Category Archives: Iran

With Iran deal sealed, don’t expect Israel to send out the air force

In Haaretz, Amos Harel writes: The Israeli government has lost this battle, as it believed it would once Hassan Rohani was elected Iranian president in June. It didn’t convince the superpowers to stand firm and make the Iranians crawl toward a more demanding agreement.

Despite the criticism expected to follow, it seems Israel will have to swallow hard and accept the deal, as problematic as it is. Later on it will focus on the sanctions front. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may resume putting pressure on his friends in the U.S. Congress to try to block the administration and tighten the sanctions that are still in Congress’ purview.

Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence will try to reveal Iranian deception that would let Netanyahu keep telling the world “I told you so.” Israel has already warned that Iran could go the way of North Korea and reach the bomb despite the global diplomatic effort. But an Israeli military option isn’t in play, at least not at this stage. As long as there is such sweeping international support for the interim agreement, bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would be political suicide.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports: Israeli stock prices rose to another record high on Sunday, ignoring local politicians’ comments that a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear programme was a mistake.

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How Iran and world powers finally got to yes on a nuclear deal

Barbara Slavin reports: Bargaining into the early hours of Sunday morning in Geneva, the representatives of the world’s major powers and Iran reached a milestone on what remains a long road to resolving the decade-old nuclear crisis, and potentially also marking a turning point in three decades of hostility between Tehran and Washington.

Under the deal hammered out between Iran and the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, China and Russia, Tehran agreed to what President Barack Obama called “substantial limitations” on its nuclear program in return for “modest relief” of sanctions that have harshly impacted the Iranian economy. The agreement covers a six-month period, during which the parties hope to establish momentum for a more far-reaching deal.

While skeptics on all sides are expected to try and pick apart the agreement, few can doubt its historical significance. Had the parties failed again this weekend – only two weeks after Secretary of State John Kerry and his counterparts last rushed to Geneva but came up short – it would have been extremely difficult to maintain the momentum of negotiations in the face of mounting pressure from more hawkish voices on all sides. President Obama’s efforts to restrain Congress from an escalation of U.S. sanctions in order to give diplomacy a chance would have been dealt a severe blow. While some in Congress will almost certainly still try to pass further sanctions, the deal reached in Geneva will have helped the White House make its case.

Indeed, Obama, speaking from the Oval Office late Saturday in Washington, said “now is not the time to move forward on new sanctions” and the agreement promises no new nuclear-related sanctions for six months if Iran abides by its commitments. [Continue reading…]

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Iran, six world powers clinch breakthrough nuclear deal

The New York Times reports: The foreign policy chief of the European Union and Iranian officials announced a landmark accord Sunday morning that would temporarily freeze Tehran’s nuclear program and lay the foundation for a more sweeping accord.

After marathon talks that finally ended early Sunday morning, the United States and five other world powers reached an agreement with Iran to halt much of Iran’s nuclear program, and some elements would even be rolled back. It was the first time in nearly a decade, American officials said, that steps were taken to halt much of Iran’s nuclear program and roll some elements of it back.

The freeze would last six months, with the aim of giving international negotiators time to pursue the far more challenging task of drafting a comprehensive accord that would ratchet back much of Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it could be used only for peaceful purposes.

“We have reached agreement,” Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s chief foreign policy official, posted on Twitter on Sunday morning.

According to the accord, Iran would agree to stop enriching uranium beyond 5 percent. To make good on that pledge, Iran would dismantle the links between networks of centrifuges.

All of Iran’s stockpile of uranium that has been enriched to 20 percent, a short hop to weapons-grade fuel, would be diluted or converted into oxide so that it could not be readily used for military purposes.

No new centrifuges, neither old models nor newer more efficient ones, could be installed. Centrifuges that have been installed but which are not currently operating — Iran has more than 8,000 such centrifuges — could not be started up. No new enrichment facilities could be established. [Continue reading…]

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As Syrian chemical attack loomed, missteps doomed civilians

The Wall Street Journal reports: As Syrian troops battled rebel forces in the Damascus suburbs Aug. 18, U.S. eavesdropping equipment began picking up ominous signals.

A special Syrian unit that handles chemical weapons was ordered closer to the front lines, officials briefed on the intelligence say, and started mixing poisons. For two days, warning signs mounted until coded messages went out for the elite team to bring in the “big ones” and put on gas masks.

U.S. intelligence agencies didn’t translate the intercepts into English right away, so White House officials didn’t know what the Syrian regime was planning until the assault began. Just before 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 21, the first salvo of poison-filled rockets streaked through the clear night sky and crashed into rebel strongholds.

Sarin gas, which kills almost instantly by attacking the nervous system, spread across sleeping farms. Pushed down by falling temperatures, the poison settled in low-lying areas and penetrated homes.

Men, women and children began coughing and gagging, with little more than wet handkerchiefs and T-shirts to hold over their mouths. Neighborhood doctors quickly ran out of antitoxins, and, in a desperate effort to wash away the poison, flooded clinic floors and dragged unconscious victims through the water. More than 1,400 people died, according to U.S. estimates, making it the worst chemical-weapons strike in a quarter century.

A final report is due soon from the United Nations. The Wall Street Journal has pieced together a reconstruction of that fateful day from battlefield reports and dozens of interviews with eyewitnesses, rebels, medics, activists and Western intelligence officials. It reveals both the horror of the attack and the months of miscalculations by the Syrian regime, opposition groups and U.S. government that left them all unprepared for what happened.

U.S. and Israeli communications intercepts reveal chaos inside the Syrian regime that night. When the reports of mass casualties filtered back from the field, according to the officials briefed on the intelligence, panicked Syrian commanders shot messages to the front line: Stop using the chemicals!

Calls came in to the presidential palace from Syrian allies Russia and Iran, as well as from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group whose fighters were inadvertently caught up in the gassing, according to previously undisclosed intelligence gathered by U.S., European and Middle Eastern spy agencies. The callers told the Syrians that the attack was a blunder that could have profound international repercussions, U.S. officials say.

The Obama administration had been closely monitoring Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile since the conflict began in 2011, and had watched the regime carry out about a dozen small-scale chemical attacks before the big one, U.S. officials say. Even if they had translated the intercepts before the Aug. 21 strike, these officials say, they likely wouldn’t have acted because there were no indications it would be out of the ordinary.

Top policy makers had little appetite for getting more deeply involved in the conflict, and questions loomed large about the legality of providing support to the rebels and the best strategy for managing the chemical-weapons threat, these officials say. Rebel leaders and their allies in the U.S. government say the White House failed to act on requests for gas masks, antidote injectors and other protective gear until it was too late.

All told, the events of Aug. 21 changed the Middle East and U.S. policy in ways likely to reverberate for years. It prompted the U.S. to consider and then pull back from military action. The eventual deal to avert a strike, in which Syria agreed to destroy its chemical-weapons stockpiles, elevated Russia, for now, to a leadership position in the region.

President Bashar al-Assad has tightened his hold on power. His regime has denied using chemical weapons, blaming the attacks on the rebels. In exchange for giving up his chemical arsenal, he avoided an American military intervention and likely will get even more support from Russia and Iran. Mr. Assad has pressed ahead with his offensive using conventional arms. U.S. intercepts show a Russian official later boasting to a Syrian counterpart about how easy it had been to get the U.S. to back off strike plans, officials briefed on the intelligence say.

Syrian opposition leaders made their first formal appeal to the U.S. for protection from chemical weapons back in June 2012. At a meeting in Washington, opposition representatives handed administration officials a request for various nonlethal supplies, including 2,500 gas masks, say people who attended.

Samantha Power, then the White House’s top human-rights official and now U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was receptive, these people say. But other White House advisers, they say, questioned whether the masks would make much of a difference. Some worried that if Islamic extremists in the opposition got their hands on them they might try to seize poison gas from the regime. Administrative lawyers worried about potentially running afoul of domestic and international law.

“It was never ‘no.'” says one opposition representative about what would become a series of requests. “But it would never happen.”

A senior administration official says, “Decisions that were made on assistance to the opposition were made in consultation with them as to what their priorities were.”

That July, American and Israeli spy agencies for the first time intercepted fragmentary intelligence about regime forces using chemical weapons on a small scale. The evidence wasn’t conclusive—there were no physical traces—but some top military officials say they found it persuasive and wanted to make it clear right away to Syria the U.S. wouldn’t tolerate even small attacks.

Then-White House Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough and other officials told their agency counterparts that the top-secret information shouldn’t be made public, but congressional committees were briefed, according to officials. Mr. McDonough also decided to restrict the distribution of such “raw” intelligence inside the government because of its sensitivity, these people say. White House officials didn’t want to set off a chain reaction that would restrict their ability to decide how active a role to play, senior U.S. officials say.

The following month, on Aug. 20, President Barack Obama said the regime would cross the U.S.’s “red line” if it started moving or using “a whole bunch of chemical weapons.”

Last December, the U.S. intercepted an unusually complete communication in which Syrian officials spoke about a potentially larger-scale chemical attack involving aircraft. The White House sent private messages to the Russian government, which in turn asked Iran to lean on the Syrians to scrap the plan, according to current and former U.S. officials involved in the matter. Iran did just that, the officials say. A spokesperson for Iran’s U.N. mission said Iran had made it clear it opposed the use of chemical weapons. [Continue reading…]

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Saudi prince frets about ‘this perception that America is going down.’

The Wall Street Journal reports: ‘The U.S. has to have a foreign policy. Well-defined, well-structured. You don’t have it right now, unfortunately. It’s just complete chaos. Confusion. No policy. I mean, we feel it. We sense it, you know.”

Members of the Saudi royal family have voiced their displeasure with the Obama administration’s approach to the Middle East through private channels and recently in public as well. None of them puts it quite like HRH Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.

One of some three-dozen living grandsons of the first Saudi King Abdulaziz, this prince is a prominent but atypical royal. His investment company made him the Arab world’s richest businessman. He strikes a modern image for a Saudi, employing female aides and jet-setting on a private Boeing. He’s at ease with Western media.

Passing through New York earlier this week, Mr. Alwaleed, who is 58, sits down with the Journal editorial board between a couple of television appearances. He wears a blue suit, shirt and tie. These days, his bouffant widow’s peak has more salt than pepper. The prince holds no important government post in Saudi Arabia, but it’s hard to shake the impression that here is the uncensored id of the reserved House of Saud.

“America is shooting itself in the foot,” he says. “Saudi Arabia and me, myself, we love the United States. But what’s happening right now here, from Republicans and Democrats, is just not helping the image of the United States and is making this perception that America is going down a reality.” [Continue reading…]

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Gaps narrowing as Iran nuclear talks continue

Laura Rozen reports: A second day of high level of nuclear talks broke for the night here Thursday with Iranian and western negotiators saying progress was being being made in narrowing gaps, but four or five issues still remain to be resolved and need more time. Talks are set to continue here Friday and are very likely to extend into the weekend.

A day “of intense, substantial and detailed negotiations on Iran nuclear programme, conducted in good atmosphere,” Michael Mann, spokesperson for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said Thursday. “Talks continue tomorrow.”

There are fewer and fewer gaps between the two sides, “the process is efficient, we have a very deep treatment” of the issues, a senior European diplomat, speaking not for attribution, said Thursday of the days’ discussions.

“Some big obstacles [to an accord] have been removed, but not all of them,” the European diplomat said. There are still about four to five elements on the table for negotiation, he said, most of them pertaining to the first phase of the agreement, which is intended to halt the expansion of Iran’s nuclear program over the course of six months while a comprehensive agreement is negotiated.

There is “no rupture with the Iranians, but it doesn’t mean agreement tomorrow,” the European diplomat said. “There is a feeling something could happen tomorrow, or after tomorrow,” but there’s no guarantee, he said. If an accord is reached over the next day, P5+1 foreign ministers could possibly come on Saturday. [Continue reading…]

This morning, Reuters reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is already on his way to Geneva.

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Friedman on the Israel lobby’s effort to block a deal with Iran

Thomas Friedman writes: Never have I seen Israel and America’s core Arab allies working more in concert to stymie a major foreign policy initiative of a sitting U.S. president, and never have I seen more lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.

That said, I don’t mind Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu of Israel and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia going ballistic — in stereo — over this proposed deal. It gives Kerry more leverage. Kerry can tell the Iranians: “Look, our friends are craaaaaazzzy. And one of them has a big air force. You better sign quick.”

No, I don’t begrudge Israel and the Arabs their skepticism, but we still should not let them stop a deal. If you’re not skeptical about Iran, you’re not paying attention. Iran has lied and cheated its way to the precipice of building a bomb, and without tough economic sanctions — sanctions that President Obama engineered but which Netanyahu and the Arab states played a key role in driving — Iran would not be at the negotiating table.

It’s good to see Friedman again acknowledging the influence of the Israel lobby and not surprising that like so many others he repeats the trope that sanctions forced Iran to negotiate, but as Hossein Mousavian points out, the actual effect of sanctions has been the opposite of their intended effect:

Contrary to the claims of some US lawmakers and Israeli officials, sanctions only caused a dramatic rise in nuclear capability, as Tehran sought to show it would not respond to pressure. Before, Iran was enriching uranium to below 5 per cent at one site with 3,000 centrifuges and possessed a minute stockpile of enriched uranium. Today, it is enriching to 20 per cent at two sites with 19,000 centrifuges. It has a stockpile of 8,000kg of enriched uranium and more sophisticated centrifuges.

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Poll: Majority of Americans support nuke deal with Iran

Time: As nuclear negotiations with Iran resume in Geneva today, a new poll by the Washington Post and ABC News finds the majority of Americans would support an agreement between major world powers and Iran that would scale back its nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions.

64 percent of the 1,006 adults polled by Abt-SRBI between Nov. 14-17 said they would support an agreement between Iran and the six major world powers—meeting in Geneva today — that would ease some of the economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic in return for restrictions on its ability to produce nuclear weapons. 30 percent of the respondents said they would oppose the agreement.

But when asked how assured they were that the agreement would actually prevent Iran from developing the weapons, only 36 percent were either somewhat or very confident, while 61 percent were more pessimistic.

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Even Israel would benefit from a nuclear weapons-free Middle East

Scott McConnell writes: Faced with a contest between an arms-control intellectual—soberly pointing that a deal reducing Iran’s enrichment capacity and placing its remaining centrifuges under international inspection will do far more to ensure that Iran doesn’t build a nuclear weapon than continued sanctions and no deal at all—and a Nentayahuite screaming about Hitler and Munich and making racist comments about Iranians, the most attentive and educated slice of the population will favor diplomacy. But I suspect that more flamboyant arguments register more deeply with more of the American population. Obama risks having diplomats left high and dry without the backing of mass public opinion.

In fact, more emotive arguments to defend an Iran deal are available and shouldn’t be left in the closet. Take the obvious one. It is political malpractice that the administration’s allies, including those in Congress, fail to question the role Israel’s nuclear arsenal has played in the development of the current crisis. What role do Israel’s nukes play in pushing other Middle East states to take massive risks to develop their own nuclear technology? M.J. Rosenberg recently reminded readers of John F. Kennedy’s long and ultimately futile effort to monitor Israel’s nuclear program, constructed with blatant deception and dishonesty by French engineers at Dimona. Kennedy and the diplomats of the era pointed out again and again that by introducing nukes into the region, Israel risked setting off a cascade of nuclear proliferation. JFK was, of course, correct. If you speak to average Americans, there is an implicit assumption that the golden rule is a fair guide to thought and action, and there is something rather odd about Israel, stuffed to to gills with nuclear rockets and submarines, insisting that no one else can ever have them. But no one on Capitol Hill raises this point. What do they fear would happen to them?

(It’s a rhetorical question; I know they would face AIPAC-generated opposition. But I’m not sure AIPAC would know what to do if 40 members of Congress suggested exploring a nuclear free Mideast).

Farah Stockman writes: When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demands that Iran’s plutonium reactor at Arak be completely dismantled because it has “no peaceful purpose,” he is speaking from experience. Israel had built a similar plant, and engaged in similar deception, at Dimona.

That’s what spooks Israeli policymakers: Iran’s nuclear playbook feels all too familiar.

“When Israel looks at Iran, they see Iran as if Iran is like Israel 50 years ago,” said Avner Cohen, professor at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and author of “Israel and the Bomb” and “The Worst Kept Secret.”

If you look at things that way, the Iranian bomb feels downright inevitable.

But Iran isn’t Israel, Cohen points out. There are plenty of reasons the Iranian program could turn out differently.

Israel had a much deeper reason to seek the bomb. Surrounded by hostile neighbors bent on its destruction, Israel felt that nuclear weapons were the key to the Jewish state’s very survival. Iran faces no such existential threat.

And, unlike Israel, Iran signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Iran is therefore subject to far stricter inspections than Israel ever allowed at Dimona. If Iran does decide to try to start producing weapons-grade fuel, the world is likely to discover it in time to stop it.

And while Johnson’s administration pressed Israel to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, he looked the other way when Israel refused. Drawing attention to Israel’s refusal would have doomed the treaty. Arab countries would have jumped ship. At the end of the day, Americans could live with an Israeli bomb, as long as Israelis didn’t advertise it by testing it. Iran can’t expect the same deal.

“I think Iranians know the world is not going to allow them” to have a nuclear weapon, Cohen said.

Instead, he said, Iran appears to be trying to keep its nuclear options open, inching as close to the ingredients for a bomb as the Nonproliferation Treaty allows, while refraining from actually building one. [Continue reading…]

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Iranian human rights activists blast Congress’s sanctions push

Ali Gharib writes: Many Iran hawks in Washington claim the mantle of human rights advocacy in their push for ever harsher measures against the Islamic Republic, up to and sometimes including the use of military force against Iran’s nuclear facilities. But there’s a disconnect: While D.C.’s Iran hawks never relent in their push for more sanctions, human rights activists working inside and outside Iran feel that sanctions are impinging on their work. That’s the backdrop for the push by the Obama administration to get Congress to hold off on more sanctions. But Members of Congress, especially from the Republican right, appear poised to press on in their quest to further cripple the Iranian economy.

“Adding more sanctions at this stage in the negotiations, when there is a lot of hope about the fate of nuclear talks with Iran, is tantamount to sabotage,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the head of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, in a statement released by the group today. “The idea of adding more sanctions at this crucial point in the negotiations disappoints millions of Iranians who are hopeful these talks will lead to a compromise and help lift the sanctions, and sounds like a drumbeat leading to war.”

The release singled out a statement by Sen. Mark Kirk, one of Congress’s most avid Iran hawks, to reporters: “How do you define an Iranian moderate? An Iranian who is out of bullets and out of money.” The line refers to Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani. While Iran’s elections are deeply flawed—only regime-approved candidates can run—it’s worth noting that Rouhani was not Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s choice for president. “The 18 million Iranians who defied the odds and voted for change in this year’s presidential elections might take issue with Senator Kirk’s insulting characterization,” noted Jamal Abdi, of the National Iranian American Council, a U.S.-based group that opposes new sanctions, in a press release.

Laying bare Kirk’s cynical attack on Iranian moderates requires only remembering his plea for Iran to free the Green movement leaders under house arrest; both Mir Hossien Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, while reformers, were also stalwarts of the Islamic Republic. And Kirk has made impolitic statements before: In 2011, he said, “It’s okay to take the food out of the mouths” of ordinary Iranians to punish them for the acts of their government. [Continue reading…]

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Blasts target Iranian embassy in Beirut

Reuters reports: Two explosions, at least one caused by a suicide bomber, rocked Iran’s embassy in Lebanon on Tuesday, killing at least 23 people, including an Iranian cultural attaché, and hurling bodies, cars and debris across the street.

A Lebanese-based al Qaeda-linked group known as the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for what it described as a double suicide attack on the Iranian mission in southern Beirut.

Lebanon has suffered a series of bomb attacks and clashes linked to the 2-1/2-year-old conflict in neighboring Syria.

Security camera footage showed a man in an explosives belt rushing towards the outer wall of the embassy before blowing himself up, Lebanese officials said. They said the second explosion was caused by a car bomb parked two buildings away from the compound.

In a Twitter post, Sheikh Sirajeddine Zuraiqat, the religious guide of the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, said the group had carried out the attack. “It was a double martyrdom operation by two of the Sunni heroes of Lebanon,” he wrote. [Continue reading…]

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Why Iran’s military won’t spoil détente with the U.S.

Akbar Ganji writes: It is fair to assume that any deal between Iran and the United States to freeze Iran’s nuclear program will be greeted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps with cries of “Death to America!” Hassan Rouhani was elected president earlier this year with a mandate to seek just such a deal. But he still has to reckon with the fact that Iran’s most powerful military force has traditionally been a bastion for ideological hard-liners uninterested in building closer relations with the United States.

At the same time, any hope that the Revolutionary Guards have of playing the spoiler in a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement will be undermined by the fact that the force is implacably divided against itself, between those who are dead set against closer relations with the United States and those who are likely to support a deal.

This is not to suggest that the Revolutionary Guards don’t pose a threat to détente; its most hard-line factions certainly do. And those tend to be the most vocal — or at least the most visible. On September 30, just a few days after Rouhani’s breakthrough telephone conversation with U.S. President Barack Obama, the chief of the Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, labeled the move a “tactical error,” adding that his forces would be monitoring the issue in the future so that it could issue “necessary warnings.” Two weeks later, on October 13, Jafari declared that “the people have figured out what [the reformists] are up to and will not be duped by their provocations in the interests of the enemy.” That same day, Yahya Rahim Safavi, a general in the Guards, expressed the Islamic Republic’s standard ideological line against relations with Washington when he said that the United States had proved repeatedly that it could not be trusted.

Around the same time, however, other prominent Guardsmen were offering a strikingly different message, by way of a revisionist interpretation of recent Iranian history. [Continue reading…]

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Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s Gatsby, master spy

Christopher Dickey writes: Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once famous in Washington for his cigars, parties and charm, is now Saudi Arabia’s point man, fighting Iran in Syria and denouncing the Obama administration.

When the prince was the ambassador he was the toast of Washington, and plenty of toasts there were. Bandar bin Sultan smoked fine cigars and drank finer Cognac. For almost 30 years as Saudi Arabia’s regal messenger, lobbyist, and envoy, he told amazing stories about politicians and potentates, some of which, surprisingly, were true. Washington journalists loved him. Nobody had better access to more powerful people in higher places, or came with so much money, so quietly and massively distributed, to help out his friends.

Over the years, Bandar arranged to lower global oil prices in the service of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and both the Bushes. At the behest of the CIA’s Bill Casey, and behind the back of Congress, Bandar arranged for the Saudis to bankroll anti-Communist wars in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan. He was thick with Dick Cheney, and he was so tight with the George H.W. Bush clan—the father, the mother, the sons, the daughters—that they just called him “Bandar Bush.”

Now, the prince is a spy, or, more precisely, the master spy of the Middle East. He is the point man for a vast Saudi program of covert action and conspicuous spending that helped overthrow the elected Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and is attempting to forge a new “Army of Islam” in Syria. Without understanding the man and his mission, there’s no way, truly, to understand what’s happening in the world’s most troubled region right now.

Bandar’s goal is to undermine Iranian power: strip away Tehran’s allies like Assad and Hezbollah; stop the Shiite mullahs from acquiring nuclear weapons; roll back their regional designs; and push them out of office if there’s any way to do that.

At the same time, he aims to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization that pays lip service to democracy and is fundamentally anti-monarchy.

The Bandar program makes for some interesting alliances. Never mind that there’s no peace treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel, in these parts, as they say too often, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and Bandar has become the de facto anti-Iran ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. [Continue reading…]

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Negotiating with Iran for an imperfect peace

Laura Secor writes: A week ago, negotiations in Geneva between Iran and six world powers adjourned without a deal. At issue was an interim agreement that would have frozen Iran’s nuclear program while the group worked out a broader, long-term settlement. By most accounts, the negotiations foundered over the late introduction of more stringent language about one of Iran’s facilities—a heavy-water reactor near Arak—and the removal of an explicit allowance for low-level uranium enrichment on Iranian soil. But meetings were set to resume this week, and, last Thursday, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran has not expanded its nuclear program since August, when President Hassan Rouhani took office. Just six months ago, productive talks with Iran—the kind that hold out the possibility of a historic breakthrough—were unthinkable. Now, for the first time in thirty-four years, Iran and the United States are speaking. Yet many in the West remain wary of a diplomatic solution. The nature of diplomacy, after all, is compromise, which means that an agreement with Iran will bring an end to the fantasy of total victory for either side.

Rouhani has committed himself to finding a quick resolution to the impasse, and the cumbersome, fractious machinery of the Iranian state has backed him with an unusual unity of purpose. The tone of the Iranian negotiating team is businesslike and frankly urgent. Gone are the grandiose diatribes and the repetitive talking points of the Ahmadinejad years. In their place is what the Iranian President, sounding like a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, calls “constructive engagement,” and the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sounding more like a member of a yoga collective, calls “heroic flexibility.”

Rouhani is a pragmatist who came to power, in part, on the strength of disaffection, both popular and élite, with the confrontational foreign policy of his predecessor. Surely his first priority is relief from the international sanctions, tied to the nuclear issue, on financial transactions and oil exports, which have caused hardship for the Iranian people. But it’s not difficult to imagine that, with Sunni extremism rising, particularly in Iraq and Syria, Rouhani and his team are also making long-term calculations about Iran’s strategic interests. So far, his foreign-policy agenda has not encountered the predicted hard-line obstruction in Tehran. On the contrary, during the Geneva talks the Supreme Leader tweeted, “Our #negotiators are children of the #Revolution. We strongly support those in charge of our diplomacy.”

On domestic matters, however, Rouhani’s support is less certain. He has fashioned a government of national unity at a time of profound political polarization. The President is a trusted member of the clerical élite, who also carries a mandate from reform-minded voters. They are waiting, with increasing impatience and skepticism, for him to make good on promises to relax censorship and to release more political prisoners. Meeting those demands will require Rouhani to persuade the conservative members of his coalition that liberalization will not threaten them or the system they uphold. He may hope to conclude the nuclear talks before addressing such delicate matters at home. But the longer Rouhani takes to satisfy reform-minded voters the more likely it is that his coalition will fracture. The Geneva talks look straightforward by comparison. [Continue reading…]

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Mossad working with Saudis on contingency plans for potential attack on Iran?

The Jerusalem Post reports: The Mossad is working with Saudi officials on contingency plans for a potential attack on Iran in the event that Tehran’s nuclear program is not sufficiently curbed in the deal that may be concluded between Iran and world powers in Geneva this week, The Sunday Times reported.

Both Jerusalem and Riyadh have expressed displeasure at the deal being formulated between Iran and the P5+1 group of world powers that they see as doing little to stop Tehran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon.

According to the Times, Riyadh has already given its consent for Israel to use Saudi airspace for a potential attack on Iran.

The paper quoted a diplomatic source as saying the Saudis were willing to assist an Israeli attack by cooperating on the use of drones, rescue helicopters and tanker planes.

“Once the Geneva agreement is signed, the military option will be back on the table. The Saudis are furious and are willing to give Israel all the help it needs,” the Times quoted the source as saying. [Continue reading…]

Probably the most salient detail here is that the report appeared in The Sunday Times — that alone may be sufficient reason why it can be ignored.

But just suppose an Israeli-Saudi operation was in the works, this much we can reasonably assume: its existence and every detail about it, would be guarded with the highest possible secrecy.

Netanyahu has already milked verbal threats for all they are worth. If he actually has any military cards he can play (such as one facilitated by the Saudis), he’s going to keep quiet about it. More likely though is that this “leak” is just more bluster and it’s intended to threaten the P5+1 more than Iran.

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The Democrats marching to war with Iran

James Traub writes: If you squeeze a bully’s b — sorry, fingers — really hard, and he buckles, then you keep squeezing until you bring him to his knees, right? That, in any case, is the logic which lies behind the bipartisan revolt against President Barack Obama’s diplomacy with Iran. In an op-ed in USA Today, Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, explained why he had defied the administration’s urgent request that Congress hang fire on further sanctions: “Iran is on the ropes because of its intransigent policies and our collective will…. Tougher sanctions will serve as an incentive for Iran to verifiably dismantle its nuclear weapons program.”

It’s hardly an absurd proposition. Menendez, one of the leading Democratic Iran hawks, also recently told an AIPAC meeting that when he began his drive to impose sanctions — a drive for which the White House might want to claim a little bit of credit as well — he was told that force would never bring the Iranians to the table. I’m not sure who, besides Flynt Leverett, argued against coercion, but it’s an unarguable fact that sanctions on Iran’s oil sales and financial system, imposed by the European Union as well as Congress, have forced the Iranians to take the nuclear negotiations more seriously than they have in the past, and may even have helped elect the moderate president Hassan Rouhani.

So why is the White House insisting that Menendez and his colleagues on the left and right are provoking “a march to war”? The obvious answer, furnished by Secretary of State John Kerry, among others, is that Iran would view additional sanctions imposed in the middle of the most delicate negotiations as a sign of bad faith. More to the point, a punitive response by the West would undermine the moderates on Rouhani’s team, and prove to Iranian hard-liners — including the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei — that the United States and its allies are an intransigent adversary intent on humiliating Iran and ultimately overthrowing its Islamic regime.

Obama’s critics have a riposte to this claim: new sanctions won’t kick in for another three to six months, and thus will function as an effective Sword of Damocles while talks continue. That’s a pretty risky gamble, especially because anything that prolongs the negotiations gives Iran more time to enrich uranium and reach a point of no return at which it could produce enough fuel to fill a bomb.

But that’s not the biggest problem with the squeeze-’em-till-they-drop crowd. The reason why Menendez and others really are marching on a path to war is that they are demanding an outcome which Iran manifestly will not accept: zero enrichment. As Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, puts it, “This is a strategy based upon hope that is not supported by the evidence of Iranian actions over the past decade, its past statements, or common sense.” [Continue reading…]

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Has Iran outwitted Netanyahu?

Rajan Menon writes: The much-anticipated breakthrough in the negotiations aimed at preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons has yet to materialize. But Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who believes that a wily Iran is outwitting its gullible interlocutors, isn’t breathing any easier; instead, he’s breathing fire. The statements from those involved in the talks (Iran and the P5+1) indicating that the obstacles to an interim accord are being overcome have incensed Netanyahu. And he has made his displeasure known — publicly and without pulling punches — even though the first-step agreement with Iran couldn’t be reached in the end.

As the upbeat reports streamed in last week, Netanyahu declared that a compromise with Iran would be a betrayal of Israel as well as a strategic blunder that would eventually bring grief to other states as well. He continues to insist that Israel will neither be bound by any deal, short of one that ensures denuclearization, that the P5+1 reaches with Iran nor rule out any response (read: a military strike) it deems necessary to defend its interests.

What are those Israeli interests? While Iranian leadership remains adamant about retaining an independent nuclear fuel cycle, which it regards as its right under the terms of the NPT, Israel has made it just as plain that Iran’s acquisition of that capability is unacceptable — period. That’s because the Israeli leadership is convinced that any accord that permits Iran to enrich uranium to a level needed for generating electricity, even under strict verification, enables it to gain, and pretty quickly, the capacity to dash across the nuclear threshold when it wishes to do so.

While this perspective explains Netanyahu’s scorn for the negotiations, he risks becoming isolated should the dealmakers eventually start viewing him as an obstreperous maximalist who is heedless of the risk of war. Moreover, he doesn’t have sure-fire options for dismantling Iran nuclear complex, which consists of many facilities, widely dispersed and well protected. [Continue reading…]

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