by Alex Vatanka

In this rowdy Iranian election season, all of the 26 or so presidential hopefuls are naturally looking for trademark political platforms to adopt. Slogans are plentiful, but going by the different camps’ daily announcements, the aspiring candidates keep probing and yet keep failing to make inroads in public [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Alex Vatanka

In this rowdy Iranian election season, all of the 26 or so presidential hopefuls are naturally looking for trademark political platforms to adopt. Slogans are plentiful, but going by the different camps’ daily announcements, the aspiring candidates keep probing and yet keep failing to make inroads in public opinion. No doubt, there is plenty of room for additional contenders to throw their hats into the ring.

The current band

To put it mildly, the existing pool of talent in the presidential fray has not excited Iranian voters. The common slogans so far have hardly been ingenious: each candidate vows to fight mounting inflation and to bring (what’s left of) the oil money to peoples’ tables; promises to end the ever-evasive corruption; makes fuzzy pledges to fix the economy; and vows to overcome the huge economic difficulties resulting from international sanctions.

The declared candidates have one more thing in common: none of them have so far dared question the so-called “red lines” of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. And in today’s Iran, there is only one red line that Ayatollah Khamenei cares about more than anything else: no one — including an elected president — should suppose they can go around the Leader to shape Tehran’s relations with the United States. Khamenei’s allies are quick to point this out and this message is coming out more often and more loudly.

On Friday, a top figure close to Khamenei, Ayatollah Emami Kashani, warned that presidential candidates should “not interfere in the fundamental policies of the Islamic Republic” and for example “make statements about [Iran’s] policies toward America.” If anyone was left in any doubt, Kashani made sure to clarify: “Such policy decisions are neither within the responsibility or capacity of [any] president.” In other words, only the Supreme Leader can guide the course toward Washington.

Enter Rafsanjani

This red line and the powerlessness of candidates to question the logic behind Tehran’s policies toward the US makes the Iranian presidential elections redundant.

Why should Iranians want to vote in an election where arguably the key question of the time — the future of Iranian policies toward Washington — is off limits for presidential hopefuls? No one can deny the fact that much of ordinary Iranians’ economic troubles and the country’s international isolation is due to the US-Iranian confrontation.

Whoever can challenge this lopsided bottom line in Tehran is almost guaranteed to capture the attention of the Iranian voter. And no man has come closer to questioning Ayatollah Khamenei’s sacred red line as Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Rafsanjani, the once mighty kingmaker and right-hand man of Islamic Revolution founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is still pondering whether to throw his hat into the presidential race.

Rafsanjani and Khamenei were once close allies but their relationship has been teetering for over a decade. Now the former president (1989 to 1997) says he will only seek another term if Ayatollah Khamenei gives him the green light.

This is not a genuine call for Khamenei’s blessing. It’s rather an attempt to force the Supreme Leader’s hand into not only accepting a Rafsanjani candidacy, but also allowing some red lines to be questioned.

Rafsanjani has already started with a bomb. Last week, he effectively impugned Tehran’s stance on Israel and offered the view that Iran should not be in the business of confronting Israel. “If the Arabs end up in a war with Israel, Iran can provide material support to the Arabs”, but that is it and no more. In other words, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, who has for a long time argued for better relations between Iran and the US, is raising the ante and even challenging the regime’s long-held immovable enmity toward the Jewish Israel.

Rafsanjani’s bomb even compelled the usually behind-the-scene figures in Khamenei’s family to stand up. Mohammad Khamenei, the older brother of the Supreme Leader, declared that the United States could not ask for a better candidate in the Iranian elections than Ayatollah Rafsanjani.

This stinging attack was more than likely anticipated by Rafsanjani. In fact, this is exactly the kind of image Rafsanjani wants to cultivate for himself; he knows this event will sit well with an Iranian electorate still waiting to be electrified.

Rafsanjani is not even in the race yet and he is still the only one shaking the political ground in the Islamic Republic.

– Alex Vatanka is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C.

by Peter Jenkins 

I was still a serving diplomat in Vienna when, in January 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had resumed uranium enrichment, suspended since November 2003. Like my Western colleagues, I feared the worst. I assumed that Iran was going to install as many centrifuges [...]]]> via Lobe Log

by Peter Jenkins 

I was still a serving diplomat in Vienna when, in January 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had resumed uranium enrichment, suspended since November 2003. Like my Western colleagues, I feared the worst. I assumed that Iran was going to install as many centrifuges as it could as quickly as it could, and that within a very few years Iran’s production of enriched uranium would bring into existence an intractable nuclear deterrent capability (even then I doubted Iran wanted an offensive nuclear capability).

I would have been incredulous had someone assured me that seven years later Iran would only possess some 16,000 assembled centrifuge machines; that Iran would only be operating some 60% of these; that it would only just be starting to install some 3,000 machines of a more advanced and efficient design, which it first obtained in 1995; that it would only have produced 8,300 kg of enriched uranium; and that less than 30% of this production would have been enriched to the intermediate level of 20% U235.

Of course, there are people who say that Iran would dearly love to have built more machines and produced more enriched uranium since 2006. For all I know, these people are right when they tell us that a number of technical impediments, some contrived by the West, and procurement problems have slowed progress.

But the latest IAEA report (GOV 2013/6 of 21 February) makes me think, as some previous reports have, that this may not be the whole story. I sense that Iran is deliberately adopting a cautious, measured approach to the expansion of its nuclear program. I speculate below about possible reasons for this.

In this latest report, the headline grabber has been Iran’s declaration to the IAEA of plans to install 18 cascades (some 3,000 machines) of the more advanced IR2m type. This has been greeted with alarm in some quarters and with condemnation by Western governments.

That was predictable but is not strictly rational. These machines are being installed at the Natanz plant, not the less vulnerable (to aerial attack) Fordow plant. They are to be used, Iran has declared, to enrich uranium to 3.5%, not 20%. They are being introduced in modest quantities (Western enrichment plants contain tens of thousands of machines). Could Iran be signalling that the West should not be alarmed: Iran has no intention of using these machines for the rapid “breakout” that is the stuff of Mr. Netanyahu’s nightmares?

Equally noteworthy are two other IAEA findings. Iran is still only using 4 out of a possible 16 cascades at Fordow to enrich uranium to 20%. And of the 47 kg of 20% U235 produced since November at Fordow and Natanz combined, some 60% has been transferred to Isfahan and converted from gaseous to metallic form.

One consequence of this is that only 167kg of the 280kg of 20% U235 produced since early 2010 is still available in gaseous form for enrichment to weapon-grade, were Iran to start re-configuring the Fordow cascades in order to “breakout”. And of this it seems likely (the IAEA report is silent) that fewer than 100kg are located at Fordow, assuming that at least a portion of the 130kg produced at Fordow has been transferred to Isfahan.

Could this be a signal that Iran has no intention of giving Mr. Netanyahu a pretext for another bout of war fever by approaching his “red line” of 240kg of 20% U235 hexafluoride ready for higher enrichment?

Anyway, it would have been nice if Western governments could have come up with a more clever reaction to the IR2m declaration than to don their global policeman’s caps and issue a stern reprimand to a sovereign counterpart. If they are really alarmed that after 17 years Iran is at last installing a more advanced design of centrifuge, why not make the few, simple policy adjustments that are needed to draw Iran into a serious negotiation?

The rational response to the introduction of more efficient centrifuge machines is to seek to increase the timeliness of the IAEA’s detection capabilities. This can be achieved by persuading Iran to re-apply the Additional Protocol. Western negotiators will find their Iranian counterparts open to persuasion provided Iranian concerns are also addressed.

After all, one does not need to be a genius to surmise that Iran’s cautious expansion of its nuclear program aims in part at bringing the West to the negotiating table — just as Western governments aim at “bringing Iran to the table” by piling on sanctions. This would be an amusing irony were the mutual incomprehension not potentially so dangerous.

Photo: Ali Akbar Salehi, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, meets IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria on 12 July 2011.