On Monday, a deal reportedly was reached with Iran to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, to restart a long-stalled investigation into Tehran’s secret work on developing nuclear weapons.
The news came directly from IAEA chief Yukiya Amano, who returned from Tehran on Tuesday following a rare visit in which he held talks with Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of Iran’s nuclear energy agency, and Saeed Jalili, the Islamic Republic’s top nuclear negotiator. According to Amano, during his “intensive” and “useful” meetings “a decision was made to conclude and sign [an] agreement” to give the IAEA access to Iranian nuclear sites, scientists and documents to restart its probe. Amano further stated that the development represents a significant turning point in the heated dispute over Iran’s nuclear intentions and sets the stage for constructive negotiations between Iran and the P5+1—the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany—set to resume tomorrow in Baghdad.
Nevertheless, the purported “concession” by Iran has raised significant concern in Israel over the probability that Iranian negotiators will argue in Baghdad that the onus now falls on the West to show flexibility by tempering its demands. It is no secret that Iran hopes progress with the IAEA will boost its chances in persuading the U.S. and Europe to roll back sanctions that have hit Iran’s oil exports and blacklisted the country from international banking networks.
Accordingly, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday reiterated his warning against compromising with Iran. At a conference in Jerusalem Netanyahu affirmed:
“In recent weeks, I have heard those who have cast doubt on Iran’s intentions.… It would be interesting to hear what they think of the Iranian Chief-of-Staff’s remarks [on Sunday]: ‘Iran is committed to the complete destruction of Israel.…’
“Iran’s goals are clear. It wants to annihilate Israel and is developing nuclear weapons to realize this goal.… Against this malicious intention, the world’s leading countries must show determination, not weakness. They do not need to make concessions to Iran. They need to set clear and unequivocal demands before it: Iran must halt all enrichment of nuclear material; it must remove from its territory all nuclear material that has been enriched up until now; and it must dismantle the underground nuclear facility in Qom.
“Only thus will it be possible to ensure that Iran will not have a nuclear bomb. This is Israel’s position; it has not changed and it will not change.”—Charles Bybelezer, Publications Chairman, CIJR
RENEWED IRANIAN CALLS FOR ISRAEL’S ‘ANNIHILATION’
Arnold Ahlert
FrontPage, May 22, 2012
Monday, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Yukiya Amano met with Fereidoun Abbasi-Davani, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), in an initial conference over Iran’s nuclear program. The Iranian Fars News Agency said the meeting represented the “eagerness” of the UN to “further develop cooperation with Iran in various areas of nuclear applications,” and it is clear the rosiness of the state media’s characterization is not without good reason. For, while the West is banking everything on an appeasement strategy with Iran, the Islamic Republic is busy broadcasting to the world its Hitlerian intentions to annihilate Israel, daring the international community to bat an eyelash.
Renewed talks with Iran come on the heels of a speech delivered Sunday by Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, Iran’s military chief of staff, in which he called for the “full annihilation of Israel.” Like every other Iranian pronouncement revealing the murderous nature of the current regime, it will likely be brushed aside when negotiations between Iran and P5+1, (the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany), begin in Baghdad tomorrow.
Amano’s rare trip to Iran marks the fourth meeting between the IAEA and Tehran. Two rounds of talks took place in Tehran in January and February this year, followed by a third round in Vienna on May 14-15. Yet despite reports of a more “upbeat atmosphere” both last week and yesterday, a large degree of genuine substance apparently remains beyond reach. “We have extensive activities in fighting cancer, food safety and security, supplying water needs and other applications of the nuclear technology,” Amano said. In other words, there was no indication of progress regarding the principal disagreement between the IAEA and Iran, namely a deal allowing the IAEA to inspect Iranian nuclear sites, most specifically the Parchin research facility, where IAEA inspectors were refused entry as recently as February.… [Furthermore], when Amano was asked if some sort of framework had been found that would answer questions about Iranian intentions, he declined to get specific. “I will not go into details but the agency has some viewpoints and Iran has its own specific viewpoints,” he said.
One of those “specific Iranian viewpoints” was revealed by Major General Hassan Firouzabadi.… “The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel,” he said in a speech to a defense gathering in Tehran. Firouzabadi further insisted that the world should recognize the dangers imposed by the Zionist regime of Israel, and reiterated the idea that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei considers defending “Palestine” a religious imperative. Earlier this year, Khamenei himself promised to “support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world,” [saying]…“The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that…definitely will be cut off.”
Iranian apologists have long insisted that remarks such as the ones made by Khamenei and/or Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been misquoted, misunderstood, or mis-translated and that the Iranians have never actually called for Israel’s destruction.… [In fact], the capacity for diplomatic self-delusion has a long and tattered track record, ranging from British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 declaration that he had achieved “peace in our time” prior to the Nazi’s march through Europe and their extermination of six million Jews, up through the Agreed Framework of 1994, in which former president Bill Clinton and his North Korea negotiator, Jimmy Carter, convinced themselves the Hermit Kingdom had abandoned its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Thus, when Yukiya Amano [is] quoted as saying that his meeting with Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili heralded a “good atmosphere” for the Baghdad gathering on Wednesday, it must be measured against an INRA report that Jalili referred to Washington as “Hiroshima culprits” who continue to produce and stockpile nuclear weapons, and as such cannot lead the global nonproliferation campaign. Add a withering analysis by Mehdi Mohammadi, domestic political analyst and contributor to the [pro-Khamenei] newspaper group Kayhan, detailing why the West is negotiating from a position of weakness, and it seems clear that nothing substantive is likely to come from the latest round of diplomacy save one sobering reality: an apocalyptic regime led by men who believe it is their religious duty to usher in the second coming of the Hidden Imam will not be deterred from its “sacred” mission.
It is a sacred mission which necessitates acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet for Western appeasers who, via the IAEA, have been negotiating with Iran for nine years, there is always room for another round of talks. It is a tragic irony they are incapable of holding the likes of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, and other members of this despicable regime to account.
DEFINING WEAPONIZATION DOWN: WHY WE SHOULD BE WARY
OF ‘SUCCESSFUL’ NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN
Amitai Etzioni
New Republic, May 22, 2012
With the next round of nuclear negotiations with Iran set to begin on Wednesday, commentators are increasingly suggesting that the prospects for their success are high. There has, however, been an alarming lack of discussion about the fact that Washington has been in the habit of constantly shifting its definition of what a “successful” outcome would consist of.
Over the course of the Iranian nuclear crisis—across the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama—one goal has remained consistent: that Iran not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. “They’ve declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people,” President Bush said in 2008. “And that’s unacceptable to the United States, and it’s unacceptable to the world.” For his part, Barack Obama announced in March 2012, “When the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say.”
These statements were ambiguous, however, in defining the “weaponization” of the Iranian nuclear program. And it’s precisely in setting this threshold that Washington has been troublingly inconsistent. During the early Bush administration, it was said that any uranium enrichment at all by Iran would be considered an unacceptable threat. Then it was said that enrichment beyond a certain percentage of refinement would be unacceptable. Then in 2007, a National Intelligence Estimate loosened the definition of threat even further, declaring that “by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapons design and weaponization work.”
And now the Obama administration seems to have decided to draw the line at a decision by Iran to actually begin the assembly of a bomb. There is no shortage of evidence that this is the new working definition. The Washington Post recently quoted a senior U.S. official as saying, “There is confidence that we would see activity indicating that a decision had been made.” In January 2012, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that “they are certainly moving on that path, but we don’t believe they have actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon.” Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told the Senate Budget Committee that “our intelligence makes clear that they haven’t made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.”
This latest red line makes eminent political sense, in that it would certainly forestall the triggering of military intervention until after the coming presidential election. But from a military viewpoint, as well as that of decision-making theory, the new threshold is a catastrophe.… The assembly process of a nuclear bomb…once all the pieces were ready…would take weeks, maybe days—hardly enough time for the United States to organize the sort of military action it is supposedly committed to in that instance.
Needless to say, this is a far cry from Washington’s original negotiating position. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive of any further retreat on the issue. (A colleague familiar with the deliberations of the White House already predicted the next concession: “Weaponization” will consist of miniaturizing a nuclear bomb and mounting it on top of a missile.) In any case, given the current red lines set by the Obama administration, we should be wary of any declarations of progress during this round of negotiations. Not all successes are made the same.
ON IRAN, IT’S TIME FOR OBAMA
TO SET CLEAR LINES FOR MILITARY ACTION
Jamie Fly & Matthew Kroenig
Washington Post, May 18, 2012
On Iran, President Obama has dangled plenty of carrots. It’s time to pull out some sticks.
With a new round of talks coming in Baghdad between Iran and the…“P5+1” over Tehran’s nuclear program, the Obama administration has gone to great lengths to stress the possibility and desirability of a diplomatic solution, and to make clear that the military option is a last resort. As White House deputy national security adviser Denis McDonough said this month in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “We believe the policy we are pursuing is working.… We’re not involved in a negotiation effort for the sake of negotiations.”
But despite the optimism that came out of the negotiations last month in Istanbul, there is little reason to believe that Iran is serious about doing anything other than using the coming weeks to enrich more uranium and make progress toward a nuclear weapon. Success in the Baghdad talks would mean starting a process that would halt Iran’s program rather than just buy more time for Tehran. To do so, the United States must not only lay out the curbs on Iran’s nuclear program that Washington would be willing to reward, but also clearly outline what advances in Iran’s nuclear program it would be compelled to punish with military force. This is the only way to prove to the Iranians that, as Obama has said, the window is indeed closing.
Over the past six years, the international community has engaged in an intense diplomatic effort to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program. All the while, the program has continued to progress, reaching disturbing milestones.…
[[By] January 2010, Iran was enriching uranium to 3.5 percent—a low level that has plausible applications for a civilian nuclear energy program—at Natanz, but we consoled ourselves with the hope that Iran wouldn’t be reckless enough to enrich to higher levels under the watchful eyes of international inspectors. That is, until it did just that. Iran now possesses more than 100 kilograms of 20 percent-enriched uranium, having done 90 percent of the work required to get to weapons-grade material.…
Iran has repeatedly crossed what should have been bright red lines for the international community. But instead of taking tough measures to stop them, the world simply watched, responding with bluster not backed up by serious repercussions. If the regime crosses another red line in the future, such as enriching beyond 20 percent, will we stand by once again?
The Obama administration has articulated only one bright red line: building nuclear weapons. But if we wait until Iran turns the final screws on a nuclear device, we…will be too late. The administration’s pledge to use force if necessary also rings hollow if Iran is allowed to make significant progress in all the other areas required for a weapon. The United States can strike Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent Iran from making weapons-grade uranium, but once it has the fissile material, the game is over.…
A more reasonable set of red lines would include advances that would greatly shrink Iran’s dash time to a bomb, such as building additional covert facilities, installing advanced centrifuges at Natanz or Qom, maintaining larger stockpiles of low-enriched uranium, enriching beyond 20 percent, kicking out international inspectors, or conducting certain weaponization-related research.…
If Iran is willing to put hard ceilings on all aspects of its nuclear program, it can avoid a near-term conflict, but if it pushes forward, it will invite a strike that will be much more painful for itself than it is for the United States. After all, Washington has a spectrum of viable military options, including a limited strike against a few key nuclear facilities, as well as a broader bombing campaign that could destroy the Iranian military and destabilize the regime. The response could be commensurate to the seriousness of Iran’s transgressions.
This proactive approach should help calm nerves in the region about Obama’s mettle, and could forestall Israel from taking matters into its own hands.…
