Iranian Alert -- August 19, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- "Americans for Regime Change in Iran"

The US media still largely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” Most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. I began these daily threads June 10th 2003. On that date Iranians once again began taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Today in Iran, most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

What About Iran?

August 19, 2004
Jewish Journal
Janine Zacharia

Last week in Baghdad, 30 Iranians were captured fighting for the militant Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. A few days earlier, two trucks transporting weapons for Sadr’s fighters were caught trying to drive into Iraq from Iran.

NBC reported recently that "thousands" of Iranian-funded fighters are operating in Iraq. And last month, the Sept. 11 commission, which investigated U.S. intelligence failures associated with the terrorist attacks, found that eight of the 19 hijackers were given safe passage through Tehran in 2000 and 2001.

Yet despite all of this damning behavior, a senior Bush administration official last month told the Financial Times, "Iran’s hard-line government has refrained from efforts to destabilize the new government in neighboring Iraq."

After the release of the Sept. 11 commission’s findings about the safe passage, President Bush responded unflappably to the critical accusation, saying the United States "will continue to look and see if the Iranians were involved."

While the on-the-books policy of the current administration is regime change in Tehran, an overstretched military and an absence of good military options have led Bush to sound decidedly dovish. Rather than beating another war drum, he has made murmurs about the prospect of resumed relations in exchange for better Iranian behavior.

Just 10 weeks before the November election, Bush faces a problem: Iran, one of the three points on the axis of evil he described in his 2002 State of the Union address, is compounding headaches for the administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is now evidence of a link between the regime and Al Qaeda, throwing further doubt on why the Bush administration chose to strike at Saddam Hussein, rather than deal with the problem of the mullahs in Tehran.

And perhaps most menacingly of all, Iran is driving full speed ahead toward achieving a nuclear weapon. Senior U.S. officials all the way up to Bush have said the world cannot allow Iran to go nuclear, but such rhetoric has not proved powerful enough to halt programs in the past.

"We’ve heard this from the administration before. We’ve said, ‘We can’t allow North Korea to develop nuclear weapons.’ News flash: North Korea does have nuclear weapons," said Jon B. Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice made the pledge most recently in an Aug. 8 interview with NBC’s "Meet the Press." "We cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon," she said. "The president will look at all the tools that are available to him."

Yet at the moment, the United States, so consumed with the mess in Iraq, hardly has the stomach for another Middle East confrontation.

"The U.S. commitment in Iraq in terms of attention and troops has dramatically reduced our leverage over Iran," Wolfsthal said.

And in case anyone in Iran remained worried about the Bush administration getting tough, all they had to do was listen to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz on Aug. 10. "We can’t do everything at once," the administration’s top hawk told the House Armed Services Committee, when asked how the United States is dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its support for terrorism.

With competing camps within the administration, some pushing for engagement, others for, at the very least, support for democracy advocates inside Iran, Washington seems hardly able to draft a coherent approach to Tehran. Gone — at least for now — is the neoconservative rhetoric that the U.S. superpower can go it alone.

Even though the Iranian nuclear threat is far more imminent than Iraq’s ever was, the United States is pursuing an internationalist approach, relying on the Europeans (who provide Iran with 40 percent of its imports and have more leverage) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — actors that the Bush administration ridiculed in the run-up to the Iraq war — to fix the problem.

Last October, the Europeans, bearing all kinds of carrots, thought they had won a pledge from the Iranians to halt their nuclear bid. The IAEA quickly found that Iran was continuing to manufacture centrifuges needed for uranium enrichment, the key to a nuclear warhead.

Now the United States is hoping the IAEA, which meets next month, will refer Iran’s nuclear violations to the U.N. Security Council. And there, the United States hopes the world will sanction Iran for its behavior.

Israel is hoping for that, too. Israeli officials say world attention to the Iranian nuclear problem has slowed the program a bit. Israel recently set back the date by which Iran will have a nuclear bomb to 2008.

But everyone all the way up to Bush knows that if diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to abandon the program fail, Israel will not wait until Iran has fissile material to take steps to thwart the program. The London Times reported last month that Israel had conducted military rehearsals for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear power facility under construction at Bushehr.

"Israel will on no account permit Iranian reactors — especially the one being built in Bushehr with Russian help — to go critical," the Times quoted an Israeli defense source as saying. "If the worst comes to the worst and the international efforts fail, we are very confident we’ll be able to demolish the ayatollahs’ nuclear aspirations in one go."

Iran, which this month tested its long-range Shahab 3 missile — believed to be able to be tipped with a nuclear warhead — has pledged in turn to "wipe Israel off the map" if it strikes at its facilities. And Ayatollah Ali Hamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, recently warned it would strike at the "enemy’s" interests around the globe in retaliation, most likely a reference to soft targets like Jewish centers and Israeli embassies.

If Iran attains nuclear capability, the perceived threat to Israel may be greater than the actual one. "I think that the odds are they would not use it against Israel. The odds are against that they would contract out the nuclear technology to terrorists," said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist who is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Speaking at a panel on Iran hosted by the Hudson Institute on Tuesday, Gerecht noted that while he believes "the Iranian regime is not a crazy regime" and therefore would not seek nuclear annihilation by striking Israel in a post-Sept. 11 world, people must be "very fearful" of the possibility of a nuclear-equipped, virulently anti-Israel Iran.

Ray Takeyh, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said on the same panel that Iran’s accelerated nuclear ambitions were motivated primarily by the "massive projection of American power on Iran’s periphery," not by a desire to strike Israel. "I never really believed that Iran wants nuclear weapons because of Israel. Israel has no territorial designs on Iran."

"Nobody is going to talk about what kind of option Israel has operationally," said David Ivry, who commanded the Israeli air force’s 1981 covert strike against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. In a telephone interview, Ivry said one of the keys to the 1981 raid was that "nobody [outside the planners] knew what [Israel’s] red line was.

"The red line was that we are going to attack when there is enriched uranium on its way to be put in the nuclear reactor," he explained. "The idea was such that we cannot attack the nuclear reactor after the enriched uranium was put in, because it would cause an environmental disaster."

"Now," Ivry said, speaking of Iran, "it is a bit different. There are more facilities. They are underground. You have to define a red line, and this should be done inside [the Israeli military establishment]."

Ivry, unlike the defense source quoted by the London Times, has no delusions that an Israeli military strike would wipe out Iran’s nuclear capability forever.

"Even when we attacked the nuclear reactor at Osirak, our intelligence said within three to five years they would have it again," Ivry said. "But the idea was such that we have to gain time.... You cannot destroy a nuclear program completely once a nation has a desire to have it. You’d need different leadership."

Zalman Shoval, the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said that an Iranian nuke would be a problem for the entire world, not just Israel.

"If the Iranians actually developed nuclear weapons capability, of course Israel would be worried," Shoval said. "But I’m not sure Israel is the sole or even the main potential target. I’m not sure this is Iran’s most important geopolitical aim. What Iran wants to do is to be a regional superpower and control parts of the Middle East, and they apparently believe that having nuclear weapons will give them that ability."

"I’m not saying Israel couldn’t act," he added. "But Israel doesn’t want and doesn’t need to be in the forefront of acting."

One of the main obstacles in confronting Iran’s nuclear program is that the program is not centered at Bushehr, Wolfsthal said. Iran is working on producing highly enriched uranium using small gas centrifuges and cylinders at spots throughout the country. Wolfsthal said Iran has the science down and doesn’t need any additional technology from countries like Pakistan or Russia.

"Iran has become largely self-sufficient ... we don’t have the ability to constrain them through an embargo or a blockade," he said.

Some experts in Washington predict a second Bush administration would be more robust in its approach to Iran, anything from more actively fomenting domestic dissent to a decapitating strike against the Iranian leadership, should the nuclear threat become critical.

A Kerry administration, some Democrats, in particular, say, may be better able to work with European allies to produce a diplomatic solution. What’s for certain, as Shoval noted, is that "despite the present imbroglio in Iraq, whoever wins in November will have to take the lead in dealing with it."

http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=12689

Terror's South African Front

August 19, 2004
FrontPageMagazine.com
Josh Lefkowitz

On July 25, following a twelve-hour shootout, two South African Al Qaeda operatives were nabbed in Pakistan, along with Africa Embassy bombing suspect Ahmed Ghailani. According to reports, the pair was plotting attacks against a number of targets in South Africa, including the Johannnesburg Stock Exchange and the National Parliament in Cape Town.

These arrests highlight the growing threat posed by radical Islamists in South Africa. In addition to Al Qaeda’s increased presence within the country, South Africa’s government has closely allied itself with Iran and has largely ignored the spread of Islamic extremism within its borders.

Two months before the Pakistan arrests, the South African government revealed that security forces had thwarted an Al Qaeda plot to disrupt the country’s presidential election. South African terror suspects have even attempted to make their way into the U.S.

Just last week, a South African with suspicious travel documents was arrested in Mexico near the U.S. border. His links to Al Qaeda are currently being investigated. And on July 19, customs agents in Texas arrested Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed, a South African woman with a doctored passport. Like the man arrested last week, she is also being probed for possible Al Qaeda ties. In addition, immigration officials have been on the lookout for suspicious persons with South African travel documents ever since British authorities discovered hundreds of genuine blank South African passports during an anti-terrorism raid in London earlier this year.

While these developments underscore South Africa’s importance as a key node in the War on Terror, in fact, radical Islam has held a foothold in South Africa since at least the 1980’s.

One of the most well-established Islamist organizations in South Africa is Qibla, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. Formed in 1980 by radical Imam Achmed Cassiem to promote the establishment of an Islamic state in South Africa, Qibla uses the Iranian Revolution as its model. During the 1980’s, Qibla sent members to Libya for military training, and in the 1990’s, operatives trained in Pakistan and fought alongside Hizbollah in South Lebanon. By 2000, over one hundred Qibla supporters had been arrested for violent offenses, including murder. After 9/11, Qibla announced that it had recruited fighters to send to Afghanistan.

Qibla is not the only group with which Achmed Cassiem is involved. In 1995, he was appointed chair of the Islamic Unity Convention (IUC), an umbrella organization for over 250 South African Muslim groups. There has been speculation that the IUC is a front for Qibla, and the group has voiced its support for convicted terrorists. Following the sentencing of those involved in the 1993 New York “Day of Terror” plot, Cassiem and the IUC penned an open letter to President Clinton that demanded “the immediate and unconditional release” of plot mastermind Shaikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and “all those sentenced with him.”

To spread Cassiem’s radical message, the IUC set up the Cape Town-based Radio 786. The station, which claimed 135,000 listeners in a 2000 survey, spreads extremist propaganda to South Africa’s Muslims. In a 1998 report, the Israeli government singled out Radio 786 for its use of “classical anti-Semitic themes.” Currently, the Radio 786 website boasts an extensive tribute to deceased Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin.

In addition to Qibla and IUC, People Against Gangersterism and Drugs (PAGAD) also has a significant presence in South Africa. According to the State Department, which labels PAGAD a terrorist organization, the group shares “some members and leadership” with Qibla.

While PAGAD claims that its sole aim is “to eradicate gangsterism and drugs,” in reality, the group has launched an anti-Western campaign. For example, PAGAD is believed to have masterminded the bombing of the Cape Town Planet Hollywood in 1998, possibly in retaliation for U.S. strikes on Sudan and Afghanistan. What’s more, PAGAD has adopted the language of holy war, as members are referred to as “mujahideen” and “martyrs.” And, according to press reports, the group has sent members to Libya and Iran for training.

While hosting a number of indigenous terror groups, South Africa has also been a haven for international terrorist organizations. According to a variety of media reports, Israel lodged a formal complaint with the South African government in 1996 regarding the existence of five Hezbollah training camps. In 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported growing concern among security analysts that “Islamist extremists, including Al Qaeda, are using South Africa’s open society as a safe haven and a base to raise funds, launder money and plan terror operations.” One U.S. counterterrorism official told The Journal, “[w]e are detecting so much smoke lately that something’s got to be burning down there somewhere.” In July 2003, the Israeli Security Services declared that there is “recognizable [Hamas] activity in South Africa.”

In addition, South Africa has allowed a stream of radical students to enter the country. As an October 2003 Washington Post article noted, students from Pakistan’s radical madrassas have fled to South Africa to avoid a post-9/11 government crackdown on extremist indoctrination. The Post quoted Mohammad Jamil, a spokesman for the Federation of Madrassas, who said, “[a]bout 500 have already moved to South Africa…Others are planning to pack their bags.” These students likely found their way to the Islamic schools that recently sprang up in Cape Town, Johannesburg, and Durban to meet the increased demand. The South African Embassy in Islamabad has contributed to this influx with its generous visa policy.

The South African government’s willingness to allow this radicalized element into the country is not surprising given its general reluctance to take a firm stance against Islamic extremism. Most notably, South Africa has developed close ties with Iran, arguably the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism. Speaking on July 21, 2003 at the 7th South Africa-Iran Joint Bilateral Commission (established to expand political, economic, and trade links between the two countries), Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamani Zuma touted “the shared values between South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran, namely the promotion of democracy, justice, peace and prosperity.” Just two months earlier, Zuma had traveled to Tehran for the 30th Session of the Organization of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers.

In line with South Africa’s deeply troubling partnership with Iran, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Aziz Pahad, met with the chief of Hezbollah’s political bureau, Mohammad Raad, in Beirut in June 2003. In a press release, the Department of Foreign Affairs remarked:

“Mr. Pahad noted Mr. Raad’s position that Hizbollah was a legitimate liberation movement in terms of international law…Mr. Pahad…concurred that clear distinctions should be made between terrorism and legitimate struggle for liberation.”

The South African government has also levied sharp criticism at Israel. For example, in 2002, Minister of Foreign Affairs Zuma led a Non-Aligned Movement delegation to meet with Yasser Arafat in an expression of solidarity with “the people of Palestine.” The accompanying Department of Foreign Affairs release declared: “[t]he NAM delegation reiterated the movement’s outrage at the intensification of the illegal Israeli occupation, the killing, vast destruction, the economic strangulation and other atrocities committed against Palestine and its people.” More recently, the Department of Foreign Affairs lambasted Israel for killing Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, who it termed “a moderating influence.”

Despite its government’s pro-Palestinian stance, South Africa clearly has not managed to escape Al Qaeda’s wrath. Instead, Islamic extremists have taken advantage of the government’s laxity and, spurred on by a chaotic situation in which poverty, unemployment, and AIDS are rampant, have been able to establish a solid base for fundraising, recruiting, and operations.

As an article in The Economist notes, “[South African President Thebo] Mbeki speaks more passionately about the need to stop the war in Iraq than about issues over which he has actual influence, such as AIDS…” Additionally, violent crime is at epidemic levels (139 police were murdered in 2002 alone) and the police are largely ineffective. Also according to The Economist, “[m]any in the police are inexperienced, poorly trained and corrupt; the institution itself cannot be relied upon to enforce the law adequately and to protect the public.” Government officials are also wary of a sweeping crackdown on radicals due to fears that such actions could lead citizens to draw parallels with the apartheid era.

While this is a legitimate concern given the country’s past, South Africa must look to the future in taking the necessary measures to neutralize the growing radical Islamic threat festering within its borders.

Josh Lefkowitz is a terrorism analyst at The Investigative Project, a Washington D.C. based counterterrorism research center.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=14700

Preventing Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons

August 17, 2004
Hudson Institute
John R. Bolton

John R. Bolton, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Remarks to Hudson Institute Washington, DC August 17, 2004

As prepared

I'm very pleased to be here at the Hudson Institute among so many old friends. Today I'd like to speak about Iran, which has concealed a large-scale, covert nuclear weapons program for over eighteen years, and which, therefore, is one of our most fundamental proliferation challenges.

All of Iran's WMD [weapons of mass destruction] efforts -- chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles -- pose grave threats to international security. Iran's pursuit of these deadly weapons, despite its signature on treaties that ban them, marks it as a rogue state, and it will remain so until it completely, verifiably and irreversibly dismantles its WMD-related programs.

In response to recent criticism that the Bush Administration has not been attentive enough to the nuclear threats emanating from Iran, let me just say from the very start of his Administration , the President treated Iran as a serious and growing threat to international security, as evidenced by his famous "Axis of Evil" speech. This Administration was at the forefront of warning the international community about the seriousness of Iran's nuclear weapons program. We have been using every diplomatic tool at our disposal -- working through multilateral channels such as the International Atomic Energy Agency ("IAEA"), the G-8, and with our Russian, Chinese, British, French and German counterparts, and many others -- to apply pressure on Iran to halt its illicit activities.

Iran's Nuclear Weapons Program Let me start by describing several aspects of Iran's nuclear activities, and why they trouble us so much. There is much we do not know about Iran's weapons program, but much that we do know has been corroborated by a series of IAEA reports over the past year. It is the accumulation of this public and uncontradicted evidence, not just our own sensitive intelligence information, that leads us to our conclusions about Iran's true objectives. To this moment, Iran has never supplied coherent explanations for what it is up to, which is yet another indication that we are watching a clandestine nuclear weapons program in operation.

Iran is pursuing two separate paths to nuclear weapons, one that would use highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and one that would use plutonium. As to the uranium route, Iran has tried to develop two different uranium-enrichment methods in order to produce weaponsgrade uranium. First, it has established a number of facilities for the manufacture and testing of centrifuges (many of which are owned by military industrial organizations), a pilot enrichment facility designed for 1,000 centrifuges, and a large buried facility intended to house up to 50,000 centrifuges. In parallel, Iran has pursued another program to enrich uranium with lasers. Both of these programs were successfully concealed from IAEA inspectors in Iran for years until an Iranian opposition group disclosed their existence. As IAEA DG ElBaradei's reports confirmed, Iran used both enrichment methods to secretly enrich uranium, enriching to at least 1.2% using centrifuges, and up to 15% using lasers.

Iran has also developed a program for the production of plutonium, an alternate path to nuclear weapons. Covert construction of a large, heavy water production plant was also disclosed by an Iranian opposition group. Its purpose is to supply heavy water for a research reactor that Iran plans to begin constructing this year. The technical characteristics of this heavy water moderated research reactor are optimal for the production of weapons-grade plutonium. Iran claims the purpose of the reactor is for isotope production for civil purposes, a claim that belies Iran's confirmed past interest in building hot cells at the heavy water reactor that appear to be designed for plutonium separation.

Another potential source of plutonium for weapons is the Bushehr light-water power reactor, which is currently under construction. That reactor is under IAEA safeguards. Russia has agreed to provide all fresh fuel for that reactor, and Iran and Russia are discussing an agreement to return all spent fuel to Russia. However, if Iran should withdraw from the Nonproliferation Treaty ("NPT") and renounce this agreement with Russia, the Bushehr reactor would produce enough plutonium each year for about 30 nuclear weapons.

The potential to produce plutonium is just one of several proliferation concerns with the Bushehr reactor. This large nuclear project provides Iran with access to nuclear technology as well as expertise and training in the construction and operation of nuclear facilities. Bushehr can be used as a cover and a pretext for other sensitive and troublesome nuclear fuel cycle activities. For a variety of reasons, including the lack of agreement with Iran on the return to Russia of the spent fuel containing plutonium, Russia has not yet shipped fuel for initial operation of the Bushehr reactor.

The costly infrastructure to perform all of these activities goes well beyond any conceivable peaceful nuclear program. No comparable oil-rich nation has ever engaged, or would be engaged, in this set of activities -- or would pursue them for nearly two decades behind a continuing cloud of secrecy and lies to IAEA inspectors and the international community -- unless it was dead set on building nuclear weapons.

Cover stories put forward by Iran for the development of a nuclear fuel cycle and for individual facilities are simply not credible. For example, Iran is making an enormous investment in facilities to mine, process, and enrich uranium, and says it needs to make its own reactor fuel because it cannot count on foreign supplies. But for at least the next decade Iran will have at most a single nuclear power reactor. In addition, Iran does not have enough indigenous uranium resources to fuel even one power-generating reactor over its lifetime -- though it has quite enough uranium to make several nuclear bombs. We are being asked to believe that Iran is building uranium enrichment capacity to make fuel for reactors that do not exist from uranium Iran does not have.

Iran would have us believe it is building a massive uranium enrichment facility without having tested centrifuge machines, and building a heavy water production plant with no evident legitimate use for the product. The more credible explanation is that Iran is building the infrastructure to produce highly enriched uranium in centrifuges and plutonium in a heavy-watermoderated reactor.

Finally, there is Iran's claim that it is building massive and expensive nuclear fuel cycle facilities to meet future electricity needs, while preserving oil and gas for export. All of this strains credulity. Iran's uranium reserves are miniscule, accounting for less than one percent of its vast oil reserves and even larger gas reserves. Iran's gas reserves are the second largest in the world, and the industry estimates that Iran flares enough gas annually to generate electricity equivalent to the output of four Bushehr reactors.

Over the past two years, the IAEA has reported many details about Iran's nuclear program that leave no doubt of Iran's nuclear weapons intentions. Consider, for example, the urgency of Iran's push to master centrifuge technology in the face of calls by the international community to suspend enrichment activities. On June 19, 2003, the Chairwoman of the IAEA Board issued a statement of the Board urging Iran not to introduce nuclear material into its centrifuge cascade, pending resolution of the issues that have been raised about Iran's nuclear program. According to subsequent reporting by the IAEA Director General, just six days later, on June 25, Iran introduced uranium hexafluoride into its centrifuge cascade. Iran's stated purpose of producing fuel for nuclear power reactors whose construction has not yet begun -- and which will not be in operation for at least a decade -- hardly justifies this need to press ahead quickly. But this urgency is quite consistent with a desire to produce a nuclear weapon as soon as possible. Consider also that the IAEA has discovered that Iran has produced Polonium 210 in the Tehran Research Reactor. The IAEA Director General's reports identify two primary uses for Polonium 210: neutron initiators in certain designs of nuclear weapons, and batteries for space satellites. Since Iran has no space satellites or deep space program, the nuclear weapons application is obviously of concern.

Another unmistakable indicator of Iran's intentions is the pattern of repeatedly lying to and providing false reports to the IAEA. For example, Iran denied testing centrifuges with uranium, denied the existence of a laser enrichment program, denied producing enriched uranium, and denied receiving any foreign assistance in its centrifuge program. In each case, Iran confessed the truth only when confronted with irrefutable technical evidence from IAEA inspections. Iran's October 2003 submission to the IAEA, a declaration that was supposed to be the correct, complete, and final story of Iran's nuclear program, omitted any mention of the development and testing of advanced P-2 centrifuges, which IAEA inspectors discovered in early 2004. Iran's violations of its safeguards agreement with the IAEA include production of plutonium by covertly introducing uranium targets into the Tehran research reactor and reprocessing the irradiated targets to separate the plutonium, and enrichment of uranium with centrifuges and lasers. The IAEA Director General concluded in November 2003 that, "it is clear that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement."

There are press reports of Iranian attempts to purchase deuterium, with speculation that this would be used for boosting the yield of nuclear weapons. Such reports underscore how incomplete our information is on the Iranian nuclear program. Why should Iran be seeking deuterium, when as I have said Iran is building a production facility for heavy water, another name for deuterium, to supply its heavy water reactor program? What other roles does deuterium play in the Iranian nuclear program? There are also troubling press reports of Iran's continued interest in procuring sensitive nuclear-related technologies from abroad that could have nuclear weapons applications, like dual-use high speed cameras and spark gaps. We hope the IAEA is investigating such procurement attempts closely and will report on any findings in the upcoming report.

The impetus behind the Iranian quest for nuclear weapons is so great it has caused Iran to renege on its commitments to the IAEA to ratify the Additional Protocol and fully cooperate with inspectors, and renege on its commitment to the Europeans to suspend uranium enrichment activities. If we permit Iran's deception to go on much longer, it will be too late. Iran will have nuclear weapons.

Isolation, Not Engagement

Since an Iranian opposition group provided public information on elements of Iran's nuclear program than had been hidden from the IAEA in August 2002, the IAEA has conducted a series of inspections or Iranian facilities. This has resulted in a series of five reports by the IAEA Director General, all of which are posted on the IAEA web site. These reports document a great deal of information on the Iranian nuclear program, and also make clear there are many remaining unanswered questions, including the true scope and nature of Iran' advanced centrifuge enrichment program, the assistance Iran has received in centrifugetechnology and in other areas, the involvement of the military in the centrifuge program and perhaps other aspects of Iran's nuclear efforts,plans for hot cells that can be used for separation of plutonium, and many others. A sixth report of the Director General is expected at the end of August, which is not likely to put these questions to rest.

In response, the IAEA's 35-member Board of Governors has since June 2003 has issued a statement of the Board and adopted four unanimous resolutions expressing increasing concern about the Iranian nuclear program, deploring Iran's failures and insufficient cooperation, and calling on Iran to cooperate fully with the IAEA. The Board has repeatedly called on Iran to suspend all enrichment related activities, something Iran steadfastly refuses to do. Indeed, The most recent resolution in June 2004 "deplores" the fact that "Iran's cooperation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been," reiterates its call for Iran to suspend all enrichment related activities, and specifically calls on Iran to refrain from production of uranium hexafluoride and production of centrifuge components. Iran has made clear it is going forward with the startup of its uranium conversion faciltiy for production of uranium hexafluoride and other materials for the Iranian nuclear program, and going forward with production of centrifuge components and assembly of centrifuges.

Iran's actions and statements do not bode well for the success of a negotiated approach to dealing with this issue. In June, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi renounced a central part of the deal Iran made last year with Britain, France and Germany to suspend its uranium enrichment programs, saying, "Iran feels itself no longer obliged to its commitments with the European Union trio and will revise its policies on nuclear activities and announce the new decisions within the coming days." And Iranian President Mohamed Khatami declared that Iran was no longer bound by any "moral commitment" to continue suspending uranium enrichment. Iran's decision on July 29 to resume the construction and assembly of nuclear centrifuge parts domestically and remove the seals on material sealed by the IAEA is further cause for alarm.

Iran's repudiation of a central element of its deal with the EU-3 is a substantial setback for the European approach, and underlines why we continue to believe that the Iranian nuclear weapons program must be taken up by the UN Security Council, falling as it does within the Council's mandate to address threats to international peace and security.

There is, of course, a real irony here. Much of the pressure on Iran has come not by the international community threatening the use of force against Iran, but merely by the prosspect of Iran's nuclear program to be placed on the agenda of the Security Council. Never has the Council been so feared! This is quite an achievement for an Administration frequently criticized as "unilateralist."

Clearly, the time to report this issue to the Security Council is long overdue. To fail to do so would risk sending a signal to would-be proliferators that there are not serious consequences for pursuing secret nuclear weapons programs. As Condoleezza Rice told Fox News two weeks ago, "The Iranians have been trouble for a very long time. And it's one reason that this regime has to be isolated in its bad behavior, not quote-unquote, 'engaged."

Our Counterproliferation Strategy

While we work to bring this issue to the UN Security Council, we are simultaneously pursuing other measures to bring a halt to Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons. We have focused special attention on Russia, the supplier of Iran's Bushehr reactor. Following sustained high-level exchanges, initiated by President Bush, we believe that Russia now shares our concern about Iran's nuclear activities. It joined us in supporting the IAEA's ongoing inspections and backed language in the Sea Island Summit declaration in June deploring Iran's failure to cooperate with the IAEA.

Additionally, Russia recently joined the core group of nations participating in the Proliferation Security Initiative ("PSI"), a robust new tool for counter-proliferation launched one year ago by President Bush. PSI is designed to stop the spread of WMD's, their delivery systems, and related materials to non-state actors and rogue states such as Iran. The overwhelmingly positive response and enhanced awareness that PSI has fostered globally about real, practical steps that can be taken to defeat proliferators is a testament to the importance that countries attach to confronting the challenge of proliferation and developing innovative tools to combat it. The PSI-coordinated interdiction of the ship, BBC CHINA, en route to Libya with equipment for its nuclear weapons program was an important element in the Libyan decision to renounce and dismantle its WMD programs.

In a speech at the National Defense University in February, President Bush addressed weaknesses in the nuclear nonproliferation regime that allowed states like Iran and Libya other states with covert nuclear programs to subvert their NPT obligations. He detailed a number of proposals that made clear the Administration's overarching approach: the frontlines in our nonproliferation strategy must extend beyond the well-known rogue states to the trade routes and entities that are engaged in supplying the countries of greatest proliferation concern. This is a "forward" policy, which can properly be described not as "nonproliferation," but as "counterproliferation." We are employing a number of tools to thwart WMD and missile programs, including sanctions, interdiction, and credible export controls. Most aspiring proliferators are still dependent on outside suppliers and technology. Thus, we can slow down and even stop their weapons development plans by disrupting their procurement efforts.

Conclusion

Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons capability is moving it further and further down the path toward international isolation. We cannot let Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond. Without serious, concerted, immediate intervention by the international community, Iran will be well on the road to doing so. [End]

This document was downloaded from the U.S. State Department website (www.state.gov) on August 17, 2004.

http://www.hudson.org/files/publications/Bolton%20Speech.pdf

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