IAEA Condemnation of Iran: An Omen of New Sanctions or a Symbolic Slap on the Wrist?

(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. Read the rest of this entry »

Quick Links:
Khamenei stamps authority on US relations, AFP http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jxlz-o2pTtBtLRTktl169QEIxL1w
Iran’s response to US shows mind-set of leadership, AP http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/21/AR2009032101079.html
Editorial: Obama strikes new tone with Tehran, Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/617f1fb4-1713-11de-9a72-0000779fd2ac.html
Roger Cohen: From Tehran to Tel Aviv¸ International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=20978866
Rami G. Khouri: Dialogue or Dictating to Iran?, Middle East Times http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/03/23/dialogue_or_dictating_to_iran/9371/
Despite Iran’s tepid response, experts hail Obama approach, McClatchy http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/64536.html
Iran sets terms for U.S. ties, AP http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090322/wl_nm/us_iran_usa
‘No proof’ Iran seeks atom bomb: Russian minister, AFP http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hBPU3NuguY_rj19oOwLADdyt-E2w
John Bolton: Iran’s Axis of Nuclear Evil, Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123759986806901655.html
Amir Taheri: Iran Has Started a Mideast Arms Race, Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123776572203009141.html%20http:/online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=AMIR+TAHERI&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND
Wife of founder of Iran’s Islamic republic dies, AP http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ikwGcpqo0p2JwanEHkViYsOE0s2QD9739J480

Khamenei stamps authority on US relations, AFP, March 22, 2009
The swift response from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to US President Barack Obama’s overtures to Iran shows the supreme leader’s determination to keep a tight grip on the issue of ties with Washington, analysts said on Sunday. “He wanted to send a message to the whole world that he is the one who takes the big decisions,” said Parviz Esmaili, who is close to Iran’s dominant conservatives. “The silence of both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the foreign ministry proves it,” Esmaili told AFP. Another analyst, Said Leylaz, who is close to the reformist minority in the Iranian parliament, also commented on the unusual silence on the issue from the hardline president. “I am certain that President Ahmadinejad would have wanted to give this response to President Obama himself as that would have boosted his chances of re-election,” Leylaz said.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jxlz-o2pTtBtLRTktl169QEIxL1w

Iran’s response to US shows mind-set of leadership, AP, March 22, 2009
The Iranian leader’s rebuff on Saturday to President Barack Obama’s offer for dialogue was swift and sweeping: Words from Washington ring hollow without deep policy changes.  But Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s response was more than just a dismissive slap at the outreach. It was a broad lesson in the mind-set of Iran’s all-powerful theocracy and how it will dictate the pace and tone of any new steps by Obama to chip away at their nearly 30-year diplomatic freeze.  ”It’s the first stage of the bargaining in classic Iranian style: Be tough and play up your toughness,” said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a professor of regional politics at United Arab Emirates University. “The Iranian leaders are not about concessions at this stage. It’s still all about ideology from the Iranian side.”  For Khamenei and his inner circle, that means appearing to stay true to the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the political narrative of rejecting the United States.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/21/AR2009032101079.html <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/21/AR2009032101079.html>

Editorial: Obama strikes new tone with Tehran, Financial Times, March 22 2009
Barack Obama’s overture to Iran, delivered by video on the eve of Monday’s Iranian new year, is a smart move, tone-perfectly delivered, and a clear departure not just from George W. Bush’s bellicose attitude but the visceral animosity that has bedevilled relations between Washington and Tehran since the Islamic Revolution of 30 years ago. Mr Obama managed simultaneously to address Iran’s innate sense of cultural superiority as an ancient civilisation, and its paranoid sense of vulnerability. “The US wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations,” he said. “You have that right but it comes with real responsibilities and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilisation”. His use of the formal title of Islamic Republic implies US recognition of the revolution and abandonment of regime change. The emphasis on rights and responsibilities – the sort of discourse tailored for, say, China – suits Iran’s sense of entitlement and ambition to be acknowledged as a regional power. The address is well aimed, furthermore, not just at Iran’s leaders but at the Iranians, arguably the most instinctively pro-American people in the wider Middle East.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/617f1fb4-1713-11de-9a72-0000779fd2ac.html

Roger Cohen: From Tehran to Tel Aviv¸ International Herald Tribune, March 22, 2009
With his bold message to Iran’s leaders, President Obama achieved four things essential to any rapprochement. He abandoned regime change as an American goal. He shelved the so-called military option. He buried a carrot-and-stick approach viewed with contempt by Iranians as fit only for donkeys. And he placed Iran’s nuclear program within “the full range of issues before us.” By doing so, Obama made it almost inevitable that one of the defining strategic issues of his presidency will be a painful but necessary redefinition of America’s relations with Israel as differences over Iran sharpen. I will return to that below. The innovations in the president’s Persian New Year, or Nowruz, overture to Tehran were remarkable. He referred twice to “the Islamic Republic of Iran,” a formulation long shunned, and said that republic, no other, should “take its rightful place in the community of nations.” Here was explicit American acceptance of Iran’s 30-year-old clerical revolution.
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=20978866

Rami G. Khouri: Dialogue or Dictating to Iran?, Middle East Times, March 23, 2009
We should not underestimate the courage and self-confidence it took for Obama to move in this direction and to make several gestures towards Iran since taking office. He reflects real strength, political realism and much humility in being able to reverse many aspects of the belligerent Bush approach and instead to reach out to Iran. Yet the persistent flaw in the Obama approach that might prove to be fatal is a lingering streak of arrogance that is reflected in both the tone and the substance of his message. This is most obvious in his insistence – after telling the Iranians that they are a great culture with proud traditions, which is presumably something they already knew, experienced and felt on their own — on lecturing Iran about the responsibilities that come with the right to assume its place in the “community of nations”, and then linking Iran’s behavior with “terror of arms” and a “capacity to destroy.”
http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/03/23/dialogue_or_dictating_to_iran/9371/ <http://www.metimes.com/International/2009/03/23/dialogue_or_dictating_to_iran/9371

Despite Iran’s tepid response, experts hail Obama approach, McClatchy, March 20, 2009
Triti Parsi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, which favors U.S. engagement with Iran, called Obama’s latest message “historic.” He said the president took the right tack in not trying to ignore Iran’s leaders and speak only to the Iranian people, as Bush almost always did. Bush’s rhetoric helped the fiery Ahmadinejad, and Obama’s approach “now may ‘un-help’ Ahmadinejad,” Parsi said. Iranian reformists, who favor improved ties with the United States, also say the previous approach helped the hawkish camp in Iran’s divided political system, which often manipulates anti-American sentiment for political ends. While Bush was in the White House, “reformists became weak,” reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh said in a recent interview in Tehran. The Carnegie Endowment’s Sadjadpour said that while Iran’s internal political battles won’t be resolved anytime soon, the new U.S. diplomacy “will undermine (hardliners) and their narrative of a hostile U.S. government bent on oppressing Iran.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/64536.html <http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/64536.html

Iran sets terms for U.S. ties, AP, March 22, 2009
Iran wants the United States to show concrete change in its behavior toward it, for example by handing back frozen assets, but Tehran is not pursuing “eternal hostility,” said Professor Mohammad Marandi at Tehran University. “I think they (the Iranian leadership) are quite willing to have better relations if the Americans are serious,” said Marandi, who heads North American studies at the university. Marandi said Khamenei did not dismiss Obama’s overture but was “effectively saying that this is simply not enough, that the United States must take concrete steps toward decreasing tension with Iran.” But Professor Hamidreza Jalaiepour, who teaches political sociology in Tehran, said Khamenei had delivered a pragmatic message rather than one based on ideology on Saturday. If the United States eased sanctions imposed on Iran or released frozen funds, Iran was likely to respond, for example in helping to stabilize neighboring Afghanistan, he said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090322/wl_nm/us_iran_usa http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090322/wl_nm/us_iran_usa

‘No proof’ Iran seeks atom bomb: Russian minister, AFP, March 22, 2009
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday there was no proof that Iran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon and urged the West to respect and reach out to the Islamic republic. “There is no proof that Iran even has decided to make a bomb,” he told the Brussels Forum conference, alongside EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who on behalf of world powers has led talks to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Lavrov said the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was best placed to monitor Iran’s activities and establish whether it might try to covertly develop a weapon under the guise of a civilian programme. Lavrov said that “as long as the IAEA works in Iran,” real concerns it may develop a bomb could be allayed.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hBPU3NuguY_rj19oOwLADdyt-E2w

Amir Taheri <http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=AMIR+TAHERI&amp;ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND> : Iran Has Started a Mideast Arms Race, Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2009
Make no mistake: The Middle East may be on the verge of a nuclear arms race triggered by the inability of the West to stop Iran’s quest for a bomb. Since Tehran’s nuclear ambitions hit the headlines five years ago, 25 countries — 10 of them in the greater Middle East — have announced plans to build nuclear power plants for the first time. The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates [UAE] and Oman) set up a nuclear exploratory commission in 2007 to prepare a “strategic report” for submission to the alliance’s summit later this year. But Saudi Arabia is not waiting for the report. It opened negotiations with the U.S. in 2008 to obtain “a nuclear capacity,” ostensibly for “peaceful purposes.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123776572203009141.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123776572203009141.html

Wife of founder of Iran’s Islamic republic dies, AP, March 23, 2009
The wife of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, has died after a long illness, state media reported Sunday. She was 93. Khadijeh Saqafi, who was known as the “mother of the Islamic revolution,” died Saturday in Tehran, state TV said. Thousands of people, including Iran’s president and supreme leader, attended her funeral at Tehran University on Sunday. “After a lifetime of patience and perseverance, and months of sick health, the dear and respected wife of Imam Khomeini has finally passed way, leaving friends of the late imam in grief,” her grandson Hasan Khomeini said in a statement posted on the Web site of Iran’s English-language state television station, Press TV.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ikwGcpqo0p2JwanEHkViYsOE0s2QD9739J480 http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ikwGcpqo0p2JwanEHkViYsOE0s2QD9739J480

Tony Wilson
Program Assistant
Open Society Institute/Open Society Policy Center
1120 19th Street, NW- 8th Floor Washington, DC 20036
Tel. 1-202-721-5600
Fax: 1-202-530-0128

Remember Iran, the greatest threat to Western civilization since, well, Iraq? The posturing conservatives who dominated America’s foreign policy for most of the last seven years pretended the only approach that ever could or should be pursued toward the mullahs would be isolation, confrontation and, what the hell, annihilation. Who can forget the oft-repeated campaign mantra of Sen. John McCain that the only thing worse than going to war with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran?

Well, it turns out that a lot of things are worse. It’s funny how a reassertive Russia armed with some 10,000 all-too-real nuclear weapons puts the theoretical menace of Iran’s as yet non- existent arsenal in perspective. But, looking ahead, what’s more curious still is that a new administration–maybe even McCain’s–may start looking for ways to work with Iran to help balance Russian power.

For centuries, whenever Russia has thrashed around in the Caucasus or in Central Asia, the Persians have been among the first to feel the bear’s hot breath. The kingdoms of Georgia, one may recall, were vassals of the shahs before they were taken by the tsars in the early 19th century. Imperial Russia kept pushing decade after decade until its troops occupied even the Iranian city of Tabriz. In the 20th century, the Soviets repeatedly tried to establish variations on the theme of a Persian Socialist Republic. That’s the kind of history the millennially minded Iranians keep in mind.

It’s true that over the last 20 years, Tehran’s relations with Moscow have been much more cooperative. The Persian pariahs would take any friends they could get. But those were the decades when Russia’s sphere of influence was shrinking–and the Russian move into Georgia is a clear signal those days of timidity are over.

History, especially Caucasian, Caspian and Central Asian history has restarted with a vengeance. The dynamics of confrontation and conciliation in Iran’s neighborhood are now every bit as complicated as they were in the 19th century, when an expanding Russian empire came up against the intrigues, alliances and sometimes overt military actions of imperial Britain in the rivalry that became known as “The Great Game.” What’s needed as we start reshaping American policy to fit the new circumstances is a reality check or, perhaps better said, a realpolitik check.

Over the short run, the mullahs will reap several benefits from Russia’s play in Georgia and Western reaction to it. “If you are no longer the greatest threat du jour then you are off the hook,” says Vali Nasr, an Iran scholar affiliated with the Council on Foreign Relations. Given the diplomatic standoff between Moscow and Washington, it will be much harder to enforce U.N. Security Council sanctions leveled against Iran for pursuing its nuclear-enrichment program. Further tightening the screws will be all but impossible. At the same time, the likelihood of American-led or supported military action against Iran is also diminished. It was never a good idea, and now it would be a very dangerous distraction for the already depleted U.S. military. Israel, however worried it may be, will have to understand that.

If Iran is not already working at full speed to develop nuclear weapons (it insists its intentions are entirely peaceful), it could be expected to pick up the pace now, and not least as a deterrent to Russian expansion in its direction. On the other hand, if it pushes too hard and too fast, Moscow may start to see nuclear-armed mullahs as a dangerous distraction, and Tehran would have to take into account the possibility that Russia, in its new and aggressive posture, would act directly and ruthlessly to eliminate the threat. Under current circumstances, who would come to Iran’s defense? Even if the Iranians decide to slow down their nuclear program, or stop it, they will have to worry about Moscow’s long-term designs on oil and natural-gas deposits around the Caspian Sea, where Russia already has a fleet and already disputes Iran’s claims to a large portion of the resources beneath the water.

The incoming American administration could “play on those kinds of fears and take advantage of the opportunities,” says Nasr. “But to play that kind of game you need a lot of clarity of vision.” That hasn’t really been the hallmark of the Bush administration, nor of McCain’s rhetoric, nor of Barack Obama’s talk about talking. Indeed, the basic policy framework of the United States is built on fundamental contradictions. “We talk as if Iran is the biggest threat, but we act as if Russia is,” says Nasr.

Thus Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a deal with Warsaw on Tuesday to put part of the American ballistic-missile shield in Poland, having long asserted that the purpose was to thwart Iran. But, um, Iran has no intercontinental ballistic missiles. Its attempt to launch a rocket into space over the weekend appears to have quite literally fizzled. Moscow, meanwhile, has hundreds of perfectly serviceable ICBMs. (We sometimes send our own American astronauts to the International Space Station on Russia’s reliable rockets.) It’s hardly surprising the Russians think the purpose of the American missile shield is to eliminate what’s left of the old strategic balance and give Washington a potential first-strike capability against Moscow. That sort of confrontation, if overplayed, could slip toward the Strangelovian standoffs of the cold war or, conceivably, something worse.

In fact, the new Great Game, like the old one, will be a long narrative of intrigue and confrontation in which there is no sudden or decisive resolution. Realism will dictate efforts to improve relations with states on Russia’s periphery whether or not their ideologies are compatible with American democratic ideals. Another Iran scholar, Gary Sick at Columbia University, believes the policymakers remaining in the Bush administration have actually come to understand this, albeit very late. “After 9/11 their world view was that the United States had limitless power,” says Sick. “I don’t think they believe that anymore. And if you really believe you have to husband your power in ways that are more cost effective, you have to change our approach to Iran.” It won’t be easy. The Iranians are hard bargainers with regional ambitions of their own, but they are not irrational, and their primary interest is security. Oddly enough, Washington may find that the U.S. benefits by helping them feel safer, not more threatened.

Read original article here: www.newsweek.com/id/154523

Hi Folks,

1. Check Stephen Kinzer’s (veteran New York Times reporter) article
on the potential relationship between events in Georgia and what may
be visited upon Iran. An important point in Kinzer’s argument is his
observation that: “American policy toward Iran has for decades been
shaped by emotion, not rationality.

” Clearly other considerations
govern U.S. foreign policy towards Iran (oil?!). Nonetheless, the
article is worth reading. It is entitled “Attacking Iran via South
Ossetia: Could the conflict between Russia and Georgia be the excuse
the Bush administration has been looking for to bomb Iran?” at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/20/usforeignpolicy.iran/print.
A pdf version is available.

2. Kinzer is the author of “All the Shah’s Men,” an excellent
account of the overthrow of Dr. Mossadeq’s government in August
1953. On the occasion, this week, of the 55th anniversary of that
momentous event, I recommend an article by Faramarz Farbod entitled,
“More than Just Another Overthrow: Let’s not Forget Mossadeq in
Iran.” The article’s abstract is as follows:

“Fifty-five years ago this week, in mid-August of 1953, Dr. Mohammad
Mossadeq, the prime minister of Iran, was toppled in a royalist coup
code-named Operation AJAX by its US and British backers. The coup
delivered a severe blow to the cause of constitutionalism, democracy,
and the rule of law in Iran, and ultimately altered the path of
politics there, in the region, and globally in ways that ought to be
familiar to discerning readers today.”

If you don’t have time to read the entire article, check out the
quote in the article from a New York Times editorial dated August 6th, 1954.

Read it at: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18494#_edn2. A pdf
version is available.

by Charley Reese

President George Bush and his tag-along buddy John McCain are repeating almost word for word about Iran the pattern of lies and threats they used to justify the war against Iraq.

Our intelligence agencies have said that Iran gave up the pursuit of a nuclear weapon three years ago. President Bush makes speeches as if he’s never heard of any intelligence agencies. That’s what worries me about President Bush. His words very often defy and contradict reality.

Recently, he almost repeated word for word a theme he often used in the buildup to the Iraq aggression. It was, he said, unthinkable to allow “the most dangerous regime to acquire the most dangerous weapons.” This guy might actually launch an attack on Iran before his term expires. If he does, you can kiss the world economy goodbye. You don’t like $4-a-gallon gas? How about $10 a gallon?

In the first place, Iran is far from the most dangerous regime in the world. I would say it is not dangerous at all, so far as the United States is concerned. Except for idiots, sane people assess threats based on capability, not on political rhetoric, intentions or imagination. Read the rest of this entry »

Several Reports Surfacing regarding Dick Cheney’s recent banter on national media regarding Iran’s so-called “nuclear enrichment” — evidently he is psychic since no one else has observed this activity — either that or he is just hoping that the American people and the media will not bother to verify the facts — as he clearly saw in the faked facts and figures and reasons he gave for invading Iraq five years ago.

Dick Cheney has his sights set on Iran

To the Editor:

Dick Cheney is making the same type of broad accusation that he made in the run-up to the Iraq war. This time, his target is Iran: “Obviously, they’re also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels,” he said during an interview in Turkey on Monday with ABC’s Martha Raddatz.

Cheney’s statement contradicts the findings of the International Atomic Energy Agency and his own intelligence agency’s reports. One can be sure that he is working behind the scenes, imploring the intelligence community to come up with some piece of information — no matter how small or suspect — that supports his contentions.

We’ve seen it all before.

From India eNews.com

By Ria Novosti. Moscow, Russia, 10:32 PM IST

Moscow, March 27 (RIA Novosti) Russian military intelligence services are reporting a flurry of activity by US Armed Forces near Iran’s borders, a high-ranking security source said Tuesday.

‘The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran,’ the official said, adding that the Pentagon has probably not yet made a final decision as to when an attack will be launched.

He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran ‘that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.’

He also said the US Naval presence in the Persian Gulf has for the first time in the past four years reached the level that existed shortly before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of Geopolitical Sciences, said last week that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s military infrastructure in the near future.

A new US carrier battle group has been dispatched to the Gulf.

The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around 80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Super hornet fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since Dec 2006. The US is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.