by Gareth Porter
In a critique of the handling of the Iran file by the International Atomic Energy Agency, former IAEA Director General Han Blix has called for greater skepticism about the intelligence documents and reports alleging Iranian nuclear weapons work and warned that they may be used to put diplomatic pressure on Tehran.
In an interview with this writer in his Stockholm apartment late last month, Blix, who headed the IAEA from 1981 to 1997, also criticized the language repeated by the IAEA under its current director general, Yukiya Amano, suggesting that Iran is still under suspicion of undeclared nuclear activity.
Blix, who clashed with US officials when he was head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from 2000 to 2003, said he has long been skeptical of intelligence that has been used to accuse Iraq and Iran of having active nuclear-weapons programs. “I’ve often said you have as much disinformation as information” on alleged weaponization efforts in those countries, Blix said.
Former IAEA Director General Hans Blix. Credit: Mikael Sjöberg
Referring to the allegations of past Iranian nuclear weapons research that have been published in IAEA reports, Blix said, “Something that worries me is that these accusations that come from foreign intelligence agencies can be utilized by states to keep Iran under suspicion.”
Such allegations, according to Blix, “can be employed as a tactic to keep the state in a suspect light—to keep Iran on the run.” The IAEA, he said, “should be cautious and not allow itself to be drawn into such a tactic.”
Blix warned that compromising the independence of the IAEA by pushing it to embrace unverified intelligence was not in the true interests of those providing the intelligence.
The IAEA Member States providing the intelligence papers to the IAEA “have a long-term interest in an international service that seeks to be independent,” said Blix. “In the Security Council they can pursue their own interest, but the [IAEA] dossier has to be as objective as possible.”
In 2005, the George W. Bush administration gave the IAEA a large cache of documents purporting to derive from a covert Iranian nuclear weapons research and development program from 2001 to 2003. Israel provided a series of documents and intelligence reports on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work in 2008 and 2009.
Blix’s successor as IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, recalled in his 2011 memoirs having doubts about the authenticity of both sets of intelligence documents. ElBaradei resisted pressure from the United States and its European allies in 2009 to publish an “annex” to a regular IAEA report based on those unverified documents.
But Amano agreed to do so, and the annex on “possible military dimensions” of the Iranian nuclear program was published in November 2011. During the current negotiations with Iran, the P5+1 (US, UK, Russia, China, France plus Germany) has taken the position that Iran must explain the intelligence documents and reports described in the annex.
The provenance of the largest part of the intelligence documents—the so-called “laptop documents”—was an unresolved question for years after they were first reported in 2004 and 2005. But former senior German foreign office official Karsten Voigt confirmed in 2013 that the Iranian exile opposition group, the Mujahedeen E-Khalq (MEK), gave the original set of documents to the German intelligence service (BND) in 2004. The MEK has been reported by Seymour Hersh, Connie Bruck, and a popular history of the Mossad’s covert operations to have been a client of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, serving to “launder” intelligence that Mossad did not want to have attributed to Israel.
Blix has been joined by two other former senior IAEA officials in criticizing the agency for its uncritical presentation of the intelligence documents cited in the November 2011 annex. Robert Kelley, the head of the Iraq team under both Blix and ElBaradei, and Tariq Rauf, the former head of the Agency’s Verification and Security Policy Coordination Office, have written that the annex employed “exaggeration, innuendo and careful choice of words” in presenting intelligence information from an unidentified Member State of the IAEA on the alleged cylinder at the Parchin military facility.
Blix said he is “critical” of the IAEA for the boilerplate language used in its reports on Iran that the Agency is “not in a position to provide credible assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities….”
Blix added that it is “erroneous” to suggest that the IAEA would be able to provide such assurances if Iran or any other state were more cooperative. As head of UNMOVIC, Blix recalled, “I was always clear that there could always be small things in a big geographical area that can be hidden, and you can never guarantee completely that there are no undeclared activities.”
“In Iraq we didn’t maintain there was nothing,” he said. “We said we had made 700 inspections at 500 sites and we had not seen anything.”
Blix emphasized that he was not questioning the importance of maximizing inspections, or of Iran’s ratification of the Additional Protocol. “I think the more inspections you can perform the smaller the residue of uncertainty,” he said.
]]>Although the Obama administration appears to be currently focused on resisting calls to increase sanctions on Iran while negotiations over its nuclear program are in session, the far more dangerous “military option” is alive and well in Washington despite its many pitfalls.
Senator-elect Tom Cotton (R-Ark) told a group of reporters on Dec. 3 that Congress should be considering the “credible use [of] force,” against Iran, according to the Free Beacon. Cotton, who described the ongoing negotiations with Iran as “a sham,” also said the US should consider arming Israel with bunker-buster bombs that could penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.
A day later, Dennis Ross, Ray Takeyh and Eric Edelman—all of whom have served in the US government—echoed their previous calls for a greater threat of force against Iran in the Washington Post. “The president would be wise to consult with Congress on the parameters of an acceptable deal and to secure a resolution authorizing him to use force in the event that Iran violates its obligations or seeks a breakout capacity,” they wrote Dec. 4.
While the White House has considerably lowered the volume on its insistence that “all options are on the table,” it has maintained the mantra. “We will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon—period,” said Vice President Joe Biden on Dec. 6, according to Reuters. “End of discussion. Not on our watch.”
Of course, President George W. Bush considered the so-called “military option” against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in 2006, but rejected it. The notion of “surgical” air strikes is also absurd: Bush was told taking out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require a massive effort. And despite its repeated threats, Israel does not have the capability with which to launch such an effort (unless it resorted to nuclear weapons). Only the US has a sufficiently robust conventional capability to do so. However, the military challenge is greater now than it was back in 2006.
The Military Option Lives On
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared in June 2014 that the Americans “have renounced the idea of any military actions.” Khamenei was likely reacting to President Obama’s West Point speech a week before. Referring to military action in general, the president said: “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean every problem is a nail.” However, asked for a reaction to Khamenei’s assertion, the White House highlighted another passage in the speech on Iran: “…we reserve all options in order to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
Possibly extending the threat into the future, leading Democratic presidential contender for 2016 Hillary Clinton repeated the mantra in March of this year. While arguing that the diplomatic process with Iran should be given enough time to work, she also said she was “Personally skeptical” of Iranian intentions. “[L]et’s be clear, every other option does remain on the table,” she added, according to Haaretz.
Various American pundits (be they hawks or those who are sensitive to Israeli views on the matter) have since labored to keep the military option alive. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz declared in TV interview on Nov. 24 that if diplomacy fails, the US “should use its military facilities and ability to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.” Israel also keeps the heat on the US by threatening to strike Iran if Washington fails to do so. Dershowitz, however, noted correctly that an Israeli attack “could only ‘set back’ Iran’s nuclear program for a few years.”
Israeli vs. US Military Action
Aside from using nuclear weapons, Israel does not have an effective military option. The extreme range involved greatly reduces the power of Israel’s military reach. Additionally, finding routes to and from the target is dicey, with most countries certain to oppose use of their airspace.
Flying through Turkey is a leading option, but Ankara would not grant permission, and could try to interfere. Cooperation between Israel and some of the Arab Gulf states (sharing the same dim view of Iran) reportedly has increased. But if a southern corridor were available—even if GCC aerial tankers refueled Israeli aircraft en route—the Israelis could only severely damage a few key targets.
By contrast, with access to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, plus its bases close to Iran, the US could mount a vastly more powerful effort. Carrier battle groups, other naval assets, and large numbers of US Air Force combat aircraft could be used.
Iranian Military Preparations
Despite its public scoffing, Iran is aware that it could face a robust military assault at some point and has thus been busy since 2006 upgrading its ability to deter or confront an attack.
Iran has upgraded its military radar and missile systems with assistance from sources such as China and Russia, as well as a variety of equipment and expertise secured through less official channels. Iran has also enhanced its large arsenal of MiG-29 fighter aircraft and several formerly Iraqi SU-24 fighter-bombers that were flown to Iran at the outset of the First Gulf War. Iran’s navy has also expanded its inventory of missile-equipped fast-attack vessels to confront a more modern navy with an asymmetric threat: “swarming” enemy vessels (overwhelming them with large number of smaller craft).
The most significant upgrade to Iran’s air defense was to have been the potent Russian S-300 anti-aircraft/ missile system. However, in response to a greatly tightened UN arms embargo in 2010, Moscow suspended the deal.
The Iranians claim to be developing their own version of the S-300 (the “Bavar-373”). They also claim to have produced their own models of a host of other foreign air, air defense and naval systems.
Many of these claims are dubious, but as with its own impressive Shahab series surface-to-surface ballistic missile program, Iran has developed quite impressive technical military-related capabilities. Some upgrades and even a few of these indigenous systems probably have been successfully fielded. I observed impressive Iranian improvisation while covering the Iraq-Iran War from inside the US Intelligence Community. For example, the Iranians kept advanced US F-14 fighters in the air far beyond all Pentagon estimates, even producing a large number of parts needed for basic maintenance and minor overhauls.
The Military Option Means War
Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh consulted me regarding his April 2006 New Yorker article about Bush administration deliberations concerning the military option against Iran. My intelligence credentials told me that Hersh had assembled, effectively, a surprising amount of information on the military planning presented to President Bush.
Hersh revealed that one military option included the use of tactical nuclear weapons to destroy vast underground facilities such as the Natanz enrichment complex. Hersh felt, as I do, that as a part of such planning, extreme options are provided, but such an option was highly unlikely to be part of any realistic plan.
Nonetheless, even conventional US military action to destroy or cripple all known Iranian sites, would, as envisaged in 2006, involve a massive effort. The Pentagon anticipated as many as 2,000 military combat flights and a possible duration of a week. Why? In order to reach Iran’s array of nuclear sites, US combat planes would have to smash Iranian defenses leading to and around the targets.
Although unclear back then, it is also possible once the US had decided to go that far, it would also hit Iran’s ballistic missile inventory, manufacturing, and test sites. This would target what many US officials (and the Israelis) consider a potentially nuclear-related sector of Iran’s military-industrial complex: a formidable delivery capability.
Iran would hardly remain passive while all this unfolded. Therefore, the US would have to anticipate attempts by Iran’s large air force to intercept incoming US aircraft, as well as sea- and air-borne attacks against US naval vessels. Finally, dozens of Iranian anti-ship missile sites flanking the Strait of Hormuz would have to be taken out. Given Iran’s post-2006 military upgrades, US aerial combat missions and the length of the assault would have to be increased. Slugging it out with Iran’s anti-aircraft defenses, confronting its air force, fending off its navy, and striking nuclear targets would effectively add up to war.
Among the many adverse consequences, perhaps the greatest concern would be radioactive contamination stemming from attacking sites near large Iranian civilian populations. The Arak reactor complex and a number of other nuclear-associated sites are close to or practically within Isfahan. The Natanz enrichment facility is less than 30 miles from the smaller city of Kashan. And the Fordow nuclear enrichment complex is situated near over a million people who call the holy city of Qom their home. International outcry over radiation leaks, civilian casualties, and other collateral damage could exceed that resulting from the assault itself.
With so many aircraft missions involved, another is the possibility that a few would be damaged or experience in-flight failures, with aircrew falling into Iranian hands. US diplomatic efforts to secure the return of downed flyers would be inevitable (for which Iran would surely exact a high price).
A particularly ominous result could be the very real possibility of an Iranian break with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in order to pursue—with lots of expertise and perhaps more residual nuclear capabilities than thought—a nuclear weapon, although probably defensive (precisely what such an attack would try to forestall).
Once hostilities are initiated, Iran might also not end them definitively. While Iran might do very little (or nothing) to sustain the military confrontation, the US could be saddled with the seemingly endless task of keeping large air and naval forces in the Gulf as a precaution against potential retaliation, particularly against frightened Arab Gulf states (several of which could have aided the US effort). Such an open-ended commitment and prolonged instability in the Gulf could become a nightmare for Washington—and plenty of other countries around the globe.
]]>by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the clashes between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL [...]]]>
by Marsha B. Cohen
One of the more remarkable aspects of the recent news coverage of Iraq — the Maliki government’s loss of control over the northern region of the country, the deadly confrontations taking place between Iraqi Shia and Sunnis, and the clashes between Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIL or ISIS) — is the absence of any mention of Israel.
Commonalities between the Kurdish quest for a long-denied state of their own and Israel’s struggle to survive in a sea of geopolitical enemies are ubiquitous in reports on the Kurdish struggle, both in the Israeli press and among Israel’s supporters abroad. Indeed, it’s not unusual to see Kurdish separatism invoked and idealized as a reflection of the quest to establish a Jewish state, underscored by imagined historical parallels between Jews and Kurds. For example, in an essay titled, “Surprising Ties between Israel and the Kurds,” in Middle East Quarterly’s Summer 2014 issue, Ofra Bengio, a senior research fellow specializing in Kurdish affairs at Tel Aviv University, points out several of these perceived parallels:
Both are relatively small nations (15 million Jews and 30 million Kurds), traumatized by persecutions and wars. Both have been leading life and death struggles to preserve their unique identity, and both have been delegitimized and denied the right to a state of their own. In addition, both are ethnically different from neighboring Arabs, Persians, and Turks, who represent the majority in the Middle East.
The idealized goals and strategies of sovereignty seeking Kurdish separatists are often contrasted with those of Palestinian Arabs, as illustrated by Victor Sharpe at the American Thinker:
…(A)fter the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the Kurds displayed great political and economic wisdom. How different from the example of the Gazan Arabs who, when foolishly given full control over the Gaza Strip by Israel, chose not to build hospitals and schools, but instead bunkers and missile launchers. To this they have added the imposition of sharia law, with its attendant denigration of women and non-Muslims.
The Kurdish experiment, in at least the territory’s current quasi-independence, has shown the world a decent society where all its inhabitants, men and women, enjoy far greater freedoms than can be found anywhere else in the Arab and Muslim world — and certainly anywhere else in Iraq, which is fast descending into ethnic chaos now that the U.S. military has left.
For decades, Israel has been a silent stakeholder in northern Iraq, training and arming its restive Kurds. Massimiliano Fiore, a fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, cites a CIA document found in the US Embassy in Tehran and subsequently published, which reportedly attested that the Kurds aided Israel’s military in the June 1967 (Six Day) War by launching a major offensive against the Iraqi Army. This kept Iraq from joining the other Arab armies in Israel, in return for which, “after the war, massive quantities of Soviet equipment captured from the Egyptians and Syrians were transferred to the Kurds.” Former Mossad operative Eliezer Tsafrir has described in detail the decade of cooperation between 1965-75 of Israel’s Mossad and Iran’s SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police, in arming and training Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces. That cooperation ceased when, without warning, the Shah and Saddam Hussein made a secret deal that abruptly ended the Israeli-Iranian partnership in northern Iraq.
The First Gulf War in 1991 gave Kurds a safe haven with an unprecedented degree of autonomy in the no-fly zone enforced by the US-led Coalition. In oil-rich northern Iraq, Kurds held regional parliamentary elections in May 1992, establishing the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Jacques Neriah, a retired colonel who served as foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and as deputy head for assessment of Israeli military intelligence, explains in a 2012 report published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs:
After the collapse of the Kurdish uprising of March 1991, which broke out after Saddam Hussein’s defeat by the U.S.-led coalition, Iraqi troops recaptured most of the Kurdish areas and 1.5 million Kurds abandoned their homes and fled to the Turkish and Iranian borders. It is estimated that close to 20,000 Kurds died from exhaustion, hunger, cold, and disease. On 5 April 1991, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 688, which demanded that Iraq end its measures against the Kurds and allow immediate access to international humanitarian organizations. This was the first international document to mention the Kurds by name since the League of Nations’ arbitration of Mosul in 1925.
A decade ago, Seymour Hersh called attention to Israel’s close ties with the Kurds. Hersh’s “Annals of National Security: Plan B“, published in the New Yorker is noteworthy, particularly in light of mounting criticism against the Obama administration’s handling of the current crisis. US officials interviewed by Hersh told him that by the end of 2003, “Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options.” One of those options was expanding Israel’s long-standing relationship with Iraqi Kurds and “establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan.” Although the reliability of Hersh’s sources was challenged at the time, they have been affirmed by more recent articles and reports. Neriah, writing in August 2012, cites numerous reports in the Israeli media about the activities of Israeli security and military personnel working for Israeli firms in Kurdistan:
According to Israeli newspapers, dozens of Israelis with a background in elite combat training have been working for private Israeli companies in northern Iraq, helping Kurds there establish elite antiterror units. Reports say that the Kurdish government contracted Israeli security and communications companies to train Kurdish security forces and provide them with advanced equipment.
Shlomi Michaels, an Israeli-American entrepreneur, and former Mossad chief Danny Yatom provided “strategic consultation on economic and security issues” to the Kurds, according to Neriah, although the Israeli government denied any official involvement.
Tons of equipment, including motorcycles, tractors, sniffer dogs, systems to upgrade Kalashnikov rifles, bulletproof vests, and first-aid items have been shipped to Iraq’s northern region, with most products stamped “Made in Israel.”The Kurds had insisted that the cooperation be kept secret, fearing that exposure of the projects would motivate terror groups to target their Jewish guests. Recent warnings that Al-Qaeda might be planning an attack on Kurdish training camps prompted a hasty exit of all Israeli trainers from the northern region. In response to the report, the Defense Ministry said: “We haven’t allowed Israelis to work in Iraq, and each activity, if performed, was a private initiative, without our authorization, and is under the responsibility of the employers and the employees involved.”
Laura Rozen, writing in Mother Jones in 2008, offered a less benign view of Michaels’ activities in Kurdistan. Besides promoting corruption through kickbacks, Michaels attempted to sell — for $1 million — a dossier to the CIA that would prove Saddam Hussein had met with Ukrainian officials in order to develop a covert chemical weapons program. Rozen also linked the 2005 AIPAC spy scandal to Israeli involvement in Kurdistan. In 2004, US intelligence agencies had heard rumors that Iranian agents planned to target Israeli and US personnel operating in northern Iraq. Larry Franklin, who worked for the Pentagon, had been caught leaking the intelligence to Washington hawks. That’s how he was was recruited by the FBI for a July 2004 sting operation that informed AIPAC officials about the alleged threat to Israelis operating in northern Iraq. Franklin pled guilty to leaking classified information and was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In her Middle East Quarterly essay, Bengio also mentions many of Hersh’s claims about Israeli involvement in Kurdistan a decade earlier, which she cautiously avers “remain unproven,” drawing upon Neriah’s account of Michaels’ adventures (without naming names):
The Yedi’ot Aharonot newspaper published an exclusive regarding Israel’s training of peshmergas, the Kurdish paramilitary force. Another Israeli source mentioned the activities of an Israeli company in the construction of an international airport in Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. The same source revealed “For their part, Iraqi sources, especially Shiite ones, have published lists of scores of Israeli companies and enterprises active in Iraq through third parties.
Less than a year ago, Lazar Berman of the Times of Israel, under the optimistic headline, “Is a Free Kurdistan, and a New Israeli Ally, Upon Us?” quoted Kurdish journalist Ayub Nuri who argued that Kurds were “deeply sympathetic to Israel and an independent Kurdistan will be beneficial to Israel.” Fast forward a year later to Neriah’s article titled, ”The fall of Mosul could become the beginning of Kurdish quest for independence,” where he says nothing about the stakes for Israel. Would an increasingly independent Kurdistan continue to look to Israel as its patron?
Or will Kurdistan fully join an anti-ISIS Iraqi alliance, backed jointly, if discreetly, by Iran, with the approval of the US? Any scenario in which Iran is part of the solution, rather than the underlying problem, is a nightmare for Israel. “[W]e would especially not want for a situation to be created where, because both the United States and Iran support the government of (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki, it softens the American positions on the issue which is most critical for the peace of the world, which is the Iranian nuclear issue,” Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli minister of strategic affairs, told Reuters.
After so many decades of trying to make use of the Kurdish dream of independence as a narrative and nuisance against its enemies, Israel stands at the cusp of being the biggest loser in whatever comes next in strife-ridden Iraq.
This article was first published by LobeLog. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
]]>“If it’s Sunday,” Columbia University scholar Gary [...]]]>
“If it’s Sunday,” Columbia University scholar Gary Sick wrote in an email to Gulf 2000, a listserv he moderates, “it must be time for major U.S. government ‘leaks’ (really planted stories) about Iran. Positioning and spinning is particularly important with negotiations possibly ready to start.”
He continued,
]]>The official feed to The New York Times is in the article by David E. Sanger and Steven Erlanger outlining U.S. demands in the opening round. They look very much like the proposed demands outlined by Israeli officials and Dennis Ross last week, viz. closing (and eventually dismantling) Fordow, and halting all production of and removing all 20 percent enriched uranium. The official going-in position seems to be a halt to all enrichment, but there is an ambiguous suggestion that a compromise outcome would be some level of enrichment with stringent monitoring and inspections.The leak to the Washington Post had a different theme. It suggests that U.S. intelligence — primarily drones and intercepts — is now so good that we can have considerable confidence that Iran is not now building a nuclear weapon and that we would know if and when Iran changed course and decided to race for a bomb. This complements the Times article by indicating that the United States is going into negotiations with a much better understanding of internal Iranian policy than we ever had on Iraq. “Trust us,” seems to to be the underlying message.What is missing from both stories is any indication of what Iran might expect to receive for its cooperation. The threat of crippling sanctions is mentioned in the event that Iran fails to toe the line, but there is no consideration of how sanctions might change if there was actual movement toward an agreement. The strategy is all threat and no concession. That is entirely consistent with U.S. strategy since at least the days of Bill Clinton.
Part of the negative tone in The New York Times may be the result of its good-cop-bad-cop approach to Iran reporting. Will we have a report from the alternative team on Monday giving a more nuanced and balanced interpretation of the same evidence? We’ll just have to wait and see.
Incidentally, neither The Times nor The Post, despite their varying degrees of focus on the intelligence picture, even hinted at assassinations or cyber warfare in Iran, let alone the Sy Hersh report about secret U.S. training of Iranian Mojahedin Khalgh operatives for operations inside Iran. Some things, it seems, are better off not said.
*This week’s must-reads/watch:
- News: Our Men in Iran - News:*This week’s must-reads/watch:
- - News: Our Men in Iran
- - News: Barak reveals conditions for Iran-West talks
- - Research Publication: Iran Nuclear Brief: The Breakout Option
- - Opinion: How Commitments Work
- - Opinion: How to Avoid Disaster With Iran
- - Opinion: Friends of Israel, Iran Negotiations Will Require Patience
John Bolton, Christian Science Monitor: The former Bush administration official and long-time advocate of hawkish U.S. and Israeli policies in the Middle East continues to argue that the Obama administration is protecting Iran’s interests over Israel’s while criticizing the President’s unwillingness to initiate war. Bolton also attempts to convince readers that a nuclear-armed Iran is inevitable unless “someone stops them” militarily:
The president’s unwillingness to take preemptive military action against Tehran’s nuclear efforts has long been evident, notwithstanding his ritual incantation that “all options are on the table.” Equally evident is his fixation to ensure that Israel does not act unilaterally against Iran, a principal reason why Washington’s relations with Jerusalem are at their lowest ebb since Israel’s 1948 founding.Accordingly, stopping Iran from getting nuclear weapons in the first place must be America’s top priority.
…
The prolonged failures of diplomacy and sanctions have brought the United States to the point where, realistically, there are only two alternatives: Either Iran’s mullahs get the bomb, or someone stops them militarily beforehand.
James A. Lyons, Washington Times: Retired Navy Adm. James “Ace” Lyons advocates three positions on Iran. First, the U.S. should make “regime change in Iran the official policy of the United States Government.” Second, the U.S. should wage war on Iran. Third, the U.S. should delist the anti-Iranian terror cult, the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK), from its foreign terrorist organizations list. This week Lyons used the claim (upheld by a U.S. District Court and largely based on testimony from 3 Iranians who say they defected from Iran’s spy agency) that Iran is tied to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, to advocate U.S. military confrontation with the Islamic Republic or at “minimum” U.S. material support for an Israeli attack:
]]>As the Obama administration wrestles with the question of what to do about Iran’s nuclear weapon program, the action we should take should be very clear. We certainly have more than sufficient justification to launch a devastating strike against Iran. The failure of all previous administrations to act, it can be argued, indirectly contributed to the Sept. 11 attacks. The difference now is that Israel must act to ensure its survival.
President Obama repeatedly has stated that a nuclear-equipped Iran is unacceptable. As a great nation, we should prepare our own strategic strike plans to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapon infrastructure and other key targets. If we do not act, then it is most likely Israel will launch its own strike before our national elections in November. Whether we assist Israel or not, we will share the blame for failure. Therefore, as a minimum, we should provide Israel with all the necessary equipment and material to make their strike as effective as possible. Nothing less is acceptable.
As reported last Friday in the Huffington Post by M.J. Rosenberg, Robert Baer, a former CIA operations officer (1976-97), told radio talk show host Ian Masters on July 12:
There is almost “near certainty” that [Israeli Prime Minister Bernjamin] Netanyahu is “planning an attack [on Iran] … and it will probably be in September before the vote on a Palestinian state. And he’s also hoping to draw the United States into the conflict…”
Baer is now expressing astonishment that anyone could have construed his comments as predicting an Israeli strike against Iran. In Time Magazine today, Baer offers his version of the unfolding of events since the radio interview was picked up and publicized:
Last week, my friend Ian Masters, who hosts the Los Angeles talk-show Background Briefing, called me up to talk about the Arab spring, and especially what would happen if Israel were to attack Iran. He was struck by the comments of recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan, saying that an increasingly paranoid and isolated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was considering launching a reckless attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and doing that soon… I noted there have been other recently retired senior Israeli security officials who’d said much the same thing, including the well-respected chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi.
Then “as these things go on radio, fact quickly turned to speculation,” Baer explains:
Warming to the subject, I chattered on about how I’d heard there was a “warning order” at the Pentagon to prepare for a conflict with Iran. I was about to add that that this was not unusual; there are warning orders all the time, and it could have nothing to do with Israeli or anything it was or wasn’t planning for Iran. (Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, after all, is accusing Iran of being behind the sharp uptick in deadly attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.) But time was short, and the host needed to finish up for the next guest.
According to Baer, the easygoing banter had no reliable basis in fact, and was purely speculative:
This was a wide-ranging speculative conversation on a local radio station, two like minds kibitzing, as media pundits so often do, with no inside information to back our interpretations of the significance of the flood of former senior Israeli security officials warning that Netanyahu is crazy and likely to do something rash. “If I was forced to bet,” I ventured, “I’d say we’re going to have some sort of conflict in the next couple of months, unless this is all just a masterful bluff — which I can’t believe the Iranians would succumb to — I think the chances of it being a bluff are remote.” Not exactly claiming to know any more than any other tea-leaf reader.
And when Masters asked me when I thought this hypothetical attack might hypothetically occur, I blithely suggested September. I was only adding two plus two: a September attack would allow Netanyahu to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and wreck plans for a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood, which is slated for September. I would have added that in the Middle East, two plus two rarely adds up to four. But I was definitely out of time.
Baer insists his offhand remarks not only were taken out of context, they were disseminated as though he were “some sort of unimpeachable authority, talking with the certainly of an insider looped into the plans and intentions of the key decision-makers.”
…what I’d said was a tedious rehash of various media reports. I would have forgotten it altogether were it not for the blogosphere’s version of a Pacific hurricane. I don’t know where it started, but soon the choice bits of our conversation were being rebroadcast as a danger signal flashing bright red: “Former CIA Official: Israel Will Bomb Iran in September,” read the headline in the Huffington Post.
This was followed by hate mail, accusations that he had “gone rogue” and become “a loose cannon,” and a tweet by former State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley that Baer didn’t know what he was talking about:
Crowley is right about me speculating about things I don’t know a lot about. (Isn’t that what commentators do more often than not?) … I wondered why Crowley and everyone else didn’t notice I hadn’t drawn a government check in more than 12 years, and therefore wasn’t bringing any inside knowledge to the subject. And I’d certainly never claimed a back-door access to Netanyahu’s inner circle that would give me any privileged knowledge about a planned attack.
But Baer has apparently staked his entire post-CIA career on being taken for an expert on matters about which, he now confesses, he doesn’t know very much. Baer’s claim that he doesn’t promote himself as an expert with inside knowledge or privileged access, however, rings hollow.
After leaving the CIA in 1997 after two decades as an operative in India, North Africa, Central Asia, Bosnia, Lebanon and Northern Iraq, Baer’s first literary venture was his memoir See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism, published in January 2002. The book was generally well received. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Baer proffered a plausible explanation, based on personal experience, of how and why the U.S. government could have allowed such a catastrophic attack to take place on U.S. soil. The book won praise from New Yorker investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who wrote its Foreword and gave See No Evil his endorsement with the review quote, “Robert Baer was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East.”
Saudi Arabia was the subject of Baer’s second book, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude, published in July 2003. Baer then tried his hand at writing a novel, Blow the House Down (2006), a supposedly fictional “alternative account” of how the events of 9/11 had transpired, with Iranian involvement as its major premise.
“The scenario that he sets forth reads in these pages like an alarming hodgepodge of the plausible, the speculative and the absurd,” wrote Michiko Kakutani in an acerbic New York Times book review. “…(I)f Mr. Baer’s intention in his new novel is to goad readers into a serious consideration of Iran’s possible terrorist connections (a timely subject, given current worries about Iran’s nuclear program), he fails in this mission by cavalierly mixing fact and fiction, the credible and the preposterous.”
While promoting the novel, Baer hinted that his “alarming hodgepodge” of speculations about Iran ought to be taken more seriously than those of a thriller novelist. Baer told Seymour Hersh (New Yorker, April 17, 2006) that Ahmadinejad and his Revolutionary Guard colleagues in the Iranian government “are capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They’re apocalyptic Shiites. If you’re sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they’ve got nukes and missiles—you’ve got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there’s no reason to back off.”
Baer apparently concluded that mixing the plausible and the speculative with the absurd would be more easily tolerated in pseudo-punditry than in fiction. In September 2008, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower, Baer’s fifth book, was published. Baer outlined three policy options the U.S. has for dealing with Iran” 1) permanently stationing U.S. troops in Iraq; 2) instigating a Shia-Sunni civil war; or 3) negotiating with Iran: “(T)reat it like the power it has become, and see what it has to offer.” Baer himself recommended the third strategy. While not an unreasonable approach, it contrasted sharply with other assessments Baer was offering about Iran.
An op ed piece for the New York Daily News, “Bet on Israel Bombing Iran” (Sept. 27), 2008, offers an interesting parallel to the current kerfuffle. Baer wrote, “What many Americans miss is that Iran is a threat to Israel’s very existence, not an imagined danger used by politicians for political advantage. Every Israeli city is within range of Iranian/Hezbollah rockets. To make matters worse, since the July 2006 34-day war, Hezbollah may have as much as trebled the number of rockets it has targeted on Israel.”
Three weeks later, a promotional blurb for lecture by Baer with the title “Iran’s Grip on America’s Future,” for the Commonwealth Club of California on Nov. 5, 2008, breathlessly hyped the event:
Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from and meet the man who was the basis of George Clooney’s character in “Syriana” — and find out why reality is even more riveting than film. Considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Middle East, Baer will explore the gap of information between what is going on in Iran and what Americans know. Bear [sic] visited Iran to interview suicide bombers [sic], a grand ayatollah, the hard-line chief of staff of Iran’s military forces and the terrorist chief of Hezbollah. Baer will discuss how and why Iran will control the most vital oil and gas trade routes, how it became a hero to the Palestinian Sunnis, and how it plans to seize oil from the Persian Gulf.
Yet in an Inter Press Service interview in Jan. 2009, Baer told Omid Memarian that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was “totally out of the question.” Commenting on a New York Times report that US President George W. Bush had vetoed such an attack despite the urging of Israeli leaders to launch one, Baer emphasized the futility of a military approach to resolving the clashes of interest between the U.S. and Iran:
We could bomb Tehran, but what does that get you? Nothing…You can bomb all military bases in Iran over a period of two weeks, but Iran is still there – it still has the ability to project power, project its will and maybe even come out of that type of conflict even stronger.
Baer is currently promoting his sixth book, The Company We Keep: A Husband-and-Wife True-Life Spy Story, published earlier this year, and co-authored with his wife Dayna. The couple met in Sarajevo, while both working for the CIA and married to other spouses. In a Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross on NPR back in March, Baer described writing the book as a “purgative.” (Apparently the first five books hadn’t done the job.)
After Baer said that he and the U.S. intelligence community had been taken by surprise by the “Arab spring,” Gross asked him, “So, do you expect you’re going to be surprised by Iran?” Baer responded, “I think now the street rising in Tehran is a neocon fantasy. I talked to people com[ng out] of Tehran, it’s not quite as bad as the exiles say. Yes, the regime has repressed the street and this Green Revolution, but I think what we’re going to see in Iran is a much more stable state…”
Exactly what that might mean for Iran’s future wasn’t at all clear, but then again, as we’ve just found out in Time today, Baer really doesn’t know what he’s talking about anyway. He is, however, selling his books.
]]>By far the most significant revelation in the piece concerns the recently-completed 2011 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). NIEs represent the consensus judgments of the 16 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community, and as such their findings frequently have major political ramifications. The 2007 NIE was particularly important (and contested), for it concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and found no evidence that the program had resumed.
Predictably, the 2007 NIE elicited howls of outrage from hawks who have been pushing military action against Tehran, and in the years since they have constantly attempted to discredit it. It’s worth making clear, however, just what the NIE did and didn’t say. It found no evidence of an active Iranian nuclear weapons program — that is, a nuclear program with elements that had no conceivable civilian uses (e.g., nuclear warhead design). The NIE never claimed that Iran had halted its nuclear program entirely, only that none of the nuclear program’s projects were unambiguously military in scope. Thus, to point to the fact that Iran continues to enrich uranium as evidence that the 2007 NIE has been discredited, as the Iran hawks have frequently tried to do, simply misses the point; the NIE did not suggest that Iran had stopped enriching uranium.
Nor did the NIE claim that it’s inconceivable that the Iranian regime ultimately seeks a nuclear weapon. It’s quite plausible that the regime does (not least, to deter U.S. or Israeli military action). What the NIE claimed was that there was no hard evidence or smoking gun proving that this was the case. Thus the relevant question is not whether we believe in our heart of hearts that Iran is seeking nukes, but whether there is any incontrovertible evidence that it is. This question is particularly salient in the wake of the Iraq war intelligence fiasco. In the runup to war, most people (including many war opponents) suspected that Saddam Hussein had WMD programs of some kind, but the U.S. would have been better served to put less weight on such suspicions and more weight on the actual evidential record.
So what does the Hersh piece actually say? The biggest revelation is that despite four years of intense political pressure from Iran hawks pushing the intelligence community to renounce the 2007 NIE, the just-released 2011 NIE continues to find no clear evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. According to Hersh, analysts at the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in particular have pushed back against this political pressure; in fact, the DIA analysts suggest that Iran’s nuclear weapons program was primarily directed at Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, not Israel, and was abandoned following the fall of Saddam.
Typically, a declassified version of the NIE is released for public consumption. This has not been done with the 2011 NIE, however, for reasons that are unclear. It’s possible that the Obama administration fears a political backlash along the lines of the 2007 version, or that it is worried that publicizing the new NIE would undercut its relatively hard-line stance on Iran. Regardless, the fact that an declassified version of the NIE has not been released means that Hersh’s piece is the first time the public is hearing about it.
In light of this, it is obvious that most of the criticism of Hersh’s piece completely ignores its central contention. The issue, once again, is not whether we should believe in our heart of hearts that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. The issue is whether the U.S. intelligence community has found any incontrovertible evidence that this is the case. If Hersh’s account of the 2011 NIE is correct, the intelligence community has not, and this is a fact that surely deserves to be mentioned in discussions of the Iranian nuclear issue.
]]>The catch? For years the United States has been accused [...]]]>
The catch? For years the United States has been accused of lending support to Jundullah as a way of fomenting instability in Iran’s ethnic Baluchi southeast.
From State’s press release:
On November 3, 2010 the Secretary of State announced the designation of Jundallah, a violent extremist organization that operates primarily in the province of Sistan va Balochistan of Iran, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) [...]
Since its inception in 2003, Jundallah has engaged in numerous attacks resulting in the death and maiming of scores of Iranian civilians and government officials, primarily in Iran’s Sistan va Balochistan province. Jundallah uses a variety of terrorist tactics, including suicide bombings, ambushes, kidnappings and targeted assassinations.
Iran responded late last month to an invitation to the November P5+1 talks on its nuclear program. Whether the latest move by the U.S. is a concession or a confidence building measure, it’s worth noting the State Department recently seems to be taking aim at Iranian national pride, such as referring to the “Persian Gulf” as the “Arabian Gulf” (see here and here).
Nonetheless, the statement on Jundullah was welcomed in Tehran, even as it bashed U.S. covert support for anti-regime groups there. According to the Iran’s semi-official news service, ISNA:
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast called the US designation of Rigi group as terrorist a “right measure.”
“Fighting terrorism is a general responsibility of all nations and the Islamic Republic of Iran regards the US measure in blacklisting Rigi terrorist group as a right measure,” he added.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran will evaluate change in the US policy on supporting terrorist groups of Jundullah (Soldiers of God), PJAK and Tondar in practice.”
Politico foreign policy blogger Laura Rozen suggests that the designation of Jundallah as a terror group could be “signal” to Iran ahead of negotiations. She quoted an unnamed Washington Iran expert who said the move is clearly aimed at engaging Iran:
The designation of Jundullah shows “one bureaucratic fight in favor of engagement was won,” one Washington Iran expert said on condition of anonymity. “But whether it’s sufficient or not and how it is followed up remains to be seen.”
U.S. geo-strategists Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett, writing on their blog, called the move a “notable turn-around” and “long overdue.” They lay out some little known history that early-on the Obama administration had considered designating Jundullah, but didn’t do so in the wake of Iran’s disputed June 2009 election. The Leveretts point out:
Since then, the perception that the United States continues to have ties to Jundallah and other groups considered terrorists by most Iranians has had a deeply corrosive effect on Iranian assessments of the Obama Administration’s seriousness about strategic engagement with Iran and its ultimate intentions towards the Islamic Republic.
As the Leveretts report, Obama inherited the wide-ranging covert program against Iran from George W. Bush, whose administration had greatly increased funding for regime change activities and subversion on Iran’s nuclear program.
In July 2008 New Yorker, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh wrote about the expansion of Bush’s program (with my emphasis):
One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” [Council on Foreign Relations scholar Vali] Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” [...] According to [former CIA agent Bob] Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.
A blog post on the Wall Street Journal website sums up much of the (thin) evidence for U.S. support of Jundullah, and quotes an earlier unequivocal denial to the blog from the State Department that such support had ever occurred:
]]>“We have repeatedly stated, and reiterate again that the United States has not provided support to Jundallah,” a [State] spokesman emailed. “The United States does not sponsor any form of terrorism. We will continue to work with the international community to curtail support for terrorist organizations and prevent violence against innocent civilians. We have also encouraged other governments to take comparable actions against Jundallah.”