Noam Chomsky writes: Reporting on the final U.S. presidential campaign debate, on foreign policy, The Wall Street Journal observed that “the only country mentioned more (than Israel) was Iran, which is seen by most nations in the Middle East as the gravest security threat to the region.”

The two candidates agreed that a nuclear Iran is the gravest threat to the region, if not the world, as Romney explicitly maintained, reiterating a conventional view.

On Israel, the candidates vied in declaring their devotion to it, but Israeli officials were nevertheless unsatisfied. They had “hoped for more ‘aggressive’ language from Mr. Romney,” according to the reporters. It was not enough that Romney demanded that Iran not be permitted to “reach a point of nuclear capability.”

Arabs were dissatisfied too, because Arab fears about Iran were “debated through the lens of Israeli security instead of the region’s,” while Arab concerns were largely ignored – again the conventional treatment.

The Journal article, like countless others on Iran, leaves critical questions unanswered, among them: Who exactly sees Iran as the gravest security threat? And what do Arabs (and most of the world) think can be done about the threat, whatever they take it to be?

The first question is easily answered. The “Iranian threat” is overwhelmingly a Western obsession, shared by Arab dictators, though not Arab populations. [Continue reading…]

Trita Parsi writes: It is now almost exactly four years ago since President Barack Obama famously offered Iran America’s hand of friendship if Tehran would unclench its fist. Though no one is speaking of friendship today — or even mutual respect — a deal may finally be in the making. Both sides appear to be preparing the ground, in their own ways, for a compromise. The precipitating factors are a combination of realizing that the escalation game has reached a dead end and the quiet signaling of acceptance of the other’s red line.

The marginal utility of further escalation is rapidly declining. The White House is on the record opposing additional sanctions at this point, arguing that it will undercut their strategy. Sanctions have had a devastating effect on the Iranian economy and helped create medicine shortages, but there are no clear signs yet that sanctions have softened Tehran’s nuclear stance. Similarly, the Iranians appear to have realized that further escalating and accelerating their nuclear activities by increasing enrichment levels beyond 20 percent, for instance, will not provide Iran with added leverage. Rather, such measures would risk transforming a chicken race into a street fight with no honorable exit options.

Behind the tough rhetoric emanating from both sides, veiled hints at a major compromise can be found. In just the last few days, editorials in both the New York Times and the Washington Post have argued that a deal should be made which accepts limited enrichment in Iran under five percent and the lifting of some sanctions in return for unhindered inspections. The Obama administration has also hinted at this. If implemented, this would be an acceptance of Iran’s red line and the most compelling force generating a reciprocal step from Tehran (far more so than the pinch of sanctions). [Continue reading…]

Seyed Hossein Mousavian and Mohammad Ali Shabani write: there are any two words in Persian that President Obama should learn, they are “maslahat” and “aberu.” Maslahat is often translated as expediency, or self-interest. Aberu means face — as in, saving face. In the nearly 34 years since the Islamic revolution in Iran, expediency has been a pillar of decision making, but within a framework that has allowed Iranian leaders to save face. If there is to be any resolution of the nuclear standoff, Western leaders must grasp these concepts.

Two examples illustrate this point. In 1988, after eight years of devastating war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, accepted a United Nations-brokered cease-fire agreement, deeming it to be in Iran’s maslahat. It was crucial that Iraqi forces had been pushed off Iranian soil, so Tehran could claim a victory.

Thirteen years later, after the 9/11 attacks, the United States overthrew the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which had sheltered Al Qaeda, in a matter of weeks. American troops would never have made it to Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif with such speed had Iran’s leaders not acquiesced to the toppling of their enemies to the east. But the George W. Bush administration squandered an opportunity for dialogue by spurning this potential diplomatic overture by Iran.

For thousands of years, Persian culture has been distinguished by customs that revolve around honor and esteem. Preserving one’s aberu is tantamount to maintaining one’s dignity. There are almost no instances in modern Iranian history when maslahat has trumped aberu. The West has poorly understood these concepts. This was particularly true under President Bush, who rewarded Iran’s tacit acceptance of the American invasion of Afghanistan by labeling Iran a member of an “axis of evil.”

Following the 2003 allied invasion of Iraq, the Swiss ambassador to Iran reached out to Washington with an unofficial outline for a “grand bargain” with Tehran that would cover everything from Iran’s nuclear program to its support for militant groups in the region. Despite this bold step, Iran was left out in the cold. Vice President Dick Cheney is said to have dismissed the initiative, reportedly asserting that “we don’t talk to evil.”

We now know, thanks to a recent memoir by the former Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani, that the Bush administration reached out to Tehran a year after dismissing the proposal. Not surprisingly, partly because of the blow to its pride, the Iranian government rejected the offer of direct, high-level talks as insincere. In the nine years since, Iran’s nuclear program — a major symbol of prestige for Iranians — has grown immensely. Things have gotten a lot more complicated.

The pattern of missed opportunities has persisted for more than three decades now. The result is that Barack Obama is the sixth consecutive president who has been led to view Iran as a threat rather than an opportunity. It is time for America to exit this vicious cycle and disregard irrational voices intent on sabotaging efforts to reach an understanding. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports: Iran reported a number of new cyberattacks on Tuesday, saying foreign enemy hackers tried in recent months to disrupt computer systems at a power plant and other industries in a strategically important southern coastal province as well as at a Culture Ministry information center.

Accounts of the attacks in the official press did not specify who was responsible, when they were carried out or how they were thwarted. But they strongly suggested that the attacks had originated in the United States and Israel, which have been engaged in a shadowy struggle of computer sabotage with Iran in a broader dispute over whether Iran’s nuclear energy program is for peaceful or military use.

Iran has been on heightened alert against such sabotage since a computer worm known as Stuxnet was used to attack its uranium enrichment centrifuges more than two years ago, which American intelligence officials believe caused many of the machines to spin out of control and self-destruct, slowing the Iranian program’s progress.

Stuxnet and other forms of computer malware have also been used in attacks on Iran’s oil industry and Science Ministry under a covert United States effort, first revealed in January 2009, that was meant to subvert Iran’s nuclear program because of suspicions that the Iranians were using it to develop the ability to make atomic bombs. Iran has repeatedly denied these suspicions.

The latest Iranian sabotage reports raised the possibility that the attacks had been carried out in retaliation for others that crippled computers in the Saudi Arabian oil industry and some financial institutions in the United States a few months ago. American intelligence officials have said they believe that Iranian specialists in cybersabotage were responsible for those attacks, which erased thousands of Saudi files and temporarily prevented some American banking customers from gaining access to their accounts.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta cited those attacks in an Oct. 11 speech in which he warned of America’s vulnerability to a coordinated computer warfare attack, calling such a possibility a “cyber-Pearl Harbor.” [Continue reading…]

The Kristol-Abrams cabal is on the war path again, concerned that the next United States secretary of defense might not be more loyal to Israel than he is to his own country. For the Emergency Committee for Israel, run by William Kristol, Elliot Abrams and their cohorts, placing the interests of Israel first should be the raison d’être of U.S. national security and foreign policy.

This is an ad the committee is now running on cable networks in the hope they can torpedo Chuck Hagel’s nomination for defense secretary — before the nomination has even been made.

President Obama faces a challenge: is he going to capitulate to the Israel lobby as he has so often before, or will he for once show he has a backbone?

If he bows to this pressure, not only will he be confirming that Washington remains Israeli occupied territory, but he will be signalling to all other interest groups, such as the NRA, that in spite of the fact that he never needs to win another election, he remains a pushover.

Ali Gharib writes: The Washington Post today decried Chuck Hagel as a possible choice to lead the Defense Department, with the editorial board remarking that, “Mr. Hagel’s stated positions on critical issues, ranging from defense spending to Iran, fall well to the left of those pursued by Mr. Obama during his first term — and place him near the fringe of the Senate that would be asked to confirm him.” That Hagel would be near the fringe of the Senate because of his views on Iran speaks to how close the Senate is to the fringes of reality: the Senate’s efforts to limit the President’s diplomacy and impose devastating sanctions haven’t worked to “prevent” Iran from advancing its nuclear program either. In 2007, Hagel asked, “What confidence should we have in a strategy that, to date, has nothing to show for it? That has achieved no tangible changes to Iran’s nuclear program and actually has seen the Middle East become more dangerous, and Iran more defiant?” Five years later, the Post editors — along with perhaps the Obama administration and certainly the Congress — would do well to ask themselves these questions.

There’s a lot to debate with regard to Hagel’s long record of views on Iran, and one might begin with his sober accounting of what the regime there is like: “[T]hey support terrorists, they support Hezbollah,” he told the Israel Policy Forum in 2008. “They’ve got their tentacles wrapped around every problem in the Middle East. They’re anti-Israel, anti-United States. Those are realities. Those are facts.” In the speech, he also called for opening a diplomatic interests section in Tehran and resuming commercial flights to the country. Try though the critics may, these can hardly be classified as “fringe” views, or unreasonable ones, and are certainly open to discussion.

What’s not up for debate is that the overall Senate tack—to impose yet more sanctions, disallow any future Iranian enrichment at any level, and oppose any confidence-building measures that could relieve pressure, as stated in a recent AIPAC-backed Senate letter — hasn’t stopped Iran from continuing to enrich apace (though hedging in various ways). The Congress and an assortment of neoconservatives may consider skepticism about the efficacy of military action a sin, but their view is again divorced from reality: the enthusiasm for keeping the military option on the table hasn’t curtailed Iran either. Rather, experts have assessed that attacking would only delay Iran and harden its resolve to build weapons — not to mention risking a years-long “all-out regional war.” Hagel’s positions may put him on the fringes of the Senate, but he’s firmly in the mainstream of expert opinion, from Israel to the Pentagon. [Continue reading…]

Former Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, is expected to be nominated as the next U.S. Secretary of Defense — though skeptics may want to test his willingness to become Secretary of Attack, as in: “Can you confirm that you will support military action against Iran when it becomes clear that that is necessary?” asks Senator X (any Republican will do) during Hagel’s confirmation hearings.

Max Fisher reports that Hagel’s statements thus far have left room for doubt — he apparently has never been heard singing John McCain’s old tune, “bomb, bomb, Iran.”

Mondoweiss: Hagel is a realist who has repeatedly bucked the neoconservatives (and as Eli Lake and Steve Walt say below, the Israel lobby is gearing up to try and do to him what it did to Chas Freeman 4 years ago). The Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), for instance, is already gearing up to battle Obama over Hagel.

Yesterday, ECI’s Noah Pollak tweeted out one reason (among many) for why he’s so averse to Hagel: he is chairman of the Atlantic Council, a mainstream think tank. The Atlantic Council has posted a piece by a member of the council titled “Israel’s Apartheid Policy.”

Here are some more reasons for why the neoconservatives are coming out swinging against Hagel:

In November 2010, Hagel led a forum on the Iran issue at the Atlantic Council, which he chairs. His comments make clear that he would never go to war with Iran, and the idea that all options must be on the table is one that he specifically rejects.

He says that only in an Alice in Wonderland world would we go to war with Iran. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: Israel is suspected of carrying out a series of leaks implicating Iran in nuclear weapons experiments in an attempt to raise international pressure on Tehran and halt its programme.

Western diplomats believe the leaks may have backfired, compromising a UN-sanctioned investigation into Iran’s past nuclear activities and current aspirations.

The latest leak, published by the Associated Press (AP), purported to be an Iranian diagram showing the physics of a nuclear blast, but scientists quickly pointed out an elementary mistake that cast doubt on its significance and authenticity. An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists declared: “This diagram does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax.”

The leaked diagram raised questions about an investigation being carried out by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors after it emerged that it formed part of a file of intelligence on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work held by the agency.

The IAEA’s publication of a summary of the file in November 2011 helped trigger a new round of punitive EU and US sanctions.

Western officials say they have reasons to suspect Israel of being behind the most recent leak and a series of previous disclosures from the IAEA investigation, pointing to Israel’s impatience at what it sees as international complacency over Iranian nuclear activity.

The leaks are part of an intensifying shadow war over Iran’s atomic programme being played out in Vienna, home to the IAEA’s headquarters.

The Israeli spy agency, the Mossad, is highly active in the Austrian capital, as is Iran and most of the world’s major intelligence agencies, leading to frequent comparisons with its earlier incarnation as a battleground for spies in the early years of the cold war. The Israeli government did not reply to a request for comment and AP described the source of the latest leak only as “officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic programme”.

Trita Parsi writes: Sometime in the next few weeks, the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) will meet with Iran to pick up diplomacy from where it left off last summer. So far, neither side has shown much appetite for compromise. Both sides have insisted on maximalist objectives; consequently, progress has been absent.

This time around it might be different. Fabricated or not, there is a sense that the end game is near. The window for this breakthrough likely closes by March of next year as Iran enters its New Year festivities followed by its paralyzing presidential elections. But there are three things that worry me, that can cause the parties to lose yet another opportunity for peace.

1. Grandstanding versus statesmanship

In the words of Massachusetts Institute of Technology nuclear expert Jim Walsh, diplomacy is not about getting everything you desire and leaving the other side with nothing. Ultimately, it is about compromise, even though that word carries a negative connotation in both the American and Iranian political discourse.

In past talks, both sides have pushed for wildly unrealistic proposals, demanding a lot from the other side and offering little in return. If such grandstanding continues, rather than the courageous statesmanship that is needed to reach a deal, then we are in trouble.

Iran can’t expect that merely stopping enrichment at the 20% level will be sufficient to close the Iranian file and lift all sanctions. At the same time, lifting of both US and EU sanctions must be part of the solution. In previous rounds, Washington refused to put sanctions relief on the table, thinking — innocently perhaps — that pressure alone would bring the Iranians to compromise. Obama administration officials have told experts in Washington that it will likely go back to the table with the same package as in the summer; that is, with no sanctions relief. European diplomats, while admitting that no deal is possible without sanctions relief, tell me that they do not expect any sanctions to begin to be lifted until late 2013 at the earliest. Continued refusal to make sanctions relief part of the mix from the outset will prove to be a decisive mistake. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports: Iran has obtained data from a U.S. intelligence drone that shows it was spying on the country’s military sites and oil terminals, Iranian media reported its armed forces as saying on Wednesday.

Iran announced on Tuesday that it had captured a ScanEagle drone belonging to the United States, but Washington said there was no evidence to support the assertion.

The incident has underscored tensions in the Gulf as Iran and the United States draw attention to their military capabilities in the vital oil exporting region in a standoff over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

“We have fully extracted the drone’s information,” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said in a statement on Wednesday, according to Iran’s English-language Press TV.

How long will it be before this dodgy graph is held up by familiar hands in front of the UN?

At the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the nuclear physicists, Yousaf Butt and Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, write: This week the Associated Press reported that unnamed officials “from a country critical of Iran’s nuclear program” leaked an illustration to demonstrate that “Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.” The article stated that these officials provided the undated diagram “to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted.”

The graphic has not yet been authenticated; however, even if authentic, it would not qualify as proof of a nuclear weapons program. Besides the issue of authenticity, the diagram features quite a massive error, which is unlikely to have been made by research scientists working at a national level.

The image released to the Associated Press shows two curves: one that plots the energy versus time, and another that plots the power output versus time, presumably from a fission device. But these two curves do not correspond: If the energy curve is correct, then the peak power should be much lower — around 300 million ( 3×10⁸) kt per second, instead of the currently stated 17 trillion (1.7 x10¹³) kt per second. As is, the diagram features a nearly million-fold error.

This diagram does nothing more than indicate either slipshod analysis or an amateurish hoax.

In any case, the level of scientific sophistication needed to produce such a graph corresponds to that typically found in graduate- or advanced undergraduate-level nuclear physics courses.

While such a graphic, if authentic, may be a concern, it is not a cause for alarm. And it certainly is not something proscribed by the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement between the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iran, nor any other international agreements to which Iran is a party. No secrets are needed to produce the plot of the explosive force of a nuclear weapon — just straightforward nuclear physics.

Though the image does not imply that computer simulations were actually run, even if they were, this is the type of project a student could present in a nuclear-science course. [Continue reading…]

Patrick Cockburn writes: No sooner was Israel’s bombardment of Gaza over than Israeli and US officials started to ratchet up the prospects of an Israeli air attack on Iran in the next few months.

This is scarcely surprising. The threat has served Tel Aviv and Washington well in the past because it enabled them to persuade the rest of the world to impose swingeing sanctions on Iran as the only alternative to war. Even so, claims that a final confrontation with Iran is only months away are looking a bit dog-eared, given that this must be one of the most frequently postponed wars in history.

Within hours of the ceasefire being announced, anonymous Israeli and American sources were claiming that the air strikes on Gaza were a dry run for an assault on Iran. Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador in Washington, compared what happened in Gaza this month to the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. He said that “in the Cuban missile crisis, the US was not confronting Cuba, but rather the Soviet Union. In Operation Pillar of Defence [Israel’s name for its Gaza operation] Israel was not confronting Gaza, but Iran.”

This flatters the Iranians who, at best, are only a regional power and nowhere near a superpower like the old Soviet Union. And even as a regional power it is in retreat as its main ally in the Arab world, Syria, collapses into civil war. The backers of Hamas in Gaza these days are not Iran and Syria but a powerful array of Sunni states including Egypt, Qatar, Turkey, Tunisia and others. [Continue reading…]

IPS reports: The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.

Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan economic and national security experts, the findings showed the effects of U.S. escalatory action against Iran could range from 64 billion to 1.7 trillion dollars in losses for the world economy over the initial three-month term.

The least likely scenario of de-escalation, which would require U.S. unilateral steps showing it was willing to make concessions to resolve the standoff, would result in an estimated global economic benefit of 60 billion dollars.

“The study’s findings suggest that there are potential costs to any number of U.S.-led actions and, in general, the more severe the action, the greater the possible costs,” Mark Jansson, FAS’s special projects director, told IPS.

“That being said, even among experts, there is tremendous uncertainty about what might happen at the higher end of the escalation ladder,” added Jansson, the second author of the report after Charles P. Blair, an FAS senior fellow on state and non-state threats.

The six plausible scenarios of U.S.-led actions against Iran included isolation and a Gulf blockade, which would include U.S. moves to “curtail any exports of refined oil products, natural gas, energy equipment and services”, the banning of the Iranian energy sector worldwide (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 325 billion dollars), and a comprehensive bombing campaign that would also target Iran’s ability to retaliate (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 1.082 trillion dollars). [Continue reading…]

Reza Marashi and Sahar Namazikhah write: “The Iranian regime is not interested in a diplomatic solution with the United States. Sustained enmity with America is a defining, inextricable pillar of the Islamic Republic. Any shift in this paradigm will irreparably destabilise the regime.” This is the argument proffered by those opposed to sustained US-Iran diplomacy.

At face value, regular chants of “Death to America” and yearly commemorations of the US embassy hostage seizure lend credence to these claims. But behind these assertions lies a deeper reality – and the latest demonstration comes from a surprising source: Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

As the Washington Post‘s correspondent in Tehran, Jason Rezaian, pointed out last week, the MOIS published a report – publicly available on its website – that assesses Israeli threats of war over Iran’s nuclear programme and highlights the benefits of negotiations with the US to avert a deeper crisis.

To the surprise of many, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry shares the assessment of its counterparts in the US and Israel: the potential destruction caused by military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities would set back the programme only a few years. More telling is their final conclusion: diplomacy is the preferred way forward.

This sober, pragmatic analysis is devoid of the rhetoric commonly emanating from the Islamic Republic. More importantly, it suggests three important points for policymakers in Washington to consider: [Continue reading…]

Uri Bar-Joseph writes: On September 19, to nobody’s surprise, Shaul Chorev, the director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, announced that his government would not attend an upcoming conference devoted to establishing a nuclear-free Middle East. The announcement reaffirmed Israel’s long-standing position that a nuclear-free zone can come about only as a consequence of a lasting regional peace. Until such a peace is achieved, Jerusalem will not take any tangible steps toward eliminating its nuclear weapons.

At least on the face of it, this stand is sensible. For 45 years, Israel has been the only nuclear power in the Middle East, enjoying a formidable strategic safety net against any existential threat. Since 1957, Israel has invested tremendous resources in building up a solid nuclear arsenal in Dimona. Today, according to various estimates, this stockpile comprises some 100–300 devices, including two-stage thermonuclear warheads and a variety of delivery systems, the most important of which are modern German-built submarines, which constitute the backbone of Israel’s second-strike capability. For Israel to give up these assets in the midst of an ongoing conflict strikes most Israelis as irrational.

This consensus, however, overlooks the fact that Israel’s nuclear capability has not played an important role in the country’s defense. Unlike other nuclear-armed states, Israel initiated its nuclear project not because of an opponent’s real or imagined nuclear capability but because of the worry that, in the long run, Arab conventional forces would outstrip the power of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). As early as the 1950s, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion sought to manage the threat of modernizing Arab armies, which were inspired by pan-Arab sentiment and backed by the Soviet Union, by developing the ultimate deterrent. Shimon Peres, the architect of Israel’s nuclear program and now Israel’s president, relentlessly argued in public speeches and writings that Israel needed to compensate for the large size of the Arab armies with “science” — a code word for nuclear arms.

As it turned out, however, Arab conventional superiority never materialized. Ever since Israel crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the 1967 war, the qualitative gap between Israel’s conventional forces and those of its Arab neighbors has only grown. Today, particularly as the Syrian army slowly disintegrates, the IDF could decisively rout any combination of Arab (and Iranian) conventional forces. This advantage, combined with the United States’ support for Israel, is what has kept Arab countries from taking up arms against the Jewish state — not the fear of nuclear retaliation. [Continue reading…]

The Guardian reports: A mid-air incident in which Iranian warplanes opened fire on a US surveillance drone high over the Persian Gulf has brought home how nuclear tensions and increased military hardware in a confined area can lead to a clash that could escalate out of control.

Western officials are concerned that minority elements on both sides of the confrontation in the region have a vested interest in triggering such a clash. Some Israeli leaders would like to see Washington drawn in so that superior US forces could strike a crippling blow to Iranian nuclear facilities, while a “war party” in Tehran sees a conflict as a means of rallying support for the regime and cracking down yet further on dissent, officials say.

They believe the risk of a “spoiler” incident will rise if a new diplomatic push aimed at reaching a peaceful settlement of the Iranian nuclear crisis appears to show progress.

The Pentagon said that on 1 November two Sukhoi 25 jet fighters flown by Iranian Revolutionary Guards, fired at the Predator drone carrying out a routine but “classified surveillance mission”, 16 miles off the Iranian shore – four miles outside its territorial waters. [Continue reading…]