WarSclerotic

Iran: Rumors Of War |.

( A lefty analysis less stupid than most. – JW )

Nov. 5, 2013

Is Israel really planning to attack Iran, or are declarations about the possibility of a pre-emptive strike at Teheran’s nuclear program simply bombast?

Does President Obama’s “we have your back” comment about Israel mean the U.S. will join an assault? What happens if the attack doesn’t accomplish its goals, an outcome predicted by virtually every military analyst? In that case, might the Israelis, facing a long, drawn out war, resort to the unthinkable: nuclear weapons?

Such questions almost seem bizarre at a time when Iran and negotiators from the P5+1—the U.S., China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany—appear to be making progress at resolving the dispute over Teheran’s nuclear program. And yet the very fact that a negotiated settlement seems possible may be the trigger for yet another war in the Middle East.

A dangerous new alliance is forming in the region, joining Israel with Saudi Arabia and the monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, thus merging the almost bottomless wealth of the Arab oil kings with the powerful and sophisticated Israeli army. Divided by religion and history, this confederacy of strange bedfellows is united by its implacable hostility to Iran. Reducing tensions is an anathema to those who want to isolate Teheran and dream of war as a midwife for regime change in Iran.

How serious this drive toward war is depends on how you interpret several closely related events over the past three months.

First was the announcement of the new alliance that also includes the military government in Egypt. That was followed by the news that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) were stocking up on $10.8 billion worth of U.S. missiles and bunker busters. Then, in mid-October, Israel held war games that included air-to-air refueling of warplanes, essential to any long-range bombing attack. And lastly, the magazine Der Spiegel revealed that Israel is arming its German-supplied, Dolphin-class submarines with nuclear tipped cruise missiles.

Saber rattling? Maybe. Certainly a substantial part of the Israeli military and intelligence community is opposed to a war, although less so if it included the U.S. as an ally.

Opponents of a strike on Iran include Uzi Arad, former director of the National Security Council and a Mossad leader; Gabi Ashkenazi, former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff; Ami Ayalon and Yuval Diskin, former heads of Shin Bet; Uzi Even, a former senior scientist in Israel’s nuclear program; Ephraim Halevy, former Mossad head; Amnon Lipkin-Shahak, and Shaul Mofaz, former IDF chiefs of staff; Simon Peres, Israeli president; Uri Sagi, former chief of military intelligence; and Meir Dagan, former head of Mossad, who bluntly calls the proposal to attack Iran “The stupidest thing I ever heard.”

Mossad is Israel’s external intelligence agency, much like the American CIA. Shin Bet is responsible for internal security, as with the FBI and the Home Security Department.

However, an Israeli attack on Iran does have support in the U.S. Congress, and from many former officials in the Bush administration. Ex-Vice-President Dick Cheney says war is “inevitable.”

But U.S. hawks have few supporters among the American military. Former defense secretary Robert Gates says “such an attack would make a nuclear armed Iran inevitable” and “prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world.” Former Joint Chief of Staff vice-chair Gen. James Cartwright told Congress that the U.S. would have to occupy Iran if it wanted to end the country’s nuclear program, a task virtually everyone agrees would be impossible.

In interviews last fall, reporter and author Mark Perry found that U.S. intelligence had pretty much worked out the various options the Israelis might use in an attack. None of them were likely to derail Iran’s nuclear program for more than a year or two.

Israel simply doesn’t have the wherewithal for a war with Iran. It might be able to knock out three or four nuclear sites—the betting is those would include the heavy water plant at Arak, enrichment centers at Fordow and Natanz, and the Isfahan uranium-conversion plant—but much of Iran’s nuclear industry is widely dispersed. And Israel’s bunker busters are not be up to job of destroying deeply placed and strongly reinforced sites.

Israel would not be able to sustain a long-term bombing campaign because it doesn’t have enough planes, or the right kind.  Most of its air force is American made F-15 fighters and F-16 fighter-bombers, aircraft that are too fragile to maintain a long bombing campaign and too small to carry really heavy ordinance.

Of course, Israel could also use its medium and long-range Jericho II and Jericho III missiles, plus submarine-fired cruise missiles, but those weapons are expensive and in limited supply. They all, however, can carry nuclear warheads.

But as one U.S. Central Command officer told Perry, “They’ll [the Israelis] have one shot, one time. That’s one time out and one time back. And that’s it.” Central Command, or Centcom, controls U.S. military forces in the Middle East.

A number of U.S. military officers think the Israelis already know they can’t take out the Iranians, but once the bullets start flying Israel calculates that the U.S. will join in. “All this stuff about ‘red lines’ and deadlines is just Israel’s way of trying to get us to say that when they start shooting, we’ll start shooting,” retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman told Perry. Inman specialized in intelligence during his 30 years in the Navy.

There is current legislation before the Congress urging exactly that, and Obama did say that the U.S. had “Israel’s back.” But does that mean U.S. forces would get directly involved? If it was up to the American military, the answer would be “no.” Lt. Gen. Robert Gard told Perry that, while the U.S. military is committed to Israel, that commitment is not a blank check. U.S. support is “so they can defend themselves. Not so they can start World War III.”

Polls indicate that, while most Americans have a favorable view of Israel and unfavorable one of Iran, they are opposed to joining an Israeli assault on Iran.

That might change if the Iranians tried to shut down the strategic Straits of Hormuz through which most Middle East oil passes, but Iran knows that would draw in the U.S., and for all its own bombast, Teheran has never demonstrated a penchant for committing suicide. On top of which, Iran needs those straits for its own oil exports. According to most U.S. military analysts, even if the U.S. did join in it would only put off an Iranian bomb by about five years.

What happens if Israel attacks—maybe with some small contributions by the Saudi and UAE air forces—and Iran digs in like it did after Iraq invaded it in 1980? That war dragged on for eight long years.

Iran could probably not stop an initial assault, because the Israelis can pretty easily overwhelm Iranian anti-aircraft, and their air force would make short work of any Iranian fighters foolish enough to contest them.

But Teheran would figure a way to strike back, maybe with long range missile attacks on Israeli population centers or key energy facilities in the Gulf. Israel could hit Iranian cities as well, but its planes are not configured for that kind of mission. In any case, bombing has never made a country surrender, as the allied and axis powers found out in World War II, and the Vietnamese and Laotians demonstrated to the U.S.

The best the Israelis could get is a stalemate and the hope that the international community would intervene. But there is no guarantee that Iran would accept a ceasefire after being bloodied, nor that there would be unanimity in the UN Security Council to act. NATO might try to get involved, but that alliance is deeply wounded by the Afghanistan experience, and the European public is sharply divided about a war with Iran.

A long war would eventually wear down Israel’s economy, not to mention its armed forces and civilian population. If that scenario developed, might Israel be tempted to use its ultimate weapon? Most people recoil from even the thought of nuclear weapons, but militaries consider them simply another arrow in the quiver. India and Pakistan have come to the edge of using them on at least one occasion.

It is even possible that Israel—lacking the proper bunker busting weapons—might decide to use small, low-yield nuclear weapons in an initial assault, but that seems unlikely. The line drawn in August 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has held for more than 60 years. But if Israel concluded that it was enmeshed in a forever war that could threaten the viability of the state, might it be tempted to cross that line?

Condemnation would be virtually universal, but it would not be the first time that Israel’s siege mentality led it to ignore what the rest of the world thought.

A war with Iran would be catastrophic. Adding nuclear weapons to it would put the final nail into the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Within a decade dozens of countries will have nuclear weapons. It is a scary world to contemplate.

Major Israel-US rift over Washington planl to let Tehran continue enriching uranium with sanctions relief.

Israel rejects US proposal for nuclear Iran

Israel announced early Thursday, Nov. 7, that it is utterly opposed to the new proposal for Iran’s nuclear program which  the United States plans to put before the two-day Geneva conference beginning later today .

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, when he met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem Wednesday night, bitterly accused the Obama administration of yielding to the Russian-backed Iranian position. Should Tehran renege on the deal, the US proposal leaves it with the capacity for enriching enough weapons-grade uranium in 10 days to build several nuclear weapons.
This US proposal calls for Iran to halt enrichment of uranium up to 20-percent grade (a short jump to weapons-grade) and slow construction on the Arak heavy water plant for plutonium production. In return, the US offers a start on selective sanctions relief. This proposal is likely to be approved by the six powers at the Geneva conference.

Kerry was reminded of his pledge that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” This deal is bad, Israel says because it leaves Iran wth all the stocks it has already built up of 20-percent enriched uranium and the ability to continue the production of low 5-percent grade unrestricted.

debkafile’s sources report that the Palestinian issue did not come up in either of the two conversations Kerry held with Netanyahu Wednesday. Both were dominated by the Iranian row and ended with differences as wide as ever.
Israel accused Washington of capitulating to the plan Moscow and Tehran handed in to President Barack Obama last week. That plan, according to our sources, entails suspending the work of 10,000 centrifuges on all grades of enrichment (3, 5 and 20 percent). However, Iran has a total of 19,000 machines of which only 9,000 are active anyway. Therefore, the offer to freeze 10,000 already idle centrifuges was a subterfuge. It is nonetheless being presented by the Russians – and now by the Americans, too – as a major Iranian concession.

The truth is that Iran is being allowed to keep its full stock of centrifuges intact, operational and available for use at any time.
This means that if Tehran decides tomorrow to renege on its deal with Washington and the world powers – after its approval in Geneva – it will retain the capacity to restart centrifuge operations in full and within 10 days accumulate enough weapons-grade material to build several nuclear bombs or warheads.

By the time Washington or the nuclear watchdog catch on, it will be too late: Iran will have The Bomb.
Last week, Moscow claimed that Iran had agreed to “restrain the weaponization processes.” This admission alone belied Tehran’s insistence that its entire nuclear program was peaceful and exposed as false Moscow’s denials of proofs that Iran was engaged in developing nuclear arms.

According to our sources, the “restraint” on offer refers only to the process of miniaturizing a nuclear bomb for use in a missile warhead or dropped from an airplane.

In sum, therefore, the US president has agreed in essence to “photograph” Iran’s nuclear program and freeze it as it stands now. Tehran would place nuclear development in suspension without, however, relinquishing a single component of its program.

The new American proposal broke surface Wednesday, as the seven delegations gathered in Geneva for the morrow’s session.A nameless US spokesman told reporters that America was now proposing that Iran, as a first step, stop its nuclear program advancing any further and start rolling parts of it back. In return, Washington offered “very limited, temporary, reversible sanctions relief.”

The spokesman said: “This phase must involve levels of Iran’s uranium enrichment, its stockpiles of the material as well as international monitoring.”

Israel is not buying this plan.

Suspicions Syria is concealing chemical arms, raising fears in region for Iran deal | JPost | Israel News.

If Russian-brokered agreement with Syria’s current President Bashar Assad is ultimately ineffective, the US’s credibility is likely to suffer in their handling of Iran’s nuclear issue.

A US official and the American representative to the United Nations suggested on Tuesday that Syria may be trying to hide some of its chemical weapons, raising more fears among US allies in the region that America is not standing up strongly enough for them.

US allies – such as Israel and the Gulf states – that oppose the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis are further worried what kind of precedent this situation will set for a possible deal with Iran.

The Russian-brokered deal to which the US and Syria agreed called for the complete dismantlement of the latter regime’s chemical weapons. If it turns out that some weapons were secretly retained, it would be a blow to US credibility in the region and likely affect its handling of the Iran nuclear file.

Prof. Eyal Zisser, an expert on Syria from the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview Wednesday evening that for Syrian President Bashar Assad, the deal was a good one because not only did it enable him to stay in power, it granted him a kind of immunity from being attacked by the West.

For the US administration, it was a good deal politically, because America did not want to get involved militarily in Syria but did want to show some sign that it cared about the humanitarian catastrophe occurring there, he said.

Asked if there was a connection between the Syrian agreement and a possible deal with Iran, Zisser maintained that “Iran is one thing and Syria is another. But clearly what connects them is a lack of will in America to get involved in the region.”

Zisser believes it is unlikely that the Syrian leader is hiding chemical weapons, because it would be “too risky for Assad,” and the US could ultimately find weapons that he tried to hide. Furthermore, Zisser added, Assad does not even need them; he has conventional military means to continue fighting the opposition.

Meanwhile, it seems that any deal that Iran would be willing to sign would not be good enough for Israel or the Gulf states, which are demanding a complete stop to the country’s nuclear program.

Many analysts see a partial deal allowing Iran to retain some enrichment capability as more likely.

Elias Harfoush, writing Tuesday in the popular London-based daily Al-Hayat, expressed many Sunni Arab states’ frustrations with the US administration when he said that “Tehran is aware of [US President] Barack Obama’s weakness” and that he “must not surrender to his adversaries” – a reference to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah.

He concluded by quoting Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei: Every population or state that trusted America ended up receiving a blow from it.

The news that Assad is cheating is, of course, predictable, noted Tony Badran, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

However, the way the US administration has prematurely credited him and praised the deal, deriding skeptics, naturally raises questions and concerns about whether it will repeat this performance with the Iranians, passing off a bad deal as a diplomatic victory.

Badran told the Post that US allies were already frustrated at the administration’s decision to make a deal with Syria over chemical weapons instead of attacking Assad and enforcing Obama’s redline.

US allies in the region see these recent developments as a “battleground against Iranian regional designs, where the US is refusing to back them and the rebels against Tehran,” Badran said. “This is already causing these allies to question the reliability of the US. The chemical weapons farce will weaken US credibility that much more.”

In addition, he went on, the failure to convene the Syrian peace talks in Geneva demonstrates “that the US doesn’t have a strategy in Syria.”

Chuck Freilich, a senior fellow at the Belfer Center of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, told the Post that he saw the process of destroying Syria’s chemical arms as continuing successfully despite some reports that the country may be hiding some weapons.

Even if those reports turn out to be true, he went on, it was a possibility that many had already considered.

In any event, “the overall outcome would be far better than could have been achieved by a military attack, which was to be limited in nature to begin with and not even focused on the chemical weapons, but simply a form of punishment for Syria’s use of chemical weapons,” he said.

Regarding the precedent for Iran, he added, “no one approaches this with any sense of trust toward the Iranians.”

A deal with Iran – considering that it calls for conditions such as limiting the levels of enrichment, transferring its uranium stockpiles out of the country, closing some facilities, and intrusive inspections – would be more a case of “verify” rather than “trust,” he said.

He further pointed out that the deal with Syria “is far from hollow, and given the fact that we have no better alternatives in terms of Iran – a completely successful military strike will not achieve more than a twoto- three-year postponement of the nuclear program and will have significant consequences, both in terms of the American response and Iran- Hezbollah’s military responses against Israel – we should fully support the American effort to reach a reasonable deal with Iran.”

He added that anyone who thought Iran would have to close down its nuclear program in its entirety was being unrealistic.

“We have to ensure – and I believe that there is basic agreement with the US on this – that a compromise agreement leaves Iran a few years away from a nuclear capability, thereby hopefully providing both the international community and Israel with sufficient time to deal with the threat if it reemerges,” he said.

Iranian Nobel laureate pans Rouhani’s rights record | The Times of Israel.

Peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi notes that despite reform-minded president, 40 Iranians have been executed in just 10 days

By Edith M. Lederer November 6, 2013, 11:17 pm

Dr. Shirin Ebadi participate in the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, in Chicago. in an interview Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013 with The Associated Press, Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi strongly criticized the human rights record of President Hassan Rouhani, citing a dramatic increase in executions since he took office this year and accusing the government of lying about the release of political prisoners. (photo credit: AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)

NEW YORK (AP) — Iranian Nobel Peace laureate Shirin Ebadi strongly criticized the human rights record of President Hassan Rouhani, citing a dramatic increase in executions since he took office this year and accusing the government of lying about the release of political prisoners.

She also pointed to spreading support for a hunger strike by human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani and three others in a Tehran prison to protest inadequate medical care, which was joined Monday by about 80 prisoners at another prison west of the capital.

Ebadi, a US-based human rights lawyer who since 2009 has lived outside Iran in self-exile, said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press that Rouhani may have the reputation of a moderate reformer, but so far “we get bad signals” from the new government when it comes to human rights. Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her efforts to promote democracy, becoming the first Iranian and first Muslim woman to win the prize.

The comments by Ebadi were mostly directed at Rouhani. They also underscore Iran’s internal tensions between Rouhani’s government and hard-liners opposing diplomatic initiatives that include groundbreaking overtures to Washington. After Rouhani and President Barack Obama held an historic phone call during the Iranian leader’s September trip to the United Nations in New York, Iran’s top leader hinted that he disapproved, though he reiterated his crucial support for Rouhani’s general policy of outreach to the West.

Ebadi’s criticism further points out the limitations of Iran’s presidency, which has little control of security or judiciary affairs that are under the sway of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the ruling clerics, as well as the powerful Revolutionary Guard.

Ebadi pointed to Tehran’s largest anti-US rally in years on Monday — the anniversary of the takeover of the US Embassy in 1979 following the Iranian revolution — where tens of thousands of demonstrators chanted “death to America” and burned an American flag.

“How do they want to have a rapprochement with America when they do that?” she asked. “Therefore, I think it’s too early to judge whether the relations between Iran and America will improve or not.”

Ebadi also expressed outrage at the retaliation that followed the death of 14 border guards in a clash with government opponents on Oct. 25 near the town of Saravan near the frontier with Pakistan.

The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that 16 “rebels” were hanged hours later in revenge for the attack. But Ebadi said the prosecutor for the province went on television soon after the attack and announced that 16 prisoners arrested previously — who had nothing to do with the attack — had been executed in retaliation.

She said the government cracks down on human rights because of “fear, but they use religion or abuse religion in order to justify it.”

And those executions weren’t the only ones, she said.

In the last 10 days, 40 people have been executed, including some political prisoners, Ebadi said, and since Rouhani was inaugurated in August, the number of executions has doubled compared with a year ago.

Ebadi said government propaganda claims that dozens of political prisoners have been released.

“This is a big lie,” she said. “Twelve or thirteen people have been released but these are people who had served their time.” Top opposition figures, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, remain under house arrest.

Ebadi said the only political prisoner released early was prominent human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, winner of the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. She is still barred from leaving Iran, Ebadi said.

In another rights crackdown, she said, the editor of the reformist newspaper Bahar was jailed last week for publishing an article on Shiite Islam deemed offensive by authorities in the Islamic Republic, a predominantly Shiite nation. He was released on “hefty” bail after two days but the paper remains closed, she said

Ebadi, 66, left Iran just before the disputed 2009 election which gave Rouhani’s predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a second term.

She said she will return when she can carry out human rights activities and her colleagues are released from prison.

Ebadi expressed hope that nuclear negotiations between Iran and six world powers, which are set to resume Thursday, will lead to the end of US-led sanctions and a settlement of the stalemate with the West over Tehran’s nuclear program.

“But I have doubts,” she quickly added, “and I think it’s too early to be optimistic.”

Instead of economic sanctions that impoverish Iranians, Ebadi urged the United States and Europe to block satellite access for Iranian “propaganda” broadcasts in 16 non-Persian languages, including English, Arabic and Spanish.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.

Hagel: US to maintain robust presence in the Gulf | The Times of Israel.

Speaking to CSIS, defense secretary cites need to deter Iran, protect allies in the region

By JTA November 7, 2013, 4:33 am

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel (photo credit: AP/Wong Maye-E/File)

WASHINGTON — The United States will maintain a robust military presence in the Persian Gulf to deter Iran, US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said, although military action would be a last resort to keep Iran from getting a nuclear bomb.

Hagel in a speech Tuesday to the influential Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank described renewed efforts to get Iran to end its suspected nuclear weapons program through diplomacy.

“The United States is clear-eyed about the challenges and uncertainties that lie ahead on this path, and the need for Iran to demonstrate its seriousness through actions,” Hagel said. “We will maintain a strong and ready military presence in the Persian Gulf, and the broader Middle East, to deter Iran’s destabilizing activities, and to work with and protect our allies and our interests.”

Israel, lawmakers in Congress, and pro-Israel groups have urged the United States not to relieve any pressure on Iran during negotiations as long as Iran does not take concrete steps to reduce its nuclear capability.

Hagel also said, describing US policies toward Iran and Syria, where a civil war continues to rage, that a US military option would be a “last resort.”

“Military force must always remain an option – but it should be an option of last resort,” he said. “The military should always play a supporting role, not the leading role, in America’s foreign policy.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said he was reassuring US allies in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, that the United States would only settle for concrete steps by Iran to end its suspected nuclear weapons program. Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful.

“It is only specific actions on which countries will be able to measure an outcome,” Kerry said in Riyadh Monday, where he met with his Saudi counterpart, Saud al Faisal, “and the outcome must be one that allows all of us to know that every day that we wake up we know that what is happening in Iran is a peaceful program and not one where they can be secretly moving towards a weapon that could threaten the stability of this region.”

Kerry headed from Riyadh to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday and Wednesday.
He said negotiations with Iran, renewed last month after Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate, expressed interest in such talks, could take months.

Israeli and Saudi Arabian leaders have expressed wariness of extended talks, saying that Iran must not be given time to advance its nuclear program under the pretext of negotiations.

BBC News – Saudi nuclear weapons ‘on order’ from Pakistan.

Saudi Arabia has invested in Pakistani nuclear weapons projects, and believes it could obtain atomic bombs at will, a variety of sources have told BBC Newsnight.

While the kingdom’s quest has often been set in the context of countering Iran’s atomic programme, it is now possible that the Saudis might be able to deploy such devices more quickly than the Islamic republic.

Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery.

Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, “the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring.”

Since 2009, when King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia warned visiting US special envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross that if Iran crossed the threshold, “we will get nuclear weapons”, the kingdom has sent the Americans numerous signals of its intentions.

Gary Samore, until March 2013 President Barack Obama’s counter-proliferation adviser, has told Newsnight:

Gary Samore served as President Barack Obama’s WMD tsar

“I do think that the Saudis believe that they have some understanding with Pakistan that, in extremis, they would have claim to acquire nuclear weapons from Pakistan.”

The story of Saudi Arabia’s project – including the acquisition of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long ranges – goes back decades.

In the late 1980s they secretly bought dozens of CSS-2 ballistic missiles from China.

These rockets, considered by many experts too inaccurate for use as conventional weapons, were deployed 20 years ago.

This summer experts at defence publishers Jane’s reported the completion of a new Saudi CSS-2 base with missile launch rails aligned with Israel and Iran.

It has also been clear for many years that Saudi Arabia has given generous financial assistance to Pakistan’s defence sector, including, western experts allege, to its missile and nuclear labs.

Visits by the then Saudi defence minister Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz al Saud to the Pakistani nuclear research centre in 1999 and 2002 underlined the closeness of the defence relationship.

Defence publisher Jane’s revealed the existence of Saudi Arabia’s third and undisclosed intermediate-range ballistic missile site, approximately 200 km southwest of Riyadh

In its quest for a strategic deterrent against India, Pakistan co-operated closely with China which sold them missiles and provided the design for a nuclear warhead.

The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan was accused by western intelligence agencies of selling atomic know-how and uranium enrichment centrifuges to Libya and North Korea.

AQ Khan is also believed to have passed the Chinese nuclear weapon design to those countries. This blueprint was for a device engineered to fit on the CSS-2 missile, i.e the same type sold to Saudi Arabia.

Because of this circumstantial evidence, allegations of a Saudi-Pakistani nuclear deal started to circulate even in the 1990s, but were denied by Saudi officials.

They noted that their country had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and called for a nuclear-free Middle East, pointing to Israel’s possession of such weapons.

The fact that handing over atom bombs to a foreign government could create huge political difficulties for Pakistan, not least with the World Bank and other donors, added to scepticism about those early claims.

In Eating the Grass, his semi-official history of the Pakistani nuclear program, Major General Feroz Hassan Khan wrote that Prince Sultan’s visits to Pakistan’s atomic labs were not proof of an agreement between the two countries. But he acknowledged, “Saudi Arabia provided generous financial support to Pakistan that enabled the nuclear program to continue.”

Whatever understandings did or did not exist between the two countries in the 1990s, it was around 2003 that the kingdom started serious strategic thinking about its changing security environment and the prospect of nuclear proliferation.

A paper leaked that year by senior Saudi officials mapped out three possible responses – to acquire their own nuclear weapons, to enter into an arrangement with another nuclear power to protect the kingdom, or to rely on the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East.

It was around the same time, following the US invasion of Iraq, that serious strains in the US/Saudi relationship began to show themselves, says Gary Samore.

The Saudis resented the removal of Saddam Hussein, had long been unhappy about US policy on Israel, and were growing increasingly concerned about the Iranian nuclear program.

In the years that followed, diplomatic chatter about Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation began to increase.

In 2007, the US mission in Riyadh noted they were being asked questions by Pakistani diplomats about US knowledge of “Saudi-Pakistani nuclear cooperation”.

The unnamed Pakistanis opined that “it is logical for the Saudis to step in as the physical ‘protector'” of the Arab world by seeking nuclear weapons, according to one of the State Department cables posted by Wikileaks.

By the end of that decade Saudi princes and officials were giving explicit warnings of their intention to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran did.

Having warned the Americans in private for years, last year Saudi officials in Riyadh escalated it to a public warning, telling a journalist from the Times “it would be completely unacceptable to have Iran with a nuclear capability and not the kingdom”.

But were these statements bluster, aimed at forcing a stronger US line on Iran, or were they evidence of a deliberate, long-term plan for a Saudi bomb? Both, is the answer I have received from former key officials.

One senior Pakistani, speaking on background terms, confirmed the broad nature of the deal – probably unwritten – his country had reached with the kingdom and asked rhetorically “what did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn’t charity.”

Another, a one-time intelligence officer from the same country, said he believed “the Pakistanis certainly maintain a certain number of warheads on the basis that if the Saudis were to ask for them at any given time they would immediately be transferred.”

As for the seriousness of the Saudi threat to make good on the deal, Simon Henderson, Director of the Global Gulf and Energy Policy Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told BBC Newsnight “the Saudis speak about Iran and nuclear matters very seriously. They don’t bluff on this issue.”

Talking to many serving and former officials about this over the past few months, the only real debate I have found is about how exactly the Saudi Arabians would redeem the bargain with Pakistan.

Some think it is a cash-and-carry deal for warheads, the first of those options sketched out by the Saudis back in 2003; others that it is the second, an arrangement under which Pakistani nuclear forces could be deployed in the kingdom.

Gary Samore, considering these questions at the centre of the US intelligence and policy web, at the White House until earlier this year, thinks that what he calls, “the Nato model”, is more likely.

However ,”I think just giving Saudi Arabia a handful of nuclear weapons would be a very provocative action”, says Gary Samore.

He adds: “I’ve always thought it was much more likely – the most likely option if Pakistan were to honour any agreement would be for be for Pakistan to send its own forces, its own troops armed with nuclear weapons and with delivery systems to be deployed in Saudi Arabia”.

This would give a big political advantage to Pakistan since it would allow them to deny that they had simply handed over the weapons, but implies a dual key system in which they would need to agree in order for ‘Saudi Arabian’ “nukes” to be launched.

Others I have spoken to think this is not credible, since Saudi Arabia, which regards itself as the leader of the broader Sunni Islamic ‘ummah’ or community, would want complete control of its nuclear deterrent, particularly at this time of worsening sectarian confrontation with Shia Iran.

And it is Israeli information – that Saudi Arabia is now ready to take delivery of finished warheads for its long-range missiles – that informs some recent US and Nato intelligence reporting. Israel of course shares Saudi Arabia’s motive in wanting to worry the US into containing Iran.

Amos Yadlin declined to be interviewed for our BBC Newsnight report, but told me by email that “unlike other potential regional threats, the Saudi one is very credible and imminent.”

Even if this view is accurate there are many good reasons for Saudi Arabia to leave its nuclear warheads in Pakistan for the time being.

Doing so allows the kingdom to deny there are any on its soil. It avoids challenging Iran to cross the nuclear threshold in response, and it insulates Pakistan from the international opprobrium of being seen to operate an atomic cash-and-carry.

These assumptions though may not be safe for much longer. The US diplomatic thaw with Iran has touched deep insecurities in Riyadh, which fears that any deal to constrain the Islamic republic’s nuclear program would be ineffective.

Earlier this month the Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar announced that the kingdom would be distancing itself more from the US.

While investigating this, I have heard rumours on the diplomatic grapevine, that Pakistan has recently actually delivered Shaheen mobile ballistic missiles to Saudi Arabia, minus warheads.

These reports, still unconfirmed, would suggest an ability to deploy nuclear weapons in the kingdom, and mount them on an effective, modern, missile system more quickly than some analysts had previously imagined.

In Egypt, Saudi Arabia showed itself ready to step in with large-scale backing following the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi’s government.

There is a message here for Pakistan, of Riyadh being ready to replace US military assistance or World Bank loans, if standing with Saudi Arabia causes a country to lose them.

Newsnight contacted both the Pakistani and Saudi governments. The Pakistan Foreign Ministry has described our story as “speculative, mischievous and baseless”.

It adds: “Pakistan is a responsible nuclear weapon state with robust command and control structures and comprehensive export controls.”

The Saudi embassy in London has also issued a statement pointing out that the Kingdom is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and has worked for a nuclear free Middle East.

But it also points out that the UN’s “failure to make the Middle East a nuclear free zone is one of the reasons the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia rejected the offer of a seat on the UN Security Council”.

It says the Saudi Foreign Minister has stressed that this lack of international action “has put the region under the threat of a time bomb that cannot easily be defused by manoeuvring around i

Israel preemptively rejects new Iran proposal | The Times of Israel.

Reported plan to limit Islamic Republic’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief is ‘a bad deal,’ official tells AFP

By Times of Israel staff November 7, 2013, 3:31 am

Iran’s heavy water nuclear facilities near the central city of Arak, 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Tehran (photo credit: AP/ISNA/Hamid Foroutan/File)

Israel is reportedly urging its Western allies to reject an expected proposal to limit Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for limited relief from crippling economic sanctions.

“Israel in the last few hours has learned that a proposal will be brought before the P5+1 in Geneva in which Iran will cease all enrichment at 20 percent and slow down work on the heavy water reactor in Arak, and will receive in return the easing of sanctions,” an Israeli official told AFP Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Israel thinks this is a bad deal and will oppose it strongly,” the official added.

A senior US official, speaking to reporters on Wednesday said both sides are coming to the table in Geneva Thursday with an understanding of what they want from each other as a “first step” — and what they are willing to give in return. She, too, asked for anonymity as a condition for participation in her briefing.

She said the six world powers — the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany — are ready to offer “limited, targeted and reversible” sanctions relief in response to agreement by Iran to start rolling back activities that could be used to make weapons.

But in a nod to skeptics in Congress, she emphasized that any economic relief given Iran can be canceled, should Tehran renege on commitments it makes in Geneva. And she said the six powers were looking to test the durability of any initial nuclear limits Iran agreed to by waiting — possibly for as long as six months — after such agreement before any sanctions relief kicked in.

Another official from one of the delegations negotiating with Iran said easing core sanctions on Iran’s oil industry and finance sectors is not on offer unless Tehran makes sweeping concessions — something it is not likely to do at this point. He also demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss negotiating points.

The Israeli official told AFP, “Israel’s assessment is that the P5+1 is in a position of strength. The sanctions are hurting Iran, Iran is feeling the pressure and the P5+1 has the capability to compel Iran to end all enrichment and to stop construction of the facility in Arak.”

In Tehran, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard leaders have been mollified somewhat for now by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s suggestion that he will give President Hassan Rouhani only a limited time to negotiate an end to the sanctions. Underscoring the support that the hard-liners enjoy in Tehran, tens of thousands marked Monday’s anniversary of the 1979 storming of the US Embassy with chants of “Death to America!”

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