(Juan Cole | Informed Consent | 28 November 2009) – The board of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday condemned Iran for secretly building a new nuclear enrichment facility at Fordo near Qom, and called on it to mothball the new site. The resolution was backed by the permanent members of the UN Security Council, including China and Russia, as well as Germany.

Fully 25 of the 35 nations on the nuclear board voted for the resolution, India joined the consensus condemning Iran, though New Delhi issued a statement saying its vote did not signal openness to the imposition of further sanctions on Iran. Only Cuba, Venezuela and Malaysia voted against the text, with 6 others abstaining and one absent. Brazil was among those abstaining. And its abstention spells future trouble for US policy toward Iran, since President Lula da Silva appears to fear that if Iran’s right to enrich is withdrawn, it could have implications for countries such as Brazil. Iran has been wooing Brazil and other Latin American countries, with some success, on anti-imperialist grounds, as WaPo rightly says.

The text (see below) affirmed Iran’s right to enrich uranium for fuel under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, but nevertheless insisted that it cease its enrichment activities. The position of the IAEA and the UN Security Council that Iran’s secret experiments before early 2003 and its refusal to be bound by the safeguards provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty have the effect of making its enrichment activities illicit. The UNSC demands that they cease until Iran allows full and completely transparent inspections. The document also said that the secret nature of the Fordo plant raised questions about whether there were other concealed sites. (In fact, outgoing IAEA head Mohammed Elbaradei confirmed that all inspectors found at Fordo was ‘a hole in the ground,’ not a real facility.)

Iran replies that its preference for working in secrecy was the result of military threats against its right to enrich, as enshrined in the NPT. It has allowed UN inspections, and these have never found a weapons program. Moreover, the text of the NPT (Article IV, Para. 1) explicitly says, “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.”

Even the safeguards system, the more recent and robust version of which Iran’s parliament declined to ratify, specifies inspections of fissile material, whereas Iran does not appear even to have any of the latter or to be capable of producing it for a decade or more.

Iranian leaders say that nuclear weapons are contrary to the Islamic law of war, that they do not want them and could not legally deploy them. They hold that the enrichment facilities are intended to produce fuel for a string of nuclear reactors that will keep Iran from having to use its precious petroleum, a key earner of foreign exchange and guarantor of national independence, for domestic power generation. Russia is building nuclear plants for Iran at Bushehr.

My own position is that, in addition, Iran’s leadership is seeking whatis sometimes called the “Japan option” or a “rapid breakout capability.” Unlike North Korea, India and Pakistan, I think Tehran genuinely does not want to actually construct and detonate a nuclear device. India and Pakistan are such large and important countries that they defied the First World nuclear club successfully and so joined it. North Korea, much smaller, weaker and poorer, has made itself an international pariah in this way, and is suffering more and more severe UN sanctions. I think most senior Iranian leaders wish to avoid those heavy sanctions, having seen what they did to Iraq.

But having a rapid breakout capability– being able to make a bomb in short order if it is felt absolutely necessary to forestall a foreign attack– has a deterrent effect. So Iran would have the advantages of deterrence without the disadvantages of a bomb if it could get to the rapid breakout stage.

My theory has the advantage of explaining everything about Iran’s behavior– its condemnation of the Bomb as incompatible with Islamic law, its willingness to offer fair cooperation with UN inspectors, the repeated inability of US intelligence and of the IAEA to find any trace of a weapons program, and yet Iran’s frustrating lack of complete transparency and its penchant for building secret enrichment sites. You can’t retain a credible rapid breakout capability, or “nuclear latency,” if your enrichment facility can be destroyed by air strikes. Repeated Cheneyite and Israeli threats to attack the enrichment plant at Natanz near Isfahan are what I believe drove Iran to construct the Fordo site inside a mountain, in hopes that this step would make it impossible for an outside power to use military might to wipe out Iran’s nuclear latency.

The US and Western Europe and Israel interpret Iran’s secrecy as a sign that nefarious secret weapons programs are being pursued. But this conclusion is riddled with difficulties. A weapons program uses enormous amounts of water and electricity and would be very difficult to conceal nowadays from US satellite and electronic surveillance. The US knew about Fordo as soon as work began on it.

A desire on the part of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commanders to retain the soft deterrence of a rapid breakout capability probably explains Iran’s waffling on the deal tentatively adopted at Geneva on October 1. That agreement would have had Iran send 2600 pounds of its 3200 pounds of low enriched uranium (enriched to less than 5 percent) to Russia for processing, so that it could be used in Iran’s small medical research reactor, and used to produce medical isotopes. In this way, the LEU, the seed stock for any potential bomb, would get used up. It would have taken Iran a couple of years to replace that LEU, reassuring Western hawks in the meantime that Iran’s weapons-making capability had been temporarily blunted. But when Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative brought this deal back to Tehran, I believe that the IRGC commanders vetoed it because they want to retain a rapid break out potential and did not want the LEU seed stock to be lost.

That the hawks were able to veto the representative of Supreme Leader Khamenei lends credence to Gary Sick’s argument that the Revolutionary Guards have carried out a soft coup behind the scenes and Iran looks more and more like a military junta.

I personally suspect that most Western officials involved in this matter know perfectly well that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and does not want an actual bomb. I think the Western leaders do not want Iran to have nuclear latency, either, because it would change the balance of power in the Middle East and would take forcible regime change off the table as an option for the West.

Although some observers are wondering if Friday’s vote is a prelude to stricter UN Security Council sanctions on Iran, Howard LeFrachi at [the] C[hristian] S[cience] M[onitor] rightly points out that China does not want more sanctions. China was essentially blackmailed into voting for Friday’s resolution, according to the Washington Post, by an Israeli threat to start a war, conveyed by Dennis Ross, a prominent member of the US Israel lobbies who also has a position in the Obama administration. But voting for an IAEA text is different from actually imposing sanctions that might hurt the Chinese economy.

Moreover, Russian Prime Minister and eminence grise Vladimir Putin is against a tightening of sanctions. India announced its opposition to a tougher economic boycott even as it voted to condemn Iran.

The reason for the reluctance of the BRIC states (Brazil, Russia, India and China) to push Iran harder economically is that they have an interest in Iran’s resources not being closed off to their exploitation. Reuters just reported that: “Indian state explorer Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC.BO) is seeking a 20-25 percent stake in a $7.5 billion phase-12 project of Iran’s South Pars gas field, media reports said on Friday.” India is growing 7 and 9% a year and has relatively little energy of its own, and so is very hungry for Iranian natural gas.

So far the US has managed to strongarm India into backing off, by threatening Treasury Department third-party sanctions. But it is entirely possible that Indian energy hunger will cause its firms to write off the $14 trillion US market and to partner with Iran. After all, the world economy is now about $60 trillion, and united Europe’s economy is as big as that of the US. If India has a choice of seeing its growth strangled for lack of electricity to run its factories and being excluded from 23% of the world economy, it may decide that the 77% is enough of a market. The importance of the US economy as a proportion of the global whole will likely rapidly decline over the next four decades.

The same considerations affect China. Russia is different because it is an energy producer. But in a world where demand for hydrocarbons is rapidly growing, there is enough demand to go around, and Russia’s economy is sufficiently diversified that it views Iran as a market and an investment opportunity. Harsher UNSC sanctions on Iran would backfire on BRIC, and therefore short of egregiously bad behavior on Iran’s part (discovery of an actual, dedicated weapons plant, e.g.), the BRIC countries will likely seek to block them.

Bottom line: Friday’s vote was likely symbolic and a signal to Iran from the international community that there is discomfort with its secretiveness and lack of transparency, and that many are suspicious of its motives. In China’s case, it may have been a warning against actions that could harm the Middle Kingdom’s burgeoning economy.

What it likely was not was a harbinger of tougher international sanctions against Tehran or a sign that BRIC is softening on that issue.

Carnegie Endowment for Peace | Washington D.C. | 20 November 2009

Dr. Trita Parsi, one of America’s foremost experts on Iran, is the author of Treacherous Alliance – the Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States (2007) which won the Council on Foreign Relations’ Arthur Polk Award. Dr. Parsi has a PhD from Johns Hopkins/SAIS. He is now the President of the National Iranian American Council, adjunct scholar at the Middle East Insitute and a regular writer and sought-after commentator on Iran. He will speak on the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, the Iranian decision making process, the Iran dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and prospects for a resolving the crisis.

This event is sponsored by the Foundation for Middle East Peace, Americans for Peace Now, Churches for Middle East Peace and the Middle East Institute.

EVENT DETAILS:

Friday November 20, 3-4:30pm
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Avenue
Washington, DC

RSVP: Foundation for Middle East Peace, info@…, 202-835-3650

Columbia University – School of International and Public Affairs| 5 December 2009

The recent elections in Iran, and subsequent challenges to their legitimacy, have been a matter of enormous internal conflict in Iran, and of seemingly endless debate in the rest of the world.  As protesters continue to take to the Iranian street to voice their opposition to the elections, fault-lines are emerging amongst the ruling elite.  These momentous events constitute a significant challenge to the legitimacy of the Iranian regime and the future of the Islamic Republic.  The conference will be an opportunity to have leading Iranian scholars and analysts discuss the impact of the recent elections, Iran’s relationship with the international community and the theocratic foundations of the Islamic Republic.

The one-day conference being held at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs  will feature Ervand Abrahamian, Asef Bayat, Hamid Dabashi, Shahla Talebi discussing the “Aftermath of the Election,” Farideh Farhi, Gary Sick, Wayne White, Judith Yaphe discussing “International Challenges,” and Houchang Chehabi, Mansour Farhang, Hossein Kamaly, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, and Abdolkarim Soroush “Appraising the Life of the Republic.”  For more event information and to register, visit the conference website.

(Associated Press | 13 November 2009) - In what could be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, federal prosecutors sought to take over four U.S. mosques and a New York City skyscraper owned by a Muslim organization suspected of being controlled by the Iranian government.

US to seize properties allegedly “linked to Iran”

(Russia Today | 13 November 2009) - Seizure of mosques and buildings allegedly belonging to Iranian government comes at time when tensions over Iran’s nuclear program are at their highest, the trial of three American hikers in Iran begins, and the deaths at Fort Hood by a Muslim army officer.

(Robert Dreyfuss | The Nation | 5 November 2009) - The Green Movement opposition flexed its muscles again in Iran this week, taking advantage of anti-American protests on the anniversary of the 1979 seizure of the US embassy in Tehran (aka “the nest of spies”) to rally thousands of anti-Ahmadinejad protestors into the streets.

Unfortunately, the Green resurgence in Iran is causing some Iran watchers to fall into the same old trap: threatening to halt US-Iran negotiations in favor of support for democracy, or some semblance of it, in Iran. The latest to make this mistake is Ray Takeyh, a former adviser to the Obama-era State Department, whose op-ed in today’s Washington Post essentially suggests that America should cut off its negotiating nose to spite its pro-democracy face. He writes:

“Iran’s hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West.”

What would the United States accomplish by ending dialogue with Iran, even a more repressive one? The United States has reasons both strategic and tactical for dealing with Iran, quite separate and distinct from our desire to see a more free, less repressive society. In fact, Iran’s hardliners need to know that the United States will persist in talking to Iran no matter how difficult the talks become, and regardless of Iranian human rights concerns. That isn’t appeasement, as the neocons and Republican members of Congress argue. It’s just common sense.

President Obama’s opening to Iran in January, his Nowruz message, and his Cairo speech all helped to galvanize the Iranian opposition, just as President Bush’s bluster and sabre-rattling helped the hardliners quash any opposition earlier. Obama’s judicious post-election refusal to join the neocons’ call to enlist the United States in full-throated support for the Green Movement was exactly the right call, and it blunted the regime’s crackdown by making it a lot harder for them to portray the greens as US-inspired. And so far, at least, Mousavi and Co. haven’t asked for any help, while simultaneously denouncing Western calls for sanctions. Let’s hope Obama stays the course, keeps talking to Iran, and doesn’t fall into a feel-good trap about asserting too loudly what everyone knows: he supports human rights in Iran.

Of course, the paradox of the current state of affairs is that Mousavi and the Green Movement have generally taken to denouncing Ahmadinejad for his agreement to hand over the bulk of Iran’s enriched uranium for re-processing in Russia and France. That accord, reached over prolonged, secret talks that culminated in a face-to-face meeting between US and Iranian diplomats on October 1, could be an important step forward. For opportunistic reasons, the Greens are now accusing Ahmadinejad of selling out Iran’s nuclear rights.

That very fact explains why it’s wrong for the United States to try to game Iranian internal politics.

In his op-ed, Takeyh warns, correctly, that Iran might (for internal reasons, mostly) draw out the negotiations, but curiously he links such a strategy to a plot by Ahmadinejad against his opposition:

“Tehran will sporadically offer to discuss the nuclear issue to whet the appetite of Western powers — before moving against its remaining domestic detractors. The powers that be in Iran hope that a prolonged and inconclusive negotiating process will cause the West to recoil from criticism, much less impose sanctions over Iran’s human rights abuses.”

That idea is far too conspiratorial, however. Just as Obama faces domestic opposition to a deal with the “mad mullahs,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Leader, faces domestic opposition to a deal with the Great Satan. (Just this week, Khamenei delivered a fierce, hysterical diatribe against the United States, even as his negotiators were proceeding apace.) Trying to discern the interplay between foreign and domestic strategies of Iran’s current rulers is a fool’s game, and it’s likely that even Ahmadinejad and Khamenei don’t know themselves how it’s all likely to play out. Certainly, the two Iranian leaders — if, indeed, they are still working together, as opposed to at cross-purposes — don’t have some grand, master strategy. Internally, they’re trying to deal with a resilient opposition movement whose strength surprised them in June, and they’re not doing very well at it. Externally, they’re struggling to negotiate with the P5 + 1 in a chess game in which they have far fewer pieces than the West.

There no reason for giddy optimism about the US-Iran talks. But one thing is certain: for them to succeed at all, both Obama and Khamenei are going to have to be very, very patient.

(Roger Cohen | New York Times OpEd | 5 November 2009) — In his last month as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei finds himself at the explosive crux of the world’s nuclear politics, ferrying messages between the Obama administration and Tehran. “They are talking through me,” he says.

Talking is something, even through a mediator, given all the poisonous U.S.-Iranian history, but time is short. President Obama’s Iran outreach is on the line in the days before ElBaradei departs on Nov. 30. It’s critical that Obama succeed or a futile confrontation-sanctions scenario will be locked in. Any vestigial hopes for a more peaceful Middle East will recede.

Protesters, Iran’s brave campaigners for a freer and more open country, are chanting, “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them or you’re with us.” That must hurt in the Oval Office. The window is narrowing for the president to show that outreach can normalize the psychotic U.S.-Iranian relationship where confrontation only comforts it. I still believe normalization is the last best hope for Iranian reform.

So Obama is right to persist, right to favor the head over the heart. But he needs an interlocutor. And right now he’s got a foreign-policy vacuum in Tehran.

Last month, it seemed there was a deal: Iran ships out most of its known low-enriched uranium — about 1,200 kilograms — and eventually gets fuel rods for a reactor producing medical isotopes. The agreement buys time. It slows the noisy, fast-ticking Israeli clocks by removing the stuff Iran could use to make a bomb.

But, as ElBaradei told me in an interview, “there’s total distrust on the part of Iran.” This has now expressed itself in a demand for “guarantees.” Iran has not balked by demanding that its uranium be sent out in phases — as some reports suggested — but by seeking cast-iron assurances that the fuel will come back.

“Whether it’s one shipment is not the issue,” ElBaradei said. “The issue is timing: whether the uranium goes out and then some time later they get the fuel, as was agreed in Geneva, or whether it only goes at the same time as the fuel is delivered.” He added: “If it is simultaneous it would not defuse the crisis, and the whole idea is to defuse the crisis.”

Compromise ideas are being explored. ElBaradei has talked to Obama, who is driving Iran policy, several times. He has talked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, weakened by the disputed June 12 election, has emerged as a proponent of what would be an immensely popular opening to America.

“There are a lot of ideas,” ElBaradei told me. “One is to send the material” — Iran’s uranium — “to a third country, which could be a friendly country to Iran, and it stays there. Park it in another state, then later bring in the fuel. The issue is to get it out, and so create the time and space to start building trust.”

It’s essential to secure “something like a year” between the uranium’s exit and the fuel’s arrival. This would open the way for “direct engagement between Iran and the U.S. There is no other way. Six-party talks can continue but the heavy lifting can only be done by the U.S.”

ElBaradei’s message to Tehran: “This is an opportunity I have not seen before and it will not happen again.” His message to Washington: “Be patient.”

The problem is the disarray in Tehran. It is payback time for Ahmadinejad. Everyone he’s slighted — like Ali Larijani, the powerful speaker of the Majlis — is gunning for him. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, went along with the outline of the Geneva deal but has begun to equivocate.

The Islamic Republic needs to move on. It has sullied and weakened itself in recent months. It needs to put an end to the paralyzing behind-the-scenes fight over who would claim credit for any rapprochement with America. It must recognize, as ElBaradei put it, that “Obama is really sticking his neck out.”

Diplomacy is most useful between enemies. There is no alternative. ElBaradei said: “Sanctions are an expression of frustration,” adding that “in the long run they will not resolve the issue.” That’s right.

A stick exists. It is the volatile state of post-June-12 Iranian society. Protest was not quashed but went underground. Every now and then it flares; that will not stop. Obama’s outreach has unsettled Iran, produced this new fluidity.

Now it’s overwhelmingly in Iran’s interest, and America’s, to do the deal. For Iran, it’s a way out of debilitating isolation; for Washington it’s a first step in Obama’s bold quest for a new Middle Eastern order.

“I hope Iran will not miss this opportunity and will take a very small risk for peace. Otherwise everybody will lose.” ElBaradei said.

He also said inspectors had found “nothing to be worried about” in the underground facility at Qum built in secret by Iran. “The idea was to use it as a bunker under the mountain to protect things. It’s a hole in a mountain.”

Bunkers or breakthrough? A Nobel laureate who has the trust of both sides will be gone in a few weeks. Use him or lose.

(The Real News Network | 7 October 2007) - In this five-part series, retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern and Iraq whistle-blower Greg Thielmann discuss respectively the role of faith-based intelligence in disinformation (Part 1) and under what conditions Iran would restart its suspended weapons program (Part 2).  In the question and answer session, McGovern and Thielman discuss the implication of US silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons (Part 3); the disconnect between the intelligence community, government and the public (Part 4); and the potential causes of armed conflict in Iran (Part 5).

Part 1:  Disinformation and Faith-based Intelligence

(Ray McGovern | The Real News Network | 7 October 2009) - Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern speaks on disinformation, Iran, and “faith-based intelligence”

Part 2:  Military threats may push Iran to restart suspended weapons program

(Greg Thielmann | The Real News Network | 7 October 2009) - Iraq whistle-blower Greg Thielmann, ” Military threats may push Iran to restart suspended weapons program.”

Part 3:  Israel’s nukes and Iran

(McGovern & Thielmann | The Real News Network | 7 October 2009) – McGovern & Thielmann on consequences of US silence on Israel’s nuclear weapons.

Part 4:  What’s intelligence got to do with it?

(McGovern & Thielmann | The Real News Network | 7 October 2009) – Ray McGovern and Greg Thielmann discuss the disconnect between the intelligence community, government and the public.

Part 5:  How would a US-Iran war begin?

(McGovern & Thielmann | The Real News Network | 7 October 2009) - Ray McGovern and Greg Thielmann on the potential causes of armed conflict in Iran.

Featuring Robert Naiman, National Coordinator of Just Foreign Policy and Kaveh Ehsani, editorial committee member Middle East Report and Professor of International Studies, DePaul University.

The present moment is pivotal on two levels: In the aftermath of its June presidential election, Iran has seen the largest political upheaval in the three decades since the revolution. And, just last week, the US and Iran engaged in breakthrough discussions on Iran’s nuclear program.

Are these two historic developments related?

How should the peace movement make sense of them?

This dialogue will explore these questions and many more, shedding much-needed light on the critical issues at stake.

Event Details: Friday, October 16 at 7 PM – School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbus Auditorium, 280 S. Columbus Dr., Chicago

(Robert Naiman | Truthout | 8 October 2009) - The relationship between the United States and Iran with respect to Iran’s nuclear file is playing out at two levels. One level revolves around formal obligations and agreements and diplomacy. The second level is the long-running contest between the United States and its allies and Iran and its allies for power and influence in the region. The contest at the formal-obligations level on the nuclear program is a proxy for the contest for power and influence, and accommodation on the nuclear program likely implies some acceptance of Iran’s power and influence in the region.

The level of formal obligations is where the conflict is most likely to be resolved or managed diplomatically because there are rules for the interaction and third parties that both sides respect. There is no international treaty that says how much power and influence Iran should have in Iraq, but there is an international treaty that gives Iran rights and obligations with respect to its nuclear program. The two sides may argue over their interpretations of the rules, but they both concede that there are rules that have to be followed, and they appeal to the same rules. So, for example, the US claims that Iran broke its obligations by not disclosing the enrichment facility at Qom earlier; Iran claims that its disclosure last week met its obligations; but both sides agree that the facility has to be disclosed at some point and that Iran has to open the facility to UN inspection.

The US and Iran agree that Iran has rights and responsibilities under the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. The United States recognizes that Iran has the right to a peaceful nuclear program. Iran recognizes that it has an obligation not to produce a nuclear weapon and says it has no intention of doing so.

However, regarding Iran’s enrichment of uranium, the US and Iran have not historically agreed what Iran’s rights are. Iran says it has not only a right to a peaceful nuclear program, but also a right to enrich uranium as part of a peaceful nuclear program. The plain meaning of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty would seem to support Iran’s view. Article IV says:

“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with articles I and II of this Treaty.”

Since Brazil, for example, enriches uranium and is not held to be in violation of the NPT, that would seem to imply that Iran also has the right to enrich uranium.

Under the Bush administration, the US position was effectively that Iran had forfeited the right to enrich uranium by its past bad behavior. But there is no provision about forfeiting such rights in any agreement Iran has signed. The Obama administration has remained ambiguous on the topic, perhaps understandably so, as it seems likely that even if some in the Obama administration do not privately see ending Iranian enrichment as a feasible goal, they still hope to get something from Iran in exchange for formally conceding this; and politically it would be much easier for the Obama administration to make such a concession in the context of a deal. But this summer, Senator Kerry, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the US should accept that Iran has the right to enrich uranium. Senator Kerry does not, of course, speak for the administration, but if I were an analyst in Iran, trying to understand the possible boundaries of future US policies, I would take that as a positive signal.

As a candidate, President Obama pledged he would engage Iran diplomatically without preconditions. The specific precondition at issue was the Bush administration’s insistence that Iran suspend the enrichment of uranium before negotiations could begin.

This past week, we saw the first signs of concrete results of the implementation of that promise in the talks in Geneva among the P5+1 countries and Iran, which apparently included bilateral talks between chief US negotiator William Burns and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. President Obama called the talks a “constructive beginning,” and The New York Times noted as signs of progress that both sides agreed to further negotiations soon, and that Iran had agreed to allow IAEA inspectors into its enrichment facility at Qom.

In his remarks following the talks, President Obama made no mention of previous US demands that Iran suspend uranium enrichment. Instead, he insisted that Iran enact its agreement to allow IAEA inspectors at Qom and undertake confidence-building measures it had already agreed to.

US officials have stressed that the main thing they were looking for in the initial talks were signs that the Iranian side was negotiating seriously. Of course, Iran is looking for the same thing. The fact that the Obama administration is currently focusing attention on the implementation of concrete, achievable demands that Iran has already agreed to is a sign that the Obama administration is serious. Many people were alarmed that the Obama administration appeared to be pounding the table; but what was more significant was that the Obama administration was pounding the table in support of reasonable, achievable demands. When the Obama administration demanded that Iran allow UN inspectors at Qom, it was demanding something that Iran had already agreed to and that Iran never disputed it was required to do.

There has long been a widespread view among many US analysts that, in the end, the US will have to accept Iranian enrichment in some form as part of any realistic deal. For example, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering and others have argued for multinational enrichment of uranium in Iran. Last May, Iran indicated its willingness to negotiate on such a proposal in a letter to the United Nations.

Others have suggested that agreement on an enhanced UN inspections regime should be able to satisfy legitimate Western concerns about the possible diversion of nuclear materials to a military program.

Indeed, the recent revelation of the facility at Qom supports such a view. Senior administration officials suggested that Iran undertook the creation of the new facility because the enrichment facility at Natanz was under UN inspection and, therefore, useless for clandestine enrichment. Now, it seems almost certain that the new facility will be under UN inspection. According to the logic of US statements, the new facility will now also be useless for clandestine enrichment. This means that, from the US point of view, Iranian clandestine enrichment has been set back and it was set back not by military action or threats of military action nor by sanctions, crippling or otherwise, but by surveillance and multilateral diplomatic action to hold Iran to account to its international obligations.

As administration officials have said, the United States has no plausible alternative to diplomacy for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. A unilateral US military strike or US-permitted Israeli strike would be a grave violation of international law. As Defense Secretary Gates has emphasized, such a strike would at best set back the Iranian nuclear program temporarily in a physical sense while impelling it forward politically. As Admiral Mullen has noted, such an attack would destabilize a region where the US has more than 180,000 troops fighting two wars in countries where Iran has significant influence and ability to shape events in ways that would put US troops in greater danger.

Sanctions are also not a plausible alternative to diplomacy. At best, existing and threatened US and international sanctions support US diplomatic efforts by increasing the benefit to Iran of a negotiated agreement. But it is extremely unlikely that sanctions alone will cause Iran to capitulate.

Many in Congress have supported efforts to try to block Iran’s imports of gas. But such efforts will be no panacea.

Some recent estimates in the press of Iran’s gas imports have varied between 25 percent and 40 percent of Iran’s gas consumption. Whatever the number is, it is likely to decrease as Iran builds up its own domestic refining capacity. Any effective gas embargo would require Russian and Chinese cooperation, which is highly unlikely. Russian and Chinese cooperation on gas sanctions is even more unlikely if such sanctions are attempted on the basis of Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium, as opposed to something around which there is stronger international consensus, such as an Iranian refusal to accept IAEA inspectors. It was widely reported that Russia had indicated possible support for increased sanctions if there was no progress in negotiations; less reported were subsequent Russian statements that they had agreed to no specific measures. Venezuela recently announced that beginning in October it would export 20,000 barrels per day of gasoline to Iran, about a sixth of current imports. Venezuela would almost certainly not comply with any embargo that did not have UN Security Council sanction. Iranian gas consumption is artificially high due to steep subsidies, which the Iranian government would like to curtail. An external gas embargo would likely provide political space for the government to reduce these subsidies, thereby reducing consumption. Whatever impact such an embargo did have would likely be felt by the Iranian population more than the government. The likelihood that such sanctions would hurt the Iranian public has been cited by the French foreign minister in opposition to such sanctions, and opposition leaders in Iran have spoken out against such sanctions. Of course, there is a school of thought that you hurt the leaders by hurting the population, but in addition to ethical concerns, there is the likelihood that such measures will backfire, strengthening the domestic political position of the government.

Some advocate a policy of “regime change,” either trying to bring about a government in Iran that wouldn’t pursue a nuclear program or trying to bring about a government friendly enough to the United States that the US wouldn’t be concerned if it had a nuclear program. Putting to the side the morality and legality of trying to overthrow the Iranian government, the feasibility and desirability of doing so is extremely doubtful. Relative, at the very least, to its nuclear program, the Iranian government is highly stable. There is a national consensus in support of the program, and any successor government to a US overthrow attempt would be as likely to pursue a nuclear program as the present one, and might well be at least as hostile as the present one. The “regime change” policy of the US in Iran in the 1950s helped produce the Iranian government we see today.

So, at the level of the formal conflict over Iran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration has no option besides the diplomacy which it promised to engage in and is now engaging in. And, as President Obama has said, a “constructive beginning” has been made.

Underneath the dispute about Iran’s nuclear program is a dispute about Iran’s role in the region. If the US didn’t have issues with Iran’s influence and activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, if the United States and Israel did not have concerns about Iran’s influence and activities in Lebanon and Palestine, it is very likely that there would be a lot less concern in the US and Israel about Iran’s nuclear program. Many in Washington and Tel Aviv, as well as Iran, see an Iranian enrichment capacity as a deterrent against a US or Israeli attack, and they object to Iran’s nuclear program precisely because they object to Iran having such a deterrent. If Iran feels secure from a US or Israeli attack, the reasoning goes, then Iran will not be afraid to “meddle” in Iraq or Afghanistan or Lebanon or Palestine.

But arguably, Iran already feels fairly secure from a US or Israeli attack, and already Iran is acting in the region in ways that the US and Israel don’t like.

Moreover, recent history indicates that direct engagement can lead to Iranian actions that the US likes better. In the case of Iraq, the US says the flow of weapons from Iran has decreased; Iran has used its influence to defuse conflicts between the Iraqi government and Shiite militias. In the case of Afghanistan, the US and Iran had a strong cooperation after the US invasion in 2001, in which Iran helped organize the post-invasion government. This cooperation ended after the Bush administration branded Iran as part of its “axis of evil.” Under the Obama administration, some cooperation has resumed. In the case of Lebanon, in May 2008 a new national accord was negotiated – the Doha Agreement – which created a national unity government including Hizbollah and ended the 18-month political crisis. The Doha Agreement was supported by both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Similarly, Saudi Arabia in the past was able to broker a national unity government between Fatah and Hamas – i.e., between its own client and Iran’s client. The Obama administration has indicated that it might be able to support a Palestinian national unity government that included Hamas.

So, in all these arenas, there is evidence that the US and Iran could get along better, regardless of the state of Iran’s nuclear program; and if the present talks between the US and Iran lead to agreements in these areas, it will lead to a reduction in tension around Iran’s nuclear program and pave the way for a real resolution of the nuclear issues.

Robert Naiman is senior policy analyst at Just Foreign Policy.

The revelation late on 24 September 2009 that Iran is in the process of building a second uranium-enrichment plant inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom introduces a fresh source of dispute to a longstanding contest of wills between the Tehran regime and western states. The information – supplied by Iran itself to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 21 September, after it emerged that western intelligence sources had become aware of the project – is not in itself evidence that Iran has an active nuclear-weapon programme; but it most certainly does mean that Iran will have that option at a time of its choosing.

The varying parts of the differentiated Iranian leadership have been consistent in denying that their state intends to acquire a nuclear-weapon capacity, though they also affirm – and foreign governments and international agencies agree – that Iran has the right to develop civil nuclear technologies. The information about the second installation both heightens the ambiguity that has always surrounded this issue, and creates a new source of tension.

Iran responded to the moment on 27-28 September by test-firing short- and long-range missiles on successive days (the latter the liquid-fuel Shahab-3 and the solid-fuel Sajil, each with a range of up to 1,987 kilometres). This forms a tense backdrop to the already scheduled meeting in Geneva on 1 October 2009, part of the ongoing cycle of diplomatic discussion among the “five-plus-one” group (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – plus Iran).

The context

The strategic and economic relevance of nuclear power for an oil-and-gas-rich state such as Iran has been endlessly disputed. There is a strong and longstanding belief in Iran that the possession of a thriving nuclear-energy sector forms one of the attributes of modernity, a sentiment arguably reinforced by western nuclear lobbies’ powerful advocacy of this energy source as a big part of the response to climate change.

The development of a nuclear-weapons capacity carries the civil-nuclear argument into another realm, but for many Iranian politicians there are pressing security reasons to take this course, even if their public stance (including that of the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) is to disclaim any interest in a military nuclear capacity.

The most immediate argument is the perceived need to counter Israel, a nuclear-weapons state since the late 1960s that now has a substantial arsenal. This extends to a sense of Iran existing alongside (if not indeed being encircled by) other nuclear-weapons states in the region – Pakistan and India to the east, and Russia to the north. Many western analysts pay little attention to such concerns, as indeed to Iranian perceptions of the massive United States presence in the vicinity of Iran, but this is all the more reason for registering their existence.

Indeed, it is hard to understand the tortuous arguments over Iran’s nuclear plans over the past decade without taking the view from Tehran centrally into account. In this respect, President Bush’s state-of-the-union address in January 2002 – which identified Iran as a core member of the “axis of evil” alongside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea – was hugely significant. This speech, after all, was delivered while Iran was still ruled by the relatively moderate Mohammad Khatami, whose government had – just two months earlier, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks – aided the United States in terminating the Taliban regime across Iran’s eastern border in Afghanistan.

The George W Bush administration went on to demolish an even more bitter adversary of Iran,  the Ba’athist regime across Iran’s western border, in 2003; but the accompanying rhetoric and the underlying dynamic meant that this also was perceived in Iran as threatening. Iran attempted to address this new situation by offering a “grand bargain” with Washington in spring 2003, but this was rejected. Iran’s elite came to see the US leadership as representing a “clear and present danger”, which may have been one factor in the election of the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Khatami’s successor in June 2005.

It is true that the outcomes of US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq were in some ways helpful to Iran: the despised Taliban were driven back, Tehran was handed greater influence in Iraq, Barack Obama is clearly different to George W Bush. But the Iranian leadership – armed with a perspective that is rooted (as authors such as Fred Halliday emphasise) in 3,000 years of continuous statehood – also understands that Obama may continue in office only until January 2013, and could well be replaced by a new president every bit as hawkish as Bush.

The calculations

At present, however, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cohort do have a problem: that Barack Obama is not functioning sufficiently as the embodiment of the “evil empire”. This fact is strikingly confirmed in the United States administration’s reaction to the news of 24 September 2009; for it is becoming clear that Obama has effectively ruled out a military option and is sticking forcefully to diplomatic engagement. If Iran does not so engage, then US policy will be to isolate Iran through even more stringent sanctions, anticipating that even Russia will come at least part of the way (see Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Aims To Isolate Iran if Talks Fail“, Washington Post, 29 September 2009).

True, China may present difficulties here, given its close relationship with Tehran over oil-and-gas deals as well as armaments supplies (see Michael Wines, “China‘s Ties With Iran Complicate Diplomacy“, New York Times, 30 September 2009). But even without China’s aid, a United States-led coalition could significantly increase the damage to Iran’s already shaky economy.

In a broader frame, the foreign-policy approach of the Obama administration poses serious difficulties to Ahmadinejad, who badly needs an external enemy to divert attention from the failing economy and the deep political divisions inside Iran (see Nazenin Ansari, “Iran’s unfinished crisis“, 16 September 2009). In the absence of such an enemy, and with the United States highly unlikely to take the war option, the obvious and logical option is to use every opportunity to identify Israel as the core threat.

This motive is matched and even exceeded on the other side: for both the rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu and a wider, deep-seated and cross-party view in Israel hold that Iran simply cannot under any circumstances be allowed to become a nuclear-weapons power. This combination of circumstances makes it more than likely that the period following the Geneva meeting on 1 October 2009 will be characterised by Iran’s further diplomatic stalling and high-pitched anti-Israel rhetoric, and Israel’s own repeated warnings about the imminent nuclear danger from Tehran.

This means that Obama will have the tough job of persuading the Israelis not to take military action against Iran on their own account. He will persist in this, both out of conviction and from underlying concern over the probable results of any Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. These were explored in an Oxford Research Group briefing  – Iran: Consequences of a War (February 2006) – which at the time of publication and after was widely read, in Tehran as well as in Washington. The document is still pertinent.

In military terms, Israel has the capacity to inflict serious damage on most of Iran’s current nuclear facilities, principally by using its recently acquired long-range F-15I and F-16I strike-aircraft as well as its ballistic and cruise missiles. It might even be able to conduct an operation without overflying Iraqi territory – if Jordan and Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have their own concerns about Iran, give such permission; but in any case, it is unlikely that any attack would do more than set Iran’s nuclear ambitions back by two or three years.

The consequences

In the short term, and especially from an Israeli perspective, there would be value in accomplishing even this: for it could be seen as sending the necessary message that Iran will not be permitted to take the nuclear-weapons path, either now or in the future.

At the same time, this assessment could be deeply mistaken in that it underestimates greatly the immediate consequences an attack on Iran is almost guaranteed to provoke:

* It unites much of Iranian political opinion behind Ahmadinejad and his intransigent allies – at least for some months. He may be disliked in many circles and hated in some, but if the country is under attack this will transcend political differences

* Iran formally withdraws from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. This will disallow any future inspections, and allow the country to rebuild its bomb-damaged facilities and move as rapidly as possible to develop a nuclear-weapons capability. This alone means that more attacks from Israel will be necessary – leading to a long-term state of war

Iran also has other options, although it may chose to wait for months or even years to utilise them:

* Engineer a series of crises over transit through the Straits of Hormuz, not sufficient to demand an out-and-out response from the United States fifth-fleet but more than enough to send shock-waves through the oil markets. Such a process could be sustained for many months

* Increase engagement with the Shi’a majority in Iraq, to the extent of encouraging more forceful opposition to any continuing US presence in the country

* Provoke more difficulties for the US-led coalition in western Afghanistan, less by aiding Taliban elements than by expanding Iranian influence from Herat eastwards and undermining central governance in Kabul

* Aid the Hizbollah movement in Lebanon even more overtly in its confrontation with Israel.

If any of these actions and strategic choices were in turn to lead to a forceful US response -  perhaps around 2013-14, after the end of the Barack Obama presidency – then Iran has more extreme options in its armoury: including the paramilitary targeting of oil-and-gas production and transport facilities in western Gulf states.

The predicament

It is relevant to these prognoses that most Arab elites would quietly welcome an Israeli strike on Iran, but that Arab public opinion would be bitterly opposed. The absence of any real political progress in achieving a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a key factor here. An additional relevant factor is that while Iraq is the only major Arab state with a Shi’a majority, there are substantial Shi’a communities in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. There is particular concern in security circles in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that Shi’a minorities would react with great anger to an Israeli attack on Iran.

All these issues have been analysed in great depth in Washington policy-circles. The Barack Obama administration is facing a difficult position as a new period of negotiations with and about  Iran gets underway (see Godfrey Hodgson, “Barack Obama’s great test“, 30 September 2009). Some of the wilder voices on the American right argue even now for military action against Iran. But this constant domestic refrain pales against a far greater external challenge: from elements in Tehran that actively want confrontation, and from an Israeli government that could be all too ready to oblige.

Paul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. Paul Rogers’s books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror (Polity, 2007) – an analysis of the strategic misjudgments of the post-9/11 era and why a new security paradigm is needed. A third edition of his Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century (Pluto Press, 2009) is forthcoming.  He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001.