Iran seems to be maintaining its previous stance on uranium enrichment — a key issue for Western powers and Israel — ahead of proposed talks by the 6-power P5+1 negotiating group. On Tuesday, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI), said Iran would ”not suspend 20 percent [...]]]>
Iran seems to be maintaining its previous stance on uranium enrichment — a key issue for Western powers and Israel — ahead of proposed talks by the 6-power P5+1 negotiating group. On Tuesday, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation (AEOI), said Iran would ”not suspend 20 percent uranium enrichment because of the demands of others.”
Iran insists that it has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium on its soil. That right is guaranteed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory, but the US and Iran appear to interpret it differently. Several UN Security Council resolutions also demand that Iran suspend its enrichment program until IAEA concerns are satisfied.
The US believes Iran is working towards nuclear weapon capability, but has not decided to build a nuclear weapon. Interestingly, some high-level US foreign policy luminaries have called the US position of 0% Iranian enrichment untenable, as Tony Karon has reported.
Laura Rozen points out that Abbasi-Davani’s comments “came a day after Iran’s foreign minister struck a conciliatory tone, expressing optimism about prospects for progress at upcoming nuclear talks.” Last week, Herman Nackaerts, the deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said the agency had a “good meeting” in Tehran even though Iran refused to allow the agency to enter its Parchin military site at this time.
These developments suggest it’s anyone’s guess at this point whether resumed talks, if they go so far, will lead to substantive progress during the diplomatic process. But it’s easy to forget that while all this is going on, a related cyberwar is quietly taking place.
While telling Israel’s Army Radio that Israel’s “red line” with Iran is still “our top priority”, Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s Likudnik Vice Prime Minister, brought up the issue today:
“In the meantime, there are interesting things happening in Iran, such as worms, viruses and explosions,” alluding to clandestine cyber-warfare operations targeting the Islamic Republic that many suspect are carried out by Israel.
Yesterday, Iran reported that its computers are being targeted by malware that wipes data from hard drives. The source is unknown.
I’m not sure how cyber attacks, particularly large-scale ones, affect Iran’s negotiating stance or its alleged nuclear ambitions. But is it fair to say that this is an important issue that’s overlooked when assessing “defiant” Iran’s unreasonable stance towards the West, just as the now forgotten issue of targeted assassinations against Iranian scientists was? Not to mention cyber blowback and another potentially calamitous form of warfare that’s slowly being unleashed upon the world, be it from Iran, or anyone else. Those issues may deserve some attention now too.
]]>News and views relevant to US mideast foreign policy for Sept. 20
“Iranian policymakers should understand that failing to limit the enrichment program will eventually trigger war”: The Security Times carries a commentary by Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential British think tank. Outlining the continuing [...]]]>
News and views relevant to US mideast foreign policy for Sept. 20
“Iranian policymakers should understand that failing to limit the enrichment program will eventually trigger war”: The Security Times carries a commentary by Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an influential British think tank. Outlining the continuing difficulties in negotiating an agreement on Iran’s enrichment activities, Fitzpatrick notes that the lack of an agreement means that pressure will grow to take military action in the coming years:
…. Iran already is nuclear capable – now possessing all the materials and technology, requiring only a political decision – and, while unpalatable, this status has not triggered military action.
The problem is that the red line separating nuclear-capable from nuclear-armed will become less clear as Iran’s enrichment program makes further advances. At present, Iran is still months away from being able to make a successful dash to produce weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU). Because IAEA inspections take place on average twice a month, any such ‘breakout’ at declared facilities would be detected in time.
If, however, the Iranians sought to produce HEU at clandestine plants, they could not be confident the work would remain hidden. Twice already, secret enrichment plants have been exposed. Iran might judge that it could get away with such exposure, claiming, as it does today, that it does not need to follow IAEA rules about early notification of new nuclear facilities.
If this is Iran’s calculation, it could well backfire. Iran does not know how close it could come to crossing the line to weapons production before its adversaries determined it was too close. If Iran’s enrichment program continues unabated, at some point Western intelligence agencies will judge that because the uranium stockpile is too large, the technology too advanced and the hiding places too many, a dash for the bomb cannot be detected in time. The red line of weapons production will have become too blurred to serve as an effective tripwire.
“Iran’s Nuclear Program: Tehran’s Compliance with International Obligations”: The Congressional Research Service asks “Has Iran Violated the NPT?” in a new report and concludes that the matter is “unclear” though the IAEA believes Iran “has violated its safeguards agreement” and was, until at least 2003, pursuing military research as part of the program. It notes that investigations are still ongoing over claims that Iran violated the NPT’s Article II, “which state[s] that non-nuclear-weapon states-parties shall not ‘manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices’ or “’seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.’”
The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate assessed in 2007 that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
In response to an IAEA Board of Governors ruling that Iran had not met its disclosure (and safeguards) obligations, the Iranian press reported that “Iranian Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani said that the most recent resolution issued against Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency raises doubt about the benefit of being a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).”
“Who’s Sabotaging Iran’s Nuclear Program?”: Building off an earlier New York Times report on allegations of sabotage against Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Daily Beast’s Eli Lake questions if this is an act of escalation by the perpetrators:
Fereydoun Abbasi, Iran’s vice president and the chief of its nuclear-energy agency, disclosed that power lines between the holy city of Qom and the underground Fordow nuclear centrifuge facility were blown up with explosives on Aug. 17. He also said the power lines leading to Iran’s Natanz facilities were blown up as well. On the day after the power was cut off at Fordow, an inspector from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asked to visit the facility.
The disclosure is significant. To start, it is the first piece of evidence to suggest opponents of the Iranian program are targeting the country’s electrical grid and doing so on the ground.
The US has publicly denied it is carrying out attacks on any facilities and military or civilian targets in Iran. An NBC investigative report from the summer reported that Israel, not the US, is actually orchestrating the bombings and assassinations. Rather than risk discovery of its own network in the Islamic Republic, the NBC said that the Mossad relies on members of the People’s Mujahedeen of Iran (PMO) to carry out these operations.
“Poll: Majority of Palestinians, Israelis say attack on Iran would result in major war”: Haaretz reports on a new poll in Israel expressing growing concern among Israeli citizens and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories that a war with Iran would “would ignite a major regional war,” though the poll also noted that a significant number of respondents do not believe a war is likely this year anyway:
According to the study’s finding, 77 percent of Israeli respondents and 82 percent of Palestinian respondents said that an Israeli attack on Iran would result in a major regional confrontation.
Regarding the possibility of an Israeli strike without U.S. backing, 65 percent of Israelis were against such a course of action, an increase from 52 percent in June.
Also, the study found that 70 percent of Israelis did not believe Israel would strike Iran in the coming months, with only 20 percent of respondents saying they believe the Iranians’ goal is to destroy Israel.
The Israeli press also reported that US diplomats have warned their Israeli counterparts that should Israel attack Iran this year, it would jeopardize Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt.
]]>Fereidoon Abbasi, head of the [...]]]>
Fereidoon Abbasi, head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization, told state television on Sunday that Iran doesn’t need uranium enriched above the 20 percent level needed for the Tehran research reactor which produces medical isotopes. Once there’s enough supply, he said, enrichment could be dropped it to the 3.5 percent level needed for nuclear power (weapons-grade uranium is more than 90 percent enriched).
“Based on our needs and once the required fuel is obtained, we will decrease the production and we may even totally shift it to the 3.5 percent,” Abbasi said, according to Iran’s Press TV.
“We are going to produce and store [20 percent enriched uranium] to some extent in order to provide fuel for Tehran’s [research] reactor for a few years or to predict fuel needs of another research reactor,” he said.
Iran’s comments are being interpreted as “mixed signals” by several mainstream outlets (aside from this Associated Press article) because of Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi’s statement over the weekend that setting conditions prior to talks is “completely meaningless“. On Saturday, the New York Times reported on U.S. “demands” which include an enhanced focus on Iran’s Fordow uranium enrichment facility. The piece included this interesting side note:
The outcome of the talks — or their breakdown — could well determine whether Washington will be able to quiet Israeli threats that it could take military action this year. But talking with Iran’s leaders also carries considerable political risk for Mr. Obama, with Iran emerging as one of the few major foreign policy issues in the presidential campaign.
Paul Pillar responds to the Times report in the National Interest:
]]>We ought to hope that the description in a New York Times report of the U.S. position going into negotiations with Iran about nuclear activities does not fairly represent what U.S. and other Western negotiators will bring to the table. Perhaps we can take heart in the absence of a good reason to expect that leaks to journalists of negotiating positions will be complete and entirely accurate. Leaks, after all, are designed for various audiences, and not necessarily the one that will be faced across the conference table. Nonetheless, it is disturbing to read of an approach that probably would diminish rather than enhance the prospects for movement toward an agreement that satisfies Western interests. The lede of the Times story is that the Obama administration and its European partners will open the talks by “demanding the immediate closing and ultimate dismantling” of Iran’s uranium-enrichment facility at Fordo. This is the newer of two such Iranian facilities and the one that—because it was constructed, no doubt at substantially higher cost, inside a mountain—is relatively less vulnerable to armed attack. This demand echoes Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak’s recent singling out, amid more talk by Barak in the same interview about possibly resorting to military force, of closure of Fordo as a key Israeli objective.
Wall Street Journal: Iran is called “aggressively defensive” by an unnamed U.S. official in an article about how a “direct military hot line” is being considered to prevent “miscalculations” after an escalation in “near-miss” military encounters between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic in [...]]]>
Wall Street Journal: Iran is called “aggressively defensive” by an unnamed U.S. official in an article about how a “direct military hot line” is being considered to prevent “miscalculations” after an escalation in “near-miss” military encounters between the U.S. and the Islamic Republic in the Persian gulf.
The U.S. is portrayed as being wary of engaging with Iran directly, but according to the official, it has a history of speaking to its “enemies”:
- We spoke to the Soviets when we had thermonuclear weapons pointed at each other.
According to the National Iranian American Council, this event is part of campaign by U.S. military leaders to open channels for direct communication with Iran.
National Review Online: Seth Leibsohn, a fellow at the Claremont Institute who served as a policy advisor for Rick Santorum’s political action committee (he runs a PR firm with his wife), attempts to alarm and infuriate readers by writing that
- This week, New York City — America — will play host to two tainting and tainted sets of affairs at the United Nations. First, the most dangerous man in the world heading the most dangerous regime in the world, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran, will arrive here to speak.
He berates Columbia University for allegedly inviting Ahmadinejad to its campus, but Leibsohn, who boasts on his bio that he has “written speeches for and collaborated with candidates for national office and several former cabinet officials” didn’t check his facts on that one.
As shown by Columbia Professor Gary Sick, no invitation was extended by Columbia and no such event is being hosted on the campus. Leibsohn’s hot air is part of the “shoddy journalism” that surrounds Ahmadinejad’s New York visit.
Leibsohn also claims that the Iranian president shouldn’t be allowed to set foot on U.S. soil, which would amount to the Islamic Republic being barred from the United Nations headquarters even though it is a member state. In other words: isolate this extremely isolated country even more and make diplomacy less attainable than it already is.
For Leibsohn, the other “tainted set of affairs” that will take place this week is the Palestinian bid for UN state recognition.
Reuters: If you read any news articles about Iran on Monday you likely saw this quote by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu:
- Iran has continued to engage in a long-standing pattern of denial, deceit and evasion, in violation of its (nuclear) non-proliferation obligations.
Reuters reports that the U.S. and Iranian representatives “traded accusations” at a 151-nation meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna on Monday. Iranian nuclear energy chief Fereydoon Abbasi is also quoted on Forbes saying that the reason Iran moved its Fordow nuclear power site underground is because of fears that it would be attacked by the U.S. and its allies if it was above ground.
A translated transcript of Abbasi’s speech to the IAEA (it does not include the quotes above) where he questions the IAEA’s impartiality and insists that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful can be found at Fars News Agency.
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