Making things worse- as usual

Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, in Foreign Affairs:

Summary: The Bush administration wants to contain Iran by rallying the support of Sunni Arab states and now sees Iran's containment as the heart of its Middle East policy: a way to stabilize Iraq, declaw Hezbollah, and restart the Arab-Israeli peace process. But the strategy is unsound and impractical, and it will probably further destabilize an already volatile region.

That Iran NIE

Just to keep handy...

At Salon:

A new report takes the wind out of Iran hawks' sails, suggesting that Iran has ceased work on nuclear weapons and can be negotiated with.

GAO Questions Effectiveness of Iran Sanctions

McClatchy Newspapers:

Two decades' worth of U.S. economic sanctions against Iran appear to have had little impact, Congress' investigative arm said Wednesday, calling into question a key pillar of President Bush's strategy to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and support for terrorism.

A report by the Government Accountability Office says that high oil prices and growing international trade have insulated Iran's leaders from the effect of sanctions. Iranian corporations and banks have switched to currencies other than the dollar and used other "workarounds" to bypass the sanctions, it says.

Iran's government has signed contracts with foreign firms worth roughly $20 billion since 2003 to develop its oil and gas deposits, the report says.

"Iran's global trade ties and leading role in energy production make it difficult for the United States to isolate Iran and pressure it to reduce proliferation and support for terrorism," it says.

Overall, it says, the effect of sanctions is unclear.

Still demonizing Iran

McClatchy Newspapers:

At a news conference Sunday, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said the use of EFPs has returned to "normal levels" after a brief increase in the first weeks of January. He couldn't explain the increase, nor could he say if Iran was behind the delivery of the weapons to Iraq.

Smith, however, said there's evidence that Iran continues to train and support Iraqi Shiite Muslim groups.

"We continue to see a negative influence by Iran," Smith said. "We clearly see their intent of training and financing continues."

Tensions between the Bush administration and Iran remain high. During his Mideast trip this month, President Bush declared, "Iran is a threat," and his administration and the U.S. military have accused Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its Quds Force of training and equipping Iraqi Shiite militias that attack U.S. soldiers.

Over the past two months, however, U.S. military officials in Iraq have said, the Iranians have smuggled fewer weapons into Iraq, although the officials have said they aren't sure how to explain the decline.

The automobile finds religion

InventorSpot:

A spokesperson for Iranian company, Iran Khodro, says its "Islamic Car" should be readily available throughout the Middle East, parts of Asia, and Africa, in three years.

The car will have options including a compass to find Mecca and a compartment for a Koran. Priced between $8,700 and $12,000, the vehicle is meant to appeal to buyers who would like a car designed with Muslims in mind and produced by a company that acts in line with Muslim values.

Brain hurts, makes too much sense

Gary Kamiya, of Salon:

Bush's disastrous legacy is now locked in place. The National Intelligence Estimate released last week, which stated that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003, is an explicit repudiation of the Bush doctrine and a preemptive strike against war with Iran. The professionals have struck back against the ideologues.

But in spite of the NIE findings, Bush and the wider U.S. establishment still share a view of Iran as evil and unapproachable. Until Washington realizes that it would be better off engaging with the Iranian regime than demonizing it, its Mideast policy will continue to flounder along the failed path of Bush's "war on terror." To avoid that outcome, it's going to have to be willing to question everything it thought it knew about Iran.

Congress and the media's so-what response to the Bush administration's outrageous attempt to cook the Iran intelligence does not inspire confidence. The Bush administration sat on the NIE for more than a year, trying to change the report to make it harsher on Iran, and all the while beating the drums for war. This fact has gone largely uncriticized, even though it's Iraq all over again. Bush has gotten a pass on his deception yet again for a simple reason: America views Iran as so innately dangerous, irrational and undeterrable that it doesn't care that Bush lied about what he knew and when he knew it.

In the eyes of the mainstream media, Congress and much of the public, Iran is the ultimate bad guy, a combination of al-Qaida and Adolf Hitler. This substratum of fear and hatred, some reasonable but much irrational, explains why leading Democrats, from Harry Reid to Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama, have reacted so tepidly to the NIE and Bush's obvious lies about it. More important, it explains why even a Democratic president could still pursue a self-destructive course of confrontation with Tehran.

A softer tone

He's not the real power, in Iran, but this is still a good thing. It undermines the ability of neocon warmongers to label him crazy.

Los Angeles Times:

In his first formal news conference since a U.S. intelligence report last week undercut claims that Iran was secretly developing nuclear weapons, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad struck an unusually mild tone Tuesday, calling for dialogue with Washington and forgoing his usual anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric.

He also denied that Iran had resumed a secret nuclear weapons program, a claim made by an Iranian exile group, the Mujahedin Khalq, which has been listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union. The group cited unidentified sources in Iran as saying the Islamic Republic had restarted its program in 2004.

A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate released last week concludes that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003. Tehran denies ever having such a program.

Ahmadinejad initially gloated over the report as vindication for Iran, though it says his country continued to enrich uranium and that Iran easily could restart its weapons program. But at the two-hour news conference, Ahmadinejad described the report as "a positive and forward step" by the U.S. to ease tensions in the Middle East.

"We do hope there will be one or two steps forward so as to make a different atmosphere for finding solutions," he told reporters. "If further steps are taken, then our problems will be less complicated."

How to stop nuclear proliferation

Thomas Coll, in the New Yorker:

By now, more than sixty years into the atomic age, there is little mystery about why or how countries sometimes agree to give up work on nuclear weapons. Moral vision is not a decisive factor, the evidence suggests; the leaders who have repudiated bomb programs span the considerable range between Muammar Qaddafi and Nelson Mandela. Nor does the nature of a country’s political system seem to matter much. According to Richard Rhodes’s recent history “Arsenals of Folly,” the countries that, since the bombing of Nagasaki, have forsworn, under diplomatic pressure, either bomb arsenals or advanced-weapons experiments include, in addition to Libya and South Africa, Yugoslavia, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Turkey, Greece, Romania, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Switzerland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Nuclear bombs are expensive, dangerous, and not very useful in war, but they do bring prestige and scare off unruly neighbors. While each diplomatic case is as individual as a fingerprint, the formula for achieving voluntary nuclear disarmament is well established: a country’s anxieties about security are negotiated into quietude; its aspirations to political legitimacy and economic integration are rewarded; and, if the government in question is nonetheless recalcitrant, political and economic pressure are brought to bear. This method is not infallible, but the global scorecard since 1945 is not entirely discouraging: about two dozen successes; three failures (India, Pakistan, Israel); five problem arsenals born in the Cold War and complicated by Great Power competition (the United States, Russia, China, France, and Britain); and two cases-in-progress, North Korea and Iran. In only one instance, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, has preëmptive military action, rather than diplomacy, figured significantly in an attempt to stop nuclear proliferation; as a test case of this approach, beginning with Israel’s raid on an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and culminating with the present war, it has proved less than persuasive. In an earlier era, the Cuban missile crisis was similarly uninspiring.

Facts

New York Times:

American intelligence agencies reversed their view about the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program after they obtained notes last summer from the deliberations of Iranian military officials involved in the weapons development program, senior intelligence and government officials said on Wednesday.

The notes included conversations and deliberations in which some of the military officials complained bitterly about what they termed a decision by their superiors in late 2003 to shut down a complex engineering effort to design nuclear weapons, including a warhead that could fit atop Iranian missiles.

The newly obtained notes contradicted public assertions by American intelligence officials that the nuclear weapons design effort was still active. But according to the intelligence and government officials, they give no hint of why Iran’s leadership decided to halt the covert effort.

Ultimately, the notes and deliberations were corroborated by other intelligence, the officials said, including intercepted conversations among Iranian officials, collected in recent months. It is not clear if those conversations involved the same officers and others whose deliberations were recounted in the notes, or if they included their superiors.

We're never leaving! Ever!

Wall Street Journal:

he U.S. Navy is building a military installation atop this petroleum-export platform as the U.S. establishes a more lasting military mission in the oil-rich north Persian Gulf.


While presidential candidates debate whether to start bringing ground troops home from Iraq, the new construction suggests that one footprint of U.S. military power in Iraq isn't shrinking anytime soon: American officials are girding for an open-ended commitment to protect the country's oil industry.

That is a sea change for the U.S., which has patrolled these waters for decades. In the past, American warships and their allies flexed the West's military might in the Persian Gulf to demonstrate a broad commitment to protect the region, which produces almost a third of the world's oil. President Jimmy Carter codified the doctrine in 1980 in response to a perceived Soviet threat.

Iran not arming Iraqi insurgents!

McClatchy Newspapers:

Iran appears to have stopped shipping the deadliest type of weapons used against U.S. troops in Iraq after a European government confronted Tehran with proof that the weapons came from Iranian factories and Iraqi officials warned their neighbor that instability in Iraq affects the entire region, U.S., Western and Iraqi officials said.

A senior U.S. general in Iraq said Thursday that Iran is upholding informal commitments it's made in the last several months and no new weapons caches have been found recently. "We believe the commitments that the Iranians have made appear to be holding up," said Maj. Gen. James Simmons, a deputy corps commander in charge of studying explosive attacks, during a press briefing.

That's a striking departure from repeated U.S. condemnations of Iranian meddling in Iraq and from the argument by allies of Vice President Dick Cheney that there's little point in negotiating with Iran because its leaders can't be trusted to deal in good faith.

Looking for an excuse

Guardian:

US military officials are putting huge pressure on interrogators who question Iraqi insurgents to find incriminating evidence pointing to Iran, it was claimed last night.

Micah Brose, a privately contracted interrogator working for American forces in Iraq, near the Iranian border, told The Observer that information on Iran is 'gold'. The claim comes after Washington imposed sanctions on Iran last month, citing both its nuclear ambitions and its Revolutionary Guards' alleged support of Shia insurgents in Iraq. Last week the US military freed nine Iranians held in Iraq, including two it had accused of links to the Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force.

Brose, 30, who extracts information from detainees in Iraq, said: 'They push a lot for us to establish a link with Iran. They have pre-categories for us to go through, and by the sheer volume of categories there's clearly a lot more for Iran than there is for other stuff. Of all the recent requests I've had, I'd say 60 to 70 per cent are about Iran.

'It feels a lot like, if you get something and Iran's not involved, it's a let down.' He added: 'I've had people say to me, "They're really pushing the Iran thing. It's like, shit, you know." '

Not that it necessarily matters

McClatchy Newspapers:

Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

Even his own administration appears divided about the immediacy of the threat. While Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney speak of an Iranian weapons program as a fact, Bush's point man on Iran, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, has attempted to ratchet down the rhetoric.

Can anyone?

Spiegel Online:

CAN MERKEL STOP BUSH?

Iran Crisis To Top Agenda of US Trip

The sounds of saber rattling against the mullah regime in Iran are getting louder in Washington. When Chancellor Angela Merkel travels to the United States this week, German politicians at both ends of the political spectrum will expect her to voice clear opposition to further military escapades. But Merkel prefers quiet diplomacy.

Bush considers war, and Britain?

Guardian:

Gordon Brown is considering a Saudi plan to limit the supply of uranium to potential nuclear weapons states and will call for new EU sanctions against Iran in the next few weeks, most probably in the form of an end to export credit guarantees.

US-allied Gulf states said yesterday they were planning a consortium to provide enough enriched uranium for Iran's civil nuclear programme, which they believe could be a deterrent against the development of nuclear weapon.

Iran can handle Bush's bluster

Washington Post:

Confronted by mounting U.S. and U.N. pressure, Iran has been steadily shifting its trade from West to East and, with the benefit of record high oil prices, is likely to be able to withstand the new U.S. sanctions, according to U.S., European and Iranian analysts.

China, a permanent member of the Security Council that can veto any U.N. resolution, is expected to overtake Germany as Iran's biggest trading partner this year. Germany and other European countries had consistently been Iran's largest trading partners for more than a decade, according to the Iran Investment Monthly.

The U.S. Treasury said that more than 40 banks, mostly in Europe, have curbed business with Iran as a result of U.S. pressure, but smaller banks, Islamic financial institutions and Asian banks are likely to step in and replace the Western financial institutions through which Iran has long sold oil on the international market. Oil traders said that Iran does an increasing portion of its petroleum sales in euros and yen, instead of U.S. dollars, and often through third parties, to help its customers circumvent U.S. financial sanctions.

"Given particularly the price and demand for oil, Iran clearly has leverage with countries that need Iran's oil," said Shaul Bakhash, a George Mason University historian and author of "The Reign of the Ayatollahs." In addition, he said, "Iran has a huge cushion of foreign-exchange reserves."

For Bush, something more important than warmongering...

Washington Post:

A U.S. military strike against Iran would have dire consequences in petroleum markets, say a variety of oil industry experts, many of whom think the prospect of pandemonium in those markets makes U.S. military action unlikely despite escalating economic sanctions imposed by the Bush administration.

The small amount of excess oil production capacity worldwide would provide an insufficient cushion if armed conflict disrupted supplies, oil experts say, and petroleum prices would skyrocket. Moreover, a wounded or angry Iran could easily retaliate against oil facilities from southern Iraq to the Strait of Hormuz.

A discouraging dose of lies

Guardian:

The commander of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, yesterday sharpened America's confrontation with Iran, claiming that a leader of its Revolutionary Guard corps was in direct charge of policy in Baghdad.

The charge that Tehran's ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, was a member of the Quds force, a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, takes US accusations of Iranian meddling in Iraq's violence to a new level. It strengthens suggestions that Washington is ratcheting up the rhetoric against Tehran in preparation for military strikes against Revolutionary Guard facilities in Iran.

An encouraging dose of rationality

Guardian:

Diplomatic relations between Britain and the United States over Iran are under increasing strain after Gordon Brown's special security adviser warned that American claims about Tehran's military capability should be taken 'with a pinch of salt'.

As a new conservative campaign group with links to the White House prepares to make the case that Iran is a direct threat to the US, Patrick Mercer urged scepticism towards any US justification for strikes against the country.

Mercer, the former shadow homeland security spokesman, who visIted the Iranian capital recently, said: 'There is increasing concern about the apparent evidence that America is preparing about Iranian military involvement.'

John Bolton is insane.

Guardian:

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.

Mr Bolton, who was addressing a fringe meeting organised by Lord (Michael) Ancram, said that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was "pushing out" and "is not receiving adequate push-back" from the west.

"I don't think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don't know what the alternative is.

"Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities."

He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the "source of the problem", Mr Ahmadinejad.

You know what's even more insane? For a year, he was our U.N. Ambassador.