Gideon Rachman's Optimism About a Nuclear Iran · 3 August 2007, 20:32 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In his column in the Financial Times – this time entitled ‘Nuclear apocalypse: the good news’ (July 23, 2007) – Gideon Rachman refers to a poll among foreign politics experts published last year in the Atlantic, which showed that only 14 per cent of them thought that Iran might use its nuclear weapons offensively, to prove that also a nuclear Iran will be cautious not to provoke a nuclear retaliation attack. In other words: even in the case of a nuclear Iran the doctrine of mutual assured destruction would remain applicable. Off course, assuming that the experts are right, the world would be better of with an Iran which is not willing to use bomb than an Iran that is willing to use it. Nonetheless, a nuclear Iran is far from desirable. In a previous posting I discussed Scott D. Sagan’s ‘How to Keep the Bomb From Iran’, an article in Foreign Affairs (September / October edition, 2006, page 45-59). In his article Sagan deems optimism about the risks of a nuclear Iran (‘deterence optimism’) as misplaced, among other things because possession of the bomb might embolden Iran to a more aggressive foreign policy, for example by means of Hezbollah. Click here to the read the whole posting.
atom bomb,
gideon rachman,
hezbollah,
iran,
nuclear iran,
proliferation
Beware of Al Qaeda False Flag Operation · 29 May 2007, 06:30 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, in his essay ‘Al Qaeda Strikes Back’ in the May / June edition of Forreign Affairs (Volume 86, number 3, page 34 of pages 24-40).
al qaeda,
bruce riedel,
false flag,
false flag operation,
iran,
tehran
Zakaria on the Release of the British Hostages · 5 April 2007, 07:38 CET by Charles Vermeulen
According to Fareed Zakaria the announcement of the release of the British hostages by the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad shows that a war to thwart Iran’s atomic ambitions might be avoidable. Click here to read his Newsweek column, this week entitled ‘Why Sanctions Are Working’.
ahmadinejad,
british hostages,
fareed zakaria,
iran,
mahmoud ahmadinejad
The Self-Confidence of John Bolton · 11 March 2007, 08:03 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Yesterday’s edition of Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad included an interview with former ‘United States Ambassador to the United Nations’ John Bolton. In the interview Bolton’s self-confidence appears to be still completely intact, despite the neoconservative failures in Iraq, despite the fact that his recess appointment wasn’t prolonged last December. When interviewer Tom-Jan Meeus asked Bolton whether a military solution for Iran’s nuclear ambitions is still a serious option for the US, he answered affirmatively. For he’s ‘convinced that it’s possible to break through the nuclear fuel cycle in Iran, by destroying, for example, their uranium enrichment facility in Natanz. Or the Iranian conversion plant in Isfahan. It’s only necessary to destroy a part of the nuclear fuel cycle to prevent that they will be able to develop nuclear arms.’ Focussing on possible retaliatory actions by Iran Bolton clearly isn’t afraid of the consequences of US military action either: ‘What would Iran do? (...) Do you think that Iran will stop selling oil? They couldn’t. Their whole economy is based on oil selling.’ But what if Iran would increase its military activity in Iraq and kill as many American soldiers as possible? According to Bolton, that wouldn’t be a problem either, because ‘for that reason we’ve just sent extra troops to Iraq’. Nonetheless Bolton adds that he isn’t very fond of a military solution. He would prefer ‘regime change’ in Tehran. Clearly all lessons which could be learned from Iraq are still wasted on Bolton. To Bolton ‘regime change’ still is an almost purely juridical procedure, which ‘only’ requires the defeat of a regular army and in his eyes wars can be completely controlled and aren’t unpredictable at all.
John Bolton, Bolton, Iran, Tehran, Iraq, Nuclear Ambitions, Nuclear Arms
bolton,
iran,
iraq,
isfahan,
john bolton,
natanz,
nuclear ambitions,
nuclear arms,
regime change,
tehran,
uranium enrichment,
us military
Bush on Iraq and Iran in CNN Interview · 21 September 2006, 08:57 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In an interview last Wednesday by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer President Bush made some tantalizing statements on, among other things, the violence in Iraq and Iran’s atomic ambitions. Click here to watch the inteview.
Scott D. Sagan on Iran's Atomic Ambitions · 16 September 2006, 10:33 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In Foreign Affairs’ September / October edition (page 45-59) an interesting essay of Scott D. Sagan, entitled ‘How to Keep the Bomb From Iran’, is included. Sagan is Professor of Political Science and director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.
Sagan opens his essay with his view that two interdependent attitudes start to dominate the way the rise of Iran as a nuclear threat is perceived in the U.S. The first is fatalism concerning the ability of the U.S. to prevent Iran from getting the bomb (‘proliferation fatalism’), the second excessive optimism concerning the U.S. ability to contain Iran as a nuclear power.
Proliferation fatalism results from the idea that if a state is determined enough to get the bomb, it will succeed because the knowlegde and technology involved are widespread. Furthermore it is believed that military intervention in the case of Iran is very difficult. (Also read: ‘A US Blitz on Iran’) Besides, even if it is possible to identify and to destroy all ‘nuclear-related sites in Iran’, the threat of retaliation remains, for example on the U.S. military bases in the Middle East. Another important reason for the fatalism in Washington is prompted by the fact that the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1 July 1968 and an active U.S. policy targeted at maintaining the treaty couldn’t prevent that countries like Israel, India and Pakistan acquired the bomb. Moreover, the NPT is under pressure since 1990s from the sale by among others A.Q. Khan of uranium-enrichment capabilities and designs of bombs to potential proliferators. Also the above mentioned rise of new nuclear powers and an aggressive U.S. role on the world-stage fuels the idea that possession the bomb is necessary for survival. A risky ingredient of the NPT, to continue, is the fact that it allowes the signatory states to produce nuclear energy. Iran, one of the signatories, therefore claims that it is its right to enrich uranium. Extra attention, furthermore, is devoted by Sagan to Pakistan as a source of anxiety.
As a nuclear power Pakistan appeared to be an enormous risk factor, because it lacks strong central controle over its nuclear technology, materials, scientists and its nuclear arsenal. During the Kargil War with India in 1999, for example, the Pakistan army had started to prepare its nuclear capable missiles for possible use, but after the war Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif appeared to be uninformed about it. Moreover, various forces with access to Pakistan’s nuclear technology or its arsenal maintain ties with extremist groups or dubious, foreign regimes. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), for example, which possesses ‘important nuclear command-and-control responsibilities’, maintains close ties with the Taliban and jihadist groups in Pakistan.
This fatalism about the U.S. ability to prevent Iran from going nuclear combined with the outcome of the Cold War, in which China and the U.S.S.R. were kept from using the bomb due to a successful policy of deterrence and containment, prompt some in the Bush administration to prepare for a nuclear Iran and to study strategies to contain Iran as a nuclear power.
Both proliferation fatalism and deterence optimism, however, are misplaced, Sagan states. Averting a nuclear war during the Cold War has been much more difficult than the American public seems to remember. Partly because possessing the bomb emboldened China and the U.S.S.R. to a far more aggressive foreign policy: the U.S. would think twice before attacking them. Furthermore, speculating on the success of containment is dangerous, considering the fact that not all parties were equally frightened by the idea of a nuclear war. Sagan calls to mind the example of Mao who thought that China would survive a nuclear war. Besides, it’s better to compare Iran with Pakistan than with China and the U.S.S.R.
Iran, especially its president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, often demonstrates a belligerent attitude towards Israel and its Sunni neighbours and possession of the bomb might embolden Iran to a more aggressive foreign policy, for example by means of Hezbollah. Add to this that it’s unlikely that Tehran will succeed in maintaining centralized control over its nuclear arsenal. One of the main sources of anxiety will be the ideologically indoctrinated ‘Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’, which is tasked with ‘securing production sites for nuclear materials’, but at the same time maintains ties with foreign, terrorist groups.
Proliferation fatalism, on the other hand, is misplaced too, for many countries curbed their nuclear ambitions because of the NPT and U.S. policy to maintain the treaty.
What can be learned from the history of non-proliferation, Sagan says, is that not all countries which desire the possesion of the bomb eventually acquire it. Another lesson is that non-proliferation can succeed when the U.S. and other world powers exert themselves to eliminated the concerns which causes a state to desire to possess nuclear arms. Since President Bush’s State of the Union of January 2002, in which he labeled Iran a member of the ‘Axis of Evil’, and while at the same ‘regime change’ and ‘preemtive strikes’ ‘to counter proliferation’ were advocated in Washington, the U.S. is the main source of concern in Tehran. Therefore it must apply all diplomatic means which it has at its disposal and provide Tehran with security guarantees.
So what, according to Sagan, can the U.S. do to prevent Iran from going nuclear? Sagan advises to take the Agreed Framework as a starting-point, which the U.S. and North-Korea agreed upon in 1994. The AF implied that North-Korea would eventually dismantle its reactors, that it remained in the NPT and that full IAEA safeguards were implemented. The U.S., in return, agreed to provide it limited oil supplies, to construct to light-water reactors, to start with the normalization of economic and political relations between both countries and to guarantee officially that it would refrain from the use of nuclear arms against North-Korea.
That AF eventually failed – North-Korea quitted the NPT in November 2002 and allegedly developed a small nuclear arsenal – because on the one hand Pyongyang was suspected of deceit, but on the other it was under the impression that the U.S. didn’t meet its obligations, because it had delayed the construction of the reactors and it had failed to start normalizing relations. By this time the U.S. seems to have acquiesced in the current situation and Washington has said already that it has no plans for military intervention. ‘The point was not lost on Tehran’, Sagan states.
The U.S. must learn what went wrong with the AF to start with, the U.S. must timely offer security guarantees to Iran, ‘making security assurances contingent on Tehran’s not developing nuclear weapons (...), rather than ‘making them contingent on Tehran’s getting rid of any existing nuclear weapons’. As was arranged in the AF any agreement with Iran must be a series of steps, each providing it some economic benefits in exchange for constraints on Iran’s nuclear development. Sagan stresses that the U.S. must soften its demand that ‘not a single centrifuge can spin’, which prevents loss of face for Tehran, without turning it into an immediate threat. Furthermore, research on uranium enrichment is allowed for Iran, but the production of large quantities of enriched uranium is not. This requires in return that Iran must permit the uttermust rigid and intrusive inspectections by the IAEA and refrains from the construction of other centrifuges and heavy-water reactors which could produce plutonium. As far as the security assurance is concerned it is important that the U.S. sticks to its part of the bargain, but also keeps open the possibility of applying sanctions or limited military action in case Tehran doesn’t stick to its part of the bargain. The U.S. could start, for example, with the promise that it won’t deploy nuclear arms against Iran. Eventually Iran must stop its nuclear program and its support for terrorist groups. Crucial, however, is that Washington stops threatening with regime change and that it plainly states that it will only promote democracy by peaceful means. An ‘acceptible price for the United States to pay to stop Tehran from getting the bomb’, Sagan says.
Is Sagan right? Is Iran simply concerned about its survival and does it only try to get nuclear weapons to become able to defend itself to the U.S. (and Israel)? Or does Iran indeed believe it is destined to become the ‘center of international power politics’ in the Middle East, as Mohsen Reza’i, secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, allegedly has said and are nuclear weapons a necessary requisite for to attain great power status? If the latter is true, which for example Robert G. Joseph, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, thinks, a political solution seems just as unrealistic as a military one.
Scott D. Sagan, Iran, Atom Bomb, Uranium Enrichment, Proliferation
How Iran May Profit From the Lebanon Crisis · 4 August 2006, 15:16 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Philip H. Gordon and Kenneth M. Pollack see several possibilities for Tehran to benefit from the current crisis in Lebanon and considering these they deem the US government’s determination to give Israel time to deal Hezbollah a decisive blow as unwise. Read their interesting article ‘The Iranian Calculus’ on the website of the Brookings Institution.
The U.S. and Iran Drawing Together · 18 March 2006, 09:15 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Last Thursday the President Bush launched a new national security strategy, by which he re-embraced the possibility of a preemptive strike on terrorists and countries which are developing weapons of mass destruction. This reaffirmation of preemption can be understood as a provocation to Iran, at a time when Iran’s nuclear programme have been referred to the U.N. Security Council. Yesterday’s news, therefore, that the U.S. and Iran plan to hold talks on the state of affairs in Iraq was all the more remarkable. In his article ‘Why the U.S. and Iran Will Talk’ on Time.com (March 17, 2006) Tony Karon provides an explanation.
Inside Criticism to Iran's Hardliners Rising · 15 March 2006, 21:14 CET by Charles Vermeulen
According to New York Times this week’s referral to the United Nations Security Council of Iranian nuclear program and Iran’s inability to get Russia’s whole-hearted support for its cause inside criticism on president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line approach. Click here to read the whole article. (Subscription ‘Today’s Headlines’, a free New York Times service, is required.)
Source: Michael Slackman, ‘In Iran, Dissenting Voices Rise on Its Leaders’ Nuclear Strategy’ The New York Times (March 15, 2006)
China's Dependence on Iran's Energy · 6 March 2006, 22:50 CET by Charles Vermeulen
A few days ago the China Economic Review published a short news item entitled ‘Iran becomes top oil source’ (2 March 2006) according to which Iran has passed Saudi Arabia as China’s main oil source. If the International Atomic Energy Agency indeed decides to send the issue of Iran’s nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council Beijing’s stance will be crucial. In his article in the International Herald Tribune entitled ‘What will China do?’ (24 January 2006) Ian Bremmer deals with the subject, taking into account China’s growing dependence on Iran’s energy.
(The CER’s source is a report in the South China Morning Post. A subscription to the SCMP is required in order to gain access to the report.)
china,
energy,
international atomic energy agency,
iran,
oil,
saudi arabia