The centrifuges continue to spin
Israel Hayom | The centrifuges continue to spin.
As part of its “Great Prophet 7” exercise on Tuesday Iran launched dozens of surface-to-surface missiles with ranges of up to 1,300 kilometers (807 miles) in efforts to prove just how far its weapons can go and that it possesses response capabilities. Iran is trying to prove its might not only with conventional missiles but with its potential nuclear capability as well. The objective of the missiles Iran showcased — for the benefit of the West and Israel in particular — is to bring Tehran to its goal of long-range nuclear capability.
On Sunday, a European embargo on Iranian oil exports went into effect. Tehran is trying to put on a “business-as-usual” façade, but the fact is that despite its denials, it has decreased its oil production, which constitutes a blow to the economy. Iran’s oil minister Rostam Ghasemi claims that Iran has found alternative buyers for its oil, but, following in Europe’s footsteps, India, South Korea and Japan have decided to trim their Iranian oil imports by 20 percent. Western diplomats have reported in recent months that the Iranian economy was ailing, and that it would only get worse from here.
But the ailing economy does not influence the centrifuges in Natanz and Fordo. The nuclear facilities do not stop, even during nuclear talks with the West. These talks have so far done nothing more than add stamps to participants’ passports: Geneva, Vienna, Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow have been the destinations over the last three years. Plenty of trips and meetings, but “no results” as was reported in the French weekly L’Express.
“[Russian President] Vladimir Putin has no interest in resolving the Iranian issue,” one French diplomat involved in the talks was quoted as saying. Perhaps that is why after the latest round of talks between Iran and Western powers in Moscow, the world decided to stop lying to us about the talks’ potential. “The talks have been productive” we were told after Istanbul (in March) and Baghdad (in May), but after Moscow they were finally called a “failure.”
David Ignatius, a senior columnist for The Washington Post, believes that the technical nuclear talks held in Istanbul on Wednesday will fall apart. The gap between the two sides is too wide to be bridged. Iran has no intention of giving up uranium enrichment, or relocating its already enriched uranium to another country or decommissioning the nuclear facility in Fordo — the West’s main demands.
This week, Iranian parliament members urged their government to take a stronger stance against the West, to punish the U.S. and its allies and to withdraw from the nuclear proliferation treaty, thus severing its cooperation with the IAEA. All of which, according to Ignatius, could expedite a possible U.S. military response.
On Tuesday it was reported that U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf were reinforced.The increased U.S. presence was one of the reason for Iran’s missile show. What Iran didn’t put on display, and no less dangerous, are the centrifuges that continue to spin. Because while we’ve been busy with our own internal affairs, this is what has been going on in Iran.
WarSclerotic 
July 5, 2012 at 11:51 AM
Iran has been enriching uranium to 20% since early 2006. Every gram it ever produced is accounted for, Each and every centrifuge is under IAEA supervision. At the moment Iran has less 20% enriched uranium on stock than a year ago, because it converted a large portion to fuel plates for its research reactor
June 05, 2012
Iran’s decision to convert a third of its higher-enriched uranium into metal plates will make it more difficult for the Persian Gulf country to assemble an atomic weapon if it decides to to so, nuclear-security analysts say.
United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have verified that Iran converted about 33 percent of its 20 percent-enriched uranium stockpile, according to two senior international officials. Iran used about 49 kilograms (108 pounds) of the 145 kilogram stockpile to make fuel in the form of metal plates for the Tehran Research Reactor
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-06-05/iranian-decision-to-convert-20-percent-uranium-may-be-good-news
July 5, 2012 at 12:10 PM
Last week there was an article written by Mr. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Why Iran Should Get The Bomb” in which he theorizes about 2nd and even 3rd strike retaliation capability. I commented that it was an exercise in futility. I just read an interesting rebuttal to Mr. Waltz’ :
July 4, 2012
Why Iran does not want the bomb
Western sanctions on Iran and heated policy debate on Tehran’s nuclear program go hand and hand, but the latest foray into the latter by Kenneth Waltz, a prominent international relations theorist, is emerging as one of the most controversial.
Turning conventional wisdom on its head, in a brief but weighty article in the influential Foreign Affairs magazine, Waltz defends Iranian nuclear proliferation as a stabilizing factor in the turbulent Middle East, citing the regional imbalances and insecurities wrought by Israel’s nuclear monopoly and the rationality of Iranian regime.
Not only that, Waltz questions the wisdom of Western and Israeli pressure tactics against Iran, pointing out that tactics such as military threats and coercive sanctions only heighten Iran’s
national security concerns, thus strengthening the country’s proliferation resolve.
Featured prominently on the magazine’s cover with the eye-catching title “Why Iran should get the bomb”, the article is a timely jab at official Western justifications for targeting Iran with an arsenal of sanctions, threats, sabotage, assassinations and, of course, incessant propaganda and psychological warfare.
Waltz, who has written extensively on the nuclear arms race and is credited for the international relations school of thought known as structural (neo) realism, expresses his pessimism that these efforts can stop a country “bent on acquiring nuclear weapons”. He predicts that Iran will beat the odds and eventually get its bombs, but that this will contribute to – rather than threaten – regional peace and security.
It isn’t clear if Waltz’s theoretical contribution, which offers a different diagnosis of the Iran problem and recommends new directions, will have an impact on real policy. Irrespective of whether one subscribes to his assumptions and conclusions, the article offers a penetrating discussion with more insights into the complexities posed by the Iran nuclear standoff than whole books on the subject
In essence, Waltz’s theory of Iranian proliferation undermines the legitimacy of the current US-led strategy of preventing Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and even the capability to build such weapons.
This is in sharp contrast to the recent past, when the US government publicly toyed with the notion of consenting to Iran’s low-grade enrichment program. That diplomatic charade has apparently outlived its usefulness, and the truth about the US’s real intentions from recent multilateral talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions is gradually becoming clear.
By expressing academic sympathy for Iran’s nuclear program, Waltz appears to have single-handedly reinvigorated debate on Iran while supplying policy-makers with a theoretical framework they can use to make better sense of their options.
Three scenarios
Waltz picks and chooses between “three scenarios” on Iran. One is halting Iran’s nuclear weapons program through sanctions and other means; a second involves Iran reaching the “breakout” threshold but falling short of assembling actual bombs (nuclear latency). Waltz dismisses the latter scenario as unlikely since “power begets to be balanced” and Iran is highly motivated to counterbalance Israel’s nuclear monopoly.
The third scenario is Iran joining the world’s nuclear weapons elite, at which point Waltz predicts Tehran would become more cautious and risk-averse.
This article highlights paradoxes in the Western and Israeli counter proliferation tool box. Firstly, that these tactics create a self-fulfilling prophecy, and secondly they will persuade Iran to continue with its proliferation activities rather than dissuading it from doing so.
Theoretically, Waltz forces the Western course of action towards Iran into the awkward position of having to justify itself. Still, this does not mean that Waltz’s approach is problem-free.
Israel-centric approach
At the heart of Waltz’s argument lies the assumption that Iran is marching towards a nuclear balance with Israel in the region. This is why Waltz expresses surprise that it has taken so long before another Middle East state acted to address this problem, notwithstanding Israel’s past attacks on Iraq and Syria to stymie any rising nuclear competition.
This hypothesis that Iran is overly concerned about Israel’s proliferation and aims to counterbalance it does not match the reality.
Iran’s nuclear program under the Islamic Republic was revived after a temporary halt at the outset of the 1979 Islamic revolution in response to the perceived threat of Iraq’s nuclear program during the 1980s and 1990s. However, it acquired a non-military dimension with the demise of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, as per the conclusion of the US’s intelligence finding of December 2007. (This national estimate remains valid and essentially unchanged today despite official Washington rhetoric).
The fact is that most Iran policy experts regarded Israel an “out of area” nuisance with respect to Tehran’s national security calculus, but it has been elevated to a primary threat solely due to Israel’s constant sabre-rattling against Iran.
Waltz is wrong to assume that Iran has been motivated to go fully nuclear as a result of the perceived threat of Israel’s arsenal. Contrary to what Waltz says, Iran’s leaders have repeatedly pointed to the “uselessness” and “futility” of Israel’s arsenal, reflected in the absence of its utility in the various Israeli wars with its Arab neighbors.
The idea of “nuclear blackmail” by Israel may be highly important to Arab leaders, but there is no evidence that it figures prominently among the Iranian leadership.
Waltz makes the error of lumping post-revolutionary Iran with the other (unit-level) states in the contemporary anarchic world and making undue generalizations about states’ behavior that fails to distinguish revolutionary from status quo powers.
A better guide for understanding Iran’s uniqueness is provided by the late French philosopher Michel Foucault, who observed the revolution first-hand and wrote about its emancipatory mission, to lift the chain that weighs on the “entire world order”.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad said in a recent speech at the Rio+20 United Nations conference that there is a need for a new world order. This points at a historical understanding of the Islamic Republic as a distinct “quasi-state” that bears a trans-national sense of responsibility as a global revisionist state combating global inequities of power and injustice.
This is why Iran has spearheaded the disarmament movement by holding disarmament conferences, supporting the UN’s goal of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, and deliberately taking aim at the nuclear weapons states’ failure toward their disarmament obligations under the articles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
By August, when Iran hosts a major summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and officially takes over the movement’s presidency for the next three years, Tehran’s determination to play an even more prominent role with respect to the disarmament and non-proliferation objectives of the NAM will grow considerably and, in turn, further weaken any opposite proliferation tendency.
For the moment, however, Iran is fairly content with its nuclear progress, which has brought it to the latent breakout capability, per the admission of Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian nuclear negotiator, and yet without any sign that Iran has any intention of turning that latent power into a nuclear-weapons regime.
One of the reasons Iran is uninterested in going fully nuclear, ignored by Waltz, is that this would trigger a reciprocal nuclearization on the part of Saudi Arabia, Iran’s main rival in the region, and thus introduce a costly and structural competition in the Persian Gulf, both draining the precious economic resources and institutionalizing the Iran-Saudi rivalry.
Indeed, that is the nub of the problem in Waltz’s article, the fact that it is Israel-centric and overlooks the regional dynamic that at present exists in the Persian Gulf region, by simply making abstract generalizations about the broader Middle East.
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG04Ak04.html