Iran Powwow In Geneva

Today was the big meeting between the United States and other allies and Iran in Geneva. They ended with a pledge for follow-on talks, which is about all that could be expected at this point, and a good sign. The US and Iran even held bilateral discussions on the side.

Washington had hoped to begin bilateral talks with Iran on a range of issues, among them trade and Tehran’s support for Palestinian, Lebanese and Iraqi insurgent and terrorist groups, including Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

But after new disclosures of a hidden Iranian enrichment facility dug deep into a guarded mountain near the holy city of Qum, the immediate goal of the negotiations shifted, to the aim that talks would touch on Iran permitting serious nuclear inspections and suspending its nuclear enrichment program.

It “cannot be an open-ended process, or talks just for the sake of talks, especially in light of the revelations about Qum,” said the American official, who briefed reporters Wednesday on condition of anonymity. “We need to see practical steps and measurable results, and we need to see them starting quickly,” he said.

Speaking at the United Nations, the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, described the talks as “constructive,” and said they focused on a wide range of issues that Iran laid out in its five-page proposal for talks, which included talk of global nuclear disarmament but no specifics about the Iranian nuclear program.

The US position is a "freeze for freeze," where no new sanctions are implemented if Iran freezes their uranium enrichment. Iran may have some leverage to bluff here. China is unlikely to participate in any sanctions, given their desire to continue to receive Iranian oil and invest. An oil spike in China as a result of an embargo or trade sanctions would harm their economic growth. And I think everyone around the table knows that.

However, the timing of the Qom facility disclosure gives the West a bargaining chip. With the IAEA agreeing that Iran broke the law, a credible case can be made globally, based on that independent judgment, for punishment.

Ultimately, I think the third-way option, where Iran buys enriched uranium from a third party that it can use in its reactors under IAEA monitoring, could actually spark an agreement. Iran has shown a willingness to consider this in the past. That there will be future talks is a good sign. More talking, less posturing.

...Obama calls for inspections of the facility at Qom within two weeks.

Threats Before Diplomacy?

The White House is actually making threats to Iran on the eve of negotiations, and I would characterize these threats as somewhat empty.

The Obama administration is laying plans to cut Iran's economic links to the rest of the world if talks this week over the country's nuclear ambitions founder, according to officials and outside experts familiar with the plans.

While officials stress that they hope Iran will agree to open its nuclear program to inspection, they are prepared by year's end to make it increasingly difficult for Iranian companies to ship goods around the world. The administration is targeting, in particular, the insurance and reinsurance companies that underwrite the risk of such transactions.

Officials are also looking at ways to keep goods from reaching Iran by targeting companies that get around trading restrictions by sending shipments there through third parties in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Hong Kong; and other trading hubs.

The administration has limited options in unilaterally targeting Iran, largely because it wants to avoid measures so severe that they would undermine consensus among countries pressing the Iranian government. A military strike is also increasingly unpalatable because, officials said, it probably would only briefly delay any attempt by Iran to produce a nuclear weapon.

As I noted yesterday, Iraq would presumably be able to provide Iran with lots of goods smuggled across the border, which would hurt efforts to isolate them economically. I don't think China would play entirely straight with this either. In addition, hanging a threat like this over negotiations like a cloud seems to poison those talks.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald actually made some points on the teevee this morning that you don't normally see, seeking to tamp down some of the generated hysteria about their nuclear ambitions.



Greenwald bats aside the silliness of hyping the fear over random statements from Ahmadinejad or missile tests (who makes more threats or tests more missiles, Iran or their counterparts like Israel?), and correctly notes that the Iranians have not violated anything under the Nonproliferation Treaty yet, having announced the existence of the facility at Qom before actually enriching uranium there. Iran is vowing to allow IAEA inspectors into the facility, which would comply with any order to "come clean" and end the potential for Qom to be used as a weapons production plant.

Scott Ritter makes some good points as well.

Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama's dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA [...]

In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material.

While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong.

I think the problem is more with the Nonproliferation Treaty. As Matt Yglesias notes, the Qom plant almost certainly was designed as either a weapons production facility or a really inefficient facility for nuclear energy. But the NPT has no enforcement for preventing facilities that appear to be a weapons plant, and Greenwald is right that Iran met their treaty obligations to this point. The treaty itself needs to be tweaked to give less latitude over time for potential proliferation, given the standard of ending nuclear weapons on this planet. As Ritter says:

Calls for "crippling" sanctions on Iran by Obama and Brown are certainly not the most productive policy options available to these two world leaders. Both have indicated a desire to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran's action, in declaring the existence of the Qom facility, has created a window of opportunity for doing just that, and should be fully exploited within the framework of IAEA negotiations and inspections, and not more bluster and threats form the leaders of the western world.

Regardless, if Iran's plant is now under the inspection umbrella, then its threat is absolutely no different now than it was before we learned about this plant, and therefore the possibility of sanctions or even military action seems a bit much at this point, especially on the eve of talks. Let's have some discretion.

Iraq's Role In Iranian Sanctions

I do believe that the abolition of nuclear weapons is important enough that threats to that goal must be met with more than talk but action, and in the case of Iran economic sanctions is far preferable to any military hits, but without the cooperation of Iraq the sanctions simply will not work. We created a situation with the invasion where now a very pro-Iranian Shiite government is in control in Iraq, and they will smuggle whatever refined oil or other supplies are needed into their neighboring country. President Talabani didn't say this yesterday, but he didn't have to. I agree with Talabani that negotiation and diplomacy should take precedence, and this week Iran will meet with world powers to discuss their nuclear ambitions and more. But he goes further, saying that sanctions will not work to change policy, and that Iraq will not allow any country airspace to bomb Iran. If you wonder how they plan to enforce that, consider the 140,000 US troops on Iraqi soil and how precarious their situation, should the Iraqi leadership turn on them.

It was well-known that Iran won the Iraq war, and now we're starting to see the consequences. As long as our forces remain in Iraq, we cannot afford to use the kind of pressure some think would be necessary to get Iran to comply. As Juan Cole says, "Somehow I don't think this is what Bush was going for when he invaded Iraq."

Ending The Scourge Of Nuclear Weapons

One way in which Barack Obama has separated himself from a standard-issue foreign policy hawk, at least in the modern conception, is on the issue of nuclear weapons. The paleo-cons and realists have generally come to the conclusion that there is no purposeful use for nuclear weapons on this planet, and the President agrees with them. Today, he presided over a session of the UN Security Council and got a unanimous agreement from the member nations to a resolution calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Gordon Brown even vowed to reduce his country's nuclear arsenal in conjunction with this pledge. In his remarks, Obama applied his prodigious rhetorical skills to a very good end.

As I said yesterday, this very institution was founded at the dawn of the atomic age, in part because man's capacity to kill had to be contained. And although we averted a nuclear nightmare during the Cold War, we now face proliferation of a scope and complexity that demands new strategies and new approaches. Just one nuclear weapon exploded in a city -- be it New York or Moscow; Tokyo or Beijing; London or Paris -- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And it would badly destabilize our security, our economies, and our very way of life.

Once more, the United Nations has a pivotal role to play in preventing this crisis. The historic resolution we just adopted enshrines our shared commitment to the goal of a world without nuclear weapons. And it brings Security Council agreement on a broad framework for action to reduce nuclear dangers as we work toward that goal. It reflects the agenda I outlined in Prague, and builds on a consensus that all nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy; that nations with nuclear weapons have the responsibility to move toward disarmament; and those without them have the responsibility to forsake them.

He's asking for more than just a hand-holding kumbaya. The resolution would commit nations to a lockdown of all loose nuclear materials within four years. It would strengthen the mandate of the IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It of course follows that nations seen as out of compliance with the NPT and the IAEA would have to face sanctions, and Obama got Russia to agree to that standard with respect to Iran. But you really cannot call for an end to nuclear weapons worldwide without calling attention to those countries threatening to defy that. I am unconvinced that Iran belongs in that number, but the pressure of proposed sanctions has led to international talks and moves toward engagement.

I share the President's vision of a world without nuclear weapons. In order for that to become reality, we need to use all necessary tools to capture loose nuclear material, confer legitimacy on the process by drawing down our own stockpiles, and ensure that all proliferation stops. That includes making all parties live up to treaty obligations. This is a worthwhile goal.

"A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop until all -- we must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the Earth."

That is our task. That can be our destiny. And we will leave this meeting with a renewed determination to achieve this shared goal. Thank you.

More Screaming From The Korean Peninsula

North Korea draws out the sabers over their neighbors to the south joining the Proliferation Security Initiative.

North Korea threatened Wednesday to launch military strikes against South Korea if any of its ships were stopped or searched as part of an American-led operation to intercept vessels suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction.

South Korea agreed to join the global interdiction program after North Korea tested a nuclear device on Monday — its second nuclear test in three years. The North had earlier warned the South not to participate in the effort, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

“We consider this a declaration of war against us,” an unidentified North Korean military spokesman said Wednesday in a statement carried by the North’s official news agency, KCNA. “Any hostile act against our peaceful vessels, including search and seizure, will be considered an unpardonable infringement on our sovereignty and we will immediately respond with a powerful military strike.”

The North Koreans also said in the statement that they “no longer feel bound by the armistice” that ended the fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. Technically, the two Koreas have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the 1953 armistice never gave way to a final peace treaty. North Korea has previously called the armistice a “useless piece of paper.”

I guess this newfound bluster is a combination of testing a young President and jockeying for power inside North Korea in the event of the death of Dear Leader. Regardless, their threat is ridiculous. The Proliferation Security Initiative, maybe the only half-decent thing John Bolton ever came up with, allows South Korea, in this case, to search ships in their own territorial waters suspected of carrying WMD. North Korea may try to provoke a skirmish at the DMZ, but their true threat is from selling weapons technology to other nations. I believe in a strong nonproliferation effort, no matter how much North Korea screams.

More interesting than North Korea's idle threats is the evolution of China on the matter. Not only have they signed on to the strong statement condemning the nuclear test, but Kevin Drum finds this:

North Korea's latest nuclear test raises the question of just how long the bonds forged between old communist allies will endure....Increasingly, China itself is questioning whether the relationship is worth the effort.

Within the Chinese intelligentsia there is a deep divide over how to handle North Korea. The Global Times, a newspaper with close party ties, Tuesday published a survey of 20 of the country's top foreign policy experts. It found them split down the middle — 10 arguing for tough sanctions against North Korea, 10 opposed.

If China throws down the hammer, North Korea will truly be isolated, far more than they are today. International solidarity is more important than the belligerence of empty threats.

North Korea Tries To Escalate

It took the UN over a week to pen their strongly worded letter condemning North Korea's missile launch, and Pyongyang immediately responded:

North Korea announced it would quit six-nation nuclear disarmament talks and restart its atomic weapons programme in protest at the UN's condemnation of its rocket launch.

The communist nation said Security Council discussion of the launch, which the North insists sent a satellite into orbit, was "an unbearable insult" to its people.

Analysts described the Pyongyang statement as unusually strong, and China, the North's closest ally, called for all sides involved in the talks to show restraint.

"There is no need for the six-party talks any more," said a statement from Pyongyang's foreign ministry carried by the Korean Central News Agency.

"We will never again take part in such talks and will not be bound by any agreement reached at the talks."

Now, let's not lost our heads over this. This is definitely a strong statement, perhaps their strongest yet. But the North Koreans have simply shown no aptitude for nuclear weapons. All the tests have failed and all the missile launches have failed, at least in their stated goals. Also, Pyongyang has threatened to quit these talks on multiple occasions, only to return to the bargaining table. Finally, they have gone very far down the road of disabling their nuclear program - remember the destruction of the reactor? Putting everything back together will take time and money, and the latter is scarce in North Korea.

Pyongyang wants to become a first-order problem for the West, but they have not risen to that level.

Now That's What I Call Talking To Your Enemies

Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei runs Iran. There is no dictator named Ahmadinejad. There is no Iranian Revolution without the Ayatollah. If you're going to make a deal with Iran, you're going to have to get the participation of Khamenei. Which, impressively, is what President Obama is seeking.

In what I’m going to interpret as clear evidence that President Obama reads this blog, the Wall Street Journal reports that the administration is “looking at ways to develop a direct line of communication to [Iranian] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.”

American and European officials say Mr. Khamenei is the only Iranian leader who can make the ultimate decision to suspend or freeze Iran’s nuclear program.

“The key issue is now to find a channel to Khamenei,” said a senior Western diplomat briefed on the Obama administration’s policy review in recent days. “If the supreme leader moves, he’s going to do it in a very prudent and incremental way.”

The discussions are part of a larger Iran-policy review that the Obama administration is aiming to complete this month, according to U.S. officials.

Matt Yglesias has a bit more. This is smart for several reasons, the most obvious being that you bargain with the one who can actually secure the bargain. There's an election for the Iranian President in June, with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged by a number of reformers. His word in negotiations will be held up by politics for several months, and we should not wait until that is settled. I don't think renewing sanctions and forward actions like shooting down an Iranian drone over Iraq (did you even hear that happened?) are particularly helpful to the extent that they strengthen the hand of the hard-liners. But the Obama Administration is clearly offering a mixture of carrots and sticks, and if they actually get the ear of Khamenei, there's a very real chance of success.

Zimbabwe Update

So the President expanded sanctions against the Zimbabwean government, at the same time that both Robert Mugabe and opposition leaders are meeting for talks on forming a unity government. So what's going on here? Richard Dowder thinks it's a trap:

It is clear what Robert Mugabe wants to see from the talks with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that began in South Africa on Thursday. On December 27 1987 he sat down with Joshua Nkomo, the leader of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) and signed a unity accord. It followed seven years of sustained violence against Nkomo's party in which some 18,000 people died. The creation of a government of national unity made Nkomo vice-president. Three Zapu leaders were given cabinet posts. They might as well have been hamsters in a cage on Mugabe's desk.

This is what Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, must remember as he sits down at the talks. Like Nkomo, his party has been battered, with many of his MPs dead, in hiding or facing charges, and more than 1,500 officials in prison. The mediator, Thabo Mbeki, and other African presidents would be happy with a deal similar to the 1987 accord. But will the MDC be able to arm-wrestle a deal that leads to Mugabe stepping down or to free and fair elections - or even a joint Mugabe/Tsvangirai control of the state and its security apparatus? The question, as Humpty Dumpty said, is: who is to be master?

Dowder argues that the talks are aimed at buying time while Mugabe can consolidate his grip on power and prepare for war. Certainly what we saw leading up to the election - tales of rape, murder, and intimidation - lead in that direction. The race might be between time and economic survival. Zimbabwe cannot currently produce enough bank note paper to keep the government solvent and paying for its thugs and supporters in the military. Really chaos is inevitable - it's a matter of how long the ruling elite can keep it at bay. So freezing the financial assets that they are taking out of the country with utmost speed is a good step.

Drumbeat To Iran Update

The series of events on Iran in the last week are deeply troubling. Today the Bush Administration levied new sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force, accusing them of "proliferating weapons of mass destruction." As the Times article says, "this is the first time that the United States has taken such steps against the armed forces of any sovereign government." Combine this with Vice President Fourthbranch's speech warning of "serious consequences" should Iran pursue a nuclear program, and you can see the phrases being recycled from fall 2002. And then, the supplemental war spending bill includes a major line item for massive bunker buster bombs, the type of which would be used to get at underground nuclear facilities in Iran.

What's worrisome here is not only the horrible mistake it would be to bomb Iran, but that it is a classic distraction scenario , keeping people's minds off of the occupation of Iraq. Whether this threat is followed through or not, the Iraq adventure gets far less scrutiny. And indeed, Republicans view the Iran saber-rattling as good for their election chances.

The whole idea of the attack makes more sense as an attempt to revive the political dynamics that worked so well for the Republicans in 2002 and 2004, when they turned public anxiety about Islamist terrorism to their advantage, while dividing the Democrats and throwing them on the defensive and off their own issues. An attack on Iran could do the same.

We can already see how the politics might play out. On Sept. 26, the Senate adopted a resolution presented by Joseph Lieberman and Jon Kyl declaring Iran's Revolutionary Guard to be a terrorist organization. The vote was 76-22, with Democrats splitting almost exactly down the middle (Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid were among the supporters). The resolution passed only because its sponsors took out two paragraphs approving a military response, but Democrats split over the suspicion that the resolution might be used to justify one.

(As a side note, we are already seeing Democrats snipe amongst themselves on this and even starting new organizations as a result, while the Republicans are united in demonizing Iran and playing the fear card for electoral advantage. There's no doubt they think this helps them, although I'm not certain that we're in the same political environment as in 2002 or 2004.)

I think it's far more instructive to take a look at what's happening inside Iran to see if this aggressive strategy is working. Late last week Ali Larijani, the top nuclear negotiator, resigned. Commentators in the United States believed this to be evidence that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was taking over the nuclear negotiations and installing his man in the post. But others see it differently:

As ever, the Tehran political scientist Kaveh L. Afrasiabi offered an intriguing explanation in Asia Times — one that reads the political significance of the change quite differently. He suggests that the move obviously reveals a state of open political warfare between the president and Larijani, but that Larijani continues to enjoy the confidence of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. In fact, when nuclear talks with EU chief Javier Solana resume on Tuesday with Jalili in Larijani’s old role, Larijani will still be present, according to Iranian officials, “as the representative of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution.”

If so, then far from throwing his weight behind Ahmadinejad, the Supreme Leader may instead be empowering the opponents of the president who are making clear that they can’t work under him. Ahmadinejad was reportedly enraged that President Vladimir Putin presented Russia’s new offer not only to the president, but also went over his head and presented it directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei. (Ahmadinejad has since denied that an offer was made, which seems a little ridiculous since not only Larijani, but the Supreme Leader himself had acknowledged that Russia had indeed made a proposal which Iran would study and respond to.)

Afrasiabi sees the developments as signaling a widening split over handling the nuclear issue: “Various commentators, especially in Europe and the United States, have been quick in interpreting Larijani’s resignation as a ‘bad omen’ reflecting a triumph for hardliners led by Ahmadinejad,” he writes. “But that is simplistic and ignores a more complex reality in the Iran’s state affairs. The quest for greater centralization of nuclear decision-making has met a contradictory response in, on the one hand, the move for more direct input by Khamenei, and, on the other hand, a parallel effort by Ahmadinejad to gain greater control of decision-making.”

Indeed, Larijani did attend the most recent negotiation with the UN, and while Ahmadinejad attempted to negotiate through the media and say that "Iran will not retreat one iota," 180 MPs in Iran signed a letter praising Larijani and denouncing Ahmadinejad's handpicked successor. There is a lot of uneasiness in Tehran over an impending attack, and this is clearly not provoking regime change, but insulating and hardening the Supreme Leader and his inner circle, as they crack down on dissent and centralize the decision-making process, probably elbowing out Ahmadinejad instead of allowing him to set policy. The mullahs control Iran, and this saber-rattling is only making them tighten their grip.

Never mind the fact that the "threat" posed by Iran is beyond minimal, even to Israel:

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said a few months ago in a series of closed discussions that in her opinion that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel, Haaretz magazine reveals in an article on Livni to be published Friday.

Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears. Last week, former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy said similar things about Iran.

The Bushies must be on another planet if they think the public is going to swallow this nonsense that Iran is a growing and gathering threat that must be bombed without delay or the Revolutionary Guard is going to take over the country and force our women into hijabs. But what's the most depressing is the knowledge that these madmen might be able to get away with it.

If a nuclear inspection deal happens, and nobody in the US media hears it...

This isn't getting any play in the US media, for what I would consider to be obvious reasons.

Iran and the UN's nuclear agency say they have made progress in talks on Tehran's nuclear programme.
In July the two sides announced a two-month arrangement aimed at clearing up outstanding questions and giving the agency better access to nuclear sites.

Both now say they have agreed on a timeline for implementation during a fresh round of talks in Tehran [...]

Since July's agreement, Iran has allowed the IAEA's inspectors to visit its heavy water research reactor at Arak, and has been holding talks with a UN technical team on guidelines for inspecting its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz.

BBC Iran analyst Pam O'Toole says that over the past few months, Iran has appeared anxious to demonstrate the transparency of its programme.

One Iranian official recently expressed hope that the West could respond to Iran's co-operation with the IAEA by not pushing for more sanctions.

The US response to this is predictable. Even though the IAEA successfully monitored Iraq's WMD program, even though they were on the way to verifying Saddam's lack of WMD before the Bush Administration kicked them out of Baghdad, they're claiming that Iran is manipulating them and using them as stooges:

A nuclear cooperation pact Iran struck with the International Atomic Energy Agency has "real limitations" and Tehran should stop trying to manipulate the IAEA to dodge harsher U.N. sanctions, a senior U.S. envoy said.

Washington was not impressed by Iran's transparency promise -- hailed as a "milestone" by the IAEA on Tuesday -- to allay suspicions it is secretly seeking atomic bombs, and would still pursue talks on more U.N. sanctions against Tehran, the U.S. envoy to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Gregory Schulte, said.

The IAEA declined comment on Schulte's criticism. A diplomat close to the Vienna-based agency said Schulte's remarks "shows a deliberate campaign to derail this process."

When other countries are resistent to US demands it shows that they must be dealt with. When they reach agreements with international organizations it proves that they're stalling for time and they must be dealt with.

The United States has no interest in resolving this dispute with Iran with anything but military force. And ordinary Americans are not being told the full story about Iranian activities. They get saber rattling and half-truths about "terrorist" Revolutionary Guards and infilitration into Iraq.



There is a legitimate concern that Iran is focused on timetables for transparency instead of action, and indeed European powers are saying similar things about this proposal. But I believe US diplomats are directly trying to upset international negotiations in a bloodlust to commit our military to yet another war. And the press is enabling them by writing in favor of this insanity, as well as ignoring any positive developments coming out of talks.

The diplomat close to the IAEA told Reuters that Schulte's comments were "very unhelpful" ... Such immediate downplaying of this development is disingenuous."

"To expect Iran now to comply on the whole package of demands by the Security Council, all at once, when they remain under sanctions, is unrealistic," the diplomat said.

Maybe Iran is dragging its feet. Maybe this deal with the IAEA is not kosher. Wouldn't it be nice if Americans KNEW about it?

Picking A Fight With Iran

You don't roll out new product in August, perhaps, but it looks like you can set things up for the fall:

The United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran's nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

I heard Robin Wright, who wrote this article, try to explain on NPR that this shows an increase in diplomatic means to solve the Iranian problem, because now the US can block financial assets of the Republican Guard and companies who do business with them. And while it's true that the Revolutionary Guard has extensive business ties with multinational corporations in the telecom and pharamceutical and transportation industries, that's naive nonsense. Under the White House's way of thinking, this probably enables them to attack Revolutionary Guard targets within Iran as a means of protecting the nation from terrorism under the original Authorization for the Use of Military Force of 2001. This is completely dangerous.

Meanwhile, China is making all kinds of deals with Iran that will help them prop up their struggling economy. If a move like this was strictly economic, all it would do would be to send Iran running further into the arms of China. The Chinese wouldn't sanction the Republican Guard through the UN, after all. But this is not about economic pressure, anyway.

The administration's move could hurt diplomatic efforts, some analysts said. "It would greatly complicate our efforts to solve the nuclear issue," said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Center for American Progress. "It would tie an end to Iran's nuclear program to an end to its support of allies in Hezbollah and Hamas. The only way you could get a nuclear deal is as part of a grand bargain, which at this point is completely out of reach."

Such sanctions can work only alongside diplomatic efforts, Cirincione added.

"Sanctions can serve as a prod, but they have very rarely forced a country to capitulate or collapse," he said. "All of us want to back Iran into a corner, but we want to give them a way out, too. [The designation] will convince many in Iran's elite that there's no point in talking with us and that the only thing that will satisfy us is regime change."

This is about forcing a confrontation, and every move that the President has made regarding Iran needs to be viewed in that light.