WarSclerotic

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 29, 2009; 3:01 PM

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 29 — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Tuesday that Iran’s construction of the Qom nuclear enrichment facility violates U.N. resolutions requiring greater candor about its atomic activities, adding that Tehran must prove to the world that it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons.

Ban’s remarks placed the U.N. body squarely behind the Obama administration’s campaign to ratchet up international pressure on Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions on the eve of nuclear talks it is scheduled to hold Thursday with the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

Ban said he outlined his concerns in a face-to-face meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday and that he would press the same message in talks with Iran’s foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, today.

“The burden of proof is on their side,” Ban said. “This new Iranian enrichment facility is contrary to the Security Council resolution. . . . They should give full access to the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] — this is what I told him.”

The Iranian government released a statement Tuesday saying that Ahmadinejad had criticized Ban during the meeting for parroting Western allegations against Iran without waiting for the IAEA to issue a formal judgment on Iran’s behavior.

“The President . . . said it is of grave concern that the U.N. Secretary General, instead of waiting for the IAEA, as the competent body, to reflect on this issue, namely the new enrichment facility, has chosen to repeat the same allegations that few Western powers are making,” the statement said.

Ahmadinejad also told Ban that Iran’s construction of the Qom facility is part of a larger Iranian program aimed at developing peaceful nuclear energy. Iran has repeatedly denied that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

The Iranian and U.N. accounts of Friday’s meeting underscored the tense nature of Ahmadinejad’s discussion with Ban, which touched on Iran’s detention of political opposition figures and what Ban characterized as Ahmadinejad’s repeated denials of the Holocaust.

In unusually strong language, Ban expressed concern about Iran’s human rights record, citing restrictions on “freedom of association, assembly and the practice of religion,” according to a U.N. account of the meeting released Friday. He also pressed Iran to invite U.N. human rights investigators into Iran and to uphold due process in trials of opposition protesters jailed after the country’s contested elections.

Iran countered this morning, saying that Ahmadinejad told the U.N. chief that “Iran condemns all the killings of innocent people that have occurred throughout history, including the killing of tens of millions of civilians in World War II.” But he said those killings cannot be used by Israel to perpetrate a new holocaust in Palestine.

The U.N. Human Rights Council met in Geneva on Tuesday to consider a U.N. report by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge who headed the U.N. war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia, that accuses Israel and Hamas, along with other Palestinian armed groups, of committing war crimes during the Gaza conflict.

The report called on the U.N. Security Council to order Israel and Hamas to conduct credible investigations into the allegations or, if they fail to do so within six months, turn the case over to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Israel and the United States have criticized Goldstone’s report as biased and unbalanced. Michael H. Posner, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, told the Rights Council on Tuesday that the United States believes the report “is deeply flawed” and disagrees “sharply with its methodology and many of its recommendations, including their extraordinarily broad scope.”

But he said the United States recognizes “Justice Goldstone’s distinguished record of public service in his own country, South Africa, and in the larger global efforts to promote justice — in the former Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and elsewhere.”

The United States has opposed Goldstone’s call for the Security Council to address alleged Israeli and Palestinian war crimes, saying the matter is best left to the Human Rights Council. But Posner said the United States would press for passage of a consensus resolution in the council, urging Israel and the Palestinians to conduct their own investigations into possible war crimes by Israeli troops and Hamas.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/29/AR2009092902191.html

Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi delivers a speech at the beginning of a general conference of the IAEA, in Vienna, Austria, 14 Sep 2009

Iran’s nuclear chief says his country will not discuss anything related to its right to enrich uranium.

Ali Akbar Salehi made his remarks two days before Iran is to discuss its atomic program with world powers in Geneva. He said Iran will never abandon its nuclear program.

Earlier, Salehi told state-run television Iran will soon tell the U.N. nuclear agency when it can inspect the nuclear plant Tehran acknowledged last week it is developing.

Meanwhile, Iranian lawmakers are warning the U.S. and other world powers against repeating past mistakes during Thursday’s talks. They said the talks are an “historic opportunity” to move past the deadlock on the nuclear issue.

The United States is threatening Iran with tougher sanctions if it does not fully reveal its nuclear activities and allow U.N. inspectors to visit its newly revealed plant.

In other news, Russia’s deputy foreign minister says Iran’s missile test launches should not be used as a reason to impose more sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program. But Sergei Ryabkov told the Interfax news agency the tests give greater argument to those who support sanctions.

China urged calm Tuesday after Tehran drew international condemnation by testing its longest-range missiles on Monday.

Russia and China are two of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, but have historically been more reluctant than the United States and European nations to punish Iran for enriching uranium.

The United States and its Western allies suspect Iran is building a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and intended to produce electricity.

Iran’s nuclear chief says Iran informed the U.N. nuclear agency that its new plant will produce enriched uranium at a level (five percent) consistent with its nuclear energy program.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-09-29-voa14.cfm

msnbc.com:Will Israel attack Iran?

Iran recently became aware that its adversaries had uncovered the existence of a nuclear facility in Qom. Last week, the US shared what it knew with Russia and China, trying to persuade them to support tougher sanctions against Teheran. Late Thursday, the mullahs abruptly “reported” the secret uranium enrichment plant still under construction to the International Atomic Energy Agency. And on Friday, the US, Britain and France announced that Iran had been exposed – for the third time – trying to deceive the world.

In this photo released by the Iranian semi-official Mehr News Agency, Revolutionary Guard’s Zelzal missile is launched in a drill near the city of Qom, 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Teheran, Iran.
Photo: AP

The underground facility, ensconced inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guards base, was described by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates as “part of a pattern” of “lies” that has characterized Iran’s nuclear program from “the very beginning.”

But don’t expect Teheran to show contrition when it meets in Geneva on Thursday with the five permanent members of the Security Council – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, plus Germany; its first official “engagement” with Washington in decades.

Iran will express, as did Ali Akbar Salehi, head of its Atomic Energy Organization on Saturday, shock at the negative reaction to Qom. In 2003, it promised to reveal any new facilities to the IAEA as soon as it made plans to build them, but later backtracked, allowing Salehi to argue that Iran had had no obligation to tell the IAEA about Qom any sooner.

Add Qom to the scary list of facilities – at Bushehr, Isfahan, Natanz and Arak, and who knows where else – where Islamist fanaticism is being wedded to weapons of mass destruction.

The Iranian leadership’s unvarnished thinking on the Qom expose was enunciated by Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s bureau chief: “God willing, this plant will be put into operation soon, and will blind the eyes of the enemies.”

WHAT happens next? President Barack Obama declared that his “offer of a serious, meaningful dialogue to resolve this issue remains open.” But he wants Iran to “come clean” and “make a choice” – cooperation or “confrontation” with the international community. Obama says his policy of engagement and multilateral consultations means that if “diplomacy does not work, we will be in a much stronger position to, for example, apply sanctions that have bite.”

That is doubtful. Iran’s game continues to be a cunning combination of cooperation and recalcitrance. One step forward, two steps back. For example, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told The Washington Post that he is willing to have his nuclear experts meet with scientists from the United States as a confidence-building measure. Of course these experts will be in no position to answer questions about Iran’s nuclear infractions.

The autocrat who stole a basically fixed Iranian election in which only vetted candidates could compete, who believes a cabal of Jews controls the world, that the Holocaust never happened and Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth, has now given his word that Iran has no interest in acquiring nuclear weapons: “We fundamentally believe nuclear bombs are the wrong thing to have.”

Iran’s stratagem is to “engage” as it pushes ahead with its bomb, thereby making it hard for the international community to impose meaningful sanctions. Once it feels certain it has all the pieces of the nuclear weapon’s puzzle in place – fuel, warhead, delivery system – it might offer Obama a stop just short of a test detonation, in return for a long list of Western concessions.

Anyway, the pace of economic sanctions is way out of sync with the progress the mullahs are making on their bomb. Even if Russia and China accepted a winter embargo on refined petroleum products entering Iran, is there any reason to imagine that the mere discomfort of the Iranian masses would take precedence for Khameini and Ahmadinejad over the bomb?

Obama should leapfrog over futile intermediate steps and place draconian sanctions on the table, now. To paraphrase John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, this would mean that all ships and planes bound for Iran, from whatever nation, would be turned back.

Perhaps this prospect, coupled with a complete land, sea and air quarantine, can influence Iran’s leaders to rethink their one-step-forward-two-steps-back strategy, and save humanity from an Iranian bomb.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254163536876&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

By Yossi Melman

Intelligence experts in the West and in Israel assumed for some time that a country that is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons would also develop a secret installation for enriching uranium so that it could hide its activities from the international community.

At such an installation, it would then be able to enrich uranium to a sufficiently high level that it would be usable as fissile material in a nuclear bomb. Indeed, what has taken place over the past few days has been the realization of those estimates, with Iran announcing that it had in place an additional installation for uranium enrichment, beyond the one the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency were aware of in Natanz.

Iran’s announcement was made so as to preempt the news first being released by the media or foreign governments. However, Iran made no real gain with its admission. On the contrary, it has only aroused additional suspicions regarding its plans, incensed the international community, and embarrassed its few supporters. Even Russia, which has to date backed Iran and prevented the imposition of harsh sanctions against Tehran, appears to be losing patience.

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Iran’s timing was especially bad, with the announcement about the Qom facility coming only days before the scheduled October 1 start of talks in Geneva with the permanent members of the Security Council and Germany. Those talks are intended to resolve the issue of Tehran’s nuclear program. The announcement also came a short while after the IAEA’s annual meeting, just after the UN General Assembly gathering, and on the day the G-8 met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In all settings, Iran was topped the agenda.

The announcement resulted in a demand from the leaders of the U.S., France and the United Kingdom that Iran allow international inspectors to enter the site at Qom. Iran confirmed that it intends to do just that and is trying to calm things by saying that only low-level enrichment took place at the facility, just like at Natanz – intended for the peaceful purpose of producing electricity.

But the world is now finding it difficult to believe a regime that has in the past been caught lying more than once. According to Tehran, the newly publicized installation is small, and can house only 3,000 centrifuges, which are too few for industrial production. This, coupled with Iran’s efforts to highlight the activities at Natanz while constructing a secret facility, leads to only one conclusion: that they were planning to use the installation to produce highly enriched uranium for military use.

If Iran does agree to let IAEA inspectors into the site, it will have to build a third enrichment facility – although there may already be one in place. Which raises a major question: How many other secret sites does Iran have for the production of the essential elements for its nuclear program? This is a question of particular importance to the military planners who are considering a military option against Iran.

Some analysts have said that the installation at Qom is the “smoking gun” that proves, beyond doubt, that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

Nonetheless, global political interests do not seem to be any closer to converging on how to deal with Iran and its nuclear program. Meanwhile, Iran is getting closer to its goal of being in a position to produce nuclear weapons.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1117289.html