NEWS: The coming war with Iran

Bush setting America up for war with Iran
By Philip Sherwell and Tim Shipman, The Sunday Telegraph, September 16, 2007

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Back on July 13, the New York Sun reported:

President Bush is set to instruct the Treasury Department to block assets associated with Iran’s revolutionary guard corps in a new executive order declaring financial war on foreign saboteurs of the Iraqi government.

The paperwork to designate Iran’s revolutionary guard corps, or IRGC, and Quds Force is now on the president’s desk awaiting his signature, according to three administration officials who requested anonymity. The designation of the IRGC and Quds Force would mark the first time the finance related executive order process, reserved usually for foreign terrorist organizations, would be used against a branch of a foreign military.

On August 15, a month later, the Washington Post reported:

The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a “specially designated global terrorist,” according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

Today, in an article that refers to the “intensifying the debate over the Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the New York Times reports:

While some White House officials and some members of the vice president’s staff have been pushing to blacklist the entire Revolutionary Guard, administration officials said, officials at the State and Treasury Departments have been pushing a narrower approach that would list only the Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force, or perhaps, only companies and organizations with financial ties to that group.

If either the Quds Force or the entire Revolutionary Guard fits the legal criteria for a “specially designated global terrorist,” why would President Bush have waited two months to sign the order? What the debate and the delay makes clear is that if and when this designation is made it will be done so for purely political reasons. Indeed, if the Iranians were guilty of everything about which they are being accused, the question would not be about when it becomes expedient to apply the force of the US Treasury Department; it would be how the United States is going to respond to acts of war.

We’ve been here before. Whenever this administration is bobbing and diving in the process of shaping its legal arguments, the political thrust is already evident. George Bush’s gut is telling him, it’s time to hit Iran. The legal, strategic, political, and purely rational arguments are being constructed after the fact.

And where in this is it possible to imagine that lessons learned from Iraq are being applied?

Inside Cheney’s brain, I imagine it runs something like this: Shock-and-awe works — it brought down Saddam; reconstruction doesn’t. So long as we don’t send in the army, the air force and the navy can take care of Iran.

And now that the British poodle is no longer available to provide Bush with some sycophantic “international support,” a French poodle has happily taken his place. The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner today said, “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war.”

EDITORIAL: From yellow cake to cement

From yellow cake to cement
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 15, 2007

The Israeli government has learned that Bashar Al-Assad recently bought significant quantities of cement from North Korea.”

OK. Maybe this line won’t make it into the president’s next State of the Union speech, but we should be in no doubt that once again the neocons are on the loose and in response the Washington Post and New York Times have dutifully put on their dunce caps. Continue reading →

NEWS AND ANALYSIS: Who killed Abdul Sattar Abu Risha?

Super-sheikh murdered by tribal rivals?
By Noah Shachtman, Danger Room, September 14, 2007

An expert on Anbar’s tribal politics offers DANGER ROOM a different view. Tribal rivals, he says, are the most likely culprits.

Think in tribal terms. Sheikh Sattar met with the U.S. President. This reinforced the newly-won position of the Albu Risha. A number of competitor tribes could not afford for the Risha to cement and consolidate its power. The new status quo and the increased power of the Risha had to be challenged. The meeting with the President assisted the Risha and its allies in consolidating their newly gained stature. It is a matter of credibility and legitimacy — a very important component of tribal leadership, whether in terms of an individual Sheikh’s position or the tribes overall position within the tribal system, such as the Dulaymi Confederation. Timing is everything. Assassinating Sattar now was necessary or it would be even harder to dislodge the Risha later. [complete article]

Qaeda group claims killing of Iraqi Sunni leader
Reuters, September 14, 2007

An Al Qaeda-led group said on Friday it was responsible for the killing of Iraqi tribal leader Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, according to an Internet posting on Friday.

The self-styled Islamic State in Iraq called the killing of Abu Risha a “heroic operation.” Its statement could not be authenticated, but it was posted on a main Islamist Web site. [complete article]

NEWS: Iraqi oil law in jeopardy

Compromise on oil law in Iraq seems to be collapsing
By James Glanz, New York Times, September 13, 2007

A carefully constructed compromise on a draft law governing Iraq’s rich oil fields, agreed to in February after months of arduous talks among Iraqi political groups, appears to have collapsed. The apparent breakdown comes just as Congress and the White House are struggling to find evidence that there is progress toward reconciliation and a functioning government here.

Senior Iraqi negotiators met in Baghdad on Wednesday in an attempt to salvage the original compromise, two participants said. But the meeting came against the backdrop of a public series of increasingly strident disagreements over the draft law that had broken out in recent days between Hussain al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, and officials of the provincial government in the Kurdish north, where some of the nation’s largest fields are located.

Mr. Shahristani, a senior member of the Arab Shiite coalition that controls the federal government, negotiated the compromise with leaders of the Kurdish and Arab Sunni parties. But since then, the Kurds have pressed forward with a regional version of the law that Mr. Shahristani says is illegal. Many of the Sunnis who supported the original deal have also pulled out in recent months. [complete article]

OPINION: Deceptive or delusional?

Bush’s appalling Iraq speech
By Fred Kaplan, Slate, September 13, 2007

President Bush’s TV address tonight was the worst speech he’s ever given on the war in Iraq, and that’s saying a lot. Every premise, every proposal, nearly every substantive point was sheer fiction. The only question is whether he was being deceptive or delusional.

The biggest fiction was that because of the “success” of the surge, we can reduce U.S. troop levels in Iraq from 20 combat brigades to 15 by next July. Gen. David Petraeus has recommended this step, and President George W. Bush will order it so. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — President Bush’s basic problem as he addressed the nation last night was that his position has become untenable: he is a president who needs a front man. If General Patraeus could have given a presidential address, Bush seemed like he would happily have handed over the Oval Office.

“The war of good and evil” — phrasing that Bush would in the past have eagerly claimed as his own — this time came instead from an email from the parents of a dead soldier, Army Specialist Brandon Stout of Michigan. Then, in the ultimate act of disownership, Bush said, “now it falls to us to finish the work they have begun.”

Sorry, Mr. President, it wasn’t Americans like Brandon Stout who started this war — they simply blindly followed your lead.

Three and a half years later, faced with the consequences of their casual assent to war, many — perhaps even most Americans — would now support the idea that the president and this administration’s top officials “have to be held accountable.”

That demand also comes from elsewhere — this time from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Today he went on to say, “I have a firm belief that one day this current US president and the American officials will be tried in a fair international court for the atrocities committed in Iraq.”

Washington’s reaction would no doubt be, of course that’s what America’s nemesis would say. Yet as all the neocons and now the president himself each energetically pursue their own personal exit strategy for getting out of responsibility for Iraq, the judgment day they clearly fear is much closer than the hereafter. It comes in the ignominious fall that the mighty will always struggle to evade. Eventually, though, executives lose their privilege.

ANALYSIS: Why the Sunnis have turned against al Qaeda

Sunni world
By Marc Lynch, The American Prospect, September 13, 2007

During his visit to Iraq last week, President Bush carved out an hour to sit down with Shaykh Abd al-Sattar Abu Risha, the controversial head of the Anbar Salvation Council who had become a symbol of America’s Anbar strategy. The pictures from that photo-op were likely the Shaykh’s death warrant: Abu Risha was assassinated today, even as Bush prepared to use the Anbar strategy’s “success” to justify our continued involvement in Iraq.

David Petraeus was quick to blame al-Qaeda for the stunning murder, a leap to judgment emblematic of all which is wrong with America’s current views of the Sunnis of Iraq. In reality there are a plethora of likely suspects, reflecting the reality of an intensely factionalized and divided community which little resembles the picture offered by the administration’s defenders. Leaders of other tribes deeply resented Abu Risha’s prominence. Leaders of the major insurgency factions had for weeks been warning against allowing people such as Abu Risha to illegitimately reap the fruits of their jihad against the occupation. The brazen murder of America’s closest Sunni ally in Iraq was as predictable as it was shocking, and carries a powerful message to both Iraqis and Americans about the real prospects for the long-term success of the American project. [complete article]

See also, Abu Risha’s place in history (Badger) and Iraqi insurgents kill key U.S. ally (BBC News).

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Paul Woodward – 7.20 AM Eastern, September 15, 2007

EDITORIAL: As Israel bombs Syria, the United States prepares to attack Iran

As Israel bombs Syria, the United States prepares to attack Iran
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, September 12, 2007

With contradictory statements coming from unnamed Bush administration officials, there continues to be speculation around the purpose and significance of Israel’s incursion into Syrian airspace last week. The New York Times reports that:

One Bush administration official said Israel had recently carried out reconnaissance flights over Syria, taking pictures of possible nuclear installations that Israeli officials believed might have been supplied with material from North Korea. The administration official said Israeli officials believed that North Korea might be unloading some of its nuclear material on Syria.

While Associated Press says that:

Israeli warplanes targeted weapons destined for Hezbollah in a strike last week in northeastern Syria, a U.S. government official said Wednesday, even as Syria and Israel remained silent on the incident. […] U.S. officials have declined to comment on whether the suspected weapons targeted might have originated in North Korea, whether the aircraft passed over Turkey on their way into or out of Syria or whether Israel had used weapons from the United States in the airstrike.

Given that North Korea has just opened up its nuclear facilities to American inspectors and it recently entered into a bilateral agreement with the U.S. saying it will disable its nuclear facilities by the end of this year, the North Korean angle to the Syrian story looks to me like a smokescreen.

In World Politics Review, Frida Ghitis points out that:

Israel is undoubtedly developing contingency plans in case it decides it must stop Iran’s nuclear program. If it decides to bomb Iran’s nuclear installations, a possible flight route could take it over the Syria-Turkey border, along Northern Iraq’s friendly Kurdish region, and into Iran. Flying safely over Syria would be key to the success of the mission against Iran.

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that Israel will not need to follow through with such plans. Fox News reports that:

Political and military officers, as well as weapons of mass destruction specialists at the State Department, are now advising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the diplomatic approach [to Iran] favored by [Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas] Burns has failed and the administration must actively prepare for military intervention of some kind. Among those advising Rice along these lines are John Rood, the assistant secretary for the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation; and a number of Mideast experts, including Ambassador James Jeffrey, deputy White House national security adviser under Stephen Hadley and formerly the principal deputy assistant secretary for Near Eastern affairs.

Consequently, according to a well-placed Bush administration source, “everyone in town” is now participating in a broad discussion about the costs and benefits of military action against Iran, with the likely timeframe for any such course of action being over the next eight to 10 months, after the presidential primaries have probably been decided, but well before the November 2008 elections.

The discussions are now focused on two basic options: less invasive scenarios under which the U.S. might blockade Iranian imports of gasoline or exports of oil, actions generally thought to exact too high a cost on the Iranian people but not enough on the regime in Tehran; and full-scale aerial bombardment.

On the latter course, active consideration is being given as to how long it would take to degrade Iranian air defenses before American air superiority could be established and U.S. fighter jets could then begin a systematic attack on Iran’s known nuclear targets.

Most relevant parties have concluded such a comprehensive attack plan would require at least a week of sustained bombing runs, and would at best set the Iranian nuclear program back a number of years — but not destroy it forever. Other considerations include the likelihood of Iranian reprisals against Tel Aviv and other Israeli population centers; and the effects on American troops in Iraq. There, officials have concluded that the Iranians are unlikely to do much more damage than they already have been able to inflict through their supply of explosives and training of insurgents in Iraq.

That is a mind-boggling assertion. Do these officials regard IEDs to be as powerful as Iranian missiles or that the latter are no more dangerous than an IED? The Iranians themselves have been quite blunt in their warnings:

[Former head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,] General Rahim Yahya Safavi, Jaafari’s predecessor and now special military advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had warned last week that the United States did not appreciate how at risk its troops were.

“It can not evaluate the vulnerability of its 200,000 troops in the region since we have accurately identified all of their camps,” said Safavi.

It’s hard not to believe that at the beginning of a war with Iran, the United States might lose more troops than it has over the course of four and a half years in Iraq.

But if anyone thinks that General Petraeus seems like far too prudent a commander to allow his forces to become so vulnerable, his comments in an interview given to The Independent on Monday offer no reassurance:

General Petraeus strongly implied that it would soon be necessary to obtain authorisation to take action against Iran within its own borders, rather than just inside Iraq. “There is a pretty hard look ongoing at that particular situation” he said.

OPINION: The next war in Iraq

The next war in Iraq
By Joe Klein, Time, August 23, 2007

Prime Minister Maliki greeted by President AhmadinejadIt has been clear for months that Nouri al-Maliki’s National Unity government is, as a senior U.S. official said, “none of the above.” Senator Carl Levin called for it to be replaced after his and Senator John Warner’s mid-August Iraq jaunt. And Ambassador Ryan Crocker told me, “The fall of the Maliki government, when it happens, might be a good thing.” But replace it with what? The consensus in the U.S. intelligence community is that there’s going to be lots of bloodshed, including fighting among the Shi’ites, before a credible Iraqi government emerges. It also seems that the U.S. attempt to build an Iraqi army and police force has been a failure. Some units are pretty good, but most are unreliable, laced with members of various Shi’ite militias. This was clear from my conversations with U.S. combat officers on the ground in Baqubah, Baghdad and Yusufia. It became clearer when seven enlisted men serving in Baghdad wrote a very courageous Op-Ed piece in the New York Times on Aug. 19 in which they said, “Reports that a majority of Iraqi army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — As the anti-Maliki chorus grows, it’s worth remembering what happened just a year ago when a foreign official — Mark Malloch Brown, then U.N. deputy secretary general — had the audacity to make a few remarks critical of the U.S. government.

John Bolton — then U.S. ambassador to the U.N. — called the matter “very, very grave” and sternly told Kofi Annan that “this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen” since 1989.

But I guess when the boot’s on the other foot and American officials are bashing in the head of the leader of another government, it’s different. After all, if an Iraqi prime minister can only enter office once he’s been duly stamped, “U.S. approved,” it’s only fitting that he can later get stamped, “U.S. disapproved.” Which is to say, this must all look perfectly in accordance with the natural order of the world if you happen to be a senior U.S. official or one of their media mouthpieces.

One such mouthpiece — David Ignatius — is less than enthusiastic about Maliki’s presumptive replacement, Ayad Allawi. “Allawi has bundles of money to help buy political support, but it comes from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, rather than the United States.” No good getting a new prime minister if he’s not in your debt and you can’t tell him what to do. How frustrating it is trying to rig a democracy in the middle of a civil war!

But there is one particularly interesting glimpse that Ignatius provides inside the convoluted process of administration thinking (keeping in mind that this is an administration afflicted with multiple personality disorder). It is that the “contain Iran” faction (read, Rice et al), now anticipates the possibility that U.S. policy towards Iraq will also become one of containment.

Containment? Haven’t we been there before?

FEATURE: Challenging the generals

Challenging the generals
By Fred Kaplan, New York Times, August 26, 2007

On Aug. 1, Gen. Richard Cody, the United States Army’s vice chief of staff, flew to the sprawling base at Fort Knox, Ky., to talk with the officers enrolled in the Captains Career Course. These are the Army’s elite junior officers. Of the 127 captains taking the five-week course, 119 had served one or two tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, mainly as lieutenants. Nearly all would soon be going back as company commanders. A captain named Matt Wignall, who recently spent 16 months in Iraq with a Stryker brigade combat team, asked Cody, the Army’s second-highest-ranking general, what he thought of a recent article by Lt. Col. Paul Yingling titled “A Failure in Generalship.” The article, a scathing indictment that circulated far and wide, including in Iraq, accused the Army’s generals of lacking “professional character,” “creative intelligence” and “moral courage.”

Yingling’s article — published in the May issue of Armed Forces Journal — noted that a key role of generals is to advise policy makers and the public on the means necessary to win wars. “If the general remains silent while the statesman commits a nation to war with insufficient means,” he wrote, “he shares culpability for the results.” Today’s generals “failed to envision the conditions of future combat and prepare their forces accordingly,” and they failed to advise policy makers on how much force would be necessary to win and stabilize Iraq. These failures, he insisted, stemmed not just from the civilian leaders but also from a military culture that “does little to reward creativity and moral courage.” He concluded, “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — While the constraints on innovation inside the military are obviously embedded in military culture and the promotions process, there seem to be a number of other factors worth considering.

As self-contained as military culture might be, it is surely influenced by trends evident in society at large. In late 2002 and early 2003, opposition to the imminent war was marginal. Not once was the American antiwar movement able to match Louis Farrakhan’s crowd-pulling power and mobilize a million-strong gathering in Washington. While most of the nation either actively or passively supported the war, it seems unrealistic to imagine that there would be many serious expressions of dissent from inside the military.

The uniformed leadership of the U.S. military are part of the Pentagon’s political culture. They might defer to civilian policymakers but they are an integral branch of the military industrial complex. As such, they have a vested interest in promoting and sustaining those programs that serve this matrix of political, commercial and budgetary needs. Innovation is likely to be deemed good, only to the extent that those needs continue being well served. Pen-pushing generals inside the Pentagon, once retired, slide easily into the boardrooms of a defense industry that ultimately has more interest in who places purchase orders than who uses their products.

The next major test of the moral courage of the generals will probably be whether they are willing to resign en masse rather than follow orders to attack Iran. Rumor has it that a number of generals are ready to rise to the challenge, but I have no confidence that this will happen. The heroism that promises a pension cut and no medals can only appeal to a rare minority. How many people can say that they achieved great success in this world by being true to their conscience?

NEWS: No big shifts planned after report on Iraq

No big shifts planned after report on Iraq
By Michael Abramowitz, Washington Post, August 25, 2007

Despite political pressure for a change of course in Iraq, the White House hopes to keep in place its existing military strategy and troop levels there after the mid-September report from Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, administration officials said.

Even as the administration faced a new call this week from Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a leading ally, to begin at least a symbolic withdrawal of troops by Christmas, White House officials said privately that they are not contemplating making major shifts before early next year. They said that next month’s report is likely to highlight what they see as significant improvements in security over the past year and that they expect the president to assert that now is not the time to dramatically change approaches. [complete article]

NEWS: Hear a general, hug a sheik: Congress visits Iraq

Hear a general, hug a sheik: Congress visits Iraq
By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Damien Cave, New York Times, August 26, 2007

The meal was just one stop in a jam-packed tour that included visits with Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders (”a sheik engagement,” the Pentagon itinerary said), a chat with the Kurdish deputy prime minister and the all-important photographs with hometown soldiers to show constituents at election time. Just another day in Baghdad in August, high season for Congressional travel to Iraq.

The trips, highly choreographed affairs known as codels, for Congressional delegations, are an annual rite of summer for lawmakers, but they have taken on fresh urgency. With Democrats running Congress and Mr. Bush’s troop increase due for an intense re-evaluation in September, roughly 50 lawmakers have tromped through Iraq this summer, and their impressions are having a profound effect on the debate. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — I don’t imagine Congressional tourism is much different from tourism in general: it’s about the convenience packaging of experience for those who lack the time or interest to accumulate real depth of understanding and a true sense of place.

NEWS: Brzezinski embraces Obama over Clinton for president

Brzezinski embraces Obama over Clinton for president
By Janine Zacharia, Bloomberg, August 24, 2007

Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the most influential foreign-policy experts in the Democratic Party, threw his support behind Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, saying the Illinois senator has a better global grasp than his chief rival, Hillary Clinton.

Obama “recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America’s role in the world,” Brzezinski said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” [complete article]

NEWS: Spying program may be tested by terror case

Spying program may be tested by terror case
By Adam Liptak, New York Times, August 26, 2007

The case is significant in a second way, as a vivid illustration of a new form of pre-emptive law enforcement intended to stop terrorism before it happens, even at the expense of charges of entrapment.

“The Federal Bureau of Investigation has an obligation to use all available investigative tools,” prosecutors wrote in a brief urging the court to impose harsh sentences in February, “including a sting operation, to remove those ready and willing to help terrorists from our streets.”

The lead prosecutor, William C. Pericak, an assistant United States attorney, said the sting had worked perfectly.

“You can’t put a percentage on how likely these guys would have been to commit an act of terrorism,” Mr. Pericak said in an interview in his office at the federal courthouse here. “But if a terrorist came to Albany, my opinion is that these guys would have assisted 100 percent.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The idea of “pre-emptive law enforcement” comes straight out of movies like “Minority Report” (representing a future in which criminals are caught before they’ve committed a crime). Anyone who finds comfort in this kind of security should kiss goodbye to democracy. This approach to national security doesn’t present the risk of leading to an authoritarian state; it exemplifies the operation of such a state.

NEWS: Israelis said to be mediating between Hamas and Fatah; Abbas opposes exchange of populated territory with Israel

Israelis said to be mediating between Hamas and Fatah
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 26, 2007

The London-based newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported Sunday that Israeli mediators are involved in efforts to reconcile rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

The southern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, headed by MK Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsur, is involved in the mediation efforts, according to the report.

The newspaper also reported that the Hamas leadership is considering an initiative proposing it hand back Gaza Strip security compounds seized from Fatah in June in order to achieve reconciliation with the rival group. [complete article]

Abbas opposes exchange of populated territory with Israel
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz, August 26, 2007

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday he opposes the exchange of populated territory between Israel and the PA within the framework of a peace deal.

At a meeting with Hadash Chairman MK Mohammad Barakeh,
Abbas stated he is against a final status accord under which areas in Israel containing Arab Israelis would become part of a future Palestinian state’s territory. This would be in return for settlement blocs in the West Bank remaining under Israeli sovereignty. [complete article]

NEWS: Taliban raise poppy production to a record again

Taliban raise poppy production to a record again
By David Rohde, New York Times, August 26, 2007

Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.

The report is likely to touch off renewed debate about the United States’ $600 million counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been hampered by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.

“I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy,” said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report’s overall findings. “And I think that we are finding one.” [complete article]

NEWS: Has Iran paused its uranium enrichment program?

Has Iran paused its uranium enrichment program?
By Matthew Schofield, McClatchy, August 25, 2007

Iran appears not to have significantly expanded its uranium enrichment program this summer, a development that has many experts wondering whether the threat of sanctions finally has had an impact on the Iranian government.

Experts won’t know for sure if Iran has paused its program until a report this week from a team of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, who were in Iran last week for the third round of inspections this summer. A public debate on the report is scheduled for the IAEA’s Sept. 10 meeting.

But after five years of frustration at a lack of Iranian cooperation, those who closely follow Iran’s nuclear program believe that Iran’s resumption of IAEA inspections coupled with the apparent halt in expansion may signal that the Islamic Republic is willing to compromise. [complete article]

NEWS: Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal

Dissent threatens U.S.-India nuclear cooperation deal
By Emily Wax and Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, August 26, 2007

After two years of painstaking negotiations, a historic nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and India appears to be unraveling as a broad spectrum of political parties calls on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to scrap the deal, saying it limits the country’s sovereignty in energy and foreign policy matters.

The landmark accord that just weeks ago looked like a major foreign policy triumph for this energy-starved subcontinent has become a political liability for India’s fragile ruling coalition.

The brouhaha over the deal has surprised some nuclear analysts in Washington, partly because the Bush administration was widely perceived as having caved in to key Indian demands. The administration had assured the government here that it could receive uninterrupted nuclear supplies from the United States and maintain the right to reprocess spent nuclear fuel — a potentially dangerous prospect because reprocessing technology can also be used to make weapons-grade plutonium. To many Western observers, India already had the upper hand in the deal, a testament to its growing international influence. [complete article]