Category Archives: nuclear issues

NEWS: The existential threat to Iran

U.S. institute: Israel could survive nuclear war
By Elie Leshem, Jerusalem Post, December 24, 2007

If a nuclear war between Israel and Iran were to break out 16-20 million Iranians would lose their lives – as opposed to 200,000-800,000 Israelis, according to a report recently published by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is headed by Anthony H. Cordesman, formerly an analyst for the US Department of Defense. The document, which is largely theoretical due to the lack of verified knowledge in some areas – specifically in terms of Israel’s nuclear capability – paints various scenarios and attempts to predict the strategies of regional powers, as well as the US.

The report assesses that a nuclear war would last approximately three weeks and ultimately end with the annihilation of Iran, due to Israel’s alleged possession of weapons with a far larger yield. Israel, according to the assessment, would have a larger chance of survival. The report does not attempt to predict how many deaths would eventually be caused by possible nuclear fallout. [complete article]

December 24 – news and opinion roundup

Notes on the post-Bush Mideast
By Tony Karon, Rootless Cosmopolitan, December 24, 2007

A year from now, the Bush Administration will be emptying its desks into cardboard boxes and preparing to hand over to its successor. And, it’s a relatively safe bet that the menu of foreign policy crises and challenges it will leave in the in-trays of its successors will be largely unchanged from that facing the Bush Administration today. A combination of the traditional lame-duck effect of the final year of a presidency, and the decline in relative U.S. influence on the global stage — a product both of the calamitous strategic and tactical mistakes by the Bush Administration and of structural shifts in the global political economy that will limit the options available to his successor — suggest that even as he goes scurrying about the Middle East in search of a “legacy,” very little is going to change in the coming year. Indeed, the recurring theme in many of the crises Washington professes to be managing is the extent to which it is being ignored by both friend and foe. [complete article]

The rise of a fierce yet fragile superpower
By Fareed Zacharia, Newsweek, December 31, 2007

For Americans, 2008 is an important election year. But for much of the world, it is likely to be seen as the year that China moved to center stage, with the Olympics serving as the country’s long-awaited coming-out party. The much-heralded advent of China as a global power is no longer a forecast but a reality. On issue after issue, China has become the second most important country on the planet. Consider what’s happened already this past year. In 2007 China contributed more to global growth than the United States, the first time another country had done so since at least the 1930s. It also became the world’s largest consumer, eclipsing the United States in four of the five basic food, energy and industrial commodities. And a few months ago China surpassed the United States to become the world’s leading emitter of CO2. Whether it’s trade, global warming, Darfur or North Korea, China has become the new x factor, without which no durable solution is possible.

And yet the Chinese do not quite see themselves this way. Susan Shirk, the author of a recent book about the country, “The Fragile Superpower,” tells a revealing tale. Whenever she mentions her title in America, people say to her, “Fragile? China doesn’t seem fragile.” But in China people say, “Superpower? China isn’t a superpower.”

In fact it’s both, and China’s fragility is directly related to its extraordinary rise. Lawrence Summers has recently pointed out that during the Industrial Revolution the average European’s living standards rose about 50 percent over the course of his lifetime (then about 40 years). In Asia, principally China, he calculates, the average person’s living standards are set to rise by 10,000 percent in one lifetime! The scale and pace of growth in China has been staggering, utterly unprecedented in history—and it has produced equally staggering change. In two decades China has experienced the same degree of industrialization, urbanization and social transformation as Europe did in two centuries. [complete article]

Poll victory for Hindu firebrand is blow to government election plans
By Jeremy Page, The Times, December 24, 2007

To fans he is the “Lion of Gujarat”, saviour of Hindus and the brains behind one of India’s richest states. To critics he is a “merchant of death” with the blood of thousands of Muslims on his hands.

But love or hate Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist and Chief Minister of the western state of Gujarat has now staked his claim to leadership of his party – and perhaps his country.

His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won 117 out of 182 seats in a local assembly election yesterday that became a barometer for the looming national elections. Congress won just 59 seats in the state poll that was spread over two weeks and which revived claims that Mr Modi had encouraged the slaughter of at least 2,000 Muslims in rioting in Gujarat in 2002. [complete article]

Pakistan’s tyranny continues
By Aitzaz Ahsan, New York Times, December , 2007

The chief justice of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, and his family have been detained in their house, barricaded in with barbed wire and surrounded by police officers in riot gear since Nov. 3. Phone lines have been cut and jammers have been installed all around the house to disable cellphones. And the United States doesn’t seem to care about any of that.

The chief justice is not the only person who has been detained. All of his colleagues who, having sworn to protect, uphold and defend the Constitution, refused to take a new oath prescribed by President Pervez Musharraf as chief of the army remain confined to their homes with their family members. The chief justice’s lawyers are also in detention, initially in such medieval conditions that two of them were hospitalized, one with renal failure.

As the chief justice’s lead counsel, I, too, was held without charge — first in solitary confinement for three weeks and subsequently under house arrest. Last Thursday morning, I was released to celebrate the Id holidays. But that evening, driving to Islamabad to say prayers at Faisal Mosque, my family and I were surrounded at a rest stop by policemen with guns cocked and I was dragged off and thrown into the back of a police van. After a long and harrowing drive along back roads, I was returned home and to house arrest. [complete article]

Uranium traces found on N. Korean tubes
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, December 21, 2007

U.S. scientists have discovered traces of enriched uranium on smelted aluminum tubing provided by North Korea, apparently contradicting Pyongyang’s denial that it had a clandestine nuclear program, according to U.S. and diplomatic sources.

The United States has long pointed to North Korea’s acquisition of thousands of aluminum tubes as evidence of such a program, saying the tubes could be used as the outer casing for centrifuges needed to spin hot uranium gas into the fuel for nuclear weapons. North Korea has denied that contention and, as part of a declaration on its nuclear programs due by the end of the year, recently provided the United States with a small sample to demonstrate that the tubes were used for conventional purposes.

The discovery of the uranium traces has been closely held by senior U.S. officials concerned that disclosure would expose intelligence methods and complicate the diplomatic process. North Korea has steadfastly refused to open up about its past practices, simply asserting that it is not engaged in inappropriate activities. However, the uranium finding will force U.S. negotiators to demand a detailed explanation from Pyongyang. [complete article]

CIA chief to drag White House into torture cover-up storm
By Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times, December 23, 2007

The CIA chief who ordered the destruction of secret videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of two top Al-Qaeda suspects has indicated he may seek immunity from prosecution in exchange for testifying before the House intelligence committee.

Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s clandestine service, is determined not to become the fall guy in the controversy over the CIA’s use of torture, according to intelligence sources.

It has emerged that at least four White House staff were approached for advice about the tapes, including David Addington, a senior aide to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, but none has admitted to recommending their destruction.

Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, said it was impossible for Rodriguez to have acted on his own: “If everybody was against the decision, why in the world would Jose Rodriguez – one of the most cautious men I have ever met – have gone ahead and destroyed them?” [complete article]

Wagons circled at CIA over tapes’ demise
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, December 24, 2007

Shortly after he arrived as CIA director in 2004, Porter J. Goss met with the agency’s top spies and general counsel to discuss a range of issues, including what to do with videotapes showing harsh interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.

“Getting rid of tapes in Washington,” Goss said, according to an official involved in the discussions, “is an extremely bad idea.”

But at the agency’s operational levels — especially within the branch that ran the network of secret prisons — the idea of holding on to the tapes and hoping their existence would never be leaked to the public seemed even worse.

Citing what CIA veterans regard as a long record of being stranded by politicians in times of scandal, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the decision to destroy the tapes was driven by a determination among senior spies to guard against a repeat of that outcome. [complete article]

CIA needs more taping, experts say
By Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2007

The controversy over destroyed CIA videotapes has highlighted weaknesses in American intelligence agencies’ methods of interrogation of Al Qaeda suspects, according to current and former officials and experts, who say those methods are compromising the ability to extract critically important information about the threat from Islamic extremism.

Congress, the Justice Department and the CIA inspector general are investigating why the CIA destroyed tapes of its 2002 interrogations of two alleged senior Al Qaeda leaders, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri. Investigators think Zubaydah was recorded being waterboarded — a controversial tactic that mimics the experience of drowning. The tapes were destroyed in 2005.

By their own accounting, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies have not videotaped the interrogations of potentially hundreds of other terrorism suspects. That indicates an outmoded level of secrecy and unprofessionalism, the interrogation experts contend.

They say that the U.S. is behind the curve of current best practices, and that videotaping is an essential tool in improving the methods — and results — of terrorism interrogations. And the accountability provided by recording is needed to address international concerns about the United States’ use of harsh, potentially illegal techniques, these experts add. [complete article]

5 myths about torture and truth
By Darius Rejali, Washington Post, December 16, 2007

So the CIA did indeed torture Abu Zubaida, the first al-Qaeda terrorist suspect to have been waterboarded. So says John Kiriakou, the first former CIA employee directly involved in the questioning of “high-value” al-Qaeda detainees to speak out publicly. He minced no words last week in calling the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” what they are.

But did they work? Torture’s defenders, including the wannabe tough guys who write Fox’s “24,” insist that the rough stuff gets results. “It was like flipping a switch,” said Kiriakou about Abu Zubaida’s response to being waterboarded. But the al-Qaeda operative’s confessions — descriptions of fantastic plots from a man who intelligence analysts were convinced was mentally ill — probably didn’t give the CIA any actionable intelligence. Of course, we may never know the whole truth, since the CIA destroyed the videotapes of Abu Zubaida’s interrogation. But here are some other myths that are bound to come up as the debate over torture rages on. [complete article]

Iran cited in Iraq’s decline in violence
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, December 23, 2007

The Iranian government has decided “at the most senior levels” to rein in the violent Shiite militias it supports in Iraq, a move reflected in a sharp decrease in sophisticated roadside bomb attacks over the past several months, according to the State Department’s top official on Iraq.

Tehran’s decision does not necessarily mean the flow of those weapons from Iran has stopped, but the decline in their use and in overall attacks “has to be attributed to an Iranian policy decision,” David M. Satterfield, Iraq coordinator and senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said in an interview.

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan C. Crocker said that the decision, “should [Tehran] choose to corroborate it in a direct fashion,” would be “a good beginning” for a fourth round of talks between Crocker and his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad. Although the mid-December date scheduled for the talks was postponed, Crocker said he expects that the parties will convene “in the next couple of weeks.” [complete article]

In a force for Iraqi calm, seeds of conflict
By Alissa J. Rubin and Damien Cave, New York Times, December 23, 2007

The thin teenage boy rushed up to the patrol of American soldiers walking through Dora, a shrapnel-scarred neighborhood of the capital, and lifted his shirt to show them a mass of red welts across his back.

He said he was a member of a local Sunni “Awakening” group, paid by the American military to patrol the district, but he said it was another Awakening group that beat him. “They took me while I was working,” he said, “and broke my badge and said, ‘You are from Al Qaeda.’”

The soldiers were unsure of what to do. The Awakening groups in just their area of southern Baghdad could not seem to get along: they fought over turf and, it turned out in this case, one group had warned the other that its members should not pay rent to Shiite “dogs.”

The Awakening movement, a predominantly Sunni Arab force recruited to fight Sunni Islamic extremists like Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, has become a great success story after its spread from Sunni tribes in Anbar Province to become an ad-hoc armed force of 65,000 to 80,000 across the country in less than a year. A linchpin of the American strategy to pacify Iraq, the movement has been widely credited with turning around the violence-scarred areas where the Sunni insurgency has been based.

But the beating that day was a stark example of how rivalries and sectarianism are still undermining the Americans’ plans. And in particular, the Awakening’s rapid expansion — the Americans say the force could reach 100,000 — is creating new concerns. [complete article]

U.S. officials see waste in Pakistan aid
By David Rohde, Carlotta Gall, Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger, New York Times, December 24, 2007

After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

In interviews in Islamabad and Washington, Bush administration and military officials said they believed that much of the American money was not making its way to frontline Pakistani units. Money has been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

“I personally believe there is exaggeration and inflation,” said a senior American military official who has reviewed the program, referring to Pakistani requests for reimbursement. “Then, I point back to the United States and say we didn’t have to give them money this way.”

Pakistani officials say they are incensed at what they see as American ingratitude for Pakistani counterterrorism efforts that have left about 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers dead. They deny that any overcharging has occurred. [complete article]

Israel rejects truce with Hamas
By Mark Lavie, AP, December 24, 2007

Israel’s prime minister pledged Sunday to continue attacking Gaza militants, ruling out truce negotiations with Hamas amid widespread skepticism about the Islamic group’s ability to halt rocket attacks.

An Israeli cabinet minister, meanwhile, angered moderate Palestinians with another plan for new Jewish housing in a disputed part of Jerusalem, complicating renewed peace talks.

There have been almost daily reports of truce feelers from the embattled Islamic Hamas regime in Gaza, and Israeli defense officials have said they are examining the proposals.

But at the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected negotiations with Hamas because it has rebuffed international demands that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and endorse past peace accords. [complete article]

Rice: US has ‘no permanent enemies’
By Matthew Lee, AP, December 21, 2007

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Friday held out the prospect of improved relations with the remaining two members of President Bush’s “axis of evil,” Iran and North Korea, as long as they meet international demands over their nuclear programs.

Rice said the Bush administration in its remaining year would welcome fundamental changes in its dealings with the two countries, as well as with Syria, and as an example pointed to warming ties with Libya, which renounced weapons of mass destruction in 2003. [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: Pakistan bombing; Qaeda shift; nuclear vulnerabilities

Pakistan bombing toll rises above 50
By Laura King and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2007

As U.S. officials warned of a renewed focus by Islamic miliants on attacks in Pakistan, the death toll climbed above 50 on Friday in a suicide bombing that could herald a perilous election campaign and a harsh new confrontation between extremists and government forces.

Even at the close of a year that has seen dozens of suicide attacks across the country, Pakistanis were horrified by the circumstances of this one in Charsadda, in North-West Frontier Province. The attacker blew himself up in a mosque, killing and maiming worshipers as they gathered to mark one of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar. [complete article]

Gates warns of Al Qaeda shift
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that Al Qaeda insurgents who were launching attacks in Afghanistan have now shifted their emphasis to Pakistan, increasing the threat in that nation.

Gates said the number of Al Qaeda insurgents and other fighters coming into Afghanistan from Pakistan was down about 40% in Regional Command East, the volatile section of the country controlled by U.S. forces.

Al Qaeda, Gates said, maintains its base in the loosely governed tribal areas on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. But the Al Qaeda fighters, he said, were not focused on attacking Afghanistan from Pakistan. [complete article]

A nuclear site is breached
By Micah Zenko, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

An underreported attack on a South African nuclear facility last month demonstrates the high risk of theft of nuclear materials by terrorists or criminals. Such a crime could have grave national security implications for the United States or any of the dozens of countries where nuclear materials are held in various states of security.

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 8, four armed men broke into the Pelindaba nuclear facility 18 miles west of Pretoria, a site where hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade uranium are stored. According to the South African Nuclear Energy Corp., the state-owned entity that runs the Pelindaba facility, these four “technically sophisticated criminals” deactivated several layers of security, including a 10,000-volt electrical fence, suggesting insider knowledge of the system. Though their images were captured on closed-circuit television, they were not detected by security officers because nobody was monitoring the cameras at the time.

So, undetected, the four men spent 45 minutes inside one of South Africa’s most heavily guarded “national key points” — defined by the government as “any place or area that is so important that its loss, damage, disruption or immobilization may prejudice the Republic.” [complete article]

NEWS: Syria turned away A.Q. Khan

Syria spurned atom smuggler approach in 2001: Assad
Reuters, December 19, 2007

Syria rebuffed a possible approach in 2001 from Pakistani-led traffickers in nuclear arms technology, President Bashar al-Assad said.

In an interview with Austrian daily Die Presse, Assad said an unnamed person delivered to Syria a letter purportedly from A.Q. Khan, the now-disgraced father of Pakistan’s atom bomb who supplied Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear parts and know-how.

“At the beginning of 2001 someone brought us a letter from a certain Khan. We did not know if the letter was genuine or a forgery by Israel to lure us into a trap,” Assad was quoted by Die Presse on Wednesday as saying. [complete article]

NEWS: Iran’s nuclear expansion

Iran receives nuclear fuel in blow to U.S.
By Helene Cooper, New York Times, December 18, 2007

The United States lost a long battle when Russia, as it announced on Monday, delivered nuclear fuel to an Iranian power plant that is at the center of an international dispute over its nuclear program. Iran, for its part, confirmed on Monday plans to build a second such plant.

In announcing that it had delivered the first shipment of enriched-uranium fuel rods to the power plant, at Bushehr in southern Iran, on Sunday, Russian officials said that while the fuel was in Iran, it would be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear monitoring agency for the United Nations. Russia also said the Iranian government had guaranteed that the fuel would be used only for the power plant.

The Bush administration took pains not to criticize the Russian move publicly, even expressing support for outside supplies if that led Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment program. [complete article]

Iran suggests it is building 2nd nuclear plant
By Nazila Fathi, New York Times, December 18, 2007

Iran confirmed Monday that it had received the first fuel shipment for its nuclear power plant at Bushehr, but also indicated for the first time that it was building a second nuclear power plant.

The revelation came in comments by the president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, made to state-run television and reported by the semiofficial Fars news agency. He was dismissing speculation that the arrival of the fuel would allow Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program, in Natanz.

“We are building a 360-megawatt indigenous power plant in Darkhovein,” he said, referring to a southern city north of Bushehr. [complete article]

NEWS: Israel’s new intelligence estimate – mixed threats

Exclusive: Annual Israeli Intelligence Estimate
By Ron Ben-Yishai, Ynet, December 16, 2007

Deep pessimism alongside cautious optimism- those are the two key principles that emerge from this year’s Annual Israeli Intelligence Estimate. The report will be presented to the security cabinet in several days time by IDF Intelligence Chief Major-General Amos Yadlin, but the highlights are here for you now in a Ynet exclusive report.

The aforementioned pessimism concerns Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The American National Intelligence Estimate “dropped quite a bomb” on Israel’s struggle against Iran’s nuclear program, said officials within Israel’s defense establishment. The US report only diminishes the likelihood that the international community will impose harsh, effective sanctions on Iran and also that the US itself will strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

“It is clear to us now that no one will do the work for us,” one of the report’s authors told Ynet, Israel can now rely solely on its own military capabilities, if and when the Iranian nuclear program achieves its aims.

The differences of opinion among the Israeli and American intelligence communities stem from different methodologies for analyzing raw data. Washington and Jerusalem are in almost total agreement regarding the known facts, as the two supply each other with whatever information they posses. [complete article]

Israel: US Iran report may spark war
AP, December , 2007

Israel’s public security minister warned Saturday that a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran is no longer developing nuclear arms could lead to a regional war that would threaten the Jewish state.

In his remarks — Israel’s harshest criticism yet of the U.S. report — Avi Dichter said the assessment also cast doubt on American intelligence in general, including information about Palestinian security forces’ crackdown on militant groups. The Palestinian action is required as part of a U.S.-backed renewal of peace talks with Israel this month.

Dichter cautioned that a refusal to recognize Iran’s intentions to build weapons of mass destruction could lead to armed conflict in the Middle East. [complete article]

Israeli envoys to U.S. to argue Iran still aiming for nuclear bomb
By Barak Ravi, Haaretz, December 16, 2007

Israel has dispatched an unscheduled delegation of intelligence officials to the U.S. to try to convince it that Iran is still trying to develop nuclear weapon – contrary to the findings of a recent U.S. intelligence report, security officials say.

The delegation, which set off last week on its unscheduled mission, will wind up its visit this week, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

It was not clear what type of material the Israeli delegation – for the most part military intelligence officers – presented to U.S. officials.

“The U.S. and Israel will also hold additional joint formal meetings on the matter in coming weeks,” the Israeli officials said. “Israel will use these forums to try to persuade the Americans that Iran is trying to development nuclear weapons, and intends to present information classified as top secret for security reasons,” the officials said. [complete article]

NEWS: Israeli official: U.S. is not doing enough on Iran nukes

Israeli official: U.S. is not doing enough on Iran nukes
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz, December 13, 2007

A senior Israeli official has fiercely criticized U.S. President George Bush’s administration for the way it has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue.

The official said that the administration was not doing what was required of it to create an international coalition and wide agreement to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.

Criticism from senior members of Israel’s political echelon with regard to U.S. policy on the matter is rare. The official mainly spoke out against Bush’s failure to enlist support from China, Russia and, to a certain extent, India, for increasing pressure on Iran and North Korea. [complete article]

NEWS & ANALYSIS: The Persian process

The myth of a bargain with Iran
By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, December 10, 2007

Unless Iran does something really stupid, Mr Bush will not be able to bomb. Much tougher sanctions are also out. So that leaves talking.

That could be a very good thing. For years, those who have opposed the drive to war have urged America to strike a “grand bargain” with Iran. This would involve Iran forswearing nuclear weapons in a convincing and verifiable way and generally promising to behave better in the region. In return Iran would get full diplomatic recognition from the US, the lifting of sanctions (such as they are) and all manner of economic and technological benefits.

But there are two obvious snags. First, America’s intelligence re-assessment will probably be a boon to hardliners in Tehran. President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad will be able to say that Iran has stood firm and faced down the world. In such a climate, why should the Iranians make concessions?

Second, there may be no “grand bargain” to be had. Most of the evidence suggests that the determination to get a nuclear bomb is a national project in Iran – uniting different political factions. The Iranians are not necessarily in a hurry. They might be deterred for a while. But the nuclear programme has become a symbol of national machismo – and is also widely regarded as a strategic necessity, given that Iran is surrounded by hostile powers.

Iran also has ambitions in the region. It is the biggest country in the Gulf area – or, as the Iranians insist on calling it, the Persian Gulf area – and it wants its “natural role” to be recognised. If Iran is to be the regional hegemon, then the US military presence must be greatly diminished. The US army is in Iraq, the navy is in Bahrain, the air force is in Qatar. There are US bases in Saudi Arabia. There is no way that the Americans are going to cede the dominant security role in the Gulf – a region that sits on top of 60 per cent of the world’s known oil reserves and 40 per cent of its natural gas.

That is the basic reason why a grand bargain will be so hard to achieve. The US and the Iranians are strategic rivals in the Gulf region. They are not going to become friends. The best that can be hoped for is an uneasy modus vivendi.

As for the Iranian nuclear programme: the message that the American public risks being left with is that it would be impossible to live with an Iranian bomb – but fortunately Iran is no longer pursuing nuclear weapons. The reality is the complete opposite. Iran probably will get nuclear weapons. And the west will probably have to learn to live with it. [complete article]

Khatami publicly assails Ahmadinejad
By Nazila Fathi, New York Times, December 12, 2007

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies were attacked Tuesday at Tehran’s major university in an unusual speech by his predecessor, who warned that political suppression, questionable economic policies and defiance on the nuclear issue were leading Iranians in the wrong direction.

The speech, by Mohammad Khatami, attracted more than 1,000 students at Tehran University, which has been a center of vocal protest against Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was elected in 2005.

Mr. Khatami’s criticism of Mr. Ahmadinejad has long been known. But his public denunciation of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s policies was unusual because of its high visibility at a site of youthful dissent. [complete article]

Report on Iran may scupper future sanctions
By Tom Baldwin, The Times, December 12, 2007

Britain and France, President Bush’s chief European allies, fear that last week’s US intelligence report stating that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons programme will be “counter-productive” in securing tighter UN sanctions against the Tehran regime.

A draft Security Council resolution being discussed yesterday by officials from the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany would extend punitive measures – including travel bans and the seizure of assets – to the 15,000-strong Quds force, as well as dozens of named individuals.

Although the document does not go as far as the US Administration – which recently imposed sweeping sanctions against the entire 125,000-member Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Quds Force, and three banks – it would represent a significant escalation in the diplomatic pressure being exerted on Iran. [complete article]

OPINION: Bush’s real lie about Iran

Bush’s real lie about Iran
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, Salon, December 7, 2007

The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear program raises questions once again about the Bush administration’s veracity in describing a nuclear threat. But President Bush’s worst misrepresentations about the Iranian nuclear issue do not focus on whether Tehran is currently pursuing a nuclear weapons program or when Bush knew the U.S. intelligence community was revising its previous assessments. Rather, the real lie is the president’s claim that his administration has made a serious offer to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, and that Iranian intransigence is the only thing preventing a diplomatic resolution. [complete article]

NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Missile defense against what?

Europe’s missile shield: NIE casualty?
By Mark Thompson, Time, December 6, 2007

TThat the new U.S. intelligence assessment of Iran’s nuclear program has put the kibosh on hawkish calls for a military response has been discussed to death, but there’s been very little focus on a second potential casualty: the U.S. plan to base ground-based missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. The plan to station interceptor missiles in Poland and tracking radars in the Czech Republic is regarded warily by citizens of those countries, and with outright hostility by the Russians who see it as aimed at blunting their own missile capability in the event of a showdown with the U.S. The plan has helped freeze U.S.-Russia ties to Cold War levels of enmity, with President Vladimir Putin just last week suspending Russia’s participation in 1990s Conventional Forces in Europe treaty.

Against the barrage of criticism from the Russians, Pentagon officials have always insisted that the purpose of the missile-defense system is to protect Europe and the U.S. from an Iranian missile attack. “It’s not the Russians that we’re worried about,” Air Force Lieutenant General Henry “Trey” Obering, chief of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, said over breakfast earlier this year. “It is the Iranian missiles that we’re worried about.” But if the best those missiles could carry is conventional explosives, the case for deploying the missile defense system in the face of the heavy diplomatic cost and financial burden ($4 billion through 2013) becomes increasingly dubious. For one thing, the Pentagon faces mounting bills of tens of billions of dollars to “reset” the U.S. military — replacing everything worn out in Afghanistan and Iraq — over the coming decade. [complete article]

Russia alleges U.S. ‘rollback’ on anti-missile plan
By Peter Finn, Washington Post, December 6, 2007

The United States has backed away from proposals it made orally in October to allay Russian fears about the deployment of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, alleged Wednesday.

Lavrov said an oral proposal to permanently station Russian officers at sites in Poland and the Czech Republic to ensure that the system’s radar would not be used to peer into Russian airspace was withdrawn when the United States submitted its proposals to Moscow in writing last month.

“We received the document, and unfortunately a serious rollback from what we agreed upon was evident,” Lavrov said at a news conference Wednesday in his first detailed comments on the U.S. written proposals. “The issue no longer concerns the permanent presence of Russian officers at possible facilities . . . in the Czech Republic and Poland.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I’m not sure why I haven’t read anyone else make this observation, but there’s always seemed to me to be a glaring contradiction that the administration on the one hand asserts that Iran will never be allowed to possess nuclear weapons, while on the other hand argues to its European allies that they need a missile defense shield for protection against Iranian ballistic missiles. Either the shield was always presumed to be unnecessary or it was always presumed that efforts to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons would fail. The Pentagon’s claim that the “missile-defense program is not geared to any kind of specific defense against a specific weapon,” is baloney.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: NIE reverberations continue

Why the Pentagon is happy about the NIE
By Mark Thompson, Time, December 5, 2007

The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was the final factor in a military equation that now appears to guarantee that there will be no war with Iran during the Bush Administration. It meshes with the views of the operational types at the Pentagon, who have steadfastly resisted the march to war led by some Administration hawks. The anti-war group was composed of Defense Secretary Robert Gates; Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and Admiral William Fallon, who oversees the U.S. forces that would have had to wage that war. In recent months, all have pushed back privately and publicly, on the wisdom of going to war with Tehran. Indeed, the Pentagon’s intelligence units were instrumental in forming the NIE’s conclusions.

The U.S. military contributes nine of the 16 intelligence agencies whose views are cobbled together in NIEs: the Counterintelligence Field Activity, the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency, Army Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, and the Office of Naval Intelligence. Some critics have suggested that the military simply found a public way to quiet the drumbeat for war coming from Vice President Dick Cheney and his shrinking band of allies in the Administration.

There was no formal response from the Pentagon. It is evident, however, that the U.S. military, already strained by wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has no appetite for a third war. That’s true even if a series of strikes against nuclear and other targets inside Iran were carried out by the Air Force and Navy, the two services who have sat, somewhat frustrated, on the sidelines as the Army and Marine Corps has done the heavy lifting in the two wars now under way. Some Pentagon officials welcomed the new NIE as evidence that the intelligence community is not tied to ideology, as some critics argued was true during the buildup to the Iraq war in 2003. [complete article]

Details in military notes led to shift on Iran, U.S. says
By David E. Sanger and Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, December 6, 2007

American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program, senior intelligence and government officials said on Wednesday.

The notes included conversations and deliberations in which some of the military officials complained bitterly about what they termed a decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down a complex engineering effort to design nuclear weapons, including a warhead that could fit atop Iranian missiles.

The newly obtained notes contradicted public assertions by American intelligence officials that the nuclear weapons design effort was still active. But according to the intelligence and government officials, they give no hint of why Iran’s leadership decided to halt the covert effort. [complete article]

Bush tells Iran to disclose nuclear activities
By Michael Abramowitz and Robin Wright, Washington Post, December 6, 2007

President Bush called on Iran to “come clean” about the scope of its nuclear activities Wednesday, as the White House made it clear there will be no change in its policy toward Tehran despite new intelligence questioning his claims about the country’s nuclear ambitions.

Traveling here for a political fundraiser, Bush indicated that he still sees Iran as a serious threat. He demanded that its leaders fully disclose details of its nuclear weapons program, which the intelligence community said Monday was shut down in the fall of 2003.

“The Iranians have a strategic choice to make,” Bush told reporters. “They can come clean with the international community about the scope of their nuclear activities and fully accept” the U.S. offer to negotiate if they suspend their nuclear enrichment program — “or they can continue on a path of isolation.” [complete article]

Iran’s nukes: now they tell us?
By Joe Klein, Time, December 6, 2007

In August, National Intelligence Director McConnell ordered CIA Director Michael Hayden to have ready by Labor Day a new intelligence estimate reflecting the latest information. Hayden said he needed more time. McConnell set a Nov. 30 deadline. Because some of the information sources were new, Hayden decided to launch a “red team” counter-intelligence operation to make sure that the U.S. wasn’t falling for Iranian disinformation. In late October, the Persia House and red-team analysts offered their findings to Hayden and his deputy, Steve Kappes, around the coffee table in Hayden’s office. The red team found that the possibility of Iranian disinformation was “plausible but not likely.” That assessment led two of the 16 intelligence agencies, but not the CIA, to dissent from the final “high” degree of certainty that Iran had stopped its weapons program in 2003. On the other hand, there was general agreement on a “moderate” finding that Iran had not restarted the program. The National Intelligence Board met and reached its conclusions on Tuesday, Nov. 27. “The meeting took a little more than two hours,” a senior intelligence official told me. “There have been times when it has taken multiple meetings that went on for hours and hours to reach a consensus, especially when dealing with one of Iran’s neighbors.”

Hayden and his senior Iran analysts briefed President Bush on the new NIE on Wednesday, Nov. 28. But it seems apparent the President made little effort to figure out how his Administration could leverage the shocking candor of the intelligence report to his advantage in dealing with Iran. “He could have said to the Iranians, ‘This document shows that we’re not rushing to war. We’re not out to get you,'” said Kenneth Pollack, a National Security Council staff member during the Clinton Administration and author of The Persian Puzzle. “‘But we — and the rest of the world — are very concerned about your uranium-enrichment program, and so let’s sit down and talk about it.'”

Oddly, Bush didn’t seem to ask for a delay in the release of the report. He could easily have requested a few weeks for his Administration to chew over the import of the NIE, discuss it with our allies, organize a new diplomatic initiative to negotiate with the Iranians. As it was, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns briefed the U.N. Security Council members who had been considering a new round of sanctions against Iran about the same time that word of the NIE broke in the press. When it did, the Chinese, who had seemed surprisingly ready to approve the sanctions, started backing away from that position. [complete article]

See also, Spinning the NIE Iran report (Tony Karon), A pattern of deception (Dan Froomkin), White House Iran intel story 2.0 (TPM).

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Evolving perspectives on Iran

Time has come for U.S. to pursue talks with Iran
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, December 5, 2007

The American intelligence report that makes the option of a military strike against Iran – and possibly the next dose of sanctions – less likely to materialize gives us an important time-out to try a new avenue vis-a-vis the Islamic Republic.

That route would center on diplomacy aimed at neutralizing Tehran’s motivation to further pursue the development of nuclear arms. For some time now, Iran has held an internal debate – which sometimes reaches the Iranian media – on how far Tehran can go in defying international pressure to abandon its nuclear program. [complete article]

Europeans see murkier case for sanctions
By Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, December 4, 2007

The Bush administration’s new intelligence assessment that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is likely to complicate efforts to impose new sanctions on Iran at the United Nations Security Council, European officials said Monday.

The officials, who declined to be identified under normal diplomatic rules, stressed that their governments were formally studying the new assessment of Iran’s nuclear intentions and capabilities by the administration’s intelligence agencies.

But they added that they were struggling to understand why the United States chose to issue the report just two days after the six powers involved in negotiating with Iran — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany — had decided to press ahead with a new Security Council resolution.

“Officially, we will study the document carefully; unofficially, our efforts to build up momentum for another resolution are gone,” said one European official involved in the diplomacy. [complete article]

Anatomy of an about-face on Iran
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2007

The new intelligence was considered compelling enough to call it to Bush’s attention in August. In a news conference at the White House on Tuesday, Bush said that the nation’s intelligence director, J. Michael McConnell, “came in and said, ‘We have some new information.’ ”

Bush said that McConnell did not provide details. “He didn’t tell me what the information was,” Bush said. “He did tell me it was going to take awhile to analyze.”

The decision to hold those details back has come under question because Bush and others in the administration continued in the succeeding months to use heated rhetoric to warn of the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. In October, Bush described that scenario as potentially pointing to World War III.

But U.S. intelligence officials said they felt compelled to employ that level of caution in part because of the searing experience surrounding the war in Iraq.

“Back in 2002, one of the knocks on the process at the time was that information was not vetted by analysts and was being rushed into the Oval Office,” said the senior U.S. intelligence official.

That experience showed, the official said, that bringing unvetted intelligence to senior officials could backfire.

This time, even as they vetted the new intelligence and launched into major revisions of the estimate on Iran’s nuclear program, intelligence officials said, they deliberately shielded analysts from administration officials and policymakers. [complete article]

Spies show Bush a way forward on Iran
By Gareth Porter, Asia Times, December 6, 2007

The NIE does refer to the role of “international pressures” in halting Iran’s program, but contrary to Hadley’s argument, it suggests that the decision to halt weaponization was not prompted by threats and pressure. The key finding of the estimate also indicates that the intelligence community believes Iran is more likely to forego the nuclear weapons option if the United States deals with its security and political interests than if it relies on threats and sanctions.

The estimate concludes that the halt in the weapons program was ordered “in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work”. That is a reference to the situation facing the Iranian leadership in 2003, when its acquisition of nuclear technology from Pakistani Abdul Qadeer Khan’s network had already been exposed but there was no threat of either military action or economic sanctions against Iran over the nuclear issue.

A major feature of the diplomatic situation in the autumn of 2003 was the willingness of Britain, France and Germany to negotiate an agreement with Iran on a wider range of security issues, based on voluntary Iranian suspension of uranium enrichment. [complete article]

Diplomatic “disaster” led to Iran intel spill?
By Eric Hundman, Danger Room, December 5, 2007

The National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nukes has been in the works for months. So why did it get released now? Various commentators are guessing that hardening opposition had “caused Cheney and his team to fold their cards,” or that a Democratic-controlled Congress pushed the Director of National Intelligence, or that the spooks are trying to undermine Bush. The latter two, respectively, appear to be untrue and ridiculous, and Cheney’s team folding its cards sounds unlikely in the extreme.

Another possibility exists, though: the Bush administration may have wanted to salvage negotiations with Iran after the “disaster” this weekend in London. This story has been largely lost in the NIE furor, but the new Iranian nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, told diplomats that all proposals made in previous negotiations over the nuclear issue were irrelevant – that the diplomatic efforts to date were for naught. This led to intimations that the negotiations would shut down, with one official quoted saying “we can’t do business with these guys at this point.” [complete article]

EDITORIAL: The diplomatic shift

The who-knew-what-when questions and the larger story
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 4, 2007

According to President Bush, “it wasn’t until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.” National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley, was yesterday even more specific: “…the intelligence community finally came to the judgments that they came to on this issue Tuesday of last week. The President was briefed on Wednesday.” Was that before or after Israel’s foreign delegation in Washington had been briefed?

Haaretz today reports that the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate, “did not catch the Israeli leadership by surprise. During their visit to Washington last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were briefed on the report.” The Israelis arrived on Sunday and left on Wednesday evening.

So, given that the subtext for the Annapolis Conference was the configuration of an alliance aimed at containing Iran, are we to believe that just before Olmert left Washington (and just after Bush had been briefed), the Israeli prime minister was pulled aside by administration officials who said, “Oh, by the way, we’d like to share our latest intelligence findings on Iran’s nuclear weapons program – or lack thereof. We think you’ll find them interesting.” I suspect that didn’t happen. When Hadley says Bush was briefed on Wednesday, he’s probably being economical with the truth and might under cross-examination concede that “briefed” merely means being shown the final draft of a text with which Bush was already familiar. I’ll leave it to bloggers more tenacious than me to get to the bottom of this. It’s not that these aren’t interesting questions, but they risk generating more heat than light.

The hyperfocus on a major news day in Washington has the unfortunate effect of reinforcing the kinds of perception that were summed up today in the New York Times by the line, “Rarely, if ever, has a single intelligence report so completely, so suddenly, and so surprisingly altered a foreign policy debate here.”

There has actually been a build up to this watershed event, but because the build up didn’t fit the conventional wisdom, it has largely been unnoticed. The conventional wisdom has been that the administration — until yesterday — was on a fairly steady trajectory in the direction of a military confrontation with Iran. But over the last few months there have been a number of signs that inside the administration, the proponents of military action had in fact already lost the argument.

The resurgence of diplomacy has been quietly driven by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Gates’ low-profile approach has meant that his efforts have frequently escaped the attention of the media. Even so, to be neither the focus of cable news nor blogosphere banter, is not to be politically ineffective. The pivotal role Gates has played in shifting the administration’s approach is described in Newsweek:

Late this summer, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates traveled to the Middle East, to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. At each stop, high-ranking Arab officials anxiously asked him: was the United States preparing to attack Iran? Gates reassured them all that the United States had no plans to do so, at least any time soon. He wasn’t dramatic about it, says a Defense Department official who accompanied Gates on the trip but declined to be identified discussing secret talks. “He didn’t grab anyone’s arm and say, ‘I’ve got Cheney under control, wink, wink’,” says this official. But Gates was low-key, straightforward, steadying—calming, even soothing in a dry and matter-of-fact way. A little later, at the end of September, Gates met with the Democratic Senate Policy Committee (something his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, would never do). One of the senators nervously asked if the Bush administration was looking for a reason to bomb Tehran. “It would be a strategic calamity to attack Iran at this time,” Gates replied. Sen. Evan Bayh, who was at the meeting, told Newsweek: “You could almost feel the relief around the table. It was, ‘Well, I guess he’s not here just to repeat the party line.’ It was just such a breath of fresh air from Rumsfeld and the ‘my way or the highway’ attitude of others.”

While among Bush critics it has often been assumed that the so-called reality-based community only exists outside the administration, it seems clear that Gates belongs to this community and that while Bush and Cheney are unlikely to admit as much, it is under Gates’ tutelage that they are now willing to give diplomacy a chance. Cheney might remain a skeptic but the ball — at least for now — is out of his hands.

The time is now ripe for an initiative. Bush alluded to such a possibility today when he said, “There has been a moment during my presidency in which diplomacy provided a way forward for the Iranians. And our hope is we can get back on that path again.” He was harking back to 2003 but engaging in a bit of revisionism by neglecting to mention that it was he and the vice president who then refused to receive the diplomatic ball when it was being tossed in their direction by Iran. Is it now possible — even with Khatami partially out of the picture — that the administration is hinting that it might be open to another grand bargain?

NEWS & ANALYSIS: NIE fallout

Israel unconvinced Iran has dropped nuclear program
By Steven Erlanger and Graham Bowley, New York Times, December 4, 2007

Israel today took a darker view of Iran’s nuclear ambitions than the assessment released by United States intelligence agencies yesterday, saying it was convinced that Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons.

It said Iran had probably resumed the nuclear weapons program the American report said was stopped in the fall of 2003. “It is apparently true that in 2003 Iran stopped pursuing its military nuclear program for a certain period of time,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israeli Army Radio. “But in our estimation, since then it is apparently continuing with its program to produce a nuclear weapon.” [complete article]

A blow to Bush’s Tehran policy
By Peter Baker and Robin Wright, Washington Post, December 4, 2007

President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

The new intelligence report released yesterday not only undercut the administration’s alarming rhetoric over Iran’s nuclear ambitions but could also throttle Bush’s effort to ratchet up international sanctions and take off the table the possibility of preemptive military action before the end of his presidency.

Iran had been shaping up as perhaps the dominant foreign policy issue of Bush’s remaining year in office and of the presidential campaign to succeed him. Now leaders at home and abroad will have to rethink what they thought they knew about Tehran’s intentions and capabilities. [complete article]

U.S. spies concoct a potent Iran brew
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, December 5, 2007

The timing of the report’s release is curious, coinciding both with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s crucial meeting with the heads of states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, where Ahmadinejad has made substantial progress in confidence-building by advancing the idea of security and economic cooperation in the region, and with critical discussions with the so-called “Five plus One” countries regarding the next United Nations steps against Iran. The Five plus One includes the five permanent members of the UN security Council – United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia and China – plus Germany.

Irrespective of Hadley’s comments, the new NIE actually undermines much of the rationale behind the US-led push for a third round of US sanctions on Iran, by flatly contradicting what until now has been held as an article of faith by US politicians and much of the media. That is, the notion that Iran has been pursuing an open weapons program via its uranium-enrichment and reprocessing activities. [complete article]

‘Bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb, Iran’
By Michael Dobbs, Washington Post, December 4, 2007

There has been a lot of loose talk about Iran’s nuclear capabilities out on the campaign trail. Here is a sampling of campaign rhetoric undercut by the publication of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, representing the consensus view of the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. [complete article]

Candidates hold to their stances on Iran
By Marc Santora, New York Times, December , 2007

The campaigns of the leading Democratic candidates seized Monday on an intelligence report showing that Iran had halted its development of nuclear weapons, saying the findings justified their more cautious approach to Tehran.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s national security director, Lee Feinstein, said the report’s findings “expose the latest effort by the Bush administration to distort intelligence to pursue its ideological ends.” He added that the report “vindicates” Mrs. Clinton’s approach, which he described as “vigorous American-led diplomacy, close international cooperation and effective economic pressure, with the prospect of carefully calibrated incentives if Iran addresses our concerns.”

In fact, in September Mrs. Clinton, Democrat of New York, voted in favor of a Senate measure declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guards “proliferators of mass destruction,” a vote that was condemned by her rivals in the Democratic field. After the vote, her aides issued a statement saying, “The Revolutionary Guards are deeply involved in Iran’s nuclear program.” [complete article]

How did a 2005 estimate on Iran go awry?
By William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, New York Times, December 4, 2007

In the summer of 2005, senior American intelligence officials began traveling the world with a secret slide show drawn from thousands of pages that they said were downloaded from a stolen Iranian laptop computer, trying to prove that Iran was lying when it said it had no interest in building a nuclear weapon.

The slides detailed efforts to build what looked like a compact warhead for an Iranian missile and were portrayed by the Americans as suggesting that the Iranian military was working to solve the technical problems in building a bomb.

Now, that assertion has been thrown into doubt by a surprising reversal: the conclusion, contained in the declassified summary of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear programs, that Iran’s effort to master the technology of building a nuclear weapon had halted two years before those briefings. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Intelligence community puts Cheney in restraints

U.S. says Iran ended atomic arms work
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 3, 2007

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains on hold, contradicting an assessment two years ago that Tehran was working inexorably toward building a bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to be major factor in the tense international negotiations aimed at getting Iran to halt its nuclear energy program. Concerns about Iran were raised sharply after President Bush had suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III,” and Vice President Dick Cheney promised “serious consequences” if the government in Tehran did not abandon its nuclear program.

The findings also come in the middle of a presidential campaign during which a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear program has been discussed.

The assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran’s ultimate intentions about gaining a nuclear weapon remain unclear, but that Iran’s “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This is a major defeat for Dick Cheney – perhaps even great enough to describe as a politically fatal blow. As Gareth Porter reported last month:

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program. The aim is to make the document more supportive of Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts provided by participants in the NIE process to two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers.

But Cheney lost — big time. The White House’s response — peppered with phrases like “positive news,” “we have made progress,” the “estimate offers grounds for hope,” a solution can be found “without the use of force” — amounts to what Cheney and his neocon supporters should regard as a strategic defeat. The intelligence community (no doubt with strong support from defense secretary Gates and his allies) has effectively kneecapped the vice president.

NEWS, ANALYSIS & OPINION: The unfolding complexity of the Iran narrative

Iran turns the charm on its neighbors
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, December 4, 2007

By engaging Iran and welcoming Ahmadinejad, the GCC states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – UAE) led by Saudi Arabia, which recently offered to set up a regional facility for producing nuclear fuel for Iran, are hoping to play an effective, moderating influence on Tehran, which has been rattling them with what the GCC media routinely refer to as “extreme statements by Iran”.

But, Ahmadinejad, who last week told a visiting foreign dignitary that “through love and kindness the regional problems can disappear”, is now about to resurrect the “charm offensive” that one of his predecessors, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, tried with the GCC states a decade and a half ago.

Iran’s new charm offensive is packed with substantially more weight, however, as Iran is broadly viewed in the region as a clear winner of the Iraq war, “controlling the main centers of power within the Iraqi state”, according to a Saudi commentary, not to mention the influence it wields in Lebanon and, potentially, among Shi’ite minorities in eastern Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the GCC region. [complete article]

A partner for dealing with Iran?
By Zbigniew Brzezinski, Washington Post, November 30, 2007

The effort to resolve by negotiations North Korea’s defiance of the global nonproliferation regime may yet prove successful. If so, does that experience offer a guide for coping with the challenge posed by Iran’s expanding nuclear program? Would a comprehensive dialogue on this issue between America and China be useful?

If, indeed, the prolonged negotiations with North Korea result in a constructive resolution of the dangers posed by Pyongyang’s open pursuit of nuclear weapons, it will have been largely due to decisive changes in the public postures of both the United States and China. America belatedly committed itself to, and then actively promoted, serious and prolonged multilateral negotiations among five concerned states and North Korea’s rulers. Even more important, China’s abandonment of its initial reticence eventually proved vital to convincing Pyongyang that its own political intransigence could become suicidal.

I recently visited China, where I had the opportunity to engage Chinese leaders in wide-ranging private conversations. I returned with two strong impressions regarding China’s attitude toward the Iranian problem. The first is that the magnitude of China’s internal transformation makes it vulnerable to global political and economic instability. China is especially worried about the consequences of any major eruption of violence in the Persian Gulf. This concern is palpable and justified if one considers the likely financial and political effects of a major U.S.-Iran collision. Thus China, despite its meteoric rise toward global preeminence, currently is geopolitically a status quo power. [complete article]

In Iraq, U.S. shifts its tone on Iran
By Tina Susman, Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2007

Not long ago, U.S. military officials in Iraq routinely displayed rockets, mortars and jagged chunks of metal to reporters and insisted that they were Iranian-made arms being fired at American bases. Collaboration between Tehran and Washington on stabilizing Iraq seemed doubtful at best.

In the last two months, though, there has been a shift in U.S. military and diplomatic attitudes toward Iran. Officials have backed away from sweeping accusations that the Iranian leadership is orchestrating massive smuggling of arms, agents and ammunition. Instead, they have agreed to a new round of talks with Iranian and Iraqi officials over security in Iraq. The meeting is expected to take place this month.

The U.S. also freed nine Iranian men last month, some of whom it had been holding since 2004. Iran denied U.S. accusations that many of them had been assisting anti-U.S. militias in Iraq, and had demanded their release in a series of testy exchanges with U.S. officials.

When the U.S. freed them, it did not allude to the Iranian demands. It said only that they no longer posed a threat.

Pentagon officials and analysts cite several reasons for the change, including U.S. concern that provoking Iran could set off a confrontation that military commanders are keen to avoid, and the realization that better relations with Iran would help stabilize Iraq. [complete article]

Iranian pushes nuclear talks back to square 1
By Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, December 2, 2007

In a sign that Iran has hardened its position on its nuclear program, its new nuclear negotiator said in talks in London on Friday that all proposals made in past negotiations were irrelevant and that further discussion of a curb on Iran’s uranium enrichment was unnecessary, senior officials briefed on the meeting said.

The Iranian official, Saeed Jalili, also told Javier Solana, who represented the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany in the five-hour talks, that United Nations Security Council resolutions punishing Iran for not suspending its enriched uranium activities were illegal, the officials said.

Representatives of the six countries met in Paris on Saturday afternoon to discuss further punitive Security Council measures against Iran after the final talks in London failed to produce a breakthrough. [complete article]

Iran’s reformers to U.S.: Let’s talk
By Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, November 30, 2007

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Shirin Ebadi are among several key Iranian public figures saying that only direct, unconditional talks with the US can ease spiraling tensions.

Mr. Khatami – the reformist cleric who was twice elected in landslide victories – and Ms. Ebadi – a human rights lawyer who just launched a National Peace Council – are suggesting that hard-liners in the US and Iran should no longer dictate the terms of division. One Iranian analyst says: It’s time to call the bluff on both sides – and talk.

“The solution is for both sides to resort to logic, refrain from provocative rhetoric, and put the emphasis on negotiations,” Khatami told the Monitor. [complete article]

FEATURE: The proliferation game

How the world helped Pakistan build its bomb
By Catherine Collins and Douglas Frantz, TomDispatch, November 27, 2007

Globalization, what a concept. You can get a burger prepared your way practically anywhere in the world. The Nike Swoosh appears at elite athletic venues across the United States and on the skinny frames of t-shirted children playing in the streets of Calcutta. For those interested in buying an American automobile — a word of warning — it is not so unusual to find more “American content” in a Japanese car than one built by Detroit’s Big Three.

So don’t kid yourself about the Pakistani bomb. From burgers to bombs, globalization has had an impact. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal — as many as 120 weapons — is no more Pakistani than your television set is Japanese. Or is that American? It was a concept developed in one country and, for the most part, built in another. Its creation was an example of globalization before the term was even coined.

So where to begin? Some argue that Pakistan started down the nuclear road under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace program, billed as a humanitarian gesture aimed at sharing the peaceful potential of atomic energy with the world. But Atoms for Peace was a misnomer — a plan to divert growing domestic and international concern over radioactive fallout from America’s nuclear tests. It would prove to be a White House public relations campaign to dwarf all others.

In fact, Atoms for Peace educated thousands of scientists from around the world in nuclear science and then dispatched them home, where many later pursued secret weapons programs. [complete article]

NEWS, ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: U.S. Special Forces inside Iran?

U.S. wages covert war on Iraq-Iran border
By Nelson Rand, Asia Times, November 28, 2007

While the PKK has been in the international spotlight in recent weeks, with Turkey mounting cross-border raids and threatening to launch an invasion of Iraq, not so much attention has been given to the Iranian offshoot, the PJAK. The group has been waging an insurgency against Tehran since 2004, which recently has escalated. A guerrilla leader told the New York Times last month that PJAK fighters had killed at least 150 Iranian soldiers and officials in Iran since August.

Iran accuses Washington of backing the group, and while the US denies this, local and foreign intelligence sources say the accusation is most likely true. According to a former US Special Forces (SF) commando currently based in Iraq who spoke on condition of anonymity, Special Forces troops are currently operating inside Iran, working with insurgent forces like the PJAK. “That’s what the SF does,” he said. “They train and build up indigenous anti-government forces.”

“The primary function of the Special Forces is to stand up guerrilla forces or counter-guerrilla forces,” said another former SF soldier, retired Major Mark Smith. While he was not specifically aware of SF teams training the PJAK, he said it would not be surprising if they were. And “they would be training in an obscure border area or in a location denied to anyone not directly involved”, he said.

He added that SF teams in Iran would be conducting strategic reconnaissance of possible nuclear and biological weapons sites, army headquarters, and significant individuals. “If they’re not doing these things in Iran, then they are remiss in their duties at the upper echelons of their command,” he said. [complete article]

Petraeus sought to prevent release of Iranians
By Gareth Porter, Antiwar, November 27, 2007

Recent statements by the U.S. military that Iran had pledged to stop supplying weapons to Shi’ite militias in Iraq and that this alleged flow of arms may have stopped in August were part of a behind-the-scenes struggle over whether the George W. Bush administration should make a gesture to Iran by releasing five Iranian prisoners held since January.

When U.S. military experts found evidence that recently discovered weapons caches probably dated back to early 2007, it strengthened the hand of those in the administration arguing for the release and weakened the position of Vice President Dick Cheney and Gen. David Petraeus, who sought to scuttle any release by insisting that there was no evidence that Iran had changed its alleged policy of destabilizing Iraq. [complete article]

Annapolis and Iran
By Gary Sick, Rootless Cosmopolitan, November 26, 2007

Is there room in these last months of a lame duck presidency to craft a modest opening to Iran, while maintaining a stout anti-Iranian coalition? Well, if we are to heed the cries of alarm emanating from the neo-conservatives as they watch their grandiose plans to add a third front to the War on Terror crumple into the dustbin of history, perhaps there really is something going on here.

Nevertheless, since this is a policy that dare not speak its name, even if these titillating signals are true, no turning point will be announced in blaring trumpets, and the message about Iran will be cloaked in vitriol and bile to prevent creating undue alarm among American conservatives and among the Arabs who are only now signing on to a long-term strategy to counter the “Iranian threat” but who also deeply fear the possibility of a sudden deal between the United States and Iran. (They can’t forget the shah and Iran-contra.)

The two individuals most likely to view these developments with quiet satisfaction are James Baker and Lee Hamilton, whose original policy prescriptions in the Iraq Study Group all seem to be coming true as George W. Bush approaches the precipice of his presidency. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The fundamental problem in trying to decipher the intention behind the administration’s mixed messages on Iran is that this presumes that the administration has an intention. Just as likely, these mixed messages are the expression of multiple intentions as conflicting factions inside the administration jostle for the upper hand, each acutely aware that a president who does not know his own mind, can be swayed.

Iranians say sanctions hurt them, not government
By Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, November 27, 2007

Banks HSBC, Credit Suisse and UBS cut business ties with Iran last year followed by Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and BNP Paribas in 2007.

“Almost every month we get notes from European banks about ceasing their cooperation with Iran,” said an employee of an Iranian bank, who asked not to be identified.

A doctor, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “We cannot open Letters of Credit in banks. Importing necessary material for medicines to treat patients who suffer cancer is becoming more difficult every day.”

Personal stories are common of how the financial sanctions are affecting those mostly well-off people who have foreign bank accounts or earn income from abroad.

Some say they will leave Iran if the United Nations imposes tougher sanctions; others are forced to use unofficial channels to get their cash.

Maryam Sharifa is one of many Iranians whose dollar account with a Western bank was closed in the past few months. Like many Iranians who lived abroad, she had kept her account open since returning to Iran.

“I had this account for 13 years in France. Do I look like a terrorist? Should I be punished just for being an Iranian?” said the 39-year-old mother of two. “I had to bring all that money with me here and buy a small apartment in Tehran.” [complete article]

Iran’s secret weapon: The Pope
By Jeff Israely, Time, November 26, 2007

The diplomatic chess game around Iran’s nuclear program includes an unlikely bishop. According to several well-placed Rome sources, Iranian officials are quietly laying the groundwork necessary to turn to Pope Benedict XVI and top Vatican diplomats for mediation if the showdown with the United States should escalate toward a military intervention. The 80-year-old Pope has thus far steered clear of any strong public comments about either Iran’s failure to fully comply with U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors or the drumbeat of war coming from some corners in Washington. But Iran, which has had diplomatic relations with the Holy See for 53 years, may be trying to line up Benedict as an ace in the hole for staving off a potential attack in the coming months. “The Vatican seems to be part of their strategy,” a senior Western diplomat in Rome said of the Iranian leadership. “They’ll have an idea of when the 11th hour is coming. And they know an intervention of the Vatican is the most open and amenable route to Western public opinion. It could buy them time.” [complete article]