William O. Beeman --The Iranian Chess Game Continues (Foreign Policy in Focus)

The Iranian Chess Game Continues
August 6, 2008

Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org

Diplomacy between Iran and the United States has entered the opening gambit stage and Iran appears to be winning at this point.

The game began on July 19, when Iranian nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili met with European negotiators with an American diplomat, Under Secretary of State William J. Burns, present for the first time at such a meeting since the Iranian hostage crisis.

The presence of William J. Burns riled many anti-Iranian forces resulting in a flurry of pronouncements and articles about American "capitulation" to Iran. The recriminations continued. Even now, on August 5, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, a notorious anti-Iran detractor, wrote a fulminating article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "While Diplomats Dither, Iran Builds Nukes."

The Bush administration clearly found itself in a difficult situation, needing to placate hawks like Bolton and Vice-President Dick Cheney while seeming to allow diplomacy to have a chance, so they made the talks not about substance, but about power – which side could compel the other to toe the line.

So the Bush administration started with a big lie. At the time of the July meeting the press and the State Department announced that Iran had a two-week deadline to respond to the European proposals, (the exact details of which remain secret, but which are presumed to include an extensive basket of technology, economic, and trade incentives).

There was no such deadline. It appears to have been a fiction. However, this falsehood gave Washington and the press the opportunity on August 2 to announce that Iran had "rejected" the deadline. The New York Times went so far as to call it an "informal deadline," a head-scratching concept.

Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki was reported by Agence France Press to have said, "The language of deadline-setting is not understandable to us. We gave them our response within a month as we said we would, now they have to reply to us."

Even the State Department itself had to back down from the fictional deadline. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack threatened further sanctions if Iran did not respond on Wednesday, July 30. But he had changed his tune on Saturday, August 2, the putative deadline. "I didn't count the days. It's coming up soon," he said. And when asked when Washington would pull incentives off the table designed to persuade Iran to abandon its uranium enrichment program, said "there is no indication of that.

So little happened at the July 19 meeting, it could hardly be called a diplomatic encounter. In fact, Iran has been pursuing a productive diplomatic course. Rather than responding to deadlines and ultimatums, Iran has steadily put forward proposals for resolving its differences with the European and American governments over its nuclear energy program. It is clear that Iran will not give up its "inalienable right" to peaceful development of nuclear energy, as enshrined in Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it (but not India, Pakistan or Israel) is a signatory. It seeks other means, short of suspending uranium enrichment, to assure the world that it has no active nuclear weapons program.

Iran's proposal for negotiations presented to the European Nations is titled "The Modality For Comprehensive Negotiations" and sets out three stages of proceedings:

Preliminary Talks. Overall determination of the negotiating timetable.

Start of Talks. Actions against Iran would be suspended and common ground matters would be discussed.

Negotiations. Actual negotiating stage which the Iranians envision should last two months, but could be extended by mutual consent.

Iran does not agree in this document to suspend uranium enrichment. The document states in the negotiation stage that determinations regarding Iran's compliance with the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty would be "concluded in the UNSC [United Nations Security Council] and fully and completely returned to the Agency [The International Atomic Energy Agency]."

This is a reasonable blueprint for forward negotiations, and it represents a real diplomatic effort on Iran’s part. By contrast, the United States seems to have acted with a combination of bluff and muscle, and has gotten nowhere for their efforts.

This has not stopped the United States and its European allies for calling on August 4 for more sanctions based on Iran's violation of the "informal deadline." This is an astonishing exercise in diplomatic audacity – calling for punishment where there could be no violation, there being no mutual agreement of the conditions under which actions would be declared a violation. Unfortunately, the political climate against Iran being what it is, such an unwarranted bellicose move will likely go unquestioned.

Except by Iran.

Iran had its own gambits in mind to retain control of the process. After the accusations and the threats by the European and U.S. consortium, they countered with a grim reminder that they could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which two-thirds of OPEC crude oil passes. They tested some new conventional missiles. Then they announced that they would indeed answer the European proposals – but in their own time and on their own timetable, according to their own agenda. They were clearly working through their own negotiation plan step by step, catching the United States off guard, and throwing everyone in Washington off their game, leaving them to continue their slow burn.

The question is whether, out of frustration or pique, the impatient Washington detractors will upset the table.

Foreign Policy In Focus contributor William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and the author, most recently, of The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

William O. Beeman--Playing Games with Iran--(Foreign Policy in Focus)

http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5387

Playing Games with Iran

William O. Beeman | July 21, 2008

Editor: John Feffer

Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org

By now the structure of the U.S. game with Iran is clear. In the first move, the United States and Iran make some small progress toward improved relations. In the counter move, hardliners in the United States and Israel launch attacks against Iran in order to sabotage these improving relations.

In the latest iteration of this game, the U.S. State Department has made an interesting gambit. It announced that Undersecretary of State William Burns would sit at the table on July 20 as members of the European Union entered into talks with Iran over its nuclear program. At the same time, the United States has been reported to be considering opening a formal American Interests Section in Tehran. These two actions will be the first serious public diplomatic activities between the two nations in nearly three decades. (Three earlier meetings in Baghdad between U.S. Iraqi Envoy Ryan Crocker and Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Hassan Kazemi-Qomi focused on security in Iraq).

The counter-moves came fast and furious. First, former UN ambassador and prominent neoconservative John Bolton launched a jeremiad against the U.S. government on July 15 in the Wall Street Journal. Criticizing the administration for failing to act militarily against Iran, Bolton placed his hopes on Israel to carry out the military attack that he fervently desires. “Instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran,” he wrote.
Following closely on Bolton’s editorial, The New York Times printed another attack against Iran on Friday, July 18, just one day before the opening of the European talks, by Benny Morris, an historian at Ben-Gurion University. Like Bolton, Morris presents an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an established fact, implies that Iran would make a first-strike attack on Israel, and thus justifies pre-emptive military action on Israel’s part.

Both Bolton and Morris base their attacks on false premises. Diplomatic dealings with Iran have, in fact, succeeded on the few occasions they have been tried. There is no proof anywhere that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program at present, a fact underscored by the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007. In fact, Iran’s nuclear experiments are still at a primitive level, far from any possibility of manufacturing weapons. Iran has never directly threatened Israel and is not likely considering a first strike against Israel.

Such attacks have followed every minuscule improvement in U.S-Iranian relations during the Bush administration. Every first move in a warming trend – such as Iranian support for the U.S. war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. aid to Iran during the Bam earthquake in 2003, and Iran’s formal offer to enter into comprehensive negotiations with the United States in 2003 – has been followed by sharp criticism from both inside and outside of the Brush administration. Detractors have countered these advances with accusations of Iranian support for Hezbullah and Hamas, and support for “special groups” attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. True to form, the U.S. military announced the launching of a new crackdown on weapons smuggling from Iran to coincide with the Saturday talks,

None of these accusations, along with the Iranian weapons program and plot to launch a first-strike against Israel, has ever been proven. The most memorable of these attacks was the labeling of Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil” in President George Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address, just as Iran’s military aid to the United States was beginning to create a climate of trust between the two nations.

Bolton, Morris, and their ilk may represent the last, weak gasp of the hawks who would embroil the United States and Israel in a disastrous confrontation with Iran. Indeed, for the time being, it seems that cooler heads are prevailing. Though Western commentators described the talks at the one-shot Saturday meeting negatively as a “deadlock,” William Burns’ official presence at the table was an important benchmark. Iran did not accept the Western proposals on the spot, but was given two weeks to respond. The Iranians appeared pleased. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief negotiator, called the negotiating process a “very beautiful endeavor.”

Despite this progress, the power of the American and Israeli extremists should not be underestimated. They still have the ear of Vice President Dick Cheney and a dwindling coterie of his supporters in the Department of Defense. A group of Israeli politicians, including Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi, have arrived in Washington, according to Mother Jones magazine, presumably to convince the Bush administration to allow them to carry out their attack.

Hostile rhetoric against Iran also plays into the U.S. electoral process. For American politicians, Iran is a universal bogeyman, useful in an election year as a device to show elected officials as tough on foreign miscreants. Indeed, since the Iranian Revolution U.S.-Iranian relations have been a centerpiece in election debates. Conspiracy theorists believe fervently that the Republican Party engineered an “October Surprise” in 1980 with Iranian officials – delaying the release of the American Hostages until after the U.S. Presidential election – and thus denied Jimmy Carter a second term. The purported event -- true or not -- has supplied a permanent political term for American elections.

In every presidential election since, U.S.-Iranian relations have been featured in presidential debates and campaign ads, with universal negativity toward Iran. This year is no exception with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain all expressing hostile attitudes toward Iran. And this year’s October Surprise is the rumor that the Bush administration will bomb Iran just before the election to give a boost to John McCain. Unless the Israeli hawks get there first.

Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) contributor William O. Beeman is professor and chair of the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He is president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association and the author, most recently, of The "Great Satan" vs. the "Mad Mullahs": How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other.

Behrad Nakhai and William O. Beeman--Iran’s Nuclear Activity: Don’t Believe the Hype (New America Media)

Iran’s Nuclear Activity: Don’t Believe the Hype

New America Media, Commentary, Behrad Nakhai and William O. Beeman , Posted: Jul 16, 2008

Editor's Note: Rumors that Iran is less than a year away from making a nuclear bomb are false and misleading, argue the commentators, who say that there is little relationship between Iran’s current state of low enriched uranium and the production of a nuclear weapon.

Is Iran a year away from making a nuclear bomb?

This is what is being whispered in Washington as a “parade” of Israeli officials comes to Washington in the next two weeks to consult on Iran, and presumably to renew Israel’s request for the Bush administration’s blessing to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, according to Mother Jones magazine. Visitors will include Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal with the thinly veiled purpose of convincing Bush officials to let Israel launch its attack. He wrote, “The crucial turning point is when Iran masters all the capabilities to weaponize without further external possibility of stopping it.”

Bolton would have the American public believe that this turning point is imminent, and he is buttressed by other neoconservative alarmists. Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research of the conservative Washington Institute for Near East Policy and senior editor of Middle East Quarterly, told Mother Jones on July 10, “It certainly appears from the last [International Atomic Energy Agency] report that Iran is on track to have enough kilos [of low enriched uranium that can be enriched to weapons grade] within a year…. What most people concentrate on is when Iran would have 600 to 700 kilos of its own low enriched uranium, which is enough to make enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb…. If everything works perfectly, [it would take] two months. If everything doesn't work perfectly, a bit longer. The answer would be the space of a few months."

This would be both ominous and convincing if it were true, but it is false and utterly misleading. Unfortunately Clawson, Bolton, and those who make similar predictions know nothing about nuclear engineering. The truth is that there is little relationship between Iran’s current state of low enriched uranium and the production of a nuclear weapon. There are many intervening steps that would take years to accomplish.

Getting from low enriched uranium (LEU) to high enriched uranium (HEU) not only requires enough quality LEU, but also perfectly tuned working machineries that Iran currently lacks. Contrary to Clawson’s assertions, Iran is far from being at that point. The quality of the LEU is also questionable. Moreover, from all indications, Iran's current setup is fragile and prone to breakage. By some reports the Iranian equipment is almost non-usable even for low enrichment purposes.

Iran is engaged in peaceful nuclear research and not nuclear weapons production — a fact re-affirmed by the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007. However, the program falls short of even low-level enrichment capability. The nation must still pass through a number of technological stages to gain a useful sustained low-level enrichment capability.

Even if another nation were to provide good quality LEU to Iran, Iran does not currently have the required resources to enrich the LEU to HEU. And if another nation were to provide Iran with HEU, Iran does not have the capability to assemble a test bomb, let alone a threatening bomb.

Commentators like Clawson make it appear trivial to assemble a “bomb” once HEU is obtained. In practice, however, handling of such HEU and the ability to assemble a working bomb is not at all trivial. That is why the United States, Russia and other nuclear nations have atomic tests. Once testing begins, the bomb-making process could never proceed unnoticed — even if conducted underground. We should remember that North Korea’s nuclear bomb tests were unsuccessful. This may be one reason they were willing to relinquish their nuclear program.

Finally, even if Iran were to obtain a bomb, it is not clear how they could provide a delivery system for the bomb with their present level of military technology. Iran has been testing conventional missiles — and not very successfully, as was recently seen in their over-hyped “show of strength” on July 10, when missile launches failed, and had to be “Photoshopped” in to the publicity pictures.

A nuclear loaded missile is a vastly different technological accomplishment from a conventional missile. An airplane might be an alternative delivery mechanism, but Iran has no aircraft capable of delivering a sophisticated nuclear weapon.

Looking carefully at Iran’s nuclear program as it stands at present, it is only reasonable to conclude that Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts have so far been very elementary — effectively just practice runs for the very lowest levels of enrichment. In theory, LEU, with the proper technological equipment and skill, could be developed into a weapon. But this is a bit like saying that theoretically carbon could be made into dynamite. In both cases, it is a long way from the raw material to the finished product. Iran’s LEU is currently of no practical use except as a means to learning the enrichment process. And it is certainly no cause whatever for a military attack.

Dr. Behrad Nakhai is a nuclear scientist. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee. He is currently working as a nuclear engineer performing nuclear safety analysis. He was formerly a research nuclear scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and has also been a faculty member at the Center for Nuclear Studies in Memphis, TN, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. He has just returned from Iran.

William O. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. He is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association, and former Director of Middle East Studies at Brown University. His most recent book is “The ‘Great Satan’ vs. the ‘Mad Mullahs’: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other”, University of Chicago Press.

John Bolton calls for Bombing of Iran

Note from William O. Beeman

John Bolton's call for military action in Iran (below) should be blatantly derided by the American public.

For John Bolton hope of effecting regime change in Iran springs eternal. However, my suspicion is that this piece was written to convince the Bush administration to give their blessing to an Israeli attack on Iran. Reportedly this week a passel of Israeli officials are in Washington lobbying hard to get the go-ahead on their military attack. To their credit the Bush officials are recalcitrant. You can see this in Mr. Bolton's rhetoric--excoriating the Bush administration for being pusillanimous. I certainly hope that cooler heads prevail in Washington.

Mr. Bolton is not above citing misleading and utterly false information about the Iranian situation. Of course, he claims that Iranian nuclear weapons development is an established fact when there is still no proof that it exists--including the conveniently ignored NIE Report of 2007 claiming that the weapons program does not exist. He has the gall to call diplomacy "failed" while neglecting to note that the U.S. has engaged in none of it--including the 2003 Iranian initiative, which he presumably had a hand in rejecting..

It is so shoddy and cheap for Washington to claim the diplomacy undertaken by European powers as somehow justifying American frustration with Iran, when we have done nothing, except to host Christopher Crocker hurling invective at the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad--some diplomacy! More and more it is looking like the neoconservative agenda of regime change throughout the Middle East to clear the way for American hegemony in the region is going down in flames. Bolton's editorial is the last gasp of this vampire movement, even as we try to drive a stake through its heart.

Best,

Bill Beeman
University of Minnesota



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121607841801452581.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
>
> Wall Street Journal
>
> Israel, Iran and the Bomb
> By JOHN R. BOLTON
> July 15, 2008; Page A19
>
> Iran's test salvo of ballistic missiles last week together with recent threatening rhetoric by commanders of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards emphasizes how close the Middle East is to a fundamental, in fact an irreversible, turning point.
>
> Tehran's efforts to intimidate the United States and Israel from using military force against its nuclear program, combined with yet another diplomatic charm offensive with the Europeans, are two sides of the same policy coin. The regime is buying the short additional period of time it needs to produce deliverable nuclear weapons, the strategic objective it has been pursuing clandestinely for 20 years.
>
> Between Iran and its long-sought objective, however, a shadow may fall: targeted military action, either Israeli or American. Yes, Iran cannot deliver a nuclear weapon on target today, and perhaps not for several years. Estimates vary widely, and no one knows for sure when it will have a deliverable weapon except the mullahs, and they're not telling. But that is not the key date. Rather, the crucial turning point is when Iran masters all the capabilities to weaponize without further external possibility of stopping it. Then the decision to weaponize, and its timing, is Tehran's alone. We do not know if Iran is at this point, or very near to it. All we do know is that, after five years of failed diplomacy by the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany), Iran is simply five years closer to nuclear weapons.
>
> And yet, true to form, State Department comments to Congress last week . even as Iran's missiles were ascending . downplayed Iran's nuclear progress, ignoring the cost of failed diplomacy. But the confident assumption that we have years to deal with the problem is high-stakes gambling on a policy that cannot be reversed if it fails. If Iran reaches weaponization before State's jaunty prediction, the Middle East, and indeed global, balance of power changes in potentially catastrophic ways.
>
> And consider what comes next for the U.S.: the Bush administration's last six months pursuing its limp diplomatic efforts, plus six months of a new president getting his national security team and policies together. In other words, one more year for Tehran to proceed unhindered to "the point of no return."
>
> We have almost certainly lost the race between giving "strong incentives" for Iran to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons, and its scientific and technological efforts to do just that. Swift, sweeping, effectively enforced sanctions might have made a difference five years ago. No longer. Existing sanctions have doubtless caused some pain, but Iran's real economic woes stem from nearly 30 years of mismanagement by the Islamic Revolution.
>
> More sanctions today (even assuming, heroically, support from Russia and China) will simply be too little, too late. While regime change in Tehran would be the preferable solution, there is almost no possibility of dislodging the mullahs in time. Had we done more in the past five years to support the discontented . the young, the non-Persian minorities and the economically disaffected . things might be different. Regime change, however, cannot be turned on and off like a light switch, although the difficulty of effecting it is no excuse not to do more now.
>
> That is why Israel is now at an urgent decision point: whether to use targeted military force to break Iran's indigenous control over the nuclear fuel cycle at one or more critical points. If successful, such highly risky and deeply unattractive air strikes or sabotage will not resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis. But they have the potential to buy considerable time, thereby putting that critical asset back on our side of the ledger rather than on Iran's.
>
> With whatever time is bought, we may be able to effect regime change in Tehran, or at least get the process underway. The alternative is Iran with nuclear weapons, the most deeply unattractive alternative of all.
>
> But the urgency of the situation has not impressed Barack Obama or the EU-3. Remarkably, on July 9, Sen. Obama, as if stumbling on a new idea, said Iran "must suffer threats of economic sanctions" and that we needed "direct diplomacy . . . so we avoid provocation" and "give strong incentives . . . to change their behavior." Javier Solana, chief EU negotiator, was at the time busy fixing a meeting with the Iranians to continue five years of doing exactly what Mr. Obama was proclaiming, without results.
>
> John McCain responded to Iran's missile salvo by stressing again the need for a workable missile defense system to defend the U.S. against attacks by rogue states like Iran and North Korea. He is undoubtedly correct, highlighting yet another reason why November's election is so critical, given the unceasing complaints about missile defense from most Democrats.
>
> Important as missile defense is, however, it is only a component of a postfailure policy on Iran's nuclear-weapons capacity. In whatever limited amount of time before then, we must face a very hard issue: What will the U.S. do if Israel decides to initiate military action? There was a time when the Bush administration might itself have seriously considered using force, but all public signs are that such a moment has passed.
>
> Israel sees clearly what the next 12 months will bring, which is why ongoing U.S.-Israeli consultations could be dispositive. Israel told the Bush administration it would destroy North Korea's reactor in Syria in spring, 2007, and said it would not wait past summer's end to take action. And take action it did, seeing a Syrian nuclear capability, for all practical purposes Iran's agent on its northern border, as an existential threat. When the real source of the threat, not just a surrogate, nears the capacity for nuclear Holocaust, can anyone seriously doubt Israel's propensities, whatever the impact on gasoline prices?
>
> Thus, instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during and after a strike on Iran. We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible. At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can.
>
> These subjects are decidedly unpleasant. A nuclear Iran is more so.
>
> Mr. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations" (Simon & Schuster, 2007).
>

The Iranian Nuclear Crisis--Portland OR October 29, 2006

The Iranian Nuclear Crisis

William O. Beeman

Portland, Oregon

October 29, 2006

The United States and Iran are moving laboriously toward confrontation—perhaps military confrontation. John Bolton and Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns are working non-stop at the United Nations to try and get international sanctions imposed on Iran. The latest attempt is to get U.N. nations to prohibit Iranian students from studying certain subjects, such as engineering, in member nations.



Iran in turn has vigorously rejected any attempts to limit its development of a full nuclear enrichment cycle. The attempts on the part of the United Nations to impose trade or other sanctions on Iran is leading to diplomatic difficulties as Russia and China will likely oppose these measures.



An examination of the U.S. position vis-à-vis Iran leads inevitably to the conclusion that the nuclear issue is merely a pretext for action against the Iranian government, which the United States has been demonizing since the Revolution of 1978-79. The Bush administration’s real goal is regime change in Iran by whatever means, and finding an issue that can be trumped up enough to garner the support of the American public, and the international community has been a constant activity since President Bush came to office in his first administration.



Now the drive to destabilize Iran by whatever means has taken on a life of its own. It has become a dangerous obsession for the Bush administration, driving them increasingly to support actions that are not only counter-productive, but dangerous for the region and the world.



I want to make several points today.



First, that the Bush administration’s goal to attack Iran predates any concern about Iran’s nuclear program.



Second, that Iran’s nuclear development program poses no immediate danger for the United States, Israel or the Middle East region—because it is not a nuclear weapons program, and all attempts to prove that it is a weapons program are specious.



Third, Iran’s attempts to address American and European fears about the program have been systematically rejected by the United States, who wishes fervently to assure that this will continue to be a live issue



Finally, that potential U.S. actions against Iran pose far more danger than Iran poses for the region and for the world.



PRE-EXISTING PLANS



The attacks against Iran have their origins in longstanding concerns about the safety of Israel, ratcheted up by the extremist views of the neoconservatives that now dominate the Bush administration.



These concerns combined with decades long antipathy toward Iran, and the desire of the United States to dominate the oil-rich Middle East create a perfect storm of fervent desire on the part of the Bush administration to attack Iran.



The rhetoric against Iran has now pervaded American political culture to such an extent that no American lawmaker is willing to defend Iran. Conversely, no politician, Democratic or Republican ever lost a vote by attacking Iran.



According to journalist Sidney Blumenthal in Salon

>>>

>>>, the neocons in the administration, specifically Vice President Dick

>>>Cheney and National Security Agency Middle East Director Elliott Abrams,

>>>have been funneling U.S. intelligence intercepts to the Israelis as part

>>>of a plan to target Syria and Iran (see Tom Barry, Hunting Monsters with

>>>Elliott Abrams ).

>>>

>>>Those intercepts were behind the recent House Intelligence Committee

>>>report blasting U.S. spy agencies for their reluctance to say that

>>>Hezbollah is nothing more than an extension of Iran, that Tehran is on

>>>the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, and that Iran poses a clear and

>>>present danger to the United States.

>>>

>>>The author of the House report, Frederick Fleitz, was a former special

>>>assistant to current UN Ambassador John Bolton. Bolton was a key figure

>>>in gathering the now-discredited intelligence that Iraq had weapons of

>>>mass destruction.

>>>

>>>According to Blumenthal, Cheney and his Middle East aide David Wurmser

>>>have dusted off a 1996 document called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for

>>>Securing the Realm." The study was authored by Wurmser, ex-Pentagon

>>>official Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, disgraced former head of the

>>>Defense Policy Board.

>>>

>>>The "Break"-originally written for then-Likud prime minister Benjamin

>>>Netanyahu-advocates that the Israelis, with support from the United

>>>States, dump the 1992 Oslo Agreement with the Palestinians, target Syria

>>>and Iraq, and redesign the Middle East.

>>>

>>>A key ingredient in the document, and one central to current

>>>administration thinking, is that since terrorism is state-supported, the

>>>war on terrorism can be won by changing regimes. Hence, to defeat

>>>Hezbollah, you have to overthrow Syria and Iran.

>>>



The only problem that the Bush administration felt they had was how to sell the overthrow of Iran to the American public. The fact that such an action would be a massive, stunning failure seems even now not to be of any great concern to them.



The only issue that really frightens and concerns the American public is their own safety. Raising the specter of atomic weapons that might be used against Americans worked effectively in convincing the U.S. public to support the Iraqi invasion. Having used this device once, the Bush administration has trotted it out again, and has fed the U.S. public a full measure of yellow journalism trying to frighten them into supporting an Iranian attack. Neoconservative Bush supporters wrote fantasy accounts of Iranian cataclysmic atomic attacks on America. Jerome Corsi, ghost author of Unfit for Command, the Swiftboat attack on John Kerry wrote Atomic Iran—in which a hyperbolic account of an Iranian atomic bomb dropped on New York’s Central Park vies for his accounts of Iranian mullahs abducting children to support their regime. Kenneth Timmerman, penned Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran in a similar vein. Let me read a passage from Ray Takyeh of the Council on Foreign Relations’ review of the book from the Washington Post:



Timmerman's thesis is simplistic and provocative: Iran is America's most militant, relentless enemy and has been involved in nearly every terrorist attack against the United States since 1979. Iran is also actively seeking the bomb -- not for deterrence, but to menace the United States and its allies. . . . Timmerman, the author of earlier books attacking France and Jesse Jackson, begins his book with the outlandish claim that Iran was complicit in the Sept. 11, 2001, atrocities. In his retelling of history, a craven CIA, determined to exonerate rogue states that sponsor terrorism, has deliberately withheld this information from the American public. The conclusions of the numerous congressional investigations and journalistic inquiries into Sept. 11 are simply ignored. The one independent examination that Timmerman does cite, the 9/11 Commission, is faulted for missing what he considers the all-too-apparent Iran link. The reader gets the impression that Timmerman would rather not bother with facts precisely because they undermine his conspiracy theory.

The book was praised by the right-wing Washington Times, New York Sun and New York Post and has been widely cited on Fox News and other sycophantic supporters of the Bush administration.



IRAN POSES NO DANGER



However, there is no proof whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.





President Bush declared on June 25, 2003 that "we will not tolerate" a nuclear armed Iran. His words are empty. The physical evidence for a nuclear weapons program in Iran simply does not exist.



Iran is completing a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in Bushehr with Russian help. The existence of the site is common knowledge. It has been under construction for more than three decades, since before the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979.



Two other nuclear research facilities, now under development, have come to light: a uranium enrichment plant in the city of Natanz and a deuterium ("heavy water") facility in the city of Arak. Neither is in operation. The only question of interest is whether these facilities offer a plausible route to the manufacture of plutonium-based nuclear bombs, and the short answer is: They do not.



The Bushehr plant is only part of the argument that Iran is embarked on a nuclear weapons program, but it is the part that can readily be analyzed. State Department accusations of dangerous Iranian intentions for the Natanz and Arak facilities are based on a patchwork of untestable, murky assertions from dubious sources, including the People's Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen-e Khalq, MEK or MKO), which the United States identifies as a terrorist organization. These sources assert that there are centrifuges for enriching uranium (an alternative to fissile plutonium for bombs) or covert facilities for extracting plutonium. Neither of these claims are especially credible, since the sources are either unidentified or are the same channels which disseminated the stories about Iraq's non-conventional weapons or the so-called chemical and biological weapons plant in Khartoum.



The testable part of the claim -- that the Bushehr reactor is a proliferation threat -- is demonstrably false. There are several reasons, some technical, some institutional.



--The Iranian reactor yields the wrong kind of plutonium for making bombs.



--The spent fuel pins in the Iranian reactor would, in any case, be too dangerous to handle for weapons manufacture.



--Any attempt to divert fuel from the Iranian plant will be detectable.



--The Russian partners in the Bushehr project have stipulated that the fuel pins must be returned to Russia, as has been their practice worldwide for other export reactors.



Just as there are many different kinds of nuclear reactors, there are different forms of plutonium, distinctions that are almost never made in public discussions of nuclear proliferation.



There are two different kinds of reactors, heavy-water or graphite-moderated reactors; and pressurized, or "light water" reactors (PWRs). The Dimona nuclear power plant in Israel is an example of the former. The Bushehr plant is the latter.



The Israeli plant is ideal for yielding the desirable isotope of Plutonium (Pu 239) necessary for making bombs. The Iranian plant will produce plutonium, but the wrong kind. It will produce the heavier isotopes, Pu240, Pu241 and Pu242 -- almost impossible to use in making bombs.



Crucial to extracting weapons-grade plutonium is the type of reactor and the mode in which it is operated. The Israeli-type plant can be refueled "on line," without shutting down. Thus, high-grade plutonium can be obtained covertly and continuously. In the Iranian plant, the entire reactor will have to be shut down -- a step that cannot be concealed from satellites, airplanes and other sources -- in order to permit the extraction of even a single fuel pin.



In the Israeli reactor, the fuel is recycled every few weeks, or at most every couple of months. This maximizes the yield of the highest-quality, weapons-grade plutonium. In the Iranian-type reactor, the core is exchanged only every 30-40 months -- the longer the fuel cycle, the better for the production of power.



For the Iranian reactor at Bushehr, any effort to divert fuel will be transparent because a shutdown will be immediately noticeable. No case of production of bomb-grade material from fuel from an Iranian-type plant has ever been reported.



No one can read the collective mind of a government. But even if Iran proves in the future to have ambitions for developing nuclear weapons, any actual production is years, perhaps decades away. Furthermore, Iran has fully acquiesced to the international inspections process. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). On June 22, the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, Gholam-Reza Aghazadeh, reiterated that all of Iran's nuclear facilities are open for inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in compliance with treaty guarantees.



Of course, Iran is developing other facilities—an enrichment plant in Isfahan, and a deuterium production plant in Natanz have been opened. These plants are entirely legal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and they are entirely consistent with power generation. Much has been made in the last week of the fact that Iran has placed two cascades of 164 centrifuges on line which now have produced enriched uranium at a lower grade than is even needed for power generation (5%). Production capacity would require 50,000 centrifuges and enrichment to a level of 90%. All intelligence experts agree that Iran is years away from coming even close to producing enough weapons grade uranium to produce even a single bomb. The German intelligence office last week estimated that if it worked non-stop on this level of enrichment, it might have enough weapons grade uranium by 2015. U.S. Intelligence Director John Negroponte agrees with this assessment. Mohammad el Baradei of the IAEA last week once again reiterated that he was “unconvinced” that Iran had any weapons program.



The deuterium plant has resulted in some interesting press. The U.S. press regularly reported that the plant has the capacity to produce weapons grade fuel. Of course this is absurd. The plant produces heavy water, which would then be used in a heavy water reactor, designed to be completed in 2009 or 2010. The spent fuel from the reactor would then have to be processed to extract any weapons-grade fuel, and another plant to build any weapons. The idea that this operation could go undetected by international inspection teams is absurd.



IRANIAN NEED



The furor in Washington over possible nuclear weapons development in Iran is fueled in part because Bush administration officials claim that Iran doesn't need to generate nuclear power. They assert that Iran's nuclear energy program is unnecessary given its oil reserves. Therefore, officials say, its nuclear plants must exist for weapons production.



In fact, for Iran, generating nuclear power makes sense. Moreover, the plans to do this were started decades ago, and with American approval.



Ex-CIA director James Woolsey, in an interview on the PBS program Frontline on Feb. 23, 2003 claimed "there is no underlying (reason) for one of the greatest oil producers in the world to need to get into the nuclear (energy) business."



At first glance, such logic seems sound. Countries with vast oil reserves also have large reserves of natural gas sitting on top of those reserves. Some years ago, the natural gas was regularly burned off to get at the oil beneath. However, technological advances today make it feasible to use this gas for power generation.



Even so, nuclear power still makes sense in a country with vast amounts of natural gas, particularly given the unusual circumstances in the Iranian hydrocarbons industry. There are needs for gas in Iran that command much higher priorities than the construction of gas power plants.



First, gas is vitally needed for reinjection into existing oil reservoirs (repressurizing). This is indispensable for maintaining oil output levels, as well as for increasing overall, long-term recovery of oil.



Second, natural gas is needed for growing domestic use, such as in cooking fuel and domestic heating (Iranians typically use kerosene for both), where it can free up oil for more profitable export. New uses such as powering bus and taxi fleets in Iran's smoggy urban areas are also essential for development.



Third, natural gas exports -- via pipelines to Turkey or in liquefied form to the subcontinent -- set an attractive minimum value for any available natural gas. With adequate nuclear power generation, Iran can profit more from selling its gas than using it to generate power.



Fourth, the economics of gas production in Iran are almost backwards, certainly counter-intuitive. Much of Iran's gas is "rich" -- it contains by-products, such as liquid-petrolem gas (LPG, better known as propane), which are more valuable than the natural gas they are derived from. Iran can profit by selling these derivatives, but not if it burns the natural gas to generate power. Furthermore, Iran adheres to OPEC production quotas, which combine oil and natural gas production. Therefore Iran cannot simply increase natural gas for export to make up for what it burns at home.



Overall, therefore, it can reasonably be argued that natural gas in Iran has economic uses that are superior to power generation, in spite of Iran's much-touted large reserves. The economic rationale is therefore plausible -- the costs of gas versus nuclear power generation are sufficiently close that the choice is a standoff, especially given the reported bargain price for the Russian reactor.



The great irony in America's accusations is that Iran's nuclear program was first developed on the advice of American specialists, who urged the government of the Shah to begin producing nuclear power in order to save oil reserves for more lucrative purposes than fuel. The prospect of an industrial base built on petrochemicals and pharmaceuticals never materialized, but the nuclear power program continued unabated.



Now, to have American officials express alarm over the exact same program is illogical at best and utterly disingenuous at worst. Much of the criticism of Iran's nuclear program comes from the same people who insisted that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons development program before the American invasion of that nation on March 19. That fact alone should raise severe skepticism throughout the world.





AMERICAN REJECTION



The potential impasse in the Iranian nuclear program could have been forestalled long ago, but the United States has regularly rejected all attempts on the part of Iran to negotiate this matter. The Bush administration should be called to explain why it seems to be driving the Iranian nuclear matter to crisis level.



As everyone in the world must now know, the United States maintains that Iran is in the process of developing nuclear weapons. It has convinced a number of European nations of the correctness of its suspicions. Iran maintains that its nuclear development is for domestic power generation purposes only, and everything it is doing is allowed under the provisions of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which Iran is a signatory.



There is no objective evidence whatever that Iran is developing a nuclear weapons program—only the suspicions of the United States and its ally, Israel, that this is true.



As part of the basis for its suspicions, the United States maintains that Iran had concealed its nuclear program for many years—the number of years varies depending on which official one asks. In fact, Iran has done no such thing. First and foremost, as mentioned previously, Iran’s nuclear program is more than 30 years old, and was started with the encouragement of the United States. President Gerald Ford offered the Iranians a full nuclear cycle in 1976 before the Revolution of 1978-79. Despite the change in government, the program has been implemented largely as conceived with U.S. approval.



Regarding concealment of Under the NPT Iran is not required to disclose its facilities until it begins to process nuclear material. This had not taken place when the United States began to object to the Iranian nuclear development in 2003.



However, that consideration aside, Iran offered as early as 1997 to make its nuclear development known to the world through inspections. The United States was fully apprised of these developments at that time.



For example, Iran offered to provide the land for EU-United Nations University nuclear enrichment facilities to be staffed exclusively by non-Iranian personnel, with no Iranians allowed to enter the facility -- very much treated as a foreign Embassy. This proposition was rejected.



In 1997, at the request of Iran, Iranian nuclear scientist Behrad Nakha’I arranged for a group of prominent US nuclear scientists to visit Iran's nuclear facilities. After couple of days of discussions, he was able to get US State Department's agreement, but the United States Department of Defense absolutely refused this offer from the beginning to the end of the two months that we were interacting, trying to make these arrangements.



He responded to all of the concerns, but just like a telemarketer reading from a prepared statement, his contact at the Department of Defense repeated the same sentence over and over, rejecting such a visit. He offered to include a representative from the DOD of the U.S. government’s choice in the inspection group, but to no avail. Since these scientists had the highest clearance from US government, requiring government permission for them to maintain their status. he had to call off the visit. This was a huge missed opportunity, among many others.



In 2003, Iran, under the presidency of moderate Mohammad Khatami issued a general offer to negotiate all outstanding issues with the U.S. These included addressing the question of Iran’s nuclear development as well as coming to agreement on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The offer had the full support of Iran’s spiritual Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Bush administration not only rejected the offer, they excoriated the Swiss diplomatic officer who brought the offer.



Iran also was the only nation to publicly accept the 2003 U.N. proposal by Mohammad El Baradei that weapons-usable fissile materials be placed under international control . This would be a step leading to fulfillment of the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). This earlier treaty was passed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993 over U.S. objections. El Baradei’s proposal was passed 149-2, the United States and Palau being the only dissenting votes with Israel and Great Britain abstaining. El Baradei's proposal would monitor all nuclear fission and guarantee that non-nuclear weapons states would be able to obtain adequate supplies for their nonmilitary usage of enriched plutonium. If implemented, this proposal would have ended the Iranian nuclear crisis, but at the price of establishing controls that would be incumbent on other nations as well—the basis for the U.S. objection to the FMCT.



It is hard to know precisely why the United States is driving the specter of Iran’s nuclear development so hard that it ignores all the attempts on Iran’s part to allay international concerns, and ignores even its own previous knowledge of and involvement with Iran’s nuclear program.



ATTACKING IRAN



The conclusion that Iran has drawn is that the nuclear issue is a pretext on the part of the United States to vilify Iran before the international community, perhaps as a prelude to a military attack. With President Bush continuing to insist that with regard to Iran “all cards are on the table,” it is easy to see how they might reach that conclusion. Iran is conducting military maneuvers on all of its borders this week (August 20). Perhaps this is coincidence, or perhaps they anticipate that whatever they do regarding the nuclear issue will not preclude hostile American action.



Just now, however Americans should be on guard—a real war may break out at any minute and the resulting conflagration would likely engulf the region, and then the world. Even now, Daniel Ellesberg in the current issue of Harper’s Magazine, Seymour Hirsh in the New Yorker, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, eminent historian William Polk and numerous others have written about the coming war between the United States and Iran that few in the United States know about, but which seems to be immanent.

Polk Writes:

The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, while the Iran “desk” at the State Department has been augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful naval battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for the Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations. These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the aerial assaults on Iraq.

The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was regarded as “a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.” They did terrible damage and killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As Bush’s former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, “If the most dominant military force in the region – the Israel Defense Forces – can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million…The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population against the Israelis.”

The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals, Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.

This is it folks. As I have warned, history changes on October 31st. It is now apparent that Bush does intend to have our ships sunk in the Gulf by Iran in a last-ditch effort to save himself and the GOP with a short bounce in the polls caused by a New Pearl Harbor. The USS Boxer Strike Group has now joined the Iwo Jima Expeditionary Strike Group and the Eisenhower and Enterprise Carrier Groups off the coast of Iran.

IRANIANS DON’T HELP

In closing I should make it clear that Iranians have not helped the situation very much. They have continued to antagonize the United States, largely due to their anger about being singled out for attack by the United States. Iran views nuclear energy development as a hallmark of modernization and a source of national pride. They think the United States is putting them down and trying to keep them backward. It is for this reason that although the majority of Iranians do not support their government, the absolutely support the development of nuclear energy.

President Ahmadinejad has also exacerbated Iran’s situation. He has been misquoted on his views on Israel and the holocaust, but he has also learned that making extreme statements raises his own political stock at home. He needs public support for his domestic political agenda -- an agenda that is paradoxically opposed by a large number of the ruling clerics in Iran. Every time he makes a defiant assertion against the United States, the public rallies behind him.



This creates what political scientist Richard Cottam termed a "spiral conflict" in which both parties escalate each other's extreme positions to new heights. It is entirely possible that Iran could goad President Bush into a disastrous military action, and that action would result in an equally disastrous Iranian reaction.



What have the Iranians done? True to fashion, they have declared the U.S. action a bluff, and have behaved in an even more defiant manner. The spiral conflict continues to everyone’s detriment.

Obviously the most reasonable position for both the United States and Iran is for the two states to sit down and talk face to face. As I have pointed out, Iran has tried to get the United States to respond to this need, but the U.S. has thus far refused. One obstacle is that Iran wants talks constructed between equals; the United States refuses to treat Iran as an equal, preferring to continue to denigrate and demonize the Islamic Republic. The U.S. wants to bring Iran to its knees or destroy its current government, and face-to-face talks are not likely to achieve that goal.

So, we have gunboats in the Persian Gulf this week. A conflagration that should never take place is ever more likely. It is a tragedy in the extreme.