WarSclerotic

Clinton: China risks diplomatic isolation over Iran – Haaretz – Israel News.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned China on Friday it risks diplomatic isolation and disruption to its energy supplies unless it helps keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Paris, Clinton said she and others who support additional sanctions on Iran for refusing to prove it has peaceful nuclear intentions are lobbying China to back new UN penalties on the Iranian government.

She said she understood China’s reluctance to impose new penalties on Iran, its third-largest supplier of oil. But she stressed that a nuclear-armed Iran would destabilize the Persian Gulf and imperil oil shipments China gets from other Arab states in the region.

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There is a new push for sanctions at the UN because of Iran’s continued refusal to engage on the matter with the five permanent members of the Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – and Germany.

Administration officials have invited new talks with Iran, but with no sign that Iran wants to do business, the focus has turned to penalties.

“As we move away from the engagement track, which has not produced the result that some had hoped for, and move forward on the pressure and sanctions track, China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supplies,” Clinton said.

The United States is the most visible leader in the new push for UN Security Council sanctions, and Clinton spent much of her time in Europe this week lobbying major powers whose support she needs to pass and enforce new economic penalties. Some of the additional measures that will be proposed target elements of Iran’s powerful militia structure, U.S. officials said.

The Obama administration has said Iran appears bent on developing nuclear weapons, although Iran claims its nuclear work is peaceful. Iran is thought to have stockpiled more than enough nuclear material to manufacture a single bomb, and more is being made daily.

Clinton said the risks of an Iranian bomb are manifold.

“It will produce an arms race, in the Persian Gulf, and Israel will feel its very existence threatened,” Clinton said in response to a question from an audience member during a speech at a French military academy. “All of that is incredibly dangerous.”

The United States has cautioned Israel publicly against a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s known nuclear facilities, arguing that such an attack would invite an arms race and retaliation.

U.S. Senate approves sanctions on Iran’s fuel suppliers – Haaretz – Israel News.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would let President Barack Obama impose sanctions on Iran’s gasoline suppliers and penalize some of Tehran’s elites, a move aimed at pressuring Tehran to give up its nuclear program.

The sanctions, approved on a voice vote, would target companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand the country’s oil-refining capacity by, in part, denying them loans and other assistance from U.S. financial institutions.

The House of Representatives has already passed similar legislation. Differences between the two bills will have to be worked out before the measure becomes law.

Lawmakers and the Obama administration fear Iran’s uranium enrichment program will be used to develop weapons, while Tehran says it is for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.

Many in Congress want to give Obama more tools to pressure Iran. Cutting off gasoline supplies would hurt Tehran’s economy; while Iran has the world’s third biggest oil reserves, it must import 40 percent of its gasoline to meet domestic demand because of a lack of refining capacity.

In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama warned Tehran aced “growing consequences” over its nuclear program. The administration has been working with several other major powers to build a consensus on new sanctions to be imposed jointly.

But U.S. business groups have warned the White House that the lawmakers’ approach threatens to undercut this joint strategy. The critics say broad-based sanctions sought by lawmakers would upset U.S. allies whose companies would be affected, and frustrate joint action with other countries against Iran.

The sanctions in the Senate bill would extend to companies that build oil and gas pipelines in Iran and provide tankers to move Iran’s petroleum.

The measure also prohibits the U.S. government from purchasing goods from foreign companies that do business in Iran’s energy sector.

The Senate acted on the same day that Iran hanged two men convicted in the wake of political unrest in the country. “The situation in Iran is terrible and it’s worsening. People are dying in Iran as we speak,” said Senator John McCain just before the Senate vote.

Other provisions in the bill would:

* Impose a broad ban on direct imports from Iran to the
United States and exports from the United States to Iran,
exempting food and medicines

* Require the Obama administration to freeze the assets of
Iranians, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are
active in weapons proliferation or terrorism

* Allow state and local governments and private asset fund
managers to easily divest from energy firms doing business with
Iran

* Strengthen export controls to stop the illegal black
market export of sensitive technology to Iran through other
countries and impose tough new licensing requirements on those
who refuse to cooperate

DEBKA.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Tehran has finally met international demands and “leveled” on its forbidden uranium enrichment process – but only as a calculated provocation.

Sunday, Jan. 24, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad admitted that Iran was now able to enrich uranium up to 20% grade. He was clearly crowing, telling President Barack Obama and the six powers – who engaged Iran in five months of fruitless negotiations to halt its drive for a nuclear weapon – that the Islamic Republic had trumped their card. He had also outmaneuvered his opponents at home.

A retrospective look at seven years of Iran’s nuclear development shows that the nuclear diplomatic strategy pursued by spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has paid off. Its built-in assumptions were that America is a paper tiger and would never dare confront Iran militarily or even diplomatically, and that Israel, reined in by the US, would never venture to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own.

Since his election as first-term president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has spiced this strategy with added zest, pugnacity and brass, which is why Khamenei was so keen on him winning a second term in the June 2009 election by hook or by crook. Together with the Revolutionary Guards, he has backed the president through thick and thin ever since.

(Details about the internal opposition to his tactics in next article).

For Iranians involved in the nuclear program, the cocky president is an icon. They credit his tenacity and bravado in the face of international and domestic opposition for bringing the program to the point where Tehran can build a nuclear weapon at any time it chooses. Had Ahmadinejad not persevered in walking on the edge and braving all odds, they say, Iran’s uranium enrichment processing, missile projects and nuclear infrastructure would still be in their infancy.

Effrontery is the name of the game

Effrontery continued to be the name of the game when Ahmadinejad beamingly informed Iranian journalists Sunday: “We will soon give good news on Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium.” The news about Iran’s “scientific progress” will mark Iran’s celebrations of the Islamic Revolution victory from February 1-11.

He knows that he has not only saved Iran from having to give up uranium enrichment but also trumped the Six-Power proposal to export low-grade enriched uranium for reprocessing overseas. By dragging out its reply to this proposal, Tehran has won precious time for raising it own enrichment process to a level a bare weeks short of 90 percent military grade.

Iran already has the technology for weaponizing nuclear materials; it has experimented with nuclear triggers and in February 2010 will have reached the point where it is able construct a nuclear weapon and test it, should it so decide. All this has been achieved under the noses of the policy-makers and intelligence analysts who doggedly insist that Iran’s military nuclearization is three years, some say, five years, in the future.

The estimate which DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources have stuck to since September 2008, that Iran will be capable of constructing a nuclear weapon by February 2010, has withstood the passage of time most of all.

This accuracy was not reached by pure analysis but by using the compass of Iranian president’s own scheduling data, which proved to be the single constant factor guiding Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel must decide on military action by May at a stretch

As this program advanced, governments in the US and other Western countries changed and bureaucracies continually adjusted their estimates to policy requirements. Those policies were built around the impression that there was plenty of time for decision-making and maneuvers between Washington and Jerusalem to prevent Israel resorting to military action against Iran’s nuclear momentum.

During those years, Tehran never swerved from its two-track march along the enriched uranium and plutonium paths towards a nuclear weapon.

Tehran has arrived at its goal leaving the US in the dust.

President Obama’s engagement strategy has failed together with its tactics for preventing an Israeli strike against Iran. DEBKA-Net-Weekly military sources estimate that Ahmadinejad’s announcement has brought an Israeli decision forward by a whole year. Instead of the end of 2011, the Netanyahu government must decide by May 2010 whether or not to take up its military option for destroying or crippling Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The schedule is tight indeed because it means that any attack must take place by early summer of this year – or not at all.

Since Tehran is fully conscious of this timeline and has made its preparations accordingly, the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions are in for a hectic period.