Iranian Alert -- October 20, 2003 -- IRAN LIVE THREAD PING LIST

Setbacks dog U.S. Iran policy

Around the world, Tehran has friends
Iraq lacked

ANALYSIS
By Michael Moran
MSNBC

June 20 — The United States began to show its teeth to Iran this week after a series of diplomatic setbacks dashed optimistic predictions of administration officials that an international consensus had formed about taking concrete steps to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The souring of the administration’s outlook was on display Friday as John Bolton, the hawkish undersecretary of state for arms control issues, said that military action against Iran is an option the U.S. is studying should diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from building a nuclear arsenal fail.

“THE PRESIDENT HAS repeatedly said that all options are on the table, but that is not only not our preference, it is far, far from our minds,” Bolton told the British Broadcasting Corp. On Thursday, President Bush also toughened his public stance, saying that the U.S. would “not tolerate” a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

The speedy decline of the U.S. effort to win broader support illustrates an important fact: Iran is viewed quite differently from Iraq or even North Korea by most of the world’s nations. In spite of its record as a supporter of terrorist groups and its repressive Islamic leadership, it is more democratic than many states that the United States regards as allies, and its strong oil and energy industries make it an attractive investment opportunity.

DOWNHILL FAST

As recently as a week ago, administration officials were citing support from Russia, the Group of Eight industrialized nations and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as proof of the progress being made by the U.S.-led effort to curb nuclear proliferation, which Bush has described as “topping the agenda” now that Saddam Hussein has been toppled.

But since then, across the board, actions the U.S. had hoped would lead to a strong condemnation of Iran for refusing to allow open inspections of all suspect nuclear facilities have fallen short.

A U.S. diplomat in New York, who asked to remain anonymous, said the U.S. had hoped the IAEA would declare Iran in “non-compliance” with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Tehran is a signatory. Such a move automatically places the issue on the agenda of the U.N. Security Council, which is empowered to impose economic sanctions and take other steps. The U.S. used similar pressure to win an IAEA condemnation of North Korea’s nuclear activities. But North Korea’s case is more clear: It formally withdrew from the nuclear treaty last year and has since publicly acknowledged its nuclear weapons research.

Toward Iran, however, “there just isn’t any support for this, for whatever reason,” the U.S. diplomat says. IAEA Director Mohammed ElBaradei, whose agency issued a report critical of Iran for refusing IAEA requests for open inspections at some sites, “still hopes he can convince the Iranians to let his guys in,” the diplomat says.

A VARIETY OF OBSTACLES

The U.S. campaign to isolate Iran is running up against multiple troubles, analysts say. The most important, according to a U.N. diplomat, is the continued anger directed at the U.S. for its decision to deal with Iraq unilaterally.

“A lot of member states were willing to sanction some kind of action, but only after nuclear inspections ran their course,” the diplomat says. “The fact that no banned weapons have turned up isn’t helping. … Some are saying, ‘Why believe them this time?’”

That attitude, for instance, appears to have persuaded more moderate members of the IAEA board to side with its director, ElBaradei, in seeking to win full cooperation from Iran before doing anything that might be seized upon by the U.S. as an opening for military action.

Another problem is Russia’s unwillingness to climb fully on board with the U.S. effort. Russia is earning $800 million for constructing a nuclear power reactor in the Iranian city of Bushehr. Bush, using his good personal ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, recently asked Moscow to link further work on the reactor with Iran’s complete compliance with IAEA demands. But Putin refused, saying he had faith that Iran’s nuclear program was about energy production and not weaponry. The U.S. has dismissed this assessment, pointing out that Iran’s huge gas and oil reserves produce energy more cheaply and noting recent evidence that Iran is producing heavy water, a component of nuclear weapons but not something that is needed for the light water reactor the Russians are finishing.

On Friday, Putin reiterated his decision after a phone call from Iran’s President Mohammed Khatami. “The Iranian leadership is ready to fully meet all the IAEA demands regarding control over its nuclear program, Putin told reporters. He did not elaborate, and Iran continued to refuse IAEA demands to open several suspect facilities to inspection.

Iran's Tortured Path

The U.S. also lacks its own economic leverage since it never re-established ties or lifted economic sanctions that were the result of the 1979 seizure by Islamic revolutionaries of the U.S. Embassy and American hostages in Tehran.

TRADING AND UNREST

While U.S. diplomacy continued to be unconvincing to most of the world, there are bright spots from the administration’s point of view. In the past two weeks, students demanding democracy and an end to “absolutism” by the Islamic clerics who rule Iran again have taken to the streets. The demonstrations have been sporadic and largely free of violence, but some analysts see significance in the fact that the Iranian government has permitted them to continue even though Tehran has blamed the U.S. for fomenting them.

A more concrete sign that the Bush administration may be making some progress is in the European Union. This week, senior European Union officials, as well as Britain’s Foreign Minister Jack Straw, insisted that they would demand full Iranian compliance before signing a trade deal with Tehran that the Iranian government has been urgently seeking.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/929088.asp

E.U.'s Iran nuke mission under way

Monday, October 20, 2003 Posted: 8:56 PM EDT (0056 GMT)
CNN.com

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- British, French and German foreign ministers have converged on Tehran with a carrot and stick proposal aimed at persuading Iran to dispel all doubts its nuclear programme could be used to make atomic bombs.

Diplomats said the key issue in Tuesday's talks would be whether Iran insisted on continuing its plans to master the entire nuclear fuel cycle, including enriching uranium. Recent signals from Tehran suggest possible moves to compromise.

The EU ministers are visiting Iran less than two weeks before an October 31 deadline set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for Tehran to disprove U.S.-led allegations it is conducting a covert nuclear arms program.

"The IAEA resolution ... imposed very serious obligations on Iran and it's for Iran to show to (IAEA chief Mohamed) ElBaradei and the IAEA board in early November that it is complying," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters en route to Tehran.

"Our trip is intended to encourage them to do so."

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer arrived in Tehran a few hours before Straw while France's Dominique de Villepin was due to land shortly before the talks begin on Tuesday morning.

Underscoring a notably softer tone from Iran in recent days over the nuclear issue, President Mohammad Khatami hinted for the first time on Sunday that Tehran could mothball uranium enrichment facilities it began building in 1985. Some Western powers fear they could be used to produce weapons-grade uranium.

Asked if Iran may stop enriching uranium, he told reporters: "We will do whatever is necessary to solve the problems."

But a British official played down the prospect of a breakthrough at the Tehran talks.

Tangible result
"What we hope is that the net contribution of all these efforts is we end up with Iran abandoning whatever aspirations it has in the nuclear weapons stakes," he said.

"We're not going to judge it by whether there is a tangible result tomorrow. It may be that the tangible result is reflected in the ElBaradei report," to the IAEA board on November 20.

Iran insists its sophisticated network of nuclear facilities is aimed at generating electricity, not making bombs.

ElBaradei has warned Iran's case may go to the U.N. Security Council if he is unable to verify in his November report that Iran has no intention of building nuclear arms.

Contamination
U.N. inspectors have found arms-grade enriched uranium at two Iranian facilities this year, but Iran blames this on contamination from machinery it bought on the black market.

Low grade enriched uranium is used as fuel in atomic reactors but highly enriched uranium can be used to make atomic weapons.

Diplomats said the E.U. ministers would demand Iran cooperate fully with the IAEA, accept tougher U.N. inspections and halt uranium enrichment.

In return, the ministers would offer to recognize Iran's right to a civilian nuclear energy program, give some technical assistance and guarantee Iran's access to imported fuel for nuclear power plants.

The EU foreign ministers will meet President Khatami, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi and Supreme National Security Council chief Hassan Rohani on Tuesday, diplomats said.

ElBaradei, who has described the European initiative as a "win-win" scenario, was assured during a visit to Tehran last week that Iran would answer all the IAEA's outstanding questions about its nuclear program and was willing to accept tighter inspections.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/10/20/iran.nuclear.arrive.reut/

Intelligence: Iran building nuke sites

Sites point to nuclear weapons development

MSNBC
By Robert Windrem
NBC NEWS PRODUCER

Dec. 13 — A senior U.S. official told NBC News on Thursday that recent intelligence indicates Iran is building two large and potentially significant nuclear facilities south of Tehran. Moreover, there may be other facilities yet undiscovered. The information raises fears that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program more actively than previously thought.

THE NEWLY REVEALED facilities are a combination nuclear research lab and gas centrifuge plant for producing enriched uranium at Natanz and a heavy-water production plant at Arak, both south of Tehran.

The heavy-water production facility is the more significant of the two, said one senior U.S. official, noting that heavy water is used to moderate nuclear reactions in research reactors that are ideal for producing plutonium. Iran is not known to have any such reactors — so the heavy-water facility could be an indication that the Iranians have a reactor that the United States is not aware of.

The combination could indicate Iran is pursuing both routes to a nuclear weapon — highly enriched uranium and plutonium, making its program much more ambitious than previously revealed.

“They certainly are suspicious,” said the U.S. official of the facilities at Natanz and Arak, adding that “another facility — the research reactor — is possible.”

SIZE MATTERS

“It looks like a large uranium enrichment plant at Natanz... We think centrifuges,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, which has analyzed satellite imagery of the facilities. “The plant is huge, 100,000 square feet, and indicates outside help.” Albright said his group, the CIA and IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) have all come to the same conclusion. Centrifuges are the most efficient way to separate weapons-grade uranium for use in nuclear weapons.

The Natanz site is a possible uranium enrichment facility, possibly a gas centrifuge site. It is located approximately 100 miles south of Tehran.

In addition, says Albright, it is difficult to believe that Iran would have built such a large plant without first experimenting with a pilot enrichment facility, though U.S. officials know of no such facility in Iran.

The biggest concern, though, says Albright, is the heavy-water facility at Arak. “Iran doesn’t need a heavy-water plant unless it has a heavy-water reactor, and we don’t know of any such reactor.” Heavy-water reactors have been used by several aspiring nuclear states to produce plutonium.

“There has to be a heavy-water reactor somewhere,” he said, echoing the U.S. official.

The existence of the facilities at Natanz and Arak was first revealed in August by an Iranian opposition group, but not confirmed by U.S. officials until Thursday. In August, Ali Reza Jafarzadeh, a Washington representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, stated: “These two secret sites are away from the monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the purpose of these sites is both for the production of nuclear fuel and also the research and expertise to be able to make the bomb.”

Neither facility has been “declared” to the IAEA, the UN agency that monitors nuclear developments to ensure they are peaceful.

Under its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty commitments, Iran must declare any nuclear site to the IAEA in Vienna and permit inspectors to visit the facilities. However, under the treaty, the Iranians do not have to declare a facility to the IAEA until it is complete.

The IAEA reacted to the dissident group’s disclosure by asking for an inspection in September and ordering commercial satellite imagery of the areas, ultimately discovering the two facilities. Iran has rebuffed the IAEA twice, most recently canceling a visit scheduled for last week. The IAEA is now scheduled to visit the plants in February.

Iran insisted on Friday it had no hidden nuclear activities and said the International Atomic Energy Agency was welcome to inspect any nuclear facilities in the country it had information about.

“We don’t have any hidden atomic activities. All our nuclear activities are for non-military fields,” government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh told reporters.

“The International Atomic Energy Agency is informed about our (nuclear) activities and the use of nuclear material either for research, chemical or medicine.

“And they can visit wherever in Iran that either we have informed them about or they have information about,” he added.

Albright dismisses Iran’s denial, saying the Iranian plans for nuclear weapons appear “grandiose” based on what is evident from the size of the facilities at Natanz and Arak as well as what is not yet revealed.

PLANS TO EXPAND

Previously, much of the attention on Iran’s nuclear weapons program was focused on a huge nuclear reactor being completed by Russian and Iranian engineers at Bushehr on Iran’s Persian Gulf coast.

The Russians managed to allay U.S. concerns about the project, insisting that Iran’s nuclear program was entirely peaceful. Intelligence officials agreed at the time that the Russian reactors were for civilian use. “What concerns us are the contacts the Iranians can establish in Russia or former Soviet states for acquiring other equipment and the expertise Iran develops under this program,” said one official.

“Iranians are very xenophobic; they want to buy one and figure out how to make their own rather than just buy outright,” said another. “They’re clearly working at a nuclear weapons program, although not as intently as the Iraqis. It will be years yet before they have nuclear capability. We can’t stop it, but we can slow it.”

The United States has long believed that the Iranian program has been plagued by incompetence and corruption that has hindered its success. Recent changes in the management of the program have led to some reforms and acceleration of the program.

In related news, Iran’s state-run television reported Thursday that the country was considering construction of a second major nuclear power plant and had ordered a feasibility study on the project. The country’s first nuclear power station, at Bushehr, has been declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and is slated to go on line next year with Russian help.

“The council has authorized Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization to study the construction of a new 1,000-megawatt plant with due consideration of environmental standards using the experience achieved from the completion of the first unit of Bushehr nuclear power plant,” Tehran television reported.

It said the decision was made during a council meeting Wednesday attended by First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref.

It was not clear if Russia would be involved in the construction of the new plant. The Kremlin has floated preliminary plans to help Iran build five more nuclear reactors over the next 10 years.

Both Russia and Iran insist that the Bushehr plant will be strictly for civilian purposes and open to international inspection. However, successive U.S. administrations have expressed concern over the plant.

The Bush administration has offered Russia economic incentives to abandon the Bushehr project but the Russians have not accepted the offer. Russia has denied consistently it is helping Iran develop nuclear weapons or with its missiles program.

In September, Russia drew up a plan for the return of spent nuclear fuel from Bushehr, seeking to allay U.S. concerns that the fuel could be used by terrorists and others to build weapons of mass destruction.

Robert Windrem is an investigative producer for NBC News, based in New York. The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/846867.asp

POLITICS-U.S.:
New Cheney Adviser Sets Syria In His Sights

Analysis - By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (IPS) - A neo-conservative strategist who has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to ''roll back'' the Ba'ath-led government in Syria has been quietly appointed as a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

David Wurmser, who had been working for Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, joined Cheney's staff under its powerful national security director, I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, in mid-September, according to Cheney's office.

The move is significant, not only because Cheney is seen increasingly as the dominant foreign-policy influence on President George W. Bush, but also because it adds to the notion that neo-conservatives remain a formidable force under Bush despite the sharp plunge in public confidence in Bush's handling of post-war Iraq resulting from the faulty assumptions propagated by the ''neo-cons'' before the war.

Given the recent intensification of tensions between Washington and Damascus -- touched off by this month's U.S. veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution deploring an Israeli air attack on an alleged Palestinian camp outside Damascus -- Wurmser's rise takes on added significance.

The move also follows House of Representatives' approval of a bill that would impose new economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria.

Wurmser's status as a favoured protege of arch-hawk and former Defence Policy Board chairman Richard Perle at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) also speaks loudly to Middle East specialists, who note Perle's long-time close association with Cheney, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Rumsfeld's chief deputy Paul Wolfowitz.

Wolfowitz was the first senior administration official to suggest that Washington might take action against Syria amid reports last April that Damascus was sheltering senior Iraqi leaders and weapons of mass destruction in the wake of the U.S. invasion.

''There's got to be a change in Syria,'' Wolfowitz said, accusing the government of President Bashar Assad of ''extreme ruthlessness''. Rumsfeld subsequently accused Syria of permitting Islamic ''jihadis'' to infiltrate Iraq to fight U.S. troops.

Perle, who last week was in Israel to receive a special award from the ''Jerusalem Summit'', an international group of right wing Jews and Christian Zionists who describe themselves as defenders of ''civilisation'' against ''Islamic fundamentalism'', has made no secret of his own desire to confront Damascus.

In a series of interviews, Perle applauded Israel's attack on Syrian territory -- the first since the 1967 war -- in alleged retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing in Israel. ''I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli Air Force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages,'' he said.

Perle said he ''hope(d)'' the United States would itself take action against Damascus, particularly if it turned out that Syria was acting as a financial or recruiting base for the insurgency in Iraq.

''Syria is itself a terrorist organisation,'' he asserted, insisting that Washington would not find it difficult to send troops to Damascus despite its commitment in Iraq. ''Syria is militarily very weak,'' added Perle.

Damascus has been in Wurmser's sights at least since he began working with Perle at AEI in the mid-1990s.

For the latter part of the decade, he wrote frequently to support a joint U.S.-Israeli effort to undermine then-President Hafez Assad in hopes of destroying Baathist rule and hastening the creation of a new order in the Levant to be dominated by ''tribal, familial and clan unions under limited governments''.

Indeed, it was precisely because of the strategic importance of the Levant that Wurmser advocated overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in favour of an Iraqi National Congress (INC) closely tied to the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan.

''Whoever inherits Iraq dominates the entire Levant strategically,'' he wrote in one 1996 paper for the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).

Wurmser, whose Israeli-born spouse Meyrav Wurmser heads Middle East studies at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute, was the main author of a 1996 report by a task force convened by the IASPS and headed by Perle, called the 'Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000'.

The paper, called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm', was directed to incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

It featured a series of recommendations designed to end the process of Israel trading ''land for peace'' by transforming the ''balance of power'' in the Middle East in favour of an axis consisting of Israel, Turkey and Jordan.

To do so, it called for ousting Saddam Hussein and installing a Hashemite leader in Baghdad. From that point, the strategy would be largely focused on Syria and, at the least, to reducing its influence in Lebanon.

Among other steps, the report called for Israeli sponsorship of attacks on Syrian territory by ''Israeli proxy forces'' based in Lebanon and ''striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper''.

''Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, even rolling back Syria,'' the report argued, to create a ''natural axis'' between Israel, Jordan, a Hashemite Iraq and Turkey that ''would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula''.

''For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East, which could threaten Syria's territorial integrity,'' it suggested.

A follow-up report by Wurmser titled 'Coping with Crumbling States', also favoured a substantial redrawing of the Middle East along tribal and familial lines in light of what he called an ''emerging phenomenon -- the crumbling of Arab secular-nationalist nations''.

The penchant of Washington and the West in general for backing secular-nationalist states against the threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism was a strategic error, warned Wurmser in the second study, a conclusion he repeated in a 1999 book, 'Tyranny's Ally', which included a laudatory foreword by Perle and was published by AEI.

While the book focused on Iraq not Syria, it elaborated on Wurmser's previous arguments by attacking regional specialists in U.S. universities, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who, according to him, were too wedded to strong secular states in the Arab world as the preferred guarantors of regional stability.

''Our Middle East scholarly and policy elite are informed by bad ideas about the region that lead them to bad policies,'' he charged, echoing a position often taken by Perle.

In the book's acknowledgments, Wurmser praised those who most influenced his work, a veritable ''who's who'' of those neo-cons most closely tied to Israel's far right, including Perle himself, another AEI scholar, Michael Ledeen and Undersecretary of Defence for Policy and the man in charge of post-Iraq war planning, Douglas Feith.

He listed former CIA director James Woolsey, who has called the conflict in Syria the early stages of ''World War IV'', Harold Rhode, a Feith aide who has also called himself Wolfowitz's ''Islamic Affairs adviser'' and INC leader Ahmed Chalabi.

Wurmser also gave thanks to Irving Moskowitz, a major casino operator and long-time funder of Israel's settlement movement, whom he described as a ''gentle man whose generous support of AEI allows me to be here''. (END/2003)

http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20712

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