We have argued that the Obama Administration’s approach to Iran sanctions is, truly, a “dead end” policy and that the only way out of this dead end “is to get serious about nuclear diplomacy with Iran—first of all, by reaching agreement on a plan to refuel the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR)”. Although the Administration continues to depict Iran as having rejected the possibility of working with the international community to refuel the TRR, this is not an accurate representation of reality.
Since October 2009, the Islamic Republic has accepted “in principle” the idea of a “swap” deal for refueling the TRR—that is, a deal in which some part of Iran’s current stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) would be exchanged for new fuel assemblies for the TRR. Iranian officials—including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki—have reiterated this position on numerous occasions over the past six months.
That this remains Iran’s position on the TRR issue was confirmed yesterday in Washington by Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, at a press conference at the Turkish Embassy (see Ben Katcher’s post) and at an invitation-only session at the Council on Foreign Relations. At the Council, Davotuğlu was adamant in his insistence that a diplomatic solution to the current nuclear impasse is “still possible—on the TRR especially”. Davutoğlu “has traveled to Iran five times since August and spoken for more than 14 hours with senior Iranian officials and politicians, including the Supreme Leader, in an effort to broker a compromise” on the issue. Thus, he speaks with both deep knowledge about and a nuanced appreciation of Iranian negotiating positions.
Davutoğlu recounts that, initially, the Iranians “were insisting on a simultaneous exchange in Iran, in installments”. But, while distrust of Western intentions and good faith prompted Tehran to insist on a simultaneous exchange of LEU for finished fuel, Davutoğlu firmly attests to the genuineness of the Iranians’ commitment to a “swap” deal: “If we had 116 kilograms [of finished fuel for the TRR] today, I assure you that tomorrow I will get you 1,200 [kilograms of LEU] from Iran”. And, according to the Turkish Foreign Minister, the Iranians have over time become “more flexible” on the precise terms they would accept for a deal on refueling the TRR. He declined, however, to provide particular details of the current Iranian position.
Fortunately, some of those details were provided earlier this week in an extended interview with the head of the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi. Indeed, Salehi provided powerful confirmation for all of the elements in Davutoğlu’s assessment of Iran’s posture regarding a TRR deal.
With regard to the possibility of a “swap” deal, specifically, Salehi held that
“the only difference between us is that the swap has to be made in Iran. And they say, ‘No, first you have to deliver your uranium to us, and then wait another one year to receive your 20 percent enriched uranium.’ But there is lack of confidence, unfortunately.”
Salehi then elaborated on three important points.
–First, Salehi stated explicitly that Iran’s continued willingness to move ahead with a “swap” deal includes a willingness to stop its current efforts to enrich uranium to the nearly 20 percent level required for TRR fuel. In particular, he says that
“The mere fact that we’ve offered not to enrich uranium to 20 percent, this was a big message sent to the West. But unfortunately they did not receive the message. I remember in many interviews I said, ‘Please. Please listen. This is a big offer…We keep our promise of [only enriching up to] 5 percent, although it is our right to enrich to whatever level we want. But we keep our promise to 5 percent. And please enrich for us the 20 percent.’ But they didn’t. They started putting conditions after conditions after conditions. And then we had to start 20 percent enrichment. And now I am saying we are ready if they—today—say ‘OK, we will supply you the fuel’, we will stop the 20 percent enrichment process. What else do you want?”
–Second, on the details of an arrangement to refuel the TRR, Salehi said that Iran would give up the amount of LEU equivalent to what it would receive in finished fuel for the TRR—and would give up the LEU in a single installment:
“We will give it in one go…the 1,000 kilos of 3.5 percent enriched uranium, in return for the 100 kilos of 20 percent enriched uranium. You can put that…under the custody of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] in Iran…That deal is on the table.”
–Third, Salehi notes that it is not incumbent solely on Iran to “create trust”—that the United States “can create trust by making the fuel swap and then return to negotiations without any conditions, without any prior conditions on equal par.”
So, the Obama Administration could have a deal on refueling the TRR whereby Iran would give at least 1,000 kilograms of its current stockpile of LEU to the IAEA. The IAEA would have control of that LEU inside Iran—meaning that Iran would have no option to take that LEU back and put it through further enrichment unless Tehran were prepared to shred its relations with the IAEA and put the Islamic Republic in an extremely precarious international position—until finished fuel was provided for the TRR. Why won’t the Obama Administration take this deal? Why does the Administration persist in treating the so-called “ElBaradei” proposal for refueling the TRR as a “take it or leave it” proposition? Can the Administration actually take “yes” for an answer on this issue?
Beyond its treatment of the TRR issue, the Salehi interview is worth reading in its entirety, regarding nuclear matters as well as a range of other important issues. Among other things, Salehi says about as clearly as one can that Iran is not seeking to make nuclear weapons:
“We have indicated this…many times. Not me—our President, our Supreme Leader. It’s against our tenets. It’s against our religion.” When asked, if the policy changed and he was asked to begin working on weaponization, Salehi says bluntly, “Of course I wouldn’t accept it…Because this is against my religion. And this is what my Supreme Leader has said. The Supreme Leader is not only a political leader. He is a religious leader as well. How can he change his words so easily?”
Additionally, Salehi’s words below should be read by all those who continue to circulate the false and completely ahistorical argument that the Islamic Republic’s legitimacy is irrevocably grounded in hostility to the United States. Noting his years of graduate study at MIT and his regret that U.S.-Iranian relations are so poor, Salehi says,
“I have a lot of respect for the US…For the people of the US. And I’ve always said this: I do not consider the US as a country. I think the US belongs to the whole human kind. It’s a human heritage…I don’t think history will be able to produce another country like the US. Because it’s a country that has served humanity so much, in terms of technology, in terms of science…Most of my professors were from the US. Even my Bachelor’s degree is from the American University of Beirut. Again I had a lot of US professors there. I feel indebted to them. This is part of my religion. You know, whoever teaches you something, you are indebted to them for your life. So my respect goes for the entire US people. But you see this is different when it comes to the actions of their government.”
There is something badly amiss if, by seriously engaging people like that, the United States cannot put its relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran on a more positive and productive trajectory.
–Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett
Pirouz_2,
I agree with much of Chomsky’s comments on the Middle East, the Israel lobby, Iran, etc., and I strongly disagree with most everything Dershowitz writes on the subjects.
For decades now, Jews have provided more than half of all the political funding raised by Demcorats in the US. They also give a good deal to Republicans. And they have enormous sway in US media. Add to all this, the fanatical “support” for Zionism and Israeli militarism, coming from millions of foolish US Christians.
Alan made a good point, that Jewish immigrants into Palestine had a better handle on public relations, accessing US and world opinion, etc etc etc, than did the native population.
Alan,
Interesting comments. The imperatives of war, certainly, caused the British to be mixed up with the Zionist enterprise in the first place. The British feared the Germans would make a play for support of international Jewry by promising a homeland in Palestine if they won the war. This is the background to Balfour’s letter to Walter Rothschild, who was one of the very few rich Jews in Britain who supported a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine or elsewhere.
Obviously, Truman would not have had anything to do with supporting a British effort to crush the Jewish terrorists operating in Palestine after the Second World War. And Britain itself was exhausted.
I agree with you Israel should “bank its takings” and accept the borders achieved in the 1948-49 war, as permanent. Dangerous notions of “creating facts on the ground” need to be punctured.
James/Pirouz
Superpower is probably the wrong word, but I agree that the context is everything and at the time, the Jewish forces knocked the spots off anything around them. If the British and US had been minded to defeat the formation of Israel at the time they could have done so, but it would have been a major undertaking, and against the backdrop of the Holocaust of course.
I don’t disagree with Shlomo Ben-Ami at all really. There is no doubt that if the British had not got mixed up with the Zionist enterprise in the first place there would be no Israel. The British certainly smashed the Arab resistance in Palestine, and that paved the way for the Jewish Agency in the years following. However, and I don’t think Ben-Ami disputes this, the British categorically changed policy away from any kind of Jewish state in 1939. It’s just that what had gone before was enough for it to happen anyway. Also, I think when he talks about the two-stage war, I interpret that as the war fought in 1947-48 before the Arab armies arrived, and the war fought after the declaration of the state of Israel on 15 May 1948, after which the Arab armies finally started helping the Palestinians.
I would also say something that pertains to Kooshy’s point earlier about the demographic makeup of the Jewish population. They were much more culturally familiar with the way the world powers operated than the locals, and could play the political and diplomatic game much more adeptly. So when Ben-Ami talks of growing political awareness in Israel, I would argue this was a significant issue in events before 1948 too.
Finally, I know there are many Israelis who can see the dangers of the current direction of policy. If the Israelis lose the goodwill of the US people, there is only the threat of power to maintain their position, and then they will end up as everybody’s enemy. That will be an untenable position for them. Also, it would be wise to bank the ill-gotten gains up to 1967, because so far the Israelis have managed to avoid any close scrutiny of 1948. However, it may be that peace is not truly possible until the Israeli people themselves are prepared to honestly appraise that period too.
James;
By the way, of all people you should never doubt the true “superpower” nature of Israel, after all according to you, a bunch of less than 14 million people, have been able to defeat one of the biggest military powers of the world (the British) and brutally force their will on them and make their country, and it was not just that, but also they have taken the world sole “superpower” as hostage and can do whatever the hell they want, against that superpowers will, they can even force it to win a war for them by the threats of “nuclear” weapons. So I think you are making far more of a superpower from the Israelies than Mr. Ben-Ami! In fact you are making a god out of them with some supernatural forces capable of manipulating the globe as they wish! :-)
James;
There are various levels of “super power”. To people who have hardly any riffles, a force with Machine guns, cannons and Tanks will be a regional “super power”.
Anyway, opinions varry, you are perfectly entitled to believe that Chomsky, Finkelstein and Ben-Ami write pure rubbish, you won’t be the first, Mr. Dershowitz for one would certainly agree with you!
Pirouz_2,
What astonishing nonsense you found! Israel as a “superpower” in 1948. Total rubbish. The Jewish terrorists were effectivel in slaughering enough Palestinian civilians to cause a stampede, but this is hardly the work of a “superpower”.
For those who are interested:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/democracy-now-debate-with-finkelstein-shlomo-ben-ami/
“SHLOMO BEN-AMI: Well, for all practical purposes, a state existed before it was officially created in 1948. The uniqueness of the Zionist experience, as it were, was in that the Zionists were able, under the protection of the mandate, of the British mandate, to set up the essentials of a state — the institutions of a state, political parties, a health system, running democracy for Jews, obviously — before the state was created, so the transition to statehood was a declaration, basically, and it came about in the middle of two stages of war, a civil war between the Israelis and the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine and then an invasion by the Arab armies. The point that I made with regard to the war is that the country, to the mythology that existed and exists, continues to exist mainly among Israelis and Jews, is that Israel was not in a military disadvantage when the war took place. The Arab armies were disoriented and confused, and they did not put in the battlefield the necessary forces.
So, in 1948, what was born was a state, but also original superpower in many ways. We have prevailed over the invading Arab armies and the local population, which was practically evicted from Palestine, from the state of Israel, from what became the state of Israel, and this is how the refugee problem was born. Interestingly, the Arabs in 1948 lost a war that was, as far as they were concerned, lost already in 1936-1939, because they have fought against the British mandate and the Israeli or the Jewish Yishuv, the Jewish pre-state, and they were defeated then, so they came to the hour of trial in 1948 already as a defeated nation. That is, the War of 1948 was won already in 1936, and they had no chance to win the war in 1948. They were already a defeated nation when they faced the Israeli superpower that was emerging in that year. “
kooshy,
I too am fascinated by the history of the Levant. And the Middle East.
The Ottoman Empire’s defeat in the First World War would have resulted in the complete carve-up of Anatolia by the victorious powers, by Ataturk fought a new war to overturn the outcome of the previous world war, and Turkey as we know it today was the result.
I might mention that one reason the French tried to keep South Vietnam independent, and separate from North Vietnam, in 1954, was the Catholic interest in the south, particularly among large landowners and commercial interests that were French or Frenchified (French by cultural, or mixed descent). France wanted to protect and enhance the Christian interest in Lebanon.
Pirouz_2,
Thanks, and you of course are very welcome. Obviously, I agree with Alan that the interests of the US are compromised by American support for Israel, and that the Israel lobby and US news media do an excellent job of deceiving the American public on this issue. They have to, otherwise the numerous stooges of the Israel lobby in the US Congress would be sent packing by the voters.
If Britain had been able to work its own desire in Palestine, there would not have been an “Israel” carved from Palestine. Ironically, as you mention, the Israelis are putting the entire programme at risk, by failing to end the occupation of the West Bank. Thus, foolish “supporters” of Israel in the US are creating the primary threat to Israel’s long-term stability, because they in effect prevent a resolution of the problem.
Alan and James;
First let me thank you for all your responses and the time and care that you guys took to write them.
On a finishing note, I would like to remind you that it is not just you guys in USA, there are a lot of people in Israel, who believe that Israeli policies of the past two decades have been harmful; not just to corporate America’s interests but also to the strategic interests of Israel itself. The best example of such people would be perhaps Shlomo Sand.
However, they don’t dispute that Israel was the creation of the “West”, nor do they deny that Israeli interests have “pretty much” always matched those of the first British and then the corporate USA; but rather they argue that, as Brzezinski put it best, we are dealing with people who have gained political awareness and it is no longer that easy to force whatever we want with minimal cost. And as a result they believe that it is in Israel’s strategic interests to go back to 1967 borders and make a permanent peace with the Arabs, rather than destabilizing the regimes of the puppet dictators in this region and perhaps having to deal with new Bin Ladens in our imminent neighbourhood (Egypt and Jordan) over a piece of land called “the West Bank”! Especially when we have already achieved the most important part of whatever we wanted!
Also they point to the demographics of the occupied lands and indicate that a “single state” solution could bring the end of Israel in the upcoming two or three decades.
Pirouz – I guess we are not destined to agree! There is more to argue but I think we have probably done it to death.
To give it some relevance to the matter at hand, my view is simply that US and Israeli interests have always diverged, that the Lobby obscures this reality, and that there is a consistent pattern of Israeli behaviour since before 1948 that creates circumstances on the ground that great powers finish up having to acknowledge rather than influence.
That the great powers have or had their own diabolical agendas is not in doubt, but these have had to be adapted, to their detriment, to cater for the Israeli presence.
This is the cycle Obama has the opportunity to break today. If he can take a direction with Iran that is in clear opposition to Israeli interests, he can use any inflammatory Israeli response to expose the contradiction at the heart of US Middle East policy.
If the US public are presented with having to choose Obama or Netanyahu, there will only be one winner.
Hopefully this is where he will take it, but if he tries to use the Iran issue as leverage to extract concessions on Palestine from Israel (as seems more likely), the whole thing is dead in the water.
James
“Governing Palestine was a losing proposition, and the British wanted out asap once the Second World War was over.”
“The continuing French interest in Lebanon had a lot to do with religion, and language/culture. With Syria, language and culture. The British would have preferred to gain control over Greater Syria at the end of the First World War, but the UK kept its deal with France (Sykes-Picot). Italy wanted a large portion of Anatolia, as did Greece, but Kemal Ataturk blocked that scheme.”
James we both know throughout the history after any war, the winners usually divided the captured territories and its richness among themselves, Iran is an example of that, since perhaps no other nation in history had as many invasion or wars as Iran and the western Asia did this all due to its central location, between the old west and the east, same is true for the winners of WW 1&2 in Versailles and Yalta. Wars and invasions do not start because of language and culture not even religion, as James Carville said it’s about the economy, after WWII French and British did not intend to lose their first WW gains to the new comers in Yalta, that is what happened and still is happening in Phoenicia.
Here is how all this may have started in around 1200 BC
“The league of independent city-state ports, with others on the islands and along other coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, was ideally suited for trade between the Levant area, rich in natural resources, and the rest of the ancient world. During the early Iron Age, in around 1200 BC an unknown event occurred, historically associated with the appearance of the Sea Peoples from the north. They may have been driven south by crop failures and mass starvation following the Thera eruption. They weakened and destroyed the Egyptians and the Hittites. In the resulting power vacuum, a number of Phoenician cities rose as significant maritime powers.”
@Alan
“Pirouz – US policy is US policy, we all know that. But what you consistently fail to demonstrate is how Israel is a strategic benefit in the implementation of that policy. Successful control of oil has historically been through the maintenance of peace through the support of sclerotic old Arab dictatorships, not war.”
Israel “used to be” a strategic benefit most importantly because its services were INVALUABLE in crushing the independent Arab nationalism. The wars of 1967 and 1973 are the best proof to this. The war of 1973 was actually won by USA (and not Israel) but still USA won it through Israel.
The most important point that you make is what you say about “the maintenance of the sclerotic old Arab DICTATORSHIPS”. Indeed that is the key to the successful exploitation of the natural resources of any resource-rich country. However, the point that you are missing in this case is that the BIGGEST threat to those dictatorships was the idea of an “independant” Arab nationalism. I can hardly find the words to describe the importance of “independence”! Without independence there is no way to transition into a democracy! That is why Imperialsit countries are so DEAD SCARED of the idea of “independence”! In fact that was why they hated Dr. Mossadegh in Iran! Not because had communist tendencies (he had none!). It was only because he was INDEPENDENT! The Americans and the British could much more easily tolerate him if he had a tendency to become a Soviet puppet. The main problem with him was that he was struggling for INDEPENDENCE!
Nasser and Arafat were both two of his greatest admirers, in fact he was (by their own admission) their inspiration.
That is precisely the point you are missing: Israels biggest service to the Western imperialism was the invaluable assistance that it gave in crushing Nasser and his ideas! It was because of Israel that today instead of an independent Egypt we have a stooge called Mobarak to run that country to any tune that USA commands him! It was because of Israel’s crushing the independent Arab nationalism that instead of an “independent” Arabia, today we have “SAUDI” Arabia with the likes of Faisal and Bendar-Bush to run the country and return all the oil revenue to the US economy. It was for Israels services that today instead of Arafat we have a puppet called Mahmood Abbas!
You say there is need for “peace” to successfuly exploit the resources, and you are very right! But what kind of “peace”? We have two types of peace: 1) A just peace based on contentment and agreement of everyone 2) The type of peace in a dictatorship where there is no objection because of FEAR! It is this second type of “peace” which is a requirement for the successful looting of the resources of a country not the first one. A cemetry is peaceful too, not because everyone is content but because everyone is DEAD SILENT. This is the type of “peace” which is necessary for the successful looting! And Israel gave GREAT services in crushing the Arab resistance and establishing this second type of “peace” that I mentioned. And the West has successfuly looted the resources of this region for more than 6 decades, what else do you want???
“The reason why some people suggest the creation of Israel dates back to 1939 is simply because that was when the British ditched all plans for any form of Jewish state and forced the Jewish nationalists to take their own route to a state, including taking up arms against the British. They had an army of 70,000 by 1945. In 1947, the British stated they would leave Palestine in 6 months, irrespective of whether there was any agreement for a future state. These are not the actions of an imperial power seeking to maintain control.”
Are you telling me that the British gave the same treatment to the Jews as they did to the Arabs between 1936-39??? You are not serious right?
People say that Israel’s creation dates back to 1939 because Arab resistance was CRUSHED by the British by that time! Over 5000 Arabs and all of the resistance leaders had been killed by the British, village after village had been razed to the ground and home after home had been destroyed to make “peace” for the Jewish immigrants! And you still think that the British were the”unwilling” bystanders?!?!? If that is their unwilling bystanding, I wonder what would be their willing participation!!
“You are wrong if you think the British controlled what went on in Palestine in the lead up to the creation of Israel.From December 1947, the British began handing over control of local areas to majority populations. The Haganah were already controlling Jewish immigration. The Czech arms shipment didn’t begin to arrive until April 1948, long after the British had ceded control over large areas of Palestine. Following the establishment of Israel in May 1948, the “direct force of the British” was behind the Arab Legion, not the Haganah.”
I refer you again to Shlomo Ben Ami who said (in his debate with Finkelstein) that: by 1939, Palestinians had already been a beaten nation (BY THE BRITISH!) and they had already lost their land to Israel. (I am paraphrasing, you can listen to the exact words if you watch that debate, it is very interesting and I think you can still find it on Democracy Now)
“Your case is built on generalizations. They do not apply to the reality on the ground at the time. It may well be the British originally wanted to come up with some fancy colonial fix in Palestine for which they were notorious, but they simply were not permitted to and didn’t care enough to fight it out.”
They most certainly succeeded and it worked out beautifuly for over 60 years (from the Western Imperialism’s point of view)!
It is true, however, that the Star of the British dominance was fading GLOBALLY, and they were soon to be replaced by the USA but only to continue the same policies (by US this time)!
“As for Arab nationalism, the states were divided up well before the creation of Israel. Israel actually gave Arab nationalism a shot in the arm. Nasser even sought an alliance with the US in the 1950s. The US never feared Arab nationalism; why should they? Like you say, they were their best customer. They didn’t even believe the Arabs would play the oil card in 1973.”
If the wars of 1967 and 1973 are shots in the arm then I don’t know what would be a bullet shot in the head! Most definitely Nasser himself would disagree with you! He was devastated and almost pushed into depression after 1967!
Your arguement is like saying that since the mouse scratched the face of the attacking cat before being eaten then for sure the cat hated himself and his attack on the mouse gave the mouse “courage and a will to resist”.
Alan, when you want to enslave a nation, it will resist, and you have to crush the resistance, and in the course of suppressing the resistance you get minor scratches which are part of the deal! You want to loot oil? You have to crush the resistance and there is no “peaceful” way of “looting”. There is always resistance to “looting” and the looter has to crush the resistance. In the course of its effort the looter might get a few nasty wars to handel, but that is only natural and part of the game called “dominance”. Once you have won the wars you can peacefully do the “looting” until, another wave of resistance comes along (if ever!).
Pirouz_2,
The British took great pride in their unification of the Indian subcontinent – - and rightly so! (My own family was connected to the imperial scheme.) They did not want partition. Jinna forced it.
You are quite right, that Pakistan was much more inclined to work with Britain and the US, in the great-power game with the USSR. India went with the “nonaligned” countries.
Pirouz_2,
The Saudis have extensive capital needs and zero desire to sell Saudi oil for less than what the market will allow. The Saudis seek to promote stability, and thus they will increase production to bring down oil prices when the price level seems too high. What is “too high” obviously is a complex assessment to make, and it needs to consider what alternatives are to hand, and the cost of those alternatives.
One aspect of British policy in the Middle East after the First World War was the desire to provide the Hashemites with what was promised to obtain their (and Arab) support against the Turks. The UK would have put Feisal in as King of Greater Syria, had the French not objected and blocked it. So the result was two Hashemite kingdoms, Iraq and Jordan.
kooshy,
British policy in Iraq, after the First World War, was to assure continued access to the oilfields, party owned by British interests. At the lowest cost to the UK taxpayers.
Governing Palestine was a losing proposition, and the British wanted out asap once the Second World War was over.
The continuing French interest in Lebanon had a lot to do with religion, and language/culture. With Syria, language and culture. The British would have preferred to gain control over Greater Syria at the end of the First World War, but the UK kept its deal with France (Sykes-Picot). Italy wanted a large portion of Anatolia, as did Greece, but Kemal Ataturk blocked that scheme.
Alan
“It is difficult to see how populating Palestine with largely Eastern European people served a particular geostrategic purpose for the British or Americans. It may be in some cases that it was convenient, as the US authorities went to considerable lengths to deny US entry to Jewish refugees from Europe (a policy the Jewish Agency in Palestine supported), however this put the US at odds with the British who were desperately trying to restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine to preserve the peace there.”
Thanks Alan for your comments
Alan- this is precisely the point, the British after the WWII were not planning to abandon their ME influence/holding willingly
(Same is true for the French, see how concern they are every time with only Lebanon and Syria, never mind the Algiers) to the US, if they were there was no need to convince Ike admin. To pull a cope in Tehran, same is true with Suez incident, the point it’s not just about the oil alone it’s about the access to oil too some countries like S. Arabia are to be secured for oil but others might be for access like Egypt and yet another for security to access like Israel. And that may be the reason for considering a different demography. I have also read about Truman’s constituency being Jewish and not Arabs but that is good for the text books here it wouldn’t sell well in ME. Try to convince the Arabs and Palestinians that the US and the rest of the allied nations were against it before they were for the creation of state of Israel see how far you can get.
On surface, some stuff in history they don’t make sense, but once you dig and look deep in to a motif they do, this is exactly where one can bet, that history will repeat itself. Israel is an example of this scenario.
Pirouz – US policy is US policy, we all know that. But what you consistently fail to demonstrate is how Israel is a strategic benefit in the implementation of that policy. Successful control of oil has historically been through the maintenance of peace through the support of sclerotic old Arab dictatorships, not war.
The reason why some people suggest the creation of Israel dates back to 1939 is simply because that was when the British ditched all plans for any form of Jewish state and forced the Jewish nationalists to take their own route to a state, including taking up arms against the British. They had an army of 70,000 by 1945. In 1947, the British stated they would leave Palestine in 6 months, irrespective of whether there was any agreement for a future state. These are not the actions of an imperial power seeking to maintain control.
————–
“You say the original weapons to the Jews were coming from Chekoslovakia, as if the guns were coming without the British control! All that region was under the complete control of the British! You seriously dont think that the Jews could immigrate to Palestine and guns could be shipped and distributed to the Jews without the involvement of the British do you?”
————–
You are wrong if you think the British controlled what went on in Palestine in the lead up to the creation of Israel. From December 1947, the British began handing over control of local areas to majority populations. The Haganah were already controlling Jewish immigration. The Czech arms shipment didn’t begin to arrive until April 1948, long after the British had ceded control over large areas of Palestine. Following the establishment of Israel in May 1948, the “direct force of the British” was behind the Arab Legion, not the Haganah.
Your case is built on generalizations. They do not apply to the reality on the ground at the time. It may well be the British originally wanted to come up with some fancy colonial fix in Palestine for which they were notorious, but they simply were not permitted to and didn’t care enough to fight it out.
As for Arab nationalism, the states were divided up well before the creation of Israel. Israel actually gave Arab nationalism a shot in the arm. Nasser even sought an alliance with the US in the 1950s. The US never feared Arab nationalism; why should they? Like you say, they were their best customer. They didn’t even believe the Arabs would play the oil card in 1973.
James;
As far as I know, yes Gandhi was vehemently opposed to the division, but that was what the British had in mind. In fact ONCE IT WAS CLEAR THAT INDIA WOULD BECOME INDEPENDENT, the British made sure that it would be divided. And the Pakistani part remained under British (and later on US) control. To this day we are still living that history and Pakistan is STILL under the Wests hegemony (as opposed to India which had closer ties with USSR and was one of the founding members of NAM). Pretty much in all Indo-Pakistani wars the West gave its total support to Pakistan.
As for the price of oil:
First as I mentioned before more important than the price of the oil per se is how the revenue is spent!
Besides, which countries in this region have been so adamant in always bringing the oil prices down? Answer: S. Arabia, Kuwait and Emirates! They have always done every thing that they could to sabotage OPEC (even sometimes illegaly selling oil from under the table above their OPEC quota) and bring the oil prices down!
And what is the definition of a cheap price for oil anyway? $40? 30? 20? 10? 5?
Let me make one clarification to give a better perspective to the oil prices, in 1975 the price of crude was about $50, calculating for the inflation that would be $195 today! Now you tell me is this price cheap or not?
Alan,
“Eric – yes, I agree with you again. I’m not sure whether you believe Iran genuinely is touting a desire for an “option” – I certainly don’t think they are. They are incessantly asked these questions by western reporters and such like, and have to give an answer of sorts, however I don’t think there is any overt expression of a desire to gain or retain a weapons option.”
Hillary’s remark in the Charlie Rose interview raised my concern: I gather she’d been told by some Iranian official that Iran would insist on its “nuclear option.” I’m comforted to gather from you and this discussion generally that that has not been the company line for Iranian officials.
I probably have been worried unnecessarily that Iran would fall for the US government’s “chip on the shoulder” baiting tactics. But I worried too LITTLE about this in the case of Iraq, ending up one of the last believers that cooler heads would finally prevail, and I suppose I feel a need to atone for my naive confidence that time.
As for sticking with the NPT scope, I agree with you on that, though I understand that some of my remarks here might have suggested otherwise. The IAEA does seem to feel it can just ask Iran any question that happens to pop into its head.
Pirouz_2,
Oil at $80 per barrel is not cheap. In fact, it is around the highest maximum average price the Saudis believe can be maintained, without rushing forward the search for alternatives.
If the US had normal relations with Iran, oil prices likely would be lower.
Eric,
I think it would be a catastrophic mistake for Iran to proceed to develop nuclear weapons. This is particularly true given that Iran has taken a leadership role in the global effort to eliminate such weapons.
Iraq was not invaded because Dick Cheney thought Saddam Hussein was trying to develop nuclear weapons. That was the cover story – - window dressing to deceive the American public, and the world. The UK would not have participated in the invasion if the US had shared its intelligence that confirmed Iraq had no WMD.
Pirouz_2,
The British did not want to partition their Indian Empire, and partition was adamantly opposed by Gandhi. The Muslim leader insisted on partition and created the subsequent catastrophe.
The British suffered substantial losses due to Jewish terrorism in Palestine and elsewhere, prior to the creation of Israel. Britain was exhausted in the wake of the Second World War and was not able to afford the costs needed to be incurred if its prefered policy choices were to be implemented.
“you are right that oil is the primary motivation for US strategy, be that Indonesia or Venezuela, and the US have long recognised that the greatest threat to their hegemony is having that oil cut off at source. But that is not the issue here.”
Alan,
The reason that I mentioned Indonesia, Venezuela and Chile (coup of 1973) was to make a point as to the fact that US policy has not been any different else where in the world.
And why I went back to the creation of Israel was to show that Israel was not created by a “lobby” but by the imperialist world powers. Israel was created on the land which was under the British control, with the direct force of the British behind it. The history of the Arab revolt in 1936-1939 is the evidence to it.
AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING HERE IS THAT: This was NOT peculiar to Palestine you can see a very similar process in India where East and West Pakistan was created, you can see a very similar happening in Iraq during the british rule with sectarian violence between Arabs and non-Arabs (Kurds and Turkmens), muslim vs. Christians incited DIRECTLY by the British! And the British were always on the side of minority giving them guns and training and instigating violence, and any reaction by the majority native population was brutally suppressed directly by the British (both in Iraq and also in Palestine)
This was a very common policy of the British empire: to create division in their colonies so that they are divided into unstable smaller parts which were constantly in war.
You say the original weapons to the Jews were coming from Chekoslovakia, as if the guns were coming without the British control! All that region was under the complete control of the British! You seriously dont think that the Jews could immigrate to Palestine and guns could be shipped and distributed to the Jews without the involvement of the British do you? And who suppressed the 1936-39 revolt in favour of the Jews anyway? There was a debate between Shlomo Ben Ami and Norman Finkelstein a couple of years ago on “Democracy Now”. In that debate he very clearly said that the creation of Israel actually dates back to 1939, not to 1948, and Finkelstein did not disagree on that point.
By the way: the biggest service that Israel could do to the cause of “steady flow of cheap oil” and the “channeling of the revenues back to the western industries” was to help overcoming the “independent Arab nationalism”. And this was a service that Israelies performed DUTIFULY. In fact that was the reason that the British created Israel to begin with: to divide the Arab world into small unstable parts constantly in war where they could peacefully exploit the energy resources AND any revenue resulting from them. Now have a look at the oil reserves in this region (with the exception of Iran) under which governments hegemony are they? And the revenue from the oil, how is it spent? where does the money to buy hoards of useless F-15’s, F-16’s Abram tanks, patriot missiles etc. come from? What is the use of this junk when it cant provide any protection against Israel and when push comes to shove US has to intervene and save the day (like in 1991 when Iraq went to Kuwait)? Did you know that some 7% of the capital invested in USA is from Saudi Arabia? If this is not a service and this is not a profit I don’t know what is?
Eric – yes, I agree with you again. I’m not sure whether you believe Iran genuinely are touting a desire for an “option” – I certainly don’t think they are. They are incessantly asked these questions by western reporters and such like, and have to give an answer of sorts, however I don’t think there is any overt expression of a desire to gain or retain a weapons option. So I think they are playing it the way you want, perhaps with one exception: they will not entertain restrictions over and above the NPT. On that we may differ, because I think that is the correct approach.
re Eric, your response to Alan — interesting analysis, that seems to conclude that the game is Iran’s to lose. We, Americans, are dependent upon the cleverness of Iran’s government to see through the US baiting strategy and Iran’s discipline to resist it.
Americans have been powerless to influence their government in any meaningful way; looks like we need to try to influence Iran’s government, as you say, to ignore US provocations.
Alan,
“Eric – Iran do not need to say one word about their “option”. There is nothing to say.”
That’s essentially my point. Whatever ability to build a bomb Iran may acquire along the way to developing nuclear energy, it will develop along the way. And with the passage of time and the continued diminution of the US military threat, it can add, if it chooses, the additional bomb-making capability that it feels it needs. I think that, by then, it may NOT feel it needs to build a bomb. I hope that’s the case, for Iran and the rest of us. But I’ll certainly understand if Iran doesn’t agree.
The US’ last-gasp hope of affecting Iran is to provoke it into panicking into bomb development, so that the US can gin up support for a military attack. It’s the typical “chip on our shoulder” US approach that we’ve used successfully with Iraq.
Americans should ask themselves this: After Saddam Hussein was rightfully put in his place after he’d invaded Kuwait, did you think very much about Iraq? That would be during the 1991-2001 time frame. I’ll confess that Iraq rarely crossed my mind during that time. Suddenly, then, in 2001, we were told we had a serious “Iraq problem.” In fact, it was the very biggest problem we faced — and not only us, but the rest of the world.
Upon being informed that he had once again become a serious problem — the world’s biggest, in fact — Saddam Hussein took the bait. He resisted inspections, talked tough and eventually boxed himself into a corner. By the end, he was saying “You can come and look under my bed if you like,” but it was too late. He lost his country and ending up swinging on the end of the rope.
No more Iraq problem (except for the mess we had to clean up, and still are). We needed a new problem, and so suddenly we were told we had an a serious “Iran problem.” In fact, it was the very biggest problem we faced — and not only us, but the rest of the world.
Once again, the leaders of our “problem” took the bait (or at least many of their supporters have — I’m not sure Khamenei really has). Instead of just claiming they wanted nuclear energy, which is all I think Iran really wanted, suddenly they insisted on the right to make a bomb if they were so inclined. Even better for the US than Saddam, who at least claimed no such intention or right.
The US government has no realistic hope of marshalling US domestic or foreign support — unless it can persuade its audience that Iran is exactly what the US government has unfairly painted it to be. It’s a long shot, but why give the US government any shot at all? It’s not “unprincipled” for Iran simply to say nothing about “nuclear options,” for Iran simply to hold off on weapon development for a couple of years until it decides whether that’s really a good idea, until it decides whether the idea to develop a nuclear bomb is really something it still feels strongly about once the unjustified military threat from the US has disappeared.
Eric – Iran do not need to say one word about their “option”. There is nothing to say. The only point of note is that in continuing to comply with the NPT, they will acquire it by default. Hence, the US believe they cannot let Iran comply with the NPT.
Iran calculates that the legal strength of the US case is too weak to be enforceable militarily, and that unilateral action is too risky, both in terms of direct consequences, and in the way it will destroy the basis of the NPT and permanently damage US authority and power around the world.
That I believe is a sound line for Iran to take, and has nothing to do with whether or not they have nuclear weapons. I agree the rhetoric of US individuals is terrifying, but that alone should not change Iran’s principled stance.
kooshy – it is difficult to see how populating Palestine with largely Eastern European people served a particular geostrategic purpose for the British or Americans. It may be in some cases that it was convenient, as the US authorities went to considerable lengths to deny US entry to Jewish refugees from Europe (a policy the Jewish Agency in Palestine supported), however this put the US at odds with the British who were desperately trying to restrict Jewish immigration into Palestine to preserve the peace there.
The Mufti had his links with the Nazis (although he had been exiled from Palestine since 1936), but so did certain elements of the Jewish population of Palestine.
As far as entrusting locals is concerned, as I have said already, the British policy was for an Arab state of Palestine by 1949. It may be that was envisaged as a commonwealth outpost, but it was certainly to be an Arab outpost. However, the British lost control of events after 1945, and soon had no interest in maintaining a presence in Palestine. That was why they abandoned the place to the UN. In fact, it was only the Jordanian Arab Legion, heavily supported by the British, that meant any part of Palestine was retained by the Arabs at all in 1948.
However, Suez DID indicate a desire to retain control over key geostrategic points. But that wasn’t in Palestine of course, and the British did keep it. True, they soon lost it, and the British and French used Israel to try to regain it, but that was well after the creation of Israel itself. Yet from a purely geostrategic standpoint, history shows us the only time safe transit through Suez has been dramatically impaired was in the period after 1967 when Israel, rather than Egypt controlled it.
As far as the US is concerned, they held no particular torch for Israel either. This was demonstrated in 1956-57, when Eisenhower ordered Israel out of the Sinai. In the early 1960s, when France gave Israel their nuclear technology, they did so specifically in the belief Israel would use it to pressure the US, and both parties went to great lengths to conceal it from the US. The Iranians can’t hold a candle to what Israel did, under Shimon Peres, to hide their program from the Americans. By 1967, the writing was on the wall over that, and Israel were canny enough to manufacture pretexts for attacking Syria, Egypt and Jordan. We have already discussed 1973.
Thus since 1957, US policy has constantly been having to react to what Israel basically presents to them as a fait accompli. There is no doubt though that, in trying to make lemonade from lemons, the US has looked to utilise Israel in ways that assist their regional strategy. The Cold War springs to mind, yet event this shows how Israel is a liability as both Syria and Egypt would have jumped at the chance for an alliance with the US before the Soviet Union.
The exception to this rule came with George W Bush, when he and his neocon fanatics found common cause with Israel and sought to impose their combined vision on the region. That had little to do with Israeli pressure – the Israelis could scarcely believe their luck.
Pirouz – you are right that oil is the primary motivation for US strategy, be that Indonesia or Venezuela, and the US have long recognised that the greatest threat to their hegemony is having that oil cut off at source. But that is not the issue here.
The issue is how does Israel help the realisation of that strategy? The simple answer is that it doesn’t. The reverse is the case – Israel makes it a whole lot harder for the US, because they have to balance their support for Israel against antagonising the much, much more important oil producers. If Israel wasn’t there, they wouldn’t have that problem.
So why does the US tolerate Israel? It is simply because of their military strength, and their capacity to completely upset the delicate balancing act the US has had to maintain since 1973.
Now, I agree it is certainly true that for Israel to use their military strength to blackmail the US doesn’t seem a very friendly thing to do. It’s not. And that is where the Lobby comes into play. Their job is to obscure the reality on the ground, to paint a very different picture of the US/Israel relationship. They do this by promoting the (non-existent) strategic significance of Israel to the US, by demonising the Arabs, and by reversing the true power balance – i.e. it is the Arabs who are strong and Israel who is weak. In addition, they fund over 80% of Congressmen, Democrat and Republican.
The day the US public cotton on to this will be a telling day, and the Netanyahus of this world bring it closer.
Regarding the formation of Israel, it is certainly true the Lobby had little to do with Israel’s establishment, other than the fact that Jewish Americans provided large sums of money to the nascent state. But what is little understood is just how weak the Arabs in and around Palestine were, and just how strong the Jewish forces were by comparison.
“Five Arab armies marched on Israel” etc etc is still widely held to be the reality, thanks once again to the ceaseless machinations of the Israeli PR machine.
Eric:
I know nothing about nuclear physics and the science behind making a bomb. What’s more I am not sure howmany people contributing to this discussion have some expertise in that field. Perhaps the best answer to your question would be given by some one on one of those “arm control forums” (armscontrolwonk is one example, by playing your cards right, without irking them -as quite often they tend to be a bit john-bolton-like people- you may ask seemingly apolitical “technical” questions and decieve them into giving you the objective “technical” answer not influenced by their ideological delusions).
However, as far as I know, there is this concept of “virtual weapon capability”. How serious is your virtual weapon capability? I would “guess” that that depends on the size of your enrichment industry, how powerful are your centrifuges are, how big an output of enriched Uranium do they have? In short how fast can you convert a large pile of low-enriched-uranium into weapon-grade-uranium? By the way Arak plant in Iran is expected to go online in 4 years or so (so I have heard) and that would give Iran also plutonium. How advanced is the nuclear industry in Iran? How fast can they extract enough plutonium to make a warhead? These are all questions which determine the degree of your “virtual weapon capability”.
You see even without the nuclear weapons, a military attack on Iran is a very unpleasent adventure with unknown consequences for the west to consider.
Even with the current state of nuclear knowledge and technology in Iran, US is having serious apprehensions about making an attack (fearing a situation far worse than Iraq maybe even equivalent to the “V” word and not to mention a possible consequence of full weaponization of Iran). Can you imagine how much more difficult an invasion and a military coersion of Iranians will be if Iran had a much more serious “virtual weapon capability”?? It is not that they fear that Iran will make a nuclear first attack on Israel or the US bases, it is just that with such a deterrent their military leverage on Iran will be much less and they can kiss goodbye any idea of a military attack on Iran even in theory or EVEN AS A “HYPOTHETICAL OPTION ON THE TABLE”!
This is why Iranians are pushing so hard for their nuclear program and that is why US is so adamant in preventing them. US is trying everything it can to keep Iran in the state of UAE and Iran is trying to become like Japan.
And MY UNDERSTANDING is that Leveretts’ point is that it is no more possible for the USA to prevent Iran from having a “virtual weapon capability”, and make it become UAE. They think (as far as I understand) that US has to come to terms with the new reality of the middle east, and try to cut the losses short and try to make a strategic “deal” with Iran, so that they can have Iran’s cooperation for protecting their interests in this region.
Arnold,
“John Bolton says that if Serbia had a nuclear capability, the US would not have been able to intervene militarily, and that is the reason the US must prevent Iran from having a nuclear capability. Ray Takeyh, more liberal of the Council for Foreign Relations says an Iranian capability would have the ‘limited’ effect of insulating Iran from threats of attack or forceful removal of its government.”
I can see that our respective conclusions depend considerably on what one means by “nuclear capability.” Clearly having an actual bomb, as North Korea does, brings to mind Clint Eastwood’s smiling reply to the overly polite bad guy at whom Eastwood was then pointing his .357 Magnum:
“If I didn’t have this gun, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
But short of an actual bomb, I do not understand how having a stockpile of LEU and the ability to refine it and turn it into a bomb some day provides any protection at all against an attack from the US. Quite the opposite, in fact. Do you imagine John Bolton would have advised against attacking Serbia if Slobodan Milosevic had then had a stockpile of plutonium and the technical ability to turn it into a bomb, but didn’t actually have a bomb? Or would Bolton have been even more likely to advise that Serbia be attacked – before it got a bomb and it was too late? Or how about Iraq in 2003? Did the US not believe (or at least claim to believe) that Iraq had “nuclear capability” but no bomb? Did that not make the US more inclined to attack Iraq, and soon, than the US would have been if it instead had been confident that Iraq had no “nuclear capability” (and no other WMD)?
In short, having a bomb is good protection against a US attack (North Korea). Indisputably having absolutely no WMD is also good protection (Malawi, for example). But having something just short of a bomb only invites attack (Iraq). Thus, when you say that “hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive today if Iraq had succeeded in getting a nuclear option,” that would have been true only if Iraq’s “nuclear option” had consisted of an actual bomb that the US believed Iraq could deliver before the US’ massive attack made that impossible. What you say might also have been true if, quite the opposite, the US had believed there was no material risk that Iraq had any nuclear program at all (and no other forms of WMD). But one could argue, as thousands upon thousands of commentators have, that “hundreds of thousands of Iraqis” did die precisely because the US believed (or at least claimed to believe) that Iraq had “nuclear capability” that fell short of an actual bomb, but might end up with an actual bomb if the US didn’t do something about it very soon. Which the US did.
“Nuclear capability” plus a reputation as a loose cannon gives a country’s leader a certain gravitas, but only if he turns that nuclear capability into an actual bomb before the US figures out what he’s up to. That’s North Korea. But if he’s a little slow off the mark, or overplays his “deliberate ambiguity” hand and thereby misleads the US (or at least the US claims that), that’s Saddam Hussein. In this light, suppose the US comes up with concrete evidence that Iran is building a bomb (or at least “evidence” good enough to sell to the American public – not a high threshold). Needless to say, Iran already has “loose cannon” status in the eyes of the US government and the American public. For that reason, exactly as you say, “the US is less comfortable with Iran in that position than it is with Japan.” This means that Iran had better either have its bomb ready for use very quickly, or be very, very convincing in its “deliberate ambiguity” posturing. My strong hunch is that the US would resolve any “ambiguity” by bombing first and asking questions later.
“Every one of the many states with [Japan's] status reached it on purpose and gains some strategic, political or economic benefit from that status.”
I continue to find this unconvincing. You mention the Netherlands, for example. The US respects the Netherlands — that I’ll grant. But I’m entirely confident that that respect is not based, even a tiny little bit, on the US’ concern that the Netherlands might some day make a “political decision” to develop a nuclear bomb. Nor can I imagine what other “strategic, political or economic benefit” the Netherlands acquired from its “Japan status.” The same goes for Japan itself. I’m not suggesting that Japan, the Netherlands or any of the other “nice” countries you mentioned have done anything wrong or behaved immaturely. That would become the case only if such a country were some day to acquire “loose cannon” status in the US’s eyes (such as Iran already has) by actually trying to exploit its entirely imaginary “nuclear option.” The ability of these “Japan status” countries to produce a bomb gives them a practical “nuclear option” to do nothing but generate nuclear power, crank out medical isotopes and, if it makes them feel better, wallow in the delusion that they could at any time make a “political decision” do even more.
“Iran has said what kind of program it wants and Iran has shown it is willing to sacrifice for that program. ”
Most Iranians strongly support Iran’s nuclear-energy program. But most of them reportedly feel that program should stay within the peaceful limits expressed by Khamenei numerous times – regardless of whether Khamenei himself really means what he says (though I think he does). Contrary to what you write, it is not my impression that most Iranians would “sacrifice” for the right to develop nuclear weapons. Nor, frankly, is it my impression that Khamenei himself insists on this. It seems impossible to me to reconcile such an insistence with Khamenei’s claim that Iran will never seek nuclear weapons. Impossible or not, I am not aware that he has ever tried to reconcile the two positions.
“Instead Iran is protecting the lives of Iranian people.”
Not unless and until it either (1) has a deliverable bomb, and lets us know that; or (2) takes steps to persuade the rest of the world it doesn’t have one (or anything close) and doesn’t want one. Until then, I believe that precisely the opposite of what you say is true.
“Iran is in the right here.”
I agree, and if we lived in a world where “right makes right,” that would count for a lot. It will also count for a lot in two years or so, if Iran will patiently dial down the confrontation and let history take its course. The US threat will dwindle considerably over time, even over the next two years. By then, Iran may be able to ignore the US safely, as it mistakenly believes it can already do today. But I’d wait two years if I were Iran. As I said in an earlier post (April 19 at 4:36 PM), doing so won’t require any material change in Iran’s “nuclear” behavior over the next couple of years anyway? Time is on Iran’s side here. Why not exploit that advantage?
“If there are no options to prevent Iran from getting a Japan option, the US will either accept an Iranian Japan option gracefully, or it will fight Iran and fail to prevent that outcome, causing unnecessary losses on both sides. ”
The second part of your sentence is precisely what concerns me. It will concern me less in a couple of years, if things have stayed peaceful until then.
Iran is ready, unfortunately, for that possibility…”
No country is “ready” for that, and no responsible government should ask its citizens to get “ready” for it if the risk can be avoided simply by calming down and letting the passage of time eliminate the risk.
James:
The main problem of US with oil producing countries is not about their not selling their oil. They have to sell that oil one way or the other, they are not gonna let that oil mature under the ground like some wine.
The main problem of US with the oil producing countries is about HOW THEY SPEND THE REVENUE! The biggest customer of Venezuelan oil is USA, and yet US-Venezuela relationship is in a very bad state, in fact there was even a coup against Chavez.
Which lobby is behind that?? Can we blame Israelies for that too?? See? it is not just the middle east, this is a general imperialist policy which has been going on all over the globe for over 2 centuries!
As for the oil embargo: USA had Iran and Shah to save the day for them. And all the revenue went to useless and astronomically expensive military toys that Iran bought from USA between 1973-1979 (that was why Shah was considered such a great ally to the USA). True, oil prices did jump up a lot, but when you want to break a “Resistence” you always have to pay a price temporarily until you subdue the resistence and start to make profit after the resistence is gone. The price that USA (West in general)paid in 1973 was to subdue the idea of an “independent Arab Nationalism” ONCE AND FOR ALL so that it could exploit the oil in peace for all the years to come (mind you the price of oil fell to record lows during the 80s and 90s), and the single most important result was that all the revenue was either going to military junk bought by the satellite arab states or would even be channeled back to US as investement!!!
THIS IS A HUGE PROFIT THAT THE WEST MADE FROM THE MIDDLE EAST!
Iran to set up bank for energy sector
A private bank in Iran will be established to help fund domestic developments in the energy sector, the Iranian oil minister said.
Iran said it would take measures to privatize its refining and oilfield services sector to offset potential problems from the Western-backed sanctions.
http://snipurl.com/vmgiv
Iran wins regional support for its nuclear programme
“The major threat in the region is Israel which has nuclear warheads. Israel must join this treaty and take quick steps to destroy its nuclear weapons which number over 200 warheads,” Muallem said.
Shami said Israel needed to be “stripped” off its nuclear arsenal.
“There is more need to strip Israel of its nuclear arsenal, as the international community is aware of its nuclear weapons capability and that this regime has defiantly declared it will use these weapons whenever it wants,” he said.
“Since the atomic weapons of the Zionist regime are not inspected, there is a danger of these weapons being used in future. This regime must join the NPT without any conditions.”
Zebari said Israel must allow UN inspectors in to its nuclear facilities, the state television website said.
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1050833/1/.html
Alan
“Koosh – I’ve not got the time to post anything substantial again today. Is there anything specific about what I have said that you want further evidence for?”
Thanks Alan
My questions are same as what I put in my earlier post, mainly if this location has a historic geostrategic significance for the west, If so, why should, local demography be trusted to maintain the security for this location, and if this trust was not, and can’t be maintained with the locals what will be a good solution to maintain security. Since I am sure there is no dispute on the geostrategic significance of this part of the word, I am purely looking at this from a sociopolitical angle.
Thanks
This small nation ( Israel) controls much of the world.
It commits crimes against humanity and its partner in crime, the United States, makes such reports as the “Goldstone Report” disappear.
It extends war — the 2006 Lebanon war — for maximum damage.
Yet, at the behest of Israel, day and night, Iran is persecuted, its citizens denied of their rights – and under the pretext of ‘human rights’ and in gross violation of international law and U.N. Security Council Resolution 984, threatened with nuclear weapons – for Messiah’s Temple.
Nukes And Temples
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25255.htm
kooshy,
I think most English people favored the Arabs over the Jews, when the thoughts of the English (and British) turned to that region of the world. There were some, of course, who thought the Jewish immigrants could create opportunities that otherwise would not obtain. But the British government did not intend to preside over the creation of a state run by Jews, with the Arabs as second-class citizens.
Pirouz_2,
US support for Israel during the 1973 war produced the Arab oil embargo. The American public paid a heavy price for US support of Israel in that war.
During the UN sanctions against Iraq, following the Gulf War, the largest buyer of Iraqi crude was the US. Yet, even today, many Americans think the purpose of the insane Iraq War was to obtain access to Iraqi crude! This slick deflection distracts attention from the setting up of the war by the Israel lobby (with the neocons, who overlap to a large degree).
James
Thank you for your comments,
We all know the military/geostrategic significance of eastern Mediterranean position for the European and the Atlantic countries. Within my questions I also tried to point to a reason for a real motif that was not replied in your comments and that was the question of The Trust of Natives that is obvious in Versailles.
Regardless of, if it was a good decision or not to recognize Israel, or who was against before it was for that decision, there were others who had advised on this decision what were their reasons beside the pure love for a Jewish homeland, were there any other reasons, has similar thing happened in recent history, like populating important lands and strategic points with more trusted or at least a different demography for obvious reason?. A lot of people on this planet think there were and are more significant reason for the west especially for that particular location then just a home fight within the Truman administration. The conquest of that particular location for the west did not just started in last century it’s been going on for a few millenniums why was so significant in the past and why it should be less significant now.
Alan;
Thanks for the time you took to go to all the details.
In regards to the “steady flow of oil”, I think the general policy of dividing the land of the countries with abundant natural resources and keeping them in a state of constant war, is a well-known imperialist policy. And in my opinion history has shown that it has paid the West handsomely in the case of middle east. So far as I can see with the exception of Iran (and the fall of Shah was not directly related to Israel, so it was not exactly their fault) all the oil resources in this region is under US hegemony.
In my opinion helping in getting rid of independent Arab nationalism (eg. Nasser) was the greatest service that the Israelies could possibly make to the cause of “steady flow of cheap oil”.
In regards to the French giving the nuclear technology to the Israelies: France was another colonial power, and the threat of using nuclear weapons against the will of the world superpowers, when you are dependant on them even for your arms is not very plausible to me. Especially if we think that one of the worlds superpowers has been forced to intervene in a military conflict -against its own will- and help the side which is blackmailing it. And then immediately after that starts to make further donations of arms and money to the blackmailing state.
By the way, the US policies in middle east are not “unique”. If you blame the US policies in middle east on the “lobby”, which lobby are you going to blame for the very similar US policies in Indonesia? Was Israeli lobby responsible for the 1973 coup in Chile too?
@Fiorangela Leone:
Thank you for your post. That was one of the points that I was trying to make: Israel’s creation dates FAR BEFORE AIPAC and any idea of Western policies in middle east being shaped by some Zionist lobby. In my opinion, the fact that Israel was created on the land under the control of the British (and the British had a great deal of difficulty in keeping those lands as their colonies) shows great parallelism with the “creation” of Pakistan (consisting of unconnected East and West Pakistan with the hostile India in between!). So what was the lobby behind that? This is a very common behaviour by the British empire: as it had to lose a part of the lands under its control to an “independent nationalist movement”, it always tried to create division in the former colony and leave it in hostile pieces which would be constantly in war.
It is not particular to palestine and in my opinion is not a result of any type of “lobby”.
Koosh – I’ve not got the time to post anything substantial again today. Is there anything specific about what I have said that you want further evidence for? I’m happy to provide it, but it will be tomorrow.
Alan,
Important points. And let’s remember that the US opposed Israel’s obtaining of nuclear weapons because Israel was regarded as the country most likely to use them.
The 1973 Arab-Israeli war was totally preventable, if the US had been willing to work with the Soviet Union to pressure Israel to get out of the Sinai and the Golan Heights. Kissinger and Nixon ignored Soviet pleas to pressure Israel to end the occupations to avoid another war.
Fiorangela,
I think most of those who put Aipac together, and who have helped it to grow to its present great power and influence, were hostile to Big Oil and saw the oilmen as pressing for good relations with the Arab oil couuntries, to the detriment of Israel.
And let’s remember that Israel was a bastion of socialism until recent years.
Castellio/Pirouz:
Regarding my comment “I think the equation is the other way around. In order to protect oil supplies, the US has had to constantly fend off the tacit Israeli threat to disrupt them by appeasement.”
I may have partly answered your question in my previous post. Suffice to say, 1973 sealed a regional status quo that locked the US into having to side with Israel come what may. There have been times when US interests and Israeli interests did converge, but these were largely ideological rather than strategic interests, and largely arose under George W Bush.
The constant fear of the US is that Israel will invoke their “security” and do something inflammatory that kicks off the Arab street and unseats all the oil-rich dictatorships that the US props up everywhere. This is why no real pressure can be brought to bear on Israel over Palestine.
This reality is camouflaged by the Lobby, which ensures US politicians and the US public remain on message; that plucky little Israel is forever embroiled in an existential fight against the salivating, gun-toting Arab masses; that it remains the one beacon of democratic hope in a wildly autocratic region.
For further reading on it, the 2003 edition of David Hirst’s “The Gun and the Olive Branch” is outstanding. Martin van Creveld, a highly acclaimed Dutch-Israeli military historian wrote a piece a while ago describing how the West could easily become a nuclear target of Israel. I think it was entitled “We Are Destroying Ourselves”. Regarding 1973 specifically, Seymour Hersh has written about the Israeli threat to use nuclear weapons, and it was also covered in “Two Minutes Over Baghdad”, an Israeli book about the Iraqi nuclear program.
kooshy,
President Truman’s military and foreign policy advisers opposed recognition of Israel in 1948, and they were furious that Clark Clifford (a domestic politics adviser) talked Truman into doing so when that was not his arena for giving advice.
Israel is an albatross around the American neck. Neocons and other elements of the Israel lobby do their best to sell a false prospectus, that Israel is an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and vital to the defence of the US itself. Total rubbish.
Eric,
Re April 18th, 10:25pm. I too notice the advice many give to Iran, to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says time and again it is not developing nuclear weapons and that all such weapons should be destroyed. I think the statement is an accurate relection of Iranian policy, and that it is far and away the most moral, and wisest way forward. Colonel Gaddafi said that nuclear weapons are dangerous for the country that possesses them. Obviously this is true, and doubly so in the case of Iran.
Alan
Can you in a significant way prove that Israel, currently has, or ever did have, no strategic significance for US’s regional hegemonic military architecture, and considering the old divide and conquer policy does US uses the geopolitical position of Israel to balance its regional power where 3 continents and 2 oceans meet narrowly? Could an all Muslim / Arab North Africa and East Mediterranean be trusted after the WW1? Was there another way for the west not to recognize the declaration of Israel’s independence immediately? (Iran was among the first, same as restating relations with China after Nixon’s visit)
Why was the Mufti of the Jerusalem siding with the Nazi Germany, did he create an atmosphere of mistrust?
Thanks
Pirouz 2, you wrote to James (pardon me for interrupting):
[paragraph 1] “Let me put it differently: Had there been some miraculous intervention by some god and the all of the oil and gas of this region had been removed to the eastern parts of China in the 19th century, we would not have any zionism or zionist lobby, or even if we had it would be to create a homeland in China not in Palestine.
[paragraph 2] In other words all I say is that “AIPAC” is nothing but a small extention of Western imperialism. It is the energy requirements of the Capitalism which has resulted in the creation of AIPAC like lobbies, not the other way around.”
I think there are different dynamics at play in time and situation of paragraph 1 contrasted with paragraph 2.
In paragraph 1 era, US was friendly with Saudi Arabia, was developing Tapline project in aftermath of WWII, was trying to figure out how to relate to Iran in a more-or-less friendly fashion.
The seed of zionist Israel was conceived/planted by Theodore Herzl in the late 1880s; the initial incitement to create a “Jewish homeland” was the Dreyfuss affair in France and what Herzl perceived to be an antisemitic atmosphere that Dreyfuss reflected. (I’ve recently begun to suspect Herzl exaggerated the extent of antisemitism; Gertrude Stein was among many, many Jewish American expatriots in France at the time of Dreyfuss; Stein and her circle prospered and thrived in Paris, and were resentful of Herzl’s attempts to mark them for discrimination. A similar attitude is beginning to develop among American Jews today — they are beginning to fear that zionist’s equating ALL Jews with zionist Israel will destroy the lifestyle they enjoy as Americans who are Jewish.) Back to Herzl — it took him ten years to get a spark of interest in his ‘Jews to Israel’ project; the spark did not emerge among French and German Jews but as a result of Russian Jewish migration to Germany in the last days of the czar/birth of Bolshevism. German Jews were not happy with the influx of Russian Jews, so a cohort of Israeli settlers began to take form; at the same time, Rothschild recognized the financial potential of a stake in the Levant and began to finance land purchases, institution building, and infrastructure in the region. The US was not a significant part of the pre-war formation of Israel.
US involvement in the TAPLINE project post-WWII was very seriously threatened by Truman’s support for Israel in 1948, and began the period of tension between US and Saudi Arabia that has had better periods and worse periods, but has never been resolved as US tries to balance support for Israel with a friendly relationship with Saudi Arabia.
AIPAC is a “second paragraph” phenomenon, definitely post-Truman and post-WWII, as American Jews sought to remove the Arabist influence from State Department, and wealthy Jews such as Edgar Bronfman used his wealth to influence the political process.
Professor Juan Cole, no friend of the IRI, has a very informative post today as to why westerm sanctions on Iran will not succeed.
http://www.juancole.com/
Why Economic Sanctions on Iran will Fail
Posted on April 19, 2010
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said at Columbia U. that a military strike on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities would be his ‘last option.’ He makes an excellent point, too often overlooked. In some instances the price of doing something is just about as high as the price of doing nothing. A US strike on Iran would risk throwing Iraq and Afghanistan into chao, with our troops in the midst of it.
The Obama administration is now moving tighten economic sanctions on Iran, as an alternative to a more direct approach. These measures include pressuring countries and firms not to buy Iranian petroleum and gas; pressuring them not to sell gasoline to Iran; and attempting to make it difficult for Iranian banks to interface with the world economic system.
While these measures could impose costs on Iran, these costs can easily be borne by the country, and more especially by the regime.
Moreover, it is unclear that Obama can even swing further sanctions on Iranian petroleum and gas. Such harsh measures are opposed by Brazil, Russia, India and China, the so-called BRIC bloc of nations that are emerging diplomatic and economic players outside the US-dominated G7 nations. At the BRIC summit in Brazil last week, a consensus emerged against strong new sanctions on Iran. Brazil is on the UN Security Council at the moment, and in May Lebanon will assume the rotating chair of that body. Given that Turkey also currently has a seat and is strongly opposed to new Iran sanctions, it may be difficult for Obama to get a significant new resolution.
Financial sanctions are not all that they are cracked up to be. Iran Oil & Gas reports that from March ‘09 to March ‘10, Iran swapped 450,000 tons of petroleum products. Some 90% of the swaps were with nations of the former Soviet Union (CIS), and 10% were with Iraq. Likely we are talking about Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. This item is an example of how Iran can import refined gasoline (it has a temporary shortage of refineries) without needing to go through the international banking system. Even if some sort of official ban on trading with Iran could be arranged by the US with these CIS countries and Iraq, private traders and corrupt government officials would simply step into the resulting black market and make a pile. Smuggling oil products out of Iraq on trucks was a specialty of Jordan and Turkey in the 1990s, and that sort of black market would operate quite efficiently were Iran to be put under the sort of sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein.
Few commodities are more easily transported and more fungible (easily exchanged for other goods or for cash) than gasoline, and the plan for a gasoline embargo on Iran (popular in Congress) is a pipe dream.
But we are hardly in a stage of black marketeering. Rather, direct deals are being done by major players, despite the withdrawal of some players, such as Lukoil, from exporting gasoline to Iran. Chinaoil just directly sold Iran 600,000 barrels of gasoline, and Sinopec, another Chinese oil giant, is preparing to resume direct gasoline sales to Iran. Soft gasoline demand in Asia because of the global economic downturn has left petroleum companies with high inventories that they are eager to offload anywhere they can, and Iran as a destination suits them fine.
Reuters reports, “As long as there is money to be made, and economic benefits to be taken advantage off, Iran will always find ready sellers of gasoline from the international market,” a trader said. “The politicians don’t understand markets…sanctions are cosmetic.”
And if direct sales became difficult, indirect ones would be substituted. And if that became difficult, smugglers would step in. A lot of Iraqis would get rich. And while paying extra to smuggle things in would hurt ordinary Iranians, the regime would use its oil profits to cushion the elites and keep them happy. (That cushioning is why very severe sanctions on Iraq never had a chance of shaking the Baathist regime).
The man said it all: ’sanctions’ are purely cosmetic, designed to make it look as though US politicians had taken some dramatic and effective step. It is odd that the politicians in Washington, who are always loudly proclaiming their belief in the market, think its iron laws can be suspended by a simple vote on their parts.
And another development taken as a bellwether of increasingly effective sanctions turns out to have been a mirage. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak clarified remarks he made last Thursday about creeping sanctions on Iran. He was misunderstood to have said that Petronas, the Malaysian petroleum company had suspended gasoline sales to Iran, but he never said any such thing and it never happened. He referred to a cancelled third-party spot oil deal that collapsed for purely economic reasons.
Moreover, Iran’s need to import gasoline is probably temporary. It has the wherewithal to build new refineries, and is doing so. Germany’s ABB Lummus has a a $512 million deal with the National Iranian Oil Company and a consortium in Iran to raise gasoline production at the Bandar Abbas refinery to about 3.5 million gallons a day from the present 1.3 million gallons.
In fact, there are ten such projects to expand existing refineries, which could allow Iran to nearly double its production of gasoline by 2012. In addition, Iran is investing nearly $40 billion in building 7 new refineries. So even a successful squeeze on Iran’s gasoline imports, if it could be implemented right away, would only have much effect for 2 years. But such a squeeze is unlikely to be successfully implemented in the first place.
Nor is Iran lacking for customers. A Swiss company just signed a deal worth $13 billion to import Iranian natural gas over the next 25 years. As for financial sanctions, so far Iran is evading them through banking partners in the United Arab Emirates, and Iran and Venezuela have two joint banks. These measures provide Iran with a back door, allowing it to mitigate the effects of financial sanctions.
Very few sanctions regimes have actually produced regime change or altered regime behavior. The US could not even accomplish this goal with regard to a small island 90 miles off its shores, Cuba. That an oil giant half way around the world with a population of 70 million that is as big as Spain, France and Germany can be effectively bludgeoned with sanctions is not very likely.
The US needs to engage in comprehensive security talks with Iran, in hopes of striking a grand bargain. Because as Admiral Mullen rightly says, there are no good military options here.
Pirouz – thanks for reply. Answers as follows (not necessarily in the same order!)
1. My point about the British creating Israel is that the only time they even envisaged there to be any kind of Israel at all was in 1936. Even then, the idea was ditched in 1939. The British regretted almost everything they did regarding Israel, and were basically out of control of events by the end of the Second World War. The British army considered their role to be protecting the Arabs by then. Following the establishment of Israel, Bernard Montgomery, the head of the British Army, considered Israel to be Britain’s primary enemy.
2. In 1956, the British certainly allied themselves with Israel to try and reclaim Suez, and that was classic imperialism, but the nationalization of Suez happened after the establishment of Israel, and the US stopped them anyway.
3. In 1948, there were 600,000 Jews and 1.2m Arabs in Palestine. The vast majority of the arms used by the Jews in the conquest of Palestine were sourced from Czechoslovakia. At the time of the conquest, if one includes the Haganah, the Irgun, Stern Gang, the Jewish Agency police force, and all trained up Jewish forces in Palestine, they numbered around 100,000. Palestinian forces were around 5000, with practically no arms at all, having been crushed by the British during the Arab Rebellion of 1936-39. No Arab state came to the aid of the Palestinians until after the Israeli declaration of independence, by which time there were already over 250,000 Palestinian refugees.
4. In the lead up to the Partition vote, Jewish sources in the US had raised around $100m for the establishment of Israel, while Arab sources had raised little more than a million for Palestinians.
5. Regarding the free flow of oil, I am always intrigued by this point. How can the establishment of Israel guarantee any oil at all, let alone the free flow of it? All anybody needed to do, and they did, was befriend the various oil rich Arab states, all of which were Western constructs themselves, and most of which still are friends with the West. Surely the establishment of Israel actually made it MORE DIFFICULT for these Arab friends of the West to remain overtly friendly with anybody allied to Israel.
6. It was the French that gave the Israelis nuclear technology. The US were outraged when they found about it because it completely upset the balance in the region. The French basically supplied it thinking the Israelis would use it to pressure the US. And they certainly did! The net result was 1973, the Oil Shock, and 37 years of paying billions in bribes to Israel and Arab regimes to keep a balance that was an awful lot cheaper before 1967.
By the way, on a note more related to the current topic:
Then by this logic USA has every right not to want a nuclear capable Iran, because otherwise Iranians may threaten that unless the oil fields of southern Iraq are annexed to Iran, they may use nuclear weapons to attack all the oil fields and the surrounding cities in this region.
Castellio:
I have the same request. Actually this is the first time I hear this, so I would appreciate if Alan would elaborate on what he said a bit more, but even assuming that Americans were forced against their will to mobilize their 6th fleet with full air escort and unload and help transport all the weaponry to the front still the question remain:
Who gave the Israeli the nuclear technology? My analogy of a hypothetical situation where Saddam would seek US assistance in invading Kuwait by threatening to use Chemical weapons against Kuwait and S. Arabia, still remains!
Alan, could you write a touch more, or point in a direction, regarding your take on 1973 in your comment at 2.55?
Has anyone elsewhere developed your final statement in terms of American appeasement? Is it a hunch or is there some documentation and reasoning?
“I feel and believe that in Iran the government and for sure the majority of the Iranians are not much concerned with what American public opinion is regarding Iranian nuclear rights.”
I recognize that, and I agree you are probably right not to worry. But in 2001, Saddam Hussein and the majority of Iraqis were not much concerned with American public opinion either, and I agreed that they had very little reason to worry.
Hope springs eternal, and so I nevertheless think you and I are right not to worry this time around. But what I am at an utter loss to understand is why Iran would even take that chance. I just don’t see the upside. Maybe I’m forgetting, but I don’t recall Israel ever drawing attention to its bomb-making effort by puffing out its chest and insisting on its right to a “nuclear option.” It just quietly went ahead and did it. That seems to have worked out pretty well for Israel – maybe worth imitating.
What you and others may be overlooking here is that Iran’s “nuclear” behavior over the next couple of years probably need not be any different at all if it follows the path I suggest during that period. Do you suspect, notwithstanding what Khamenei has said over and over (“no nukes for Iran”), that Iranian scientists are presently at work perfecting nuclear triggers or other bomb-specific devices? I don’t; maybe I’m naive, but I don’t. Do you think that’s likely to change over the next couple of years? Again, I don’t – at least as long as Khamenei keeps saying what he’s been saying consistently for many years. And if any evidence to the contrary should be found while Khamenei sticks to that line over the next couple of years, the US will have just the “smoking gun” it needs – probably long before Iran has an actual bomb with which to dissuade the US from attacking.
So what, exactly, does Iran expect to gain over the next couple of years by insisting on its “nuclear option?” Frankly, I can’t even imagine why Iran would ever bring that up – much less discuss it at length with a representative of the US State Department. If Iran is very close to 100% certain that the US will not attack it during the next two years or so, I suppose there’s little risk. But before Iran makes a final assessment of those odds, I highly recommend it send some agents to live for a while in the US – listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on the radio every day, watch Fox News every night, attend a few Fourth of July parades and county fairs, hang out at the local barber shops, and then report back to headquarters.
Perhaps Iran is concerned that agreeing today to more intrusive inspections would prevent it later from achieving “deliberate ambiguity” because the IAEA inspectors will be confident that Iran cannot have developed a nuclear weapon under their noses. I will tell you – free of charge – right now how to handle that problem: once you’ve got your bomb design far enough along, just have some Iranian scientist “inadvertently” leave his laptop in an airport waiting lounge with some bomb-part drawings on the hard drive, and then have a government spokesman nervously say “no comment” when the IAEA asks you about it. That should do the trick.
In short, whether or not Iran might decide later to develop a nuclear bomb, I cannot see why, for now, it would not simply act as if it never will. Nor if, to the contrary, Iran is presently working on a bomb do I see any benefit in raising suspicion by talking about a “nuclear option.” Either way, insist on a “nuclear option” later if you like, but not now. For now, make nice, get your nuclear energy plants up and running more quickly and more cheaply, and get the sanctions reduced or eliminated (or at least not increased). Schedule an all-hands meeting for a couple of years down the road and see where things stand then.
Alan;
1) Creating Israel “exactly the way it is today” could not possiblly have been envisaged and “planned” by anyone. We are in 2010, Balfour declaration happened in 1917, no one could possibly foresee what would happen some 100 years from that date, just as no Americans could foresee 911 when they “created” mujahedin in Afghanistan prior to USSR’s invasion. However, just as in 1998, Brzezinski would not regret what he did in 1979, my opinion is that the British do not regret what they did between 1917 and 1956.
Re Brzezinski : http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski.html
2) Creating a state, by a small minority by purging the big majority out of land at gun point, requires arms, huge sums of money and the political/economic support of the worlds dominant forces. In my humble opinion this is WAY WAY beyond some “Jewish lobby”. This is a BIG investment and like all other capitalist investments has to have a significant “rate of return” (ie. in this case energy security and free flow of cheap oil). The most important point that I was trying to make is that as I stated in my previous post: Had all the oil and gas of this region been by some miracle transferred to the eastern part of China, today we would have an Israeli like state made from immigrants (Jewish or not) in China fighting for a “homeland” and purging the native chinese from their rightful land.
3) If you have noticed in my previous post, I am not saying “Israeli-Arab” wars, I say: “Western-Arab” wars. Apart from the oil, the independent nationalism in general (and Suez Canal as one manifestation of it) was another massive hurdle in the way of Wests imperialistic aspirations, a hurdle to whose overcome Israel served dutifuly.
4)Suez was the last attempt of the British to act as an “independent” imperialist state. After that USA completely (one is almost tempted to say “officially”) took their seat and the British moved into USA’s shaddow.
5)All military equipment used by the Israelis have ALWAYS been provided to them by the Westerners.
6) It was the West who gave the Israelies the “nuclear” technology. It is like a hypothetical situation where US would help Saddam in invading Kuwait and then saying that: “We had to, if we didn’t Saddam threatened to use ‘chemical weapons’ against all its neighbours!”
One last point: I think one of the most brilliant assessments of the nature of ISraeli-American relationship came from Dr. Norman Finkelstein, when asked whether it was Israel who had to follow the US lead or it was the US who was being “controlled” by the zionists, he replied (I am paraphrasing here, I listened to him in one of his lectures and I dont have any link to it):
-Probablly a combination of the two: In so far as US strategic interests in this region and the steady flow of cheap oil is concerned, Israel is following US’s interests. But when it comes to westbank and a two-state solution based on the borders of 1967, I don’t think that US has any particular problem with that (ie. a viable Palestinian state), and it is Israelis and their lobbies in US which are manipulating the US foreign policies.
It has been my consistent position that uranium enrichment is not the real issue in the US-Iran discord. The enrichment issue offers up a very convenient face to the actual goals of the US policy because it has the “right” public and media dimensions.
Until and unless the US and Iran have a meeting of minds on the role of Iran in Iran’s neighborhood, as well as Iran’s position on its relationship with countries such as China, the US will not take the TRR deal and is not interested in a rapprochement.
I have heard from academic visitors aware of the debate in Iran’s key policy circles that Iran’s “political elites” are keenly aware of US goals and intentions and believe that any real deal with the US will have the enrichment issue resolved as a “side-effect” — not the other way around. They believe that any major concession will be interpreted by the US circles that drive the Iran policy as a triumph that bodes ill as it will lead to additional and endless demands on Iran.
Ever since Obama’s overtures to Iran, Iran has consistently replied with the “coded” diplomatic message that it wants to see changes in how US treats Iran. In other words, Iran wants a place at the table in its own neighborhood and wants to be a major player in the energy equation for the next 50 years or more. The latest diplomatic initiative by Iran to talk to all security council members is for Iran to put a “large public face” on the message Iran has privately delivered to a number of countries — that it is effectively the US that is refusing the TRR deal and Iran is ready to take the deal.
Pirouz – fear not, we often discuss this.
I agree with James. The British never intended there to be an Israel as it is today. The only time there was a definitive British plan to create a Jewish state was the Peel partition plan in 1936, which was rejected by Jews and Arabs. In 1939, the British formally dropped all plans for a Jewish state when they adopted the McDonald White Paper, which restricted Jewish immigration and set the goal of a single independent state of Palestine by 1949.
The US, for their part, originally supported the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which of course failed. By March 1948, the US were sponsoring an Arab League proposal, together with Jewish opponents of the Jewish Agency, to the UN for a single state trusteeship. That was what kicked off Plan Dalet and the Jewish conquest of Palestine, much of which had taken place prior to the declaration of the state of Israel in May 1948.
Suez in 1956 was a British and French plan hatched to get the canal back, which was vehemently opposed by the US, while in 1973, the US arms bailout came in response to Israeli threats to use their nuclear weapons.
To be honest, I think the equation is the other way around. In order to protect oil supplies, the US has had to constantly fend off the tacit Israeli threat to disrupt them by appeasement.
Eric, congratulations you just proofed that there is biased presenting Iran’s rights and obligations by western governments and their abiding media.
Your argument is relevant if the entire planet will just look to what the American court of public opinion understands or believes, lately even with all duet tap dancing’s by Mr. Obama and HRC it don’t seem so.
I feel and believe that in Iran the government and for sure the majority of the Iranians are not much concern with what American public opinion is regarding Iranian nuclear rights, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t want to have a friendly relationship with the Americans or any other nation for that matter. Nor they will accept to let their rights reduced to keep the American, Russians, or Chinese happy that wouldn’t happen, it’s the questions of rights and obligations and the way the NPT is written, once you have the knowhow and the industrial infrastructure you automatically have the “option”, now if that’s what western countries are concerned with, sorry is already too late., if can’t do war will have to live with it, with this Iran or next Iran , I believe Iran’s situation will be more like current south Africa then Japan.
Eric – I agree with everything you say, but the US population is not Iran’s target market here. I suspect they don’t even particularly care. If anything, they want the US to continue undermining the NPT, because it ultimately weakens the US in the eyes of other NPT participants who before had simply grudgingly accepted the US had the right to decide who got the technology and who didn’t.
That is the sham that Iran is exposing, and what Iran seeks to change. There are many, many countries who clearly understand how Iran’s NPT rights are being denied and the importance of Iran standing their ground.
James;
I am not sure I can follow your latest post. I am not sure what you are trying to say. But let me explain what I mean:
First: I am talking about the events after the first world war.
Second: It was first the British who decided to create the state of Israel, and then it was the British and later the USA who kept Israel in existence BY FORCE. The history of Palestine mandate, Balfour declaration, various western-Arab conflicts including 1956 Suez war and the war of 1973 (which was the DIRECT military intervention of USA, without which Israel would have ceased to exist right back then) is the evidence of what I say.
Let me put it differently: Had there been some miraculous intervention by some god and the all of the oil and gas of this region had been removed to the eastern parts of China in the 19th century, we would not have any zionism or zionist lobby, or even if we had it would be to create a homeland in China not in Palestine.
In other words all I say is that “AIPAC” is nothing but a small extention of Western imperialism. It is the energy requirements of the Capitalism which has resulted in the creation of AIPAC like lobbies, not the other way around.
PS. What we are talking here is a bit too off topic, and I appologize to everyone. James I am eager to hear more about your view on the matter, but I don’t know how we can communicate without interrupting other people’s conversation and changing the current topic.
James Canning — One “Alex Ross,” who just celebrated his first anniversary as Hillary Clinton’s assistant for international communications at State Dept., travels around the world ensuring that communications networks are unfiltered and that ‘human rights are not violated.’ He had scathing things to say about Iran’s “complete shutdown” of internet on Ashura, and stated that “the willingness of a state to completely disrupt communications of its citizens” is extremely worrying and indicates the degree of repression of the Iranian regime….”
Ross’s comment followed his earlier denunciation of the “illegitimate” election results, employing the usual talking point.
Is young Alex Ross related to Dennis Ross?
Any possibility we could get personnel in the State Department who represent American interests and values — values such as truth, objectivity, fact-based policy making?
Alan,
Iran supports the NPT, while objecting to certain aspects of IAEA activity. Iran is wise to support the treaty and continue to work with other countries to expose to the American public the fact Israel refuses to allow any IAEA inspections. Most Americans seem to be unaware Israel has not signed the NPT. For that matter, of course, most Americans do not even know what the treaty is, or what it seeks to achieve.
Alan,
“I would just like to add that I think there is a certain determination in Iranian policy to follow a path that essentially requires the NPT to either be implemented as it was intended, or to be exposed as the sham it currently is.”
This policy ought to persuade all men and women of good will. But it isn’t, at least in the US, and I don’t see its prospects brightening any time soon.
One reason in particular stands out: Many Iran critics routinely blur the distinction between Iran’s real obligations under the NPT and its imagined “obligations” under the several UN Security Council resolutions relating to Iran’s nuclear programs. I’m willing to bet that well over 90% of Americans don’t know the difference. When an Iran critic points out that Iran is violating several UNSC resolutions (which it is, after all) – resolutions approved by China, Russia and other countries that Iran’s supporters presently insist are standing up for Iran (on sanctions) – the vast majority of American listeners interpret that to mean that Iran is violating its NPT obligations and that everyone, including China and Russia, is quite upset about that. Iran’s obligations typically are generalized as “Iran’s obligations under international law,” and Iran is understood to be thumbing its nose at the whole world, including its supposed “allies,” China and Russia, by violating those obligations.
So far, not much success for Iran’s effort to expose the NPT for “the sham it currently is.”
For those Americans who feel a need to reconcile China/Russia’s alleged support for Iran on further sanctions with China/Russia’s presumed displeasure at Iran’s violations of its “obligations under international law” (not to mention China/Russia’s approval of all existing sanctions), the US government offers an answer that goes something like this:
“Well, China and Russia – which, as you probably know, have approved all sanctions imposed by the United Nations on Iran so far – are naturally concerned that further sanctions might hurt ordinary Iranians. Goodness knows that concerns us too. Iran’s leaders, of course – you remember: the ones who stole last year’s election – couldn’t care less about ordinary Iranians, and so they willingly expose them to the risk of more severe sanctions – or even worse – by blatantly violating Iran’s obligations under international law. When we look at the Iranian government’s irresponsible march toward a nuclear bomb, and China’s and Russia’s blocking of our efforts to preserve peace by imposing further sanctions, sometimes we are close to despair. Is there anything, we wonder, that a warm, caring country like the United States can do to protect the Iranian people from their own callous leaders and save the world from a nuclear holocaust? We must keep all options on the table, of course, but we continue to pray that a peaceful solution can be found. If only Iran’s leaders would allow Iran to comply with its obligations under international law! We don’t hold out much hope for that, however – at least until there comes that glorious day when Iran is led by different people who care about their own people.”
Detect any progress so far in Iran’s effort to expose the NPT (aka “Iran’s obligations under international law”) for “the sham it currently is?”
There are a few Americans, of course, who do understand the difference between the NPT and UNSC resolutions, and so wonder whether Iran’s violations really involve the NPT. Iran’s critics have still other arrows in their quiver for these annoying skeptics. The next one usually pulled out is Iran’s breach of its NPT site-disclosure obligation. Iran argues it needs to disclose only 6 months before it introduces fuel to a site. The IAEA argues it must disclose much earlier, essentially when the decision to build the site is made. This difference of opinion actually does arise under the NPT, of course. It enables Iran’s critics to claim that it is Iran, not its critics, that refuses to allow the NPT to “be implemented as it was intended.”
And which side do most Americans think is correct on this point? If a pollster were to ask the following two questions, how do you think most Americans would answer?
Question 1. The existence of Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz had been kept secret by Iran for several years until its existence was exposed by others in 2002. Had Iran violated its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty by not disclosing this nuclear site earlier?
Question 2. [Same question, but substitute "Fordow/2009" for "Natanz/2002"].
How is Iran doing so far in its effort to expose the NPT for “the sham it currently is?”
Let’s not forget that we’re preaching to the choir on this website. Very few Americans sing in that choir, and Iran’s critics are well aware of that.
Pirouz_2,
Re your April 18th (3:56am) post. The Rothschild family in Britain as a whole opposed the creation of a Jewish “homeland” in Palestine, or elsewhere for that matter, prior to the First World War. Most rich British Jews agreed with the Rothschilds. And Britain did not intend to preside over the displacement of the Arab (and other) people of Palestine, by Jews, to create a state controlled by Jews.
I think most American international businessmen see the US backing of Israel, right or wrong, as damaging to their business interests in the Middle East.
Daniel Dombey of the Financial Times interviews Hillary Clinton in today’s FT:”Challenge for Clinton in bid to tame Tehran”.
Clinton: Iran “has refused to abide by its own obligations or to respond constructively to the offers the international community has made.”
Is Hillary spouting talking points laid out for her by Dennis Ross? And lying through her teeth?
Eric,
I believe Arnold is closer to the truth in this discussion. When you say,
“More security for the world, less temptation for Iran to make the wrong choice.”,
I think that is opposite the truth. Iran’s having a Japan Option would make the world safer, but Iran having the bomb itself would make the world MUCH safer. I speak here of detente – alluding to the point that Arnold makes,
“A nuclear capability would prevent what happened to Iraq from happening to Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive today if Iraq had succeeded in getting a nuclear option.”,
it seems clear that the kind of diplomacy that N Korea deserved would become the only strategy that the West could pursue with Iran. This would fly in the face of the elites of US and Israel who, above all, want to keep the region ’safe for war’, and as Arnold also said, “protect… the lives of Iranian people”.
This is a good debate, but I believe the MAD argument prevails, albeit not at the level of completely assured destruction, but enough of the region, particularly the Strait, destroyed as to render the economies of most of the countries of the region horribly crippled, plus spin-off to the rest of the world, especially the big oil importing nations. The frustration of our war pkanners and Iran hawks is visible every day in some media or another. Congress and the American people are primed for another war. Even with this kind of overwhelming permission the men who love war just can’t figure out how to wage this war without producing truly catastrophic consequences for the whole world. Their frustrationn is palpable. May it ever be so.
Eric/Arnold – interesting debate.
I would just like to add that I think there is a certain determination in Iranian policy to follow a path that essentially requires the NPT to either be implemented as it was intended, or to be exposed as the sham it currently is.
Right now, the consequences of US imperialism/adventurism on the back of unchecked power and the ability to mould international institutions to their will, is visible in practically every direction from Iran. Iranian attainment of the “Japan Option” against the will of the US has the potential to be a game changer in this dynamic.
The more Iran holds the line of the NPT, the more the US is forced to undermine it, and this will become increasingly apparent. This serves to dilute US power, particularly in the region, but worldwide also. So Iran attaining the “Japan Option” is less about having the option to build a nuke – the strategic advantage that provides is tacit with any enrichment programme and does not need any expression by anybody – and more about undermining existing international power structures. The control over who is “good” and who is “bad”, who is entitled to this and who is entitled to that, will be lost.
No. Just as Israel’s weapon impacts Israel’s strategic situation without Israel ever actually carrying out a threat to use a weapon, Japan’s virtual weapon impact’s Japan’s strategic situation and an Iranian virtual weapon would impact Iran’s strategic situation.
Japan did not stumble onto nuclear capability. There was a conscious decision made by Japanese strategists to stockpile over 40 tons of plutonium. Japan could easily have nuclear power without that stockpile. Japan stockpiles it because of the strategic option it gives. And Japan does so without violating the letter or the spirit of the NPT. Japan is doing nothing wrong, also nothing immature.
John Bolton says that if Serbia had a nuclear capability, the US would not have been able to intervene militarily, and that is the reason the US must prevent Iran from having a nuclear capability. Ray Takeyh, more liberal of the Council for Foreign Relations says an Iranian capability would have the “limited” effect of insulating Iran from threats of attack or forceful removal of its government.
Even if US strategists didn’t admit it, an Iranian nuclear capability – again completely consistent with Iran’s requirements under the NPT if those requirements are applied, as they explicitly must be, “without discrimination” – has substantial, even overwhelming strategic value for Iran. Childish? A nuclear capability would prevent what happened to Iraq from happening to Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis would be alive today if Iraq had succeeded in getting a nuclear option. Even if Iraq did not build a weapon and stayed in the NPT. For Iran not to get a nuclear option if getting one is possible would be ridiculous. It would be a betrayal of the Iranian people of the most profound magnitude.
But still, it is an Iranian decision. I don’t think I can impact that decision. Iran has said what kind of program it wants and Iran has shown it is willing to sacrifice for that program. If I thought Iran was being childish, so what?
I understand the US wants to keep the option of attacking Iran. Really, that’s what this is about from the US point of view. Israel had calculated that it is strategically necessary to keep the option of issuing nuclear threats to its neighbors with its neighbors incapable of responding. That’s what this is about from Israel’s point of view. (Israel is going to have to change that calculation over the next year.)
Iran is not giving the US and Israel the options they want. Instead Iran is protecting the lives of Iranian people. Iran is doing so without leaving the NPT, without ignoring its obligations, the way the US has an obligation not to reduce its arsenal but to enter good faith negotiations with the other weapons states to fully disarm, which the US has never done since it ratified the treaty. Iran is doing so without building nuclear weapons and threatening to use them the way Israel does.
Iran is in the right here. Iran does not have to submit to US demands that it not be nuclear capable to be right. If I thought Iran was wrong, it wouldn’t matter though.
For the US, there is no military option that will prevent Iran from being nuclear capable. There is no sanction option. There is no regime change option. If there are no options to prevent Iran from getting a Japan option, the US will either accept an Iranian Japan option gracefully, or it will fight Iran and fail to prevent that outcome, causes unnecessary losses on both sides. Iran is ready, unfortunately, for that possibility, but other than point it out, I’m just an observer.
Arnold,
I understand you to be saying that Iran considers it important to be able to say, as Japan can: “We could build a bomb if we wanted to, but we don’t want to. It’s not because the US tells us we can’t. It’s purely a matter of choice.”
Either (1) Iran will never choose to build a nuclear weapon, in which case it should not matter whether Iran could have done so if it wanted; or (2) Iran will choose to build a nuclear weapon someday, in which case it indeed will matter that Iran was permitted to attain the capability to do so – i.e. the rest of the world will regret having permitted Iran to attain that capability.
Since we don’t know now which choice Iran will make, won’t it be best for all concerned not to allow Iran to develop the capability to build a bomb (assuming for the sake of discussion it doesn’t have that capability already)? More security for the world, less temptation for Iran to make the wrong choice.
Is this simply a matter of Iran not wanting to be pushed around, or needing to prove that it’s capable of building a bomb? If so, I fully understand those feelings, but they strike me as bases for decisions made by insecure teenaged boys, not grown-up countries. I consider myself to be a strong supporter of Iran’s right to pursue its nuclear program for peaceful purposes. That’s an uphill battle already. Why make it even tougher by making it necessary to take into account Iran’s easily bruised ego?
I’ve often seen it written, justifiably so, that the US should deal with Iran as it is, not as the US would like it to be. The same goes for Iran. It should deal with the US as it is, and that includes (1) a strong desire to be secure from nuclear attack by Iran some day; and (2) a natural suspicion of a country that declines to take steps consistent with its verbal assurances of entirely peaceful intentions – for no reason other than wounded pride. Wounded pride might be a good enough reason for the US as Iran would like it to be, but it’s not good enough for the US as it is.
Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani has stated that Iran will follow the Japanese model in its nuclear program. Japan has nuclear technology but does not possess any nuclear weapons and Iran will follow the same path in its nuclear program, Larijani said in a meeting with Japanese House of Councilors President Satsuki Eda in Tokyo on Wednesday.
http://www.payvand.com/news/10/feb/1260.html
OK Eric, so what’s your point?
I think you understand now that Iran wants what Japan has, there is no technical barrier to a Japanese weapon, only a political one. Iran’s Parliament speaker has gone to Japan and said that Iran, like Japan, will be a country that could make a weapon but does not as a political decision.
That’s Iran’s position.
You say the US is less comfortable with Iran in that position than it is with Japan. Fine.
You say from the US perspective, Japan has a peaceful program but Iran does not, even though Japan has far more technical potential to weaponize – literally over 1000 times as much weapons potential by any reasonable standard of measurement. You need a skewed definition of “peaceful” to do that, but if you want, fine.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to lobby Iran to take a different position, or what. You think Iran would be better off renouncing the technical capability to make a weapon – every indication is that Iran’s leadership disagrees.
So now, what do you want to happen? Do you want the people on this board to stop saying Iran wants a program with the technical capabilities Japan’s program has? That just would not be accurate.
Do you want us to adopt your variable definition of the term “peaceful”, so that we stop saying Iran’s program is peaceful even as we continue saying Japan’s program is peaceful, Brazil’s, South Africa’s and lots of other countries’ are peaceful? Also not accurate with any fair definition. Your definition is not fair.
Do you want some representative of Khamenei to read this and reconsider Iran’s position? Iran’s leadership is already well aware of the abilities and limits of US coercive pressure. They still want for, like Japan, South Africa, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and several NPT non-weapons states, there to be no technical barrier preventing them from building a weapon if they were to make that political decision.
Every one of the many states with that status reached it on purpose and gains some strategic, political or economic benefit from that status.
I can’t figure out what your point is, what you want.
James,
“Some vicious scaremongering regarding Iran was presented on CBS News tonight, the reporting by Wyatt Andrews who claimed Iran had rejected Obama’s engagement effort and might be one year from having an operable nuclear weapon for delivery against Israel by missile. Total crap.”
Thanks for mentioning this. But Iran’s supporters are in a better position to challenge such overstatements if they can say: “That’s a lot of *&$#*. Iran’s nuclear program is devoted solely to nuclear energy.”
If some Iran-basher can get up and say: “What’s a lot of *&$#* is that statement. Some Iran supporters claim this, but others insist that Iran also wants a “nuclear option” because it has 15 countries around it that it says aren’t very friendly, and at least two of them have nuclear weapons. What exactly does Iran mean by “nuclear option” – power plants and cancer treatments? I don’t think so.”
I’m not sure I have an answer to that, based on what I’ve been reading lately. Can you give me an answer, other than “Nobody has a right to tell Iran what it can and can’t do!”? That answer works fine if we get to decide, but we don’t.
Some vicious scaremongering regarding Iran was presented on CBS News tonight, the reporting by Wyatt Andrews who claimed Iran had rejected Obama’s engagement effort and might be one year from having an operable nuclear weapon for delivery against Israel by missile. Total crap.
Eric A. Brill,
The Obama administration has stated publicly Iran has NPT rights to operate nuclear power plants. If the issue is lack of adequate transparency, despite the continuing IAEA monitoring Iran allows, the focus of the discussion, by the US, should be on that issue. Given that Israel allows nil transparency, the obvious hypocrisy of the US may make some Obama administration people reluctant to call attention to the disparity in treatment sought for Iran, as contrasted with that allowed Israel.
ARNOLD (and FIORANGELA, in response to an earlier post to the same effect):
You should understand that I do not disagree with you at all about Iran’s rights under the NPT. Clearly the US and the UN Security Council have demanded more of Iran than they have any right to demand. But pointing that out doesn’t do any good. I have no doubt whatever that the US and the UN Security Council are well aware of this. If their awareness of it were enough for them to change their behavior, they would have changed their behavior long ago.
If we want that behavior to change, we have to take account of the fact that, whether or not it should, the US does have power to take actions it’s not entitled under international law to take, and that it’s exhibited a willingness to take such actions. That being so, one has to consider what legitimate interests of the US, and the world generally, may not be fully protected under the NPT and other international regulatory schemes, and then come up with proposed solutions that would permit the US to protect those interests without preventing Iran from accomplishing what it’s entitled to accomplish.
If Iran wants merely to develop peaceful nuclear energy, the US objects because the existing scheme of things (in the US’ view) doesn’t properly protect the rest of the world against the risk that Iran will also develop nuclear weapons, and we suggest a thoughtful solution that would allow both Iran and the US to achieve their legitimate interests (without over-reaching, as the US presently does), the US is more likely to cooperate than it will be if Iran simply continues to insist on its rights under the NPT. The US will simply continue to say “no,” and continue to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and relations with other countries.
Iran will be “right” but that won’t get it where it’s trying to go.
Eric, what you’re describing is not the NPT that Iran ratified. The real NPT acknowledges the right of countries to nuclear technology without discrimination provided they do not build or acquire a weapon or divert fissile material into a weapons program. The restrictions of the real NPT are also subject to the provision that a country can elect to leave the NPT if it gives notice.
Without discrimination means that the fact that the US feels comfortable with Japan does not Japan a right to a huge stockpile of weapons-usable plutonium while the equivalent can be denied to Iran. That would be discrimination based on the US comfort level.
If you feel the US is justified in going beyond the NPT, and applying new restrictions on Iran then you agree with the every US administration since the Iranian revolution and with Israel and US allies especially in Europe. It is not an uncommon position, though it is impossible to justify based on the words of the treaty.
However, it so happens that it does not look like the parties that agree with you will be able to impose their anti-legal and discriminatory interpretation of the NPT on Iran as a practical matter. It doesn’t matter much if you wish they could.
If you seriously do not believe there is a significant difference between the nuclear programs of Japan and UAE in this case you hold a very uncommon position. This is my first time coming across it.
Japan could certainly build a weapon, if it chose, without American permission – I don’t even know where to start addressing a claim of the opposite. There is no doubt about Japan’s option in the mind of at least some Japanese politicians.
Iran has a right, and pretty much has accomplished the beginnings of a Japan option against the efforts of the US and others.
ARNOLD and FIORANGELA,
First, my apology to Arnold for seeming to discount what are, as always, very well-reasoned and well-presented posts. Fiorangela, I’d make the same apology to you, except that I haven’t yet had a chance to commit the same sin in response to your post. I have nothing but the highest of respect for both of you.
I think the main question is this:
What nuclear “options,” if any, should Iran have, beyond the right to produce nuclear energy (or medical isotopes) for peaceful uses?
My answer is: None.
I think the follow-up question is this:
Should Iran be allowed to refine its own nuclear fuel for these permitted uses?
My answer is: Yes.
I believe the answer to the first question should depend on what is best for everyone, not only Iran, and on what real-life forces are available to bring that about. That may sound like George Bush, but a big difference lies in what I think those real-life forces may properly be used for.
I think these should be our goals:
1. The development of peaceful nuclear energy should be strongly encouraged.
2. The proliferation of nuclear weapons should be strongly discouraged.
3. Goal 1 trumps Goal 2, but only if the country in question complies with whatever safeguards the world has reasonably imposed in an effort to avoid a conflict between Goal 1 and Goal 2. Otherwise, Goal 2 trumps Goal 1. What is “reasonable” properly may vary depending on the country’s past behavior, its scientific knowledge and technological capabilities, the ease or difficulty of monitoring compliance, the ease or difficulty of handling a “break-out,” and a few other factors, but in no event may safeguards be used for political purposes unrelated to Goal 2 (for example, to encourage regime change, or to weaken the country vis-à-vis its neighbors or enemies). Drawing this line often may be hard, but it nonetheless will be useful to articulate where it should be drawn and to remind heavy-handed regulators of its location from time to time.
4. A country’s desire to achieve “deliberate ambiguity” should not justify any relaxation of safeguards.
5. Subject to the above, the sovereign rights of a country should be fully respected.
You might pause to consider whether you agree with these rankings, and whether I’ve left anything out. Some will argue, of course, that Goal 2 always trumps Goal 1, that it’s impossible to prevent proliferation once you green-light peaceful nuclear energy and, therefore, that Goal 1 should always be discouraged. While flatly prohibiting peaceful nuclear energy probably would decrease the risk of nuclear-weapon proliferation, the benefits of peaceful nuclear energy (principally, less dependence on oil), and the effectiveness of thoughtful and strictly-enforced safeguards, make that a risk I believe is worth taking. Others (such as Iran) might say that Goal 5 (sovereign rights) always wins. But I think most people would largely agree with these Goals and how I’ve ranked them. In optimistic moments, I even believe the US government agrees with them.
In this frame of reference, I don’t think it’s useful to discuss whether Iran is entitled to what I’ll call the “Japan option.” In the first place, I don’t believe Japan really has an option to do any more than it’s now doing. The only real difference between the “Japan option” and the “UAE option,” which Arnold mentions in contrast, is that the world has one less tool to keep Japan in line: it would be pointless to impose safeguards aimed at preventing Japanese scientists from figuring out how to “weaponize their [nuclear] program,” since Japanese scientists already know how to do that and there’s no effective way to eradicate that knowledge. This does not mean, however, that we acknowledge Japan’s right to use this unquestioned ability if it should ever choose to produce nuclear weapons. We acknowledge merely that Japan could do so if it were ever given permission – which it never has been given, which it has never asked for, and which it almost certainly would not be given if it should ever ask. In contrast to Japan, the UAE almost certainly lacks the expertise to “weaponize its [nuclear] program.” For that reason, in fashioning safeguards for the UAE’s nuclear program, it would be useful to include safeguards aimed at keeping it that way – i.e. at preventing UAE scientists from developing or obtaining “weaponization” knowledge. The same goes for Iran. So, in that sense, I do think Iran (and the UAE) should be treated differently from Japan.
But these are merely differences in methods, differences in the forms that safeguards properly may take to reflect different circumstances among countries. The goals of the safeguards would be the same in all cases – for Japan, for the UAE, and for Iran: permitting peaceful nuclear energy (and medical isotopes), preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons, and not misusing safeguards to interfere in a country’s internal affairs or foreign relations.
In some cases, safeguards for a country could be relaxed even more if the world’s ability to handle a “break-out” is greater with respect to that country. Consider Japan again, for example. China is right next door and predictably disinclined to allow Japan to develop nuclear weapons. Japan is extremely vulnerable to economic sanctions. It has a weak military. Its nuclear missiles would need to travel a great distance to threaten very many countries. For these reasons and others, the world can afford to use a longer leash on Japan, at least until Japan starts tugging on the leash. That is not so, of course, with countries such as Iran, which lives in a more crowded and volatile neighborhood and doesn’t always get along with its neighbors.
This does not mean that we should be swayed by Iran’s insistence that Israel (and possibly India and Pakistan), who also live in crowded and volatile neighborhoods, must be subjected to the same restrictions as Iran. We might agree with that sentiment, but that does not mean we must also agree with what usually follows: “… and, therefore, since those countries are not subject to such restrictions, Iran should not be either.” The answer to that assertion lies in this statement made by former US President Jimmy Carter in a different context: “Life is not fair.” If one were to accept the argument that, unless and until we rein in all nuclear-armed countries, any country in the world should be free to develop nuclear weapons, we could end up with 50 nuclear-armed countries.
Though this probably will upset some readers, I’ll add that I’m not sure we should even press existing nuclear-weapons states (notably Israel, India and Pakistan) for more transparency. A country’s desire to achieve “deliberate ambiguity” should not justify the relaxation of safeguards aimed at preventing the country from acquiring nuclear weapons. But if a country already has nuclear weapons – as those three countries do – then the question of whether or not to relax safeguards aimed at preventing the development of nuclear weapons is academic. The horse is out of the barn. That being so, about all we could realistically expect (if anything) in response to further pressure on those nuclear-weapons countries would be more transparency about what they have. Would that necessarily achieve anything worthwhile? If Israel’s enemies were to learn that Israel has only 1 or 2 usable bombs, for example, instead of the far larger number many believe it has, might Israel feel compelled to add several dozen real bombs to its arsenal? What is India likely to do if it finds out that Pakistan has twice as many bombs as India? Would these predictable results be good for anyone?
One can argue, of course, that a country that’s achieved “deliberate ambiguity” might also become a swaggering bully, even though it’s largely bluffing about its nuclear-weapons strength. That does concern me enough that I think we should not encourage more countries to achieve “deliberate ambiguity,” and is another reason why I would not relax safeguards to permit a country to make this effort. Even so, if a country’s arsenal consists of only 1 or 2 actual bombs, and 70 or 80 “imaginary” bombs, it presumably will be a little careful about throwing its weight around.
In short, “deliberate ambiguity” is a cheap and useful defense for countries that already have it, and so I’d not try to take it away — especially since their predictable refusal to cooperate probably would doom the effort anyway. But tough luck for the countries that don’t already have it. It’s difficult enough to fashion safeguards to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons without being pressed to loosen them so that the country has a reasonable shot at achieving “deliberate ambiguity” – especially when risks exist that the country will exploit that ambiguity by threatening its enemies, and that its bluffed enemies might themselves seek to “nuke up” in response to a threat that doesn’t really exist.
Focusing now on Iran, I think this all calls for safeguards that intrude aggressively on actual or potential efforts to develop “weaponization” expertise, but that otherwise leave a clear path for Iran to develop peaceful nuclear energy and medical isotopes.
What about Iran’s insistence on its right to refine uranium? If – and I stress “if” – we conclude that safeguards fashioned for Iran will only prevent it from building nuclear weapons if Iran is required to acquire refined uranium from other countries, rather than refine its own, then I believe Iran should be prohibited from refining its own fuel. But I don’t think the premise of that question is valid. I believe we’ve concluded, reluctantly but confidently, that Iran has already learned what it needs to know to refine uranium to whatever purity it desires, and that knowledge can’t be eliminated. That being so, if we intrusively monitor Iran’s nuclear program to ensure that it’s only refining LEU sufficient for its approved nuclear power plants and 20% fuel sufficient for the TRR, and we insist that all of its refinement facilities be located in “bombable” places above ground, will it make a dime’s worth of difference whether Iran refines its own fuel or buys it from outside Iran? I don’t think so – and so Goal 5 (respect for a country’s sovereign rights) dictates that we permit Iran to refine its own fuel. If a “break-out” occurs, after all, we would tell Iran it may not buy fuel from outside and it may not refine its own fuel. If Iran has “bombable” refinement facilities scattered around Iran (as we will have insisted) and it keeps operating them after the “break-out,” the US would simply bomb them. The same result for the rest of the world either way, and Iran would be out several expensive refinement facilities – a prospect that might make it think longer and harder about a “break-out” in the first place.
There is nonetheless a difference, of course, if the West desires to continue (as I have no doubt it does) to misuse its control over Iran’s nuclear fuel supply to interfere in Iran’s internal affairs and its relations with other countries. That sort of interference is precisely what I have in mind when I refer to restrictions in Goal 3 that are “over the line,” or that unjustifiably interfere with a country’s sovereign rights (Goal 5). The West has a right to security against an Iranian “break-out,” but no right to interfere in Iran’s internal or foreign affairs. Allowing Iran to refine its own nuclear fuel in Iran, exclusively at “bombable” and heavily-inspected sites, would allow the West to protect itself against a break-out just as effectively as if Iran were not refining its own uranium, while allowing Iran to operate its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, and generally to get on with life, without unfair Western interference.
Fiorangela,
You asked what Iran should do. Clearly, the choice Saddam Hussein made was a poor one, in hindight, but of course this outcome was the result of the exceptionally vicious nature of the decision-makers who drove forward the invasion. The Iraqi foreign minister was on the CIA payroll, and he told them Iraq had destroyed its WMD in the 1990s. Cheney kept this information from the British! Why? Because Cheney and his gang knew Britain would not participate in the invasion if it was apparent Iraq posed no threat. In a way, the neocons and other warmongers used the UK as a backdoor for their scheme of deception carried out against the American people.
Ahmadinejad’s letter to Obama was a good idea. Iran needs to continue to call for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the Middle East. I think Iran makes a mistake in calling for the US to get rid of its nukes; instead, the focus should be on Israel and the threat to the peace of the region posed by Israel.
Fiorangela,
I join with you in challenging Eric A. Brill’s contention the US behaves intelligently when it formulate its Middle East military policies. The obvious stupidity, demonstrated time and time again, show otherwise.
Kathleen,
The murderous illegal war waged by the US and the UK in Iraq obviously are a very good reason for Iran to worry about an even further episode of lunacy by the American government.
The issue is whether Iran is more secure, if it does not proceed with developing nukes. I think the answer is affirmative.
You know, it’s just a pretext. If there were no pretexts lying around, they would fabricate one (like the Israelis fabricated the fictitious Syrian plutonium reactor). It’s like the fable about the wolf and the lamb:
Once upon a time a Wolf was lapping at a spring on a hillside when, looking up, what should he see but a Lamb just beginning to drink a little lower down. “There’s my supper,” thought he, “if only I can find some excuse to seize it.” Then he called out to the Lamb, “How dare you muddle the water from which I am drinking?” “Nay, master, nay,” said Lambikin; “if the water be muddy up there, I cannot be the cause of it, for it runs down from you to me.” “Well, then,” said the Wolf, “why did you call me bad names this time last year?” “That cannot be,” said the Lamb; “I am only six months old.” “I don’t care,” snarled the Wolf; “if it was not you it was your father;” and with that he rushed upon the poor little Lamb and — WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA WARRA — ate her all up. But before she died she gasped out— “ANY EXCUSE WILL SERVE A TYRANT.”
Eric, You’re a subtle and strategic thinker. You wrote:
“That’s precisely why Iran’s pursuing a “deliberate ambiguity” policy poses (nearly) the same risks as an actual effort to develop a bomb. Iran should do neither.
Yes, it would upset Israel greatly if Iran should try that and succeed. But Israel, and its supporters in the US government, are very smart people, and I have no doubt they’ve got several contingency plans already in place to ensure that Iran doesn’t succeed in that effort.”
I’m a black-and-white kind of person. Yes, Israel and US would be upset; yes, Israel and US have contingency plans.
I disagree that US (especially) and Israel are as SMART as you indicate.
My larger grievance is why should Iran allow itself to be dominated by Israeli and US preferences and demands? Granted, weaponization is outside NPT; Iran is claiming it is NOT seeking weapons and US/Israel seek to deny Iran the right to enrich, which IS within NPT. From my perspective, Iran has the law on its side.
You wrote, [because ambiguity annoys Israel is] “precisely why Iran should not do it.”
What SHOULD Iran do? Iran has been questing for self-determination in relations with US (later in conflicts w/ Israel) since just after WWII; Petraeus and HR Clinton have declared that US will determine how states in the region will behave; the Parthemore Miller “game changing” document asserted that US strategy should be to reassert superpower dominance of the region.
Why should Iran accept US (Israeli) control over the Middle EAst, of which grand strategy accepting US dictates regarding nuclear posture is the key symbol?
What SHOULD Iran do?
We have the famous 2002 outburst the then by leader of Japan’s opposition Liberal Party, Ichiro Ozawa: “It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads. We have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads”
http://www.nci.org/02NCI/04/japan-articles.htm
I hope this comment is accepted with a link.
America talking/bargaining Japan out of such a decision is different from how the US would react to a politician from UAE making such a statement or the UAE making a decision to weaponize. The United States could laugh at UAE if it tried to make a statement such as this. Actually, in 2005 Iran could not have credibly made a statement such as this. In 2012 it will be. Not quite as credibly as Japan, but in a different class from either Iran in 2005 or UAE or Syria today.
Ozawa’s ability to make such a statement has strategic value for Japan, even if Japan never carries out the threat Ozawa made, which had been an implicit threat for years before Ozawa actually said it.
If such an option is meaningless, the US can ask Japan to turn over its stock of plutonium. Japan keeps its stock because the option has value to Japan.
@ James Canning
Re: Your post from April 17, 2010 at 6:58 pm
I agree with your post. What I am trying to say is that if we go back to the history of the creation of Israel (Palestine mandate and Balfour Declaration) and the fact that Israel was created and held in existence by the brute force and money of imperialst countries (mainly first the British and then USA), in my opinion, it can be seen that the major force which led to the creation of Israel and the problems in the middle east was the necesseities of the western capitalism and its dependence on oil (energy resources in general). If there has been a zionist lobby it is mainly the result of the imperialism. And again “in my opinion” (I agree with Prof. Chomsky here), Israel and Zionism have indeed served Western capitalism. This is especially true for the time from 1948 to early 1990’s.
Now of course it could be argued that eversince 1990’s Israel has started to become more and more of a problem for the West, or in other words Israeli interests have begun to harm EVEN the corporate America (nevermind the American people’s interests, it never served the interest of the people of USA to begin with). It has started to destabilize the puppet governments of US allies in this region and is doing more harm than service. But this is a relatively new development and even certain sections of the corporate US still argue that it serves “corporate America’s” interests.
But in my opinion, the policies pushed by the AIPAC not only harm “corporate America’s” interests, but also I highly doubt that they even serve the Zionist interests in the long run. But that is a separate issue.
Arnold,
“Do you think the United States, or slightly more realistically China, could stop Japan from weaponizing if Japan was to make the decision? It could only by pretty much flattening the country.”
I’ll have to give your post more thought tomorrow, because I can see already it’s very well thought out. But I can say right now that I don’t find this assumption quite so easy to accept. I think it would take the US about 30 seconds to talk Japan out of that decision. The US president would call up the Japanese Prime Minister and say: “You just sold your last Nintendo, Canon, Sony, Panasonic, Nikon, Olympus, Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Pentax, Kawasaki, etc., etc., etc. product in the US for a while. Give me a call in the morning if you change your mind. Oh, and by the way, we hear your friend China isn’t too happy about your decision either.”
That’s why I don’t think that aspiring merely to Japan’s status really can be what Iran’s officials mean by keeping their nuclear “options” open. Japan’s nuclear “options” are utterly meaningless. Nonetheless, since you say, convincingly, that both US and Iranian officials appear to have considered Japan’s nuclear options not to be as meaningless as I do, I’ll have to think about how that may have affected and affects their thinking. People naturally base their analysis on what they think is true.
Eric:
Do you think the United States, or slightly more realistically China, could stop Japan from weaponizing if Japan was to make the decision? It could only by pretty much flattening the country. We can disagree on this though, because we are talking about far-fetched scenarios. Nuclear weapons are stockpiled (and efforts made to achieve virtual nuclear status) for far-fetched scenarios though, not to actually use. The theoretical outcomes of far fetched scenarios have an impact on reality. For example, it was far-fetched that the US would use nuclear weapons to prevent Russian tanks from overtaking Germany. But that far-fetched possibility still impacted the outcome of the cold war.
The US’ goal has been to prevent Iran from gaining Japan’s capability or stature. When the US demanded that Iran stop enriching it was to prevent Iran from gaining a Japan option. More recently, the demand that Iran export enough uranium to have less than one ton domestically was aimed at preventing Iran from having a Japan-like option.
That was really the direction of US policy. Now you’re right that it was not something the US could accomplish, but the US very sincerely had that as a goal. I thought stupidly so for a long time, but interview after interview with US officials in the administration, outside of the administration the entire US proliferation foreign policy community has until the past few months been united in preventing Iran from achieving Japan’s stature as a goal.
Iran wanted to defeat US efforts to prevent Iran from becoming like Japan and if it has not yet fully succeeded, it is in a very good position now, because of large sacrifices many Iranians have made. I’m sure what Iran told Hillary and I’ve read other reports that are similar to other westerners, is that Iran will not accept a US insistence that it not be like Japan, that it instead be like UAE which does not have a Japan option.
My most important point is that it is not trivial and it is was not accepted by the US that Iran has a right to the same nuclear status as Japan or Brazil many countries do, but more countries do not. Iran did have to work for that specifically. Iran did have to reserve that “option”. If we agree on this, we agree on everything important.
A secondary point is that Japan does get benefits from its status that it would not have if making a weapon would be harder for Japan. In a real sense, whatever word you want to use for what Japan has, Hillary Leverett and I use “option” which is very common by people who look at the nuclear issue closely, but whatever word it does have value and is something Iran has made and will make sacrifices to get and keep.
Another thing about far-fetched scenarios. The outcome of far-fetched scenarios impacts how far fetched they are. It is far fetched today that the US would stage in Iraq the way it staged in Kuwait to invade Iraq in 2002. If the US implements severe sanctions that impacts Iran’s military capacity, then after a decade maybe it will be less far fetched. But if by then Iran will be able to build a weapon making an invasion still impossible, that makes the severe sanctions themselves less valuable, and less likely to occur.
Fiorangela,
“According to U of Penn political science professor Ian Lustick, the possibility that Iran may mimic Israel’s nuclear ambiguity is exactly what “drives Israelis crazy” (Lustick’s phrase).”
I understand that. That’s precisely why Iran’s pursuing a “deliberate ambiguity” policy poses (nearly) the same risks as an actual effort to develop a bomb. Iran should do neither.
Yes, it would upset Israel greatly if Iran should try that and succeed. But Israel, and its supporters in the US government, are very smart people, and I have no doubt they’ve got several contingency plans already in place to ensure that Iran doesn’t succeed in that effort. At least one of those plans undoubtedly involves dropping bombs on Iran, and several of the less drastic plans undoubtedly involve other forms of severe punishment designed to make Iran wish it hadn’t pursued that “deliberate ambiguity” policy.
James,
“Have you considered the possiblity, if not very considerable probability, that Iran sees itself as more secure if it does not develop nukes?”
Yes. And what you say makes perfect sense to me – to Iran’s leaders too, I hope.
What I worry about, based on Hillary’s report, is that at least the middle ranks of Iran’s government (let’s hope they rise no higher) include people who don’t agree that Khamenei’s stated (religious) reasons are sufficient for opposing nuclear weapons and therefore substitute their own half-baked ideas about preserving Iran’s nuclear “options.”
To the extent that Iran ultimately succeeds in building, fueling and operating nuclear power plants free of crippling sanctions or other Western interference, that won’t happen because some young US State Department lawyer comes running into her boss’ office one morning to announce “Oh my gosh – they’re right! The Non-Proliferation Treaty DOES give Iran the right to develop peaceful nuclear energy! How could we have missed this?” They know that already – lawyers are really good at reading treaties. It will happen because some cool heads persuades some hot heads that Iran really does want to develop its nuclear capabilities for peaceful purposes only, and so the US should take a tiny step of faith and see how it all works out. If Iran should mistakenly interpret that dim green light as the US’ humble acknowledgement of the unassailable logic of Iran’s position, and thereupon press its luck by conjuring up some clever “deliberate ambiguity” scheme or – worse yet, by actually developing a bomb – either of which will probably require some bobbing and weaving to loosen the short-leash restrictions that will have been imposed on Iran’s nuclear program, there’s a very good chance that the hot heads will soon tell the cool heads it’s time to end the experiment. That would not be good for Iran’s peaceful nuclear energy program, its economy, or the security of its people.
Of course, this scenario assumes a considerable degree of US influence over the pace of Iran’s nuclear power program. Maybe the US doesn’t really have that power. After all, consider how little trouble the US has caused so far. Maybe Iran stands little to gain by resisting the temptation to overplay its hand.
In Israel, a country stolen from the Palestinians, fanatics control the government. One of the fanatics is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Last week Netanyahu called for “crippling sanctions” against Iran.
The kind of blockade that Netanyahu wants qualifies as an act of war. Israel has long threatened to attack Iran on its own but prefers to draw in the US and NATO.
Why does Israel want to initiate a war between the United States and Iran?
Is Iran attacking other countries, bombing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure?
No. These are crimes committed by Israel and the US.
Is Iran evicting peoples from lands they have occupied for centuries and herding them into ghettoes?
No, that’s what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for 60 years.
What is Iran doing?
Iran is developing nuclear energy, which is its right as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran’s nuclear energy program is subject to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which consistently reports that its inspections find no diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.
The position taken by Israel, and by Israel’s puppet in Washington, is that Iran must not be allowed to have the rights as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that every other signatory has, because Iran might divert enriched uranium to a weapons program.
In other words, Israel and the US claim the right to abrogate Iran’s right to develop nuclear energy. The Israeli/US position has no basis in international law or in anything other than the arrogance of Israel and the United States.
The hypocrisy is extreme. Israel is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and developed its nuclear weapons illegally on the sly, with, as far as we know, US help.
As Israel is an illegal possessor of nuclear weapons and has a fanatical government that is capable of using them, crippling sanctions should be applied to Israel to force it to disarm.
Israel qualifies for crippling sanctions for another reason. It is an apartheid state, as former US President Jimmy Carter demonstrated in his book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.
The US led the imposition of sanctions against South Africa because of South Africa’s apartheid practices. The sanctions forced the white government to hand over political power to the black population. Israel practices a worse form of apartheid than did the white South African government. Yet, Israel maintains that it is “anti-Semitic” to criticize Israel for a practice that the world regards as abhorrent.
What remains of the Palestinian West Bank that has not been stolen by Israel consists of isolated ghettoes. Palestinians are cut off from hospitals, schools, their farms, and from one another. They cannot travel from one ghetto to another without Israeli permission enforced at checkpoints.
The Israeli government’s explanation for its gross violation of human rights comprises the greatest collection of lies in world history. No one, with the exception of American “Christian Zionists,” believes one word of it.
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/090830_sanctions.htm
Hyping Iranian threat while ignoring Israeli defiance
Iran is immeasurably more cooperative with the IAEA than Israel and has no nuclear weapons.
Unlike Iran, Israel has never permitted international inspections of its nuclear sites, and has consistently refused efforts to place its activities under international supervision.
Israel is also the most aggressive state in the region, having conducted military attacks on other countries at least four times since 2006. Iran, by comparison, has never attacked another country in modern history.
The New York Times’ treatment of Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs in recent months is a clear example of the systematic double standard the “paper of record” displays in international coverage (Extra!, 8/09).
Meanwhile, Israel’s longstanding refusal to cooperate in any way with international institutions seeking to monitor its actually existing nuclear weapons is absent from the pages of the New York Times.
James “Have you considered the possiblity, if not very considerable proabability, that Iran sees itself as more secure if it does not develop nukes? Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey all call for Israel to get rid of its nukes, and for support of Iranan’s domestic nuclear power programme.”
With Israel and the I lobby endlessly repeating unsubstantiated claims about an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program. And then watching what Iraq looks like next door and at what Israel has done in Lebanon the Gaza over the last several years.
One could understand why Iran might be just a bit worried
Eric Brill (responding to D Cooper)
“No, I can’t imagine it. Deliberate ambiguity is a luxury I don’t think Iran can afford right now. I nevertheless wonder whether that is what Hillary’s remark means. ”
According to U of Penn political science professor Ian Lustick, the possibility that Iran may mimic Israel’s nuclear ambiguity is exactly what “drives Israelis crazy” (Lustick’s phrase). http://www.edmaysproductions.net/webvideo/irannuke.wmv
Lustick is the second speaker, after Keith Weissman
Eric A. Brill,
Have you considered the possiblity, if not very considerable proabability, that Iran sees itself as more secure if it does not develop nukes? Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Turkey all call for Israel to get rid of its nukes, and for support of Iranan’s domestic nuclear power programme.
Arnold Evans,
Surely it is ludicrous to suggest the US would mass forces on the border of Iran, preparing for an invasion.
Even specific bombing attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities seems a stretch.
ARNOLD,
Thank you for such a thorough response.
I understand the Japan analogy. I thought it applied until I read Hillary’s report of what she’d been told by Iranian diplomats. Her report makes me wonder.
You give two different definitions of “option.” Under your simpler test, “a country that has in its domestic stock the material necessary to build a weapon has a weapon option.” Several countries already have the nuclear “option” under that definition, of course, including Japan and Iran. No need for Iranian diplomats to insist on that “option,” any more than I need to insist on my “option” to have two ears or a belly-button. It’s simply a statement of fact, not a right that needs to be insisted upon. For that reason, Hillary’s report that Iranian diplomats insist on Iran’s nuclear “option” suggests that “option” means something more to Iran.
I worry that it may mean what your second definition of “option” would require – that a country be able to deliver a nuclear bomb before another country (notably the US) can prevent it. That tougher test is implied by this sentence, in which you describe the enviable status Iran apparently would like to achieve with its nuclear “option:”
“If US troops were massing on Iran’s border, then by the time an invasion could be put into place and launched, Iran could build a nuclear weapon that it could use to make an invasion with acceptable US casualties impossible.”
Having a nuclear “option” under this definition obviously requires more than just a “domestic stock” of “material.” It requires (in addition to a delivery system, which Iran of course has), either (1) a nuclear bomb ready for use; or (2) a combination of HEU (or the ability to make HEU, very quickly) and the ability to weaponize that HEU (again, very quickly). Since the US probably wouldn’t mass troops on Iran’s border, but would instead send dozens of supersonic bombers to do the job, few if any countries would consider themselves to have a nuclear “option” under this definition unless they actually had a bomb ready for loading, but I’ll retain the second alternative since you mention that possibility in your sentence quoted above. Even so, despite what you suggest elsewhere in your post, I doubt that you or most other well-informed people believe (I certainly don’t) that Iran presently has a nuclear “option” under this definition.
Nor do I believe, and I suspect you don’t either, that Japan has a nuclear “option” under your second definition – the “option” that Iran apparently considers it important to have. That is why it strikes me that the Japan analogy is not valid. As you note, there has never been an “accusation that Japan has taken specific weaponization steps that are not justified by civilian applications.” Thus, when you say that Japan “has the option to weaponize its program if it chooses,” what you really mean is that Japan has the ability to weaponize its program if it chooses, and either (1) the US allows Japan to do so; or (2) Japan can do so without being detected.
Needless to say, the US will not allow Japan to “weaponize its program.” It probably would protest the moment Japan takes “specific weaponization steps that are not justified by civilian applications.” And the US, reasonably or not, appears to be confident that the current monitoring scheme is sufficient to detect any effort by Japan to take such steps. While Iran might complain that that monitoring scheme is unfairly looser for Japan than for Iran, the US undoubtedly would claim the differences are warranted: Iran insists on a great deal of in-country refinement capacity, while Japan does not, and, justifiably or not, the West believes it has other good reasons to trust Japan more than it trusts Iran.
If we properly describe Japan’s situation, as I believe I just did, and that is all Iran wants, I say fine. Until Hillary’s report made me wonder, that is all I understood Iran was aiming for. Though its approaches differ, the US’ (legitimate) objectives are the same for each of Japan and Iran:
1. To prohibit the country from taking “specific weaponization steps that are not justified by civilian applications.”
2. To ensure that no such steps are taken, so that the US can be confident that the country does not have a nuclear weapon.
(All this, of course, assumes that the US has the right to prevent other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons. I fully understand that many readers strongly disagree with that. Nonetheless, since I happen to think that preventing nuclear proliferation a worthy objective, I’m willing to go with the “might makes right” argument on this point.)
Japan has always appeared willing to accept these limits. Based on statements made many times by Khamenei, by Salehi in his Elizabeth Palmer interview, by Ahmadinejad, and by other Iranian officials over the years, I had understood that Iran is prepared to accept these limits too.
(ALAN, the Afrasiabi article you cited comes into the mix here:)
But if Iran’s objectives require that it step outside these limits, that it keep its nuclear activities “under the radar” until it is in a position either:
(1) to confront the US (and Israel, Pakistan and others) with a fait accompli (i.e. possession of the nuclear “option” under your stricter definition); or at least
(2) to achieve a “deliberate ambiguity” which it can leverage to accomplish some of what it might accomplish with an actual bomb, whether in its own self-interest to enhance its security, or nobly (in the shockingly naïve view of Kaveh Afrasiabi, in the article Alan cited) to blackmail other nuclear-weapons countries into giving up those weapons;
then Iran is aiming for substantially more than what Japan has been happy to accept.
Iran may be justified to ask that the US not always insist that Iran “prove a negative” every time someone claims to have overheard some locker-room conversation or to have found a laptop with bomb blueprints on the hard drive. But Iran should also be sensitive to the US’ understandable fear that allowing Iran to refine large amounts of uranium in-country, as Iran now demands the right to do (and as I would demand too, given the unreliability of foreign sources), effectively prevents the US from controlling the most easily monitored ingredient of a deliverable nuclear bomb – fuel (weaponization technology being harder to monitor, and delivery systems being practically off-limits because they are easily justified for other purposes). In any case, the US never knowingly will, and should not be expected to, agree to an inspection regime and other restrictions loose enough to permit Iran to achieve either a nuclear bomb or exploitable ambiguity. Iranian requests for such looseness would only fuel Western suspicions and probably lead to demands for even tighter restrictions.
Iran has a right to ask for whatever it is entitled to under the NPT to develop peaceful nuclear energy, and it can count on a great deal of support if it sticks to that – from the Turkish Foreign Minister, for a specific example, as the Leveretts’ piece notes, from guileless Iranians (apparently including Salehi) who believe Khamenei actually means what he says when he insists that Iran will never seek nuclear weapons, and from a very large number of highly educated and informed Westerners who resist the nearly incessant drumbeat in the US for war against Iran.
But if Iran overplays its hand in an effort to achieve more than what it needs to develop peaceful nuclear energy (i.e. a bomb or exploitable ambiguity), it will risk losing that invaluable support. I certainly can understand why Iran believes it would be nice to have a nuclear weapon, or at least to make other countries worry that it might have one. But striving for either result would be to put the safety of its own people at serious risk for objectives that will almost certainly never be attained and are not worth attaining even if they could be.
Pirouz_2,
The state-corporate linkage that does so much to drive the formulation and execution of foreign policy has in effect made a deal with the Zionist lobby. The “military-industrial” complex needs a plausible “enemy” to frighten the American public, so that insane levels of “defence” spending are continued year after year after year, even when there is no “threat” warranting much if not most of the so-called “defence” spending. Arab, and other Muslim, hatred of Israel for its oppression of the Palestinians is transferred to the American public – - at least in the thinking of that public. There has been a deliberate near-total penetration of the foriegn and defence policy making apparatus of the US, by elements of the Israel lobby.
Rehmat,
““Should the Iraqis ever cross-over Israeli border for aggression – I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die,” former US president Bill Clinton, speaking at Toronto Jewish Fund Raiser, July 30, 2002. Interestingly, young Clinton refused to fight for his own country during Vietnam War!”
Not to disagree generally with your points, or even your point about Bill Clinton in the hypothetical ditch at the Israel/Iraq border (though I didn’t know they had one), but I do think you’re unfair to suggest irony in your last sentence. The Vietnamese were not about to cross over the US border for aggression. Had they been, I have a strong hunch that Bill Clinton, along with many others who opposed that war, would have jumped into a ditch with his rifle.
@Pirouz_2
“Actually according to BBC he was indeed her fiance:”
The source I linked is a reporter who knows the guy and says something different.
Eric Brill:
The way I’ve come across the term “option” used, is indeed that a country that has in its domestic stock the material necessary to build a weapon has a weapon option. For example, the classic example is Japan. I’m not sure there is an accusation that Japan has taken specific weaponization steps that are not justified by civilian applications, but it is very widely, in fact universally by people who are informed on nuclear issues, accepted that Japan has the option to weaponize its program if it chooses.
Other countries with options include Brazil, Canada and probably, depending on how the requirements one supposes apply to building a weapon, one or two dozen other countries.
Countries with options did not include Iran in 2006. The US and Israel in 2006 were sure Iran did not have a weapon because Iran did not have enough fissile material to make one, and the US was about as sure of that as it ever can be. Unless Iran had successfully smuggled essentially an entire weapon from abroad, it did not have a weapon.
Today, Iran as a practical matter does have that option. If US troops were massing on Iran’s border, then by the time an invasion could be put into place and launched Iran could build a nuclear weapon that it could use to make an invasion with acceptable US casualties impossible.
Interestingly, because Iran has that option, Iran is much more sure than it was in 2006 that the US is not going to bother mass troops on its border. Having the option gives benefits even to a country that honestly does not intend or permit building a weapon. US planners would not allocate hundreds of thousands of ground troops to bases bordering Iran based on nothing more solid than an expectation that Iran will not change its mind.
To determine if a country has an option to make a weapon, you ask what would the country do if it decided it needs one. Leaving Iran aside, Syria would have to get a stock of raw fissile material and then build the plants necessary to convert this fissile material into a weapon. This process would take a matter of years and would be detectable and to some degree preventable by countries that oppose the effort. Syria does not have a nuclear capability today.
If Iran wanted a weapon, it already has a stock of enriched fuel and the technology within its borders to build one. The United States opposes this, and earlier wanted Iran to stop working to gain the technology needed to build a bomb. Now the United States is attempting to pressure Iran to reduce its stock of uranium below what it would need if it wanted to build a weapon.
Unless Iran complies with US demands, and to a lesser degree even if Iran does comply with these demands, Iran would be able to produce a weapon relatively quickly in any plausible scenario. Iran today, in any plausible scenario, does have a weapons option.
I’m pretty sure the Iranians told Hillary and Flynn Leverett as well as other Western visitors, off the record, that Iran intends to be more like Japan and less like Syria – I’m sure they did not use that exact statement, but that is what they meant and what Hillary understood them to mean.
Iran’s Parliament speaker Larijani recently said in Japan that Iran intends to join Japan among the ranks of countries that could build a nuclear weapon but do not. So this is now an openly held position.
Mohammad – The Iranians are not weak in communication but in distorting the facts. The mainstream media in the US is not controlled by the American patriots but the pro-Israel Lobby groups which distort and scared the hell out of the westerners in the interests of Israel.
Here are a few examples:
“I am sorry, gentlemen, but I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious to see the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents,” – Harry Truman’s response to US diplomates, who advised him not to recognize State of Israel, November 10, 1945.
“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the world – no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and vote of majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of small group of dominant people,” – President Woodrow Wilson.
“Should the Iraqis ever cross-over Israeli border for aggression – I would personally get in a ditch, grab a rifle, and fight and die,” former US president Bill Clinton, speaking at Toronto Jewish Fund Raiser, July 30, 2002. Interestingly, young Clinton refused to fight for his own country during Vietnam War!
“The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particlar, is the Jewish Century,” – Professor Uri Slezkine (University of California, Berkeley – a Russian Jew – in book ‘The Jewish Century’.
“Obama asks Shimon Peres: What can I do for Israel,” – Israel daily Ha’aretz, November 17, 2008.
http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2008/12/07/who-rules-the-west/
Eric – this piece is interesting, and may give a few clues about Iranian views or strategy regarding the “option”.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL24Ak02.html
@b
Actually according to BBC he was indeed her fiance:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/2010/03/100324_makan_neda_israel.shtml
Her mother clearly says that they were engaged to be married and had Neda not been killed they would have been married.
A bit OT
Ms. Agha Soltan’s “fiance”, Caspian Makan, mentioned by Pirouz_2 below, was neither her fiance, nor is he telling the truth on other issues.
Setting the record straight on Caspian Makan
http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/afghanistan/100404/caspian-makan
Dan,
“Can you imagine if Iran had a policy of deliberate ambiguity on its nuclear programme?”
No, I can’t imagine it. Deliberate ambiguity is a luxury I don’t think Iran can afford right now. I nevertheless wonder whether that is what Hillary’s remark means.
Cyrus,
“Beyond that, any country with civilian nuclear knowhow can be similarly accused of seeking such options.”
Every country with “civilian nuclear knowhow” inevitably learns some things that could help it to make a nuclear bomb. That’s an unavoidable risk that we’ve agreed to accept under arrangements such as the NPT. But if wanting a nuclear “option” means nothing more than that, why would Iran even mention it to Hillary? That’s like saying “I want the option to have two ears.”
As Hillary used “option,” it appears to mean the right to take steps toward developing a nuclear bomb beyond those a country inevitably takes as it develops peaceful nuclear energy. If that’s what Iran wants the “option” to do, I understand that desire, but I don’t agree that Iran should have that “option.” What concerns me most about Hillary’s remark is that I thought the Iranian government at least claimed to agree with me on that.
Countries who seek “options” to build nukes don’t offer to run their nuclear programs as equal joint ventures with other countries. Beyond that, any country with civilian nuclear knowhow can be similarly accused of seeking such options. According to the IAEA currently about 40 countries have this theoretical option already.
No Obama pressure on Israel over nuclear ambiguity:
US President Barack Obama, during this week’s nuclear summit, put no pressure on Israel to shift away from its policy of deliberate ambiguity on its atomic programme, a minister said on Wednesday.
Can you imagine if Iran had a policy of deliberate ambiguity on its nuclear programme?
Foreign military experts believe Israel has an arsenal of several hundred nuclear warheads, but Israel has never publicly acknowledged having atomic weapons, maintaining a policy of deliberate ambiguity since it inaugurated its Dimona nuclear reactor in 1965.
In 1969, Israeli leaders undertook not to make any statement on their country’s nuclear potential or carry out any nuclear test, while Washington agreed to refrain from exerting pressure on the issue.
Like nuclear-armed countries India, Pakistan and North Korea, Israel is not party to the NPT in order to avoid international inspections.
However, no sanctions or pressure is exerted on Israel.
Hypocrisy and double standard is almost impossible to stomach.
@Eric A. Brill:
And I agree with you 100%. Also I believe that Iran (or to say the least the dominant forces in their administration mechanism) does NOT intend to cross that “line” so to speak. Thats what I meant by the word “option”: having the knowledge and the ability without actually crossing the line to actually making the warhead or even to stockpile highly enriched Uranium.
But then again it is Ms. Leverett who should clarify what she thinks Iranians want.
I know for a fact that Mr. ElBaradei also thinks that they want the option without actually wanting to cross the line. There are a few interviews that he has given and has explained his view on this issue.
Pirouz,
Maybe “option” needs some clarifying. It’s inevitable that Iran’s pursuit of peaceful nuclear energy will result in its scientists learning quite a bit that would be useful in building a bomb. But a lot of what it takes to build a bomb requires focused efforts that are NOT required merely to develop peaceful nuclear energy.
I fully understand why Iran would want to make that special effort — it doesn’t live in a quiet neighborhood — but I nevertheless think that many Westerners who otherwise support Iran feel that it should stop short of crossing that line. So if “option” means crossing that line, as distinguished from merely picking up some useful information in the course of developing peaceful nuclear energy, then I think I understand what Hillary meant but I can’t say I think it’s in Iran’s best interests to cross that line.
@Eric A. Brill:
For whatever my opinion is worth:
I do believe that the Iranians want the “option”. But not quite because they are worried about their neighbours. Iran has several motivations for its nuclear program all of which are valid reasons but none of them is to deter or to scare our neighbours. The most impostant motivation (IMO) for their nuclear program is SECURITY and is related directly to USA/Israel.
This absolutely does not mean that they want to produce atomic warheads; that would create unpleasent consequences for them (not in the least that S. Arabia may want to go down the same road), but they DO WANT THE OPTION, so that if push comes to shove they can always know that their back is not against the wall and they have the “ability”.
Furthermore I sort of agree with them on this point.
To All,
I would appreciate someone — ideally Hillary Leverett — clearing up something that’s been bothering me since I read the transcript of the Leveretts’ Charlie Rose interview, in which Hillary emphasized her understanding that Iran wants the “option” to produce nuclear weapons. This came to mind again when Ali Akbar Salehi confirmed in his interview by Elizabeth Palmer (linked in this article) that Iran does not seek nuclear weapons because Islam prohibits them, and said that he would be shocked and opposed if that policy should ever change.
If Iran indeed wants the “option,” then Iran wants the “option,” and there’s no point in anyone claiming it doesn’t. But my understanding is that Iran has always denied, very firmly, that it seeks, or will ever seek, nuclear weapons. No one has to take Iran’s word for that, of course, but it nevertheless would concern me greatly to learn that mid-level government officials, several years ago, left Hillary with the impression that Iran doesn’t really mean what it says about this.
I’ve quoted quite a lot from Hillary’s interview below because the context may help others to interpret and explain what she meant. Her remarks toward the end may mean that Iran wants the nuclear-weapons “option” merely for the same reason that Saddam Hussein initially resisted intrusive inspections in 2002: to keep his neighbors guessing about Iraq’s military capabilities. But that interpretation is not clear to me from Hillary’s remarks. If that is what she meant, I don’t think it was either necessary or useful for those Iranian negotiators to tell her that: Iran’s neighbors would be “guessing” regardless of what Iran says, and obviously it undercuts Iran’s “no nukes for us” claim if its own government officials are suggesting something quite different to their US counterparts. (And look where it got Saddam Hussein to try to balance those two objectives.)
Am I just misinterpreting what Hillary told Charlie Rose? Even if I am, I’m somewhere north of 99.9% sure that many other viewers of that interview interpreted it the same way.
I’d appreciate someone clearing this up for me.
ELIZABETH PALMER INTERVIEW OF ALI AKBAR SALEHI:
Palmer: Let me ask you, if the [Iranian] policy [not to develop nuclear weapons] changed and suddenly a directive came down that said ‘Dr. Salehi, we would like your agency to work on weaponization’, what would you personally do?
Salehi: Personally? Of course I wouldn’t accept it.
Palmer: You wouldn’t?
Salehi: Of course. Because this is against my religion. And this is what my Supreme Leader has said. The Supreme Leader is not only a political leader. He is a religious leader as well. How can he change his words so easily?
CHARLIE ROSE INTERVIEW OF LEVERETTS:
Charlie Rose: Do you believe that [Ahmadinejad] and his government wants nuclear weapons or the ability to make them?
Hillary Mann Leverett: The option.
Charlie Rose: The option?
Hillary Mann Leverett: Absolutely, the option.
Charlie Rose: You believe they want the option?
Hillary Mann Leverett: I believe they want the option. I spent two years negotiating with Iranian officials over Afghanistan and Al Qaeda. Everything that they told me then and in the track two diplomacy I’ve had with Iranian officials since then, including early on with someone who was part of the Revolutionary Guard, their national security calculus is Iran is surrounded by 15 hostile countries. It’s not just Israel with nuclear weapons, it’s Pakistan with nuclear weapons. There’s not a strategic ally among the 15 neighbors.
Charlie Rose: They say we want the option to have nuclear weapons, yes, we want nuclear technology, yes, we want the option to have nuclear weapons because Israel and Pakistan have nuclear weapons and we’re surrounded by hostile powers who want to challenge our influence in the region. Why don’t they say that?
Hillary Mann Leverett: I think what they focus on is their obligations under the NPT. And that’s what they see as their public obligation. But I think very few Americans have had the chance to sit with them in negotiations or privately to really discuss and ask them, without judging, what are your national security interests? What are your imperatives? What are your weaknesses? They’re not going to get up there on television and say “We have no conventional military power to project force.” They’re not going to do that. But it’s because Americans have had so little contact over the 30 years that they don’t hear these arguments.
@James Canning:
On the issue of Israeli lobby I agree better with Prof. Chomsky:
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-israel-lobby-by-noam-chomsky
I have utmost respect for all people who emphesize about the importance of the Israeli lobby (and I do agree that the Israeli lobby is very powerful and effective) but I think Prof. Chomsky’s approach is more realistic.
Pirouz_2,
Regarding the non-existent Iraqi WMD, I think Cheney was fairly sure Iraq had none, but he told G W Bush that Iraq in fact did have WMD. Bush is well-known for remarkable ignorance, and lack of interest in pursuing information he had a duty to acquire. In other words, I believe Bush was a dupe of Cheney and other warmongers, and that the invasion of Iraq was not delayed to allow more weapons inspections because the war party were afraid the truth would become all too apparent: that Iraq posed no threat to the US or the UK, and thus from the UK attorney general’s standpoint, it was illegal.
Pirouz_2,
Most reasonably well-informed Americans I talk to, with substantial experience in business affairs globally, would prefer normal relations with Iran. I think it is a serious mistake to believe corporate interests are driving the foolish US effort to isolate Iran. From what I can ascertain, the driving force in American policy-making emanates from the Zionist lobby and its extensive network of fellow travellers.
@Mohammad:
I am afraid I disagree with you on the importance of “misunderstanding”. I don’t think that there is any significant misunderstanding between the Iranian and US officials. Misunderstanding between people of Iran and US people maybe, but misunderstanding between US officials and Iranian officials no.
Howcome Leveretts don’t misunderstand Mr. Salehi? Does he speak English with an accent which is clear only to Leveretts??
What is next? Perhaps the invasion of Iraq was a matter of misunderstanding and lack of PR too? And perhaps G.W. Bush and D. Cheney honestly thought that Saddam had WMDs??
American people maybe affected by PR, but American statesmen never. As a matter of fact they are the ones who prepetrate the PR!!
I sort of agree with Mr. Zarrabi on this particular point. I don’t think that US really is worried about Iranians “wiping Israel off the map” or causing a nuclear holocaust on innocent (!!!) and defenseless (!!!) Israelis. Furthermore they know perfectly well that Iran is not a threat to the peace and security in this region, it is just that they see Iranian policies as an important obstacle to their aspirations.
A lot of people here keep talking Israeli interests conflicting with the US interests. I think there should be a distinction here between US people’s interests and corporate US interests. While it is true beyond any arguement that the Zionist’s agenda is against American people’s interests, the same cannot be as easily argued about a conflict between the Zionist interests and corporate America’s interests.
By the way I don’t think that there was a problem of PR related to the election issue either:
1) US has spent some ~400 million dollars to destablize Iran. This is not a matter of “paranoia” or “misunderstanding”. This money has obviously not evaporated into thin air, and unless you think that it has ended up in Ahmadinejad’s campaign, then it must some how have helped the so called “green movement” (By the way I have always wondered if this name “green” is inspired by “greenback”??? ).
2)The fact that there is a $500,000 “Milton Friedman” prize for Mr. Akbar Ganji or the fact that green slogans such as: “Death to Palestine!”, “Neither to Ghazza nor to Lebanon my life is dedicated to Iran!”, “Death to Russia!”, “Death to China” were being chanted on our streets by the greens and the downright filthy lies that reformist newspapers say about people such as Chavez or their wilful mispresentations of the facts going on in Lebanon and Palestine (and in L. America), makes you wonder WHY?? Whenever I see a big lie by news papers I always wonder what financial incentives did they have? Big lies are not a final proof to the editors having been bought but they do rise a big suspicion!!
3)It is not a matter of misunderstanding when Ms. Clinton says clearly that behind the scenes there were a lot of support going from US to the Green movement.
4)It is not a misunderstanding that Mr. Ali Afshari is an NED Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow. Nor is it a misunderstanding that Ms. Agha Soltan’s fiance goes to Israel to shake hands with Peres.
Mohammad,
“Iranian officials are very weak in communicating their position, and the US uses that weakness to present the world with its own version of the affairs.”
I certainly agree with this. Ms. Palmer did not show herself to be a formidable interviewer, and yet a fairly high Iranian official (Salehi) had a tough time with some of her questions — questions that any second-rate American PR adviser could have coached him through in about an hour or two of preparation.
I’ve noticed this in Iran’s public presentations on other subjects. It makes one wince at times. It would be money well spent for Iran to hire some good Western-savvy PR people. I wish that the plain old unvarnished truth were sufficient, but Iran does need to consider its audience.
Mohammed,
Important point. Before the US/UK invasion of Iraq, the CIA tracked down dozens of family members of Iraqis known to have worked in Iraq’s weapons programmes. All of them confirmed Iraq had destroyed its WMD back in the 1990s. Most if not all were astonished, and alarmed, that this fact was not known to the CIA!
Dick Cheney took the trouble to go to CIA headquarters in Langley, to ensure that substantial evidence Iraq posed no threat to the US or the UK, was kept out of the White House in the months before the invasion. Cheney knew he had a moron serving as his president, but he feared that if Bush knew the truth, he might not back the insane war.
Bravo! The shameless lying by US officials, and in fact major newspapers and other media, is dangerous and worthy of the deepest contempt. Time and again, Iran says it is open to a deal, and zero response from US officials. Are they all stooges of the Israeli militarists?
Arnold, as ialways, your grasp of events is highly logical. However, there are critical elements of conjecture involved in your line of reasoning. We just can’t know, and that’s frustrating.
Regarding Iran PR, keep in mind who their primary audience is. For their political base and the Arab street, they don’t do too badly. In fact, in certain cases, they do rather well.
In terms of Western audience, it’s my opinion they simply don’t give a damn. They figure they can’t win against the huge Western media concerns, that are far better resourced and experienced at these kinds of things, so instead they focus on the audience that matters to them most. And popular polls in the Islamic ME reflect the fact they achieve a level of success.
@Fiorangela
You’re exactly to the point. It is very disappointing that Iranian officials’ lack of PR skills is so defining in the nuclear issue (as well as other issues, e.g. human rights, Palestine-Israel conflict, Green Movement, Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts etc.). It has resulted in a very deep misunderstanding between people in Iran and people in US. Iranian intentions, values and positions are poorly understood outside of Iran, and even among opposition Iranians who are more affected by the Western media. The fact that in the US there has even been a serious debate on such a weird subject as ‘whether Iranian decision-makers are rational and not driven by apocalyptic intentions’ speaks volumes. We Iranians are often amazed of such irrelevant Western perspectives (which seem to come out of intelligent, serious people) on Iran.
Another example was the ‘Israel should be wiped off the map’ misinterpretation. The current topic is another example; the US claims that Iran rejected the ‘generous’ swap offer, a ridiculous claim which even doesn’t get [widely] disputed in the US because most people are ignorant of Iran’s position. Such behavior on the part of US fuels misconceptions in Iran too; the popular impression that America is ‘totally run by arrogant Zionists’ and that ‘American politicians are inherently not sincere’ is reinforced, and a vicious cycle of misunderstanding begins (as it has been the case in the last 31 years).
I think this phenomenon is in most part because of a lack of communication skills on part of Iranians, esp. Iranian officials. We have yet to understand the value and impact of clear, uninterpretable messages, which as you implied, may be a result of our poetic literature and the fact that concise, vague expressions which can be interpreted in different ways are even valued in the Persian culture.
I hypothesize that even the post-election crisis was partly because of a clear lack of PR skills by the officials, who didn’t know how to convince the protesting crowds that no widespread fraud had happened (which seems to be the case) and when the protesters weren’t convinced, the officials felt that there was a ‘plot to overthrow the IRI’ since they thought that ‘We know that we haven’t done a fraud, so why are these people protesting? There must be another explanation…’. They didn’t understand the constructive power of clear communication and the destructive power of misunderstanding. They think that destructive power comes only from foreign plots (Heck, even Shah used to talk about a British/Soviet plot when describing the 1979 revolution). That lack of knowledge proved disastrous.
Alan, there is a dynamic of the ground shifting in Iran’s favor as this dispute continues. A deal Iran would have accepted eagerly four years ago, it may be ambivalent about today.
Obama says he hopes stronger sanctions, applied unilaterally after a blanket new UNSC resolution has been imposed, may reverse this dynamic. That is very, very doubtful. Sanctions can increase hostility between Iran and the United States, but they do not stop Iran’s LEU stock from growing or progress from being made on Arak.
What sanctions actually do is present an Iran a few years from now that is more hostile than it would have been, and still with more options in its nuclear program. On the other hand, Obama really feels like he made concessions to Iran, that Iran’s right to enrich will be acknowledged.
Iran also feels like it really was ready to make a major concession to the US, in limiting its LEU stock at a level substantially lower than what Iran has already accomplished. Until US demonstrations of bad faith became intolerable and overwhelming.
Anyway, the US is now militarily deterred, and if the situation evolves along its present lines, by the time the US is no longer vulnerable in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran will have a credible nuclear weapons option, which would mean the US would be permanently militarily deterred from directly intervening in Iran.
This is shaping into a real cold war, complete with proxy conflicts and an avoidance of direct intervention by both major parties. This cold war will ultimately end with a resolution of the Israel issue that is the only real basis of dispute between the US and Iran. Until the entire region feels that the issue has been decided in a way consistent with principles of justice, the costs imposed on the US will only continue to increase as years go by.
Lastly, the current US plan to coerce the Palestinians, under pain of Gaza-like starvation, to accept a “state” with limited sovereignty would not be seen as consistent with justice in the region, would not resolve the dispute, would not end the cold war with Iran and would not reduce the costs Israel forces the US to bear on its behalf.
Why won’t the Obama Administration take this deal? VERY SIMPLE. The entire swap deal was pretextual. It was intended to be refused, so as to paint the Iranians as the “intransigent” party who refused “engagement”, thus justifying a further deliberate escalation. The entire nuclear issue is pretextual. It could have been resolved long ago, condsidering Iran’s many compromise proposals to place additional restrictions on their nuclear program well beyond the requirements of the NPT which would have addressed any real concerns about weapons proliferation. Those offers were simply ignored, and the swap deal will be allowed to die off, precisely because the US needs to keep the nuclear issue alive as a pretext. This is all part of Dennis Ross’ strategy of making a war more palatable to the public by pretending that diplomatic efforts had failed, when in fact there were no real diplomatic efforts.
Mohammed, you make an important point:
“Iranian officials are very weak in communicating their position, and the US uses that weakness to present the world with its own version of the affairs.”
I observe that Iranians talk and think in poetic forms rather than styles calculated to sell or persuade or confuse; Iranians use parables more and talking points less.
As well, Iranians are not fluid in speaking and writing English; facility in foreign languages has been the point of entry for foreign nationals to gain influence in diverse countries and cultures.
On the other hand, I’ve not heard any American leader speak a word of Farsi.
This situation presents a tremendous opportunity for Americans and Iranians to engage in cultural exchange, to learn each other’s language and habits of mind. It’s a lot cheaper than missiles and bombs; it’s creative and constructive, not ugly-making and destructive.
This morning, Ohio Rep. Sherrod Brown was a guest on C Span. He discussed, among other things, that the US has not solved its problem of disposal of nuclear waste. Surely Iran has investigated that problem. How much trust could be built by US and Iran sharing best practices to mutual benefit rather than one attempting to dominate and destroy the other.
Great post. It’s a very interesting interview too.
This strikes me as the key:
“Third, Salehi notes that it is not incumbent solely on Iran to “create trust”—that the United States “can create trust by making the fuel swap and then return to negotiations without any conditions, without any prior conditions on equal par.””
This seems to imply a successful TRR deal, for Iran, is linked to the dropping of sanctions, because the sanctions are based on the UNSC resolutions demanding Iran cease enrichment (i.e. a precondition). So, to get the outcome we all want, the TRR deal is going to need to encompass something that addresses the sanctions drive.
Arnold – really interesting points. Of course, Iran originally offered to limit the amount of LEU accummulated as part of their negotiations with the EU3. If that is forming part of the current negotiation, it would need to be a calculation based on the annual fuel requirement for power plants, rather than the amount required for a bomb. That would leave an element of ambiguity of course, but it would be entirely consistent with a fuel-only program without denying Iran any rights.
Iranian officials are very weak in communicating their position, and the US uses that weakness to present the world with its own version of the affairs.
And this:
http://www.raceforiran.com/is-the-u-s-%e2%80%98offer%e2%80%99-to-iran-on-medical-isotopes-a-pretext-for-more-coercive-action
Perhaps one of the most important pieces yet produced by the Leveretts.
One point that could have been added and that the Leveretts had written about earlier is the issue of medical isotopes. The US offer to provide “inexpensive” medical isotopes, was rightly interpreted by Iranians that they would not be getting fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor once the Islamic Republic handed over the 1,000 kilos of 3.5 percent enriched uranium. Otherwise, if they were honestly planning to give Iran fuel for the TRR, why would Iran need to import medical isotopes?
I think we should read this previous piece again:
http://www.raceforiran.com/has-iran-spurned-a-serious-or-cynical-u-s-offer-regarding-its-nuclear-program
The United States insists that it made a good deal, and hints strongly that there are non-public aspects of the deal that make it better for Iran than is obvious. What we see often is that high-level administration military or nuclear officials speak tell reporters that there was a good deal offered, but there are never specifics about what makes the deal good.
Piecing together statements that have been made, along with speculation based on known western red lines, what was offered was something like this:
Iran would export its uranium, get its LEU stock to a level acceptable to the US – and commit to keeping its uranium stock at around that level for the duration of negotiations – using the pretext of Iran contributing to an international fuel bank at some point.
Iran would get short term fuel supplies to prevent the plant from having to actually shut down, and would get a long term fuel supply after Iran has demonstrated for a year that it is willing to hold its LEU stock at a level acceptable to the US.
Iran would also get everything the US has offered in the past conditional on a suspension, for example, airplane parts, and the US would add that it would upgrade the TRR.
The key of the issue is that the US agrees to allow Iranian enrichment, Iran agrees to keep its domestic stock at a limited level. Israel was not happy with this deal, because Iran would still be in a substantial sense nuclear capable, but the US would not give Israel any option other than to accept it.
An up-front swap would break this deal because Iran could then rebuild its LEU stock to its current level or above.
Maybe this is what has been going on.
In an important sense, it represents a larger concession from Iran than George Bush asked. Bush asked for a suspension for the duration of talks, Obama asks for no suspension, but for Iran to keep its stock, for the duration of negotiations and permanently as an outcome of negotiations, at a level substantially smaller than Iran’s current stock.
Would the US go back on a deal like this once Iran exports its uranium? The US has an ongoing need from Iran, that Iran keep its stock at a low level. Iran would have some leverage. The US would rather Iran keep its stock at a low level permanently than just have a one time decrease in its stock.
Is it a good deal for Iran? It was designed to be borderline, a deal that some Iranians would accept and others reject. The alternative for Iran is a stock of LEU capable of making multiple weapons instead of less than one. Then situations such as the Balochistan bombing, the attack on the nuclear scientist in December, the probable US support for the Green revolution – support Clinton publicly said the US was giving a lot of behind the scenes have made Iran less willing to make concessions to the US than it was in the beginning of October.
Five years from now, Iran will be in a position to start Arak which will give Iran a path to plutonium, it will also have enough uranium, I’d guess in different locations, for multiple weapons. Negotiations starting then may see the US forced to accept more than the US has come to accept now.
The TRR deal was part of a larger deal. I’m very sure about that, even though I’m just guessing about what the details of the larger deal would have been. Nobody has leaked the rest.
Outstanding post.
I’ve been asking the very same question: “Can the US administration take yes for an answer.”
It defies logic. Why can’t the swap take place in Iran? What is the reason? That Iran would use the time to trick the US, remove the LEU from IAEA control and build a bomb before the swap takes place? That is utterly absurd. What other reason could there possibly be for the US not accepting the deal?
Again, we’re looking at a situation where the US is living up to its name as “the world arrogance.”