WarSclerotic

Friendship Under Fire – By David Makovsky | Foreign Policy.

The Iranian nuclear threat will challenge Obama and Netanyahu’s sometimes-rocky relationship like never before.

BY DAVID MAKOVSKY | FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Next month, U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold a key meeting over the Iranian nuclear challenge that will test their sometimes rocky relationship. After a weekend visit by National Security Advisor Tom Donilon to Israel, the White House announced this week that Obama will host Netanyahu in Washington on March 5. This will be an opportunity for the two leaders to synchronize their positions on Iran. Whether they can reach some common ground — now or in the near future — could be a decisive factor in Israel’s decision-making on whether to strike Iran sometime this year.

International pressure on the Islamic Republic has never been higher. In addition to the new, crippling U.S. sanctions enacted on Dec. 31 and Feb. 6, the European Union recently pledged to halt the importation of Iranian oil by July 1. Iran’s economy is reeling.

For their part, Iranian leaders have struck an increasingly aggressive note. They have threatened a preemptive strike against their foes, and warned that they could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s traded oil flows daily. In another recent act of defiance, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced on Feb. 15 that a “new generation” of Iranian centrifuges had just been activated at the Natanz nuclear site. And this week, IAEA inspectors charged with monitoring Iran’s nuclear program were denied access to a military facility, returning to Vienna after what they termed “disappointing” talks with their Iranian interlocutors.

Despite its saber-rattling, Iran is feeling the heat of international sanctions. Over the past month, the Iranian rial has been devalued by 50 percent. Iran has also indicated that it may even be willing to resume diplomacy, which it has scorned since the last round of negotiations in 2009 and 2010.

With the media rife with speculation about a possible Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities by this summer, tensions between the two countries have risen to an all-time high. Iran is blaming Israel for the recent assassinations of its nuclear scientists, and Israel is accusing Iran of masterminding the Feb. 13 terror attack against Israeli diplomats in New Delhi, as well as attempted attacks in Tbilisi and Bangkok.

It is no secret that Netanyahu and Obama have never been close, but now is the time for the two leaders to find common ground over the Iranian nuclear issue.

There has already been some progress in getting top U.S. and Israeli officials to speak about Iran in similar terms. Last week in the Knesset, Netanyahu said it is critical that the world — not just Israel — identify “red lines” when dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. In a CBS appearance last month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declared that Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon, as well as closure of the Strait of Hormuz, are “red lines” for the United States.

However, the United States and Israel clearly differ in where their red lines lie. The United States has put the focus on Iran actually gaining a nuclear weapon, while Israel — more vulnerable to Iranian missiles due to its geographic proximity — views the threshold as the Iranian regime’s acquisition of enough low-enriched uranium to build a bomb, pending a political decision to convert it to weapons-grade fuel.

The other set of differences between the United States and Israel has to do with how long they are willing to wait before judging the international sanctions of Iran to be a success or failure. On the one hand, this is the first time that the United States and the EU have imposed the type of “crippling” sanctions that Israel has long called for. But on the other, recent statements by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak signal that Israel believes its window for military action is rapidly closing. As a result, Israeli officials fear they might not have the time to wait and see whether the sanctions halt Iran’s nuclear program peacefully.

Israeli military capabilities to strike Iran’s proliferating nuclear sites — especially those bunkered deep within a mountain outside the city of Qom — are more limited than those of the United States. The prospect of a new round of Iranian-U.S. diplomacy is another critical component of this equation, as it could further postpone U.S. military action in the event that sanctions fail. Taken together, these circumstances could force an Israeli decision on a preemptive strike under suboptimal conditions.

All this puts Israel on the horns of a dilemma. It can hope that sanctions will ultimately deter Iran’s nuclear program, but this may mean foregoing decisive action against what it sees as an existential threat in the hope that the United States will act further down the road. Barak and Netanyahu are commonly identified as favoring a strike, but based on my recent trip to the region, it is clear that others within the Israeli cabinet and defense establishment still have doubts. As such, the prospect of a strike is not inevitable. If Israel believed that the United States were absolutely committed to handling this issue, it would certainly shift the Israeli debate about whether to strike.

But without absolute certainty, holding off on a strike is a tough decision for Israeli officials to make. Many Israeli military leaders are children of Holocaust survivors who joined the Israeli army to ensure Israeli self-reliance in fighting against enemies who regularly pledge to eradicate it. A poignant reminder is the iconic photo of Israeli jets flying over Auschwitz in 2003, which hangs on the walls of many of their offices.

Nonetheless, it is a fundamental misreading of Israel to view this as an ideological issue. Israeli considerations of a strike are rooted not in their ethos of self-reliance, but in the fear that the United States will ultimately fail to strike, even if sanctions fail. Israeli officials’ fears are compounded by their knowledge that the American people are fatigued by conflict, and by the suspicions of some that the United States has not entirely ruled out a strategy of containment, U.S. protestations to the contrary.

The Obama administration’s official policy opposes containment, holding that the Iranian nuclear program is too destabilizing for the Middle East. As the president told NBC on Feb. 5, “We are going to do everything we can to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and creating an arms race — a nuclear arms race — in a volatile region.” Concerns about Iran handing dirty bomb technology to non-state actors, such as the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, along with fears that Iran would seek to dominate the Persian Gulf, are also all too real.

In light of these threats, some analysts could argue that Obama — who is known for his preference for Predator drone strikes in Pakistan and such surgical operations as the one that killed Osama bin Laden — would indeed resort to military action if sanctions failed. And despite tensions between Obama and Netanyahu over the Middle East peace process, sources close to Obama argued to me that these policy differences in no way infringe upon the president’s commitment to Israel’s security.

At the same time, U.S. officials have also raised fears of an Israeli strike in the short term — as evidenced by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey’s comments on Feb. 19 that an Israeli attack would be “destabilizing.” Their fears center on the belief that an attack by Israel could unravel international sanctions, and that Iran would be able to reconstitute its program in fairly short order.

How can Obama and Netanyahu win each other’s trust? The two sides should come to a more precise understanding of U.S. thresholds for the Iranian nuclear program and American responses should they be breached, as well as an agreement on a timetable for giving up on sanctions so their Iran clocks are synchronized. In other words, the two sides need to agree on red lines that might trigger action. Israel will probably seek some guarantees from the United States before agreeing to forgo a pre-emptive strike that might not succeed.

It may turn out that such guarantees are impossible, given the mistrust between the two parties and the ever-changing regional circumstances. Whatever the mechanism, there is no doubt that the U.S.-Israel relationship could benefit greatly from a common approach toward the Iran nuclear program at this tumultuous time. Their upcoming meeting and the months ahead promise to test the Obama-Netanyahu relationship like never before.

BOLTON: Iran’s relentless nuclear quest – Washington Times.

Nothing has slowed regime’s race to build the bomb

The Valentine’s Day announcement of new scientific and technological achievements in Iran’s nuclear program demonstrates the continued broadening and deepening of its capacities in this sensitive, dangerous field. While the race to achieve functional nuclear weapons is the most mesmerizing and immediately threatening aspect of Iran’s work, its continued march across the full scope of nuclear activities shows that Tehran is confident it will not soon be thwarted.

Iran is in for the long haul, belying the fancy that diplomacy or economic sanctions can work. The confirmation that the Fordo uranium-enrichment facility near Qom is fully operational and that its first domestically manufactured fuel rods are installed in the Tehran Research Reactor shows Iran steadily mastering the nuclear-fuel cycle. Perhaps we will next hear that the Arak heavy-water production facility is completed and functioning and that the nearby heavy-water reactor will, in fact, be inaugurated in 2013. Or that Iran’s ballistic-missile program has launch-tested vehicles capable of reaching targets in the Western Hemisphere.

Each successive step underscores that Iran’s carefully planned, systematic and increasingly operational nuclear infrastructure is not designed simply to show defiance of Western opposition and sanctions, as some contend. Remember, for example, the flurry of optimism about proposals to exchange Iran’s existing supply of low-enriched uranium so that a foreign nation could manufacture fuel rods for the Tehran reactor. Iran swatted away that initiative, not least because manufacturing fuel rods domestically always was part of its larger strategy to widen and intensify its nuclear capability.

Iran’s slow and steady progress for two decades has demonstrated beyond frantic rhetorical efforts at denial that diplomacy has not only been futile, but has provided Iran political cover and legitimacy while it pursued its nuclear objectives. Even more important, negotiations and the imposition of weak, ineffective sanctions have given Iran time to reach the point where its nuclear activities are broad and deep, and it is close to winning the strategically important race to the nuclear-weapons finish line. President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper testified to the Senate in January that “the sanctions as imposed so far have not caused [the Iranians] to change their behavior or their policy.” Public assertions and actions by China, India, Turkey and others make clear that new financial and oil-related sanctions also will come essentially to naught.

This ongoing failure also demonstrates why the notion, still dominant in Europe and the Obama administration, that Iran can be trusted with a “peaceful” nuclear program if it renounces weapons capabilities is delusional and dangerous. There is no way to comprehensively monitor covert nuclear activities by a nation determined to hide them, as North Korea unfortunately has proved. For decades, Iran has lied about its objectives, obstructed international inspectors and flouted its supposedly solemn treaty obligations against pursuing nuclear weapons, all the while supporting international terrorism. Plainly, therefore, to all but the most naive, the Tehran regime is not to be trusted with sharp objects, let alone nuclear weapons.

The sedate pace of Iran’s nuclear program demonstrates its lack of concern for U.S. military action. Indeed, so confident is Tehran that it not only has conspired to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington on our own soil, but has been busily targeting Israeli diplomats in terrorist attacks and giving Europe a taste of its own medicine by cutting off oil supplies even before new European Union sanctions take effect. Sadly for America, Iran’s progress represents a bipartisan foreign-policy failure, extending over three successive administrations. The Obama administration’s only real distinction, embarrassing though it is, is to have carried Clinton and George W. Bush administration mistakes to their ultimate conclusion. Mr. Obama could well be remembered in history as the president asleep in the wheelhouse when Iran actually achieved both nuclear weapons and a fully indigenous nuclear fuel cycle.

Only one question remains. However sanguine Iran is about U.S. inattention, neither Tehran nor Washington really knows what Israel will decide to do militarily. The window for such action has been closing for years, and Israel may have waited too long. Given the size and growth of Iran’s program and the notorious inadequacy of our intelligence in that country, there is much we don’t know, and none of it can be good. Accordingly, even a successful Israeli strike could now be insufficient to halt Iran’s program for an extended period. And certainly, Iran has more than enough strategic warning to prepare its defenses.

Those in the White House who fear an Israeli attack more than Iranian nuclear weapons may prevail. But a world where Iran has nuclear weapons (and, inevitably therefore, so will others nearby) will be far more dangerous than a world after an Israeli military strike.

John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of “Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad” (Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Nuclear Iran | Isreal | Slain Nuclear Scientist | The Daily Caller.

“Mostafa’s ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel,” Fatemeh Bolouri Kashani told the Fars News Agency this week.

She was referring to the wishes of her late husband, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, an Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated on the streets of Tehran in January.

It is unclear who exactly killed her husband and other scientists involved in the Iranian nuclear program over the last two years — no one has claimed responsibility — but their elimination was likely directed by Israel, the United States or one of the various Arab countries that quite understandably fear a nuclear Iran (or perhaps a combination thereof). What Kashani’s comment highlights, however, is why Israel cannot live with a nuclear Iran and why Israel’s leaders have been forced to seriously weigh authorizing a difficult and dangerous mission to set the Iranian nuclear program back militarily.

Many foreign policy elites, perhaps epitomized by CNN host Fareed Zakaria, confidently assert that Israel specifically and the West generally can live with a nuclear Iran. The Iranian leadership isn’t suicidal, they tell us. Ignore Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, or Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s statement that Israel is a “cancerous tumor of a state” that “should be removed from the region,” or supposed moderate former Iranian President Akbar Rafsanjani’s casual remark that the “application of an atomic bomb would not leave anything in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”

They’re just posturing or joking or have been misinterpreted, we’re told. Israel and the West can live with a nuclear Iran, foreign policy intellectuals in New York, London and Berlin proclaim.

But if you’re the tiny, embattled State of Israel, it is hard to see how you can afford to take the chance that the Iranian leadership is merely joshing with their eliminationist rhetoric. Even if the odds are only 5 percent that the Iranian regime is apocalyptic and would act to bring back the hidden Imam through a nuclear holocaust, a five percent chance of a second holocaust is five percent too much for Israel to tolerate. (And let’s forget entirely for a moment the dire strategic problems of dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran even if the Islamic Republic doesn’t immediately use the bomb once it obtains the capability to strike. Try handling Hezbollah when they have a nuclear shield.)

But while Western policy elites exude confidence in the rationality of the Iranian regime, we see from Kashani’s comment about her late husband that those intimately involved in making a nuclear Iran a reality believe it is their mission, likely the very reason they got involved in the nuclear project to begin with, to eliminate the Jewish state. And we aren’t talking about some uneducated bumpkin. This was a highly educated nuclear scientist.

Earlier this week my boss, Tucker Carlson, appeared on a comedy show and jokingly called for the elimination of Iran (as you may have heard, an alarming number of their leaders have called for the elimination of Israel). The liberal blogosphere went apoplectic, which is funny considering anyone who has actually talked to Tucker about foreign policy knows that the last thing he thinks is prudent is a strike on Iran, much less a genocidal attack eliminating an entire people.

But Glenn Greenwald and other liberal commentators got their panties in a wad over the comment, though it is strange how Greenwald and his buddies never seem to get as incensed by much more serious calls by Iranian power brokers to eliminate Israel.

Scream over the trivial, ignore the serious. This is your liberal commentariat, America.

I don’t know if Israel will strike Iranian nuclear facilities — no one really does. I don’t know what Israel’s capacity is to set back Iran’s program. I don’t know if the Israeli intelligence establishment is right when they say they can handle Iran’s nuclear program or those who argue that covert action is no longer sufficient are right. And I don’t know when Iran will cross a “red line” where Israel will no longer have a military option.

But I do know that the current Israeli government faces gut-wrenching decisions, which probably can’t fully be appreciated by leaders in Paris or London or even Washington. The West would be seriously threatened by Iranian nuclear proliferation. Only Israel faces possible elimination.

If Israel believes the United States won’t act to protect itself and the world from a nuclear Iran, it may very well decide it has to act itself. Understanding Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast’s dream — and the strong probability that there are plenty of others working on Iran’s nuclear program that share it — helps one better comprehend the reason why.

GuelphMercury – Eyeing the point of no return with Iran.

IranA carnival float depicting Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with dynamite in his mouth – representing Iran’s nuclear program – and a match took part in the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, Monday.

Frank Augstein/The Associated Press

Oman Tribune – the edge of knowledge.

WASHINGTON The Obama administration is bluntly warning Israel about the danger of bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, but it is far from clear whether the allies are truly at odds over a core policy question or orchestrating an elaborate campaign to wring concessions from the Islamic Republic.

Both countries say that at least for now, tightening a web of economic sanctions around Iran’s vital oil exports is the best way to pressure Teheran into serious negotiations about its nuclear programme, which the US and its allies suspect is aimed at mastering the know-how to build a bomb.

But Israel regards a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat, and in recent weeks officials have suggested they may attack its nuclear facilities before the programme reaches a point of no return.

At times, US officials have appeared alarmed that overheated war talk could ignite a conflict and sought to tamp it down.

But the administration has struggled “to find the right mix of threat and persuasion,” said Suzanne Maloney, a former State Department official now at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

“Wildly oscillating” messages “are playing out in the media in ways that are not helpful to whatever the diplomatic aims of the Israelis and the Americans might be,” she added.

Cliff Kupchan, a former State Department official now with the risk analysis firm Eurasia Group, said the Obama administration “is using the real possibility of an Israeli attack to both push sanctions and to wring concessions out of Iran. And the same time, US military and other officials are publicly and privately telling Israel not to go, because they think it’s a truly bad idea.”

Israeli officials insist publicly that the two countries are working closely together.

“Not only is there no crisis, but coordination and understandings are tightening,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon. “We see nearly eye-to-eye on the course of action as well as on the whole.”

Israeli media have portrayed the flurry of visits by top American security officials as an attempt to dissuade Israel or, in the words of one published report, to “implore” it not to attack Iran. Whether Israel really is considering an airstrike is far from clear. For one thing, Netanyahu does not appear to have convinced his security Cabinet or the military that bombing Iran is the proper course.

“The problem for Netanyahu is that some military insiders are still against it,” said an Israeli official, who did not want to be identified when speaking about the sensitive issue.

Several high-ranking military and intelligence officials who retired last year, including Meir Dagan, who headed the spy agency Mossad, have come out publicly against preemptive military action.

To some, the mixed messages appear to be part of a grander strategy.

“It’s a shell game in which the Europeans play the ‘good cop,’ the US is the ‘bad cop’ and Israel is the ‘crazy cop,’” said Cameron Brown, international affairs columnist for The Jerusalem Post. “The idea is to appear so irrational that you scare the other side into making concessions. It’s a strategy Israel has used for a long time.”

A military official said the “crazy Israel” strategy has served as an effective deterrent over the years.

National security adviser Tom Donilon told Israeli officials that Washington shares their concern about Iran’s nuclear push but also stressed the need to let sanctions work, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

“We certainly understand the heightened concern that Israel has given its geographic location and other circumstances that are involved here for Israel,” Carney said, discussing Donilon’s visit and the White House view on Iran’s ambitions.

Gates Opens Up on an Armed Iran | The Jewish Exponent.

Amid all the speculation about a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities — and what such a strike would mean for the United States — Robert M. Gates says he’s “blessedly” relieved that he’s no longer the Pentagon’s top man.

Robert Gates’ last visit to Israel as secretary of defense came in 2011, when he met with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak (right) in Tel Aviv. Flash 90

Throughout his decades of government service, including stints as secretary of defense and director of the CIA, Gates has wrestled with his share of foreign-policy predicaments. But how to handle the current situation with Iran, he says, is one of the toughest challenges he’s ever encountered.

“The problem is that there are three clocks at work here, all of them moving at a different speed,” Gates said in an interview with the Jewish Exponent, ahead of his upcoming appearance at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s major campaign event on March 15.

One clock is Iran’s own internal timer. With the country facing powerful international economic sanctions, the question is, he said, whether they will cause enough instability to change Tehran’s approach to its nuclear program.

The second clock is the pace at which that nuclear program is proceeding, and the third clock revolves around the thorny questions ticking steadily away in the United States and Israel: How much longer can you wait to see if sanctions work and is military intervention the solution?

His comments came just days before the U.S. national security adviser, Tom Donilon, met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem over the weekend and before a group of international monitors returned to Iran to seek greater clarity on what is happening on the ground.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, warned that an Israeli strike at this time would be “destabilizing.” Gates’ successor, Leon Panetta, recently suggested that Israel might strike sometime this spring, setting off a firestorm of reaction among analysts in both countries.

Gates, whose 2006-2011 term as secretary of defense spanned both the Bush and Obama administrations, said the tensions between Israel and the United States over the Iran question arise because the two nations see this “tough issue” through different lenses.

Robert M. Gates

“Iran is a huge challenge for the United States, but it is an existential threat for Israel,” he said. “We say we won’t accept a nuclear Iran, but we said that about North Korea, too.”

He asserted that the two allies generally agree in their assessment of how far along the Iranian program is. The difference, he said, stems from the thinking over what Iran’s reaction would be to a military strike.

“A fair number in Israel think that Iran would respond only with a token attack,” he said, suggesting that Israeli officials see a comparison with the lack of reaction to its strike at the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981 and it’s attack on a Syrian nuclear facility in 2007.

In contrast, he said, the “more broadly accepted view in the United States” is that such an attack could launch another war that would be destabilizing to the region.

Why such different assessment? It’s “just different perspectives,” he said, adding that he is in sync with the prevalent American perspective. “My personal view is that neither one of those countries was Iran,” he said, alluding to Iraq and Syria.

Although Gates has cautioned against military action in the past, he told the Exponent that the question “is ultimately something Israel has to decide for itself.”

Gates acknowledged that the wide speculation over whether Israel would take unilateral military action without first conferring with — or at least warning — the United States is indicative of some tension between the two allies.

Some of that friction, he has suggested, stems from the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which President Barack Obama placed as a high priority on his foreign-policy agenda when he took office.

He said the disputes over Jewish settlements in the West Bank that have led to public disagreements between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are not new.

Noting that he has worked for eight presidents, Gates said that the most angry he has seen any of them is over the settlements issue.

He said there is frustration on the part of the U.S. government with both Israel and the Palestinians, but the stories about tensions with Israel are overblown.

“There are some superficial tensions,” he said, but the actual relationship between Israel and the United States has never been stronger.

“We’ve done more for Israel in the past five years,” going as far or farther than any military cooperation in the past, he said, citing as examples the funding Washington provides for Israel’s joint missile-defense program and the Iron Dome, which aims to protect against short-range rocket attacks.

“There’s a huge underlying bond between the two countries; we wouldn’t be doing what we do for Israel if there wasn’t recognition of the strong alliance.”

Gates, who was recently installed as chancellor of the College of William and Mary, his alma mater, is slated to tackle some of the recent developments in the region during his talk in Philadelphia, “A Diplomat’s Guide to the New Mideast.”

The Arab Spring and what’s happening in the foreseeable future “presents the U.S. and Israel with more problems than opportunities,” he said.

He also predicted little movement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at this time, saying there are “too many factors working against progress,” especially given the recently declared unity government between Hamas and Fatah. “How can you have a unity government with two parties — one willing to work with Israel, the other sworn to its destruction?”

Asked about the outcome of the war in Iraq, which he inherited when he became secretary of defense in 2006, during President George W. Bush’s second term, Gates demurred.

“It’s too early to tell,” he said of whether the nearly nine-year war could be considered a success.

How Iraq develops from this point on, he said, will help determine that judgment.

Lebanon news – NOW Lebanon -Iran urges IAEA not to “perturb climate of cooperation”.

Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency urged the UN watchdog on Wednesday to “avoid perturbing the climate of cooperation,” saying talks over Tehran’s controversial nuclear program would continue.

Ali Asghar Soltanieh was speaking after two days of fruitless visit to Iran by IAEA inspectors raised tensions, with Russia warning of “catastrophic” consequences if it leads to a military attack on the country.

“During the past two days, we raised technical and legal matters. Technical answers were provided to the agency’s questions,” Soltanieh was quoted by state television’s website as saying.

“This posture of cooperation and dialogue will continue, and we advise [the IAEA] to avoid perturbing the climate of cooperation.”

“Proposals were made” to advance cooperation between Iran and the IAEA, “but to reach a final accord, we need more time. And we have agreed to continue discussions.”

The IAEA said it had gone into the two-day visit to Tehran, and another inconclusive one last month, in a “constructive spirit,” but that no agreement had been reached on efforts to elucidate Iran’s nuclear activities.

The UN watchdog said there was no agreement with Iran “at this point in time” on holding further talks.

Despite requests, “we could not get access” to a military site in Parchin where suspected nuclear warhead design experiments were conducted, team leader and chief inspector Herman Nackaerts said on returning to Vienna.

Referring to Parchin, Soltanieh said: “For every visit, it is necessary to fix a framework and rules taking into consideration both parties.”

Talk of possible military action against Iran by Israel, with or without US help, had lent urgency to diplomatic efforts to lower tensions.

The United States and Europe have been ramping up economic sanctions on Iran since November, when the IAEA published a report crystallizing – though not entirely validating – Western suspicions it was pursuing nuclear weapons research in Parchin and elsewhere.

Iran has repeatedly said the sanctions will not deter it from its nuclear ambitions, and it has threatened to strike back at any military action, possibly by closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

–AFP/NOW Lebanon

Russia warns against `hasty conclusions` over Iran.

Vienna: Russia said on Wednesday the world should not draw “hasty conclusions” over Iran’s most recent rebuff of UN attempts to investigate allegations the Islamic Republic hid secret work on atomic arms, but the US and its allies accused Tehran of nuclear defiance.

Under international pressure to show restraint, Israel, which has warned repeatedly that it may strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, pointedly urged major world powers to mind their own business, saying it alone would decide what to do to protect the Jewish state’s security.

France said Iran’s continued stonewalling of the International Atomic Energy Agency “is contrary to the intentions” expressed by Tehran in its recent offer to restart talks over its nuclear activities.

In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said while world powers have not yet reached a decision on those talks, Iran’s refusal to cooperate with the investigation “suggests that they have not changed their behaviour when it comes to abiding by their international obligations”.

The IAEA’s acknowledgment of renewed failure came early Wednesday at the conclusion of the second trip in less than a month aimed at investigating suspicions of covert Iranian nuclear weapons work.

The IAEA team had hoped to speak with key Iranian scientists suspected of working on the alleged weapons program, break down opposition to their plans to inspect documents related to nuclear work and secure commitments from Iranian authorities to allow future visits.

But mission head Herman Nackaerts acknowledged his team “could not find a way forward” in negotiations with Iranian officials. A separate IAEA communiqué clearly — if indirectly — blamed Tehran for the lack of progress.

“We engaged in a constructive spirit, but no agreement was reached,” it quoted IAEA chief Yukiya Amano as saying.

Iran continued sounding a hard line, with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei telling the nation’s nuclear scientists to forge ahead with the atomic program.

“Sanctions and political pressures won’t have any effect. When a nation decides to resist, when it believes in its domestic power and its own capability, nothing can stop it,” Khamenei told the scientists, adding: “I pray for you.”

As on the previous visit that ended in early February, Iran did not grant requests by the IAEA mission to visit Parchin — a military site thought to be used for explosives testing related to nuclear detonations, the statement said.

The statement also said that no agreement was reached on how to begin “clarification of unresolved issues in connection with Iran’s nuclear program, particularly those relating to possible military dimensions”.

The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security said on Wednesday it had new indications of hidden weapons work by Iran.

ISIS said that a cache of telexes to Western high-tech companies from the Physics Research Centre in Tehran shows that from about 1990 to 1993, the centre sought to purchase equipment and materials that could have been used in weapons research and development.

Tehran has acknowledged that the Physics Research Centre in Tehran conducted nuclear-related research, but said the centre’s work was limited to efforts to prepare Iran’s military and civilian population for dealing with a nuclear strike.

Iran insists it is using nuclear energy only to generate power, and Khamenei proclaimed on Wednesday that possession of atomic arms is a sin as well as “useless, harmful and dangerous”. Iran asserts that the allegations of secret work on developing nuclear arms are based on fabricated US and Israeli intelligence.

But in a 13-page summary late last year, the IAEA listed clandestine activities that he said can either be used in civilian or military nuclear programs, or “are specific to nuclear weapons”.

Among these were indications that Iran has conducted high-explosives testing to set off a nuclear charge at Parchin.

Other suspicions include computer modelling of a core of a nuclear warhead and alleged preparatory work for a nuclear weapons test and development of a nuclear payload for Iran’s Shahab 3 intermediate range missile — a weapon that could reach Israel.

The IAEA trip and its aftermath were accompanied by renewed sabre-rattling by Iran and Israel.

Iranian General Mohammed Hejazi, who heads the military’s logistical wing, warned that Iran will “not wait for enemies to take action against us”. “We will use all our means to protect our national interests,” he told the semiofficial Fars news agency.

His comments followed Iran’s announcement of war games to practice protecting nuclear and other sensitive sites, the latest military manoeuvre viewed as a message to the US and Israel that the Islamic Republic is ready both to defend itself and to retaliate against an armed strike.

Israel and the US have said military force remains a last-ditch option to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, but while Washington has recently tamped down its rhetoric — and is thought to be urging Israel to practice restraint — the Jewish state remains bellicose.

Russia, too, warned Israel against the consequences of attacking Iran, with Deputy Foreign Minister Gennyadi Gatilov telling the ITAR-Tass news agency on Wednesday that such a strike “would be a catastrophe not only for the region but for the whole system of international relations”.

But Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman rebuffed both Washington and Moscow, telling Israel’s Channel 3 TV news the issue “is not their business”.

“The security of the citizens of Israel, the future of the state of Israel, this is the responsibility of the Israeli government,” he said. “We will make the best decision for the Israeli interest.”

Shannon Kile, head of the Nuclear Weapons Project at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, warned the risk of military conflict was rising — and not necessarily through the threat of direct Israeli attack.

“There is an escalation dynamic under way, especially in the Persian Gulf, where you could have a conflict arising from an accident, a misunderstanding, from a local commander acting on his own initiative and I think that’s the problem,” Kile said.

In Paris, Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said Tehran’s continued stonewalling of the probe, now in its fourth year, “is another missed opportunity for Iran” to ease suspicions about its nuclear goals and reconcile with the rest of the world. Nadal said Iran’s refusal to cooperate on the issue “is contrary to the intentions” of Iran’s recent offer to restart nuclear talks after a series of abortive meetings over the past two years.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Iran’s intransigence “is the path the leads to further international isolation”. But German officials were cautious when asked about the possibility of imposing yet more sanctions against Iran in response to the latest setback.

Britain, which would join the US, China, Russia, France and Germany in any nuclear negotiations with Iran, said it wasn’t yet clear what impact the IAEA visit’s failure might have on the international community’s response to Tehran’s recent offer of renewed talks.

“We share the IAEA’s disappointment. The IAEA genuinely wants to make progress and we want the Iranians to engage in meaningful talks,” a spokesman for Britain’s Foreign Ministry said on customary condition of anonymity in line with policy.

Russia urged renewed efforts to engage Iran on its suspected secret nuclear work.

“We must not make hasty conclusions,” Gatilov, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, told reporters, calling for the IAEA to “continue contacts” with Iran on the issue.

The IAEA said no further talks were planned for the moment. But Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh also said “more time was needed” for final agreement on the issue.

RealClearPolitics – Getting Iran to Back Down.

By David Ignatius

Report: Iran concealed key atom research center – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Science and International Security study says Physics Research Center played pivotal role in Islamic Republic’s ‘undeclared nuclear program,’ casting further doubt on Iran’s claims that nuclear program has peaceful purposes

Reuters

An Iranian research center that has been investigated by UN nuclear inspectors appears to have played a key role in Tehran’s atomic program, which Western powers fear is aimed at producing weapons, according to a new report released on Wednesday.

The study by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) will likely cast further doubt on Tehran’s denials that it is seeking atomic bombs as the UN nuclear agency prepares to publish a new report on Iran in the coming days.

Iran’s Physics Research Center was established in 1989 “as part of an effort to create an undeclared nuclear program,” according to ISIS’s president David Albright, a nuclear expert and former inspector for the UN International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as well as Andrea Stricker and Paul Brannan.

“Although Iran has admitted that the PHRC was related to the military and had a nuclear purpose in the area of defense preparedness and radiation detection, its actual nuclear role appears much more extensive,” the ISIS report said.

The Iranian research center was established a year after the end of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, in which Saddam Hussein’s troops used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers.

According to the UN nuclear watchdog’s November 2011 report on Iran, the Physics Research Center was established at Lavizan, a complex near a military installation in Tehran.

Ahmadinejad visiting the center (Photo: EPA)

Lavizan was completely razed in late 2003 and early 2004. Western diplomats and intelligence sources said at the time that they suspected Tehran was conducting undeclared nuclear activities at Lavizan and was determined to cover them up.

ISIS said it has acquired more than 1,600 telexes relating to the nuclear procurement activities of the Physics Research Center and Sharif University, another Iranian institution involved in Tehran’s nuclear research, in the 1990s.

“Iran has failed to declare all of PHRC’s activities to the (IAEA),” the Albright group’s report says. “Iran has stated to the IAEA that the PHRC procurements were not related to a nuclear program. The information assembled in this ISIS report, however, contradicts this claim.”

Extensive cover-up?

If the allegations are confirmed, they could show that Iran’s suspected nuclear cover-up is far more extensive than was previously known. This may annoy Iranian allies such as Russia and China, which have slowed the push for new sanctions on Iran while pressing Tehran to cooperate with the IAEA.

While the exact nature and full scope of the Physics Research Center’s nuclear-related activities “remains difficult to fully understand,” Albright’s report said it is time for the Iranians to come clean about the center’s past work.

“Iran should clarify PHRC’s exact purpose and accomplishments and its relationship to the IAEA’s broader question of the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear effort,” the report said.

UN nuclear officials have repeatedly complained that Iran has not fully cooperated with their attempts to shed light on the full extent of Iran’s nuclear program, which it kept hidden from agency inspectors for nearly two decades until 2003.

The IAEA sent several senior officials to Iran recently to persuade Tehran to grant them greater access to the nuclear facilities but failed to win any pledges to boost cooperation. The setback could raise the risk of confrontation between Iran and the West.

The IAEA has been looking into the Physics Research Center, which acted as an umbrella organization under Iran’s defense ministry and coordinated various nuclear activities.

According to the IAEA, by the early 2000s, the Physics Research Center’s activities had been folded into the so-called AMAD Plan, which was responsible for what the IAEA refers to as “alleged studies” into research and development relevant to building nuclear weapons.