WarSclerotic

American Thinker Blog: Gaming Iran scenarios; a Kobayashi Maru test?.

Rick Moran
David Ignatius is one of the most respected Middle East hands in the press corps. He has  worked in many countries in the region and has, in my opinion, usually a realistic outlook on what American interests are.

Ignatius was allowed to observe an exercise at Harvard involving some former heavy hitters at state and the White House that gamed out various Iran scenarios that are likely to occur over the next few months and what he saw didn’t encourage him.

Writing in the Washington Post, Ignatius was trying to keep score:

My scorecard had Team Iran as the winner and Team America as the loser. The U.S. team — unable to stop the Iranian nuclear program and unwilling to go to war — concluded the game by embracing a strategy of containment and deterrence. The Iranian team wound up with Russia and China as its diplomatic protectors. And the Israeli team ended in a sharp break with Washington.Mind you, this was just an exercise. But it revealed some important real-life dynamics — and the inability of any diplomatic strategy, so far, to stop the Iranian nuclear push.

The simulation was organized by Graham Allison, the head of the Belfer Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It was animated by the key players: Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state, as President Obama; and Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. They agreed to let me use their names in this summary.

The gamers framed their strategies realistically: Obama’s America wants to avoid war, which means restraining Israel; Iran wants to continue its nuclear program, even as it dickers over a deal to enrich uranium outside its borders, such as the one floated in Geneva in October; Israel doesn’t trust America to stop Iran and is looking for help from the Gulf Arab countries and Europe.

Is this a “no win” scenario – the famous Star Trek test for cadets named the Kobayashi Maru test? In this case, we lose if Iran gets the bomb. The only victory I could imagine would be some kind of regime change but that is so much the pipe dream it shouldn’t be considered. We also lose if we have a public break with Israel or if we force Russia and China into even a cozier relationship with the mullahs than they have now. All of this is predicated on the notion that Obama will not attack and that he will do everything he can to try and prevent Israel from doing so.

No, Obama will not attack. The Iranians, Russians, and Chinese know this as do our allies. What I found fascinating in this exercise was the open break foreseen between Israel and the US – or, more specifically, Obama and Netanyahu. I have read several analysts who believe that if such a break were to occur, the chances for a general middle east war become better than 50-50. Israel’s enemies may seek to take advantage of our break with the Jewish state while the Israelis may not feel any constraints in trying to solve a few problems that have been confronting them with regard to Syria, Hezb’allah, and the Palestinians.

Ignatius was not optimistic:

What worried me most about this game is what worries me in real life: There is a “fog of diplomacy,” comparable to Clausewitz’s famous fog of war. Players aren’t always clear on what’s really happening; they misread or ignore signals sent by others; they take actions that have unintended and sometimes devastating consequences.The simulated world of December 2010 looks ragged and dangerous. If the real players truly mean to contain Iran and stop it from getting the bomb, they need to avoid the snares that were so evident in the Harvard game.

Sounds like August, 1914 to me but that is almost certainly an oversimplification. The point Ignatius is trying to make is that this scenario has the potential to spin out of control into a  very serious crisis.

And in charge, we have a naive, inexperienced president who is confused about American vital interests and hasn’t a clue what the ramifications of a break with Israel would mean.

ElBaradei warns against Israel attacking Iran.

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Former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei

GreekAmericanNewsAgency.

Γράφει ο/η Greek American News Agency

06.12.09

by Stephen Brown, FrontPAge Magazine The decade-long attempt to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons may have entered the final round on Sunday when Iran announced to the world it intended to build ten new uranium enrichment sites. “This is really a statement of defiance,” a former senior Israeli atomic official told The Wall Street Journal, “telling the world we are going to go ahead with our nuclear program.” The Iranian government’s statement came only two days after the world’s major powers condemned Iran’s nuclear program, which, despite Iranian denials, is believed to be producing nuclear weapons. China and Russia joined the United States, France, Britain and Germany to support an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution ordering Iran to stop construction on the uranium enrichment plant near Qom, a secret facility whose existence President Obama revealed last September. Due to the international criticism, Iranians are now threatening to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and reduce cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog. North Korea is the only other country ever to have pulled out of the treaty. According to news reports, the Iranian decision to thumb their nose at the U.N. and world opinion and construct new nuclear fuel refinement facilities was made Sunday evening at a cabinet meeting chaired by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad. The Iranians will start work on five of the new sites within two months and at an unspecified future time on the remaining five. It is believed the reason for the extra facilities is to allow Iran to build more nuclear bombs. One military analyst says U.N. weapons inspectors and the U.S. Department of Defense are of the opinion Iran currently has enough enriched fuel for one nuclear weapon. Iran would like to have several more in order to present itself as a “credible threat.” The Iranian announcement signals a defeat for President Obama’s ‘soft’ approach towards the Islamic Republic’s leadership. In an interview with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya satellite television network last January, Obama said Iran’s leaders would find the extended hand of diplomacy if they “unclenched” their fists. “As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us,” Obama said. But as early as March there were already signs that Iran was in no mood to unclench and drop the rock it was holding in the form of its nuclear weapons program. That month, President Obama released a video, wishing the Iranians a happy New Year, which, in Iran, falls on the first day of spring. In return for his friendly overture, the American president received from the Iranian government nothing but a demand for apologies for America’s past transgressions, real or imagined, against Iran. Sunday’s statement simply proves what most have suspected all along: One cannot talk to the Iranian leaders and that they are simply stringing out negotiations to complete their nuclear arms program. And the fact the Iranians still celebrate the 1979 American embassy seizure every November, a flagrant and criminal breach of international law, shows they do not want to talk to the United States in particular and are still willing to flout international norms. Essentially, Iran’s leaders are religious fanatics who believe they have been chosen by God to establish a Shiite hegemony over the majority Sunni Islamic world and then, hopefully, over the whole planet. Of the world’s one billion Muslims, about 220 million are minority Shiites, of whom the largest number, about 62 million, live in Iran. Pakistan contains the next largest community of Shiites at 33 million, while India is third with 30 million and Iraq fourth with 18 million. Iran’s mullah regime sees possessing nuclear weapons as instrumental to its plans for world domination. Nuclear arms would also add significant muscle to Iran’s security in a part of the world where any sign of weakness or vulnerability could be dangerous. Iranians have not forgotten how Iraq took advantage of Iran’s revolutionary turmoil to launch a devastating eight-year war against it in 1980. And like Russia with its former Eastern European satellites, Iran would also use nuclear weapons to intimidate weaker neighbors. The Asia Times columnist, Spengler (a literary pseudonym), gives another reason why Iran is not afraid to seek confrontation over its nuclear weapons program. Iranian demographics have sunk to West German levels of about 1.6 children per woman, which would make waging a war in 20 years impossible. Iran currently has enough young men to embark on a military adventure, whether internally for nuclear weapons acquisition or externally against the Sunni world, while in twenty years it won’t. Iran’s heavily-subsidized economy is also imploding. Like Argentina with its 1982 Falkland Islands’ invasion and Germany in 1939, economically it is now or never for Iran to make a grab for the ring. In a year’s time it may be too late, especially if oil prices drop dramatically again. Besides, again like Argentina, a military adventure would probably cause those Iranian people actively opposed to the regime to put aside their economic and political grievances and rally around the country’s leadership in nationalistic pride. But if Iran wants a fight, it will most likely get one. The Islamic regime’s Holocaust-denying leadership has openly stated it wants to erase Israel from the map. Facing such a naked threat to their country’s existence, one military publication states the Israelis are now openly discussing using a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Israel’s Jericho missiles can carry nuclear warheads, they also can be equipped with a conventional warhead. An attack by Israeli warplanes is also a possibility. The Israelis already have American backing for such a strike if negotiations fail, as they appear to have. American Vice-President Joe Biden said in an ABC interview last July America would not prevent an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. And since the only other option would be a nuclear-armed Iran, the Israelis will now likely ensure this last round ends in a knockout.

The Naval Arena in the Struggle against Iran | Global Terrorism.

DEBKAfile – US to focus on uranium findings in Syria – evidence of Iranian proliferation.

December 6, 2009, 9:00 AM (GMT+02:00)

Syrian reactor

A senior official in the Obama administration described the UN nuclear watchdog inspectors’ discovery of traces of highly processed plutonium at the bombed Syrian-North Korean facility at Dir a-Zur as a “smoking gun” – evidence of Iran’s covert nuclear activities and proliferation, DEBKAfile‘s Washington sources report.

It was confirmed by International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors in their Nov. 30 visit to the site which was demolished by Israel in September 2007.

Obama administration sources are confident that with this information of Iranian violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, even Russia and China will have to endorse stiff new sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The soil samples the inspectors collected at their last visit to Dir a-Zur confirmed an earlier discovery of uranium used in separating out bomb-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel which the US believes was supplied by Iran. Those experiments were clearly further along that previously assessed.

The same traces were found at the Syrian nuclear research reactor near Damascus.

Washington intends to present these findings as solid evidence of the tie-in between the Syrian and Iranian military nuclear programs, together with proofs of Tehran’s direct involvement in the planning and construction of the demolished Syria reactor.

Iran will also be shown to have supplied Syria with the nuclear materials and technology for its operation as part of its own program to attain a nuclear weapons capability.

The US will use this body of evidence to demonstrate Iran has been in grave breach of its NPT obligations since 2007. This week, officials in Tehran said their government has no plans to abdicate from the treaty.

According to DEBKAfile‘s Washington sources, the Obama administration may decide to plant the information in the US and world media before making a formal presentation.

Last Thursday, Dec. 3, Iran’s national security council director Saeed Jalili visited Damascus for urgent consultations with Syrian leaders on fending off the coming American assault on its nuclear program based on the evidence of Syria covert nuclear activities. His party included members of Iran’s nuclear energy commission who helped build the Syria’s North Korean reactor.

Jalili and Syrian president Bashar Assad spent several hours discussing how to respond to the forthcoming American revelations.

Their talks were violently interrupted by the bomb blast on an Iranian pilgrim bus in central Damascus. Official figures have not been released but the number of dead is believed to be fifteen Iranians with many more injured. Assad ordered Syrian officials on the spot to claim the blast was an accident and not an act of terror. Both sides assumed that the hand behind the attack had advance knowledge of the Iranian-Syrian conference and was bent on sabotaging it.

Poll: Americans find Iran greatest threat to US | International News | Jerusalem Post.

Americans say Iran poses a greater threat to the US than any other country, and a growing number call Teheran a major threat, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, third left, reviews Iran’s armed forces as an unmanned drone is paraded past during a ceremony commemorating Army Day.
Photo: AP

SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region |  World

Americans continue to approve of pre-emptive military attacks in some circumstances, with 63 percent telling pollsters that they would support a US use of force if Iran had produced a nuclear weapon, with only 30% opposed.

So far, Americans give US President Barack Obama mixed reviews on his Iran policy, with 43% approving and 40% disapproving.

Their attitudes on Iran came against a growing isolationist sentiment in America, which has reached a four-decades high. For the first time in that span, a plurality (49%) think the United States should “mind its own business internationally” and let other countries get along the best they can on their own, the Pew poll released Thursday found.

Four years ago, 42% agreed that the US should “mind its own business” in international affairs; in December 2002, just 30% agreed with this statement.

Additionally, 44% now agree that because the United States “is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not.”

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That percentage is by far the highest since the question was first posed in the 1960s.

Still, Americans continue to sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, with just over half, or 51%, saying they sympathize more with the Israelis, while just 12% report that they sympathize with the Palestinians more. Pew points out that these results “have changed little in recent years.”

When it comes to US policy toward this conflict, Pew assessed the public doesn’t have a clear impression. About a quarter can’t offer an assessment of current or past American policy. Of those who can, 30% think that the US has favored Israel too much, with 15% saying the United States has favored the Palestinians too much and 29% say past policy has struck the right balance.

On Obama, the survey found 51% of Americans think he is striking the right balance with 16% saying he favors the Palestinians too much and 7% saying he favors Israel too much.

During his presidency, fears of a terror attack have risen. Now 29% of the public consider the ability of terrorists to attack the United States is greater than it was at the time of the 9/11 attacks, a figure that is 12 points higher than in February.

Terrorism continues to be the top international concern, with 76% saying Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida are a major threat. Iran’s nuclear program comes in at 72%, a number that has grown steadily from the 60% who called it a major threat in September 2008.

And when asked in an open-ended format which country represents the greatest danger to the US, more Americans cite Iran (21%) than any other country. Iraq and Afghanistan garnered 14% each, 11% said China and 10% answered North Korea.

Even so, 76% of those polled say the US should “concentrate more on our own national problems and building up our strength and prosperity here at home” rather than think in international terms, close to a 45-year high.

The public also continues to stress that it is more important for President Obama to focus on domestic policy than foreign policy in overwhelming numbers: 73% think Obama should focus on domestic policy and only 12% think he should address foreign policy, consistent with when Obama took office in January.

“Tough economic times have always led the American public to turn inward rather than look beyond America’s shores,” assessed James Lindsay and Parke Nicholson of the Council on Foreign Relations, who collaborated on the survey. “These poll results highlight a potential political problem for President Obama.”

Specifically, they said, “He campaigned on a pledge to use energetic diplomacy to restore American global leadership. So far, though, his multilateral efforts have come up short. Iran and North Korea refuse to halt their nuclear programs. The Israeli-Palestinian peace process remains frozen.”

In that context, they continued, “he could face greater political resistance, from both ends of the political spectrum, to his activist foreign policy and multilateralism.”

The survey of 2,000 members of the general public was conducted via telephone from October 28 to November 8. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish with a margin of error of three percentage points.

What will it take to tame Tehran’s nuclear plans? – Telegraph.

Time is running out for the West’s conciliatory approach after President Ahmadinejad’s latest provocation, says Con Coughlin.

By Con Coughlin
Published: 6:45AM GMT 01 Dec 2009

Comments 60 | Comment on this article

Making his point: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a meeting last month Photo: AFP/Getty

The best that can be said about Iran’s announcement that it intends to build a further 10 uranium enrichment facilities is that at least we are now clear about its intentions.

For much of the past year, the West has been labouring under the illusion that Iran might somehow be coaxed into negotiating a resolution to the international crisis over its nuclear programme. Barack Obama, in particular, has gone out of his way since taking office last January to try to persuade Tehran to end the decades of anti-American hostility that have defined Iran’s approach to Washington since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Shortly after his inaugural address, Mr Obama offered to negotiate directly with Tehran, without preconditions, if the regime would agree to “unclench its fist” and demonstrate its willingness to resolve the nuclear crisis by peaceful means. But all the President has got in return is a hardening of Tehran’s position, resulting in an announcement that, even by Iranian standards, represents a dramatic escalation in the country’s nuclear ambitions. Iran’s fist, it seems, remains as tightly clenched as at any time during the past 30 years.

And Iran is never averse to using intimidation to silence its critics – the detention of five British sailors, announced by the Foreign Office last night, is a tried and trusted tactic that we have seen used several times in the past.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, said that a cabinet meeting at the weekend had agreed that the new facilities were required to help Iran produce 20,000 megawatts of nuclear-generated electricity by 2020.

Precisely why the world’s fourth largest oil producer is so obsessed with developing nuclear power has never been adequately explained by the government. All Mr Ahmadinejad and other senior members of the regime ever say when pressed is that Iran has an inalienable right to develop nuclear power if it chooses, and that is how it intends to meet its future energy needs.

The problem is that many of the facilities the Iranians have built so far, such as the massive underground enrichment facility at Natanz, are not suitable for the nuclear power plant that is currently being built by Russian technicians at Bushehr, in the Gulf. If the enriched uranium being produced at Natanz is unsuitable for the country’s domestic nuclear programme, what else might it be used for?

It is this and other glaring discrepancies in Iran’s public declarations about its nuclear programme that have led the West to conclude that Iran’s nuclear intentions are far from peaceful, and that the regime is secretly working to construct an atom bomb.

These suspicions deepened further after Mr Obama revealed the existence of a hitherto undeclared enrichment plant during September’s G20 summit at Pittsburgh. Flanked by Gordon Brown and the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr Obama revealed that Iran had built a second uranium enrichment facility in a mountain range close to the holy city of Qom.

Iran was deeply embarrassed by this diplomatic démarche, and agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the UN body responsible for nuclear monitoring, to visit the site. At the same time, Mr Obama and other world leaders hoped that the revelation would finally persuade Tehran to take a positive approach to negotiations to end the crisis. To start with, the omens looked good. At a summit in Geneva in early October, Tehran indicated it was willing to accept a deal put together by six world powers – Britain, France, Germany, Russia, China and the US – to ship 75 per cent of its enriched uranium stocks to be processed in Russia, in return for UN sanctions being frozen.

Removal of the stockpiles of enriched uranium, which have been created in defiance of the UN, was seen as an important confidence-building measure, as it would eliminate suspicions that Iran might use the material to construct a nuclear weapon (Iran is currently believed to have sufficient fissile material to build one nuclear warhead).

But, as has so often been the case in the drawn-out negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme, the Iranians have gradually backed away from the Geneva commitment, to the extent that they have now ruled out exporting any of their stockpiles of enriched uranium.

At the same time, the team of IAEA inspectors that was allowed to visit the Qom facility had reached some disturbing conclusions about the site’s proposed use. Its emphatic conclusion was that the facility, which is still several months away from completion, has no obvious civilian or commercial use, prompting the suspicion that it has been built as part of a clandestine military programme.

This conclusion would certainly fit in with the assessment made in a secret report drawn up by the IAEA earlier this year, details of which were leaked last month, which found that Iran now had “sufficient information” to make a nuclear bomb, and had probably carried out tests on key components.

A combination of the Qom discovery and Iran’s refusal to comply with the agreement to export its stockpiles of enriched uranium has now led to a complete breakdown of the negotiating process.

Even Mohammed ElBaradei, the IAEA director-general, concedes that his inspectors have reached a “dead end” in their attempts to unravel Iran’s true nuclear intentions. During his 12-year tenure as head of the IAEA, Mr ElBaradei has bent over backwards to accommodate Tehran, often blocking publication of sensitive material that might embarrass the Iranians in the hope that he could persuade them to make a full disclosure of their programme.

But before retiring at the end of last week, Mr ElBaradei effectively admitted that his diplomatic overture had failed, and accused Iran of lacking credibility over its handling of the nuclear negotiations. Mr ElBaradei’s gloomy assessment has now resulted in the IAEA’s 35-member board taking the exceptional measure of censuring Iran for building the Qom facility, and demanding that it freeze all work on its uranium enrichment programme. Perhaps the biggest surprise to emerge from the vote last Friday was that, for the first time, both China and Russia supported the resolution. Previously, Moscow and Beijing have resisted the West’s attempts to pressure Iran, arguing that the threat posed by Tehran’s nuclear programme has been exaggerated.

The fact that both Russia and China now appear to be prepared to take a tougher line with Tehran is about the only positive development to emerge from this otherwise sorry saga. This is partly due to Mr Obama’s intense diplomatic efforts to court both Moscow and Beijing, and a growing awareness that, unless urgent action is taken soon, the world will wake up one morning and find that the ayatollahs have successfully tested an atom bomb.

There are many reasons to be alarmed by this prospect, not least the impact such a development would have on a region that is not renowned for its political stability. If Iran acquires a nuclear weapons capability, many of the major Arab states will try to follow suit, thereby destroying international efforts to curb the threat of nuclear proliferation. Saudi Arabia is believed to have reached an understanding with Pakistan to acquire its nuclear know-how, while Egypt and Syria have both expressed an unwelcome interest in developing their own nuclear capability.

Then there is the altogether more complex issue of how to handle Israel’s visceral opposition to the Iranian programme. Israel regards Iran’s nuclear quest as an existential threat to the Jewish people equal to that of the Holocaust, which is hardly surprising, given that Mr Ahmadinejad has repeatedly declared his desire to wipe Israel off the face of the Middle East.

Successive Israeli governments – including the current administration of Right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – have pledged to take unilateral military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure if its development is not checked.

Time is clearly not on the side of those attempting to talk Iran round. For the past six years, the West has been involved in intensive negotiations with Tehran to resolve this dispute, but all that has happened is that Iran has dramatically increased its nuclear capability while the West has received nothing in return.

This is a situation that can no longer be allowed to continue. If Iran wishes to persist with its defiant attitude, then it must face the consequences.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has argued in favour of “crippling” sanctions being imposed against Iran, and urgent action should now be taken to implement them as soon as possible, in a last-ditch effort to bring Tehran to its senses. Otherwise the consequences are too dreadful to contemplate.

Iran Rejects IAEA Transparency Demand on Atom Sites – NYTimes.com.

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran said it will provide the U.N. nuclear watchdog with the bare minimum of information about its plan to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants, a stance sure to stoke Western suspicions about its atomic agenda.

In a defiant response to last week’s International Atomic Energy Agency board of governors vote rebuking Iran for building a second enrichment plant in secret, Tehran said on Sunday it would build 10 more sites like its IAEA-monitored one at Natanz.

In 2007, in reprisal for U.N. sanctions slapped on it, Iran renounced an amended IAEA code of conduct requiring states to notify the agency of nuclear plans as soon as they are drafted, so as to catch any illicit atomic bomb work in the early stages.

Iran reverted to an earlier IAEA transparency code mandating only 180 days notice before a nuclear site begins production.

A senior Iranian official quoted by official news agency IRNA made clear Iran would apply the minimum transparency rule to its plan for 10 more enrichment plants.

Analysts say Iran will need many years if not decades for such a huge expansion of enrichment, but fear Iran’s adherence to obsolete notification rules will heighten the risk of Tehran trying to “weaponize” enrichment clandestinely.

Uranium enrichment can be calibrated to yield fuel either for nuclear power plants or the fissile core of a nuclear bomb.

A senior Iranian diplomat involved in now stalled nuclear talks with the West said Iran would continue cooperation with the IAEA only according to its 1970s basic safeguards agreement.

“According to the safeguards, after installation of equipment (centrifuges) and only 180 days ahead of injecting gas into the centrifuges … we should inform the IAEA,” Abolfazl Zohrehvand told IRNA. “And we will act within the framework of the safeguard,” the former Iranian ambassador to Italy said.

“Since 2007, Iran officially has stopped implementation of amendments to code 3.1, obliging countries to inform the IAEA when they plan to build a facility,” added Zohrehvand.

SHADOWY PROJECT

The IAEA has told Iran it was “outside the law” by failing to declare the second enrichment site taking shape inside a mountain bunker near Qom as soon as plans for it were drawn up.

Iran said construction there began in 2007 and the project was hushed up for fear of air strikes by Israel. Iran declared the plant to the IAEA in September after, according to Western powers, learning that their spy services had discovered it.

Western diplomats said they had intelligence evidence that the enrichment project was hatched before 2007, and that Iran probably would have used the site to enrich uranium to weapons-grade if it had not been exposed.

Iran says its enriched uranium will be only for electricity generation. Iran’s record of nuclear secrecy and lack of power plants to use low-enriched uranium has convinced the West that Iran is hiding a program to develop nuclear weapons capacity.

Last week’s IAEA resolution also urged Iran to halt all enrichment-related activity, allow unfettered IAEA inspections, guarantee it is not hiding more sites, and cooperate with an IAEA probe into allegations of nuclear weapons research by Iran.

The United States and Germany warned Iran on Thursday that it was rapidly approaching a December deadline to accept an IAEA-brokered nuclear cooperation deal with world powers.

Iran has backed off from the deal calling on it to send 75 percent of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Russia and France to be turned into fuel for a Tehran medical research reactor.

The West hoped that farming out a large amount of Iran’s LEU reserve for reprocessing would minimize the risk of Iran’s refining the material to high purity suitable for bombs.

But hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday Iran would enrich its LEU stockpile to 20 percent purity needed for the medical isotope reactor, a step the West fears would usher Iran closer to the 80-90 percent grade for an atom bomb.

In talks with six world powers in Geneva on October 1, Iran agreed in principle to the deal but has since balked. Iran has until the end of the year to agree to it or face the threat of tougher sanctions, U.S. officials say.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s efforts to engage Iran with confidence-building measures have so far been fruitless. Ahmadinejad ruled out further talks with six major powers on the future of Iran’s enrichment campaign.

(Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

The Associated Press: AP sources: US eyes January for new Iran sanctions.

By MATTHEW LEE and JENNIFER LOVEN (AP) – 8 hours ago

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is looking to press in early January for a new round of United Nations sanctions against Iran for its continued defiance of demands to come clean about its nuclear program, U.S. officials said Friday.

As President Barack Obama’s year-end deadline looms for Iran to comply with demands to prove its atomic activities are peaceful, the administration is reaching out to European allies, Russia and China to win support for new penalties at the U.N. Security Council after its membership changes Jan. 1, the officials said.

Senior U.S. diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her chief deputy James Steinberg, raised the urgency of the matter with European foreign ministers at high-level meetings in Athens and Brussels this week ahead of a summit of European leaders.

The sanctions package is not yet “coherent,” one official said, but may include U.N. penalties aimed at elements of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the United States already has applied, and on Iran’s petroleum industry, which the Obama administration is considering.

The official said there are still disagreements over how far to push on sanctions, noting that some moves could affect world oil markets. “We are looking to find what everyone can agree will be most effective and have the least impact on the Iranian people,” the official said.

That official and others spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal administration thinking on the evolving sanction proposals.

The State Department said Friday the administration was hoping for a strong statement on Iran, including a mention of possible sanctions, from the Dec. 10 and 11 European Council session in Brussels.

“There will be a broad discussion on next steps in that meeting,” spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters. “The E.U. is expected to have a written statement on Iran.”

“Our focus is shifting more towards the pressure track,” he added.

Senior diplomats moved this week to win backing from Russia and China, which are generally opposed to sanctions and have balked at imposing new penalties.

Clinton herself discussed Iran with her Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of a NATO meeting in Brussels. And she is dispatching the third ranking U.S. diplomat, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, William Burns, to Beijing next week.

Burns, who represents the United States at meetings of the six-nation group trying to persuade Iran to meet its international obligations, will be in the Chinese capital for talks on Iran and other issues on Tuesday and Wednesday, Kelly said.

Burns will try to persuade China to attend another possible meeting of the six-nation group before Christmas to discuss sanctions, the officials said. That meeting could set the stage for a referral of sanctions to the U.N. Security Council in January. China, though, has so far resisted scheduling it, the officials said.

With Iran’s continued resistance, its disclosure in September of a secret uranium enrichment plant and its recent threat to build 10 more, U.S. officials believe they can win Russian and Chinese support.

An Iranian nuclear official said Friday that Iran will not answer to the U.N. nuclear watchdog about the plan for new enrichment sites beyond the barest minimum required under the international nonproliferation treaty.

The comments by Abolfazl Zohrehvand came days after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was considering whether to scale back cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency after it approved a resolution censuring Iran over its nuclear program.

Iran maintains its nuclear program is peaceful and insists it has a right to enrich uranium to produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity.

The U.S. and others believe Iran is using a civilian program to cover attempts to develop atomic weapons.

Israel Air Force chief’s “hard decisions” means no total security against multi-directional missiles

28 Nov. Israeli Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Ido Nehushtan told a Tel Aviv University audience Friday, Nov. 27: “The time for hard decisions is fast approaching,” adding “The scope of security threats to Israel is very complex and we must prepare for all exigencies.” He was addressing a ceremony marking 30 years of the IDF’s Talpiot program which offers hi-tech, math and physics training and degrees for high IQ conscripts to join special projects.

DEBKAfile’s military experts translate the “hard decisions,” he referred to as the tough choice of priorities facing government and military decision-makers in a potential war.

They would have to choose between striking Iran’s ballistic missile bases or the missiles pointing at Israel from Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, as well dealing with hostile ships facing Israel from a fifth direction, the Mediterranean.

The joint US-Israel Juniper Cobra 10 missile interception exercise at the beginning of November and exposed a major vulnerability: In the event of a coordinated missile offensive from several directions: Israel would be unable to extend total security both to its missile bases, airfields and strategic sites and also to its civilian population. The Israeli Air force is not capable of knocking out all out once all five potential sources of missile attacks.

This means that if the Israel air force first targeted Iran, Syria and Hizballah would be free to provide Iran with active support by sending their missiles and rockets flying into Israel from its northern borders before their bases can be seriously impaired by an Israeli counter-attack.