Does Iran Have the Right to Enrich Uranium? The Answer is Yes--William O. Beeman

This article was printed in an abbreviated form on Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-o-beeman/does-iran-have-the-right-_b_4181347.html#es_share_ended

Does Iran Have the Right to Enrich Uranium? The Answer is Yes.

William O. Beeman

Now that serious talks with Iran over its nuclear program are underway, one seemingly insurmountable issue is whether Iran has the right to enrich uranium. The short answer is: Yes.

Those who are trying to torpedo the ongoing talks, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, want Iran to be forced to agree to the whole monty—a complete cessation of uranium enrichment and a dismantling of all enrichment facilities. Iran claims that it has the inalienable right to enrich uranium as guaranteed in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which it is a signatory.

The NPT treaty language is quite clear. In Article IV of the treaty it states:

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[1].

The United States position as articulated by Undersecretary of State, Wendy Sherman is claiming that under the treaty Iran does not have the right to uranium enrichment because this activity is not specifically cited in the treaty. Secretary Sherman told the Senate Foreign Relations committee in answer to a question by Senator Marco Rubio in a Committee Hearing on Oct. 3 that

“it has always been the U.S. position that   that article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all [and] doesn’t speak to enrichment, period. It simply says that you have the right to research and development. And many countries such as Japan and Germany have taken that [uranium enrichment] to be a right. But the United States does not take that position. We take the position that we look at each one of these [cases]. And more to the point, the UN Security Council has suspended Iran’s enrichment until they meet their international obligations. They didn’t say they have suspended their right to enrichment, they have suspended their enrichment, so we do not believe there is an inherent right by anyone to enrichment.[2]”

Secretary Sherman’s comments reveal several important errors, as well as a prejudicial view of Iran’s nuclear program.

First, Secretary Sherman downplays the serious differences in U.S. interpretations of the NPT with most of the rest of the world. The United States cannot object very strenuously to Article IV  of the treaty. U.S. objections to the idea that uranium enrichment under the treaty should be restricted are actually based on Articles I and II of the treaty, specifically cited in Article IV. Articles I and II, which read as follows.

Article I

Each nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; and not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear-weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, or control over such weapons or explosive devices.

Article II

Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices[3].

The relationship between Articles I, II and IV of the treaty has been extensively analyzed by Xinjun Zhang,  Associate Professor of Public International Law, Tsinghua University , Beijing, in an authoritative article published in 2006[4]. Zhang points out that there is a discrepancy between the U.S. interpretation of the relationship between the three clauses and that of other nations, notably European allies. The principle difference lies in the word “manufacture” in Article II. Zhang writes:

In contrast to what has been recognized as the US view that the NPT commitment not to ‘‘manufacture’’ nuclear weapons includes a prohibition on all related development, component fabrication and testing, the European view prevailing in the 1980s insisted that the ‘‘inalienable right’’ was subject to no restrictions except the explicit ban on nuclear explosion in the Treaty[5].

Zhang goes on to document that European signatories to the NPT have viewed the “inalienable right” to include complete access to the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment of uranium. This is also the view of former IAEA Directors Mohammad El-Baradei and Bernard Goldschmidt.. He quotes Goldschmidt in particular as asserting: “that up to the mid-1970s, the IAEA safeguards and NPT policy were free from any technical fix; that the NPT policy could be summarized in one sentence: explosion was forbidden, everything else was allowed; and that nothing in NPT prohibited Party States from following the technical path of their choice[6].”

Despite Secretary Sherman’s assertions, it should be obvious that United States government has no authority to interpret this international treaty on its own with no input or ratification from the other 189 signatories (North Korea withdrew in 2003). In fact, several attempts to modify or interpret the NPT in international review conferences, the latest in 2005, have ended in failure to make any modification[7]. Aside from that, however, if Washington takes the position that Iran does not have the right to enrich uranium under the NPT, it is acting unilaterally and is out of sync with its allies and with the very organizations it cites on this policy, such as the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA). It is worth noting that Israel has no say in this matter, because it is not a signatory to the NPT.

As Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a stringent critic of Iran’s nuclear program, had to concede in the National Review Online in 2004:

Do nations have a right under the NPT to acquire ostensibly civilian nuclear technology, if it brings them within days of having a bomb?

Iran–backed by Brazil, South Africa, Germany, the IAEA’s own director general, and, most recently, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards–has always said yes. Iran’s most sensitive nuclear activities, which can generate weapons-usable fuels, they argue, are clearly backed by the NPT’s authorization of all members to develop peaceful nuclear energy as they see fit.

Whether you call this a legal loophole or, as Iranian officials insist, an inalienable right, the only way either Iran or the supporters of this view can imagine getting Iranians to desist in their nuclear brinkmanship is to sit down with them, treat them as equals, and cut a deal that addresses their concerns.[8]

Additionally, contrary to Secretary Sherman’s statement, it has not “always” been the U.S. position that the NPT does not grant the right to nations to enrich uranium. In fact, the U.S. position has only concretized during the George W. Bush administration, with specific opinions regarding uranium enrichment much more recent than that. The initial interest in the NPT and its wording seems to date from 2003 when the Bush administration, alerted by information from the anti-Iranian group, the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK or MKO) then classified as a terrorist organization, provided information that Iran was engaged in nuclear development. This was, of course, not news at all, since Iran had an active nuclear energy program dating from pre-Revolutionary times in the Pahlavi era, fostered and aided by the United States. It was at this time in the wake of the tragic air attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington that that U.S. verbal and political attacks on Iran began to focus on its nuclear energy program.

From December 18, 2003 to January 10, 2006; Iran voluntarily suspended its uranium enrichment program as a “confidence building gesture” in adherence to an additional protocol to the NPT recommended by the IAEA. However the additional protocol had not been ratified by the Iranian Parliament. The result was no response from the United States or its allies, and increased economic sanctions for Iran. At this point the Iranian Parliament refused to ratify the additional protocol and Iran resumed uranium enrichment.

Secretary Sherman also testified that the United Nations Security Council had “suspended their [Iran’s] enrichment.” This is untrue. The Security Council does not have the power to suspend any nation’s nuclear activities. They can only request that nations do so. As an aside, Security Council Resolutions have been regularly ignored by many nations without consequence over the years. The original call for Iran to suspend enrichment of uranium as a further “confidence building measure” was articulated in Security Council resolution 1696 in July, 2006[9], which calls on Iran to implement the measures recommended by the IAEA Board of Governors, issued one month after Iran resumed uranium enrichment. The recommendation also is a request, not an outright prohibition or suspension.

[The IAEA Board of Governors] Underlines that outstanding questions can best be resolved and confidence built in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's programme by Iran responding positively to the calls for confidence building measures which the Board has made on Iran, and in this context deems it necessary for Iran to:

•

·         re-establish full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and reprocessing  activities, including including research and development, to be verified by the Agency;

·         reconsider the construction of a research reactor moderated by heavy water;

·         ratify promptly and implement in full the Additional Protocol; pending ratification, continue to act in accordance with the provisions of the Additional Protocol which Iran signed on 18 December 2003;

·         implement transparency measures, as requested by the Director General, including in GOV/2005/67, which extend beyond the formal requirements of the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol, and include such access to individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual use equipment, certain military-owned workshops and research and development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations[10]

Subsequent UN Resolutions regarding Iran’s nuclear program all refer back to Resolution 1696 and the stated purpose of requiring Iran to suspend enrichment for “confidence building.”

But is it now necessary for Iran to continue “confidence building” after more than seven years of no detectable nuclear weapons activity? Since 2006 there have been at least two public U.S. National Intelligence Estimate reports (2007 and 2011) that state that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. In addition the IAEA has, in every quarterly report since 2003 asserted that Iran has not diverted fissile material for any military purpose. Additional assessments by American and Israeli military and intelligence officials reassert that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Iran’s leaders, most notably Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i have renounced the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

In answer to another question by Senator Rubio, who asked if Iran was more like Pakistan and North Korea, who are not NPT signatories, but enrich uranium; or like Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Argentina and Brazil who are NPT signatories and who also are allowed by the world community to enrich uranium (there are fifteen other NPT non-weapons signatory nations who do so as well), Secretary Sherman said as much in her answer:

They [the Iranians] resemble themselves. They are a sui generis case. In many ways more dangerous than any country who has the ability to reprocess enrich or has nuclear weapons or seeks to get nuclear weapons[11]

In light of this information it seems clear that the United States has singled out Iran for prejudicial treatment among NPT signatories. If the United States is viewing uranium enrichment on a case by case basis, then Iran is the only nation that is being treated in this manner.

It should be clear that much of Secretary Sherman’s testimony is colored by the fact that the United States is staking out a hard-line position for the sake of bargaining with Iran. The positions of both sides could change. President Obama stated on September 27, 2013

"I've made clear that we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy in the context of Iran meeting its obligations. So the test will be meaningful, transparent and verifiable actions, which can also bring relief from the comprehensive international sanctions that are currently in place[12]."

Secretary Sherman in her testimony pointed out that the word “access” was carefully chosen in the President’s remarks in contrast with “right,” opening the way for a diplomatic solution to U.S.-Iranian differences that would save face.

Iranian President Rouhani responded on October 3, 2013 by saying that, although Iran was not willing to concede its right to enrich uranium, Iran is open to discussing “details” of nuclear activities including the enrichment of uranium[13].

It is clear that the only way that the United States can claim that Iran does not have the right to enrich uranium is by ignoring the provisions of the NPT as they have been understood by the international community, by singling out Iran for prejudicial treatment, and by ignoring its own intelligence regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

Bottom line: At present Iran has the legal right under treaty to enrich uranium. It may be persuaded to give up that right in negotiations, but there is at present no justification for holding it to this unreasonable demand.

__________________________

William O. Beeman is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota and Visiting Scholar at Stanford University for 2013-2014. He has conducted research in Iran and other areas of the Middle East for more than forty years. He is the author of The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other (Chicago, 2008)

---

[1] Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT, Opened for signature: 1 July 1968; Entered into force: 5 March 1970; Duration: extended indefinitely in 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference), 729 UNTS 161, Article IV

[2] Sherman, Wendy. 2013. Testimony before U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee (October 3).

[3] Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Articles I and II

[4] Zhang, Xinjun. 2006. The Riddle of ‘‘Inalienable Right’’ in Article IV of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: Intentional Ambiguity Chinese Journal of International Law (2006) 5 (3): 647-662.

[5] Ibid, p. 651.

[6] Ibid. See also Zhang, Xinjun. 2009. Intentional Ambiguity and the Rule of Interpretation in Auto-interpretation: the case of “inalienable right” in NPT Article IV. Japanese Yearbook of International Law, 52: 35-66.

[7] Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 2 May 2005 http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2005/ebsp2005n006.html

[8] Sokolski, Henry. 2004. Nuclear Rights and Wrongs. National Review Online (September 21). http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/212273/nuclear-rights-and-wrongs/henry-sokolski>

[9] http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?docid=453786b00

[10] http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2006/gov2006-14.pdf

[11] Sherman, op. cit.

[12] http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/09/27/203494/obama-talked-to-irans-rouhani.html

[13] http://world.time.com/2013/10/02/rouhani-iran-to-discuss-nuke-details-not-rights/#ixzz2jElrhYVE

With Each New Assessment, Iran's Nuclear Clock Is Reset Politics Plays a Role in How Intelligence Is Interpreted --(Jewish Daily Forward)

With Each New Assessment, Iran's Nuclear Clock Is Reset
Politics Plays a Role in How Intelligence Is Interpreted

By Gal Beckerman

Published August 19, 2009, issue of August 28, 2009.

Commentary by William O. Beeman: There is no evidence whatever that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Yet American and Israeli politicians have continually made political hay by claiming that there is one, and that production of an Iranian nuclear bomb is "one year away." This has been going on every year since the early 1990's. Additionally, the Mujaheddin-e Khalk (MEK or MKO), a U.S.-certified terrorist group dedicated to the overthrow of Iran's government continues to curry favor with the west by supplying dubious information about Iran's nuclear intentions. This masquerade needs to be exposed. In the article below from the Jewish Daily Forward, Gal Beckerman points out the chicanery in these claims, and the venal motives of those who make them.

The senior Israeli official's tone was dire. In only a few years, the Iranians would be ready to launch a nuclear bomb. He minced no words. "If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years."

The year this apocalyptic prediction was made: 1995.

As we all know, Israel survived the year 2000. Iran did not get the bomb. And earlier this month, it was revealed that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research's latest estimate has pushed that dreaded date back to 2013, when it posits that Iran will finally be able to produce highly enriched uranium, a key ingredient in any nuclear weapon.

Then again, the State Department could be as wrong as that Israeli official back in 1995. To listen to the drumbeat emanating from Tel Aviv, the Iranians are much, much closer. In March, Amos Yadlin, the head of Israeli military intelligence, announced that Iran had "crossed the technological threshold." In only a year, they would be equipped with what they need to build some kind of crude nuclear device.

It's hard to know how to make sense of all these divergent estimates. Though they have become more numerous and more conflicting since the beginning of this year, analyses of Iran's nuclear capabilities have always been a matter of broad interpretation. From the moment that Iran announced in the mid-1980s its intention to launch a nuclear program, intelligence agencies in Israel and the United States - which analysts agree both look at the same raw data - have set and reset the nuclear clock over and over again.

Israeli intelligence, in particular, has announced a "point of no return" almost every year, a continually unfulfilled prediction that some say erodes the credibility of its analysts.

What some see as the fine point of when exactly Iran gets the bomb is not inconsequential. The time frame for both diplomacy and a military response that would have serious ramifications hinge on this question. It is for this reason, a wide range of independent observers agree, that politics has played the most central role in how intelligence on Iran and its nuclear program is interpreted and packaged for the public.

"Clearly the fact that some of these assessments seem to change rather rapidly has fueled the suspicion that much of it is actually politically motivated," said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council.

The problem, according to Parsi and others, is that the elements that make up any assessment of Iran's actual progress can be read differently.

From a technical standpoint, there are a series of steps on the path toward making a bomb, each of which can be interpreted as the menacing "threshold." Beginning with building large quantities of centrifuges to producing low-enriched uranium and then more highly enriched weapons-grade uranium to finally having a device to launch a bomb, the red lights could start flashing at any point.

By all accounts, Iran has managed to produce low-enriched uranium, possibly enough to make a crude bomb. Low-level enrichment for civilian nuclear uses is legal under international law. But based on its incomplete answers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, world leaders, neighboring countries and many security analysts are deeply concerned that this is not all Iran has in mind. The question of Iranian nuclear weapons development remains murky. According to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran stopped all work on a nuclear weapons program in 2003. But this piece of intelligence is also disputed.

"This is one of these cases that where you stand determines to a large extent what is your assessment," said Shlomo Brom, a former Brigadier General in the Israeli Army and now senior research fellow and director of the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. "If you are at the possible receiving end of this thing - and that is the feeling of most Israelis - then you don't want to take chances. You look at the worst possible scenario. It's only if you're in an institute somewhere in the Western world then you can make sober analysis and make predictions based on the more probable assumptions."

Further underlining the degree to which politics plays a role in these predictions is the long history of unrealized Armageddon scenarios - and it is not Israeli intelligence alone that has sounded the alarms.

In 1992, Robert Gates, then director of the CIA, pointedly upended conventional thinking about Iran's nuclear progress when he gave a much shorter time span for attainment of the bomb. "Is it a problem today?" he asked at the time, "probably not. But three, four, five years from now it could be a serious problem."

Another rash of predictions arrived in 1995. When Israeli government officials were quoted in American newspapers talking about a five-year timeline, officials with the Clinton administration quickly countered with qualifications and their own counter predictions. The small conflict led to a meeting in Jerusalem between William Perry, the defense secretary and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. They emerged from their discussions to announce that they were in agreement - Iran would get the bomb in seven to 15 years (next year, that is, at the latest).

Much of the speculation about Iran throughout the 1990s had to do with the possibility that its nuclear program was being boosted with outside help, from Russian loose nukes to technical help from North Korea. At least one of these outside elements did evade American intelligence, the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan who is known to have aided the Iranians in advancing their program at least twice, in the late 1980s and mid 1990s.

This unknown variable of outside help also allowed for a wide range of timelines.

Throughout the last decade, the warnings have become more dire at the same time that it has become harder to see into what David Albright, a physicist who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security, called "the black box of Iran's decision making." This further unknown - what Iranian leaders intend - is one more fluid element that gives both the skeptics and alarmists an opportunity to project their own thinking and come up with independent predictions.

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, for one, views Iran's leadership as "a messianic apocalyptic cult" who will not be deterred by Israel's own nuclear weapons capability. "When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran," he told the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg in May.

In contrast, Anthony Cordesman, a widely respected Middle East strategic analyst who has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations, and Abdullah Toukan, an adviser to the late King Hussein of Jordan, present an Iran that is a rational, if hostile, actor, influenced by concrete geopolitical perceptions of its own. These include "unfriendly neighbors surrounding them, including nuclear tipped Pakistan" just to Iran's east; the "grave threat to its security" that Iran sees in America's military presence in Iraq immediately to its west and the presence of the American Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf waters lapping its south, the two men wrote in a recent study. This is seen also in the context of what was, until recently, America's declared policy of "regime change," they note. Finally, say Cordesman and Toukan, Iran's fear of "Israeli intentions to destabilize Iran and attack its nuclear facilities," drive it to develop its capabilities all the more.

"The Israelis always like to posit that Iran is one year away," Albright said. "There is an honesty to these assessments because they do have technical analysts in Israel who are looking very closely. They could be talking about a certain number of centrifuges built, a certain type of covert facility, various other things, but it's always one year away."

Many American analysts think these Israeli nightmare scenarios are distracting from what might be the most plausible explanation of Iran's intentions.

Gary Sick served on the National Security Council staff under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan and was the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. He believes that Iran has been slowly engaged since the 1970s in building a peaceful civilian nuclear program that has what he called "surge capacity" of 18 months. That is the amount of time it would take for Iran to boost low-enriched uranium for power plants and other non-military uses to highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium and deploy this as an atomic bomb, Sick said.

According to Sick, this interpretation is shared by many other analysts and backed up by statements from those who began the program under the Shah in the 1970s. But others warn that Iran may be developing a nuclear weapon capability secretly that it could deploy much more quickly.

Either way would mean that Iran is seeking a kind of nuclear ambiguity. It wants to be threatening without actually publicly introducing another nuclear weapon into the Middle East - a clear turning point likely only to set off a race by its neighbors to obtain nuclear weapons of their own. It is a position not dissimilar from the one now held by Israel, which still does not publicly disclose that it has the bomb.

Asked why this more nuanced scenario - one that would do nothing to assuage or discredit Israeli fears - is not more widely discussed, Sick answered, "It doesn't sell newspapers."

Contact Gal Beckerman at beckerman@forward.com

Scott Ritter--Acts of War (Truthdig - Reports)

Truthdig - Reports - Acts of War

Note from William O. Beeman

Scott Ritter's account includes new information about Olli Heinonen, the Finnish IAEA deputy for safeguards. Mr. Heinonen has been working in lockstep with the Bush administration to build a case for war against Iran.


Truthdig

Acts of War
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080729_acts_of_war/

Posted on Jul 29, 2008

By Scott Ritter

The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions that took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.

Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.

The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.

However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.

It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva Conventions. The MEK says its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.

The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.

Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled. Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.

The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.

A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner that results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort that have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.

Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality that long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which, of course, has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.

Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done. “This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”

This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.

A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.

I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.

Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.

Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.

Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).

The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation that would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President John F. Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression.

One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.

Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and Marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.

AP photo / Brennan Linsley

Members of the Iranian resistance group Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, guard a road leading to the group’s main training camp, watched over by a U.S. Army Abrams tank in background, near Baqubah in north-central Iraq.
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William O. Beeman---Will the U.S. Support Terrorists to Destabilize Iran? (New America Media)

Will the U.S. Support Terrorists to Destabilize Iran?

New America Media, News analysis, William O. Beeman, Posted: Jul 07, 2008

Editor’s note: All attempts to justify a military attack on Iran have failed and the US is now looking at supporting fringe and terrorist groups to destabilize the country. It won’t work, says NAM contributing writer, William O. Beeman, but it will destabilize the region for years to come. Beeman is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. He is President of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association. The second edition of his book, The “Great Satan” vs. the “Mad Mullahs”: How the United States and Iran Demonize Each Other, has just been published by the University of Chicago Press.

Elements of the Bush administration have begun to resemble semi-insane Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" with regard to Iran. Reckless and obsessive to destroy Iran’s regime, they fondle their ball bearings, and pursue any scheme that they believe will get rid of the mullahs before the inauguration of the new American president in January 2009.

In desperation, they have turned to supporting fringe-level ethnic separatists—all of whom are terrorists and enemies of the United States who are also hostile to Iran. This strategy is truly the last gasp of a failed Middle East policy. It is ill-conceived, and if continued, will foment continued violence in the region for years without affecting the Iranian regime in any significant way.

All attempts to justify a military attack on Iran have failed. Iran’s continuing nuclear program remains the Bush administration’s prime bulwark against Iran, but it is a very weak bulwark. There is still no evidence whatever for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Last December’s National Intelligence Estimate stated clearly that no current nuclear military program exists. Iran remains unwilling to halt uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes that is guaranteed to them under the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty, but responded positively on July 4 to European calls for negotiations on the nuclear issue, undercutting the Bush hard line (and effecting a drop in oil prices).

Other accusations against Iran are equally feeble. Claims of its support for attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq have failed for lack of any evidence. Iran’s supposed “proxy” attacks on Israel through Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas strain credulity, since these two groups are acknowledged by all credible experts to formulate their political agendas independently from Iran.

Continually frustrated in their attempts to launch any legitimate attack against Iran, Vice President Cheney and a group of die-hard neoconservatives hovering in and around his office, particularly his former Middle East adviser David Wurmser, have long been rumored to be engineering active support for dissident opposition groups who share their goal to overthrow the current Iranian regime. Many of these groups are aligned with non-Persian ethnic factions in Iran, notably Arabs, Kurds, Azerbaijanis and Baluchis. Serious analysts in the region have tended to dismiss these efforts as silly and ineffective. Nevertheless, neoconservative organizations such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Near East Policy and the Hudson Institute have quietly championed the idea that Iran could be successfully dismembered along ethnic lines.

The American Enterprise Institute has long been a hotbed for debate over these plans. In October 2005, it hosted a conference entitled “The Unknown Iran: Another Case for Federalism?” in which the specter of an ethnic dismemberment of Iran was raised. The AEI has subsequently been host to several conclaves where this idea of fomenting ethnic violence has been discussed, in which representatives from dissident groups are regularly invited to hold forth.

The host of the 2005 conference Michael Ledeen and his cronies Michael Rubin, Danielle Pletka and Myrav Wurmser, the wife of Cheney’s former adviser, David Wurmser, have a curious rhetorical stance regarding Iran’s ethnic dissidents. They write long pieces pointing out that Persians are a minority in Iran, that ethnic groups are restive, that the central government lacks support from the fringe elements in the population. Then in the last paragraph they suddenly deny recommending that ethnic dissident groups be supported. Likewise Ledeen calls incessantly for the overthrow of the Iranian government, then denies that he is calling for military action.

The military continues to entertain the dismemberment of Iran and retired military officer and novelist Ralph Peters proposed the idea in the June 2006 issue of the Armed Forces Journal. His article, ”Blood Borders” champions national independence for every ethnic group in the Middle East, redrawing the borders of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey.

The problem would not be so acute, except for the fact that these groups, now somewhat ineffective, would be truly bad news if provided with significant U.S. aid and weapons. They would never be effective at eliminating the Iranian government, but they could become a source of instability and violence throughout the region for years to come. Because they are basically all anti-American in their orientation, the United States will also be harmed if they are strengthened.

Iran specialists have been aware of these groups for years, and largely discounted them. However, assertions of active United States support for them, awakened by journalist Seymour Hersh in the July 7 issue of the New Yorker, have become real cause for concern. The groups include:

*The M.E.K—Mujaheddin-e Khalq—officially a terrorist group in the United States for having killed Americans before the Revolution. They are Marxist in orientation, and are despised in Iran, since they were protected by Saddam Hussein all during the Iran-Iraq war, and are directly supported by the United States today.

*The PJAK—the “Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan,” a trans-national Kurdish militant organization dedicated to an independent Kurdistan. They are supported by the United States when they launch attacks against Iranian forces, but faulted when they launch attacks against Turkish forces in Turkey.

*The Jundallah—based in Sunni Muslim Balochistan. They are supported by extreme conservative Salafi groups in Saudi Arabia. The Salafi movement also forms the religious philosophy of the Taliban of Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda. Claims of U.S. support for Jundallah are now several years old. In April 2007 Brian Ross and Christopher Isham of ABC News reported that the United States had been aiding Jundallah to attack Iranian targets. Jundallah’s leader, Abdul Malik Rigi, appeared on the Iranian service of the Voice of America, where he was identified as "the leader of popular Iranian resistance movement." More disturbing are Jundallah’s wider connections. As Seymour Hersh points out: “Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.”

Sunni Arab separatists in the Southeast Iranian province of Khuzistan, especially in its capital, Ahwaz, have been active since the time of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. There is no identifiable organization as with the other groups above, but Iranian security forces claim that the current round of violence, which includes the assassination of an Iranian Shi’ite cleric, Hojjat ol-Eslam Hesham Seymari on June 26, 2007, were “trained under the umbrella of the Americans in Iraq." The militants have also been linked with the London-based Ahvaz Arab People's Democratic-Popular Front.

The Southern Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement, SANAM or GAMOH, led by Mahmudali Chehregani was founded in 1995, and is perhaps the weakest of the ethnic separatist movements today. Nevertheless, Chehregani was hosted in Washington by the U.S. Department of Defense in June 2003, according to the Washington Times, and addressed a number of neoconservative venues. One difficulty with this movement is Chehregani’s antipathy to Kurds, whom he calls “guests” in the Azerbaijan region of Iran.

These separatist movements continue to have support in some legislative circles. Two of the most avid supporters are Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas and Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, both Republicans. Both favor removing the MEK from the list of terrorist organizations, and Brownback served as host to Mahmud Ali Chehregani in Washington.

No serious analyst of Iranian affairs believes that a strategy of ethnic division would bring down the central government of the Islamic Republic. Iran expert Vali Nasr, who teaches at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University was quoted by Hersh as saying, “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. . . . working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.” Not to mention serious consequences for the United States.