To nuke, or not to nuke, Iran? | Al Jazeera Blogs.

October 26th, 2009.

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I would guess that, for most people, the use of nuclear weapons is not even a matter for debate. Indeed, since the last actively deployed nuclear weapon showed its true colours 64 years ago, even the most belligerent of world leaders have yielded to a saner instinct and kept their fingers off the button, to few complaints.

But there’s another opinion. Its current champion, in the media at least, is John Bolton, George W. Bush’s one-time pick as Ambassador to the United Nations. In a conference ironically entitled “Ensuring Peace”, Bolton argued that the only sure way to stopping a nuclear first strike is – to initiate a nuclear first strike.

“So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”

In Bolton’s mind, then, the issue here is not to question the strategic value of nuclear weapons or the impact that using them would have on humanity; the only important question is – “who should use them first?” If it’s “us”, that’s ok. If it’s “them”, not so good.

If you are a casual user of media you would probably conclude that he’s not alone in that opinion. Even as President Barack Obama attempts to steer the nuclear bandwagon onto a path towards fewer weapons, the louder voices (or those most often quoted) are warning of proliferation and impending nuclear destruction at the hands of crazed foreign leaders.

But weighing into the debate recently, in an article in Foreign Policy magazine, Professor John Mueller frames the issue in a different perspective. In reality, he says, the nuclear trend is encouraging, because even though a few countries do still feel the need to arm themselves with the ultimate weapon, they are the minority.

“a major reason so few technologically capable countries have actually sought to build the weapons, contrary to decades of hand-wringing prognostication, is that most have found them, on examination, to be a substantial and even ridiculous misdirection of funds, effort, and scientific talent.”

History, he argues, makes it abundantly clear that, even in the most incendiary moments in international politics, even without the constraint of “mutually assured destruction”,  the world’s stockpile of nukes has achieved little but gather dust.

“…possessors of the weapons [have not] really been able to find much military use for them in actual armed conflicts. They were of no help to the United States in Korea, Vietnam, or Iraq; to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan; to France in Algeria; to Britain in the Falklands; to Israel in Lebanon and Gaza; or to China in dealing with its once-impudent neighbor Vietnam.

But even if Bolton’s argument is accepted over Mueller’s, one question remains unanswered: if Iran does indeed have a hidden network of undeclared bomb-making factories… where exactly should Israel drop that nuke?

DEBKAfile – Obama’s NSA on Iran: “Nothing is off the table”.

October 28, 2009, 8:27 AM (GMT+02:00)

NSA James Jones

The US president’s national security adviser James Jones said early Wednesday, Oct. 28: The United States will be ready to respond if Iran fails to take tangible steps soon to meet its commitments over its nuclear program. “Nothing is off the table,” he warned.

Jones delivered the keynote address as the founding conference of the new J Street Jewish lobby, which advocates US pressure on Israel for concessions in peace talks and diplomatic engagement with Iran and the extremist Hamas.

Iran has said it will reply – with changes – by Thursday, Oct. 29 or the next day

to the IAEA compromise proposal for the further processing of its 75 pc of enriched uranium in Russia and France. “We will see in a short amount of time if engagement is able to produce the concrete results that we need and will be prepared if it does not,” Jones said.

“If implemented, this arrangement would set back the clock on Iran’s breakout capability as it would reduce Iran’s stockpile far below the amount needed in order to produce a weapon, and it would take time to reconstitute the amount needed for a breakout,” he said.

DEBKAfile‘s military sources report that the proposal calls for Iran to send overseas 900 kg of its 1,200-kg stock of enriched uranium. Replacing that amount at its Natanz plant would take 240 days of processing at the estimated pace of 3.75 kg per day. All the US administration can hope to gain therefore from the IAEA proposal is less than a year for negotiations with Iran before the situation is back where it started before engagement. For Iran, this is a pretty good deal.

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U.S. set to respond if Iran defiant: Obama aide | U.S. | Reuters.

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will be ready to respond if Iran fails to take tangible steps soon to meet its commitments over its nuclear program, President Barack Obama‘s national security adviser warned on Tuesday.

“Nothing is off the table,” General James Jones said, referring to Washington’s options in dealing with Iran if it continues defying international demands.

He spoke after Iran‘s state media said Tehran wanted major amendments in the framework of a U.N. nuclear fuel deal that it broadly accepts.

The diplomatic snag threatened to unravel the plan and expose Tehran to the threat of harsher sanctions.

“Iran now needs to follow through on its commitments,” Jones said in a speech in Washington to J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief said earlier on Tuesday there was no need to rework the U.N. draft, and he and France’s foreign minister suggested Tehran would rekindle demands for tougher sanctions if it tried to undo the plan.

Among the central planks of the plan opposed by Iran — but requested by the West to cut the risk of an Iranian atom bomb — was for it to send most of its low-enriched uranium reserve abroad for processing all in one go, state television said.

The draft deal emerged from Iran‘s recent talks in Vienna with the United States and other world powers.

Iran‘s pledges have won a reprieve from sanctions targeting its oil sector but Obama and other leaders have stressed they will not wait indefinitely for Tehran to follow through.

“We will see in a short amount of time if engagement is able to produce the concrete results that we need and will be prepared if it does not,” Jones said.

Since taking office in January, Obama has sought to engage Iran diplomatically, taking a less-confrontational approach than his predecessor George W. Bush.

Iran says it is enriching uranium only for power plant fuel. But its history of nuclear secrecy has raised Western suspicions Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capability.

Jones said Iran‘s agreement to export low-enriched uranium to other countries would be a good first step toward reducing Iran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon in the short term.

“If implemented, this arrangement would set back the clock on Iran‘s breakout capability as it would reduce Iran’s stockpile far below the amount needed in order to produce a weapon, and it would take time to reconstitute the amount needed for a breakout,” he said.

Jones said the administration had consulted Israel and other U.S. allies in the Middle East and Europe plus Russia and China and the consensus was “moving toward our direction” over Iran.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

DEBKAfile – UN team unwelcome in Tehran, Mottaki whittles down overseas enrichment plan.

October 26, 2009, 5:48 PM (GMT+02:00)

Just arrived, ordered to leave?

Senior Iranian MP Alaeddin Boroujerd said Monday afternoon, Oct. 26 that the UN inspectors had carried out their mission to visit a newly-disclosed uranium enrichment plant and may leave Iran later in the day. DEBKAfile‘s Iranian sources report that the nuclear watchdog team were supposed to have paid a second visit to the Fordu plant near Qom in the next two days after their first trip on Sunday. So either the Iranians cut the inspectors’ mission short or they were denied access to the suspected facility and aborted.

Earlier, as world powers waited on tenterhooks for Tehran’s reply to the IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei’s overseas enrichment proposal, Iran’s foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki came up with a new offer: “There are two options on the table… either to buy it or give part of our fuel for further processing abroad.”

He said a final Iranian reply would come within days.

DEBKAfile‘s Iranian sources report: The idea Mottaki threw out was aimed at seeing how far the Islamic Republic could whittle down the original proposal to send 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for conversion into unweaponizable fuel for a research reactor, without giving up its “inalienable right” to enrich its own nuclear material.

Iran was let off the hook of the Friday Oct. 23 deadline for its reply, although the US, France, Russia approved the deal on time. Mottaki took up the slack to try and push the powers and ElBaradei a bit further into accepting the reduction of overseas shipments and licensing Iran to import some more, a suggestion not included in the Elbaradei plan because it would violate UN Security Council Resolutions. In this way, Tehran hoped to let go of only a (negotiable) part of its enriched uranium – and so invalidate President Barack Obama’s plan to lose control of most of the enriched uranium it held in stock that could be used for making a nuclear device.

This new Iranian proposal boils down to a deal to break that stock down into consignments of, say, 100-200 kgs, each to be posted overseas over a period of months or even years.

This was confirmed by MP Boroujerd, the head of parliament’s foreign policy commission, who said: “Because the West has repeatedly violated agreements in the past, Iran should send its low enriched uranium abroad for further processing gradually and in several phases and necessary guarantees should be taken.”

He said this to Iran’s Arabic language al Alam television Monday.

Since Iran is known to produce 3,175 kgs of enriched uranium a day at its overt plant in Natanz, it would need 77 days to produce the 200 kg taken out of stock for shipping to Russia and France. This is the quantity Tehran proposes to purchase to keep its stock level, refusing under any circumstances to be deprived of a sufficiency of material for producing a nuclear weapon.

Tehran will accept the world powers-IAEA deal only if it can be finagled to meet this fundamental principle – a process Mottaki has kicked off.

How far are the US, Russia and France coordinated on standing up to Tehran’s dickering? Speaking after the Iranian foreign minister, a senior Russian official Sergei Ryabkov urged the exercise of patience with the Islamic Republic: “We should not give the impression that everything has stayed as it was. On the contrary, we need to give the Iranians positive stimuli.”