By Conn Hallinan – October 18, 2009
Iranian nukes:
are they or aren’t they? That depends on whom you ask.
According to Associated
Press, “senior officials” at the United Nation’s International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA) say Iran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and has
worked on a missile to carry it. The document—entitled “Possible Military
Dimensions to Iran’s Nuclear Program”—has yet to be formally released.
The study is based on the intelligence provided by UN member states, not the UN
itself.
However, an IAEA official says the organization “has no
concrete proof that there is or has been a nuclear weapon program in Iran.”
Some of the “evidence” against Iran is based on documents
that purport to show Iran was working on a program from 2001 to 2003. But the
fact that none of the documents have security markings and that letters from
Iranian defense officials lack government seals make them suspect. The Iranians
claim the documents and letters are forged.
According to historian Gareth Porter, the IAEA used the
absence of security markings and government seals to determine that the Niger
uranium documents, which the Bush Administration used to justify the invasion
of Iraq, were false. Porter says in this case, however, the IAEA seems to think
the documents are genuine.
Does the revelation that Iran has built a secret enrichment
facility change things? That depends on what the facility—which is not
yet functioning—is designed to do. To be a backup in case of an attack on
Iran’s other enrichment facility, or a facility to produce weapons grade
material? Only IAEA inspections will settle that issue.
The Israelis claim Iran is within months of producing
weapons grade uranium, an assessment the U.S. intelligence community disputes.
According to Newsweek, U.S.
intelligence agencies say they are confident that the 2007 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of Iran’s nuclear capacity correctly concluded that
as of 2003 Iran had “halted its nuclear weapons program,” and not resumed it.
That has not stopped the Netanyahu government’s full court
press on the Obama Administration to stiffen sanctions against Iran and to
consider a military strike if those fail. A report by the pro-Israeli
Bipartisan Policy Center, signed by Republican Dan Coats, Democrat Chuck Robb
and Air Force Gen. Charles Ward (ret.), charged that Iran would be able to
produce “a weapon’s worth of highly enriched uranium…in less that two months,”
and that the Obama Administration should “begin preparations for the use of military
options.”
On Sept 10 the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
(AIPAC) poured lobbyists into Washington to press for “crippling” sanctions
against Iran, which included support for U.S. Rep. Howard Berman’s (D-Ca) Iran
Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act to cut off gasoline supplies to Iran. Iran has
lots of gas and oil, but not much refinery capacity and must import gasoline.
United Against Nuclear Iran, an advocacy group founded by
State Department heavyweights Dennis Ross and Richard Holbrooke, recently
launched a TV blitz to “isolate Iran economically” to prevent Teheran from
acquiring nuclear weapons.
Tougher sanctions might pass the U.S. Congress, but it is
running into stiff opposition abroad.
Russia and China recently agreed to consider new sanctions—a
quid pro quo for the U.S. scrapping its missiles in Eastern Europe? —but
whether they would go along with “crippling” sanctions is another matter.
China, for instance, provides Iran with about one-third of its gasoline needs.
Germany will only support tougher sanctions if they have the
backing of the entire European Union (EU). French Foreign Minister Bernard
Kouchner also expressed doubts, saying that a gas embargo was a “bit dangerous”
and would hurt “mainly poor people.”
Since the EU works by consensus, and since many EU members
will not go along with an embargo without United Nations authorization—an
authorization that might draw a Russian or Chinese veto— sanctions like a
gasoline embargo look doubtful.
The Berman bill would punish countries that traded gasoline
to Iran, but that could put the U.S at loggerheads with Russia, China, and the
EU. Brazil has also made it clear that it will have nothing to do with
sanctions. “I think there are a lot of sanctions and not enough conversations
with Iran,” Brazilian President Lula da Silva told Le Monde.
If the sanctions collapse, might Israel be tempted to go for
a military strike? Again, that depends on whom you ask.
Tel Aviv has talked quite openly about attacking Iran,
although even the Netanyahu administration seems to be of multiple minds about
the military option. While the Prime Minister calls Iran an “existential
threat,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the press Sept. 17, “Iran
does not pose an existential threat against Israel.” And according to Russian
President Dmitry Mediedev, Israeli President Shimon Peres assured him that
Israel did not intend to attack Iran.
The Israeli military say they can pull off an attack, but
other observers are no so confident. Even the Israelis admit that such an
attack would only delay, not derail, an Iranian nuclear program.
Some Americans are pushing for a military response. “No one
should believe that tighter sanctions will, in the foreseeable future, have any
impact on Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” says former UN ambassador John
Bolton. “Adopting tougher economic sanctions is simply another detour away from
hard decisions on whether to accept a nuclear Iran or support using force to
prevent it.”
In the meantime, Iran has accepted an invitation to talk
with the Obama Administration, although it says its right to enrich nuclear
fuel for civilian power plants is not on the table. However, Trita Parsi of the
National Iranian American Council says that Iran’s initial position is “most
likely an opening bid, not a red line.” Iran, for instance, might agree to
rigorous and intrusive inspections of its enrichment program.
Playing hardball may backfire. “Pointing a gun at their
heads merely reinforces their desire for a reliable deterrent, and probably
strengthens the hand of an Iranian official who think they ought to get a bomb
as soon as possible,” writes Harvard University professor of international
relations Stephen Walt.
Another question is whether the government of President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in any shape to carry out negotiations. Last month’s
rigged elections has Ahmadinejad relying increasingly on the military and the
most rightwing forces in Iran, and such an alliance may constrain the
government’s ability to compromise.
Iran’s internal turmoil has certainly animated Ahmadinejad’s
most provocative tendencies, including his recent questioning of the Holocaust
as a “real event,” a denial the late, great Palestinian intellectual and
revolutionary, Edward Said, had little patience with:
“We must recognize the realities of the holocaust not as a
blank check for the Israelis to abuse us, but as a sign of our humanity, our
ability to understand history, our requirement that our suffering be mutually
acknowledged. The real issue is intellectual truth and the need to combat any
sort of apartheid and racial discrimination, no matter who does it. There is
now a creeping, nasty wave of anti-Semitism and hypocritical righteousness
insinuating itself into our political thought and rhetoric. One thing must be
clear in my firm opinion: we are not fighting the injustices of Zionism in
order to replace them with an invidious nationalism, religious or civil, that
decrees that Arabs in Palestine are more equal than others. The history of the
modern Arab world—with all its political failures, its human rights
abuses, its stunning military incompetences, its decreasing production, the
fact that alone of all the modern peoples we have receded in democratic and
technological and scientific development—is disfigured by a whole series
of out-moded and discredited ideas, of which the notion that the Jews never
suffered and that the holocaust is an obfuscatory confection created by the
Elders of Zion is one that is acquiring too much, far too much currency.”
Taliban’s Challenge Readers might want to go to shahamat.org, the Taliban’s website, and click on
the English version of Mullah Omar’s “Message of Felicitation” to the Obama
Administration. There is lots of religion in it—the man is a
Mullah—but what should give the White House pause is the strong current
of nationalism.
“With the passage of time, the resistance and the Jihadic
movement, as a robust Islamic and nationalist movement, assumed the shape of a
popular movement and is approaching the edge of victory…the policy which they
[the U.S. and NATO] have adopted will only prolong the current crisis but will
never solve it. This is because the existence of foreign troops in Afghanistan
and the invasion is in itself an issue, not a solution.”
He blasts the “rampart corruption” of the “Kabul
administration” and its “…embezzlement, drug trafficking… mafia networks,”
and “the tyranny and
high-handedness of the warlords…” that “has driven the people to face poverty,
starvation and unemployment…”
Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality in the world
and for every person who dies in the war, 20 die of treatable diseases and
malnutrition.
His own program is vague: “…rehabilitation of social and
economic infrastructure, advancement and development of the education sector,
industrializations of the country and the development of agriculture.” Omar
challenges the idea that the Taliban are “against education and women’s
rights,” but gives no details.
He pledges that Afghanistan will be a “responsible force”
and “will not extend its hand to cause jeopardy to others,” adding, “The West
does not have to fight this war.”
He calls on the resistance to “abandon internal differences”
and, while demanding that foreign troops leave, keeps the door open for
negotiations: “Our goal is to gain independence of the country and establish a
just Islamic system. We can consider any option that could lead to the
achievement of this goal.”
If the war in Afghanistan becomes one for national
liberation, not religion, all the foreign troops in the world don’t stand a
chance. 