GCC Countries Complicate US' Iran Plans

MIDDLE EAST

Analysis by Meena Janardhan

DUBAI, Apr 16 (IPS) - With members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) urging dialogue rather than war with Iran over its nuclear programme and reluctant to allow their territories to be used in any attack, Washington's pressure tactics against Tehran appear to be faltering.

This reluctance is seen as one factor in the Islamic Republic's defiant announcement, last week, of an expansion of its uranium enrichment programme to ‘industrial' levels which, the West fears, is a step away from producing a nuclear bomb. Tehran has consistently denied a weapons component to its nuclear programme.

On Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised address from the city of Shiraz that Tehran ‘'will not retreat even one iota to preserve its nuclear right''. This was clearly a response to the United States' warning that further United Nations Security Council sanctions would be brought to bear upon Iran.

But beyond sanctions it would be hard for the U.S. to contemplate military action against Iran because of a lack of support from such GCC countries as Qatar which played host to the U.S. Central Command during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

‘‘We will not participate by any means to harm Iran from Qatar,'' first deputy premier and foreign minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al-Thani said as far back as on Mar. 15. ‘‘Let us hope to solve this diplomatically and through peaceful means,'' said Sheikh Hamad, who has since taken over as the premier.

Less than a fortnight later United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan used the run-up to the Arab League summit in Riyadh to announce: ‘‘We have informed the Iranian brothers in a message carried recently by the foreign minister that we are not party to its conflict with the U.S. and will not allow our territories to be used for any military, security or intelligence activities against it.''

That announcement was not without misgivings. Prof. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla of the Emirates University, while appreciating the reconciliatory message to Iran, said: ‘‘As a follow up statement we should also make it clear that if we are attacked by Iran we will retaliate.''

Analysing the UAE and Qatar's statements, Abdulla told IPS that the ‘'GCC countries are trying to do everything possible not to send wrong messages to Tehran. They feel that they should not antagonise Iran at a time when its role in the region seems to be gaining in strength''. The reference was clearly to Iran's massive influence in the current politics of Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. The GCC comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

‘‘This is not just a message to the Iranians but also to the U.S. that ‘you are on your own','' Abdulla said. At another level, it is also a signal to ‘‘the public at large across the Arab world,'' he added.

The issue of public opinion becomes relevant in the context of a Zogby International survey of six Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, where only six percent of respondents thought Iran a major threat to their security. About 80 percent considered Israel and the U.S. as the two biggest external threats.

The results of the poll announced in February suggested that fewer than 25 percent Arabs wanted Iran to be pressured to halt its nuclear programme. In fact, about 60 percent said Tehran had the right to pursue the programme even if it was aimed at developing nuclear weapons.

‘‘Iran is a huge neighbour and we have been living in the same neighbourhood for centuries. We understand the positive and negative sides of the relationship and we have adapted very well to all the changing faces of Iran. We lived with Iran before and after the U.S. became a part of the equation, and we will continue to do so with or without the U.S., irrespective of whether Iran is a nuclear or non-nuclear power,'' Abdulla explained.

That understanding was evident when Sheikh Khalifa -- whose country has a running feud with Iran over the occupation of the Abu Mussa and Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands -- said: ‘‘The UAE is an independent and sovereign state that rejects the use of its territories to attack any country, especially if it is a neighbour and Muslim.''

One of the likely reasons facilitating Doha's soft approach could be the ample opportunities that Qatari and Iranian leaders have had in recent times to hold face-to-face discussions, especially on exploring the possibility of forming a ‘grouping' of gas exporters, which gained momentum during Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to the Middle East in February.

Discussions at a 16-member Gas Producing Countries' Forum in Doha during the second week of April focused on deepening cooperation aimed at creating a stable world market for the ‘fuel of the future'.

Among the other countries in the GCC bloc, Oman -- which has the Straits of Hormuz separating it from Iran -- has consistently urged negotiations and was the only country in the GCC bloc not to endorse the idea of the Gulf as a weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-free zone, aimed at ‘denuclearising' Iran, during the GCC summit in Abu Dhabi in 2005.

Given the extent of Iran's influence in the Middle East, energy-rich Saudi Arabia has resorted to engaging with Iran through dialogue to ensure that the situation does not deteriorate any more than it already has.

Ever since the nuclear issue turned into international one, Ahmadinejad, former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani and chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani have taken care to visit several GCC countries. Reciprocally, several Arab leaders from the Gulf, including the emir of Qatar and the UAE foreign minister, have visited Tehran in attempts de-escalate the tension.

Iran has made several positive gestures which could be the basis for dialogue in the future. At the Arab World Competitiveness Roundtable, held in Doha on Apr. 9-10, Iran proposed a 10-point plan for establishing a security and cooperation organisation in the Gulf region.

Due to the strategic importance of the Gulf and the need for building trust, security, stability, and sustainable development, it is necessary to devise a framework for security and economic cooperation in the region, said Hassan Rowhani, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies of Iran's Expediency Council.

Proposed in Iran's plan were: establishment of a Gulf Security and Cooperation Organisation that would include the six GCC members, Iran and Iraq; joint security arrangements and building trust between the regional countries concerning nuclear issues, including monitoring and verification of each others' nuclear programmes in a voluntary and non-intrusive manner.

Also proposed were the establishment of a joint nuclear enrichment consortium among the regional countries for producing nuclear fuel and other peaceful uses of nuclear energy under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency and cooperation among regional countries for the establishment of a Middle East free of WMD.

However, this ‘constructive' plan had ‘precondition' -- withdrawal of foreign military forces from the region. This implies that the U.S., the sole security guarantor for the six-member bloc, should pull out and this will never be acceptable to the GCC countries in the near future.

Yet, according to Abdulla of the Emirates University, ‘‘War is not the answer, unless it is a short and surgical one, which no one, including the U.S., can guarantee.''

Iran sanctions boost civil nuclear disaster risk, report says

Another Chernobyl anyone? Do Americans know winds carry dust from Iran over the US?
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By Harvey Morris

Published: April 2 2007 03:00 | Last updated: April 2 2007 03:00

International sanctions to starve Iran's nuclear programme have heightened the risk of a radiological disaster that could spread across the Gulf, according to a new British report.

John Large of Large and Associates, UK nuclear consultants, writes that once the Bushehr civilian reactor in southern Iran goes into operation this year, a safety failure - a radioactive leak - could threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Arab Gulf states.

"The United Nations Security Council sanctions are aimed at halting, or at least impeding, the transfer of knowledge, information and equipment relating to Iran's uranium enrichment and heavy water related undertakings," the report, commissioned by the United Arab Emirates' Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, states.

"The irony here is that perhaps the culture essential to maintaining nuclear safety for Iran's separate civil nuclear power programme will be left wanting."

The Bushehr civilian power plant, nearing start-up with Russian assistance, was excluded from United Nations sanctions imposed last December and strengthened this week in an attempt to halt a nuclear programme that experts believe is geared to producing a bomb.

Although Russia would be responsible for overseeing safety and taking charge of spent fuel at the Bushehr plant, Mr Large expressed concern that Iran's isolation from the international nuclear science community would compromise safety at it and other plants.

The report leaves little doubt that the Iran's overall programme would provide it with dual civilian-military capabilities.

The plant at Bushehr "would not, on its own, provide sufficient demand to commercially justify the sheer scale of Iran's ventures into the uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel manufacturing fields."

But Mr Large believes the Iranians have run into problems in perfecting centrifuge uranium enrichment technology at a plant at Natanz and have therefore boosted a heavy water project to produce plutonium at Arak in eastern Iran.

"Reading between the lines suggests that Iran has encountered considerable technical and logistical difficulties and setbacks in its endeavours to establish itself as a nuclear power in the region," the report says.

However, the Arak project "would enable Iran to venture along the route of acquiring a plutonium-cored nuclear weapons arsenal, like North Korea."

Assessing the radiological risks of accident or military strike against Iran's widely dispersed nuclear facilities, Mr Large says little or no contamination would spread from Arak until the plant was up and running.

The Arak facilities would be safe at least until the start-up of the plutonium breeding reactor. Damage to underground facilities at Natanz would pose a radiological threat but it would be confined to the workforce and local population.

However, "the radiological aftermath of an extreme radioactive release at Bushehr, either as a result of a military strike or a severely damaging accident . . . could require rapid implementation of population protection measures," Mr Large writes.

A radioactive plume would potentially contaminate the southern Gulf, including the territory of the UAE.

The report says a punitive strike on Bushehr would have little significance to an Iranian military programme. But after it went into operation, accidental or deliberate damage "might result in an untoward release of radioactivity accompanied by intolerable health and economic impacts across the region."

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

UN Security Or United Rape?

Related
UNSC: Sanctioning the next war of aggression
Security Council resolution on Iran a grave threat to international peace and security
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March 26, 2007

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

We must defend justice with our lives lest we need justice to defend our lives


As I watched Iran being hauled in front of the United Nations ‘Security’ Council, a vivid picture conjured up in my mind – my native country Iran, a vulnerable and defenseless beauty being prepared for violation by brutal savages. As she struggles to defend her honor, no one is prepared to come to her aid, save a few. Even her own children, those raised on her soil hope she will be brutally raped. With lust-filled eyes, they hope to fulfill their ambitions on her ravaged ruins, her broken pride.

Who are these beasts, and what has transformed this United body to such a menace?

The most uninformed among us knows that the United States is dictating the rules at the ‘Security’ Council. The driving force behind the American policy makers’ actions is Israel represented by AIPAC and other Israeli representatives in the United States. However, while Zionism gives motivation to the neo-conservatives in Washington to rape and ravage the Middle-East, Washington stands to benefit from AIPAC’s/Israel’s commands.

Theodor Herzl, witnessing discrimination against Jews in Europe, was convinced that sovereign control over territory would guarantee Jews against discrimination. The location was not important. He sought the support of Europe’s wealthiest Jews to colonize territory. Max Nordau, a close friend of Herzl’s, stated that “we are going to Palestine to extend the moral boundaries of Europe as far as the Euphrates”. Chaim Weizmann’s analogy for the comparison of Arab to Jew was “the desert against civilization”. The attraction of Palestine was its appeal to the colonial powers, specifically Great Britain and the imposition of imperial control such as the British and Dutch East India Companies.

Today, the United States is the colonial power and the major investor in the region. Furthermore, as The Center for Public Integrity has demonstrated, The Carlyle Group profits from government and conflict ; a company that employed some of Washington’s most powerful figures, including former Secretary of State James Baker, former President George H.W. Bush, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci and former FCC Chairman William Kennard, as well as former British Prime Minister John Major – not foregoing the Ladin and Saudi ties. Israel is no longer a nascent state, but en par with the world’s only super power – for not only does it have an arsenal of illegal nuclear warheads and one of the strongest conventional armies, but it has influence over US Congress, and many believe, the White House. Both Israel and the US need stretching room for expansion and more profit. Iran is key, it would appear.

One must surely question why Iran would be shunned by all the ‘Security’ council members. India’s case has demonstrated that non-permanent members are subject to coercion, but what of the permanent members?

France - If Iran’s legitimate rights are recognized, Iran would have to have her wealth returned to her; to the dismay of the Europeans. In 1973 France, Belgium, Spain, and Sweden, formed the joint stock company EURODIF. Sweden withdrew from the project in 1974. In 1975 Sweden’s 10 per cent share in EURODIF went to Iran as a result of an arrangement between France and Iran. The French government subsidiary company Cogema and the Iranian Government established the Sofidif (Société franco–iranienne pour l’enrichissement de l’uranium par diffusion gazeuse) enterprise with 60 per cent and 40 per cent shares, respectively. In turn, Sofidif acquired a 25 per cent share in EURODIF, which gave Iran its 10 per cent share of EURODIFI. In 1974, the Shah lent 1 billion dollars (and another 180 million dollars in 1977) for the construction of the factory, to have the right to buy 10% of the production. Iran remains a shareholder of Eurodif via Sofidif, a Franco-Iranian consortium shareholder which owns 25 % of Eurodif. According to The Wall Street Journal of Dec. 5, 2006, the price of enriched uranium has increased by 800 percent since 2001, and given the recent growing interest in nuclear fuel, and the commitment of suppliers, Eurodif would likely prefer to have Iran sanctioned than recognize her legitimate right. Especially if as before, they are not the ones who have to send soldiers to battlefields.

Bulletin 26 – Dual Use: Avoiding The Nuclear Precipice of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation not only confirms Iran’s share in Eurodif, but lends legitimacy to her wishes to exercise her inalienable right under Article IV of the NPT to enrich uranium indigenously versus the Russian import due to her past experience with foreign dealings [ ].

It must also be noted that Iran has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia where the United States buys its uranium for its nuclear power plants . Much like the 1953 era when the Americans and the British had their eyes on Iran’s precious resources, it would seem that uranium is one more incentive for the violation of Iran.

Russia – John D. Grace describes Russia as an "ally and opponent" of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) and the same for oil consumers -- in other words, it is a "fulcrum." In spite of Grace’s generous description of Russia, it has raised a few eyebrows in Europe when it has cut off energy supplies at will and as a political tool. 6% of the total known oil reserves are in the former Soviet Union . However, as the world’s biggest supplier of natural gas and one of the largest suppliers of oil, it will greatly benefit from high oil prices due to sanctions and unrest in the Persian Gulf. This money-strapped nation was willing to supply Iran not only with enriched uranium, but with surface-to-air missiles. It has decided to halt its cooperation because it understands that conflicts in the Persian Gulf region will double the price of oil – much to its benefit; while at the same time to other Arab countries, much like the US is doing. Additionally, it also realizes that a ‘nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident anywhere’. It could be that Russia has it on good authority that this irrational Administration means to bomb Bushehr . Having weighed the danger of contamination and their surplus profit from an attack on Iran, they opted to vote for the latter.

China - It would seem that with China’s growing appetite for oil, their vote would be illogical. However, China has been making remarkable discoveries of her own. Not only has she found oil deposits in Bohai Bay near Dalian (source – China Newnet), but after two years of exploration, it was publicly reported on March 24th that off the coast of Taiwan huge deposits of natural gas, known as the ‘ice that burns’ and labeled as the energy of the energy source of the future had been discovered. If Taiwan had been an ‘old war relic’ in the past, it makes her a prize worth fighting for. Would this make China sway her vote? Additionally, according to the BBC, China and Venezuela are working on making oil deals that will be mutually beneficial.

And finally, Great Britain. She was the instigator in the 1953 coup against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadeq. In a role reversal, it would seem that today, GB is the one who is helping incite war. No doubt with her poor economy, as with the Iraq war, she would be happy with the crumbs off the US table.

What is important to remember is the following:

- It was the United Nations that established the State of Israel in 1948.
- It was the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that stood by idly as Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran for 3 years in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
- It was the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that watched Israel destroy Iraq’s peaceful nuclear technology, passed a resolution, but remained idle as Isarel continued with its path of destruction.
- It was the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that stood by while 500,000 children in Iraq were subjected to malnutrition and death.
- It was the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that stood by and watched America illegally invade Iraq without passing a resolution.
- It was the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that watched the Israelis destroy Lebanon for 33 days with American ammunition. One man at the UN ‘Security’ Council, John Bolton, ruled over the lives and deaths of the Lebanese.
- It was the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that watched Israel raze Palestinian homes over and over again.
- It is the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that is witnessing the starvation of Palestinians people, women and children alike.

And it is the United Nations ‘Security’ Council that is ordering the savage and cruel gang rape of Iran. They have passed resolution to take her defenses away. Under the pretext of her nuclear program, her inalienable right to enrich uranium for energy –Article IV of the NPT, they have passed a resolution that Iran must not have conventional weapons to defend herself when they come to attack her – to ravage her, to take all that is hers and her children’s.

Regardless of race, color, or religion, we are all equal under the law. To repeat a cliché, we are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain – this is humanity’s bond – a bind that if broken with indifference, will cause the demise of civilization as we know it. We must not remain complacent in the face of the insecurity that is about to take place – the UNSC’s violation of Iran. This is not a call for justice for Iran, nor for the children of Iran, but a call to disallow oppression. We must defend justice with our lives, lest one day we be in need of justice to defend our lives.

UN nuclear inspectors visit Iranian enrichment facility: diplomats

VIENNA, March 20 (AFP) Mar 20, 2007
UN inspectors visited the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz on Tuesday, diplomats said, but it was not clear if they resolved a dispute over monitoring a strategic underground bunker.

"The inspectors were able to carry out their inspection work in Iran on Tuesday," said a diplomat close to the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who like others asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

A second diplomat said the IAEA experts visited the underground bunker where Iran is building an industrial-scale plant to make enriched uranium, which can be used for nuclear reactor fuel or atom bomb material.

Iran had stopped IAEA inspectors from visiting Natanz on Saturday, in a move a third diplomat said was designed to hide work they have done underground in installing centrifuges, the machines which spin at supersonic speeds to enrich urnaium.

There is also a pilot enrichment plant above-ground which since April 2006 has been doing research-level amounts of enrichment.

Iran has refused to let the IAEA install cameras to monitor the hall where the Iranians have already set up hundreds of centrifuges deep underground to protect them against any air strike.

But Iran had promised "frequent inspector access" to the site, the IAEA reported in February.

The highly sensitive inspections, and talks over how they are to take place, come as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was expected to plead Tehran's case this week before the UN Security Council, which is considering tightening sanctions on the Islamic republic over fears that it seeks nuclear weapons.

Iran's blocking access to Natanz would be a violation of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had reported on February 22 that Iran was at the underground site spinning centrifuges empty, without uranium feedstock gas, in two 164-centrifuge production lines, and was finishing installing two other similar cascades, also totalling 328 centrifuges.

ElBaradei said the IAEA had "agreed to interim verification arrangements" at Natanz's underground site "involving frequent inspector access but not remote monitoring."

"Iran was informed that these arrangements (which are now in place) would be valid only for as long as the number of machines installed... did not exceed 500, and that, once that number was exceeded, all required safeguards measures would need to be implemented," ElBaradei said.

A diplomat said Iran did not want the IAEA to see "that it now has more than 500 centrifuges functioning underground" and that was the reason for Saturday's delay.

Iran has challenged the agency "to provide a detailed legal basis" for putting in cameras, as it contests the legality of the 500-centrifuge limit, according to the report.

Tehran has defied the UN's calls to suspend uranium enrichment, insisting that its nuclear programme is a peaceful effort to generate electricity.

Iran warned Monday that it would make a "proportionate" response to any new UN sanctions.

Diplomats in Vienna speculated that cutting off access to Natanz might be part of this response.

The Security Council is to meet Wednesday to review a draft resolution against Iran agreed last week by the body's five permanent members -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States -- plus Germany.

New sanctions would include barring Iran from exporting arms and buying weapons such as missiles.

IAEA Freezes Assistance Programs to Iran

The UN is pulling their staff. Expecting a bombing campaign, are we?
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Thursday March 8, 2007 12:31 PM

AP Photo XPZ111

By GEORGE JAHN

Associated Press Writer

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Delegates to a 35-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency on Thursday approved the suspension of nearly two dozen nuclear technical aid programs to Iran as part of U.N. sanctions imposed because its nuclear defiance.

A defiant Tehran said it would not bow to pressure on its nuclear program.

The decision to deprive Iran of 22 projects was taken by consensus and was expected. Even nations on the IAEA board normally supportive of Iran backed it because it was recommended by agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, on authority of the U.N. Security Council.

``I have not heard anyone express dissatisfaction'' with ElBaradei's recommendations, said Ramzy Ezzeidin Ramzy, Egypt's chief IAEA representative, before the decision, reflecting the meeting's widespread unanimity on the issue.

Chief Iranian delegate Ali Ashgar Soltanieh dismissed the decision, along with other international moves to pressure his country to suspend uranium enrichment, as the work of a ``few countries ... to deprive Iran from its inalienable rights for (the) peaceful use of nuclear energy.''

The ``Iranian nation is a peace-loving nation but will never tolerate any pressure or intimidation,'' he told the meeting.

He also said Israel's undeclared nuclear program endangers ``both regional peace and security.''

Those comments were in response to a letter from 17 Arab nations plus Palestinian authorities that called for Israel to be put under agency inspections. The letter asserted that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last year acknowledged that his country had nuclear weapons - something Olmert has denied doing.

Israel, in a brief statement, said it had no plans to change its nuclear policies, said an IAEA official who was inside the closed meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

The suspensions of technical cooperation fell under the provision of U.N. Security Council sanctions agreed Dec. 23 to punish Iran for defying a council demand that it freeze its uranium enrichment activities. The five permanent council members now are consulting on additional sanctions after Tehran ignored a new ultimatum to stop enrichment last month.

Council diplomats in New York said these could include a travel ban, an expanded list of people and companies subject to an asset freeze, an arms embargo and trade restrictions, but they cautioned that differences remained.

While Iran says it has the legal right to develop an enrichment program to generate nuclear power, the Security Council has called on it to end such activities because of fears it could misuse the process to produce fissile material for warheads.

Before the decision on technical aid, Soltanieh accused the United States and Israel of threatening military attacks on its nuclear facilities and said Security Council sanctions against his country were illegal.

Washington in turn criticized Tehran for ignoring Security Council demands to freeze enrichment and said Iranian ``intransigence'' in answering questions about its nuclear program raises the level of concern that it might be seeking to make atomic arms.

Those comments, inside and on the sidelines of the meeting, came as part of a review of a report by ElBaradei that confirmed Iran had defied a Security Council deadline on enrichment last month.

Soltanieh accused the U.S. and Israel of ``continuing to make threats against Iran's ... (nuclear) facilities.'' But he suggested that Tehran's nuclear program would survive any aggression, citing ElBaradei in declaring that nuclear ``knowledge cannot be bombed.''

While not directly threatening attacks, both Israel and the U.S. have not ruled out any option in trying to stop what they say is an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

Soltanieh denied such aims, saying: ``Weapons of mass destruction have no place in the Islamic Republic of Iran's defense doctrine.'' Iran steadfastly insists it is not interested in nuclear arms and wants to enrich uranium not to create the fissile core of warheads but to generate energy.

Outside the meeting, he attributed international pressure on Iran to give up enrichment to ``the poisonous food served up by a few (IAEA) members and sent to New York,'' to the Security Council.

Reflecting the U.S. stance, chief delegate Gregory L. Schulte accused Iran of ignoring ``the serious international concerns expressed by the Security Council'' in demanding a freeze of enrichment.

Schulte also criticized Iran for continuing to build facilities that will produce plutonium - another possible pathway to nuclear arms - and thus again ignoring a Security Council demand. He cited ElBaradei in saying that his agency cannot conclude that Iran's program is peaceful unless Tehran stops stonewalling on questions posed by his agency. And he urged Tehran to reverse a ban on 38 IAEA inspectors, all from countries that back Security Council action against the Islamic republic.

On North Korea, Japan and other nations urged Pyongyang to honor its commitments under a six-nation deal that ultimately commits it to scrap its nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei plans to go to the communist nation March 13 as part of the agreement, a possible prelude to the return of IAEA monitors after a more than four-year hiatus.


Associated Press writer Palma Benczenleitner contributed to this report.

On the Net:

www.iaea.org

What Would You Do if You Were Iran?

Posted on Mar 5, 2007

By Tad Daley

Any New Yorker will tell you that the best views of Manhattan are to be found not on the island, but from across the water. The most sublime commentator on the workings of “democracy in America,” it is often argued, was not from America, but Europe—Alexis de Tocqueville, in his majestic work by that very title. The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped many breathtaking photographs of wondrous spiral galaxies millions of light years away, but no human has ever held such a perspective on our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, because no human (nor even any human artifact) has ever viewed it from the outside.

The greatest insight into a difficult and complex matter often comes from an outside observer. In late February the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran had accelerated rather than suspended its uranium enrichment activities. Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking from Australia, immediately warned Tehran, “All options are still on the table.” Two days later Cheney suddenly showed up, publicly unannounced, in Pakistan, setting off a flurry of talk radio and Internet speculation that the true purpose of the visit was to negotiate flyover rights for an impending air assault on Iran. In response, an Iranian deputy foreign minister stated, “We’re prepared for any situation—even for war.”

To the dismay and astonishment of the peace and progressive Democratic base that swept the party back into power last November, the three early front-runners for the 2008 presidential nomination—Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards—have consistently expressed a similar hawkishness on Iran. Clinton and Edwards have even uttered the identical “all options on the table” phrase!

Why is Iran so intent on pursuing its atomic ambitions, despite such naked saber rattling from the planet’s overweening military leviathan? The most candid, unvarnished answer to that question has recently come not from any Iranian or American but from someone viewing the impasse from across the water. From Europe. From the outside.
Vladimir Putin.

“We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force in international relations,” the Russian president said in Munich last month, referring unambiguously to the United States. “Nobody feels secure anymore,” and America’s adversaries “feel cornered.” Of course, said Putin, “such a policy stimulates an arms race. The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction” (emphasis added).

Putin said what no Iranian officials will say, because if they did they would have to admit that they are seeking not just nuclear electricity but nuclear weapons. Putin said what no Bush administration officials will say, because if they did they would have to admit that all their efforts to, as President Bush put it in 2002, “free the world from weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those who hate freedom” have had precisely the opposite effect.

Make no mistake. The repugnant comments by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, about the Jewish past and the Israeli future deserve to be renounced by any right-thinking citizen of the world. But Ahmadinejad’s true influence among the mullahs has always been limited, and is now, by all accounts, in free fall. Regardless of who is really running the show, might not Iran have some legitimate national security interests in its own self-preservation?

Consider the world as seen from Tehran in the past half-decade. George W. Bush announced a new doctrine of “pre-emption,” wherein the U.S. may see fit to launch regime-changing invasions of states that Washington, in its own subjective judgment, concludes might pose a threat, someday, to American national security. He declared that of all the odious regimes on the planet, three alone constitute an “axis of evil.” Breaking with the entire Cold War legacy of mutual nuclear deterrence, he issued a new nuclear doctrine, one that contemplated nuclear attacks on non-nuclear states (in explicit violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). He actually named seven states (including Iran) as possible targets of a pre-emptive American nuclear first strike. Then he launched his first pre-emptive war against the country next door to Iran, decapitating its regime and driving its leader first into a spider hole in the ground and then to the gallows.

And after all that, Tehran finds itself surrounded on four sides by American military power—Iraq to the west, Afghanistan to the east, U.S. bases in Turkey and Central Asia to the north, and the mighty U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf to the south (which just recently doubled its presence there).

Putin did not explain exactly how nuclear weapons could serve to defend a country like Iran from an overwhelming American air assault. But the old Cold Warrior surely understands the new model of nuclear deterrence that is emerging in the post-Cold War world—one that could radically transform the 21st century nuclear landscape.

During the Cold War’s long atomic arms race, it became clear that nuclear weapons had little actual military value. It was difficult to conceive of any scenario where the benefits of launching a nuclear weapon could exceed the almost infinite risks. But we needed thousands of nuclear weapons, the argument ran, because the Soviets possessed thousands of nuclear weapons. And they needed them because we had them. Our atomic arsenal deterred them from using theirs, and their atomic arsenal deterred us from using ours. This, of course, was the logic behind “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD—surely the most appropriate acronym in all of human history.

But if a country like Iran manages to acquire a nuclear arsenal, its function will be dramatically different. Iran, of course, cannot hope to defeat the United States in any kind of direct military confrontation. No one can. But Tehran could aspire not to defeat but to deter what must seem to Iranian leaders to be a very real threat of an American military first strike. And to exercise such deterrence, it doesn’t need the capacity to bring about the “assured destruction” of the entire American nation. All it needs is the capability to vaporize an American military base or three in Qatar or Kuwait or Iraq, or an entire aircraft carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf, or even an American city on one coast or the other. It also needs to indicate that it would respond to any attack by employing that capability immediately, before it becomes too late, following the venerable maxim: “Use them or lose them.” This, we learned in recent years from now-elderly Soviet officers who were on the ground during the Cuban missile crisis, is precisely what they were prepared to do at even a hint of an American first strike.

There is, of course, only one thing that can provide Iran with this kind of deterrent capability. Hint: it’s not nuclear electricity.

When Tehran looks west, it sees an Iraq that abandoned its nuclear weapons program, opened itself to unprecedented intrusions on its sovereignty, did not in fact possess any weapons of mass destruction—and got itself invaded for its trouble.

When Tehran looks east, it sees a North Korea that is one of the most desperate countries in the world. Most of its citizens are either languishing in gulags or chronically starving. It is impoverished, puny, a pathetic excuse for a 21st century nation-state. And yet, because it chose an alternate course—constructing a small nuclear arsenal in secret, then whipping back the curtain to reveal that arsenal to the world—it appears to be successfully deterring any kind of military attack from the greatest military juggernaut in human history.

What would you do if you were Iran?

It is true that neither the International Atomic Energy Agency nor American intelligence officials have put forth a shred of evidence indicating that Iran has diverted materials from its nuclear energy activities to a nuclear weapons program. It is also quite possible that Iran might be dissuaded from its nuclear ambitions, in return for an end to U.S. support for internal Iranian groups seeking the violent overthrow of the regime (imagine if Iran were doing that here!), a formal mutual security pact with non-aggression pledges in both directions, and some acknowledgement on our part that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty doesn’t just impose nonproliferation obligations on them but also disarmament obligations on us.

Instead, astonishingly, with the ceaseless beating of the Iran war drums in the background, the Energy Department on March 2 announced a contract to build a brand-new, ultra-modernized U.S. nuclear warhead—the first in two decades—to ensure the long-term “reliability” of the American nuclear arsenal.

Until more enlightened diplomacy starts emanating from Washington, Tehran will continue its march toward the nuclear Rubicon. The logic of the situation requires it. No rational Iranian defense planner could responsibly recommend anything else.

A Cold War concept that never captured the public imagination quite like MAD was the simple idea of “unacceptable damage.” If a vulnerable nation could obtain the capability to impose unacceptable damage on an adversary, that would probably be enough to cause that adversary to pause, indefinitely, before initiating any kind of war. And the obliteration of an American military base or naval formation or city would clearly seem to qualify as “unacceptable damage” for us. Although “UD” hardly contains the rich acronymphomaniacal irony delivered by MAD, Iran and North Korea may be the first states to base their national security strategies solidly upon it.

There is very little reason to suppose that they will be the last.

Tad Daley is a veteran international policy analyst and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as a policy aide to the late U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and as national issues director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. He is presently Peace and Disarmament Fellow in the Los Angeles office of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nobel laureate anti-nuclear organization. He can be reached at tad@daleyplanet.org.

Powers of persuasion: Hans Blix

It would be desirable to induce Iran to suspend its enrichment programme, but attacking the country is not the way to do it.

March 5, 2007 9:00 AM

Hans Blix

This is the foreword to Would Airstrikes Work? a report by the Oxford Research Group.

The ultimate aim of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty was a nuclear-weapon free world. All states without non-nuclear weapons were invited to commit themselves to remain without these weapons and the five states, which had tested such weapons, were invited to commit themselves to nuclear disarmament.

Incentives to acquire nuclear weapons flow in most cases from perceived security interests or from a wish for recognition and status. Success in preventing a spread of the weapons and in eliminating existing arsenals depends on states coming to the conclusion that their security interests and status do not call for nuclear weapons.

The end of the cold war has been and remains singularly helpful to lower tensions and to increase security in many parts of the world. Practical cooperation between states bilaterally, regionally or through international organisations has the same effect. By contrast, new nuclear arms programmes in nuclear weapon states, anti-missile programmes, space weapon developments and threats of armed attacks or of actions to bring about regime change through armed force or subversion, increase security concerns. In cases like North Korea and Iran it is not the threat or use of armed force but the absence thereof that will help to ensure non-proliferation.

This report does not reject the contention that a wish to develop nuclear weapons or at least the option to acquire such weapons may be part of the reason for Iran's programme for the enrichment of uranium. Today, it does not matter much what the Iranian intention is, if, indeed, there is an agreed intention. After all, whatever the intention today, it could change in two years time.

Inducing Iran to suspend the enrichment programme at least for a prolonged period of time would - all agree - be desirable to reduce tensions in the Middle East and to give time for other efforts with the same aim. The question is how to induce Iran to join this conclusion.

With much technical knowledge this study argues, that it would be several years before the present Iranian programmes for the enrichment of uranium and possible production of plutonium could result in weapons and that there is time for diplomacy. It further argues that military attacks on Iranian nuclear installations would be disastrous and counterproductive.

I fully agree. In the case of Iraq, the armed action launched aimed to eliminate weapons of mass destruction - that did not exist. It led to tragedy and regional turmoil. In the case of Iran armed action would be aimed at intentions - that may or may not exist. However, the same result - tragedy and regional turmoil - would inevitably follow. Further, as argued in this study, armed attacks on Iran would very likely lead to the result they were meant to avoid - the building of nuclear weapons within few years. It is inconceivable that the security council would authorise armed action against alleged intentions. Such action would therefore present another contravention of the UN charter, raising the question whether anything was left of the charter's provisions on the threat and use of force. If Iranian nuclear power plants at Bushehr were to be targeted, when they have begun to operate, such attacks would also violate the 1977 additional Geneva protocol (article 56), which protects such plants.

The conclusion is clear: diplomacy must be used to persuade Iran at least to suspend its enrichment programme for a prolonged period of time. However, it is illogical to ask Iran to suspend its enrichment programme before any diplomatic negotiations take place about the conditions for the suspension. It is time for serious talk - not for humiliating preconditions.

Hans Blix is chairman of the weapons of mass destruction commission.

N.Korea must declare uranium program: U.S. envoy

Will it ever be possible for the U.S. to make a deal it does not renege on?
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By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent 12 minutes ago

North Korea's obligatory declaration of its nuclear programs under a disarmament pact must include its secret uranium enrichment, the U.S. envoy in talks with Pyongyang said on Tuesday.

Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said in a speech before the second day of talks with North Korea that Washington wanted Pyongyang to be clear about its obligations under the landmark nuclear deal.

"We want to be sure that when the North Koreans give us a declaration there are no surprises and no omissions," he said in a speech at the Japan Society in New York.

Under the February 13 deal reached in Beijing by the Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and China, North Korea must begin discussions within 60 days to produce a comprehensive list of its nuclear activities.

Hill on Tuesday resumed talks with North Korean envoy Kim Kye-gwan aimed at eventually normalizing diplomatic ties as part of the agreement, under which Pyongyang has pledged to scrap its nuclear arms programs in exchange for aid.

The two-day New York talks are focusing on political and legal impediments to normalization of ties between countries that have been bitter foes since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

INTELLIGENCE DEBATE

Hill repeated U.S. assertions that Pyongyang is trying to enrich uranium -- allegations that caused a 1994 U.S.-North Korea nuclear agreement to unravel and over which there is debate in Washington after U.S. officials acknowledged some gaps in intelligence.

"There's a whole list of things that North Korea has been purchasing over the years that are entirely consistent with a highly enriched uranium program," Hill said.

"If they don't have a highly enriched uranium program, why did they buy all his stuff?" he asked, referring to expensive centrifuges, aluminum tubing and manuals.

Uranium enrichment would be a second way to increase the stockpile of fissile material of North Korea, which last October tested a nuclear device made from plutonium produced by a reactor to be shuttered under the February 13 disarmament deal.

The negotiating teams of Hill and Kim held four hours of "very constructive, very businesslike" talks on Monday evening, said Hill, who will address the media when the talks conclude on Tuesday afternoon.

He declined to discuss the initial meeting in detail, but said: "We don't look for any immediate outcome from this meeting. It is just a first session."

The talks in New York marked the highest-level meeting between the two countries on U.S. soil since communist North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, sent a top envoy to Washington in 2000 in an abortive effort to improve relations.

Analysts have been skeptical about rapprochement between the United States and North Korea -- a country President George W. Bush in 2002 labeled part of an "axis of evil."

The normalization effort "does not mean that all our problems with North Korea go away with the abandonment of their nuclear aspirations," said Hill. "Obviously we'll have continuing differences with North Korea."

Issues to be discussed on Tuesday include Washington's designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism and U.S. trade sanctions against it under the Trading with the Enemy Act, Hill said.

Before the next round of six-party nuclear talks in Beijing on March 19, North Korea will hold discussions with Japan in Hanoi this week. The parties will also have separate meetings on energy aid, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and regional security.

Attacking Iran could speed up nuclear programme: think tank

by Phil Hazlewood 1 hour, 34 minutes ago

Pre-emptive military strikes on Iran could accelerate rather than hinder Tehran's production of atomic weapons, a report by a British global security think-tank warned Monday.

Backed by the former chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Hans Blix, the Oxford Research Group said Iran could respond to an attack by launching a "crash programme" to develop a crude nuclear device within months.

"If Iran is moving towards a nuclear weapons capacity it is doing it relatively slowly, most estimates put it at least five years away," said one of the report's authors, leading British nuclear scientist Frank Barnaby.

"However attacking Iran -- far from setting back their progress towards a bomb -- would almost certainly lead to a fast-track programme to develop a small number of nuclear devices as quickly as possible.

"It would be a bit like deciding to build a car from spare parts instead of building the entire car factory. Put simply, military attacks could speed Iran's progress to a nuclear bomb."

The report suggests air strikes, like those reportedly being considered by the United States and Israel, would harden Iranian attitudes and political resistance to outside pressure to stop uranium enrichment.

The Islamic republic would then focus on manufacturing one or two nuclear devices, leading to a nuclear-armed Iran within one or two years, it added.

Blix, who headed the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) in Iraq and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), backs the report's assessment.

He wrote in the report's foreword: "Armed attacks on Iran would very likely lead to the result they were meant to avoid -- the building of nuclear weapons within a few years."

The report argued that military action would probably result in a high number of civilian casualties, as a surprise attack would inevitably catch many people unawares and unprotected.

Air strikes would have to hit many well-protected targets across Iran, including the Kalaye Electric Company, which produces components for gas centrifuges used in uranium enrichment.

Other targets would include the Bushehr nuclear reactor, the Arak heavy water reactor and heavy water production plant, uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, uranium mines at Saghand and the research reactors at Isfahan.

But the report said there was a "real possibility" Iran had built secret facilities elsewhere as well as "false targets" in anticipation of air strikes.

"With inadequate intelligence, it is unlikely that it would be possible to identify and subsequently destroy the number of targets needed to set back Iran's nuclear programme for a significant period," it said.

The report suggested that Iran could salvage enough material for a bomb from the reactor at Bushehr after any attack, or turn to the black market, where small amounts of uranium or plutonium would be easy to smuggle.

Alternatively, the Iranians may already have set up clandestine facilities with centrifuges that could escape an attack.

"It is a mistake to believe that Iran can be deterred from attaining a nuclear weapons capability by bombing its facilities," the report said.

"In the aftermath of a military strike, if Iran devoted maximum effort and resources to building one nuclear bomb, it could achieve this in a relatively short amount of time: some months rather than years."

The group's executive director, John Sloboda, said: "This report doesn't get into the rights and wrongs of military strikes. It asks whether they will achieve their objectives...

"The conclusions should be food for thought for even the most hawkish: military strikes against Iran will simply not work. Indeed they could even bring a nuclear-armed Iran closer."

West 'humiliating' Iran, says Hans Blix

Former UN weapons inspector slams US and Europe over 'humiliating neo-colonial' attitude to Iran. 'People have their own pride whether you like them or don't,' he adds, urging use of economic incentives for better diplomacy

Associated Press
Published: 02.26.07, 23:29 / Israel News

Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said Monday the United States, Europe and the UN Security Council are ''humiliating'' Iran by demanding that it suspend uranium enrichment before any negotiations and then dictating its rewards.

He said the package of economic and political incentives put forward in June 2006 by the US and key European countries, which was later endorsed by the council, did not mention the key issue of security guarantees for Iran or adequately address the possibility of US diplomatic recognition if Tehran renounces enrichment.

''The first incentive, I think, is to sit down with them in a direct talk rather than saying to them 'you do this, thereafter we will sit down at a table and tell you what you get for it,''' Blix said. ''That's getting away from a humiliating neo-colonial attitude to a more normal (one).''

''People have their own pride whether you like them or don't,'' he told a media briefing ahead of a daylong conference on ''Weapons Threats and International Security'' organized by The Century Foundation, a Washington-based research institute on domestic and international challenges.

By contrast, Blix said the six-party negotiations on North Korea's nuclear program in Beijing have focused on negotiations and recently addressed the country's security concerns and issues of the country's status and diplomatic relations with the United States - ''regrettably far too late.

''It could have been done much earlier. Years have been lost and plutonium has been gained in (North) Korea,'' Blix said, noting the country's nuclear test in October.

More carrots needed

In the case of Iran, however, Blix said, the international community has taken a completely different approach to negotiations.

Initially, the Europeans put a lot of carrots on the table without much American support. Gradually, there was more US backing including support for Iran's entry into the World Trade Organization, for spare parts for US-made aircraft, and facilitating investment if it gives up enrichment, he said.

''But we haven't heard anything about offers concerning guarantees for security in case they will go along with a renunciation of enrichment, nor much regarding recognition,'' Blix said.

''It's the US that can deliver assurances about security, and the US that can deliver recognition or normalization of relations,'' he said.

Blix criticized the demand first by the Europeans, then the US, and now by the Security Council, that first Iran must suspend enrichment and then there will be talks where ''they will explain what the Iranians will be given.''

''This is in a way like telling a child, first you will behave and thereafter you will be given your rewards,'' Blix said. ''And this, I think, is humiliating. The Iranians have resisted all the time saying, no, we are willing to talk, we are willing to talk about the suspension of enrichment, but we are not for suspension before the talks.''

''I would be surprised if a poker player would toss away his trump card before he sits down at the table. Who does that?'' he asked.

'Military threats are very dangerous'

Blix said he wants Iran to suspend its enrichment program ''but this is poor diplomacy - a poor way to try to achieve it.''

Blix led the US inspectors who searched for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the US-led invasion in 2003. Prior to that he headed the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. He now heads the Stockholm-based Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, which is sponsored by the Swedish government.

The IAEA reported last week that Iran had ignored Security Council demands to suspend enrichment and instead had expanded its enrichment program. Iran maintains that its program is purely aimed at the development of nuclear energy, but the Europeans and American believe its real goal is to produce nuclear weapons.

Blix said the economic sanctions which the Security Council imposed are useful.

''I don't think military threats are useful,'' he said. ''They will scare a number of people in Iran, yes. But at the same time, I think they are also very dangerous. A spark could fly, and they are very dangerous.''

Blix said the West should put itself in Iran's shoes, facing 140,000 American troops in Iraq, bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan which are major US allies, and the US talking to another Iranian neighbor, Azerbaijan.

''It's not absurd that they might feel a little worried about their security and that security guarantees from the US - in the same manner as in North Korea - could be useful,'' he said.

MP says Switzerland plans to guarantee enrichment in Iran

Tehran, Feb 17, IRNA

Iran-MP-Nuclear

A Majlis deputy said here Saturday that a plan has been presented by Switzerland to settle the dispute between the West and Iran over the latter's peaceful nuclear activities and guarantee enrichment inside Iranian territory.

First Deputy of Majlis' National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mohammad-Nabi Roudaki made the disclosure while speaking to IRNA.

Asked to comment on the Swiss proposal, he said that "the plan was raised during a meeting between Iran's Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary Ali Larijani with Swiss officials last week."
"It will guarantee uranium enrichment inside Iranian territory under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) while allowing resumption of talks as a first step to solving the dispute over Iran's nuclear activities," he said.

According to the Swiss plan, the Islamic Republic of Iran will be allowed to enrich uranium at a limited or low-scale rate and under IAEA surveillance.

The MP said that the plan was still being studied by the SNSC.

"The plan was offered to Iran after Iranian diplomacy gained international support through a recent visit by the Supreme Leader's Advisor for International Affairs Ali-Akbar Velayati to Moscow and Larijani's participation in the 43rd Conference on Security Policy in Munich, Germany.

"The offer also coincided with the Iranian nation's massive rallies on February 11 (Bahman 22) marking the 28th anniversary of the victory of the Islamic Revolution and President Ahmadinejad's promise at Tehran's Azadi Square to announce a major achievement in its nuclear program before the end of the current Iranian year and other remarkable achievements in the scientific field.

The MP from southern Shiraz city added: "They (the US and its allies) have now come to realize that the Iranian nation is determined to resist all obstacles and to assert its legal nuclear right." He noted that US President George W Bush has reiterated that direct talks with Iran is not on the US agenda and rumors of such talks are a media propaganda.

He said "Russia, China and India, three countries which exercise great influence in international affairs, have also understood that the US adopts a policy of unilateralism in the world and intends to pit Russia against China in international affairs." Pointing to a joint front set up by Russia, China and India, Roudaki said Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his address to the Munich security conference, stressed that his country would not tolerate US unilateralism.

He stressed the importance of the Iranian nation reinforcing its vigilance in order to confront adverse international developments.

"Iranian officials should exercise reason and carefully study the Switzerland plan," he said.

2327/2321/1414

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on Iran nuclear are sites well advanced

Related
Tehran's surprising allies
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US able to strike Iran in the spring

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian


A second battle group has been ordered to the Gulf and extra missiles have already been sent out. Meanwhile oil is being stockpiled. Photograph: Reuters

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

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Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Deployment

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most vocal supporters of such a strike.

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."

Opposition support

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various notions of what the policy should be."

In spite of the president's veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture, the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation, said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor and the US is looking away."

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental war".

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had evidence - serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives - of Iraqi militants' weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of the increased tension, Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

War of words

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly"
George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

"I think it's been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled waters"
Dick Cheney

"It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux"
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation"
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iranian nuclear scientist ‘assassinated by Mossad’

The Sunday Times February 04, 2007
Sarah Baxter, Washington

A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.

An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour’s death emerged on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as “gas poisoning”. The Iranian reports did not say how or where Hassanpour was poisoned but his death was said to have been announced at a conference on nuclear safety.

Rheva Bhalla of Stratfor, the US intelligence company, claimed on Friday that Hassanpour had been targeted by Mossad and that there was “very strong intelligence” to suggest that he had been assassinated by the Israelis, who have repeatedly threatened to prevent Iran acquiring the bomb.

Hassanpour won Iran’s leading military research prize in 2004 and was awarded top prize at the Kharazmi international science festival in Iran last year.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to announce next Sunday — the 28th anniversary of the Islamic revolution — that 3,000 centrifuges have been installed at Natanz, enabling Iran to move closer to industrial scale uranium enrichment.

Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency say that hundreds of technicians and labourers have been “working feverishly” to assemble equipment at the plant.

Iran official says allows U.N. cameras at key atom site

Fri Feb 2, 2007 10:08 AM EST

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian official said on Friday Tehran had allowed the installation of surveillance cameras at a complex where it is set to begin expanding enrichment of nuclear fuel.

The official, who declined to be identified further, spoke after diplomats in Vienna, where the U.N. atomic watchdog is based, said Iran had refused to let U.N. inspectors set up cameras at the underground section of the Natanz complex.

He also denied some reports abroad that Iran had begun installing 3,000 centrifuges to step up uranium enrichment. "It has not started yet," he said. Enriched uranium can be used to run power plants or to detonate atomic bombs.

The United Nations has slapped sanctions on Iran's nuclear program for defying demands to stop enriching uranium, a process Tehran insists is aimed only at generating electricity.

The West suspects the Islamic Republic is striving to build atomic bombs behind the facade of a civilian energy program. International Atomic Energy Agency investigations have found no proof of bombmaking, but raised many questions.

Tehran has invited six ambassadors from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of developing nations for a "transparency" visit to Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday, although they are not due to see the centerpiece Natanz installation.

They will instead tour a uranium-conversion facility near the central city of Isfahan, where the uranium hexafluoride gas is made for feeding into centrifuge enrichment machines. They may also visit a heavy water reactor project at Arak.

NAM diplomats said Iran invited the envoys, accredited to the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency, to show openness about its program. Washington says simply showcasing Iran's nuclear activities would not build confidence abroad.

NUCLEAR DIVERSION FEARS

The IAEA conducts inspections of Natanz and other Iranian nuclear facilities to try to verify that work is not being diverted to making nuclear bombs, which the West fears. Iran denies such intentions.

"The installation of cameras has taken place in Natanz. We have cooperated with the IAEA based on the safeguards and we will continue to do so in the framework of cooperation and treaties," the Iranian official told Reuters.

"The installation of monitoring systems and surveillance is taking place correctly and in the past days, the monitoring system has been strengthened and there is no problem regarding this issue between Iran and the agency," he said.

The official said he was referring to Natanz's underground hall, where 3,000 centrifuges are set to be hooked up. The complex includes a small, above-ground centrifuge research facility that is under steady IAEA camera surveillance.

Asked about the Iranian official's denial, a Vienna diplomat familiar with IAEA operations reaffirmed that Iran had caused a holdup with camera preparations at the underground plant.

"But it's not a fait accompli. There have been contacts to resolve the matter," the diplomat told Reuters on Friday.

An Iranian news agency, however, said plans to expand work at Natanz might bring "limited changes" in the way inspectors carried out their work, including camera installation.

Student news agency ISNA said the decision to move from research at Natanz to industrial-level work "will naturally have some limited changes in the way the inspectors inspect and install cameras, and in some of the agency's technical and legal regulations." ISNA did not elaborate or give a clear source.

The major expansion of centrifuge capacity is part of plans to ramp up from experimental research, purifying token amounts of uranium, to so-called "industrial-scale" enrichment.

It would not be illegal for Iran to refuse to allow cameras to be hooked up in the subterranean centrifuge hall because nuclear work has not yet commenced.

(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in Vienna)

Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders

The Israeli public buys into the government propaganda(remember Americans swallowed Bush's guff. The Israeli army runs the country. After an embarassing loss in Lebanon and waning power at home, they could use an easy win and Cheney is just itching to make more cash off another war.

Ahmadinejad does not and has never made the major decisions in Iran. The Supreme Leader Khamenei handles those.

Even White House insiders say privately Iran is 10 years away from producing sufficient bomb grade uranium.
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Boasts of a nuclear programme are just propaganda, say insiders, but the PR could be enough to provoke Israel into war

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor

Sunday January 28, 2007
The Observer

Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium, the material used to make nuclear bombs, are in chaos and the country is still years from mastering the required technology.

Iran's uranium enrichment programme has been plagued by constant technical problems, lack of access to outside technology and knowhow, and a failure to master the complex production-engineering processes involved. The country denies developing weapons, saying its pursuit of uranium enrichment is for energy purposes.

Despite Iran being presented as an urgent threat to nuclear non-proliferation and regional and world peace - in particular by an increasingly bellicose Israel and its closest ally, the US - a number of Western diplomats and technical experts close to the Iranian programme have told The Observer it is archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production.

The disclosures come as Iran has told the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], that it plans to install a new 'cascade' of 3,000 high-speed centrifuges at its controversial underground facility at Natanz in central Iran next month.

The centrifuges were supposed to have been installed almost a year ago and many experts are extremely doubtful that Iran has yet mastered the skills to install and run it. Instead, they argue, the 'installation' will more probably be about propaganda than reality.

The detailed descriptions of Iran's problems in enriching more than a few grams of uranium using high-speed centrifuges - 50kg is required for two nuclear devices - comes in stark contrast to the apocalyptic picture being painted of Iran's imminent acquisition of a nuclear weapon with which to attack Israel. Instead, say experts, the break-up of the nuclear smuggling organisation of the Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadheer Khan has massively set back an Iran heavily dependent on his network.

A key case in point is that Tehran originally procured the extremely high-quality bearings required for the centrifuges' carbon-fibre 'top rotors' - spinning dishes within the machines - from foreign companies in Malaysia.

With that source closed down two years ago, Iran is making the bearings itself with only limited success. It is the repeated failure of these crucial bearings, say some sources, that has been one of the programme's biggest setbacks.

Iran is also believed to be critically short of key materials for producing a centrifuge production line to highly enrich uranium - in particular the so-called maraging steel, able to be used at high temperatures and under high stress without deforming - and specialist carbon fibre products. In this light, say some experts, its insistence that it will install 3,000 new centrifuges at the underground Natanz facility in the coming months is as much about domestic PR as reality.

The growing recognition, in expert circles at least, of how far Iran is from mastering centrifuge technology was underlined on Friday by comments by the head of the IAEA, whose inspectors have been attempting to monitor the Iranian nuclear programme.

Talking to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Mohamed El Baradei appealed for all sides to take a 'time out' under which Iranian enrichment and UN sanctions would be suspended simultaneously, adding that the point at which Iran is able to produce a nuclear weapon is at least half a decade away. In pointed comments aimed at the US and Israel, the Nobel Peace prize winner warned that an attack on Iran would have 'catastrophic consequences'.

Yet some involved in the increasingly aggressive standoff over Iran fear tensions will reach snapping point between March and June this year, with a likely scenario being Israeli air strikes on symbolic Iranian nuclear plants.

The sense of imminent crisis has been driven by statements from Israel, not least from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has insisted that 2007 is make-or-break time over Iran's nuclear programme.

Recent months have seen leaks and background briefings reminiscent of the softening up of public opinion for the war against Iraq which have presented a series of allegations regarding Iran's meddling in Iraq and Lebanon, the 'genocidal' intentions of its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and its 'connections' with North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

It also emerged last week in the Israeli media that the country's private diplomatic efforts to convince the world of the need for tough action on Iran were being co-ordinated by Meir Dagan, the head of Israel's foreign intelligence service, Mossad.

The escalating sense of crisis is being driven by two imminent events, the 'installation' of 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz and the scheduled delivery of fuel from Russia for Iran's Busheyr civil nuclear reactor, due to start up this autumn. Both are regarded as potential trigger points for an Israeli attack.

'The reality is that they have got to the stage where they can run a small experimental centrifuge cascade intermittently,' said one Western source familiar with the Iranian programme. 'They simply have not got to the stage where they can run 3,000 centrifuges There is no evidence either that they have been stockpiling low-enriched uranium which could be highly enriched quickly and which would give an idea of a malevolent intent.'

Another source with familiarity with the Iranian programme said: 'Iran has put all this money into this huge hole in the ground at Natanz; it has put a huge amount of money in these P-1 centrifuges, the model rejected by Urenco. It is like the Model T Ford compared to a Prius. That is not to say they will not master the technology eventually, but they are trying to master very challenging technology without access to

everything that they require.'

IRAN: TOP NUCLEAR SCIENTIST DIES UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES

IRAN: NUCLEAR SCIENTIST DIES UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES

Tehran, 25 Jan. (AKI) - One of Iran's top nuclear scientists, Ardeshir Hassanpour, a professor at the university of Shiraz, has died under mysterious circumstances. Hassanpour's death was announced by Iranian state television, a week late, on Thursday. No reason was given for his death. The scientist was proclaimed the best scientist in the military field in the Islamic Republic in 2003. Hassanpour directed the centre for nuclear electromagnetic studies he had founded in 2005.

He had also co-founded the center for atomic research in Isfahan, the most important in the country, Iranian state television reported.

Last year, Ardeshir Hassanpour was awarded Iran's most prestigious scientific award, the Kharazmi prize.

(Rah/Aki)

Jan-25-07 18:14

What if Iran Suspends? A Western Dilemma

POLITICS:

Analysis by Trita Parsi*

WASHINGTON, Jan 26 (IPS) - As the Feb. 21 deadline for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme fast approaches, both Iran and the West are scrambling to prepare themselves for all possible moves by the other side.

A scenario causing some discomfort among decision-makers in the George W. Bush administration would entail Iran succumbing to the Security Council request -- but only after first giving its nuclear programme a decisive push.

After more than two years of negotiations, inspections, threats and counter threats, the Security Council finally put the Western demand for Iran to halt its uranium enrichment programme into a legally binding Chapter VII Security Council resolution. With a deadline of Feb. 21, UNSCR 1737 requires a suspension of "all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development, to be verified by the IAEA," the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Though the sanctions imposed on Iran are relatively benign, markets in Iran have reacted negatively to the development and pragmatists in Iran are pressuring the country's top decision-maker, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to find a face-saving way out of this situation before the standoff with the West escalates further.

This has proven a difficult task. Khamenei is suspicious of the intent of Western governments and has little faith in their willingness to reciprocate potential Iranian concessions. In his view, sources close to his office reveal, a hardline stance against the West should be tried since the more conciliatory policies pursued by former President Mohammad Khatami failed to produce any gains for Iran.

The counter-argument, presented by the pragmatists, goes that the softer policy helped avoid a costly and potentially unmanageable confrontation with the West.

According to Nasser Hadian, a political analyst close to the Reformist camp, Iran will likely announce the connection and operation of six cascades of centrifuges within the next few weeks. Sources familiar with the debate in Tehran say that Iran is considering using the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution on Feb. 11 to announce this decision and celebrate it widely.

By doing so, Hadian explains, the Iranian government would become psychologically and politically prepared to accept a compromise on its enrichment programme. It would be a face-saving exercise that could pave the way for a suspension and an agreement to permit much tougher IAEA inspections in order to avoid any escalation in the Security Council. It would also provide Iran with a stronger position in the ensuing negotiations with the P5+1 states -- Britain, France, Russia, China, the United States and Germany.

Though Iran would agree to the U.N. Security Council demand and intrusive inspections, this move is still causing discomfort in Western capitals. In a standoff that increasingly has become about prestige and stature, and less and less about non-proliferation, the Iranian move might provide Tehran with a bit too much face-saving, in the view of some Europeans. It could be interpreted by Brussels as an insult and make the EU's efforts to find a resolution to the nuclear wrestling match appear irrelevant.

After all, speeding up the Iranian programme would counter the spirit and letter of the Security Council resolution, even if Iran would manage to suspend the programme before the resolution deadline is reached.

More importantly, the Iranian move would signal that Tehran has -- in spite of U.S. and EU efforts -- managed to master the fuel cycle. For Washington, this would cause an additional headache; mastering the fuel cycle is the latest Israeli red line (previously, Israel regarded uranium enrichment as the nuclear point of no return). Israel has signaled Washington that if Iran crosses this line, and the Bush administration refuses to take action, Israel will be left with no choice but to attack Iran itself.

As a result, from Israel's perspective, the U.S. policy will be proven a failure if Iran connects the cascades -- even if it subsequently suspends its nuclear programme and enters into negotiations with the U.S. and the EU for a long-term solution.

The threat of an Israeli attack on Iran, however, is likely still viewed with some scepticism in Washington, even though Israeli officials have as of late warned Washington that an attack may be imminent. The Israeli Air force still lacks the capability to successfully take out the known Iranian facilities. More importantly, U.S. war plans involve not only targeting the nuclear plants but also much of the infrastructure related to the nuclear programme.

While the U.S. has the capability to target these points, Israel does not. A rash and unsuccessful military campaign could turn the political momentum to Iran's favour and undermine efforts to stop Tehran.

Israeli military action would also spell disaster for Tel Aviv's efforts to use the perceived threat from Iran to forge closer ties with the pro-Washington Sunni dictatorships in the region, without necessarily acceding to the longstanding Arab condition for such a diplomatic shift: an Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state. As much as these Arab dictatorships loathe and fear Iran, they cannot gravitate towards Israel if it engages in a pre-emptive war against a fellow Muslim state.

Finally, Iran is the home to the largest community of Jews in the Middle East outside of Israel itself. Approximately 25,000 Iranian Jews continue to live in the Islamic republic, a country they have called home since the Persian King Cyrus the Great liberated the Jews from the Babylonian imprisonment 2,500 years ago. Military confrontation with Iran could jeopardise the security of this ancient community, a move the Jewish State would be reluctant to take.

Yet, even if Israel doesn't act on its threats, Washington will still be faced with a major political dilemma. On the one hand, it will be difficult for the U.S. to refuse negotiations with Iran after having publicly repeated suspension of enrichment as its sole condition for talks.

"I myself have said I'll show up any place, any time, anywhere to talk with my Iranian counterpart, with other European leaders, if the Iranians will just do the one simple thing that the world has been asking them to do for almost three years: suspend their enrichment capabilities," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told PBS News Hour earlier last month.

On the other hand, having defined a nuclear weapons capability as the mastering of the fuel cycle, and having vowed not to permit Iran to have such a capability, inaction by the Bush administration could come at the expense of appearing to backtrack on an important pledge to Israel. Washington hawks will no doubt accuse the president of letting Iran off the hook.

At some point, however, Washington, Brussels and Tehran must choose whether to win the battle for enrichment or the battle for prestige. Winning both may be outside the realm of possibility for all involved parties.

*Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Triangle -- The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States" (Yale University Press, 2007). He is also president of the National Iranian American Council (http://www.niacouncil.org/).

Petro-Power and the Nuclear Renaissance: Is Big Brother in Your Energy Future?

Tomgram: Klare, Is Big Brother in Your Energy Future?

For the last two weeks, Tomdispatch has been concentrating on the way Pentagon strategists have taken possession of our future and are writing their own dystopian science fiction scenarios about the world we are soon to enter -- and the weapons systems that are meant to go with it. Five years ago, Michael Klare, a military and energy expert, wrote a prophetic book, Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. Its title caught the embattled nature of our emerging resource future moment better than any Pentagon fantasy. His most recent book, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum, was no less on the mark. Now, for Tomdispatch, he continues to peer ahead in the second of a two-part series on our militarized energy future.

While the Bush administration and its neocon supporters have long been offering up a vision of a vast imperial enemy-in-the-making that they call "Islamo-fascism," Klare, in part 1, discovered quite another, more realistic and chilling set of possibilities that he dubbed "Energo-fascism" -- or the militarization of the global struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy. There, he focused on the Pentagon's changing role in global energy politics. Now, he moves on to energy blackmail in a great-power world and the Big-Brother-style dangers of making nuclear power a major future alternative source of energy. Tom

Petro-Power and the Nuclear Renaissance

Two Faces of an Emerging Energo-fascism (Part 2)
By Michael T. Klare

Not "Islamo-fascism" but "Energo-fascism" -- the heavily militarized global struggle over diminishing supplies of energy -- will dominate world affairs (and darken the lives of ordinary citizens) in the decades to come. This is so because top government officials globally are increasingly unwilling to rely on market forces to satisfy national energy needs and are instead assuming direct responsibility for the procurement, delivery, and allocation of energy supplies. The leaders of the major powers are ever more prepared to use force when deemed necessary to overcome any resistance to their energy priorities. In the case of the United States, this has required the conversion of our armed forces into a global oil-protection service; two other significant expressions of emerging Energo-fascism are: the arrival of Russia as an "energy superpower" and the repressive implications of plans to rely on nuclear power.

Energy Haves and Have-nots

With global demand for energy constantly rising and supplies contracting (or at least failing to keep pace), the world is being ever more sharply divided into two classes of nations: the energy haves and have-nots. The haves are the nations with sufficient domestic reserves (some combination of oil, gas, coal, hydro-power, uranium, and alternative sources of energy) to satisfy their own requirements and be able to export to other countries; the have-nots lack such reserves and must make up the deficit with expensive imports or suffer the consequences.

From 1950 to 2000, when energy was plentiful and cheap, the distinction did not seem so obvious as long as the have-nots possessed other forms of power: immense wealth (like Japan); nuclear weapons (like Britain and France); or powerful friends (like the NATO and Warsaw Pact countries). Needless to say, for poor countries possessing none of these assets, being a have-not state was a burden even then, contributing mightily to the debt crisis that still afflicts many of them. Today, these other measures of power have come to seem less important and the distinction between energy haves and have-nots correspondingly more significant -- even for wealthy and powerful countries like the United States and Japan.

Surprisingly, there are very few energy haves in the world today. Most notable among these privileged few are Australia, Canada, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran, Iraq (if it were ever free of conflict), and a few others. These countries are in an envious position because they do not have to pay stratospheric prices for imported oil and natural gas and their ruling elites can demand all sorts of benefits -- political, economic, diplomatic, and military -- from the foreign leaders who come calling to procure copious quantities of their energy products. Indeed, they can engage in the delicious game of playing one foreign leader against another, as Kazakhstan's President, Nursultan Nazarbayev -- a regular guest in Washington and Beijing -- has become so adept at doing.

Pushed even further, this pursuit of favors can lead to a quest for political domination -- with the sale of vital oil and natural gas supplies made contingent on the recipient's acquiescing to certain political demands set forth by the seller. No country has embraced this strategy with greater vigor or enthusiasm than Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The Rising Energy Superpower

At the end of the Cold War, it appeared as if Russia was a forlorn, wasted ex-superpower, impoverished in spirit, treasure, and influence. For years, it was treated with disdain by American officials. Its leaders were forced to swallow humiliating agreements like the expansion of NATO to Moscow's former satellites in Eastern Europe and the abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. To many in Washington, it must have seemed as if Russia was little more than a relic of history, a has-been never again slated to play a significant role in world affairs.

Today, Moscow, not Washington, seems to be enjoying the last laugh. With control over Eurasia's largest reserves of natural gas and coal as well as enormous supplies of petroleum and uranium, Russia is the new top dog -- an energy superpower rather than a military one, but a superpower nonetheless.

First, a look at the big picture. Russia is the absolute king of natural gas producers. According to BP (the former British Petroleum), it alone possesses 1.7 quadrillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, or 27% of the total world supply. This is even more significant than it might appear because Europe and the former USSR rely on natural gas for a larger share of their total energy -- 34% -- than any other region of the world. (In North America, where oil is the dominant fuel, natural gas accounts for only 25% of the total.) Because Russia is by far the leading supplier of Eurasia's gas, it enjoys a position of supply dominance unmatched by any energy provider -- except Saudi Arabia in the petroleum field. Even in that realm, Russia is the planet's second leading producer, falling just 1.4 million barrels short of Saudi Arabia's 11.0 million barrels per day at the start of 2006. Russia also possesses the world's second largest reserves of coal (after the United States) and is a major consumer of nuclear energy, with 31 operational reactors.

Soon after assuming power as president in 1999, Vladimir Putin set out to convert this superabundance of energy -- the economic equivalent of a nuclear arsenal -- into the sort of political clout that would restore Russia's great-power status. By controlling the flow of energy to other parts of Eurasia from Russia and former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan (whose energy is exported through Russian pipelines), he reasoned, he could exercise the sort of political influence enjoyed by Soviet officials during the heyday of the Cold War. To accomplish this, however, he would have to reverse the wide-ranging privatization of the oil and gas industry that occurred in the early 1990s after the breakup of the USSR and bring vital elements of Russia's privately-owned energy industry back under state control. Since there was no legitimate way to do this under Russia's post-Communist legal system, Putin and his associates turned to illegitimate and authoritarian methods to de-privatize these valuable assets. Here, we see another emerging face of Energo-fascism.

Remarkably, Putin himself had long before spelled out the rationale for concentrating control over Russia's energy resources in the state's hands. In a 1999 summary of his Ph.D. dissertation on "Mineral Raw Materials in the Strategy for Development of the Russian Economy," he asserted that the Russian state must oversee the utilization of the country's mineral raw materials -- including oil fields in private hands -- for the good of the Russian people. "The state has the right to regulate the process of the acquisition and the use of natural resources, and particularly mineral resources, independent of on whose property they are located," he wrote. "In this regard, the state acts in the interests of society as a whole." No better justification for Energo-fascism can be imagined.

The most famous expression of this outlook has been the so-called Khodorkovsky Affair. In 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the CEO of Yukos, then Russia's top oil producer, was arrested on fraud and tax-evasion charges. He had run afoul of Putin by pursuing all sorts of energy deals independent of the state, including possible joint ventures with Exxon Mobil, and by supporting anti-Putin political forces inside Russia -- either of which would have alone been sufficient to earn him the Kremlin's wrath.

However, it is now apparent that Putin's ultimate goal in engineering the arrest was to seize control of Yuganskneftegaz, Yukos' prime asset, accounting for about 11% of Russia's oil output. With Khodorkovsky and his top associates in prison awaiting trial, the government auctioned Yuganskneftegaz to a secretive shell company, which then resold it to state-owned Rosneft at a below-market price. In one fell swoop, Putin had managed to dismember Yukos and turn Rosneft into the country's leading oil producer.

The Russian president has also sought to extend state control over the distribution and export of oil and gas by blocking any effort by private firms to build pipelines that would compete with those owned and operated by Gazprom, the state-owned natural gas monopoly, and Transneft, the state oil-pipeline monopoly. The United States and other consuming nations have long pushed for the construction of privatized oil and gas pipelines in Russia to increase the outflow of energy to Europe and other foreign markets as well as to dilute the power of Gazprom and Transneft. The Kremlin has, however, systematically foreclosed all such efforts.

If the concentration of ownership of energy assets in the state's hands through legally dubious means is one dimension of emerging Energo-fascism in Russia, a second is the utilization of this power to intimidate have-not states on Russia's periphery. The most notable expression of this to date was the cutoff of natural gas supplies to Ukraine on January 1, 2006. Ostensibly, Gazprom stopped the flow in a dispute over the pricing of Russian gas, but most observers believe that the action was also intended as a rebuke to Ukraine's Western-leaning president, Victor A. Yushchenko. Remember, this was in the dead of winter, and natural gas is the main source of heat in Ukraine, as in much of Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Gazprom resumed the flow after a last-minute pricing compromise and following vociferous complaints from Western European customers who were suffering their own losses (as the Ukrainians diverted Europe-bound gas for their own use). This was the moment when it became clear to all that Moscow was fully prepared to open and close the energy spigot as a tool of foreign policy.

Since then, Moscow has employed this tactic on several occasions to intimidate other neighboring states in what it terms its "near abroad" (as the U.S. used to speak of Latin America as its "backyard"). On July 29, 2006, claiming a leak, Transneft halted oil shipments to the Mazeikiu refinery in Lithuania after its owners announced its sale to a Polish firm, not a Russian one. Observers of the move speculate that Russians officials intended to force a Russian takeover of the refinery.

In November, Gazprom threatened to more than double the price of natural gas to its former Georgian SSR from $110 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters. The alternative offered was a cessation of deliveries. Again, political pressure was believed to be at least part of the motive as Georgia's pro-Western government has defied Moscow on a wide range of issues. In December, Gazprom pulled the same sort of trick on Belarus, demanding a major readjustment of prices from a close (and impoverished) ally that had recently been showing mild signs of independence.

This, then, is another face of Energo-fascism in Russia: the use of its energy as an instrument of political influence and coercion over weak have-not states on its borders. "It is not that energy is the new atomic weapon," Cliff Kupchan of the Eurasia Group consultancy told the Financial Times, "but Russia knows that petro-power, aggressively and cleverly applied, can yield diplomatic influence."

Big Brother and the Nuclear Renaissance

The last face of Energo-fascism to be discussed here is the inevitable rise in state surveillance and repression attendant on an expected increase in nuclear power. As oil and natural gas become scarcer, government and industry leaders will undoubtedly push for a greater reliance on nuclear power to provide additional energy. This is a program likely to gain greater momentum from rising concerns over global warming -- largely a result of carbon-dioxide emissions created during the combustion of oil, gas, and coal. President Bush has repeatedly spoken of his desire to foster greater reliance on nuclear power and the administration-backed Energy Policy Act of 2005 already provides a variety of incentives for electrical utilities to build new reactors in the United States. Other countries including France, China, Japan, Russia, and India also plan to up their reliance on nuclear power, greatly adding to the global spread of nuclear reactors.

Many problems stand in the way of this so-called renaissance, not least the mammoth costs involved and the fact that no safe system has yet been devised for the long-term storage of nuclear wastes. Furthermore, despite many improvements in the safety of nuclear power plants, worries persist about the risk of nuclear accidents such as those that occurred at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986. But this is not the place to weigh these issues. Let me instead focus on two especially worrisome aspects of the future growth of the nuclear power industry: the possible federalization of nuclear reactor placement in the U.S. and the repressive implications globally of the greater availability of nuclear materials open to diversion to terrorists, criminals, and "rogue" states.

Currently, America's municipalities, counties, and states still exercise considerable control over the issuance of permits for the construction of new nuclear power plants, giving citizens in these jurisdictions considerable opportunity to resist the placement of a reactor "in their backyard." For decades, this has been one of the leading obstacles to the construction of new reactors in the U.S., along with the costly and time-consuming legal process involved in winning over state legislatures, county boards, and environmental agencies. If this practice prevails, we are never likely to see a true "renaissance" of nuclear power here, even if a few new reactors are built in poor rural areas where citizen resistance is minimal. The only way to increase reliance on nuclear power, therefore, is to federalize the permit process by shunting local agencies aside and giving federal bureaucrats the unfettered power to issue permits for the construction of new reactors.

Unlikely, you say? Well consider this: The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a significant precedent for the federalization of such authority by depriving state and local officials of their power to approve the placement of natural gas "regasification" plants. These are mammoth facilities used to reconvert liquified natural gas, transported by ship from foreign suppliers, into a gas that can then be delivered by pipeline to customers in the United States. Several localities on the East and West coasts had fought the construction of such plants in their harbors for fear that they might explode (not an entirely far-fetched concern) or become targets for terrorists, but they have now lost their legal power to do so. So much for local democracy.

Here's my worry: That some future administration will push through an amendment to the Energy Policy Act giving the federal government the same sort of placement authority for nuclear reactors that it now has for regasification plants. The feds then announce plans to build dozens or even hundreds of new reactors in or near places like Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, and so on, claiming an urgent need for additional energy. People protest en masse. Local officials, sympathetic to the protestors, refuse to arrest them in droves. But now we're speaking of defiance of federal, not state or municipal, ordinances. Ergo, the National Guard or the regular Army is called up to quell the protests and protect the reactor sites -- Energo-fascism in action.

Finally, there's another danger in the spread of nuclear power: that it will require a systematic increase in state surveillance of everyone even remotely connected with commercial nuclear energy. After all, every uranium enrichment facility, nuclear reactor, and waste storage site -- and any of the linkages between them -- is a potential source of fissionable materials for terrorists, black-market traffickers, or rogue states like Iran and North Korea. This means, of course, that all of the personnel employed in these facilities, and all their contractors and sub-contractors (and all their families and contacts) will have to be constantly vetted for possible illicit ties and kept under strict, full-time surveillance. The more reactors there are, the more facilities and contractors who will have to be subjected to this sort of oversight -- and the more the security staff itself will have to be subjected to ever higher levels of surveillance by state security agencies. It's a formula for Big Brother on a very large scale.

And then there's the special problem of "breeder reactors." These plants produce ("breed") more fissionable material than they consume, often in the form of plutonium, which can, in turn, be burned in power reactors to generate electricity but can also be used as the fuel for atomic weapons. Although such reactors are currently banned in the United States, other countries, including Japan, are building them so as to diminish their reliance on fossil fuels and natural uranium, itself a finite resource. As the demand for nuclear energy grows, more countries (even, possibly, the USA) are bound to build breeder reactors. But this will vastly increase the global supply of bomb-grade plutonium, requiring an even greater increase in state supervision of the nuclear power industry in all its aspects.

The State's Iron Grip

All the phenomena discussed in this two-part series -- the transformation of the U.S. military into a global oil-protection service, the growth of the energy equivalent of a major-power arms race, the emergence of Russia as an energy superpower, and the need for increased surveillance over the nuclear power industry -- are expressions of a single, overarching trend: the tendency of states to extend their control over every aspect of energy production, procurement, transportation, and allocation. This, in turn, is a response to the depletion of world energy supplies and a shift in the locus of energy production from the global north to the global south -- developments that have been under way for some time, but are bound to gain greater momentum in the years ahead.

Many concerned citizens and organizations -- the Apollo Alliance, the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the Worldwatch Institute, to name but a few -- are trying to develop sane, democratic responses to the problems brought about by energy depletion, instability in energy-producing areas, and global warming. Most government leaders, however, appear intent on addressing these problems through increased state controls and a greater reliance on the use of military force. Unless this tendency is resisted, Energo-fascism could be our future.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).

[Note: For the last two weeks, Tomdispatch has focused special attention on the Pentagon and militarization-related pieces. At the end of this month, Chalmers Johnson will return to this website with a capstone piece for this series on militarization and the fate of our republic. Look for it.]

Copyright 2007 Michael T. Klare