‘It’s 1938, and Iran Is Germany’: Israel’s Patience with Tehran Wearing Thin – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

By Dieter Bednarz, Erich Follath and Christoph Schult

‘It’s 1938, and Iran Is Germany’

Israel’s Patience with Tehran Wearing Thin

Iran’s leaders continue to reject compromises over their nuclear program and are rebuffing the IAEA. The West is likely to respond with tighter sanctions, but that is unlikely to satisfy Israel, which has attack plans already drawn up.

Six men are sitting around a table, deciding the future of the world. The men, who represent the US, Russia, China, France, Britain and Iran, are considering questions such as: Is Tehran really building a nuclear bomb? Do sanctions work, and if they do, how should they be intensified? Will bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities end up being the only real solution, and what would be the consequences?

The men are not politicians, but scientists and diplomats involved in a role-playing scenario. They are all Israeli citizens. That doesn’t make the experiment, which took place two weeks ago at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, any less spectacular. The participants in this role-playing exercise, all of whom were very familiar with the issues involved, were capable of taking a completely different approach to what-if scenarios than politicians, because they cannot be held responsible for anything — good or bad — that results from their decisions.

The outcome of the experiment was supposed to be kept secret, but this much was leaked: The participant playing the United States emphasized negotiations and shunned confrontation for a long time, while “Iran” was convinced that it had excellent cards and viewed the risk of truly hard-hitting sanctions as slim. “Israel” initially pushed for international isolation and crippling economic sanctions by the United Nations, but then — as a last resort — threatened to attack.

Plans at the Ready

The results probably pleased Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu, because they reflected the way he thinks. Although the premier is not yet prepared to deploy Israeli fighter jets to conduct targeted air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the military has plans at the ready.

Netanyahu has said often enough that he will never accept an Iranian nuclear bomb. He doesn’t believe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he insists that Iran’s nuclear program is intended solely for civilian purposes. But he does take Ahmadinejad — a notorious Holocaust denier — at his word when he repeatedly threatens to wipe out Israel. Netanyahu draws parallels between Europe’s appeasement of Hitler and the current situation. “It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany,” he says. This time, however, says Netanyahu, the Jews will not allow themselves to be the “sacrificial lamb.”

But even politicians who normally take a less extreme view, like Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, Israel’s minister of intelligence and atomic energy, are now realizing that the situation is coming to a head. A narrow majority of the Israeli population currently favors bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, while 11 percent would consider leaving Israel if Tehran acquires nuclear weapons.

Meridor says that his counterparts in the US government are reporting a sharp increase in the level of concern among Iran’s moderate Arab neighbors. “Ninety percent of the conversations between the United States and countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now revolve around Iran, while 10 percent relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” he says.

Decisive Stage

This concern is not limited to the region. In Washington and in the European Union — and, more recently, in Moscow –, the focus has shifted dramatically toward Iran. After years of maneuvering and deception, and after a long period of missed opportunities, including on the part of the West, the conflict is moving toward a decisive stage.

In a SPIEGEL interview in mid-November, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she had no intention of taking the military option “off the table.” Her German counterpart, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, attended a meeting at the Israeli Foreign Ministry last Tuesday, where he was briefed on the latest Israeli intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program. The next day in Vienna, while standing next to Nobel Peace Prize winner and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohammed ElBaradei, who is leaving office this week after heading the UN nuclear watchdog agency for 12 years, Westerwelle said that the world community’s “patience with Iran” is “not infinite.”

Tehran played a cat-and-mouse game with the IAEA for a long time. However, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has both privileges — such as technical assistance in the civilian use of nuclear energy — and clearly defined obligations. The regime has repeatedly failed to live up to these obligations, despite many efforts to build bridges, particularly on the part of ElBaradei. This incurred the wrath of the administration of former US President George W. Bush, who even had ElBaradei’s telephone conversations tapped.

In its most recent internal report, dated Nov. 16, 2009 and marked “for official use only,” the IAEA has adopted an unusually sharp tone. According to the report, the Fordo uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom in northwestern Iran, which the UN inspectors only discovered in September, was “clearly reportable,” because it had apparently been under construction for much longer than the Iranians had indicated. A possible military nuclear program, which the Iranian leadership has consistently denied, raises “alarming” questions, according to the report, while Tehran continues to refuse to permit unannounced inspections. In summary, the report states: “Iran has not fulfilled its obligations. Its behavior is not conducive to the establishment of trust.”

Just a Year Away from the Bomb?

Behind the scenes in Vienna, there are grave concerns over news that Iran could be well on its way to developing a Shahab-3 midrange missile that could be upgraded to carry nuclear weapons and could reach Tel Aviv. Iranian scientists are believed to have successfully simulated the detonation of a nuclear warhead. Detonation is one of the most technologically challenging problems in the construction of this type of nuclear weapon. Experts believe that it could take Iran as little as a year to acquire the expertise and a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium to build a real nuclear warhead.

Intelligence reports about a restructuring in the Iranian Defense Ministry are no less alarming. According to those reports, a “Department for Expanded High-Technology Applications” (FEDAT) is now under great pressure from the government in Tehran to push ahead with a military nuclear program. According to an organizational chart of FEDAT that SPIEGEL has obtained, the department is divided into sub-departments for uranium mining, enrichment, metallurgy, neutrons, highly explosive material and fuel supply (“Project 111”). FEDAT is headed by the mysterious Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, one of the key officials the IAEA wants to interview, although Mahabadi has so far refused to talk to the agency.

Repeated Overtures

US President Barack Obama has made many overtures to Iran. He has admitted to historical mistakes, such as the 1953 CIA-backed coup that toppled liberal Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. In a video message to the Iranian people coinciding with the festival of Nowruz, which marks the beginning of the Iranian new year, Obama spoke of the great civilizing achievements of the Persian nation. He abandoned Washington’s demand that Tehran give up uranium enrichment altogether, which had been a precondition to negotiations under his predecessor, George W. Bush.

And he proposed, together with other permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, a barter deal that would allow all parties to save face: Iran was to ship a large share of its low-enriched uranium abroad for one year, to Russia or Turkey, and in return would receive nuclear fuel elements processed by France.

The benefit for Tehran was that it would receive, for its research reactor, urgently needed radionuclides that are used in cancer therapy. The benefit for the international community was that it could be sure that the Iranians, during the period covered by the deal, would have no opportunity to pursue their own extensive enrichment activities needed to produce high enriched uranium, the material used to make bombs.

The Iranians seemed interested at first, but then they began setting conditions. In the end, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki rejected the offer, stating that Tehran would definitely not send fissile material abroad.

Clinging to Last Hopes

In an almost desperate appeal, ElBaradei then addressed the Iranian leadership directly, saying: “You need to engage in creative diplomacy, you need to understand that this is the first time that you will have a genuine commitment from an American president to engage you fully, on the basis of respect, with no conditions.” In his last few days in office, the IAEA chief is clinging to the hope that a final response is still forthcoming.

But Iran currently favors threatening gestures over compromises of any sort. The Iranians were so enraged over a resolution Germany presented to the IAEA board of governors last Thursday, which was supported by Washington, Moscow and Beijing, that they threatened to limit their cooperation with the UN. The resolution, which was accepted the next day by a large majority, is essentially nothing but a demand for assurances from Tehran not to maintain any further undeclared nuclear facilities. In one of the biggest military maneuvers in recent years, the Iranian leadership spent five days parading all of its available military equipment, almost as if it were preparing for the worst.

But the display of Iran’s tanks and fighter jets was not only intended to intimidate the “Zionist aggressor” and its allies. The mullahs also used the maneuver to demonstrate their resolve and capacity to take action on the domestic front, where the regime has been at odds with its detractors for the last six months. Since Iran’s presidential election in June, when the uncompromising Ahmadinejad deprived his reform-oriented challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi of victory through apparent election fraud, the opposition has been unrelenting.

Paying the Price

The regime takes the nightly protest chants of “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) and “Marg bar Dictator” (“Death to the dictator”) very seriously. In the months of the revolution, in 1978 and 1979, millions of Iranians used the same slogans in protest against then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his brutal Savak intelligence service.

Dozens of supporters of the “Green Movement” have already paid for their protests with their lives, and at least 4,000 regime critics have been arrested. Although many were released after a few days, reports of torture and rape only increased the population’s loathing of the regime. The elderly Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, who challenged the regime’s legitimacy and issued a fatwa declaring nuclear bombs to be “un-Islamic,” is under de facto house arrest once again.

‘The Enemy Is Everywhere’

The leadership has increased the pressure once again in recent weeks. It strengthened the feared Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, considered the regime’s most loyal supporters, by adding two units to “combat the psychological operations of the enemy.” Another new unit was established to monitor opposition Internet sites and combat “insults and the spreading of lies.” These units are under the command of the Tehran public prosecutor’s office, notorious for its show trials. The country is in a “soft war,” said Pasdaran General Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, “and the enemy is everywhere.” One of the targets of the latest government crackdown was Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, whose prize was confiscated by authorities.

Popular rage is not directed only at the “vote thief” in the presidential office. Many believe that Ahmadinejad is merely a puppet of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was previously virtually untouchable. He is the strong man, he appoints the highest-ranking judges, and he is in charge of the intelligence services, the armed forces, the Revolutionary Guards and the hated Basij militias. He determines the basic features of government policy and decides on Iran’s course in the nuclear conflict.

Willing to Compromise?

But to what extent is this leadership now capable of taking action? Will it accommodate the global community in the nuclear conflict, or does the regime see confrontation with the West as its opportunity to survive?

According to conservative sources in Tehran, President Ahmadinejad was most recently quite willing to make a compromise. He apparently hoped that he could spruce up his reputation, heavily tarnished as a result of the election disaster, at least internationally. This, say the Tehran sources, explains why Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili signaled a willingness to make concessions at the historic nuclear summit in Geneva in early October, a meeting at which an Iranian official came face-to-face with a senior representative of the “Great Satan” for the first time since the Iranian revolution. But in Khamenei’s eyes, the deal — uranium outsourcing in return for fuel delivery — was a non-starter. Ironically, opposition politician Mousavi agrees with him.

A key reason for the Iranian politicians’ self-confidence is that they do not believe that Israel would truly risk an attack on Iran. US experts also warn against the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities. David Albright, head of the Washington think tank ISIS, believes that a “surgical strike” against the nuclear facilities would be completely impossible. According to Albright, no one knows how many nuclear sites Iran has, and the centrifuges in existing facilities like Natanz are apparently installed in tunnels so deep underground that even bunker-busting bombs could not destroy everything.

The Israelis, on the other hand, believe that Iran is merely playing for time. The Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has long had its capacities directed at Iran, and not just since Netanyahu came into office. Israeli envoys quietly visit European companies that export products to Tehran. When the agitated German executives insist that their products are intended purely for civilian purposes, the Israelis produce photos showing the European components installed in one of Iran’s nuclear plants.

Chances of Success

“The West approves UN sanctions by day and trades with Tehran by night, and Ahmadinejad takes advantage of this ambivalence,” Israeli Trade Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told SPIEGEL. Ben-Eliezer, a retired general, believes optimistically that Iran can be stopped, but that this would require a total embargo: “Nothing can be allowed in or out.”

With the Iranian economy weakened, the regime under internal pressure after the disputed elections and the Russians distancing themselves from Iran, the chances that sanctions will succeed have never been this good, say some diplomats in Tehran.

“The regime in Iran is not irrational,” says Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor. According to Meridor, only if possessing the bomb jeopardizes the regime’s survival, will Ahmadinejad decide against building the weapon.

Others, however, believe that the timetable of escalation is already as good as fixed, and that the conflict is coming to a head. They believe that tighter sanctions will start in the spring of 2010, followed by air strikes perhaps in the summer of 2010.

Meanwhile, a representative of the Iranian government has already issued precautionary threats: “If the enemy want (sic) to test its bad luck and fire a missile into Iran, before the dust settles, Iran’s ballistic missiles will target the heart of Tel Aviv.”

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Would Iran Provide A Nuclear Weapon to Terrorists? | Global Terrorism.

Winter 2009

The United States seeks to negotiate an end to Iran’s bid for nuclear weapons. U.S. and European officials have laid out scenarios whereby Iran could potentially threaten the surrounding Arab states, Israel, or even Europe with missiles equipped with nuclear warheads. But there is strikingly little discussion among policymakers about the possibility Iran might share nuclear weapons with one of the many terrorist organizations it supports.

Al-Qaeda?

When this worst-case scenario is raised, analysts usually focus on Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shi’ite terrorist group founded in the early 1980s by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. However, al-Qaeda has a far more extensive history of seeking to acquire these weapons, and as the 9/11 Report stated, Osama bin Laden’s network retains nominal yet murky ties with Iran.

Despite a history of distrust and feuding between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Tehran and al-Qaeda share common enemies in the United States and Israel. This has yielded cooperation in recent years.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted some of the major U.S. terror cases of the 1990s, outlined in detail in National Review Online the cooperation between Iran and al-Qaeda. McCarthy points to the case of Ali Mohamed, a shadowy Egyptian who eventually immigrated to the United States and served in the U.S. Army. Unbeknownst to U.S. intelligence, Mohammed was also a senior al-Qaeda trainer and served as bin Laden’s personal bodyguard. At bin Laden’s direction, Mohammed conducted surveillance of various potential bombing targets including the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

When he pled guilty in 2000 to participating in al-Qaeda’s war against the United States, Mohammed cited the existence of “contacts between al-Qaeda and al-Jihad organization [Egyptian Islamic Jihad, headed by Zawahiri], on one side, and Iran and Hezbollah on the other side. I arranged security for a meeting in the Sudan between [Imad Mugniyeh], Hezbollah’s chief, and bin Laden.”

Mohammed further stated that Hezbollah provided explosives training for al-Qaeda and al-Jihad. Iran, in turn, supplied al-Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbollah to “supply explosives disguised to look like rocks.”

Mohammed’s disclosure should not have come as a surprise. When the U.S. indicted bin Laden in 1998, the Justice Department charged that he had called for al-Qaeda to “put aside its differences with Shi’ite Muslim terrorist organizations, including the government of Iran and its affiliated terrorist group Hezbollah, to cooperate against the perceived common enemy, the United States and its allies.”

The indictment added, “Al-Qaeda also forged alliances… with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.”

When it released its final report in 2004, the 9/11 Commission noted that, “senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as intelligence and security.”

That instruction at Hezbollah facilities included al-Qaeda’s top military committee members. One of those who received training from Hezbollah, McCarthy noted, was Saif al-Adel, al-Qaeda’s chief of military operations and a “driving force” behind the 1998 Africa embassy bombings. He was also tied to the U.S.S. Cole bombing in 2000, and was believed to have trained some of the September 11 hijackers.

Al-Qaeda’s Record

Now that the relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran has been established, it is important to understand that al-Qaeda has stated clearly that it seeks to use weapons of mass destruction on the United States.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative (www.nti.org), a group headed by media mogul Ted Turner and former Georgia Democratic Senator Sam Nunn, notes there is evidence dating back to the early 1990s of al-Qaeda’s effort to obtain a nuclear device and recruit people with nuclear weapons expertise. For example, the U.S. government’s indictment of bin Laden for the 1998 Africa embassy bombings alleges that at various times dating back to 1992, the al-Qaeda boss joined with a senior aide, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, and others “to obtain the components of nuclear weapons.” The document also charges that in 1993 the group attempted to purchase highly-enriched uranium in Sudan.

Al-Qaeda continued its efforts to obtain WMD and nuclear know-how throughout the 1990s. Then, in 2000, a Russian National Security Council official announced that al-Qaeda’s Taliban allies had sought to recruit a nuclear expert from a Russian facility.

Shortly before September 11, bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri met with two senior Pakistani nuclear weapons experts who were Taliban supporters. Although they denied providing bin Laden with any useful information, the Pakistani experts admitted to The Washington Post in December 2001 that they provided detailed technical information in violation of Pakistani security laws.

Even after being driven from his base in Afghanistan, bin Laden has continued his quest for nuclear weapons. In 2004, captured al-Qaeda operative Sharif al-Masri told interrogators that al-Qaeda seeks to acquire nuclear materials in Europe and move them to Mexico, and from there, across the border into the United States. In 2005, two jihadists were arrested in Germany trying to obtain uranium. One of them was an Iraqi who had trained in al-Qaeda’s camps and was associated with September 11 planner Ramzi Binalshibh.

While we do not know the extent to which bin Laden’s network has achieved success, the Obama Administration is on record as stating that al-Qaeda continues to try to acquire nuclear weapons technology and know-how.

“Al-Qaeda is still there in the region, ever dangerous and publicly asking people to attack the U.S. and publicly asking nuclear engineers to give them nuclear secrets from Pakistan,” Richard Holbrooke, the Special U.S. Representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, said on September 16.

The Calculus

Terrorism analysts in Washington need to be asking: Under what circumstances might Iran decide to up the ante and transfer WMD technology to terrorist organizations?

Diplomats typically dismiss the possibility. They acknowledge that this would be a terrible thing, but express doubt that Iran would take such a drastic step for two reasons.

First, they argue that Tehran itself is uncomfortable at the prospect of terrorists acquiring such weapons. Second, they argue that the Iranian leadership understands that if a nuclear weapon is transferred to al-Qaeda and used to attack the United States or any of its allies, the retaliation would be overwhelming.

To be sure, analysts should not underestimate the importance of American power as a deterrent. But it is equally important to understand that, with Iran, deterrence has its limits. No nation today has as extensive a record of supporting terrorism as Iran, and Western policies in place until now have utterly failed to deter Iran from facilitating terrorism using conventional weapons.

U.S. deterrence has been eroded by Iran’s perception of American weakness, and by the fact that the Iranian regime has been able to foment terrorism and violence against the United States and the West for more than 30 years and get away with it. Deterrence is further weakened by the instability of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who seems not to fear conflict with the West.

The Hezbollah Scenario

Iran could also provide a nuclear weapon to any of its proxy terrorist organizations in conflict with Israel. Indeed, Iran could see this is an insurance policy. In the event that Israel launches a preemptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran may conclude that it has nothing to lose by turning nuclear technology over to terrorists-notably Hezbollah.

Iran already has smuggling routes to the group. Recently, it smuggled massive quantities of weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon, in an attempt to help it to rebuild the weapons arsenal destroyed by Israel during the 2006 war. As a result of that smuggling, Hezbollah now has more than three times the number of missiles it had at the start of that war. Israeli military officials acknowledged in November that Hezbollah now has Iranian-made Fajr rockets that reach Tel Aviv and possibly Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona.

The Israelis are doing their best to stop the flow of weapons. On November 3, Israeli commandos intercepted an arms shipment on its way from Iran to Hezbollah. The weapons were transported aboard the MV Francop, a cargo ship flying the Antiguan flag. Hidden aboard the civilian vessel were three-dozen shipping containers holding weaponry for Hezbollah. At 500 tons, the Francop was carrying a quantity of armaments at least 10 times as large as that aboard the Karine-A, a ship that Iran loaded up with 50 tons of advanced weaponry for Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority in Gaza. It was captured by Israel in January 2002.

In the Francop case, the weapons seized aboard the ship included 3,000 recoilless gun shells, 9,000 mortar bombs, and more than half a million rounds of small-arms ammunition. Also found aboard the ship were 2,800 rockets. English- and Farsi- language markings on the polyethylene sacks containing the munitions proved that Iran’s National Petrochemical Company produced the sacks.

In January 2009, Cypriot authorities captured a shipment of anti-tank weapons, artillery and rocket-manufacturing materials for manufacturing rockets on a Cypriot ship leased by an Iranian firm. Intelligence officials believe the weaponry was bound for Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

In May 2007, the Kurdish PKK terror group derailed an Iranian train in southeastern Turkey carrying rocket launchers, mortar shells, and light arms to Syria (possibly destined for Hezbollah.) In December 2003 and January 2004, after humanitarian assistance was flown into southern Iran for earthquake victims, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards used the return flights to Damascus to smuggle arms to Hezbollah.

These are the instances in which weapons were captured. There are untold numbers of Iranian shipments that get through. The question that analysts must now answer is: could a nuclear weapon get through, too?

The late Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, took this possibility seriously. Under the right circumstances, Tehran might attempt to transfer WMD to Hezbollah, or perhaps other terror groups, such as Hamas or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In interviews with The Washington Times and The New York Times not long before his death in 2007, Leventhal said it was not beyond the realm of possibility that Hezbollah could try to smuggle a crude nuclear device via a ship or truck and deliver it to a highly populated Israeli city. According to Leventhal, if the fissile device functioned poorly, it would result in an explosion with the power of 1,000 tons of TNT, resulting in radiation contamination and a “catastrophic” number of casualties. If such a device functioned properly, it could result in an explosion with the power of 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT-roughly equivalent to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in August 1945.

The Iranian Nuclear Threat

The dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapon are many. While the dangers of the conventional missile threat have been made clear, the danger of an Iranian bomb in the hands of terrorist organizations requires further analysis. The free world dismisses such threats at its own peril.

Column- The consequences of America’s actions – Holland, MI – The Holland Sentinel.

YouTube – John Bolton Israel will attack Iran by end of 2009 (MODERN WARFARE SERIES/ IRAN/’Portents Of War’).

Editorial: Obama must outline plan to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

The Detroit News

President Barack Obama will outline tonight his strategy for a troop surge in Afghanistan that hopefully will curtail the violence and allow for the building of a sustainable political infrastructure. Meanwhile, there’s still Iran.

Developing an effective response to Iran’s nuclear ambitions is as important as stabilizing Afghanistan and keeping Iraq moving toward self-government.

The Iranians have proved impervious to international pressure to suspend their uranium enrichment work. Iran demonstrated its defiance again this week by revealing plans to build 10 more centrifuges to produce the material necessary for a nuclear weapon.

On Iran, the Obama administration seems torn between moving forcefully to deny it nuclear capability and developing a strategy to contain the nuclear threat if it manages to build a weapon.

At this point, the United States must be prepared to do both.

Time is running short to impose an effective, iron-clad sanctions program punishing enough to discourage Iran from pursuing its nuclear goals. The Obama administration must push for a stronger commitment from China and Russia to participate in sanctions.

The sanctions must be tightened soon. Iran has demonstrated its intent to rapidly accelerate its uranium enrichment efforts. Once all of the centrifuges are built, a bomb won’t be far behind.

The other option, of course, is a military strike. But neither the United States nor its allies, except possibly for Israel, seem to have an appetite for bombing Iran. And the effectiveness of stopping the Iranians through a military attack is questionable.

So the administration must demonstrate that it is prepared to counter and deter the Iranians if they do develop a nuclear weapon.

This starts with building a stronger defensive shield around Israel and other potential targets. It also involves developing and deploying new weapons of our own specifically designed to deal with Iran’s nuclear program — including the so-called bunker-busting bomb that the Pentagon says will be ready in months and will be capable of destroying Iran’s underground nuclear sites.

Iran must be persuaded that we are prepared to stop it by any means necessary from wielding its nuclear program as a club over the civilized world.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

Dec 2, 2009 Beware the winds of December By Alastair Crooke While America has been absorbed by the Afghan election imbroglio, a less-noticed event slid into place in the Middle East. It is less dramatic than President Hamid Karzai’s near removal; but this event tilts the strategic balance: Turkey finally shrugged off its United States straight-jacket; stared-past any beckoning European Union membership; and has fixed its eyes toward its former Ottoman Asian and Middle Eastern neighbors. Turkey did not make this shift merely to snub the West; but it does reflect Turkey’s discomfort and frustration with US and EU policy – as well as resonate more closely with the Islamic renaissance that has been taking place within Turkey. This “release” of Turkish policy towards a new direction – if successful – can be as significant as the destruction of Iraq and the implosion of Soviet power was, 20 years ago, in “releasing” Iran to emerge as one of the pre-eminent powers in the region. In the past months, a spate of new agreements have been signed by Turkey with Iraq, Iran, Syria and Armenia, which suggest not just a nascent commonality of political vision with Iraq, Iran and Syria, but more importantly, it reflects a joint economic interest – the northern tier of Middle East states are in line to become the principal suppliers of natural gas to Europe – thus displacing Russia as the dominant purveyor of gas to central Europe. In short, the prospective Nabucco gas pipeline to central Europe may gradually eclipse the energy primacy of Saudi oil. What is mainly symbolic in the prospective passing of the baton of energy “kingpin” – at least for Europe – from Saudi Arabia to the “northern tier”, however, is given substance, rather than symbolic form, in the simultaneous weakening of the “southern tier” – Saudi Arabia and Egypt – both of which have become partially incapacitated by their respective succession crises and domestic preoccupations. The weakening of the “southern tier” comes at a sensitive time. The region sees the drift of power from erstwhile US allies, Egypt and Saudi Arabia towards the northern tier, and, as is the way in the Middle East, is starting to readjust to the new power reality. This can be most clearly seen in Lebanon today, in the growing procession of former US allies and critics of the Syrian government, making their pilgrimage to Damascus. The message is not lost on others in the region either. The US administration sees these changes too. It additionally knows – as writers on the elsewhere have made clear – that any sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program ultimately will fail. They will fail not only because Russia and China will not play ball but precisely because the much touted “moderate alliance of pro-Western Arab states” is looking increasingly to be a paper tiger: the “moderates” are not seriously going to confront Iran and its allies. Hopes by those, such as John Hannah, writing on foreignpolicy.com, that the Saudi bombing of the Houthi rebels in Yemen would mobilize a sectarian Sunni hostility towards Shi’ite Iran have not been realized. On the contrary, the Saudis’ action has been clearly seen in the region for what it is – a partisan and tribal intervention in another state’s internal conflict. But if sanctions on Iran are widely acknowledged – at least in private within the US administration – as destined to fail, this must be provoking some interesting self-questioning within the White House: The US is in the process now of withdrawal from Iraq, it is looking for the exit in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is getting messier. None of these events seems likely to become particularly glorious episodes for the administration. It is not hard to imagine White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel and White House senior adviser David Axelrod asking themselves, “why the president should want to risk another perceived failure” – as sanctions on Iran surely will be. “Why”, they may ask, “do sanctions and open ourselves to persistent Republican jeering at their inevitable failure and then ultimately force us to have to ask … well, what do we do next, Mr President”? “Worse, will we,” they may ask, “be going into mid-term congressional elections with the Republicans raising that old Vietnam taunt that the ‘US Army did not lose in Vietnam – it was the politicians who stabbed the military in the back’ but with that same mantra now being used by our political enemies to depict Iraq and Afghanistan as failures of political nerve? Do we want to go into the midterm elections with failing Iran sanctions hanging like an albatross around our necks too?” No doubt in this discussion one of the White House staffers will point out that, in the case of Iraq, sanctions were indeed pursued, despite the likelihood of their failure, but for one reason only: to entice the Europeans on board; to go through the diplomatic motions – so that the Europeans would have no choice but to accept the consequences of their failure. But this does not apply in the case of Iran, the officials might point out: Britain and France, and to a lesser extent Germany, are, on this issue, more committed to “imploding” the Iranian state – by “soft” war, if not by “hot” war – than is Washington – so what would be the purpose of sanctions now? We do not know the outcome to this hypothetical debate. We do not yet know that negotiations with Iran will fail; although it seems that the debate within the administration seems to be hardening against the idea of Iran retaining any enrichment capacity. If this does become the administration’s position, then failure of negotiations is assured. Iran will not abjure its right to a nuclear fuel cycle for power generation – even at the risk of war. This is the essence of the dilemma: if sanctions seem likely to lead to nothing more than Republican sniping and taunts of weakness, how does the president display “toughness” on Iran – against the backdrop of withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan and abstention on the Israeli-Palestinian political process? It is clear that Israel must be reading the region in the same fashion. Israelis are acutely sensitive to US politics, and the Israeli media already express understanding for the acute dilemma that will face the US president if sanctions do not succeed in persuading Iran to abandon all enrichment (the Israeli objective). How might Israel see the way to help President Barack Obama resolve this dilemma – given the improbability that Israel will be given any “green light” to attack Iran directly, with all the consequences that such military action might entail for US interests in the region? A recent article by the veteran and well-connected Israeli columnist, Alex Fishman, in the Hebrew language newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth, perhaps offers some insights into how Israelis may be speculating about such issues when he warns about “the approaching December winds”. These winds, Fishman tells us, will bring more and new revelations – not about Iran’s nuclear ambitions – but about Syria’s nuclear projects: the departure of Mohamed ElBaradei from the chair at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he states, will open the door to new IAEA demands to inspect two suspected nuclear sites in Syria. Fishman notes that, following the surfacing last month in Germany of stories that Israeli special forces had been on the ground covertly in Syria, no one should be surprised if more evidence and photographs of the nuclear reactor, destroyed by Israeli air attack in September 2007, come to dominate the headlines in the Western press this December. The “star” turn in this prospective public relations campaign is to be evidence proving a direct Iranian nuclear connection and finance for Syria’s alleged nuclear project. Fishman suggests that it suits “Israel’s internal as well as foreign PR efforts” for the time being to play along with talk of peace between Israel and Syria; but that both the December campaign against Syria’s alleged Iranian nuclear cooperation in the Western press, and the playing along with the Syrian peace track “are directly linked to negotiations” that the US is conducting with Iran. Fishman concludes that these could end in confrontation with Iran – “and also lead to a military strike”, in which case, “whomsoever is in the Iranian camp will also get a pounding” – a reference to Syria. Does this piece truly reflect Israeli thinking? We do not know; but Fishman certainly is well connected. Does the Israeli security establishment really conceive that the road to military action against Iran passes through Damascus? For those who recall the tacit support given by Europe and the US to Israel’s 2007 surprise military attack on Syria, Fishman’s scenario is not as unlikely as it may seem. That earlier episode could easily have escalated to a wider war. More likely is that this is but one of a number of “game changing” scenarios that Israel is considering, but which ultimately all have Iran as the “end game”. In the past, Israel’s political parties of the right had a reputation for conceiving unconventional military actions, which sought to transform and invert the political paradigm of that time. Such actions did not always wait on, or seek, a US “green light”. There was not direct collusion with the US. Israeli leaders looked more to the direction of the political wind in Washington. It was viewed by Israelis historically as finding a creative way to help a US president “get to yes” – to borrow Obama’s own phraseology – by creating the public support and momentum to let a US president feel pulled forward by sentiment from a need to “hold Israel back”. Is a new scandal of Iranian nuclear malfeasance and proliferation into Syria to serve as the pretext? Will a repeat of the 2007 air strikes on Syria lead to a wider conflict? Does the Israeli leadership think to ease Obama out of his Iran dilemma, by using the supposed “provocation” of a “Syrian-Iranian nuclear partnership” for a widening conflict? Perhaps we should we should beware these December “winds”?

Wake up: we cannot wish away Iran’s bomb | David Aaronovitch – Times Online.

David Aaronovitch

The Iranian bomb is beginning to feel like one of those horrible things you saw coming all along, but never felt quite able to stop. It reminds me of the fall of Zimbabwe into its late Mugabe phase — all the elements were there, but you kept hoping that he would see sense, or be deposed or something. In three years or five, maybe there will be pictures of Iran’s Supreme Leader reviewing a march-past of his nuclear rocketry, while we wonder how it all happened.

We will get to this place, first, via the “wasn’t”, as in the Iranian regime probably “wasn’t” developing a nuclear weapon, or there “wasn’t” any utterly conclusive evidence that they were. Readers with long memories will recall the relief that greeted the reporting of the publication in 2007 of the US National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE, we were told, seemed to suggest that the Iranians had shut down their nuclear weapons programme in 2003-04 but had been reluctant to prove it to anyone for capricious reasons of their own. Almost all the people who had originally disbelieved the intelligence suggesting the existence of WMD in Iran and Iraq now firmly believed the spooks. And most of those who had trusted their every warning before were now pretty sceptical.

Whatever the truth about the weapons’ existence, it was argued that Iran didn’t have a “weaponisable capability”, so that even if a warhead could be produced out of all this newly and unnecessarily enriched uranium, the mullocracy wouldn’t actually be able — ceteris paribus — to attach a firework to a stick and send it fizzing towards the enemies of the Islamic Republic.

I sense this confidence has taken a knock. Once you have the rider, most experts seem to agree, training the steed is mostly a matter of time. So it was with just about all the other nuclear nations, and now there are suggestions from different sources that Iran is indeed researching a weapons capability. Far more convincing than mere spookery was the forced admission by the Iranians in September of a hidden 3,000 centrifuge mountain plant near Qom. That was followed by their more brazen announcement this week of building plans for another ten enrichment plants. Since Iran has huge natural energy resources and also the promise of Russian nuclear fuel for any nuclear energy plants, this capacity makes little sense, unless it is either for bombmaking, or to make people think that it is for bombmaking.

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This brings us, puffing, into the next station along the way, which is “doesn’t” — as in it “doesn’t” really matter that much if Iran gets a bomb. A rhetorical — but irrelevant — companion to this argument is that it is hypocritical to complain about an Iranian bomb when the French and Brits (not to mention the Israelis) have bombs of their own. To which one can only admit that, yes it is a bit, but that
(a) there are historical reasons for this that would take some unpicking and

(b) the solution, as suggested in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, would be to lose nuclear weapon capacity rather than to spread it to every nation that feels inclined to own H-bombs of its very own.

More relevant is the view that the risk from a mullah missile is much less than the risk of trying to prevent it. This argument tends to emphasise the sophisticated — no, exquisite — system of checks and balances imagined to exist within Iran, which might prevent any wild-eyed fundamentalist getting his millennarian hands on the ultimate millennarian weapon.

According to this view President Ahmadinejad and his ilk are either far more pragmatic than his map-wiping rhetoric might suggest, or else are constrained by much wiser, almost invisible forces inhabiting the bodies of unseen grey-bearded clerics.

Like many people, even if I can’t buy “wasn’t”, then I have a desire to go along with “doesn’t”. The feeling of mission fatigue in this country and in the US is palpable. We almost lack the spare mental capacity to consider how to deal with the difficult “other”. We have intervened in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, Bosnia and Sierra Leone. We have agonised over Gaza and Lebanon. We have debated Darfur and Zimbabwe.

It is all so difficult, so intractable, that the easiest answer seems to be to withdraw, to let things alone, to hope that they will go away. The hope can direct us towards the preferred answer; it is more comfortable to believe that it won’t matter that much if Iran does get nuclear weapons. No one, after all, has dropped a bomb since Nagasaki.

I could share this feeling but for two things.

The first is that there was very nearly a nuclear exchange betwen Pakistan and India on May 27, 1998, and I am far from convinced that we won’t come to regret the South Asian bomb.

The second is that the future of Iran is far from clear. Take this straw in the wind: last week the Canadian-Iranian film-maker, Maziar Bahari, who was arrested and imprisoned for 118 days after last June’s protests in Iran, gave an account of his treatment at the hands of the regime.

Already we know that “Green” protesters were tortured, raped, made to sign false confessions and to take part in show trials facing concocted charges. What Bahari told us was that his interrogators were not working for the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence but for the intelligence division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

The significance of this was that it constituted new evidence that the Revolutionary Guard have become a parallel security state within Iran, their physical pre-eminence compensating for the political weakening of Mr Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Khamenei. Do our calculations about the Iranian bomb survive its effective possession by the Revolutionary Guard?

There is no grand military option in Iran, only the near-fantasy of the “surgical strike” in which the uranium enrichment programme is destroyed and, along with it, almost certainly, the Iranian democratic movement.

But there is still one possibility that could rule out both military action and the spectre of the Guard Bomb. That one possibility is united international action to impose targeted sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard and their political backers, and on the nuclear programme.

It would mean agreement by the Russians, the Chinese, the Germans, the French, the Americans and us to occupy a single position.

Otherwise we could find ourselves facing some great terrible future Chilcot inquiry in which we seek to answer how it was that we failed to stop the last, worst Middle East war.

Iran’s Defiance – by Stephen Brown | FrontPage Magazine.

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The decade-long attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may have entered the final round on Sunday when Iran announced to the world it intended to build ten new uranium enrichment sites.

“This is really a statement of defiance,” a former senior Israeli atomic official told The Wall Street Journal, “telling the world we are going to go ahead with our nuclear program.”

The Iranian government’s statement came only two days after the world’s major powers condemned Iran’s nuclear program, which, despite Iranian denials, is believed to be producing nuclear weapons. China and Russia joined the United States, France, Britain and Germany to support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution ordering Iran to stop construction on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom, a secret facility whose existence President Obama revealed last September.

Due to the international criticism, Iranians are now threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. North Korea is the only other country ever to have pulled out of the treaty.

According to news reports, the Iranian decision to thumb their nose at the U.N. and world opinion and construct new nuclear fuel refinement facilities was made Sunday evening at a cabinet meeting chaired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad. The Iranians will start work on five of the new sites within two months and at an unspecified future time on the remaining five.

It is believed the reason for the extra facilities is to allow Iran to build more nuclear bombs. One military analyst says U.N. weapons inspectors and the U.S. Department of Defense are of the opinion Iran currently has enough enriched fuel for one nuclear weapon. Iran would like to have several more in order to present itself as a “credible threat.”

The Iranian announcement signals a defeat for President Obama’s ‘soft’ approach towards the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network last January, Obama said Iran’s leaders would find the extended hand of diplomacy if they “unclenched” their fists.

“As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said.

But as early as March there were already signs that Iran was in no mood to unclench and drop the rock it was holding in the form of its nuclear weapons program. That month, President Obama released a video, wishing the Iranians a happy New Year, which, in Iran, falls on the first day of spring. In return for his friendly overture, the American president received from the Iranian government nothing but a demand for apologies for America’s past transgressions, real or imagined, against Iran.

Sunday’s statement simply proves what most have suspected all along: One cannot talk to the Iranian leaders and that they are simply stringing out negotiations to complete their nuclear arms program. And the fact the Iranians still celebrate the 1979 American embassy seizure every November, a flagrant and criminal breach of international law, shows they do not want to talk to the United States in particular and are still willing to flout international norms.

Essentially, Iran’s leaders are religious fanatics who believe they have been chosen by God to establish a Shiite hegemony over the majority Sunni Islamic world and then, hopefully, over the whole planet. Of the world’s one billion Muslims, about 220 million are minority Shiites, of whom the largest number, about 62 million, live in Iran. Pakistan contains the next largest community of Shiites at 33 million, while India is third with 30 million and Iraq fourth with 18 million.

Iran’s mullah regime sees possessing nuclear weapons as instrumental to its plans for world domination. Nuclear arms would also add significant muscle to Iran’s security in a part of the world where any sign of weakness or vulnerability could be dangerous. Iranians have not forgotten how Iraq took advantage of Iran’s revolutionary turmoil to launch a devastating eight-year war against it in 1980. And like Russia with its former Eastern European satellites, Iran would also use nuclear weapons to intimidate weaker neighbors.

The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (a literary pseudonym), gives another reason why Iran is not afraid to seek confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Iranian demographics have sunk to West German levels of about 1.6 children per woman, which would make waging a war in 20 years impossible. Iran currently has enough young men to embark on a military adventure, whether internally for nuclear weapons acquisition or externally against the Sunni world, while in twenty years it won’t.

Iran’s heavily-subsidized economy is also imploding. Like Argentina with its 1982 Falkland Islands’ invasion and Germany in 1939, economically it is now or never for Iran to make a grab for the ring. In a year’s time it may be too late, especially if oil prices drop dramatically again. Besides, again like Argentina, a military adventure would probably cause those Iranian people actively opposed to the regime to put aside their economic and political grievances and rally around the country’s leadership in nationalistic pride.

But if Iran wants a fight, it will most likely get one. The Islamic regime’s Holocaust-denying leadership has openly stated it wants to erase Israel from the map. Facing such a naked threat to their country’s existence, one military publication states the Israelis are now openly discussing using a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Israel’s Jericho missiles can carry nuclear warheads, they also can be equipped with a conventional warhead. An attack by Israeli warplanes is also a possibility.

The Israelis already have American backing for such a strike if negotiations fail, as they appear to have. American Vice-President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview last July America would not prevent an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since the only other option would be a nuclear-armed Iran, the Israelis will now likely ensure this last round ends in a knockout.

Saudi Gazette – Iran’s new nuclear plans magnet for sanctions.