The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is hosting an online discussion on Iran and International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) compliance standard. Authors include Arms Control Law blogger Daniel Joyner, the Hudson Institute’s Christopher Ford, and Vertic’s executive director, Andreas Persbo. Last week, Joyner, a law professor at the University of [...]]]>
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is hosting an online discussion on Iran and International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) compliance standard. Authors include Arms Control Law blogger Daniel Joyner, the Hudson Institute’s Christopher Ford, and Vertic’s executive director, Andreas Persbo. Last week, Joyner, a law professor at the University of Alabama, wrote that the IAEA is overstepping its bounds with the two additional and separate legal standards included in the Director General’s Board of Governor’s report:
I think that the two additional legal standards are ultra vires, or beyond the authority, of the IAEA to apply to Iran and to be the basis for investigations and assessments by the IAEA. The only lawful standard for the IAEA to apply is the clear standard from Article II of Iran’s CSA, i.e. that all declared, safeguarded nuclear material in Iran has not been diverted to non-peaceful use.
It must be remembered that the IAEA is not a general policeman of international nuclear energy law. It is not the “UN’s nuclear watchdog,” as the media is so fond of calling it. The agency is an independent international organization, which was created through a treaty — an instrument of international law. As such, it has only the international legal personality and the limited mandate of legal authority, which are provided both in the agency’s statute and in its bilateral Safeguards Agreements with member states.
Now for the kicker:
So what does this mean in application? It means that the current director general and his predecessor have consistently assessed in their reports to the Board of Governors that, according to this one lawful standard, Iran is in full compliance with its IAEA safeguards obligations.
It also means that, since Iran neither has an Additional Protocol in force with the IAEA, nor is under any legal obligation to conclude one, the fact that the agency is “unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities” — standards derivable from the protocol — is legally irrelevant.
Furthermore, it means that the IAEA does not have the legal authority PDF to either investigate possible military dimensions, or the weaponization, of Iran’s nuclear program, or to publish reports making assessments on this issue, as it did in November 2011.
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By Dr. Strangeseuss
(a/k/a Marsha B. Cohen)
When Iran gets the bomb
We’ll all need to worry.
Let’s sit down and think
What to do—we must hurry!
A bomb is a weapon
That drops down and explodes
On buildings and people,
On wheat fields and roads.
When a bomb knocks down houses.
The people inside
Whether children or grownups
Will be hurt or have died!
And nuclear bombs
Are the worst of the worst.
Spreading nuclear fallout
When they open and burst.
What a horrible way
To kill, maim and destroy:
Hiroshima, Nagasaki
And (almost!) Hanoi.
Such terrible weapons!
And they keep getting worse.
We mustn’t allow any
Spread of this curse.
That’s why the UN
Got most states to agree
Bombs like these are forbidden
By the 1968 N-P-T.
But the US and Russia
China, Britain and France
Had all tested their A-bombs
While they still had the chance.
And they got to keep them
On the condition that they
Wouldn’t use them, sell them
Or give them away.
Other countries that didn’t
Had to promise they’d try
To use “atoms for peace”
Not to make people die.
But a couple of countries
Didn’t think that was fair.
They wanted an A-bomb
And figured they’d dare
Make them in secret.
And hide them away
Where they wouldn’t be seen
By the I-A-E-A.
Israel, India,
Pakistan, as we know
All made themselves A-bombs
They’re all set to go.
South Africa had one
Then gave up with no fight.
(The hands that launch A-bombs
Should only be white!)
North Korea’s got nukes
That’s been sort of okay.
They simply wouldn’t listen
To the I-A-E-A.
Now IRAN wants the bomb!
Oh what shall we do?
Everyone else in the world
Will be wanting one too!
Arabs and Afghans,
Baluchis and Kurds,
Azeris, Turks, Tajiks
And Uzbeks! No words
Can describe all the havoc
In our world–now so calm–
When the day finally comes
that Iran gets the bomb!
Iran with a bomb
Would really be weird.
It’s a country whose leaders
Have all got a beard!
And you know what that means.
They’ll push us around.
They’ll shut off our oil
(Or charge by the pound).
They’ll make us all Shi’ites.
And make us speak Persian.
So le’s cripple them with sanctions
And perhaps an incursion!
So bring on the drones,
Assassinations, Stuxnet and Flame!
When Iran gets the bomb
Things won’t be the same!
The sun will not shine.
Our grass will not grow.
When Iran gets the bomb…
Where will free worlders go?!
Neoconservative Hudson Institute pundit Lee Smith seems very upset with the Obama administration. Reacting to retired Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ comments, reported by Jeffrey Goldberg, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an ungrateful ally, Smith wrote in the Weekly Standard that the [...]]]>
Neoconservative Hudson Institute pundit Lee Smith seems very upset with the Obama administration. Reacting to retired Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ comments, reported by Jeffrey Goldberg, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an ungrateful ally, Smith wrote in the Weekly Standard that the Obama administration is to blame for Israel’s growing isolation. Smith, reading deep into the Pentagon’s motives, explains:
- Gates is upset because, while the White House has provided the Israelis with “access to top-quality weapons, assistance developing missile-defense systems, high-level intelligence sharing,” the administration hasn’t gotten what it really wants in exchange—movement on the peace process, according to Goldberg. Of course, the Israelis haven’t gotten what they really want either—action on Iran—and the Pentagon’s munificence is partly intended to deter the Israelis from taking matters into their own hands.
Smith seems to think “action on Iran” can only possibly mean a military attack, revealing both his designs and what he thinks the Israelis want. But his analysis is nonetheless off the mark. In fact, the Obama administration has taken many wide-ranging steps both to slow down the Iranian nuclear program and find a solution that averts military action.
For instance, the United Nations Security Council, shepherded by the U.S. in a renewed era of Obama multilateral diplomacy, passed sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. This May, a U.N. Experts Panel said the sanctions “are constraining Iran’s procurement of items related to prohibited nuclear and ballistic missile activity and thus slowing development of these programs.”
There’s also, as Smith notes, been great military and intelligence cooperation on Iran between the Obama administration and Netanyahu’s government. Smith generally mentions the cooperation in passing, but fails to address perhaps its most dramatic facet: when Israel and the U.S. worked together on the Stuxnet computer virus that damaged Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. Exactly how much is uncertain, but no serious analysts challenge that it did slow the program. After the Stuxnet cyber-attack was widely reported, legendary Israeli spy chief Meir Dagan pushed back Israel’s estimate for when Iran would get a bomb to 2015 at the earliest.
President Obama also changed the tone of discourse with Iran from the hawkish Bush administration approach that spurned talking and rejected cooperation, which led to even more sour relations. Negotiations over the nuclear program and other subjects have yet to yield fruits, but, according to Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji, the Obama approach has helped in other ways. In 2010, Ganji spoke with CAP analyst Matt Duss and told him Obama’s shift opened up the political space that made possible the rise of the Green opposition movement:
- Asked about the impact of President Obama’s approach to Iran, Ganji praised the change in rhetoric, and suggested that it helped create a favorable environment for the Iranian democracy movement. “Obama offered a dialog with the Iran,” Ganji said, “and this change in discourse immediately gave rise to that outpouring of sentiment against the Islamic Republic last year.”
There can be little doubt that Israel wishes for regime change in Iran, yet giving breathing space to the most broad indigenous opposition movement to emerge in Iran since the fall of the Shah in 1979 doesn’t seem to be enough for Smith.
If by “action,” Smith is limiting himself to talking about bombing Iran, he ought to drop the euphemism and say so. And, indeed, the Obama administration has not gone that route, probably because analysts — even military analysts at pro-Israel think tanks — widely agree that such a course would be dangerous and potentially disastrous. Only neocons seem to disagree.
]]>- The Wall Street Journal: The WSJ’s editorial board catalogs newspaper and blog commentary on “The ‘Israel First’ Myth: Obsessed with the Jewish state, Mideast ‘experts’ got the region all wrong.” The writers lash out at the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman for his history of endorsing “linkage” and for suggesting that, “If Israel could finalize a deal with the Palestinians, it will find that a more democratic Arab world is a more stable partner.” They write: “It was fanciful of Friedman to think that Arab dictators–whom he now acknowledges have depended on scapegoating Israel to maintain their hold on power–would have agreed to such plans,” and “The current regime in Iran is dedicated to Israel’s destruction. It’s hard to see how Israel would be better off today if it had entrusted its security to the Arab dictators whose own people have suddenly made them an endangered species.”
- Tablet Magazine: Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow Lee Smith opines that “While protest rage across the Middle East, Israel stands as a regional model of resiliency, relevance and democratic stability.” Smith admits that this is an about-face from the position he took last week, when he claimed that “Israel is finished” and “the fall of Hosni Mubarak is only the latest setback in a decade of extraordinary strategic debacles for Israel.” This week, he argues, “The Arab model for success is not Iran, or Turkey, but Israel,” and, more specifically on Iran: “Iran’s nuclear program and full-throated opposition to the United States and the Zionist entity may make it the envy of some fans of resistance in the region, but the fact is that an Iranian bomb is the Hail Mary pass of a dying society where there’s been no economic development for 30 years.”
- The Washington Post: The Post’s “Right Turn” blogger takes issue with the White House’s “tepid language” in denouncing the Iranian government for its detainment of opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Jennifer Rubin observes that “[the administration’s statements] highlights perhaps the greatest failing of the Obama administration: its failure to seize the moment and provide support (rhetorical and otherwise) to the Green Movement in 2009.”
- The Weekly Standard: Jaime Daremblum, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, blogs on the “underreported news” that the U.S. government is investigating “whether Venezuela recently defied American sanctions by sending gasoline to the Islamic Republic.” “‘Hugo Chávez and PDVSA are actively helping Iran bypass both U.S. and international sanctions in its pursuit of nuclear weapons,’ said Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL). Over the past several years, Chávez has effectively turned his country into an Iranian satellite,” writes Daremblum. He ominously concludes that the Obama administration needs to “promulgate a coherent, robust strategy for addressing the Chávez threat and repelling Iranian influence in the region (which continues to grow).”
- The Washington Times: Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Danny Ayalon, writes in the Washington Times that the last few weeks have thoroughly dis-proven the importance of “linkage”—the concept accepted by both the Obama administration and the U.S. military’s top brass that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would help further U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East. “The WikiLeaks revelations proved that among Arab decision makers and policy-shapers, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was fairly low on the list of urgent priorities in the region,” writes Ayalon. He argues that instability in the region is due to food insecurity, rising desertification, and vanishing water resources.
But I want to look at Lee Smith, just because he gave me a good laugh yesterday.
For years, the Weekly Standard correspondent [...]]]>
But I want to look at Lee Smith, just because he gave me a good laugh yesterday.
For years, the Weekly Standard correspondent and Hudson Institute fellow has been saying that Arabs respect only strength. Well, someone forgot to tell this to the Arabs. If Hosni Mubarak had been reading Smith, he must be wondering why he feels so much like Rodney Dangerfield right now.
Let’s look at some of Smith’s writing. Here’s a piece from just last month:
Western cyber-optimists argue that information technology like satellite television and the Internet will so inundate the Arabic-speaking Middle East with images and information that it will entirely reconfigure Arab societies. But this has it exactly wrong: Culture is more powerful than technology, and how a society uses any given technology is determined by its culture.
Now, who has it exactly wrong? Within a month of Smith’s screed, peaceful protesters used Facebook to organize what became the massive Egyptian protests that overthrew the “strong horse.” Once the Internet went down, they watched Al Jazeera and other satellite channels to figure out what was going on, who was saying what, and where to go next. The events of the past month represent an almost exact negative image of Smith’s sociological caricature.
I use the words “strong horse” above because this is how Smith refers to leaders that can move the Arab heart — not Facebook groups anonymously led by shrimpy Google execs. It’s even in the name of Smith’s book, “The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations,” which came out last year.
I haven’t read the book, but I have read an approbative review by Daniel Pipes in the National Review that appeared early last year:
[Smith] presents Pan-Arab nationalism as an effort to transform the mini-horses of the national states into a single super-horse and Islamism as an effort to make Muslims powerful again. Israel serves as “a proxy strong horse” for both the United States and the Saudi-Egyptian bloc in the latter’s Cold War rivalry with Iran’s bloc. In a strong-horse environment, militias appeal more than do elections.
Could this possibly be more wrong? Is the Islamist “single super-horse” theory the reason that the Muslim Brotherhood promptly rejected a call of solidarity from Tehran? The absurdity of Pipes’s last statement alone makes my head spin. Wait, wait. It gets better:
What Smith calls the strong-horse principle contains two banal elements: Seize power and then maintain it. This principle predominates because Arab public life has “no mechanism for peaceful transitions of authority or power sharing, and therefore [it] sees political conflict as a fight to the death between strong horses.” Violence, Smith observes is “central to the politics, society, and culture of the Arabic-speaking Middle East.”
That’s not all:
Smith’s simple and near-universal principle provides a tool to comprehend the Arabs’ cult of death, honor killings, terrorist attacks, despotism, warfare, and much else. He acknowledges that the strong-horse principle may strike Westerners as ineffably crude, but he correctly insists on its being a cold reality that outsiders must recognize, take into account, and respond to.
Now that Pipes and Smith have been proven wrong by events, will they go back and “recognize, take into account, and respond to” the undeniable new reality that doesn’t fit into their worldview? Probably not, because they’re ideologues, and that’s what ideologues, by definition, do. Reality is subservient to what they want to think about the world.
Now, go back and read Daniel Pipes’s review of Lee Smith’s book– and you tell me who is obsessed with Israel and the “strong horse.” Is it the Arabs who continue to flood the streets and demand freedom from their rulers? Or is it these neoconservatives?
]]>- The Weekly Standard: Hudson Institute Visiting Fellow Lee Smith blogs on the Iranian plan to send two naval ships through the Suez Canal, and observes that the Iranians are conducting “a test, and not just for Egypt’s military regime.” “The Iranians are also probing the Egyptian population to see where it stands on resistance—the ships were headed to Syria, another pillar of the resistance bloc lined up against Israel—for in the end the Iranians are testing Cairo’s peace treaty with Jerusalem,” says Smith. He goes on to say that Mubarak’s departure is a major coup for Iran.“For better or worse, Mubarak was an American asset and with him off the board the Iranians believe they are one step closer to undermining Washington’s position in the region—and since that position is anchored to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, you can be certain that the Iranians will keep pushing on it.” He concludes that Egypt’s participation in upholding Arab-Israeli peace might be under threat as a new Egyptian government takes power and the Egyptian military seeks to avoid a conflict with its own people.
- Commentary: Alana Goodman opines on reports that Iranian opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi will stand trial for sedition. Goodman sees the crackdown on opposition leaders as a potential boost for the Green Movement: “Like many offenses, sedition is punishable by death in Iran. And while the Iranian government has expressed an eagerness to prosecute Mousavi and Karroubi, such a trial could also result in a backlash against the government and serve as an even greater rallying cry for the Green movement.”
- National Review Online: Victor Davis Hanson lists “The Many Paradoxes of Barack Obama” and observes that the central paradox in the Middle East is “The relatively pro-American authoritarians (in Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, and the Gulf) are more vulnerable than the anti-American and far more savage totalitarian regimes (Iran, Syria, Libya, etc.), at least for now, because the latter are more willing to blockade the international media and to use brutal force to crack down on popular protests.” Hanson decides that the Obama administration must be pursuing a strategy of “[C]onsider[ing] the more anti-American regimes more sustainable, untouchable, and authentic, and their protesters tainted with Westernization.” He continues, “I don’t know how else to explain the administration’s otherwise inexplicable failure to support Iranian dissidents in 2009, or its harsh attitude toward Mubarak versus its mild treatment of Ahmadinejad, or its efforts to reach out to a rogue Syria while pulling back from a democratic Israel.”
Slavin hits on the tenor of administration officials’ comments, as well as the effort to boost Voice of America‘s public diplomacy bona fides as a [...]]]>
Slavin hits on the tenor of administration officials’ comments, as well as the effort to boost Voice of America‘s public diplomacy bona fides as a way of talking to Iranians over the heads of their government.
Carnegie Iran analyst Karim Sadjadpour tells Slavin that the U.S. shift may reflect an administration belief that a deal to ratchet down tensions between the West and the Islamic Republic over the latter’s nuclear program may not be possible:
Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says that the administration was more inhibited when protests broke out following Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential elections because “Obama still held out hope of reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran. Today I think the White House has come to the conclusion that they can’t reach a modus vivendi with a regime that seemingly needs them as an adversary.”
On the public diplomacy front, Slavin notes an interesting turn at VOA‘s Persian News Network, which is illegally beamed into Iran by satellite. Slavin writes that neoconservatives have already attacked a new VOA official, a State Department Foreign Service officer heading up PNN, for comments related to the National Iranian American Council. (NIAC is run by Trita Parsi, a former IPS colleague and frequent neoconservative target who wrote for IPS before Slavin began writing for the wire .)
Slavin (with my emphasis and links):
]]>The Obama administration has struggled to find ways to communicate support for Iranian protesters without giving the Iranian government ammunition to blame unrest on outside interference. Broadcasts by the Persian News Network (PNN) – the Farsi service of the Voice of America – are a component of the strategy even though VOA’s mandate is to present news without political bias.
On Monday, Ramin Asgard, an Iranian-American Foreign Service officer whose last posting was as a political adviser to Central Command – took the helm of the PNN. VOA executives said it was the first time since the waning days of the Cold War that a non-journalist has assumed such an important position in U.S. government-funded broadcasting.
VOA management has had difficulty finding the right person to run the sprawling service, which has one hit show – a “Daily Show” clone called “Static” or “Parazit” in Farsi – but has been riven by disputes among its staff over what vision of Iran’s political future to promote. Some members of Congress as well as some Iranian expatriates have complained that PNN is too critical of U.S. policy and too accommodating to Tehran.
Asgard, who also served as head of an Iran watch office in Dubai, did not seek the position but was offered it after several others turned VOA down or were deemed unsuitable, according to a source with knowledge of the process.
On the job only three days, he has already been the target of an attack on a blog run by the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. Trey Hicks, a researcher at the Hudson Institute, accused Asgard of undermining U.S. policy toward Iran by suggesting U.S. taxpayer support for the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a group that has in the past advocated engagement with Iran but has also taken a tough stance on human rights abuses. Hicks also questioned Asgard’s command of Farsi.
Asgard did not respond to requests to reply to the allegations.
Trita Parsi, head of NIAC, said Asgard had once suggested that the grassroots group help him recruit interns for the Dubai office but Parsi said he was not in a position to help and no funds were offered. While in Dubai, Asgard did promote scientific and cultural exchanges with Iran, which was – and remains – the policy of the U.S. government.
Sadjadpour said Asgard was chosen in part to insulate VOA from Congressional complaints that the service was not sufficiently taking account of U.S. government views.
“The heads of VOA think they need to protect themselves against Congress and he [Asgard] checked some of the right boxes,” Sadjadpour said.
- The Wall Street Journal: Kenneth M. Pollack, director of the Saban center at the Brookings Institution, opines, “Could al Qaeda Hijack Egypt’s Revolution?” and observes, “the Iranian regime is also gleeful about the collapse of Mr. Mubarak, one of America’s most important Arab allies and one of Tehran’s most passionate enemies.” He continues, “Iran’s mullahs often see opportunity in chaos and violence, believing that anything that disrupts the region’s American-backed status quo works to their advantage,” and concludes, “All of this gives Iran and al Qaeda common interests that may drive them toward tacit cooperation—with the goal of fomenting a modern Bolshevik Revolution.”
- Tablet Magazine: Hudson Institute visiting fellow Lee Smith argues that the Muslim Brotherhood is still a radicalizing force in Egypt and calls Yussuf al-Qaradawi, the Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood preacher who exiled himself from Egypt in 1961, a “prospective Khomeini.” Qaradawi, who hosts the show “Shariah and Life” on Al Jazeera, “has cultivated among some American analysts a reputation for moderation with his fatwas, permitting masturbation and condemning Sept. 11 (while supporting suicide bombers in Israel),” says Smith. Smith goes on to argue, “While the parallels between Iran in 1979 and Egypt in 2011 can be overdrawn, it is foolish to pretend that they are not there,” and warns, “To the Iranians, Qaradawi is perhaps not the ideal voice of Sunni Islamism, but insofar as he rises and the Americans suffer, Tehran will make its accommodations.”
- Los Angeles Times: Jonah Goldberg writes a column on “The real realism in Israel” in which he argues against linkage and supports the view that the current unrest in Egypt has nothing to do with Israel. Goldberg, who is at the Herzliya Conference, on a trip underwritten by the Emergency Committee for Israel, says that proponents who see an Israeli-Palestinian peace process as a key U.S. foreign policy goal, such as Gen. James Jones, are detached from reality. “Such thinking falls somewhere between wild exaggeration and dangerous nonsense,” says Goldberg. He goes on to argue, “As we’ve recently been reminded, Israel is the only truly democratic regime in the region, and therefore the most stable. But, we are told, if we were only more conciliatory to corrupt dictatorial regimes and more sympathetic to the ‘Arab street,’ the region would be more stable. (Ironically, this is very close to Israel’s own position, no doubt because it will take any peace it can get.)”
- The Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin blogs that, in Israel, “dissent is celebrated, not suppressed.” She bolsters this assertion by citing yesterday’s Herzliya Conference panel on Iran’s nuclear program, characterizing the panel as “arguments between those who see [Iran's] nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel (as does the government) and those who indulge in the fantasy that this isn’t anything to worry about.”
- The National Review: Hudson Institute visiting fellow and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith defends George W. Bush’s “freedom agenda,” writing that Obama is “repudiating his freedom agenda” and “threw the baby out with the bathwater.” He continues, “Rather, in its national-security approaches to Iran, Russia, China, Venezuela, and the Arab states, it downplayed human rights and democracy concerns or discarded them altogether.” Feith charges, “when Iranian demonstrators bravely defied imprisonment, torture, and death to protest their government’s electoral fraud in June 2009, Obama’s frigid detachment shocked even many of his own political supporters.”
- The New York Times: The America Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin writes on the NYT’s “Room for Debate” forum that “Egypt is not Iran,” and observes, “many current and former officials worry that any withdrawal of support for Egyptian President Mubarak will reverberate through the region much as did President Carter’s abandonment of the Shah of Iran.” Rubin argues, “The problem with Carter’s approach was not the shah’s fall, but White House dithering in its aftermath,” and advocates that the Obama administration “support establishment of a technocratic transitional government, use their soapbox to help it make the necessary legal changes to ensure a smooth election according to a set time line, and then welcome Egypt’s new democratic order.”