Category Archives: international relations

SPEECH & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Together we can do the hard work to seek a new dawn…

Courage against convention, then and now
By Barak Obama, October 2, 2007

We need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union – a country that doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, India and Pakistan and North Korea have joined the club of nuclear-armed nations, and Iran is knocking on the door. More nuclear weapons and more nuclear-armed nations mean more danger to us all.

Here’s what I’ll say as President: America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons.

We will not pursue unilateral disarmament. As long as nuclear weapons exist, we’ll retain a strong nuclear deterrent. But we’ll keep our commitment under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty on the long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons. We’ll work with Russia to take U.S. and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert, and to dramatically reduce the stockpiles of our nuclear weapons and material. We’ll start by seeking a global ban on the production of fissile material for weapons. And we’ll set a goal to expand the U.S.-Russian ban on intermediate-range missiles so that the agreement is global.

As we do this, we’ll be in a better position to lead the world in enforcing the rules of the road if we firmly abide by those rules. It’s time to stop giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse. It’s time for America to lead. When I’m President, we’ll strengthen the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that nations that don’t comply will automatically face strong international sanctions. [complete article]

See also, A world free of nuclear weapons (George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, Sam Nunn, Wall Street Journal, January 8, 2007).

Editor’s Comment — To say, “America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons,” is a fine thing. Reagan said the same thing, but what he left behind was missile defense — the fanciest boondoggle the military-industrial complex ever dreamed up.

If Obama is actually serious — in other words, if he isn’t merely trying to conjure up a narrative of light contrasting with the era of Bush-Cheney darkness — then he needs to add some substance to his declaration.

A plan is a dream with a deadline.* Kennedy didn’t just say that America would send a man to the moon as soon as it would be feasible. He said that it would happen before the end of the decade. Likewise the dream of a nuclear weapon-free world is no use if it’s off on a horizon that we never reach. Obama’s “long road” sounds like one that goes on forever.

And if Obama really wants to give his declaration some punch, he must do better than this: “It’s time to stop giving countries like Iran and North Korea an excuse. It’s time for America to lead.”

Instead, how about acknowledging that in a world of nuclear-haves and nuclear-have-nots, there is not a single nation that can claim a right to nuclear arms and that it is this inequity more than anything else that is the driving force behind nuclear proliferation.

Nuclear power confers political power and everyone wants it.

This isn’t about good boys protecting the world from bad boys. A path towards nuclear disarmament requires that the members of the nuclear club be willing to disavow a form of power that they have hitherto regarded as their entitlement.

(*Since I never knowingly plagiarize, I must give credit where it’s due. That line comes from a fortune cookie.)

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OPINION: Negotiating with Iran

Sanctions won’t stop Tehran
By Selig S. Harrison, Washington Post, October 2, 2007

Suppose that the Bush administration abandons its campaign for economic sanctions, tones down talk of war and opens direct negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program. Suppose also that it drops its insistence on the suspension of uranium enrichment as a precondition for dialogue.

Would Iran accept the terms for denuclearization accepted by North Korea in the direct negotiations that led to the Feb. 13 agreement with Pyongyang and that are now being implemented in fits and starts: a no-attack pledge, normalized economic and diplomatic relations, economic aid, and removal from the U.S. list of terrorist states?

Based on a week of high-level discussions in Tehran recently and on previous visits during earlier stages of the nuclear program, my assessment is that Iran would demand much tougher terms, including a freeze of Israel’s Dimona reactor and a ban on the U.S. use of nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf. [complete article]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Israel and the world can live with a nuclear Iran

The world can live with a nuclear Iran
By Martin van Creveld, The Forward, September 24, 2007

In case Bush does decide to attack Iran, it is questionable whether Iran’s large, well-dispersed and well-camouflaged nuclear program can really be knocked out. This is all the more doubtful because, in contrast to the Israeli attacks on Iraq back in 1981 and on Syria three weeks ago, the element of surprise will be lacking. And even if it can be done, whether doing so will serve a useful purpose is also questionable.

Since 1945 hardly one year has gone by in which some voices — mainly American ones concerned about preserving Washington’s monopoly over nuclear weapons to the greatest extent possible — did not decry the terrible consequences that would follow if additional countries went nuclear. So far, not one of those warnings has come true. To the contrary: in every place where nuclear weapons were introduced, large-scale wars between their owners have disappeared.

General John Abizaid, the former commander of United States Central Command, is only the latest in a long list of experts to argue that the world can live with a nuclear Iran. Their views deserve to be carefully considered, lest Ahmadinejad’s fear-driven posturing cause anybody to do something stupid. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Martin van Creveld, a world-renowned professor of military history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has a habit of being bluntly truthful. This is what he said in an interview earlier this year:

“We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons … thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany.”

“Our armed forces are not the 30th strongest in the world, but rather the second or third… We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets that can launch them at targets in all directions. Most European capitals are targets of our air force … We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that this will happen before Israel goes under.”

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NEWS & ANALYSIS: Iran – an enemy of convenience

Senate urges Bush to declare Iran Guard a terrorist group
By David M. Herszenhorn, New York Times, September 27, 2007

The Senate approved a resolution on Wednesday urging the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.

Since last month, the White House has been weighing whether to declare the Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group or to take a narrower step focusing on only the Guard’s elite Quds Force. Either approach would signal a more confrontational posture by declaring a part of the Iranian military a terrorist operation. [complete article]

The secret dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States
Trita Parsi interviewed on Democracy Now, September 25, 2007

TRITA PARSI: Israel has for a very long time been a critical factor in America’s formulation of a policy vis-à-vis Iran. But what’s really interesting is that the influence of Israel has gone in completely different directions, if we just go back fifteen years. During the 1980s, in spite of the Iranian Revolution, in spite of Ayatollah Khomeini’s many, many harsh remarks about Israel, far, far worse than what anything Ahmadinejad has said so far, Israel at the time was the country that was lobbying the United States to open up talks with Iran to try to rebuild the US-Iran relations, because of strategic imperatives that Israel had. Israel needed Iran, because it was fearing the Arab world and a potential war with the Arabs.

After 1991, ’92, that’s when you see the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations, because that’s when the entire geopolitical map of the Middle East is redrawn. The Soviet Union collapses. The last standing army of the Arabs, that of Saddam Hussein, is defeated in the Persian Gulf War. And you have an entirely new security environment in the Middle East, in which the two factors, the Soviets and the Arabs, that had pushed Iran and Israel closer together suddenly evaporate. But as their security environment improves, they also start to realize that they may be ending up in a situation in which they can become potential threats to each other. And that’s when you see how the Israelis shift 180 degrees. Now the Israeli argument was that the United States should not talk to Iran, because there is no such thing as Iranian moderates.

And ever since, the Israelis and the pro-Israel interest in the United States have lobbied to make sure that there is no dialogue or there’s no rapprochement between the United States and Iran. And the Iranians have done similar things. They have undermined every US foreign policy initiative in the Middle East that they feared would be beneficial to Israel. So the real shift in Israeli-Iranian relations come after the Cold War, not with the revolution in 1979. [complete article]

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OPINION & NEWS: Listening to Iran

Ganji: “difficult days” for Iranian democracy activists
By Akbar Ganji, Scott MacLeod’s Time blog, September 24, 2007

Far from helping the development of democracy, US policy over the past 50 years has consistently been to the detriment of the proponents of freedom and democracy in Iran. The 1953 coup against the nationalist government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq and the unwavering support for the despotic regime of the Shah, who acted as America’s gendarme in the Persian Gulf, are just two examples of these flawed policies. More recently the confrontation between various US Administrations and the Iranian state over the past three decades has made internal conditions very difficult for the proponents of freedom and human rights in Iran. Exploiting the danger posed by the US, the Iranian regime has put military-security forces in charge of the government, shut down all independent domestic media, and is imprisoning human rights activists on the pretext that they are all agents of a foreign enemy. The Bush Administration, for its part, by approving a fund for democracy assistance in Iran, which has in fact being largely spent on official institutions and media affiliated with the US government, has made it easy for the Iranian regime to describe its opponents as mercenaries of the US and to crush them with impunity. At the same time, even speaking about “the possibility” of a military attack on Iran makes things extremely difficult for human rights and pro-democracy activists in Iran. No Iranian wants to see what happened to Iraq or Afghanistan repeated in Iran. Iranian democrats also watch with deep concern the support in some American circles for separatist movements in Iran. Preserving Iran’s territorial integrity is important to all those who struggle for democracy and human rights in Iran. We want democracy for Iran and for all Iranians. We also believe that the dismemberment of Middle Eastern countries will fuel widespread and prolonged conflict in the region. In order to help the process of democratization in the Middle East, the US can best help by promoting a just peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, and pave the way for the creation of a truly independent Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. A just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the establishment of a Palestinian state would inflict the heaviest blow on the forces of fundamentalism and terrorism in the Middle East. [complete article]

U.S. focus on Ahmadinejad puzzles Iranians
By Michael Slackman, New York Times, September 24, 2007

In demonizing Mr. Ahmadinejad, the West has served him well, elevating his status at home and in the region at a time when he is increasingly isolated politically because of his go-it-alone style and ineffective economic policies, according to Iranian politicians, officials and political experts.

Political analysts here say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up.

“The United States pays too much attention to Ahmadinejad,” said an Iranian political scientist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “He is not that consequential.” [complete article]

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NEWS: Ahmadinejad, the flinty populist

Ahmadinejad hailed in Middle East
By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles Times, September 24, 2007

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a flinty populist in a zip-up jacket whose scathing rhetoric and defiance of Washington are often caricatured in the Western media, has transcended national and religious divides to become a folk hero across the Middle East.

The diminutive, at times inscrutable, president is a wellspring of stinging sound-bites and swagger for Muslims who complain that their leaders are too beholden to or frightened of the Bush administration. Ahmadinejad, who arrived in New York Sunday ahead of a U.N. General Assembly meeting, is an easily marketable commodity:a streetwise politician with nuclear ambitions and an open microphone.

“I like him a lot,” said Mahmoud Ali, a medical student in Cairo. “He’s trying to protect himself and his nation from the dangers around him. He makes me feel proud. He’s a symbol of Islam. He seems the only person capable of taking a stand against Israel and the West. Unfortunately, Egypt has gotten too comfortable with Washington.” [complete article]

See also, 60 Minutes interview with President Ahmadinejad (CBS video) and Iran’s Ahmadinejad: No attack on Israel (AP interview).

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FEATURE: Mohamed ElBaradei

An indispensable irritant to Iran and its foes
By Elaine Sciolini and William J. Broad, New York Times, September 17, 2007

While Dr. ElBaradei’s harshest detractors describe him as drunk with the power of his Nobel, what keeps him on center stage is a pragmatic truth: He is everyone’s best hope.

He has grown ever more indispensable as American credibility on atomic intelligence has nose-dived and European diplomacy with Tehran has stalled.

For the world powers, he is far and away the best source of knowledge about Iran’s nuclear progress — information Washington uses regularly to portray Tehran as an imminent global danger.

Even the Iranians need him (as he likes to remind them) because his maneuvers promise to lessen and perhaps end the sting of United Nations sanctions.

Dr. ElBaradei, who is 65, seems unfazed, even energized, by all the dissent. He alludes to a sense of destiny that has pressed him into the role of world peacemaker. He has called those who advocate war against Iran “crazies,” and in two long recent interviews described himself as a “secular pope” whose mission is to “make sure, frankly, that we do not end up killing each other.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — In their reference to ElBaradei’s “mangled metaphors,” his “naive grandiosity,” and his being “drunk with the power of his Nobel,” (references all conveniently ascribed to others), these reporters betray a subtle contempt reserved for UN officials which we rarely find directed at even some of the most moronic buffoons who sit in Congress or have been presidentially appointed in the executive branch of government. If, as reported, ElBaradei is “everyone’s best hope,” the Times seems intent on doing its best to undercut that hope. And is that for nothing more than the reason that as an Arab, as a Middle Easterner, and as an unelected non-American official, Mohamed ElBaradei’s political authority cannot be acknowledged by the newspaper that treasures its privileged access to the seat of American power?

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