A new report released by the International Crisis Group this week examines the efficacy and unintended consequences of sanctions on Iran and suggests steps that can be taken during the diplomatic process to unwind them and mitigate their humanitarian consequences while addressing the nuclear issue more effectively. “The [...]]]>
A new
report released by the International Crisis Group this week examines the efficacy and unintended consequences of sanctions on Iran and suggests steps that can be taken during the diplomatic process to unwind them and mitigate their humanitarian consequences while addressing the nuclear issue more effectively. “The Iranian case is a study in the irresistible appeal of sanctions, and of how, over time, means tend to morph into ends”, says Ali Vaez, Crisis Group’s Senior Analyst for Iran. “In the absence of any visible shift in Tehran’s political calculus, it is difficult to measure their impact through any metric other than the quantity and severity of the sanctions themselves”.I’m still making my way through it, but it’s already clear that this is one of those don’t-miss reports for Iran-watchers and those who are interested in US-Iran relations. I’ve reproduced the recommendations from the executive summary below, beginning with the most important issue related to the sanctions regime — the healthcare crisis in Iran — which Lobe Log contributor Siamak Namazi wrote about today in the New York Times:
RECOMMENDATIONS
To address the healthcare crisis in Iran
To the government of Iran:
1. Streamline currency allocation, licensing and customs procedures for medical imports.
To the government of the United States and the European Union:
2. Provide clear guidelines to financial institutions indicating that humanitarian trade is permissible and will not be punished.
3. Consider allowing an international agency to play the role of intermediary for procuring specialised medicine for Iran.
To sustain nuclear diplomacy and bolster chances of success
To the P5+1 [permanent UN Security Council members and Germany] and the government of Iran:
4. Agree to hold intensive, continuous, technical-level negotiations to achieve a step-by-step agreement and, to that end, consider establishing a Vienna- or Istanbul-based contact group for regular interaction.
5. Recognise both Iran’s right in principle to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes on its soil and its obligation to provide strong guarantees that the program will remain peaceful.
To the governments of Iran and the United States:
6. Conduct bilateral negotiations on the margins of the P5+1 meetings or parallel to them.
To address the immediate issue of 20 per cent uranium enrichment
To the P5+1 and the government of Iran:
7. Seek agreement on a package pursuant to which:
a) Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment at 20 per cent level for an initial period of 180 days and convert its existing stockpile of 20 per cent enriched uranium to nuclear fuel rods; and
b) P5+1 members would provide Iran with medical isotopes; freeze the imposition of any new sanctions; waive or suspend some existing sanctions for an initial period of 180 days (eg, the ban on the sale of precious and semi-finished metals to Iran or the prohibition on repatriating revenues from Iranian oil sales); and release some of Iran’s frozen assets.
To address the issue of Fordow
To the P5+1 and the government of Iran:
8. Seek agreement on a package pursuant to which:
a) Iran would refrain from installing more sophisticated Centrifuges at Fordow and implement additional transparency measures, such as using the facility exclusively for research and development purposes and allowing in-house International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resident inspectors or installing live-stream remote camera surveillance; and
b) P5+1 members would suspend sanctions affecting Iran’s petro-chemical sector or permit Iran’s oil customers to maintain existing levels of petroleum imports.
To reach a longer-term agreement
To the P5+1 and the government of Iran:
9. Seek agreement on a package pursuant to which:
a) Iran would limit the volume of stockpiled 5 per cent enriched uranium, with any amount in excess to be converted into fuel rods; ratify the IAEA’s Additional Protocol and implement Code 3.1; and resolve outstanding issues with the IAEA; and
b) P5+1 members would provide Iran with modern nuclear fuel manufacturing technologies; roll back financial restrictions; and lift sanctions imposed on oil exports; the P5 would submit and sponsor a new UN Security Council resolution removing international sanctions once issues with the IAEA have been resolved.
To rationalise future resort to sanctions on third countries
To the U.S. and European Union:
10. Consider setting up an independent mechanism to closely assess, monitor and re-evaluate the social and economic consequences of sanctions both before and during implementation to avoid unintended effects, harming the general public or being trapped in a dynamic of escalatory punitive measures.
11. Avoid where possible imposition of multi-purpose sanctions lacking a single strategic objective and exit strategy.
]]>Graham offered his curious take on what it means to negotiate — demanding that Iran accept all U.S. demands prior to negotiation — in a conversation with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, who indicated that his negotiating tactic was probably a non starter. Graham first emphasized his hawkish bent by noting that the “only way” for an agreement to be reached between the sides was for the U.S. to threaten “a strike by the United States.” He went on:
GRAHAM: Here’s what we should do. We should tell the Iranians, no negotiations, stop enriching, open up the site on the bottom of the mountain, a secret site. Then we will talk about lifting sanctions. You are not going to get to enrich uranium any more, period.
VAN SUSTEREN: I think they will probably stay “go fish” on that one.
Watch the video:
Leave aside that the Fordow site is not “secret” (it’s under U.N. inspections and monitored by camera) and that reports on U.S. and Israeli estimates state that these intelligence agencies don’t believe Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons (Graham doubts the intelligence), Graham’s position prompts one to ask: What’s the alternative to negotiations, since Graham is proposing pre-conditions that Iran would never meet? The Senator from South Carolina’s been busy on that front, too — and falsely citing the Obama administration to back himself up. The House yesterday passed a resolution that seeks to shift U.S. “red line” for an attack to an Iranian “nuclear capability” — something Graham mentioned on Fox News — from an Iranian push for nuclear weapons.
While the CIA has laid out a specific definition, the “nuclear capability” language is a complex issue. The word “capability” has a special meaning in the non-proliferation context, but it’s not always clear exactly what. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), one of the Sentae’s most vociferous Iran hawks, said this year, “I guess everybody will determine for themselves what that means.”
Before the House version passed, co-sponsor Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) clarified what he meant by “capability,” defining it as Iran mastering all elements of a weapon and kicking out U.N. inspectors. (The move allayed the fears of some critics that the measure could be interpreted as taking Graham’s hard-line on “no enrichment.”) House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) forthrightly noted that the “capability” language was a shift in U.S. policy that stood in contrast to “decision to develop nuclear weapons.” But Graham was most circumspect indefending his version of the bill on the Senate floor yesterday, conflating “capability” with the Obama administration red line of “weaponization.”
But Graham is wrong that blocking an Iranian nuclear “capability” is, as he said, an “echo (of) a policy statement made by President Obama.” In March, Obama committed (again) to “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” and that it was “unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon” — not a “capability.” He added, “I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said: “The United States… does not want Iran to develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”
While a potential Iranian nuclear weapon is widely considered a threat to both the security of the U.S. and its allies in the region, as well as the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The intelligence estimates give the West time to pursue a dual-track approach of pressure and diplomacy to resolve the crisis. Questions about the efficacy and consequences of a strike have led U.S. officials to declare that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.
]]>Now, from my perspective as a former mid-level official in the U.S. intelligence community and the Department of State, I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided.
Thielmann was set to retire in 4 months but resigned early from the Bush administration in protest over the politicization of intelligence. In 2009, he told CBS News that responsibility for the U.S.’s unjust war on Iraq was shared by all but that
The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show.
Thielmann is currently a fellow at the ACA, an anti-nuclear proliferation non-profit organization where he focuses, among other things, on Iran. (Read my interview with ACA executive director Daryl Kimball here.)
Now, while the Obama administration is making a visible effort to handle its Iran intelligence more carefully, the same cannot be said about the handling of widely available official information about Iran’s nuclear program by many U.S. broadcast media outlets. In the clip above, CNN’s Jonathan Mann fails to mention Thielmann’s important background or Israel’s widely suspected though undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal, but does offer ample alarmism about Iran’s nuclear activities even though the Israeli official statements he bases it on actually counter it. After Thielmann says that recent acknowledgement by Israeli military officials that Iran has not decided to make a nuclear weapon and is a rational actor coincide with U.S. military intelligence assessments, Mann voices his own confused interpretation:
I wonder if we could parse, though, exactly what [Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz] is saying. What he said is that the Iranians are moving step-by-step to get to a place where they could build a nuclear weapon, which is to say, I would assume, that they’re going to continue to violate their understandings with the International Atomic Energy Agency, they’re going to continue to enrich uranium beyond the point that they need for any civilian purpose. They’re going to get so close, that people in Israel would inevitably be nervous about them taking that one last step. It sounds like he’s saying they’re doing everything but tightening the last screw and he thinks they’re going to make a decision in the future, in his mind, that they won’t do it, but they’ll make that decision in some time to come.
Thielmann politely responds that Mann is going “a little beyond what [Gantz is] saying” and while Iran is certainly acquiring more of the “ingredients” for a nuclear weapon
…it’s not fair to say that they’re anywhere near a turn of a screw away from a weapon and in fact that is exactly what the objective of the current round of negotiations is, to take a step which would halt the accumulation of this enriched uranium and reverse it.
After more than 162,000 dead Iraqi men, women and children, thousands of dead U.S. soldiers and what could be an eternity of blowback from a pretentious U.S. war, isn’t it also fair to say that we and especially news media should try to avoid “faith-based intelligence” interpretations?
]]>]]>A high-level advisor to Iran’s supreme leader said his country is ready to allow “permanent human monitoring” of its nuclear program in exchange for Western cooperation but also warned Iran is prepared to defend itself against military strikes.
Mohammad Javad Larijani, who serves as Secretary-General of Iran’s Human Rights Council and key foreign policy advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei, said the West should sell Iran 20 percent enriched uranium and provide all the help that nuclear nations are supposed to provide to countries building civilian nuclear power plants. He also said the U.S. and the West should accept his country’s right to continue what Iran calls its peaceful nuclear program. In return for cooperation from the West, he said, Iran would offer “full transparency.”
Should negotiations fail and military strikes against nuclear sites in Iran begin, however, Larijani borrowed a phrase from President Obama’s own policy when he said “every possibility is on the table” when it comes to Iran’s response to such attacks. He did not discount the possibility of closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz or the firing of rockets into Israel.
Asked about an often-quoted statement by Iranian President Ahmadinejad about “wiping Israel from the face of the map”, Larijani said it was “definitely not” Iran’s intent to militarily obliterate Israel, adding that “neither the president meant that nor is it a policy of Iran.”
Larijani also said that financial sanctions, which the White House has said are having a significant impact on the Iranian economy, were a “failure” if they were designed to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions.