An AFP report earlier today reveals that the Stuxnet malware has been found at Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr. (All the blockquotes below are from the AFP report.)
Iranian officials confirm that 30,000 industrial computers in Iran have been hit by Stuxnet yet deny that Bushehr was among those infected.
That might be what Iranian officials believe, but whether it’s a belief based on fact is another matter.
As we get further into this report, it becomes apparent there is a high probability both that Bushehr has been penetrated and that the malware may still be active.
Siemens said its software has not been installed at the plant, and an Iranian official denied the malware may have infected nuclear facilities.
Siemens might not know that its software was installed at the plant, but thanks to a UPI photograph, we know that Bushehr control systems do indeed run on Siemens’ WinCC SCADA system. The warning shown below says: “WinCC Runtime License: Your software license has expired. Please obtain a valid license.”
This is what Ralph Langner, a German industrial security expert, saw as a red flag indicating that the plant is vulnerable to a cyber attack.
“This virus has not caused any damage to the main systems of the Bushehr power plant,” Bushehr project manager Mahmoud Jafari said on Iran’s Arabic-language Al-Alam television network.
“All computer programmes in the plant are working normally and have not crashed due to Stuxnet,” said Jafari, adding there was no problem with the plant’s fuel supply.
The official IRNA news agency meanwhile quoted him as saying the worm had infected some “personal computers of the plant’s personnel.”
And no infected personal computers have been hooked into the plants control system?
As indicated in this photograph showing Russian contractors inside Bushehr, the path from a personal computer to the plant’s control system is short and direct.
As for the fact that Bushehr’s control system has not crashed, the fact that the project manager cites this as evidence that the system is malware-free suggests that he does not understand how Stuxnet is designed. Stuxnet monitors process conditions and until those conditions have been met, everything should work fine. This is not like a virus that slows down an operating system.
Given the inside knowledge that Stuxnet’s creators required, it seems quite likely that the moment they would want it to kick into action — assuming that Bushehr was the intended target — would be a moment at which a catastrophic system failure could be attributed to a flaw in the facility’s construction, design or operation. A failure, for instance, as the plant approaches its intended full operational generation capacity. The 1000 megawatt plant is expected to have reached only 40% capacity by the end of December.
Telecommunications minister Reza Taqipour said “the worm has not been able to penetrate or cause serious damage to government systems.”
Again, this statement suggests a lack of understanding about Stuxnet’s highly targeted design and the fact that it is designed not to cause damage elsewhere.
Mahmoud Liayi, head of the information technology council at the ministry of industries said:
…industries were currently receiving systems to combat Stuxnet, while stressing Iran had decided not to use anti-virus software developed by Siemens because “they could be carrying a new version of the malware.”
“When Stuxnet is activated, the industrial automation systems start transmitting data about production lines to a main designated destination by the virus,” Liayi said.
“There, the data is processed by the worm’s architects and then engineer plots to attack the country.”
If this is the official consensus, Iranian facilities such as Bushehr are as vulnerable now as they were before anyone knew about Stuxnet. Liayi’s statement suggests that Stuxnet is being viewed as a tool of espionage designed to facilitate rather than execute sabotage.
In an interview on Bloomberg TV, Richard Falkenrath suggested that Israel is the most likely source of the Stuxnet malware which seems designed to cripple industrial facilities in Iran.
Falkenrath is currently the Deputy Commissioner of Counter-Terrorism for the NYPD and held several positions in the George W Bush White House including Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Homeland Security Advisor.
The Associated Press says that experts from Iran’s nuclear agency met this week to discuss how to combat the Stuxnet attack on Iranian facilities, according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
The director of the Information Technology Council of the Industries and Mines Ministry has announced that the IP addresses of 30,000 industrial computer systems infected by this malware have been detected, the Mehr New Agency reported on Saturday.
“An electronic war has been launched against Iran,” Mahmoud Liaii added.
“This computer worm is designed to transfer data about production lines from our industrial plants to (locations) outside of the country,” he said.
He also announced that a working group composed of representatives from the Communications and Information Technology Ministry, the Industries and Mines Ministry, and the Passive Defense Organization has been set up to find ways to combat the spyware.
Graph shows concentration of Stuxnet-infected computers in Iran as of August. Source: Symantec
Eugene Kaspersky, co-founder and chief executive officer of Kaspersky Lab, says that the creation of Stuxnet marks the beginning of the new age of cyber-warfare.
Speaking at the Kaspersky Security Symposium with international journalists in Munich, Germany, Kaspersky described Stuxnet as the opening of “Pandora’s Box.”
“This malicious program was not designed to steal money, send spam, grab personal data, no, this piece of malware was designed to sabotage plants, to damage industrial systems,” he said.
“I am afraid this is the beginning of a new world. [The] 90’s were a decade of cyber-vandals, 2000’s were a decade of cybercriminals, I am afraid now it is a new era of cyber-wars and cyber-terrorism,” Kaspersky added.
Among industrial security experts who are convinced that Iran is the target of the Stuxnet attack, a debate has opened up around which facility the malware was designed to strike.
Frank Rieger, a German researcher with GSMK, a Berlin encryption firm, suggests that the Natanz enrichment facility looks like the most likely target. He laid out his reasoning to the Christian Science Monitor.
• Stuxnet had a halt date. Internal time signatures in Stuxnet appear to prevent it from spreading across computer systems after July 2009. That probably means the attack had to be conducted by then – though such time signatures are not certain.
• Stuxnet appears designed to take over centrifuges’ programmable logic controllers. Natanz has thousands of identical centrifuges and identical programmable logic controllers (PLCs), tiny computers for each centrifuge that oversee the centrifuge’s temperature, control valves, operating speed, and flow of cooling water. Stuxnet’s internal design would allow the malware to take over PLCs one after another, in a cookie-cutter fashion.
“It seems like the parts of Stuxnet dealing with PLCs have been designed to work on multiple nodes at once – which makes it fit well with a centrifuge plant like Natanz,” Rieger says. By contrast, Bushehr is a big central facility with many disparate PLCs performing many different functions. Stuxnet seems focused on replicating its intrusion across a lot of identical units in a single plant, he says.
Natanz also may have been hit by Stuxnet in mid-2009, Rieger says. He notes that “a serious, recent, nuclear accident” was reported at that time on WikiLeaks, the same organization that recently revealed US Afghanistan-war documents. About the same time, the BBC reported that the head of Iran’s nuclear agency had resigned.
Lending some credence to the notion that Stuxnet attacked more than a year ago, he says, is the International Atomic Energy Agency’s finding of a sudden 15 percent drop in the number of working centrifuges at the Natanz site.
Even though Natanz would seem like a logical target to choose if the objective of the attackers was to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, Rieger’s inference — that the halt date preventing Stuxnet spreading means the attack had to take place before July 2009 — is questionable, for at least two reasons.
Firstly, given that the designers had a very specific target, their aim is likely to have been to penetrate that target while trying to limit the proliferation of the malware and thus reduce the risks of the operation’s exposure.
As previously reported, another German industrial security expert, Ralph Langner, has speculated that the Bushehr nuclear reactor is the most likely target. He bases this theory on various pieces of circumstantial evidence.
Firstly, it is known that Bushehr uses the Siemens SCADA systems that Stuxnet targets and that access to these systems available to Russian contractors working on the facility would allow the malware to be installed through USB memory sticks.
Secondly, photographic evidence shows that the facility had very weak cyber security.
A journalist’s photo from inside the Bushehr plant in early 2009, which Langner found on a public news website, shows a computer-screen schematic diagram of a process control system – but also a small dialog box on the screen with a red warning symbol. Langner says the image on the computer screen is of a Siemens supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) industrial software control system called Simatic WinCC – and the little warning box reveals that the software was not installed or configured correctly, and was not licensed. That photo was a red flag that the nuclear plant was vulnerable to a cyberattack, he says.
“Bushehr has all kinds of missiles around it to protect it from an airstrike,” Langner says. “But this little screen showed anyone that understood what that picture meant … that these guys were just simply begging to be [cyber]attacked.”
The picture was reportedly taken on Feb. 25, 2009, by which time the reactor should have had its cybersystems up and running and bulletproof, Langner says. The photo strongly suggests that they were not, he says. That increases the likelihood that Russian contractors unwittingly spread Stuxnet via their USB drives to Bushehr, he says.
“The attackers realized they could not get to the target simply through the Internet – a nuclear plant is not reachable that way,” he says. “But the engineers who commission such plants work very much with USBs like those Stuxnet exploited to spread itself. They’re using notebook computers and using the USBs to connect to one machine, then maybe going 20 yards away to another machine.”
Langner also cites international concern about the Bushehr reactor becoming operational.
This is a somewhat weaker strand of his argument. After all, the existence of this Russian-fueled reactor was widely seen as a demonstration of the fact that Iran could, it it chooses, have a civilian nuclear energy program without any need for a uranium enrichment program.
There is however another argument that can be made in which Bushehr becomes the target of cyberwarfare, even if it might not be a vital node in Iran’s nuclear program. In this scenario, Stuxnet would not be designed to perform its function until the reactor becomes fully operational. At that point, the malware would not simply stop the reactor working — it would trigger a Chernobyl-type nuclear meltdown.
Why would the attackers want to precipitate such a catastrophic event?
In the hope that such an “accident” would make the Iranian government look unfit to safely operate any kind of nuclear program.
To undermine Iranian domestic support for the program.
To alienate Iran from its Gulf neighbors who would be exposed to the fallout.
When John Bolton was last month melodramatically counting the days left for Israel to launch a missile strike on Bushehr, it was ostensibly because once the plant was fueled the Israelis would no longer be willing to risk the lives of so many in the region. With Gulf shipping lanes also closed down for an indeterminate period after an Israeli strike, the global economic impact would be severe.
On the other hand, in the event that Israel struck but did not fire a single missile and could not be shown to be responsible, the results of its own cost-benefit analysis — vastly different from that of the US — might make a devastating cyber attack on Bushehr seem well worth the risk.
In an analysis of Israel’s expanding cyberwarfare capabilities, Scott Borg, director of the US Cyber Consequences Unit, which advises various Washington agencies on cyber security, told Reuters last year that an Israeli attack on an Iranian nuclear facility could employ “malware loitering unseen and awaiting an external trigger, or pre-set to strike automatically when the infected facility reaches a more critical level of activity.”
The decision by Iranian authorities to announce that they have an ongoing investigation on how to thwart Stuxnet, suggests that they may now also be reassessing the risks of bringing Bushehr online as a fully operational facility.
Postscript: Even though discussion on the whole subject of Stuxnet’s purpose and origin is at this point highly speculative, some readers may view my suggestion that the goal is to cause a Chernobyl-type disaster to be a particularly wild conjecture. Maybe it is, but here’s a little more of my thinking on why that would be a plausible objective.
There is little reason to doubt that Israeli leaders from across the political spectrum are serious in their stated objections to Iran’s nuclear program. (Whether those objections correspond with Iran’s genuine nuclear ambitions is another question, as is the question of whether a nuclear-armed Iran would actually pose an existential threat to Israel.)
Among analysts inside and outside Israel there is a broad consensus that military action aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear facilities would accomplish no more than cause a setback of a few years in the program. The same applies to sabotage.
Given the broad national support the nuclear program has, there is also reason to doubt that regime change would necessarily result in Iran’s enrichment program being scrapped.
What those who fear a nuclear-armed Iran hope to see is a credible political shift as a result of which Iran’s nuclear intentions are no longer in doubt and are demonstrably peaceful. (Which is to say, an ideal end-state similar to the one adopted by South Africa when it chose to abandon nuclear weapons — an ironic comparison of course, given that it was Israel that helped South Africa become a nuclear-armed state.)
For that reason, coercion (through sanctions) and military force are both potentially counterproductive in that pressure generally produces resistance.
On the other hand, the desired outcome might be reached if the Iranians through their own volition came to the conclusion that the costs of nuclear development outweighed the benefits. A catastrophic “accident” might be instrumental in bringing about a change of perspective through which for Iran as a nation, nuclear power lost most of its appeal.
Needless to say, if such an accident was exposed to be the result of an Israeli cyber attack, the plan would dangerously backfire.
Do intelligence agencies come up with such reckless plans? All the time.
Inveterate gamers will no doubt see another possibility here — that Stuxnet is part of a psy-ops plan designed to provoke a greater fear of catastrophic damage than it can actually cause. Possibly, but to identify and then exploit four Windows vulnerabilities suggests that the creators of this malware were willing to employ every possible resource at their disposal. In other words, they were seriously intent on doing damage — not just provoking fear.
If there was a ministry of information it would release reports like this: “US Assures Israel That Iran Threat Is Not Imminent.” But why would Washington need to create such an agency when the New York Times so gladly provides the service?
In a report transparently written as a quasi-official response to Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Point of No Return,” we learn that contrary to all the feverish speculation about an imminent strike on Iran, it turns out everything’s cool.
And maybe it is — though the Times’ Mazzetti and Sanger could do more credible reporting if they made an effort not to sound like a mouthpiece for the administration.
The one priceless quote in their article comes from Gary Samore, President Obama’s top adviser on nuclear issues, who when referring to an anticipated one year “dash time” that the Iranians would need to convert nuclear material into a working weapon, said: “A year is a very long period of time.”
Israeli officials said their assessments were coming into line with the American view, but they remain suspicious that Iran has a secret enrichment site yet to be discovered.
American officials said, in contrast to a year ago, that Iran’s nuclear program was not currently the central focus of discussions between top leaders in Washington and Jerusalem. During the last visit to Washington by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in early July, the Iranian program was relatively low on the agenda, according to one senior administration official.
The next time Netanyahu takes questions from the press, maybe someone can ask him whether he agrees with the White House’s assessment about the nature of time and that a year is indeed a very long period.
Another issue the article touches upon is the breakout capacity for the long-delayed National Intelligence Estimate. Since the White House seems eager to say what the NIE will say even before its been released, can we interpret this as an effort to shape the report that is itself supposed to shape the administration’s policy?
Finally, just to be sure that the Israel lobby does not become too despondent when they hear another war might not be just around the corner (despite their best efforts), the article closes by saying:
Even as American and Israeli officials agree that the date that Iran is likely to have a nuclear weapon has been pushed into the future, that does not mean that Israel has abandoned the idea of a possible military strike.
American officials said that Israel was particularly concerned that, over time, Iran’s supreme leader could order that nuclear materials be dispersed to secret locations around the country, making it less likely that an Israeli military strike would significantly cripple the program.
So have no fear — the option of a strike is still on the table, or to be precise, at some indeterminate point in the future there might be a strike and it could happen sooner rather than later because at some point (future or past) the Iranians could hide everything and maybe they already have secret facilities in which case the opportunity to destroy them has already past. Clear?
Israel has until the weekend to launch a military strike on Iran’s first nuclear plant before the humanitarian risk of an attack becomes too great, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said Tuesday.
A Russian company is expected to help Iran start loading nuclear fuel into its plant starting on Saturday, after which an attack on the Bushehr reactor could trigger harmful radiation, which Israel wants to avoid, Bolton said. So unless the Israelis act immediately to shut down the facility, it will be too late.
“Once it’s close to the reactor … the risk is when the reactor is attacked, there will be a release of radiation into the air,” Bolton told FoxNews.com. “It’s most unlikely that they would act militarily after fuel rods are loaded.”
The attack Iran story gets increasingly bizarre. Now we have neocon commentators like Bolton watching the clock as though this was some kind of sporting event and at the same time, presenting Israel as a thoroughly responsible player. While Israel might be willing to destabilize the whole region, it wouldn’t want to risk spreading nuclear fallout into the Gulf. But as Marsha Cohen points out, the risks from fallout would not simply be humanitarian — they would be economic:
Besides the catastrophic human and environmental toll of such an attack, the sea lanes through which much of the world’s oil supplies pass would be endangered.
Iranians know this. In 1980, Iran bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear power plant before it contained any radioactive material. Osirak was quickly repaired by the French contractors who built it. Eight months later Osirak was partially destroyed by Israeli jets, aided by Iranian intelligence.
Meanwhile, at The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg and Robin Wright are now placing bets on the likelihood of an attack — not in the next few days, but the coming months.
“By July next year, I’ll wager that neither Israel nor the United States will have bombed Iran,” says Wright.
Note the phrasing chosen by the man who just a few days ago expressed “profound, paralyzing ambivalence” about whether on attack on Iran would be a good idea. He doesn’t now simply reiterate his expectation that an attack is more likely but that it looks like a “better” than 50 percent chance.
Casually chosen words? Maybe, but if Goldberg was being asked how likely another 9/11 attack might be and he thought it more likely than not to happen, I doubt that he would say there is a better than 50 percent chance of such an attack, would he?
Whether characterizing it as “mainstreaming war with Iran” or “making aggression respectable,” Goldberg’s article serves to create a false narrative that claims that the two failed meetings held between the U.S. and Iran last October constitute an exhaustion of diplomacy, that deems the Obama administration’s crippling, indiscriminate sanctions on Iran a failure only weeks after they’ve been imposed, and that then leaves only one option remaining on the table: an American or Israeli military strike. And on top of that, if President Obama doesn’t green light a bombing campaign, Israel will have no choice but to bomb itself, even though it isn’t well-equipped to do so, according to Goldberg.
It is important to note that the aim of this unfolding campaign may not be to pressure Obama into military action. It could just as much serve to portray Obama as weak and indecisive on national security issues that are of grave concern to the U.S. and that are of existential nature to Israel. This portrayal will give the Republicans valuable ammunition for the November congressional elections as well as for the 2012 presidential race.
Indeed, the likely political motivation for this unfolding campaign should not be underestimated. Just as much that the building blocks of the Iraq war were put into place under the Clinton years — most importantly with the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998 — serious preparation for selling an Iran war to the American public under a Republican president (Palin?) in 2013 must be undertaken now, both to establish the narrative for that sell and to use the narrative to remove any obstacles in the White House along the way.
[O]ne day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran — possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft.
Worried about an Israeli attack on Iran? That’s the idea.
You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will.
This is how some Israelis are trying to twist Washington’s arm to get the US to attack Iran.
A more honest way of making the argument would be to say this: If the US won’t attack Iran, then Israel will — even though it won’t accomplish its military objectives and it will open Pandora’s box. Desperate nations sometimes do desperate things. You have been warned.
Another name for this: blackmail.
It’s hard to counter an irrational argument when the irrationality is intentional. Such are the means by which someone like erstwhile Israeli army corporal and current Atlantic commentator, Jeffrey Goldberg, attempts to persuade his readers — not through cogent reasoning based on clear evidence, but by an insidious form of argument that has the clarity of slime.
Consider the way he tries to close his case for an attack on Iran — even while avoiding saying straight out that he supports such a course of action.
The United States must not take the risk of letting Israel attack Iran because if President Obama orders US forces to attack instead, this would be the most patriotic thing to do. Obama would not be serving Israel’s interests; he would be defending Western civilization.
Based on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program; and Obama knows — as his aides, and others in the State and Defense departments made clear to me — that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to the interests of the United States, which include his dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, I agreed with those, including many Israelis, Arabs — and Iranians — who believe there is no chance that Obama would ever resort to force to stop Iran; I still don’t believe there is a great chance he will take military action in the near future — for one thing, the Pentagon is notably unenthusiastic about the idea. But Obama is clearly seized by the issue. And understanding that perhaps the best way to obviate a military strike on Iran is to make the threat of a strike by the Americans seem real, the Obama administration seems to be purposefully raising the stakes. A few weeks ago, Denis McDonough, the chief of staff of the National Security Council, told me, “What you see in Iran is the intersection of a number of leading priorities of the president, who sees a serious threat to the global nonproliferation regime, a threat of cascading nuclear activities in a volatile region, and a threat to a close friend of the United States, Israel. I think you see the several streams coming together, which accounts for why it is so important to us.”
When I asked Peres what he thought of Netanyahu’s effort to make Israel’s case to the Obama administration, he responded, characteristically, with a parable, one that suggested his country should know its place, and that it was up to the American president, and only the American president, to decide in the end how best to safeguard the future of the West. The story was about his mentor, David Ben-Gurion.
“Shortly after John F. Kennedy was elected president, Ben-Gurion met him at the Waldorf-Astoria” in New York, Peres told me. “After the meeting, Kennedy accompanied Ben-Gurion to the elevator and said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you, I was elected because of your people, so what can I do for you in return?’ Ben-Gurion was insulted by the question. He said, ‘What you can do is be a great president of the United States. You must understand that to have a great president of the United States is a great event.’”
Peres went on to explain what he saw as Israel’s true interest. “We don’t want to win over the president,” he said. “We want the president to win.”
Israel only wants what’s good for America — and we’re supposed to believe that, even while few if any Israelis could be persuaded that America only wants what’s good for Israel.
The truth is that everyone gets to define their own interests so let’s ignore the obsequious crap from Peres and consider Goldberg’s core claim: that Israel is gearing up to strike Iran.
Even if Goldberg is participating in a neocon game of bluff, the only kind of bluff worth engaging in is one that has credibility. To make a credible argument that Israel has the intention of going it alone, Goldberg would have to present the outline of a credible plan of attack. He doesn’t even try.
Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation.
And he prefaces this “plan” by saying Israel only gets one try. That’s not even a back-of-an-envelope war plan. It’s more like a Twitter war plan.
Five years ago Kenneth Pollack dismissed the idea that Israel could attack Iran on its own. I don’t see any reason to doubt that his analysis on the military logistics of an attack still remains sound. Indeed, there seem to be plenty of Israeli analysts who concede that Israel simply does not have the option of going it alone. Even Goldberg quotes an unnamed Israeli general who says: “This is too big for us.”
In The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, Pollack wrote:
[T]he United States … should not count on Israel to conduct a counterproliferation strike for us. It is almost certainly the case that Israel would be willing to absorb the diplomatic costs of a strike, would be prepared to deal with Iran’s retaliation in the form of either terrorist attacks or missile strikes on Israel, and probably is not overly concerned about Iranian behavior in Iraq. The problem for Israel is much simpler: Iran is too far away. Most of the known Iranian nuclear facilities are around 1,000 miles away from Israel. Its Jericho II ballistic missiles could reach these targets, but they lack the payload, accuracy, and numbers to be able to significantly damage (let alone destroy) more than one or two of the large Iranian nuclear facilities, which leaves the matter to the Israeli Air Force. Even assuming that Israeli aircraft were to fly directly to Iran, overflying Jordan and Iraq, the only aircraft in its inventory that could reach Iran’s known nuclear sites are its 25 F-151 strike fighters. (Israel would need to set up aerial refueling stations at three to five locations between Israel and the Iranian targets for its roughly 350 F-16s to be able to participate, which would be practically impossible.) Because the F-151s would have to carry a considerable amount of fuel, they could not carry a great deal of ordinance. Given the size of the various Iranian nuclear facilities, it would not be possible for Israel to destroy all of them in a single raid as it did Osiraq. Nor would it be politically, militarily, or logistically possible for Israel to sustain multiple such strikes over the many days, if not weeks, it would take for all its F-151s to accomplish the job. [My emphasis.]
The neocon game of bluff will only box in the Obama administration if the Israeli “threats” are treated seriously. A more appropriate response would seem to be to focus on the limits of Israeli military action — unless that is one imagines that Israel would launch a nuclear attack on Iran, which to my mind is wildly implausible. (If Israel wants to permanently seal its global pariah status, the first offensive use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki is a sure way.)
Goldberg reports, but apparently didn’t take seriously, the observations of some Israelis who given their positions of military command seem to merit close attention:
Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, is said by numerous sources to doubt the usefulness of an attack, and other generals I spoke with worry that talk of an “existential threat” is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people. “We don’t want politicians to put us in a bad position because of the word Shoah [Holocaust],” one general said. “We don’t want our neighbors to think that we are helpless against an Iran with a nuclear bomb, because Iran might have the bomb one day. There is no guarantee that Israel will do this, or that America will do this.”
The message Netanyahu, Goldberg and other panic-stricken Zionists are unintentionally sending out is that come the day Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, Israelis may as well back their bags and abandon the Jewish state.
That probably won’t happen because in such an event Israel will “discover” what many Israelis no doubt already think: that retired General John Abizaid was right when he said that the United States and its allies can “live with” a nuclear-armed Iran. “Let’s face it — we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with nuclear powers as well,” Abizaid told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
That was true in 2007 and it’s true now. It’s also true that spineless politicians remain the playthings of fear-mongers who are addicted to war.
Iran has pledged to stop enriching uranium to the higher grade needed for a medical research reactor if world powers agree to a fuel-swap deal it outlined earlier this year with Turkey and Brazil, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Wednesday.
The offer marks the latest in an international tug-of-war over the nuclear ambitions of Iran, which denies international allegations that it is pursuing nuclear weaponry. U.S. and European diplomats say Iran’s offer suggests it has felt the pinch of a rash of economic sanctions imposed on Tehran since June.
The United Nations imposed sanctions in part because Iran insisted it would continue enriching nuclear fuel to 20%, a level Tehran said was necessary to fuel a medical-research reactor and that the U.S. and others feared was a step toward creating nuclear weapons.
Mr. Davutoglu said Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki offered to change Tehran’s position on continuing enrichment when the two men met in Istanbul on Sunday. Mr. Mottaki had said “there will be no need for Iran to continue 20% enrichment if the Tehran Agreement was realized and the country gets the fuel it needs,” Mr. Davutoglu told a joint press conference with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle on Wednesday.
The Obama administration is said to be “studying” the discussions. I would hope that behind the scenes they are sending unambiguous positive signals to Turkey. The issue of continued enrichment was the supposedly the reason for earlier rejecting the Turkish-Brazilian brokered deal with Iran. If Turkey can now deliver on the administration’s key demands, we will get to find out whether Washington is operating in good faith. Let’s see.
The CIA has lost one of its most valued former spies.
Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who defected to the US, is now on his way back home to Tehran after a very messy and public re-defection. ABC News obtained exclusive photos of Amiri leaving Washington’s Dulles International Airport late Tuesday night on a commercial flight to Doha, Qatar, en route to Iran.
Amiri was escorted directly to the jetway entrance by a security officer. He was flanked by what appeared to be a U.S. official and a representative from the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. He boarded the Qatar Airways flight ahead of the other passengers, and spoke only to his companions. After more than a year in the US, Amiri claimed he had never really defected. In a series of videos released on the internet, he insisted that he had been kidnapped, drugged and tortured by the CIA. The US flatly denies that it ever held Amiri against his will.
The Washington Post columnist and unofficial spokesman for the CIA, David Ignatius, attributes Amiri’s departure to a change of heart.
The CIA has struggled for decades with how to handle defectors better so that they are happy in a strange new land. The agency periodically tries to improve its tradecraft in working with these skittish guests. But defectors are trouble. They are like small boats in a heavy sea, not sure which way is home.
But Ignatius concedes that it is hard to understand why the Iranian scientist would have defected while leaving his wife and child behind. That detail, along with the deaths of Ardeshire Hassanpour and Masoud Alimohammadi, might seem to reinforce the claim that Amiri was in fact abducted and that all three cases be seen in the context of a US-backed, Israeli-led covert war targeting Iran’s nuclear programme.
What seems more likely however, is that the Iranians took the CIA for a ride — that Amiri’s “defection” took place so the Iran could glean more about the extent of American knowledge about its nuclear program and that the information he gathered was worth more valuable than the information he gave away.
During a stage interview with Yousel al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the United States, Jeffrey Goldberg made it clear that even when acting as a representative of The Atlantic and helping facilitate a forum in Aspen, Colorado, he still sees himself first and foremost as an Israeli.
When the ambassador pointed out that Iran’s nuclear program presents a greater risk to the UAE than it does to the US — the US being separated from Iran by two oceans — Goldberg requested clarification. Was he being addressed as an American or as a “representative of the Jewish people”? In Goldberg’s mind, to be Jewish means to have ones heart in Israel irrespective of where one might reside on the planet.
As Goldberg’s blog posts after the interview also made clear, when it comes to Iran, the topic that interests him above all else right now is pumping up support for a military strike against Iran. When the UAE ambassador pointed out that Palestine is the core issue in the region, Goldberg simply glossed over the fact.
This is the key section of the interview — the part Goldberg ignored, as did his friend Eli Lake at the Washington Times, when pumping out this week’s rendition of Israel’s Arabs-united-against-Iran narrative. Here the ambassador makes it clear that the only significant leverage Obama has on the issue of Iran is to push hard for the creation of a Palestinian state.
YOUSEF AL OTAIBA: I think President Obama has inherited two very difficult campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has inherited the worst financial crisis since 1929. He is now dealing with what seems to be an unfixable oil spill, not just environmentally, but economically, from an energy standpoint. So President Obama has his hands full.
Do I think he recognize the threat from Iran? Yes, I do. Do I think he has very limited options and not necessarily a lot of ability to fix it? Yes. I think President Obama is just constrained with the lack of resources and tools at his disposal. And if he’s heard anything from the Arab leaders that he talks to, most of them, and I’m fairly sure that King Abdullah when he was here mentioned the same thing.
For him to really make progress on the Iran issue and to deal with extremism and to deal with terrorism in the region, to deal with radicalized home-grown terrorism in the U.S., you need to address the peace process. That is the one core issue everyone tends to blame, and that’s what the people hang all their problems on.
Well, the Palestinians are, you know, they are — they don’t have a country, they are abused, they are oppressed, and the U.S. always sides with Israel. So the sooner U.S. appears to be objective and impartial and create a Palestinian state, we take that argument away from everyone, and that is in everyone’s best interest.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Why would that stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon?
OTAIBA: It won’t stop. It will get you all the Arab countries more aligned on containing Iran because now they use Palestine as an excuse, and the Palestine issue is a deep political problem. And I’m not saying it’s only the U.S.’ fault, I’m saying it is as much Israel and Palestine’s fault for not making any progress on it themselves. But lack of their kind of commitment, the U.S. needs to step in and say, you need to do this. And you need to do this for your sake, for our sake, and for the region’s sake. [Emphasis mine.]
So, contrary to the claims being made by Jeffrey Goldberg and others in the Israel lobby, the principal call coming from the Arab world is not for the US to strike Iran but rather that it apply its influence on Israel and hasten the creation of a Palestinian state.
[Update: See this post which confirms that Goldberg twisted the narrative here.]
After an exchange between the UAE ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba and Jeffrey Goldberg on Tuesday we learn that “the UAE would sooner see military action against Iran’s nuclear program than see the program succeed” — at least that’s what Goldberg says.
But the ambassador also said: “There are many countries in the region who, if they lack the assurance the US is willing to confront Iran, they will start running for cover towards Iran.”
In other words, countries like the UAE will ultimately align themselves with whichever ends up being the most durable power in the region. Even so, autocratic rulers who rely on American support would naturally like the defender of their tenuous legitimacy to maintain its regional dominance.
The Washington Times quotes from the same exchange between Goldberg and al-Otaiba in Aspen:
“I think it’s a cost-benefit analysis,” Mr al-Otaiba said. “I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion … there will be consequences, there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what.”
“If you are asking me, ‘Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran?,’ my answer is still the same: ‘We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.’ I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the UAE.”
It is not only Israel that fears the rise of a nuclear Iran; the Arabs, if anything, fear such a development to a greater degree. The Jews and Arabs have been fighting for one hundred years. The Arabs and the Persians have been going at for a thousand. The idea of a group of Persian Shi’ites having possession of a nuclear bomb scares Arab leader like nothing else — it certainly scares them more than the reality of the Jewish bomb.
Goldberg speaks for Netanyahu and the lobby, but the UAE government does not accept his interpretation of their ambassador’s remarks:
The UAE Assistant Foreign Minister for Political Affairs, Tareq al Haidan said today that the statements attributed by the Washington Times to the UAE Ambassador to the United States, Youssef al Otaiba “are not precise”.
“These statements came as part of general discussions held on the sidelines of an unofficial gathering and were taken out of their context in which Mr. Otaiba was speaking,” Mr al Haidanl said.
“Iran is a neighboring country and we maintain historic relations with it.” He stressed that “the UAE respects and believes in the sovereignty of other states and in the principle of non-interference, of all forms, in their internal affairs.”
“Already, the UAE declared, more than one time and in official statements issued by the Foreign Ministry, its position on the Iranian nuclear issue,” Mr al Haidan added.
“The UAE totally rejects the use of force as a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue and rather calls for a solution through political means that are based on the international legitimacy, transparency as well as the need for working, through the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], on the right of all states to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
“The UAE, at the same time, believes in the need of keeping the Gulf region free of nuclear weapons,” Mr al Haidan said.
As for whether the Arab world is as vexed about Iran as Goldberg claims, perhaps a clearer indication came from one of Israel’s few allies, Jordan, when King Abdullah spoke to the Wall Street Journal in April:
WSJ: What do you think when you look at Iran and international policy. There’s a lot of talk now about how active Iran is in Iraq as far as trying to push their political clients. Do you see it active in Hezbollah/Lebanon? In the Palestinian territories? Is the engagement track working?
HM KING ABDULLAH: Again, I look at it from a different angle. If there are those that are saying that Iran is playing mischief, then I say it is being allowed to play mischief. The platform they use is the injustice of the Palestinians and Jerusalem. So if you start taking those cards off the table, then Iranian influence on the Mediterranean through Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza diminishes or becomes non existent. My view is that I am really against any military action in Iran, that is Pandora’s box. But by dealing with the core issue, that’s when you start taking cards away from the Iranian regime.
The core issue is Palestine — not an Iranian bomb — and a strike on Iran, that’s Pandora’s box.
Just because Obama put on a shameless performance yesterday to please the Israelis and the lobby, and just because there is no evidence that he is a man of principle, doesn’t mean he’s stupid. He knows what Pandora’s box looks like and he’s just as reluctant as anyone else to find out what it contains.
Philip H Gordon is the US Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. He sat down with an AP reporter this week to talk about Turkey.
Turkey is alienating US supporters and it needs to demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West, Gordon says. “We think Turkey remains committed to NATO, Europe and the United States, but that needs to be demonstrated,” he said. “There are people asking questions about it in a way that is new, and that in itself is a bad thing that makes it harder for the United States to support some of the things that Turkey would like to see us support.”
Gordon cited Turkey’s vote against a U.S.-backed United Nations Security Council resolution on new sanctions against Iran and noted Turkish rhetoric after Israel’s deadly assault on a Gaza-bound flotilla last month. The Security Council vote came shortly after Turkey and Brazil, to Washington’s annoyance, had brokered a nuclear fuel-swap deal with Iran as an effort to delay or avoid new sanctions.
Some U.S. lawmakers who have supported Turkey warned of consequences for Ankara since the Security Council vote and the flotilla raid that left eight Turks and one Turkish-American dead. The lawmakers accused Turkey of supporting a flotilla that aimed to undermine Israel’s blockade of Gaza and of cozying up to Iran.
The raid has led to chilling of ties between Turkey and Israel, countries that have long maintained a strategic alliance in the Middle East.
Turkey’s ambassador to the United States, Namik Tan, expressed surprise at Gordon’s comments. He said Turkey’s commitment to NATO remains strong and should not be questioned.
“I think this is unfair,” he said.
Tan said Turkish officials have explained repeatedly to U.S. counterparts that voting against the proposed sanctions was the only credible decision after the Turkish-brokered deal with Iran. Turkey has opposed sanctions as ineffective and damaging to its interests with an important neighbor. It has said that it hopes to maintain channels with Tehran to continue looking for a solution to the standoff over Iran’s alleged nuclear arms ambitions.
“We couldn’t have voted otherwise,” Tan said. “We put our own credibility behind this thing.”
Tan said that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was expected to discuss these issues with President Barack Obama on the margins of a summit of world economic powers in Toronto on Saturday.
Gordon said Turkey’s explanations of the U.N. episode have not been widely understood in Washington.
“There is a lot of questioning going on about Turkey’s orientation and its ongoing commitment to strategic partnership with the United States,” he said. “Turkey, as a NATO ally and a strong partner of the United States not only didn’t abstain but voted no, and I think that Americans haven’t understood why.”
Just two weeks ago, before Gordon decided his primary duty was to placate the Israel lobby, in an interview with the BBC he rejected the suggestion that the US and Turkey have become strategic competitors in the Middle East.
“I think the United States and Turkey remain strategic partners,” he said. “We have so many interests in common. We can have disagreements, and there are things we disagree on, not least the vote on Iran at the United Nations. Throughout that process we have been frank with each other about our differences. We’ve explained to them why we think it was important for countries to vote yes in the Iran resolution. They have explained to us why they think the Tehran declaration was something worth pursuing. And we’ve explained to them what we think the shortcomings are. That’s what friends and partners do.”
But can friends be so overbearing that they issue demands for a demonstration of commitment to their partnership?
The US wants Turkey to help advance America’s agenda in the Middle East. Is the Obama administration helping advance Turkey’s agenda in the region? Turkey after all is now in a much stronger position to promote regional stability than any of its Western tutors.
As deeply in debt as the United States is, there is one currency that it can use without fear of ever running short and it’s a currency whose value is appreciated in every corner of the globe. It’s called respect. A little goes a long way.
How many countries in the world are there where someone can be thrown in jail for talking to a foreigner? That was one of Mordechai Vanunu’s most recent “crimes” as a citizen in “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Having spent 18 years in prison — more than 11 of those in solitary confinement — after revealing to the world Israel’s clandestine nuclear weapons program, Vanunu is now back in solitary confinement.
Amnesty International has rightly declared that he is a “prisoner of conscience,” and called for his immediate release.
The state persecution that Vanunu has suffered for decades and other details provide reason to suspect that he may the individual who in a report several days ago was simply referred to a Mr X.
Nobody knows who Mr. X. is. Ynet has learned that a man has been imprisoned for some time in wing 15 of Ayalon Prison but nobody knows who he is and what charges he is being jailed for. Nobody talks to him, nobody sees him, nobody visits him, nobody knows he is in jail. “He was placed in full and complete separation from the outside world,” said an Israel Prison Service official.
To enter the wing where the detainee is being held, you have to pass the jailers on the southern side of the prison and go through double iron doors. Unlike regular separation wings, where prisoners can talk loudly between the cells or see the goings-on in the corridors with mirrors, wing 15 has only one cell without neighboring cells and without a corridor, so that whoever is jailed in it is completely isolated from any living being.
“I don’t know any other prisoner or IPS detainee held in such severe conditions of separation and isolation,” said a Prison Service official. “There is confidentiality surrounding the detainee in wing 15 in every respect, including his identity and the crimes he committed. I doubt even the jailers in charge of him know who he is. There is too much confidentiality surrounding him. It is scary that in 2010 a man is imprisoned in Israel without us even knowing who he is.”
The official said, “it is simply a person without a name and without an identity who was placed in complete and absolute isolation from the outside world. We don’t know if he gets visits, if he gets the rights that every detainee deserves by law and if anybody even knows he is in jail.” The IPS declined to divulge who the person jailed there is. Its spokesman, Lt. Col. Yaron Zamir, said: “The IPS does not provide information about locations and names out of security considerations.”
Mr. X. is being kept in the wing originally built in order to jail Prime Minister Rabin’s assassin, Yigal Amir. Amir was jailed in the same cell under heavy security, with security cameras in the cell until December 2006, when he was moved to the separate wing at Rimonim prison in the Sharon district. The cell in wing 15 is relatively large and, in the case of Amir, his family met him in the cell so that he would not have to be taken out during visits.
Amnesty confirms that Vanunu is being held in Ayalon Prison.
“He [Vanunu] has written letters to us this year and last year also, where he stated explicitly that he did not want to be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. The reason he gave was that Simon Peres had received the Nobel Peace Prize, and Peres he alleged was the father of the Israeli atomic bomb and he did not want to be associated with Peres in any way.” – Geir Lundestad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute and Secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, 24 February 2010.
For the first time in the history of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, a preemptive request to withdraw a nomination—by the nominee—was made.
It was revealed last week that in a letter to the Committee, Mordechai Vanunu had asked for his candidacy to be rescinded. It was unusual enough for Geir Lundestad to acknowledge that a nomination had even been received, let alone publicly disclose Vanunu’s request. But for Vanunu—a man who should have been awarded the Peace Prize long ago—it was in full keeping with the dignity, integrity and uncompromising nature of one to whom the world owes a great debt.
Mordechai Vanunu – more than just a whistleblower
Vanunu worked as a technician at Israel’s Dimona nuclear plant in the Negev Desert from 1976-1985. In a 1986 interview with The Sunday Times, he courageously exposed, for the first time, his country’s clandestine nuclear activity. A week prior to the interview’s publication, he was lured by a Mossad agent from London to Rome, where he was apprehended and whisked off to Israel. In secret proceedings, Vanunu stood trial for treason, was swiftly convicted, and sentenced to 18 years behind bars. He spent more than 11 of them in solitary confinement.
Vanunu was released from Ashkelon’s Shikma prison in April 2004, unapologetic and unrepentant. “I am proud and happy to do what I did,” he said.
As for enduring nearly two decades of incarceration?
“I said to the Shabak [Shin Bet], the Mossad, ‘you didn’t succeed to break me, you didn’t succeed to make me crazy.’”
Conditions of his parole prohibited him from speaking with journalists, supporters, or non-Israelis of any kind. He was restricted from travelling within the country and barred altogether from leaving it.
In 2007, Vanunu was found to be in violation of his parole, in part for attempting to travel from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, and it landed him in jail for another three months. Being a convert to Christianity and an advocate for Palestinian rights did not help his case, but only served to increase the scorn heaped upon him by his countrymen.
Although the term “whistleblower” is usually appended to Vanunu’s name, the description is weak and understated. He was more like the “siren” that alerted the world to Israel’s undeclared nuclear bombs and the introduction of weapons of mass destruction to the Middle East.
A BBC documentary, “Israel’s Secret Weapon,” which first aired in 2003 just weeks before the start of the war in Iraq, examines Israel’s nuclear weapons program, the secrecy in which it has always been shrouded, and the ruthless measures through which Israel’s “nuclear taboo” is enforced. The film reveals:
The brutality with which Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s most famous political prisoner has been treated. By the time this film was made, Vanunu had been held in solitary confinement for longer than any prisoner in the West.
The mafia-like power wielded by the ulta-secret Yechiel Horev, who as Director of Security of the Defense Establishment was committed to ensuring that Vanunu never be permitted to leave Israel.
The deception through which Israel concealed the most sensitive areas of the Dimona nuclear facility from scrutiny by American inspectors.
The cover-ups and threats that have forced injured Dimona workers to maintain their silence about accidents, injuries and sickness caused their exposure to nuclear materials.
The blanket refusal by members of the Bush administration to discuss any questions relating to Israel’s large stock of weapons of mass destruction just as Washington was insisting that an active WMD program in Iraq (which of course turned out to be non-existent) necessitated war.
President Obama is either a liar or he has lost control of his own administration.
In a letter he sent to the president of Brazil in late April, Obama spelled out the terms on which the US would support a diplomatic initiative by Brazil and Turkey who hoped to revive a nuclear swap agreement that Iran had rejected last fall. Obama expressed his skepticism that Iran would make the necessary concessions. He was proved wrong, but then instead of welcoming Lula and Erdogan’s diplomatic accomplishment, Secretary Clinton dismissed it out of hand. If she did so with Obama’s consent, he has shown his word is worthless. If she did so on her own initiative, this president has lost his authority as chief executive.
His Excellency
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva
President of the Federative Republic of Brazil
Brasilia
Dear Mr. President:
I want to thank you for our meeting with Turkish PrinIe Miuister Erdogan during the Nuclear Security Summit. We spent some time focused on Iran, the issue of the provision of nuclear fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR), and the intent of Brazil and Turkey to work toward finding an acceptable solution. I promised to respond in detail to your ideas. I have carefully considered our discussion, and I would like to offer a detailed explanation of my perspective and suggest a way ahead.
I agree with you that the TRR is an opportunity to pave the way for a broader dialogue in dealing with the more fundamental concerns of the intemational community regarding Iran’s overall nuclear program. From the beginning, I have viewed Iran’ s request as a clear and tangible opportunity to begin to build mutual trust and confidence, and thereby create time and space for a constructive diplomatic process. That is why the United States so strongly supported the proposal put forth by former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General EIBaradei.
The IAEA’s proposal was crafted to be fair and balanced, and for both sides to gain trust and confidence. For us, Iran’s agreement to transfer 1,200 kg of Iran’s low enriched uranium (LEU) out of the country would build confidence and reduce regional tensions by substantially reducing Iran’s LEU stockpile. I want to underscore that this element is of fundamental importance for the United States. For Iran, it would receive the nuclear fuel requested to ensure continued operation of the TRR to produce needed medical isotopes and, by using its own material, Iran would begin to demonstrate peaceful nuclear intent. Notwithstanding Iran’s continuing defiance of five United Nations Security Council resolutions mandating that it cease its enrichment of uranium, we were prepared to support and facilitate action on a proposal that would provide Iran nuclear fuel using uranium enriched by Iran — a demonstration of our willingness to be creative in pursuing a way to build mutual confidence.
During the course of the consultations, we also recognized Iran’s desire for assurances. As a result, my team focused on ensuring that the lAEA’s proposal contained several built-in measures, including a U.S. national declaration of support, to send a clear signal from my government of our willingness to become a direct signatory and potentially even play a more direct role in the fuel production process, a central role for Russia, and the IAEA’s assumption of full custody of the nuclear material throughout the fuel production process. In effect, the IAEA’s proposal offered Iran significant and substantial assurances and commitments from the IAEA, the United States, and Russia. Dr. EI Baradei stated publicly last year that the United States would be assuming the vast majority of the risk in the IAEA’s proposal.
As we discussed, Iran appears to be pursuing a strategy that is designed to create the impression of flexibility without agreeing to actions that can begin to build mutual trust and confidence. We have observed Iran convey hints of flexibility to you and others, but formally reiterate an unacceptable position through official channels to the IAEA. Iran has continued to reject the IAEA’s proposal and insist that Iran retain its low-enriched uranium on its territory until delivery of nuclear fuel. This is the position that Iran formally conveyed to the IABA in January 2010 and again in February.
We understand from you, Turkey and others that Iran continues to propose that Iran would retain its LEU on its territory until there is a simultaneous exchange of its LEU for nuclear fuel. As General Jones noted during our meeting, it will require one year for any amount of nuclear fuel to be produced. Thus, the confidence-building strength of the IAEA’s proposal would be completely eliminated for the United States and several risks would emerge. First, Iran would be able to continue to stockpile LEU throughout this time, which would enable them to acquire an LEU stockpile equivalent to the amount needed for two or three nuclear weapons in a year’ s time. Second, there would be no guarantee that Iran would ultimately agree to the final exchange. Third, IAEA “custody” of lran’s LEU inside of Iran would provide us no measurable improvement over the current situation, and the IAEA cannot prevent Iran from re-assuming control of its uranium at any time.
There is a potentially important compromise that has already been offered. Last November, the IAEA conveyed to Iran our offer to allow Iran to ship its 1,200 kg of LEU to a third country — specifically Turkey — at the outset of the process to be held “in escrow” as a guarantee during the fuel production process that Iran would get back its uranium if we failed to deliver the fuel. Iran has never pursued the “escrow” compromise and has provided no credible explanation for its rejection. I believe that this raises real questions about Iran’s nuclear intentions, if Iran is unwilling to accept an offer to demonstrate that its LEU is for peaceful, civilian purposes. I would urge Brazil to impress upon Iran the opportunity presented by this offer to “escrow” its uranium in Turkey while the nuclear fuel is being produced.
Throughout this process, instead of building confidence Iran has undermined confidence in the way it has approached this opportunity. That is why I question whether Iran is prepared to engage Brazil in good faith, and why I cautioned you during our meeting. To begin a constructive diplomatic process, Iran has to convey to the IAEA a constructive commitment to engagement through official channels — something it has failed to do. Meanwhile, we will pursue sanctions on the timeline that I have outlined. I have also made clear that I will leave the door open to engagement with Iran. As you know, Iran has thus far failed to accept my offer of comprehensive and unconditional dialogue.
I look forward to the next opportunity to see you and discuss these issues as we consider the challenge of Iran’s nuclear program to the security of the international community, including in the U.N. Security Council.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
So what did Brazil and Turkey accomplish? An agreement by Iran to do exactly what Obama claimed he was seeking: that Iran would transfer 1200kg of LEU to be held in escrow by Turkey and in return for which, one year later, Iran would receive fuel rods for the TRR.
The US response? Secretary Clinton claimed there were “discrepancies” in the offer. These included that:
There is a recognition on the part of the international community that the agreement that was reached in Tehran a week ago between Iran and Brazil and Turkey only occurred because the Security Council was on the brink of publicly releasing the text of the resolution that we have been negotiating for many weeks. It was a transparent ploy to avoid Security Council action.
That is a truly Kafkaesque statement!
The US and its allies have been mounting diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran to force it to make concessions on the nuclear issue. As soon as Iran makes concessions, the US turns around and says the concessions are a “ploy” to avoid sanctions.
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.
The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa’s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.
The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of “ambiguity” in neither confirming nor denying their existence.
The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa’s post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky’s request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week’s nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.
They will also undermine Israel’s attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a “responsible” power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.
South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.
The documents show both sides met on 31 March 1975. Polakow-Suransky writes in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials “formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal”.
Among those attending the meeting was the South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong. He immediately drew up a memo in which he laid out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Jericho missiles but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
This week the Obama administration made what may come to be seen as a blunder of historic proportions. At a moment when tactical agility was a must, it stayed on course because it lacked the diplomatic finesse to show or perhaps even recognize the difference between being resolute and being inflexible.
The sanctions juggernaut plowed into the Iran diplomatic initiative masterminded by Brazil and Turkey and on the basis that these are “lesser” powers, Washington imagined its own agenda must be unstoppable. Or at least the administration felt compelled to bow in obedience to a fear that shackles every Democratic leader: the fear that flexibility will be seen as a sign of weakness.
Common sense and prudence made it clear that the smart way of responding to the new opening from Iran would have been with a cautious opening in return. Instead, Iran, Turkey and Brazil got the door slammed in their face. The calculation in Washington, no doubt, was that Iran, in its usual tempestuous style would swiftly reject the swap deal in the face of the continued threat of sanctions, and the diplomatic upstarts, Lula and Erdogan, would defer to the old world order.
Instead, it seems that Iran remains intent on seizing the initiative, will stick to the deal it signed and thereby demonstrate to the world that in the long-running nuclear dispute it is the United States that is now the intransigent party.
Turkey’s prime minister is seeking international support for a deal under which Iran would ship much of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said Saturday he had written to the leaders of 26 countries saying the deal would resolve the nuclear standoff with Iran by way of diplomacy and negotiation. The countries included all permanent and non-permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Iran will submit an official letter to the IAEA on Monday morning conveying its acceptance of the uranium enrichment deal brokered by Turkey and Iran, state-run news agency IRNA reported on Friday, citing a statement by the country’s National Security Council.
“Following the joint declaration by Iran, Turkey and Brazil, permanent representative of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the IAEA officially announced its readiness to submit our country’s letter to the IAEA Chief per paragraph six of the Teheran Declaration,” the statement reportedly read.
Also on Friday, IRNA quoted a top Iranian cleric as saying that the deal was a “powerful response” that “put the ball in the West’s court.” He reportedly stated that far from being a ploy meant to facilitate enrichment for military use, the deal should be seen as a confidence-building measure.
Meanwhile in Turkey, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope that the deal reached last week would “open the door to a negotiated settlement” between Iran and Western nations, according to a Reuters report.
Ban reportedly called the enrichment agreement “an important initiative in resolving international tensions over Iran’s nuclear program by peaceful means.” He went on to praise Turkey’s role and cooperation with Brazil in negotiating the deal, stressing that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would have to make its own assessment concerning the issue at hand.
At this point, it looks like Hillary Clinton has driven the United States into a diplomatic ditch.
The American mindset now as always fixes its attention on power and while the US remains the pre-eminent global power it assumes that it must have its way. But this fixation on power blinds Washington to a more important issue — one that provides the foundation for effective diplomacy, namely, trust.
This issue of trust, I believe, is the key to not just the Iranian nuclear crisis, but also other conflicts in the region, including the Arab-Israeli one. On all these issues, America has all the eye-catching instruments that give her full confidence: The world’s most powerful military, the largest diplomatic corps, and the most sophisticated brain power with plentitude of universities, institutes and think-tanks.
Yet, I am sorry to say, she terribly lacks the trust of the peoples of the Middle East. So, it would be only wise for her to rely more on the regional actors that do have that trust – such as the new Turkey of the 21st century.
The agreement on Iran’s nuclear fuel announced on Monday after mediation by the Turkish and Brazilian governments should be good news for those who seek to use the rule of law to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation. From both the American and Iranian perspectives the political dimension of the current dynamics is more important than the technical one. The accord should remind us that the style and tone in diplomatic processes is as important as substance.
Iran and its international negotiating partners have not reached agreement on Iran’s nuclear programs in the past half-decade, to a large extent because American- and Israeli-led concerns have been translated into an aggressive, accusatory, sanctions-and-threats-based style of diplomacy that Iran in turn has responded to with defiance.
Iran’s crime, in the eyes of its main critics in Washington and Tel Aviv (they are the two that matter most, as other Western powers play only supporting roles), is not primarily that it enriches uranium, but that it defies American-Israeli orders to stop doing so. (The Iranian response, rather reasonable in my view, is that it suspended uranium enrichment half a decade ago and did not receive the promises it expected from the United States and its allies on continuing with its plans for the peaceful use of nuclear technology. So why suspend enrichment again?)
The Iranians are saying, in effect, that this issue is about two things for them, one technical and one political: The technical issue is about the rule of law on nuclear nonproliferation and the right of all countries to use nuclear technology peacefully. The political issue is about treating Iran with respect, and negotiating with it on the basis of two critical phenomena: First, addressing issues of importance to Iran as well as those that matter for the American-Israeli-led states; and, second, actually negotiating with Iran rather than condescendingly and consistently threatening it, accusing it of all sorts of unproven aims, and assuming its guilt before it is given a fair hearing.
The age in which the non-Western world could be expected to show deference to the dictates of the dominant global powers is over. Western leaders must either humbly adapt to a world that has changed or suffer the humiliations that arrogance now invite.
There seems to be a near-universal consensus that sanctions won’t persuade Iran’s leaders to abandon the Islamic republic’s uranium enrichment program — but maybe that’s besides the point. Maybe by now what would be the most cynical interpretation of the Obama administration’s objectives can also be treated as the most credible view.
In this instance, what does that mean? It means that the drive to impose sanctions on Iran has less to do with Iran than it has to do with calming the fears of the Democratic Party’s wealthiest Zionist donors ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
Unnerved by the repeated warnings that Israel faces an existential threat, these donors won’t sign their checks until they’ve heard a sufficiently soothing answer to the question: “What are you doing about Iran?”
“We’ll do whatever it takes.” “We’re pushing for tougher sanctions than the Bush administration did.” “We’re absolutely dedicated to preventing Iran acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.”
But meanwhile in Israel it turns out that preparations are being made for the unthinkable — living with a nuclear Iran.
Haaretz reporters, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, just attended a simulation held at the prestigious Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center where the assumption was that the US will not give a green light for Israel to attack Iran and that sanctions will not derail Iran’s nuclear program.
The IDC simulation centered on a confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah with a hypothetically nuclear Iran in the background. Similar to other simulations taken place in the West in the last two years, the premise is that an Iranian nuclear umbrella would give more freedom to organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas, encouraging them to provoke Israel. The Herzliya panelists reached the conclusion that Hezbollah’s possession of a “dirty” or radioactive bomb would bring about the kind of American determination that would lead to an international military task force, which would in turn disarm Hezbollah. We’ll believe it when we see it.
Indeed. If consideration of the prospect of a nuclear Iran reflects the rise of realism among Israeli strategic thinkers, the idea that the US would disarm Hezbollah suggests that realism is still struggling to gain a firm foothold.
As noteworthy as anything else that the simulation revealed was the fact that — at least in the thinking of these Israelis — in the context of the Jewish state’s fears about regional threats, the Palestinians don’t even come into consideration.
Disarming the Israeli-Palestinian landmine, a central Obama administration claim has it, would aid in cooling the region, and maybe even in curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But, at least as simulation participants found out, the Palestinians have turned into a negligible entity. The most significant maneuvers were led by the United States, Israel, and the European Union, with some aid offered by the more moderate Arab states. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were virtually out of the game.
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An AFP report earlier today reveals that the Stuxnet malware has been found at Iran’s nuclear power plant at Bushehr. (All the blockquotes below are from the AFP report.)
The CIA has lost one of its most valued former spies.
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