"The US is headed toward another strategic disaster in the Middle East!"

Via FLC

"Ever since Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei stepped down as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late 2009, the United States and some of its allies have pushed Baradei’s successor, Yukiya Amano, to ratify Western arguments that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Today, Amano authorized the release of an IAEA report, see here, purporting to do just that.
Predictably, the report is being treated in some quarters as an effective casus belli. As the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy commented after the document’s release, ... the report “should serve to shift the public debate from whether Iran is developing a nuclear weapon, to how to stop it”. It is not difficult to imagine how Republican presidential candidates will strive to “out-hawk” one another—and, especially, President Obama—during their next debate this coming Saturday as to their willingness to go to war to stop the Islamic Republic from building a nuclear bomb.    

But the report—arguably the most anticipated document of its kind since the NPT was first advanced in 1968—does not in any way demonstrate that Iran is “developing a nuclear weapon”. Rather, it once again affirms, as the IAEA has for decades, Iran’s “non-diversion” of nuclear material. In other words, even if the Islamic Republic wanted to build nuclear weapons (and Tehran continues to deny, at the highest levels of authority, that it wishes to do so) it does not have the weapons-grade material essential to the task.    

Nevertheless, Amano chose to focus the report on unsubstantiated intelligence reports, provided almost entirely by the United States, Israel, and other Western governments, alleging that the Islamic Republic is working on a nuclear weapons program. Most of this information has been available to the IAEA for years. But Baradei refused to publicize it during his tenure as the Agency’s chief—because he could neither corroborate it nor be confident about its provenance and quality. Remember, Baradei had been right about the state of Iraq’s nuclear program in 2002, when all of the intelligence services and national governments that would later try getting him spun up about Iran had been spectacularly wrong. And he was not going to let the United States or anyone else steamroller him on Iran.      

Amano, unfortunately, does not bring the same kind of intellectual and political integrity to his job as his predecessor. The United States, Israel, and other Western governments had to work hard to get the IAEA’s Board of Governors to elect Amano in 2009, by the narrowest possible margin, barely overcoming a challenge from South Africa’s distinguished ambassador to the Agency, Abdul Minty. But Washington and its allies got what they wanted. An October 2009 cable from the U.S. mission to the IAEA, published last year by Wikileaks, see here, reported that Amano had “reminded [the U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA] on several occasions that he would need to make concessions” at times to developing countries, “but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision”, including “the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”  

And so the latest IAEA report treats its readers to sensational stories of Iranian nuclear weapons designs and experiments on things that can supposedly only be applied to the fabrication of nuclear weapons. None of these stories is corroborated by hard evidence, but the Amano-led IAEA passes them on anyway, with its effective imprimatur. ... ... ... ... 

Iranian efforts to develop a “nuclear weapons capability”, as described by Baradei, may make American and Israeli elites uncomfortable. But it is not a violation of the NPT or any other legal obligation that the Islamic Republic has undertaken. While the NPT prohibits non-nuclear-weapon states from building atomic bombs, developing a nuclear weapons capability is, in Baradei’s words, “kosher” under the NPT, see here. It is certainly not a justification—strategically, legally, or morally—for armed aggression against Iran.     

In the end, the United States and its allies have a choice to make. They can continue down a path that will ultimately prompt them to launch yet another illegal and ill-considered war for hegemonic domination in the Middle East. But the consequences of attacking Iran are likely to be far more damaging for America’s strategic position in the Middle East than the reverses it suffered as a result of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. (We would ask anyone who questions whether the Iraq war was profoundly counter-productive for the United States simply to compare Washington’s standing and influence in the Middle East 10 years ago to its standing and influence there today; viewed through this prism, the measure of self-inflicted damage to America’s strategic position in this critical region is truly extraordinary.)
Alternatively, the United States and its allies can accept the Islamic Republic as an enduring political order with legitimate interests and sovereign rights, and come to terms with it—much as the United States came to terms with the People’s Republic of China in the 1970s. In the nuclear arena, specifically, this means accepting, in principle and in reality, the continued development of Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium, while working with Tehran to put in place multilateral arrangements to ensure that the proliferation risks associated with uranium enrichment in Iran (as in any other country) are controlled. 

Based on our conversations with senior Iranian officials, we are convinced that this is precisely the sort of conversation Tehran wants to have with Western and other international interlocutors about their nuclear program. But the United States—under the Obama Administration every bit as much as under the George W. Bush Administration—refuses to pursue this sort of dialogue.
Until that changes, the United States is headed toward another strategic disaster in the Middle East. And, by succumbing to American pressure, the IAEA has raised the odds that this is precisely what will occur. "

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 5:39 PM

 

'Failing yet again to absorb the lessons of Iraq & WMD'

"... Fast-forward to 2011 and we're left wondering if these same newspapers have really taken on board the lessons of Iraq. Here, for example, is David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent of the New York Times, writing in its Sunday Review last weekend:

At the White House and the CIA, officials say the recently disclosed Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States – by blowing up a tony Georgetown restaurant frequented by senators, lobbyists and journalists – was just the tip of the iceberg.

Note how the allegation of an "Iranian plot" in the US – which was greeted with a good deal of scepticism when it first surfaced last month – now appears to have become an established fact (even though it has yet to be tested in court). Not only that. Sanger's anonymous officials are now asking us to believe it is part of a bigger and even more menacing Iranian plot which stretches across continents from the Yemen to Latin America.

At the Washington Post, meanwhile, Joby Warrick has been briefed by David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security. Citing Albright, Warrick describes Iranian work on a detonation device known as the R265 generator:

"According to the intelligence provided to the IAEA, key assistance in both areas [design and testing] was provided by Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist who was contracted in the mid-1990s by Iran's Physics Research Center, a facility linked to the country's nuclear programme."

The way this is presented in the Washington Post, it points very clearly to the idea that Iran was working on a trigger for a nuclear bomb. But look elsewhere and that interpretation becomes less certain: possibly it wasn't nuclear at all, but (See MoonOfAlabama) a project to manufacture nanodiamonds.

Of course, these are extremely murky waters and I'm not at all sure who to believe. There is probably a lot of deception taking place on both sides. But what seems to me extraordinary is the reluctance of journalists – especially in the US mainstream – to acknowledge the uncertainties and their willingness to accept what, as far as Iran is concerned, are the most incriminating interpretations.

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 5:47 PM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian