(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trouble for US policy toward Iran, since President Lula da Silva appears to fear that if Iran’s right to enrich is withdrawn, it could have implications for countries such as Brazil.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.

Ahmadinejad’s grip is slipping. The ayatollah is losing ground. And the military is on the rise. Gary Sick on how Obama should handle the aftershocks of a political earthquake.

(Gary Sick | The Daily Beast | 27 November 2009) - Iran is at a revolutionary juncture, one of those hinge moments in history when an explosion of actions and debates produces towering outcomes—often unintended—that bend the course of events the way a black hole in space bends a beam of light. In the tumult of these moments, it is almost impossible to know how it will end; only in retrospect does the outcome appear inevitable.

This hinge moment began on 22 Khordad—June 12 on the Western calendar—the date of Iran’s electoral debacle. On that date, all the old rules changed and a new set of rules began to be devised. There is evidence of deep political fissures among the ruling elite and signs of fierce debate. At the moment, Iran’s political leadership finds it convenient to pretend that all is as before. But in fact, there has been a political earthquake and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is moving to consolidate its power. Before it is over, we may see a new strongman emerge from the military, as has happened in so many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere when the political status quo was shattered and everything was in flux.

Before it is over, we may see a new strongman emerge from the military, as has happened in so many other countries in the Middle East and elsewhere when the political status quo was shattered and everything was in flux.

Iran, of course, has experienced such hinge moments before: notably the 1979 collapse of the shah and the replacement of his monarchy with a revolutionary Islamic government. Its effects extended far beyond the borders of Iran. I was in the White House at the time when Iran invaded the American embassy in Tehran and held its occupants prisoner for 444 days. That action arguably insured the defeat of President Jimmy Carter and the election of Ronald Reagan. It also indelibly imprinted an image of a fanatical, hostile Iran on the psyches of Americans who watched it play out as the first major U.S. foreign policy crisis to be televised live and broadcast into the living rooms of every family in the United States.

Part of the problem that Washington had in attempting to negotiate an end to that deadly dispute was the absence of an address in Iran. We knew that the hostages had been taken by a group of radical students; we knew that the revolutionary regime had thrown its support to the students; we knew that the supreme revolutionary authority was Ayatollah Khameini, but he would not talk to us, and the Iranians who did talk to us proved to have no real authority.

Today I am experiencing a back-to-the-future moment.

The election debacle on 22 Khordad was in my view the final, bungled stage of what was intended to be a gentle coup propelling the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the pasdaran, into a position of unassailable power behind the scenes. The amazing rise of the Green Movement, under the almost accidental leadership of Mir Hossein Moussavi and later Mehdi Karroubi, threatened to upset these plans, and panicked efforts to prevent it brought the pasdaran out of the shadows and into the full glare of international attention.

The pasdaran had begun playing an overtly political role a full decade earlier. Its insinuation into the economy of Iran had been widely observed for years. It also controlled the nationwide paramilitary force known as the basij. Its association with a radical faction of Iranian clerics, led by Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, who preached that the word of the Supreme Leader in Islamic Iran was absolute—the very voice of God—was well known. But the election of 22 Khordad propelled the pasdaran into an active role in domestic politics, just as it forced Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader who is supposed to remain above politics, to align himself with a specific political faction and thereby sacrifice his legitimacy as an objective arbiter.

I am personally convinced that the Revolutionary Guard Corps is now rapidly becoming the dominant force in Iranian politics—greater than President Ahmadinejad, and greater even than Ayatollah Khamenei himself, though the pasdaran and others continue to pay lip service to his “leadership.” I base this judgment, among other things, on the fact that senior leaders of the pasdaran no longer have any compunction about taking positions that differ from those of the President or the Supreme Leader; yet neither the President nor the Supreme Leader ever dare disagree with the pasdaran. But if that is true, who exactly is calling the shots?

The political decision-making apparatus of the pasdaran is totally opaque. It is possible to conjecture a circle of dogmatic officers together with a narrow faction of clerical advisers who share a belief in the divine right of rulers. But it is impossible to give a list of the members of this circle, let alone the process by which they arrive at policy positions.

This uncertainty is what reminds me of the days of the revolution and the murky operations of what was then the Revolutionary Council. The U.S. government spent a tremendous amount of time and effort during the hostage crisis trying to identify the key members of the Revolutionary Council and to develop channels for communicating with this central policy-making body.

The results were less than satisfactory, partly no doubt because the group was itself a mirror image of the political chaos after the Iranian revolution. The Council had a fairly well established membership, but influence on specific policies varied from one moment to the next according to the shifting political winds, and there was no reliable process by which decisions were taken and implemented. There was, in short, no reliable address where a U.S. initiative might be registered and acted on.

It is 30 years later, and we have arrived at another hinge moment in history. And the Obama administration has a serious problem, scarcely discussed but eerily familiar. How do you engage with Iran when there is no reliable address in Tehran?

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and is the author of two books on U.S.-Iranian relations. Mr. Sick is a captain (ret.) in the U.S. Navy, with service in the Persian Gulf, North Africa and the Mediterranean.

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.

(Benjamin Weiser | New York Times | 12 November 2009) - Federal prosecutors in Manhattan began legal action on Thursday to seize properties in Queens and across the country where several mosques are located in a broad move against a nonprofit organization that was accused of illegally providing money and other services to Iran.

The organization, the Alavi Foundation, owns the land on which the mosques sit, as well as a majority interest in an office tower at 650 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, which has also been slated for seizure by the government.

The authorities accused the Alavi Foundation of spending millions of dollars to obtain and develop the properties, in violation of federal laws that ban trade with Iran.

In addition to the Queens property, which is at 55-11 Queens Boulevard and houses the Imam Ali Mosque, the government sought forfeiture of the foundation’s ownership in seven other properties, several of which house mosques. Another of the properties is a 36-story granite-and-glass tower at 52nd Street known as the Piaget Building.

The prosecutors did not specify how much money they were seeking to be forfeited, but they said that the foundation had tried for years to hide its relationship with the government of Iran. The prosecutors described meetings between the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations and the foundation’s president. The two men met periodically, in a closed room, at the center in Queens, the complaint said.

The government, in a complaint filed in Federal District Court, made no allegations against the mosques or other tenants of the properties owned by the foundation.

In a statement issued late Thursday, the office of the United States attorney, Preet Bharara, said that they remained free to use the properties.

“There are no allegations of any wrongdoing on the part of any of these tenants or occupants,” said Yusill Scribner, a spokeswoman. “No action has been taken against any tenants or occupants of those properties.”

A lawyer for the foundation, Daniel Ruzumna, said: “The Alavi Foundation is disappointed that the government decided to bring this civil forfeiture action. The foundation has been cooperating fully with the government since the investigation began. The foundation intends to litigate the government’s claims and expects to prevail when the litigation is over.”

The prosecutors’ action came on the same day the White House said that President Obama had renewed longstanding economic sanctions against Iran, Reuters reported. The president said, “Our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal.”

Worshippers at the Imam Ali Mosque were stunned by the news of the government’s action, which they said they learned of only from reporters outside.

The mosque is in a white two-story building that also houses the Razi School. A forfeiture notice had been taped to the front door.

“This is a place of worship; anybody can come to pray, that’s it,” said one congregant, Ali Naderi of Queens. “We do believe this allegation is not true.”

He said the mosque was a nonprofit organization and received support from the Alavi Foundation and others. “We don’t own this place,” he said. “We are a community and we come for worship.”

Mr. Naderi said 600 to 700 families attended the mosque regularly.

A man who answered the phone at Imam Ali Mosque on Thursday night said, “No one is here; everybody is praying,” and abruptly hung up.

“Because information is lacking, this might well cause yet another wave of fear in the Muslim community,” said Adem Carroll, chairman of the Muslim Consultative Network, an advocacy group. “It would be sad if word in our community starts spreading that the government will shut us all down. Already some think this is a war against the religion; that is a very unhelpful perception.”

The mosques — also on Alavi Foundation property in Maryland, Texas and California — receive space and financial support from the foundation, said one person affiliated with the organization who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

On its Web site, the foundation says that it has promoted “Islamic culture and Persian language, literature and civilization” for more than 30 years, through grants and other activities.

Al Baker, Anahad O’Connor and Karen Zraick contributed reporting.

(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