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.

Secret Enrichment Facility Discovered In Iran

A day after passing a UN resolution to move toward total nuclear disarmament, Barack Obama joined Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown to disclose the existence of a secret Iranian site used to enrich low-grade uranium. Iran has acknowledged the site, but “The (IAEA) also understands from Iran that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility." Obama had this to say:

Appearing before reporters in Pittsburgh, Mr. Obama said that the Iranian nuclear program “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.” President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, appearing beside Mr. Obama, said that Iran had a deadline of two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions.

“The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, standing on the other side of Mr. Obama. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”

It sounds like US intelligence had been monitoring the facility, near the holy city of Qom, for years, but recently had their cover broken, which led Iran to disclose the existence of the plant to the IAEA. Obama said today that "the size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program," although I'm wondering about the exact meaning of that remark, given the claim that no enriched uranium exists there, which American officials confirm (they say it could be ready by next year).

This comes right before the October 1 meeting between Iran and Western powers, and is sure to add some intensity to them.

This latest disclosure, along with the stolen election and state-sponsored repression of dissent, is turning Iran into a pariah regime, like North Korea.

Iran has the right under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to learn how to produce enriched uranium to fuel the reactors it is building. But the centrifuges it is using are an open-ended technology, such that if a nation can learn to use them to enrich uranium to 22 percent (enough for reactor fuel), there is no absolute bar to its learning to enrich to the 95 percent required for a nuclear bomb. Iran can therefore only allay suspicions that it actually wants a bomb by allowing thorough (and even surprise) U.N. inspections and by granting greater access to its scientists, engineers and equipment. Iran was caught doing undeclared weapons-related research in 2002, which is forbidden in the NPT, so it is on a kind of probation from the point of view of the West [...]

Iran may be counting on Russia and China to come to its aid. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would be foolish to make that bet. Although Russia's prime minister (and de facto leader), Vladimir Putin, recently spoke out against further sanctions on Iran, President Dmitry Medvedev indicated in a CNN interview on Sunday that Russia's patience is not infinite. He said, "Iran must cooperate with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], this is an absolutely indubitable thing, if it wishes to develop its nuclear dimension, nuclear energy program." It is possible that Russia will be more flexible on the Iran sanctions issue now that President Obama has canceled plans to build missile shield facilities in Poland and a radar station in the Czech Republic, plans to which Moscow had vehemently objected. Likewise, Obama is seeking to blunt Iran's propaganda campaign concerning the nukes of the great powers by pushing for further nuclear disarmament in the U.S. and Russia.

From the standpoint of Obama, who may be on the verge of a reality check on Afghanistan, he cannot vow to end the existence of nuclear weapons in the world and then sit idle as Iran reveals yet another secret facility. The sanctions may only endanger the Iranian people; but so many are fed up with the ruling regime anyway that it could tip the balance.

Juan Cole has a photo essay contrasting Ahmadinejad's UN rhetoric with reality.

Serious Moves On Iran Diplomacy

In a major potential shift that bodes extremely well for an amicable resolution to strained US-Iranian relations, David Sanger reports that the Obama Administration, unlike its predecessor, will not demand the full result of negotiation BEFORE negotiating.

The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing proposals that would shift strategy toward Iran by dropping a longstanding American insistence that Tehran rapidly shut down nuclear facilities during the early phases of negotiations over its atomic program, according to officials involved in the discussions.

The proposals, exchanged in confidential strategy sessions with European allies, would press Tehran to open up its nuclear program gradually to wide-ranging inspection. But the proposals would also allow Iran to continue enriching uranium for some period during the talks. That would be a sharp break from the approach taken by the Bush administration, which had demanded that Iran halt its enrichment activities, at least briefly to initiate negotiations.

The proposals under consideration would go somewhat beyond President Obama’s promise, during the presidential campaign, to open negotiations with Iran “without preconditions.” Officials involved in the discussion said they were being fashioned to draw Iran into nuclear talks that it had so far shunned.

Sanger is actually hedging a bit too much here. The Bush Administration did not call for a halt to Iranian enrichment "briefly." They consistently called for a verifiable end to enrichment as a condition of talks, which were supposed to be about enrichment. In other words, this was like a contract negotiation where you ask for a million dollars up-front, before sitting down to talk about whether or not you get a million dollars. It was a negotiation fated never to begin, as nobody would be so stupid as to give away their entire bargaining power prior to bargaining. This gesture by Obama shows the Iranians that he's actually serious about diplomacy and engagement. As Mohamed ElBaradei of the IAEA puts it:

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors would be a critical part of the strategy, said in an interview in his office in Vienna last week that the Obama administration had not consulted him on the details of a new strategy. But he was blistering about the approach that the Bush administration had taken.

“It was a ridiculous approach,” he insisted. “They thought that if you threatened enough and pounded the table and sent Cheney off to act like Darth Vader the Iranians would just stop,” Dr. ElBaradei said, shaking his head. “If the goal was to make sure that Iran would not have the knowledge and the capability to manufacture nuclear fuel, we had a policy that was a total failure.”

Now, he contended, Mr. Obama has little choice but to accept the reality that Iran has “built 5,500 centrifuges,” nearly enough to make two weapons’ worth of uranium each year. “You have to design an approach that is sensitive to Iran’s pride,” said Dr. ElBaradei, who has long argued in favor of allowing Iran to continue with a small, face-saving capacity to enrich nuclear fuel, under strict inspection.

Obama has a larger goal than "looking tough" to Iran or making belligerent statements in the media. He wants to eradicate nuclear weapons from this planet. And pursuing strategies that have no hope of working frustrates that goal. And reaching an accommodation with Iran, by contrast, would be a major step.

For the time being, even cynical realists might recognize that Obama’s endorsement of the goal of abolition enhances America’s negotiating position within the nonproliferation system without imposing any practical constraints on American power. In fact, the Prague speech was not especially notable for its idealism; its significance lies in Obama’s comprehensive, pragmatic accounting of the nuclear-diplomacy mess that he was handed by his predecessor [...]

It may be impossible to prevent nuclear gridlock in the Middle East. Under an umbrella of Russian protection, Iran does not fear speeches. Still, it is inarguably in the United States’ interests to employ aggressive and creative diplomacy to attempt to revise Tehran’s perception of the costs and benefits of its nuclear program. Obama understands what is at stake: Iranian recalcitrance, he said, could produce “a potential nuclear-arms race in the region that will increase insecurity for all.” Last Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined a European-led initiative to re-start nuclear negotiations with Tehran. In a reversal of Bush Administration policy, she said that the United States would be a “full participant” in the talks.

Today's revelation is exactly the kind of creative diplomacy required in this difficult situation. Faced with yet another bad hand from the Bush Administration, President Obama is operating with the urgency needed to move forward on the ambitious goal of ending the menace of nuclear weapons.

Iran: Everybody's Favorite Whipping Boy

Um, this is a misleading story. Iran has enough uranium to make a bomb, but it takes until the seventh paragraph to report that "the material would have to undergo further enrichment if it was to be used as fuel for a bomb and that atomic inspectors had found no signs that Iran was making such preparations." In fact, it's even more remote than the article makes out.

Iran cannot construct nuclear bombs with uranium enriched only to less than 4%. It needs to be enriched to something like 90% to make a bomb. Iran is not known even to have that capability, and no it cannot be done in 2 months (try a decade), assuming they were trying to do it, which our $40 bn. a year intelligence agencies say they are not. So all the silly articles on Friday about how iran now has enough enriched uranium to make a bomb are just illiterate. Moreover, the report in question actually says that Iran is slowing its enrichment activities.

This is propaganda with a right-wing frame, and I fear the Administration is promoting it. And this has consequences inside Iran. That hardliners are blocking websites promoting reformer Mohammed Khatami is to be expected, but they are clearly using the Manichean "us against the world" nature of current international relations to provide cover for this suppressing of dissent. It's stupid policy to keep hyping these reports and distorting their findings. The Obama team can go a long way to ending this crap by refusing to accept the premises. So far they haven't.

Major Internal White House Battle Over Iran

There are a host of conflicting signals coming out of the US on Iran, which suggests a war within the Pentagon, the State Department and the White House itself over whether or not to attack. It's very hard to decipher who is winning this debate. While Cheney usually has the upper hand in these fights (after all, it's his Administration), he's outnumbered these days, more so than when Rumsfeld was at his side. And it appears the commanders are very reluctant to go along with any attack plans for Iran as well.

Let's chart this battle on the flip.

We know that the US announced this week that it plans to engage in bilateral talks with Iran over the Iraq crisis and how it can be managed. But the Vice President was very quick to qualify that the two sides would only be talking with respect to Iraq. On other issues, such as the country's nuclear program, neoconservatives are continuing to press for attack. Take a look at what John Bolton said today:

A nuclear Iran would be as dangerous as “Hitler marching into the Rhineland” in 1936 and should be prevented by Western military strikes if necessary, according to a leading hawk who recently left the Bush administration.

John Bolton, who still has close links to the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph that the European Union had to "get more serious" about Iran and recognise that its diplomatic attempts to halt Iran's enrichment programme had failed.

Iran has "clearly mastered the enrichment technology now...they're not stopping, they're making progress and our time is limited", he said. Economic sanctions "with pain" had to be the next step, followed by attempting to overthrow the theocratic regime and, ultimately, military action to destroy nuclear sites.

Mr Bolton's stark warning appeared to be borne out yesterday by leaks about an inspection by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of Iran's main nuclear installation at Natanz on Sunday.

This is eerily similar to the Iraq debate, when neoconservative claims about the need to attack quickly were buttressed by leaked information coming out of the New York Times, possibly provided by the same group of people that are quoting it.

Inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency have concluded that Iran appears to have solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on a far larger scale than before, according to the agency’s top officials [...]

In a short-notice inspection of Iran’s operations in the main nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday, conducted in advance of a report to the United Nations Security Council due early next week, the inspectors found that Iranian engineers were already using roughly 1,300 centrifuges and were producing fuel suitable for nuclear reactors, according to diplomats and nuclear experts here.

However, scrolling down the article, we see that the IAEA qualifies their finding:

It is unclear whether Iran can sustain its recent progress. Major setbacks are common in uranium enrichment, and experts say it is entirely possible that miscalculation, equipment failures or sabotage — something the United States is believed to have attempted in the past — could prevent the Iranian government from reaching its goal of producing fuel on what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran boasts is “an industrial scale.”

The material produced so far would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be transformed into bomb-grade material. To accomplish that, Iran would likely first have to evict the I.A.E.A. inspectors, as North Korea did four years ago.

Even then, it is unclear whether the Iranians have the technology to produce a weapon small enough to fit atop their missiles, a significant engineering challenge.

The fact that we are then far away from the point at which Iran can successfully enrich enough uranium for a warhead is pushed to the side and obscured, and the information which can be twisted into a campaign of fear and warmongering but right at the top.

But despite this, not everyone within the Administration is on board for this new marketing campaign, as made most clear by Admiral William Fallon, the new chief of CENTCOM, who not only denied the release of a third carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf, but also said this:

Fallon's refusal to support a further naval buildup in the Gulf reflected his firm opposition to an attack on Iran and an apparent readiness to put his career on the line to prevent it. A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch".

Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, "You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

Yet while one side is trying to put the crazies back into the box, the other side is inviting the crazies over for meetings, and looking to them to incite grassroots support for an attack on Iran:

President George W. Bush met privately with Focus on the Family Founder and Chairman James Dobson and approximately a dozen Christian right leaders last week to rally support for his policies on Iraq, Iran and the so-called "war on terror."

“I was invited to go to Washington DC to meet with President Bush in the White House along with 12 or 13 other leaders of the pro-family movement," Dobson disclosed on his radio program Monday. “And the topic of the discussion that day was Iraq, Iran and international terrorism. And we were together for 90 minutes and it was very enlightening and in some ways disturbing too." [...]

Dobson went on to enumerate a series of meetings convened by Christian right leaders in Washington to discuss the supposedly existential threat to the United States from a nuclear Iran.

“I heard about this danger [from Iran] not only at the White House but from other pro-family leaders that I met during that week in Washington," he said. “Many people in a position to know are talking about the possibility of losing a city to nuclear or biological or chemical attack. And if we can lose one we can lose ten.

"If we can lose ten we can lose a hundred," he added, “especially if North Korea and Russia and China pile on.”

Since the Administration is getting such internal resistance to their saber-rattling on Iran, they're taking the case directly to the base through the conduit of the theocratic right. This also has a parallel to Iraq, as one of the last people Bush met with before the invasion was Pat Robertson.

So clearly, there's a lot of argument and arm-twisting back and forth. Into this breach step the Democrats. And they are gradually becoming more united on this issue, and more importantly appear to be taking it seriously.

House Democrats, who have been divided on whether the president needs authorization from Congress to attack Iran, suggested yesterday that they are more united on the controversial issue.

But with Iran measures possibly headed to the House floor as early as today, it is unclear if Democrats have the votes to pass legislation calling for the president to seek authorization from Congress for a preemptive strike on Iran [...]

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised several members, including Reps. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), and Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.), that she would allow for an up-or-down vote on an Iran amendment, though it is unclear which amendment or amendments will be voted on.

In the 109th Congress, Iran amendments offered by DeFazio and Hinchey were easily defeated.

But a new amendment by Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.) could attract the most votes. His measure would prevent funds authorized in the bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from being obligated or expended to plan a contingency operation in Iran.

Andrews said in an interview that he has spoken to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) about his amendment to the pending defense authorization legislation.

The DeFazio Amendment is likely to come up for a vote today, and it's vital that you call your Representative and ask that they support it. It's going to come down to the wire to see if they can get this into the Defense Authorization Bill. With all of the turmoil surrounding where the White House is at on Iran, it's important that the Democrats are clear and direct: no funds for any activities regarding Iran without explicit authorization from the Congress.

I don't know if anyone can figure out where this will lead. What's clear is that there are still a significant number of those in power, including the Vice President and possibly the President, agitating for war with Iran. This is insanity, and those inside the Administration doing the yeoman work of trying to stop it need to be supported by the Democrats.

He's The Madman We Listen To!

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held a press conference, so the whole Western world should stop what their doing and listen to what he had to say, right?

Um, why?

A year ago he claimed that Iran has successfully enriched uranium, without saying how much or whether it could even power a flashlight. Now he's coming back with more boasts, and the Western media follows happily along (although at least there's a little skepticism):

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said today that his country has started to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, and had reached the next phase of what he described as an irreversible program that his country had a right to pursue.

Some diplomats who follow the standoff between Iran and the West over its nuclear program wondered whether the claim might be at least partly a bluff.

OF COURSE it's a bluff, in the sense that he's making a claim, the impact of which is unknown. And all publicizing the bluff does is play into the hands of those in our government who have already decided on their desire for war, and are just hoping for a pretext. The Europeans get this:

Iran’s penchant for exaggerated public boasts about its atomic program made it difficult to assess the significance, if any, of today’s announcement. A European diplomat said the declaration seemed to have more to do with political showmanship than with technical breakthroughs.

But our homegrown neocons, who are desperate for an angle to allow them to put on their war helmets and lay maps on the floor and make attack plans, are lapping it up. Stanley Kurtz is breathlessly reporting estimates based on... well, the words of Ahmadinejad and scribbles on the back of an envelope. Gateway Pundit gets angry because Iranians are calling Americans names. Blue Crab Boulevard sees the Ahmadinejad statement as proof that, "While the West fiddles along, Iran is busy charging ahead with its nuclear weapons program." And here's some suggestive talk from Instapundit:

Everyone says that a nuclear-armed Iran is intolerable, but they mostly seem inclined to tolerate it rather than actually do anything, and even mild suggestions about doing anything are treated as beyond the pale. The likely consequence of this squeamishness and sloth, of course, is that when things come to a head more people will die than if we took effective action now.

He doesn't explain what that effective action is, but you can figure it out. And there are enough posts and stories like this out there to pretty much know that the Republican establishment welcomes the rhetoric.

All of this fretting and belligerence is based on an Ahmadinejad press conference. Mind you, these are the same people who often say that Ahmadinejad cannot be trusted with nuclear weapons. We can't trust him in that sense, so... why are we trusting him now? There is no independent confirmation that Iran will be able to have a bomb in, say, a year. Not even the IAEA can determine if there is an active weapons program. The rest is noise. And the noise is coming from the Iranian President who is routinely derided as "an irrational madman." Except when he's talking about the precise details of uranium enrichment.

The British sailor crisis averted last week showed to me that the inner workings of Iranian government is incredibly complex and occasionally contradictory. Public statements from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bear little resemblance to official Iranian policy, and both the ruling mullahs and the President have their own motives. We cannot base our policy on celebratory government statements, any more than we should base the war on terror on every word that comes off Osama bin Laden's lips. We have unreliable narrators in Iran when it comes to their nuclear program. I know that the White House is willing to be duped by statements like this because they have a vested interest in finding a pretext for war. But Democrats shoudn't make the same mistake, and they should demand some independent confirmation from the intelligence community before believing anything coming out of Tehran.