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
Bill Clinton on the Iraq Study Group Report · 8 December 2006, 09:49 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Last Wednessday Twan Huys of Dutch current affairs programme NOVA interviewed former U.S. president Bill Clinton, which was broadcast last night. In the interview Clinton, who paid a visit to the Netherlands, made some some interesting statements on the report which the Iraq Study Group came up with last Wednessday.
Clinton admitted that he was familiar with only 3 or 4 of the 79 recommendations of the study group yet, but he thinks that ‘putting more emphasis on training and embedding [American] troops in advisory roles with the Iraqi’s is a good tactical suggestion’ and he thinks that the U.S. ‘has to have some lowering of [U.S.] troop levels if for no other reason than to free up some troops to go to the internationally approved mission in Afghanistan to stop the resurgent Taliban and the resurgent Al-Qaeda that would follow that.’ Furthermore he agrees that the U.S. government has ‘to restart the peace momentum (...) between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That would help a great deal (...) overall in reducing the terrorist tensions and improving the climate in the Middle East.’ And he agrees that the U.S. government ‘should reach out to the Iranians and the Syrians and try to get a regional solution’. Although ‘right now the Iranians don’t want to do anything, probably because their policy seems to be: what ever causes America heartburn is good for us’, Clinton believes that this isn’t a mission impossible: ’[t]he truth is that there are 1.6 million Iraqi refugees already. If Iraq were to deteriorate to the point Bosnia did before we had a stabilization, there will be 10 million Iraqi refugees, most of them would be in Iran. I don’t really think that Iran wants that. So I think that there may be an opportunity for us to all work together.’
On the question whether Clinton is afraid that the conflict in Iraq will spill over its borders to the neighbouring countries, he responded that he’s afraid that ‘the country will may disintegrate internally and many, many more people may die and that it may become the new epicenter of organised terror activity throughout the region. (...) [A]nd that (...) it could destabilize other countries. But not some much by having the conflict itself spill over. Although (...) the Iranians (...) and the Syrians should be worried about whether their own financial and political resources could be strained if they have too many refugees.’
To conclude, Clinton said that he doesn’t hold the view that the U.S. army should leave Iraq as might be physically possible, for in 2003 the U.N. has endorsed the presence of international troops in the country to prevent its collapse and he subscribes to the view that it would result in ‘more chaos and death in the country of innocent civilians’. But, on the other hand, the U.S. has ‘to look to the time when our military involvement will end and (...) readjust what [it’s] doing there now’ and he favours ‘some lowering of the troops now’ for ‘it will send a signal that [the U.S.] is changing policy and to ‘free up some troops to try to be strong in Afghanistan’.
Update – For the coming days the interview with Bill Clinton, which furthermore is about climate change and the ambition of his wife senator Hillary Clinton to become U.S. president, can be viewed here. Don’t be discouraged by the introduction in Dutch, for the interview itself is completely in English.
afghanistan,
al-qaeda,
bill clinton,
clinton,
iran,
iraq,
iraq study group,
syria,
taliban
Why Iran Might Be Willing to Help Out Too · 14 November 2006, 07:18 CET by Charles Vermeulen
In ‘Iran Seeks to Keep US Troops in Iraq’, an article on EurasiaNet, Kamal Nazer Yasin states that Iran isn’t happy at all with the current chaos in Iraq. According to a unnamed political scientist he quotes one of the reasons for a quick American pull out is that ‘Iranian security forces are simply not prepared to protect [the 700-mile common border] against a massive inflow of refugees, weapons, smugglers and armed adversaries of all kinds’. Click here to the whole report and learn why Iran might be interested in talks with the U.S. too.
iran,
iraq,
kamal nazer yasin,
us troops
Why Would Syria Help Out Washington? · 13 November 2006, 21:27 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Today British Prime Minister Tony Blair urged Iran and Syria to help out the U.S. and the U.K. in their efforts to end the violence in Iraq. But why would they do this? Washington and London are ‘bogged down in the quagmire’ of Iraq and therefore regime change in Tehran and Damascus, as aspired once by the Bush administration, seems very unlikely right now. In the case of Syria, however, a gleam of hope is justified. As violence continues in Iraq large numbers of refugees likewise continue to leave the country. The UNHCR recently estimated that at least 600,000 Iraqi refugees are already living in Syria. Although many of them have ‘fled over the past decade or more, (...) now some 2,000 a day are arriving in Syria’. According to the UNHCR ‘the needs of those who have fled are dramatic and to a large extent unmet’. As such the growing number of Iraqi refugees constitutes a potential source of instabilitaty within Syria’s borders, but therefore it might also be an opportunity for Washington and its allies to invoke the assistance of Damascus successfully.
blair,
iran,
iraq,
london,
refugees,
syria,
tony blair,
unhcr,
washington
Ammar Abdulhamid on the Prospect of War · 23 August 2006, 07:32 CET by Charles Vermeulen
Ammar Abdulhamid, a ‘non-Resident Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington’, in an entry in his blog entitled ‘ Countdown to Armageddon!’, on the prospect of war between Syria (and Iran and Hezbollah) and Israel (and the US) and the intentions of Bashar Assad’s regime in this matter.
(The above mentioned article was originally published on bitterlemons-international.org last Thursday. Todays edition of The Daily Star website includes the article too.)
ammar abdulhamid,
bashar assad,
hezbollah,
iran,
israel,
syria
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