Daily Archives: January 11, 2008

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The unraveling of Israel’s nuclear ambiguity

CIA reveals: We said in 1974 that Israel had nuclear weapons
By Amir Oren, Haaretz, January 11, 2008

The Central Intelligence Agency, backed by bodies including the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Defense Intelligence Agency, determined in August 1974 that Israel had nuclear “weapons in being,” a “small number” of which it “produced and stockpiled.”

Israel was also suspected of providing nuclear materials, equipment or technology to Iran, South Africa and other then-friendly countries.

This top secret document, consigned to the CIA’s vaults for almost 32 years, was suddenly released to the public this week, during U.S. President George W. Bush’s visit to Israel and on the eve of his trip to the Persian Gulf. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — For several decades, Israel has adopted a position of so-called “nuclear ambiguity,” asserting that it would not be the first state to introduce atomic weapons to the Middle East. The United States has colluded in allowing this claim to rest unchallenged — even though it is widely understood that Israel does in fact possess a nuclear arsenal estimated to range from 70 to 400 warheads.

The first indications that the United States’ position might change occurred during Robert Gates’ confirmation hearings in which he included Israel among the nuclear states that surround Iran. Documents released by the Nixon Library a few weeks ago confirm that in 1969, Henry Kissinger warned President Nixon about Israel’s nuclear capabilities and that the “Israelis, who are one of the few peoples whose survival is genuinely threatened, are probably more likely than almost any other country to actually use their nuclear weapons.” A year ago, Ehud Olmert provoked a storm of criticism inside Israel by being the first Israeli prime minister to make reference to Israel’s nuclear arsenal.

It seems to be a matter of time (months or even weeks?) before Israel decides to unambiguously come out of the nuclear closet. If this happens, the nuclear equation changes across the whole region. Will it trigger a Middle East nuclear arms race? Will it help empower those who argue that the only effective way of challenging Iran’s nuclear program is through turning the whole region into a nuclear-weapon-free zone? Or will the United States attempt to contrive a policy that claims that Israel has a unique “right” to possess nuclear weapons and exempt itself from international treaties?

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Unscrambling Iranian-U.S. communications

What to make of the Iranian videotape
By William M. Arkin, Washington Post, January 10, 2008

Iran has now aired a video of the incident in the Straits of Hormuz on Sunday, and according to the wire services (AP, AFP, Reuters) the video stresses routine and not confrontation.

As I said yesterday, the Iranians on Sunday wanted to send a not-so-subtle message to their Persian Gulf neighbors that they could disrupt the flow of oil and that any U.S.-Iranian confrontation would hurt the pocketbooks of the ruling sheiks. Now, by issuing a video that seems to call into question the authenticity of the Pentagon videotape, Iran seeks a bigger victory with international public opinion.

At this point, Washington has two choices: It can release every shred of intelligence and information it has in an attempt to show how the Iranians are lying. Or it can let the matter drop and focus instead averting these types of incidents in the future. If it chooses the latter, it may find that Iran is a more willing partner than it appears. What Tehran is saying, after all, is quite similar to what the U.S. Navy is saying. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Let’s suppose that the Pentagon had never released its own video (the one to which it added an audio track) — that it had simply issued a statement describing the Hormuz incident — and that the Iranian video that has now been broadcast came under critical scrutiny. Suppose the Pentagon then announced that after having analysed the Iranian videotape, they had determined that the audio came from a different source than the images. Would the Pentagon refrain from describing this as a “fabrication”? Almost certainly not — and neither would many news editors in the U.S. media be reluctant to run headlines referring to the “Fabricated Iranian Video.”

Official version of naval incident starts to unravel
By Gareth Porter, Antiwar, January 11, 2008

Despite the official and media portrayal of the incident in the Strait of Hormuz early Monday morning as a serious threat to US ships from Iranian speedboats that nearly resulted in a “battle at sea,” new information over the past three days suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no US commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

The new information that appears to contradict the original version of the incident includes the revelation that US officials spliced the audio recording of an alleged Iranian threat onto to a videotape of the incident. That suggests that the threatening message may not have come in immediately after the initial warning to Iranian boats from a US warship, as it appears to do on the video. [complete article]

Forging ties with Iran
By Mark Brzezinski and Ray Takeyh, Boston Globe, January 11, 2008

There is widespread feeling overseas that the consequences of the judgment that Tehran has suspended its nuclear weapons program should be positive, not punitive. To be sure, the Islamic Republic still has nuclear ambitions, and its expanded uranium enrichment capacity is certainly worrisome. Nonetheless, dialogue and diplomacy are still the best means of mitigating the Iranian challenge. And despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s odious rhetoric and the reckless behavior of Iranian speedboats, there is reason to believe that Tehran may be open to such an approach.

While some have depicted Iran as a rash, militant state imbued with messianic fervor, the clerical state today is an unexceptional opportunistic power seeking to exert preponderance in its immediate neighborhood. Gone are the heady revolutionary days when Iran viewed projection of influence as necessitating the subversion of the incumbent Arab regimes. [complete article]

See also, Iran shows its own video of vessels’ encounter in Gulf (NYT) and US protests Iran harassment of US ships (AP).

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NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: The unraveling of the War on Terrorism

The West has not just repressed democracy. It has aided terror
By Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, January 9, 2008

The Pakistani senator gazed at the headline in despair. It read: “US weighs new covert push in Pakistan”. Washington was authorising “enhanced CIA activity” in the country while US Democratic candidates declared they were all ready “to launch unilateral military strikes in [Pakistan] if they detected an imminent threat”. Hillary Clinton wanted “joint US-UK oversight” of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. In a country where anti-Americanism is almost a religion, said the senator, this is “an answer to a Taliban prayer”.

I am convinced that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first curse with foreign policy. For the third time in 20 years, the west is meddling with the world’s sixth most populous state. It did so to promote the Afghan mujahideen against the Russians in the 1980s, then to attack al-Qaida after 9/11, and now to “guard” Pakistan’s bombs against a fantastical al-Qaida seizure. Needless to say, the sole beneficiaries are the Taliban and the forces of disorder. [complete article]

Pakistan warns US not to enter northwest
AP, January 11, 2008

President Pervez Musharraf warned that U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan’s border region with Afghanistan in the hunt for al-Qaida or Taliban militants, according to an interview published Friday. [complete article]

Pakistan takes a step backwards
By Syed Saleem Shahzad, Asia Times, January 12, 2008

At a time when Pakistan’s national decision-making institutions are suspicious of international plans to make the country’s nuclear program controversial, there is serious consideration for repositioning the country’s foreign policy as neutral in the United States-led “war on terror”.

This would mean non-interference in the restive tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan. These are virtually autonomous areas where Taliban and al-Qaeda militants have established bases and vital supply lines into Afghanistan.

Such a move would have devastating effects on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) efforts to control the ever-growing insurgency in Afghanistan.

Following a meeting of the Pakistan corps commanders headed by the new chief of army staff, General Ashfaq Kiani, a press release said there would be a review of the situation in the tribal areas and, instead of citing any plans for military operations there against militants, the release said the military’s decisions would be based on “the wishes of the nation”. [complete article]

See also, Bomb kills at least 23 in Pakistan (NYT) and Baitullah Mehsud – the Taliban’s new leader in Pakistan (Jamestown Foundation).

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Counting the dead

New estimate of violent deaths among Iraqis – 151,000
By David Brown and Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, January 10, 2008

A new survey estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years following the U.S.-led invasion of the country. Roughly 9 out of 10 of those deaths were a consequence of U.S. military operations, insurgent attacks and sectarian warfare.

The survey, conducted by the Iraqi government and the World Health Organization, also found a 60 percent increase in nonviolent deaths — from such causes as childhood infections and kidney failure — during the period. The results, which will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine at the end of the month, are the latest of several widely divergent and controversial estimates of mortality attributed to the Iraq war.

The three-year toll of violent deaths calculated in the survey is one-quarter the size of that found in a smaller survey by Iraqi and Johns Hopkins University researchers published in the journal Lancet in 2006. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The Washington Post‘s attention focuses on the fact that this number is lower than some other estimates. Another way of stating the number is to say that 151,000 people (and many more) are now dead as a result of the foreign policy that the U.S. government crafted in response to the deaths of 2,974 people on September 11, 2001. Or to put it another way: for every individual who lost his or her life on 9/11, another 50 people have died as a result. Or to put it yet another way, 50 non-Americans are supposedly worth less than one American.

U.S. bombs Iraqi insurgent hideouts
By Solomon Moore, New York Times, January 11, 2008

American bombers and fighter aircraft dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs on suspected militant hide-outs, storehouses and defensive positions in the southern outskirts of Baghdad on Thursday, the United States military said.

In one of the largest airstrikes in recent months, two B-1 and four F-16 aircraft dropped 38 bombs within 10 minutes near the Latifiya district south of Baghdad, the military said. The airstrikes were accompanied by a large Iraqi and American ground assault.

The air attack was part of a nationwide joint offensive that includes a continuing sweep in Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, and raids Thursday in Salahuddin Province, northwest of the capital, between Samarra and Ramadi. [complete article]

See also, Blast kills 6 as troops hunt Iraqi insurgents (WP).

For U.S., the goal is now ‘Iraqi solutions’
By Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, January 10, 2008

In the year since President Bush announced he was changing course in Iraq with a troop “surge” and a new strategy, U.S. military and diplomatic officials have begun their own quiet policy shift. After countless unsuccessful efforts to push Iraqis toward various political, economic and security goals, they have decided to let the Iraqis figure some things out themselves.

From Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to Army privates and aid workers, officials are expressing their willingness to stand back and help Iraqis develop their own answers. “We try to come up with Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems,” said Stephen Fakan, the leader of a provincial reconstruction team with U.S. troops in Fallujah.

In many cases — particularly on the political front — Iraqi solutions bear little resemblance to the ambitious goals for 2007 that Bush laid out in his speech to the nation last Jan. 10. “To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis,” he pledged. “Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year . . . the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq’s constitution.” [complete article]

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NEWS: The torture tapes cover-up

Ex-CIA aide won’t testify on tapes without immunity
By Scott Shane, New York Times, January 10, 2008

A lawyer for Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency official who in 2005 ordered the destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations of prisoners at a secret site overseas, has told Congress that Mr. Rodriguez will not testify about the tapes without a grant of immunity, a person familiar with the discussions said Wednesday.

The House Intelligence Committee has scheduled a closed hearing on the tapes’ destruction for next Wednesday, and John A. Rizzo, the C.I.A.’s acting general counsel, has agreed to testify.

The committee issued a subpoena last month for Mr. Rodriguez’s testimony. Since then, the Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the tapes’ destruction. Mr. Rodriguez’s lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, wrote to the committee last week, saying that in light of the investigation he would not allow Mr. Rodriguez to offer testimony that might subsequently be used against him, according to the person familiar with the discussions, who would not speak for attribution because of their confidential nature.

The immunity demand creates a quandary for the House committee, which rejected a request from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to postpone the Congressional inquiry. An offer of immunity for Mr. Rodriguez’s testimony could make prosecuting him difficult or impossible, legal experts say. [complete article]

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