Worldview: Iran
by A Concerned Citizen
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Retired on 31 December 2007
Table of Contents
Main Items
Iran Intelligence
Attack Iran?
2006 Articles
First Thoughts
Ahmadinejad's Sanity
Should we Strike?
Preparing for a Strike?
Other Articles
Iran Intelligence
Introduction
Article Archive
CIA Doubts About Iran Nukes (2006)
Scott Ritter on Iran
Iran's Offers
Back to Iran Menu
Introduction (14 Sep 06): Here we go again? The following is strangely reminiscent of the prewar debate on WMD in Iraq.
UN INSPECTORS DISPUTE HOUSE IRAN REPORT
Dafna Linzer, WP, 14 Sep 06
'This is like prewar Iraq all over again', said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. 'You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.'
So I should begin to collect articles on this topic, as I encounter them on the internet. Here are some articles to start us off.
WP: IAEA disputes Iran report by House Panel
CBS News: IAEA: Iran Nuclear Report 'Outrageous'
Jorge Hirsch: The Meaning of the IAEA Iran Vote
YNet News: Israel: Few months to avoid nuclear Iran
Defense News: U.S. Tells IAEA Iran 'Aggressively' Seeking Atom Bomb
Chatham House: Iran and its Neighbors
Actually, it would be best to launch an entire archive of articles on this topic, past and present, as I encounter them. That will be done in the following section.
Back to Iran Intelligence
As stated in the previous section, the issue of Iran and WMD is so important that I will open an archive containing whatever useful articles I find on this topic as I surf the web. This includes articles both past and present, though naturally there will be many more recent articles. Of course, the following selection cannot claim to be comprehensive, but hopefully enough information will be accumulated over time to discern the truth behind all the propaganda.
Official Documents
Websites
2003
2004
2005
Know, because until March of this year Iran had voluntarily cooperated with Director-General ElBaradei and staff of the International Atomic Energy Agency as if an unratified Additional Protocol to their 1974 Safeguards Agreement was actually in force.
After more than three years, comprising 1700 man-days of inspections, the IAEA found 'no indication' there were 'undeclared source or special nuclear materials' in Iran. Furthermore, they found no indication that any declared source or special nuclear materials had been diverted to military purpose.
As for Iran comprising a nuke threat, the IAEA inspectors didn't even find trace amounts of almost pure Uranium-235, much less the hundreds of pounds that would be needed to make a few first-generation nukes.
But the almost certain knowledge that there is no Iranian nuke threat doesn't faze Western politicians.
Iran: Intelligence Archive
Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons
Guidelines of the Nuclear Suppliers Group
Wikipedia: Nuclear Program of Iran
Wikipedia: Iran and Weapons of Mass Destruction
IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency
Arms Control Association: Arms Control Today
European Commission: External Relations
CFR: The Iran Intelligence Gap
ISIS: Country Assessments: Iran
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Leonard S. Spector: Iran's Secret Quest for the Bomb
ISIS: The Iranian Gas Centrifuge Uranium Enrichment Plant at Natanz
Henry Sokolski: Iran on the Brink
Guardian: US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
Michael Isikoff: Terrorist MEK cult a source of intelligence
Website: Maryam Rajavi, leader of MEK
WP: Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb
Jorge Hirsch: The Meaning of the IAEA Iran Vote
PINR: Intelligence Brief: Iran
BBC: UK 'cover-up' on Israel's nukes
Arms Control Wonk: Iran & the Bomb 1: How Close Is Iran?
Gary Samore: Stopping the Iranian Bomb - Part I [Part II]
Joseph Cirincione: No Military Options
Steven Clemons: Plame Leak Sabotaged US Intel Effort on Iran
IHT: Serious technical challenges slow Iran's nuclear efforts
Steven Clemons: America's Botched 2003 Iran Diplomacy
Gareth Porter: Iran Nuke Offer Snubbed
Graham Allison: US intel may be underestimating Iran bomb
NUKE FREE ZONE IN IRAN
Gordon Prather, Antiwar, 17 Jun 06
The Neo-Crazies, in cahoots with the Anti-Nuclear-Whatever crazies, have managed to get Western politicians from across the political spectrum to view-with-alarm the Iranian nuclear weapons 'threat'. Of course, as those politicians know, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is now a nuke threat.
Gareth Porter: No Evidence of Secret Enrichment by Iran
Gareth Porter: Bush Ensured Iran Offer Would Be Rejected
Chatham House: Iran and its Neighbors (PDF)
US House Select Committee: Iran as a Strategic Threat (PDF)
CBS News: IAEA: Iran Nuclear Report 'Outrageous'
WP: UN inspectors dispute Iran report by House Panel
YNet News: Israel: Few months to avoid nuclear Iran
Defense News: U.S. Tells IAEA Iran 'Aggressively' Seeking Atom Bomb
Michael Eisenstadt: The Complex Calculus of Preventive Military Action
Truthdig: Hersh: White House 'Stovepiping' Iran Intelligence
SO MUCH FOR INALIENABLE RIGHTS
Gordon Prather, Antiwar, 16 Dec 06
As an NPT signatory, Iran has an 'inalienable right' to develop 'without discrimination' the capability to enrich uranium — subject, of course, to an IAEA Safeguards Agreement, entered into for the exclusive purpose of verifying that no 'source or special fissionable material' has been diverted to a military purpose.Furthermore, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia and China — as signatories to the NPT — have all undertaken to 'facilitate' that development by Iran.
Nevertheless, despite at least a dozen quarterly reports by IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei that he could find no indication that Iran had ever diverted any source or special fissionable material to a military purpose, Bush and the Likudniks have managed to get the IAEA Board of Governors to repeatedly violate the IAEA Statute and the UN Security Council to repeatedly disregard the UN Charter, demanding that Iran give up its rights guaranteed by both the NPT and by the IAEA Statute.
[. . .]
After praising ElBaradei for having conducted a multi-year program of inspections of unprecedented scope and thoroughness, resulting in no evidence of undisclosed nuclear activity, much less a diversion of source or special fissionable materials, Ritter revealed that Israeli intelligence has also been unable — despite considerable use of on-the-ground 'human intelligence' and analysis of spy-satellite images - to find any indication of a hidden Iranian nuclear program.
Nevertheless, 'Israel has drawn a red line that says, not only will they not tolerate a nuclear weapons program in Iran, they will not tolerate anything dealing with nuclear energy, especially enrichment, that could be used in a nuclear program.'
SHOW ME THE INTELLIGENCE
Ray McGovern, Antiwar, 20 Jan 07
Unvarnished NIEs sent to the White House by the Negroponte/Fingar team have not shied away from unwelcome conclusions undercutting administration claims, and have gone over like proverbial lead balloons. An NIE estimate on Iran completed in early 2005, for example, concluded that the Iranians will not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before 'early to mid-next decade', exposing Cheney's fanciful claims of more proximate danger. And an NIE produced in April 'A06 on global terrorism concluded that the invasion of Iraq led to a marked increase in terrorism, belying administration claims that the invasion and occupation had made us 'safer'.Worse still from the administration's point of view, patriotic truth-tellers (aka leakers) inside the government apparently decided that administration rhetoric on both of these key issues had deliberately misled the American people, who were entitled to know the truth.
The two unwelcome estimates meant two strikes on Negroponte. Then the White House learned of an impending strike-three — this one an NIE assessing the future in Iraq and apparently casting doubt on the advisability of US escalation. In a classic Cheneyesque pre-emptive strike, the estimate was put on hold; Negroponte was given a pink slip and assigned back to the State Department. There are rumors that Fingar is clearing out his desk as well.
Steve Clemons: Reality Check on Iran's Nuke Capacity
NYT: Rebuke in Iran to Its President on Nuclear Role
Guardian: Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders
February 2007
NPR: State Dept. Delays Intelligence Report on Iran
IRNA: IAEA installs new cameras at Natanz Nuclear Complex
Nuclear Experts: Iran Links Underground Centrifuges
FM official: Iran's nuclear program fully transparent
WP: Rice Denies Seeing Iranian Proposal in 'A03
BBC: How close is Iran to a nuclear bomb?
ElBaradei: No proof that Iran is after nuclear weapons program
Gareth Porter: US Briefing on Iran Discredits the Official Line
Financial Times: Interview with Mohammed ElBaradei
Guardian: Iran 'six months from mass uranium enrichment'
Sydney Morning Herald: Iran bomb is 10 years away, says ElBaradei
Guardian: US Iran intelligence 'is incorrect'
IAEA: Report on Iran by the Director General
Guardian: Iran still pursuing nuclear programme, says UN watchdog
US intelligence on Iran does not stand up, say Vienna sources
LA Times: UN calls US data on Iran's nuclear aims unreliable
CFR: Lionel Beehner: Intelligence on Iran Still Lacking
UN News: IAEA: Iran continues nuclear enrichment
Iran FM: Iran will not suspend uranium enrichment
March 2007
Joseph Cirincione: Contain and Engage (report)
RFE: Iran: Officials Put Positive Spin On IAEA Report
Reuters: Iran says wants atom talks
Ray McGovern: Iran's Very Bad N-Word
Ray McGovern: How Long Until Iran Gets the Bomb? No One Has a Clue
Arms Control Wonk: NIE on Iran's WMD Programs
April 2007
ABC: Iran Nuclear Bomb Could Be Possible by 2009
WEIGHING THE IRANIAN NUCLEAR THREAT
Michael Hirsh, Newsweek, Apr 2007
DAVID ALBRIGHT: If Iran does not start enriching, then negotiations are still possible. If it does start enriching underground, then negotiations are much less likely. The only thing that can stop Iran is Iran itself. There's no way to stop them short of bombing the facility, which is highly unlikely and certainly not desirable. Iran's centrifuge facilities are too dispersed. And we don't know where they keep their new centrifuges or have new facilities under construction.Probably the solution is to find a way to finesse this condition [put forward by European negotiators] of suspension, so talks can start. [Iran would agree to re-suspend its program in return for U.S. and European agreement to suspend the sanctions process.] If this isn't negotiated soon, then the start-up of enrichment could happen any day, and after that negotiations become much more difficult.
USIPeace Briefing: Who Rules Ahmadinejad's Iran?
Justin Raimondo: Democratic Illusions
IAEA: Iran making nuclear fuel in underground plant
SD Tribune: Iran needs 'few years' to make fuel for atom plants
IRAN: NOT A NATION OF NUKES
Peter Hitchens, Sunday Mail, 21 Apr 07
The people of Iran are probably the most pro-Western in the world, though that will not stop them fighting like hell if we are foolish enough to attack them. Not that they will do so with nuclear weapons any time soon. Iran is rather bad at grand projects. Its sole nuclear power station has never produced a watt of electricity in more than three decades, the capital's TV tower is unfinished after 20 years of work and Tehran's airport took 30 years to build.[. . .]
Again and again, Iranians told me Western hostility was the main force that could push them into the arms of a regime they did not much like. The last thing the ayatollahs need is for the peoples of Europe and America to know much about their country and its people, or to realise the truth — that Iran is our natural ally in the Middle East, a European civilisation trapped by history and geography in the midst of Arabia. It does not belong there, culturally or religiously.
We treat Turkey like a brother, when it is a militant Islamic state kept secular only by a disguised military dictatorship. And we treat Iran like a pariah, when it's a largely secular nation kept Islamic only by an ageing and discredited, but open, despotism.
[. . .]
I have tried to understand the sweet, sad mystery of Iran's unique brand of Islam, quite unlike the hard, aggressive faith found in the Arab lands. I have touched the silver bars of the holiest shrine in the country, as the pious crowds thronged around it, many crying out in ecstasy that they have reached this sacred place. I suspect these scenes are the closest I shall come to what English pilgrims to Canterbury must once have known.
[. . .]
Travel in the smooth, modern metro down to poor south Tehran and you will find many more black veils and chadors, and many more beards and ringed fingers, the usual signs of serious Islam and support for the regime. For it is the poor who have largely benefited from the revolution, which gave them state jobs and good schools. Even here, things are not quite what they seem. ...
[. . .]
In some houses, the women stayed covered at all times and I could not even shake hands with them, bowing instead. In others, they dressed and acted like Westerners. It was clear that public opinion exists and matters here. I asked about the gruesome public hangings. My neighbour at the dinner table explained: 'At the beginning of the revolution these sorts of things, public hangings and floggings and the amputation of limbs, were common. But people didn't like them. They do sometimes hang mass killers or child molesters but if they announced the public hanging of an ordinary murderer, people would stay away to show their disapproval.'
Remember, this is a country that does have elections and those elections don't always go according to plan, despite ruthless official rigging. I asked those present if they had supported Ahmadinejad in the presidential poll. All hands but one went up. Would they do so again? No hands went up. By the way, the women dominated this conversation.
May 2007
IAEA SAYS IRAN STEPPING UP NUCLEAR WORK
David Sanger, NYT, 14 May 07
VIENNA, May 14 — 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.
Until recently, the Iranians were having difficulty keeping the delicate centrifuges spinning at the tremendous speeds necessary to make nuclear fuel and were often running them empty or not at all.
Now, those roadblocks appear to have been surmounted. 'We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich', said Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the energy agency, who clashed with the Bush administration four years ago when he declared that there was no evidence that Iraq had resumed its nuclear program. 'From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that's a fact.'
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.
Arnaud de Borchgrave: Iran's nuclear plans askew
IAEA: Iran not hampering nuclear inspections
IAEA: Iran 3-8 years away from developing nuclear bomb
CASMII: Fact Sheets of Iran-US Standoff
Kaveh L. Afrasiabi: Are Iran's missiles a threat to Europe?
BBC: Powers make IAEA Iran complaint
Arash Norouzi: 'Wiped off the Map' — The Rumor of the Century
Robert Baer: More Bad Intelligence on Iran and Iraq
June 2007
Officials: CIA running black ops against Iran, Syria and Lebanon
Gordon Prather: After the retaliation
Gordon Prather: Iran is abiding by NPT; US is not
July 2007
Scott Ritter: A Farewell to Arms Control
Steve Clemons: Report on Hardened Underground Facility near Natanz
Gordon Prather: More NeoCrazy Media Sycophany
August 2007
Gordon Prather: The Illegal — and Immoral — Option
Space War: Bush falsely accuses Iran of openly seeking nukes
Tony Karon: Asking the Wrong Questions on Iran
Charles Pena: Defusing Nuclear Hysteria
IHT: Iran expands atom program, falls short
IAEA: Iran atom drive slows but more clarity needed
Steve Clemons: The IAEA Iran Report
Ray McGovern: Bush Puts Iran in Crosshairs
IHT: Iran expanding its atom program, UN agency reports
IAEA confirms the 'peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear activities'
WP: IAEA: Iran Cooperating In Nuclear Investigation
ISIS: IAEA Safeguards Report on Iran
September 2007
Gordon Prather: IAEA-Iran Resolving Outstanding Questions
BBC: Iran 'reaches key nuclear goal': 3000 centrifuges
Spiegel: Interview with Mohammed El-Baradei
IRAN SPINNING CENTRIFUGES — AND HALF-TRUTHS
Gareth Porter, Asia Times, 8 Sep 07
WASHINGTON — Iran's unexpected agreement with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, to resolve old issues surrounding its nuclear program in less than two months, and the fact that it has installed only two-thirds of the centrifuges previously announced, indicate that Tehran may be positioning itself for another bid for a diplomatic solution.The IAEA report circulated to board members last week, which is still unpublished but has been leaked to the press, says only 2,000 centrifuges have been activated. In mid-2006 and again in January, Iranian officials had said they planned to have a 3,000-centrifuge cascade spinning by some time last spring.
[. . .]
Iranian willingness to reach formal agreement in three separate meetings with ElBaradei in July and August to resolve all remaining issues on its past nuclear research by November was clearly aimed at moving the Iran nuclear dossier from the United Nations Security Council back to the IAEA and averting a military confrontation with the US.
Based on Iran's own previous offers, such a deal would involve a guarantee against any nuclear-weapons program through an intrusive inspection regime, in return for an approved enrichment program limited to a number of centrifuges well short of what would be required to produce nuclear weapons.
In the brief 2005 negotiations with the European Union Three (EU-3 — Britain, France and Germany), Iran submitted a formal proposal offering to negotiate a mutually acceptable ceiling on the number of centrifuges at Natanz, which would be producing low-enriched uranium that could not be used to make weapons, and 'continuous on-site' inspection by IAEA nuclear specialists at all facilities to provide 'unprecedented added guarantees'. The EU-3 refused to discuss the proposal with Tehran.
In May 2006, the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the Supreme National Security Council, Hassan Rohani — who had been Khamenei's top nuclear negotiator — offered a similar plan in a Time magazine essay.
[. . .]
ElBaradei observed in an interview with The Financial Times on February 19 that even if Iran had 3,000 or more centrifuges operating, they could not go beyond 5% enrichment, which would be far below what would be required for weapons-grade uranium, as long they remain under an IAEA inspection regime.
[. . .]
The United States has insisted that it will not negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue until it has agreed to suspend enrichment completely, but Iran has said it will only enter talks without preconditions.
The administration of US President George W Bush is furious with ElBaradei for taking the steam out of its campaign of pressure on Iran. ... The Washington Post, which has been vocal in support of the administration's aggressive policy toward Iran, attacked ElBaradei on Wednesday ... Despite US diplomatic pressure on its allies, however, in an April 2005 showdown in the IAEA board, the US was the only one of 35 members who did not support another term for ElBaradei.
Gordon Prather: Rogue Regulator?
Khody Akhavi: AEI Hypes Iran 'Threat'
Antiwar Radio: Scott Horton interviews Gareth Porter
Antiwar Radio: Scott Horton interviews Joseph Cirincione
Gordon Prather: Israel's Right of Self-Defense
WP: Ahmadinejad's remarks at Columbia
October 2007
Scott Ritter: The Big Lie: 'Iran Is a Threat'
Scott Ritter: Iran has no nuclear weapons program (audio)
ElBaradei: No evidence Iran is making nukes
BBC: IAEA findings on Iran dismissed
Oliver Kamm: IAEA and France: whom to believe?
BAS: Nuclear terrorism's fatal assumptions
November 2007
IAEA: November 2007 Iran Report
BBC: UN mixed on Iran nuclear report
Gordon Prather: IAEA Again Verifies Iranian Compliance
NYT: Report Raises New Doubts on Iran Nuclear Program
Khody Akhavi: Nuke Watchdog Report Won't Stop Sanctions
David Albright: Evaluating Iran's Uranium-Enrichment Progress
Trevor Findlay: Looking Back: The Additional Protocol
December 2007
Gordon Prather: Deck the Malls With Dirty Nukes
BBC: US report plays down Iran threat
BBC: NIE on the Iran nuclear threat
A MIRACLE: HONEST INTEL ON IRAN NUKES
Ray McGovern, Antiwar, 4 Dec 07
The main points of the NIE:"We judge that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program...
"We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007.
"We do not have sufficient intelligence to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain the halt of its nuclear weapons program indefinitely...
"We judge with moderate confidence Iran probably would be technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium sometime during the 2010-2015 time frame.
"We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be technically capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015."
Having reached these conclusions, it is not surprising that the NIE's authors make a point of saying up front (in bold type), "This NIE does not [italics in original] assume that Iran intends to acquire nuclear weapons."
Arms Control Wonk: More on the Iran NIE
Noah Shachtman: Intel Insider: Iran Report Ain't Political
Gordon Prather: Smoking Laptop Follies
Ray McGovern: Bush Spins Iran's Centrifuge
Antiwar Radio: Scott Ritter on Iran
NAF: U.S. Iran Policy After the NIE (video)
Alan M. Dershowitz: Stupid Intelligence
AN IRAN BOMBSHELL FOR BUSH
Mark Follman, Salon, 5 Dec 07
FLYNT LEVERETT: Here's what they are leaving out of the discussion: What the Iranians want ultimately is a strategic deal with the U.S. that would address their fundamental security and legitimacy as a republic, their role in the region. The NIE concludes that if Iran could actually achieve that sense of security and a regional role without building a nuclear weapon, they'd be open to a deal. But you have to put something on the table in front of them that's really going to address those things. Not only has the administration never put an offer like that on the table, they've explicitly refused to do so.Take the incentives package put together [back in 2005] by the Europeans: The section dealing with regional security had all kinds of explicit and implicit guarantees for the Islamic Republic of Iran, as part of an overall settlement talking about Iran's role in a regional security framework. The Bush administration would not sign on to that package last year until literally all of that language was taken out. They've never been serious about negotiations.
Justin Raimondo: Iran, Nukes, and the 'Laptop of Death'
Flynt Leverett: Bush's real lie about Iran
Daniel Pipes: That NIE Makes War against Iran More Likely
John Bolton: The Flaws In the Iran Report
Caroline Glick: The Abandonment of the Jews
Ken Timmerman: Skepticism Mounts Over NIE Findings
Patrick Clawson: Judging Iran's Nuclear Program
Valerie Lincy: In Iran We Trust?
NYT: Despite Report, France and Germany Keep Pressure on Iran
WP: NATO Envoys Back Rice In Urging Iran Sanctions
NYT: IAEA praises U.S. report, but keeps wary eye on Iran
Yossi Klein Halevi: An Insult to Intelligence
ISRAEL HAS NO 'SMOKING GUN' ON IRAN
Jerusalem Post, 18 Dec 07
Israel does not have 'smoking gun' intelligence that will force an American reassessment of its National Intelligence Estimate that Iran halted its nuclear weapons plan in 2003, a government official told The Jerusalem Post Monday.The official's comments came as a delegation from Military Intelligence is in the US for meetings with American officials about Iran.
Another diplomatic official labeled as either 'very arrogant' or 'naive' the idea that all Israel had to do was reveal one piece of information to get the US intelligence community to say it erred and will 'take it all back and follow Israel's line'.
Justin Raimondo: Man of the Year: Thomas Fingar
Gordon Prather: Why the NIE Is Wrong
CIA Doubts About Iran Nukes (19 Nov 06): Is Seymour Hersh 'too far to the left' to be trusted? Is he one of those urban coastal liberals who always 'blame America first'? Does his social circle overlap with that of the dreadful Noam Chomsky? Even though I am a moderate liberal myself, I had a feeling this must be somewhat true, perhaps because my not-so-brilliant brain can be subliminally influenced by the Rasputin skills of the Karl Rove propaganda machine. Well, that was before the midterms, and now Rove may have to look for an honest living for a change. Anyhow, to tell the truth, I don't know whom to believe, but the conservatives sure have taken a huge hit in credibility since invading Iraq on flimsy evidence, killing thousands of innocents, and replacing a dictator with a brutal civil war. Their intentions may have been noble, but the disastrous consequences cannot be swept under the rug, though some unrepentant conservatives are busy doing just that.
As for Hersh's reporting, he is one of those big-name journalists, like Bob Woodward, who keeps quoting anonymous sources from the highest level of government. Thus, his information seems irresistible, but how much of it can we believe? I guess it comes down to his credibility. Can we trust a 'left-wing New Yorker'? Conservatives will remind you of Walter Duranty, the New York Times reporter earlier in the last century, who won a Pulitzer prize, yet who allegedly became an 'apologist for Stalin', wittingly or unwittingly. Well, as I said, the conservatives have screwed up big-time this time around in Iraq. I guess there is a human tendency to see what you want and believe what you want, based on your partial perceptions.
That being said, Hersh provides a lot of juicy detail, and I suppose most of it is true, if only because he is reporting on high-level officials who can't agree among themselves! That sounds plausible.
NOTE (late 2007): My opinion of Hersh has risen considerably since I wrote this and learned to 'disengage' my brain from the center-right mainstream media. ;-)
CIA DOUBTS ABOUT IRAN NUKE PROGRAM
Seymour Hersh, New Yorker, 20 Nov 06
The Administration's planning for a military attack on Iran was made far more complicated earlier this fall by a highly classified draft assessment by the C.I.A. challenging the White House's assumptions about how close Iran might be to building a nuclear bomb. The C.I.A. found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear-weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency. (The C.I.A. declined to comment on this story.The C.I.A.'s analysis, which has been circulated to other agencies for comment, was based on technical intelligence collected by overhead satellites, and on other empirical evidence, such as measurements of the radioactivity of water samples and smoke plumes from factories and power plants. Additional data have been gathered, intelligence sources told me, by high-tech (and highly classified) radioactivity-detection devices that clandestine American and Israeli agents placed near suspected nuclear-weapons facilities inside Iran in the past year or so. No significant amounts of radioactivity were found.
[. . .]
The C.I.A. assessment warned the White House that it would be a mistake to conclude that the failure to find a secret nuclear-weapons program in Iran merely meant that the Iranians had done a good job of hiding it. The former senior intelligence official noted that at the height of the Cold War the Soviets were equally skilled at deception and misdirection, yet the American intelligence community was readily able to unravel the details of their long-range-missile and nuclear-weapons programs. But some in the White House, including in Cheney's office, had made just such an assumption — that 'the lack of evidence means they must have it', the former official said.
Iran is a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty, under which it is entitled to conduct nuclear research for peaceful purposes. Despite the offer of trade agreements and the prospect of military action, it defied a demand by the I.A.E.A. and the Security Council, earlier this year, that it stop enriching uranium — a process that can produce material for nuclear power plants as well as for weapons — and it has been unable, or unwilling, to account for traces of plutonium and highly enriched uranium that have been detected during I.A.E.A. inspections. The I.A.E.A. has complained about a lack of 'transparency', although, like the C.I.A., it has not found unambiguous evidence of a secret weapons program.
Last week, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced that Iran had made further progress in its enrichment research program, and said, 'We know that some countries may not be pleased.' He insisted that Iran was abiding by international agreements, but said, 'Time is now completely on the side of the Iranian people.' A diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. has its headquarters, told me that the agency was skeptical of the claim, for technical reasons. But Ahmadinejad's defiant tone did nothing to diminish suspicions about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
'There is no evidence of a large-scale covert enrichment program inside Iran', one involved European diplomat said. 'But the Iranians would not have launched themselves into a very dangerous confrontation with the West on the basis of a weapons program that they no longer pursue. Their enrichment program makes sense only in terms of wanting nuclear weapons. It would be inconceivable if they weren't cheating to some degree. You don't need a covert program to be concerned about Iran's nuclear ambitions. We have enough information to be concerned without one. It's not a slam dunk, but it's close to it.'
There are, however, other possible reasons for Iran's obstinacy. The nuclear program — peaceful or not — is a source of great national pride, and President Ahmadinejad's support for it has helped to propel him to enormous popularity. (Saddam Hussein created confusion for years, inside and outside his country, about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, in part to project an image of strength.) According to the former senior intelligence official, the C.I.A.'s assessment suggested that Iran might even see some benefits in a limited military strike — especially one that did not succeed in fully destroying its nuclear program — in that an attack might enhance its position in the Islamic world. 'They learned that in the Iraqi experience, and relearned it in southern Lebanon', the former senior official said. In both cases, a more powerful military force had trouble achieving its military or political goals; in Lebanon, Israel's war against Hezbollah did not destroy the group's entire arsenal of rockets, and increased the popularity of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The former senior intelligence official added that the C.I.A. assessment raised the possibility that an American attack on Iran could end up serving as a rallying point to unite Sunni and Shiite populations. 'An American attack will paper over any differences in the Arab world, and we'll have Syrians, Iranians, Hamas, and Hezbollah fighting against us — and the Saudis and the Egyptians questioning their ties to the West. It's an analyst's worst nightmare — for the first time since the caliphate there will be common cause in the Middle East.' (An Islamic caliphate ruled the Middle East for over six hundred years, until the thirteenth century.)
[. . .]
As the C.I.A.'s assessment was making its way through the government, late this summer, current and former military officers and consultants told me, a new element suddenly emerged: intelligence from Israeli spies operating inside Iran claimed that Iran has developed and tested a trigger device for a nuclear bomb. The provenance and significance of the human intelligence, or HUMINT, are controversial. ...
HUMINT can be difficult to assess. Some of the most politically significant — and most inaccurate — intelligence about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction came from an operative, known as Curveball, who was initially supplied to the C.I.A. by German intelligence. But the Pentagon consultant insisted that, in this case, 'the Israeli intelligence is apparently very strong.' He said that the information about the trigger device had been buttressed by another form of highly classified data, known as MASINT, for 'measuring and signature' intelligence.
[. . .]
'The Iranians have demonstrated that they can enrich uranium', the diplomat added, 'and trigger tests without nuclear yield can be done. But it's a very sophisticated process — it's also known as hydrodynamic testing — and only countries with suitably advanced nuclear testing facilities as well as the necessary scientific expertise can do it. I'd be very skeptical that Iran could do it.'
[. . .]
Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran who is the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a conservative think tank ... 'Why were they so slow in getting the second cascade up and running?' Clawson asked. 'And why haven't they run the first one as much as they said they would? Do we have more time?' ... 'Why talk about war?' he said. 'We're not talking about going to war with North Korea or Venezuela. It's not necessarily the case that Iran has started a weapons program, and it's conceivable — just conceivable — that Iran does not have a nuclear-weapons program yet. We can slow them down — force them to reinvent the wheel — without bombing, especially if the international conditions get better.'
[. . .]
Despite such rhetoric [from Republicans, Hilary Cinton, Evan Bayh and even Howard Dean], Leslie Gelb, a former State Department official who is a president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, said he believes that, 'when push comes to shove, the Israelis will have a hard time selling the idea that an Iranian nuclear capability is imminent. The military and the State Department will be flat against a preemptive bombing campaign.' Gelb said he hoped that Gates's appointment would add weight to America's most pressing issue — 'to get some level of Iranian restraint inside Iraq. In the next year or two, we're much more likely to be negotiating with Iran than bombing it.'
UPDATE (20 Nov 06): The administration has responded by saying that 'The White House is not going to dignify the work of an author who has viciously degraded our troops'. It is certainly debatable whether Hersh has degraded our troops, and I doubt that he has, but it is quite clear that this is not an honest response to Hersh. Politically useful perhaps, but dishonest nevertheless.
Back to Iran Intelligence
Scott Ritter on Iran (20 Nov 06): Well, if we can quote Hersh and the New Yorker, why not click over to the even more 'left-wing' Alternet site and listen to ex-UN weapons inspector and Iraq war critic Scott Ritter tell us that Iran is not such a threat. (As I remember, Ritter was allegedly involved in some kind of unsavory sexual incident with a minor. Should his views be discounted because of this rather murky story? Could he be the victim of a smear campaign? Could some GOP operatives stoop to such a level? We can't rule that out!)
NOTE (16 Apr 07): Since writing this, my opinion of Ritter has shot up considerably, and I now consider him a major voice on nuclear disarmament. As for the alleged scandal, it turns out that digging on the net turns up only a few scraps of dubious evidence. And let us remember how the Bush campaign in 2000 maliciously impugned a biracial love-child to John McCain, or something like that. There are few limits to political ugliness, carried out by 'unofficial' sympathizers.
Ritter's basic point is that the Bush administration is hell-bent on 'regime change' in Iran, just as it was in Iraq. This in turn gives Iran a powerful incentive to develop nuclear weapons, to deter US aggression, or to claim to be doing so. (Saddam did in fact bluff, with disastrous consequences for everybody. On the other hand, such a strategy seems to have worked for North Korea!) This raises the whole question of whether pre-emptive regime change is a wise and ethical stance for US policy. Regimes may be heinous by our standards, but announcing regime change seems likely to increase their determination to acquire WMD or otherwise behave in ways we don't like. It's highly destabilizing! Furthermore, it seems very doubtful in most cases whether the public in those countries really wants the US to impose its will, as patriotism is generally more powerful than any democratic aspirations that may exist.
Ritter then states that prior to Bush II invading Iraq, the US made demands that Saddam prove that he did not have a nuclear weapons program. The inspectors were finally getting in and finding nothing, but this was not enough. Saddam was asked to prove a negative, which is virtually impossible. Ritter argues that such an unreasonable demand demonstrates that the US administration was insincere about its motives, that it really wanted regime change, not just the elimination of a nuclear program. He says that the US is now repeating the same tough approach with Iran, for which there is also no good evidence of an actual nuclear weapons program (see the Hersh article above). He claims that the UN inspectors have found 'no evidence whatsoever' of a nuclear weapons program, but the Bush administration still wants Iran to prove the impossible negative.
Finally, Ritter discounts the apocalyptic rhetoric of Ahmadinejad, who has no real power. He insists that the Ayatollahs in charge do not want nuclear weapons, based on their rhetoric and on his 'free access' to various officials during a recent trip. The supreme Ayatollah has issued a fatwa that 'rejects outright the acquisition of nuclear weapons'. A fatwa is supposed to be a serious, religious statement, but some will argue that the prophet Mohammed sometimes deceived infidels in the interests of jihad. In 2003, says Ritter, the same supreme Ayatollah reached out diplomatically to both the US and Israel, claiming to want peace and normalization of relations, and was even willing to put Iran's nuclear program on the table. The US may have officially dismissed this as a subterfuge, but Ritter claims that the real reason was to keep the regime change option open. One might ask why the Ayatollahs don't silence or moderate the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad. One might also ask why the Bush administration has not sent Condi Rice to Tehran to talk to the supreme leader and call his bluff. That may happen soon.
SCOTT RITTER's TARGET IRAN (15 Jan 07): Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who argued against the Iraq invasion, has a new book out (as of Sep 06) arguing against the impending invasion of Iran. It may be that Ritter has had unsavory scrapes with the law, but he also has genuine WMD experience, and he was right about the Iraq war, contrary to so many of our mainstream pundits. His word is now at least as good as all the overpaid and overhyped Tom Friedmans. Here are some comments from Amazon reviewers regarding his book:
TARGET IRAN: THE WHITE HOUSE'S PLAN
FOR REGIME CHANGE
Scott Ritter, Amazon books, Sep 06
Reviewer 1: Scott Ritter provides chapter and verse on how conflict with the Axis of Evil nations could have been avoided with direct negotiation. The mullahs of Iran sought to negotiate with everything on the table, including nuclear weapons and a treaty with Israel. North Korea still wants direct negotiations. So did Saddam. We don't negotiate with regimes we want to remove. Bush prefers to 'take them out' no matter how many Americans die.
Reviewer 2: Iran is perceived, and not incorrectly, as a major threat to Israel. But Ritter makes the point that Israeli and American interests are not identical. After the recent events in Southern Lebanon, watching our congress and our administration give their complete support to whatever Israel was going to do, it's hard to see much separation.Whatever the threat to us from Iran, Mr. Ritter says it's very much overblown at this point and should not lead to war. Iran, according to Ritter, approached this administration several years ago to normalize relations and limit it's nuclear research. They were rebuffed. Mr. Busch can only visualize regime change.
If this goes forward as Mr. Hersh and Ritter both seem to think is inevitable, what are the chances of success? According to these gentlemen, the results will be utter catastrophe. Iran will immediately shut off the oil spigot. Venezuela will create a hemispheric crisis by acting in sympathy and fail to honor their US contracts. US troops in Iraq will be under attack by the Shia and possibly because of a religious fatwa in response to our attack. Iranian missiles will be directed against the Saudi oil fields to further disrupt the world markets. The world economy will be plunged into a massive recession. This could lead to a ground invasion of US troops most likely from Uzbekistan that could easily turn into a trap. Our ground troops are seriously depleted and under equipped at this point already. Here is where Ritter says this administration could use field grade nuclear weapons to break the back of Iran. He thinks this is the ultimate deal breaker because it absolutely assures us that radical Arabs will find a way over time to deliver a nuclear bomb to an American city.
See also an excellent review by Richard Hodgman.
COMMENT: One may feel that Ritter is throwing Israel to the wolves, but he does have a point that American (not to mention global) interests should come first. More importantly, he draws our attention to the fact that we still have time to negotiate and that the mullahs have offered to negotiate, even putting Israel on the table. Notice how this is never mentioned by the MSM, while Ahmadinejad's genocidal rantings are repeated at every opportunity. So who has the real power in Iraq, Ahmadinejad or the mullahs?
Given the disaster in Iraq, and the much larger disaster one could expect in Iran, it would only be sane to exploit every option before resorting to war. Yet as of this writing, it seems that the administration is gearing up for a 'pre-emptive' attack on Iran, by making threats to Tehran and moving a carrier group to the area. Notice how detailed and plausible is Ritter's projection into the future, including the warning that the use of nuclear bunker-busters may set a precedent that could come back to haunt us. It seems that an invasion of Iran might very well suck the world into a real Armageddon — all the more so because they are fanatical and prepared to die in large numbers. Some argue this makes them Nazis, and that we must not repeat 1939, but if the Bush administration is simply dismissing negotiations, then the analogy is deceptive propaganda. Remember that the Iranians do have good historical reasons to hate us and consider us the aggressors, and that all patriotic nations get hyperbolic when threatened. We must at least try to talk.
BBC: Washington 'snubbed Iran offer'
Gordon Prather: Iran's Golden Offer
The Forward: Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War
UPDATE (15 Jan 07): It just occurred to me that I am missing the essential point of Ritter's analysis: that the Bush administration has been looking for excuses for regime change, first in Iraq and now in Iran. If true, this is fundamentally different from an administration that is solely concerned with 'doing whatever must be done' to preclude the possibility of a nuke in terrorist hands. In particular, it means that the administration cannot be trusted in how it presents its case, and indeed the intelligence fiasco leading up to Iraq now seems like rather more than an 'honest mistake'. How does cherry-picking flimsy evidence qualify as an honest mistake? Let me also point out that Ritter was a Marine with combat experience, who worked hard to uproot Saddam's WMD stockpile from after the first Iraq war. One cannot accuse him of being an unpatriotic or timorous peacenik. Let us also remember that then Director of Intelligence Negroponte has also said that Iran is years away from a nuclear weapon. Why the apparent rush to bomb?
SCOTT RITTER WITH SEYMOUR HERSH (26 Feb 07): Here is a video on YouTube showing an important discussion held between Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh during October of 2006 regarding an Iranian nuclear weapon program and a possible strike by US forces:
NOTE: A transcript can be found here. Alternative video here.
Hersh starts out by quoting Ritter's book, Target Iran, which claims that the CIA and the Israelis have conducted spy missions in Iran, using the Kurds and the MEK (an Iranian resistance group). These efforts have failed to prove that there really is a nuclear weapons program (as opposed to the civilian nuclear enrichment program allowed to participants in the Non Proliferation Treaty). (Note that the CIA continues a long tradition by working with the Iranian MEK, which the State Department has branded a 'terrorist' group.)
Hersh then challenges Ritter on the lack of footnotes and sources, but Ritter wants to protect sources who might otherwise be dismissed from their jobs by a US government zealous to control the public discussion. Anyway, Ritter says, much of this knowledge can be gleaned from the regional press (e.g. Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kurdish), if not from the mainstream American press, which has its agenda set by the neocon/Israeli determination to get the US to bomb the known Iranian sites. (Besides, says Ritter, his visits to Iran have convinced him that the Iranians know all this already.)
Ritter insists that he is sympathetic to Israel but that American and Israeli interests do not necessarily coincide, as much of the Jewish Lobby would have us believe. For example, we should not be using American military assets to fight Hezbollah, since that is an Israeli problem. Israel is like the tail wagging the American foreign policy dog. Furthermore, he accuses the present Israeli intelligence service of indulging in a kind of theorizing that was supposedly rejected after the Yom Kippur war disaster, e.g. speculating on Iranian intentions or secret programs without hard evidence, or conjuring a more unified 'Shiite crescent' front than actually exists. He claims that much of the Jewish Lobby in America works to tow the line by pressuring and intimidating American politicians and by hounding critics with the 'anti-Semitism' smear. Ritter has no problem with foreign countries trying to influence American foreign policy, as long as they declare themselves. AIPAC, he claims, tends to be exempted from this requirement, by the fact that there is such a porous boundary between Israeli and Jewish-American citizens.
Other interesting claims are that Israel has agents in the IAEA, that Israel has used the MEK to 'proselytize' propaganda about Iranian weapons programs in the USA, and that Israel really wants to shut down even the 'peaceful' and legal enrichment process, since it could be diverted to nukes at any time and Iran simply cannot be trusted. But Israeli hardliners also believe (or claim to believe) that Iran is currently working on a nuclear weapons program. The 'evidence' is that there is a nuclear enrichment program, allowed by the NPT, and the Iranians are becoming adept at building tunnels, with North Korean help (which proved effective against Israeli forces in last summer's war in Lebanon). Ritter asserts that the Israelis are unjustifiably concluding from these separate facts that there is an active Iranian nuclear weapons effort.
In other words, Israel has convinced the administration, the neocons and the subservient American press that an Iranian nuclear weapon is imminent, when in fact the data is as flimsy as before going into Iraq, and this is all a smokescreen for the understandable Israeli desire to eliminate even those Iranian nuclear programs allowed by the NPT. The American hawks are trying to shut down the debate, even though the IAEA has stated that there is no reliable proof of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Ritter accepts that the IAEA has not disproved such a program either, since one cannot prove a negative, but operating on mere suspicion is a recipe for perpetual war. Further, the renewed proclivity in the Israeli intelligence community (Amos Gilad in particular) for paranoid 'faith-based' speculation has convinced them that the 'Shiite Crescent' is a huge and unified threat, not unlike Bush's Axis of Evil, which must be decapitated by regime change in Iran. Indeed, concludes Ritter, it's really about regime change and not about any weapons program. That is the true inner impetus driving Israel, the neocons and the Bush administration, just as with Iraq. Israel has successfully injected this paradigm into the hawkish circles of American foreign policy, which are still in control. In other words, Iraq all over again.
SCOTT RITTER ON ANTIWAR RADIO (28 Feb 07): I'll say one thing. What Scott Ritter says is either very important (if he is right) or very dangerous (if he is wrong). Frankly, he sounds credible to me and makes a lot of sense. I recommend reading or listening to the whole interview. I will summarize Ritter's main points, some of which have been seen already:
INTERVIEW WITH SCOTT RITTER
Antiwar Radio, 28 Feb 07
MP3 and transcript
The Bush administration has made it clear that it would like to 'democratize' the Middle East (e.g. the March 2006 National Security Strategy document). This is also called 'regime change', which may sound like a good idea to us but is bound to be highly destabilizing, with unpredictable consequences. It basically means starting a fight.
(There is more in this interview that I have not covered.)
REGIME CHANGE IS THE REAL REASON
Scott Ritter, 28 Feb 07
Note: This is the same interview that I just convered, but here I have simply provided quotes from the transcript (rather than relying on notes I took while litening to the radio show).
Horton: And so it's really not that our government is worried that they are about to have an armful of nuclear weapons then?Ritter: Well, actually the government knows that Iran is not about to have an armful of nuclear weapons. When you hear someone say that Iran is ten years away from having a nuclear weapon, that means that they are at zero right now, because ten years is about how long it takes in this day and age — that's what it takes to put in place the technology, develop the infrastructure, pump out the fissile material, etc. Ten years is what a nuclear program takes. So if someone says they are ten years away, that means they are doing nothing now.
Horton: That's funny because just this morning in the Financial Times, Mohamed el-Baradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency used exactly that same figure, ten years.
Ritter: It's one that people continuously throw out. What Mohamed el-Baradei and others — I'll just speak about el-Baradei because I know what he is committed to. He has said repeatedly that the work of the IAEA inspectors has uncovered no evidence that sustains the allegations that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
However, he notes that the type of inspections that are permitted in Iran: those inspections that are mandated by the Nonproliferation Treaty, the safeguards inspections, even the additional protocol inspections that Iran agreed to — none of these gives the IAEA inspectors the kind of access that is necessary to ascertain that there is no nuclear weapons program in Iran.
This means if someone throws out the supposition that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, it doesn't matter if the IAEA doesn't find any evidence to back this up. The IAEA, under pressure from the United States to try to prove the negative that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, is saying that they [the IAEA] have to have absolute access to every site in Iran even though that's a violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty. It's not called for by the Nonproliferation Treaty.
Horton: We saw in Iraq what really happens in a situation like that; total access still isn't good enough because if you are not turning over your banned weapons we know you have, then that's just proof that you are hiding them better than we were accusing you of hiding them. Right?
Ritter: Well, (laughs), that's the rhetoric.
The bottom line is, as was the case in Iraq, disarmament is not the objective in Iran. Believe me, there are much better ways to go about pursuing disarmament than what the United States, than what the IAEA are doing. Verification, disarmament and arms control all require that you have a modicum of trust — that it is a bilateral activity — that in exchange for giving something, you get something.
In the case of Iraq, it was clear that even though the Iraqis did everything in their power eventually to demonstrate that they had disarmed. They granted full access to the inspectors. It was the American agenda of regime change that corrupted the integrity of the entire operation and created a cloud of distrust that polluted every aspect of the inspector's work.
The same thing is taking place today. Iran has given the IAEA inspectors extraordinary access to facilities throughout Iran. They have explained things. They have provided documents. They have done above and beyond what is required by the Nonproliferation Treaty and have demonstrated that their nuclear energy program is a program that is consistent with that which is permitted by the law. But thanks to the United States, the IAEA has corrupted the integrity of the process: by insisting that Iran comply with things that it is not required to do; by creating a wall of mistrust; by buying along with the notion that somewhere in Iran — we don't know where, no one knows where, somehow we don't know how, nobody knows how — Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. And they just throw that out there without any evidence to back it up. It's just a given. We are told that the President of the United States and others in the administration have said there can be no doubt Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
Well you know what, there's nothing but doubt that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. There is no evidence whatsoever! I need to reinforce that point: There is no evidence whatsoever to back up the rhetoric that the Bush administration has put out there that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program
[. . .]
Horton: Okay, you wrote — I'm trying to remember if it was a year or two years ago—that this whole 'attempt' by the United States and the Europeans to get Iran to back down from their nuclear capability—such as it is—that rather than being plan A, and then if that doesn't work, plan B and then if that doesn't work, Plan C (that is, getting the Europeans to negotiate for us, and then Plan B, getting the United Nations to do sanctions if necessary and then Plan C being warfare), you said that this is really step 1, 2 and 3, not plan A, B and C.
Ritter: That's correct. It's all part of the same plan. The Bush administration knows there is a certain process to be followed through in getting the world and the American people prepared for armed conflict. . . .
VIDEO: ROBERT SCHEER INTERVIEWS SCOTT RITTER
Truthdig, 20 Mar 07
For the record, here are some notes from this important interview, representing Ritter's views:
Back to Iran Intelligence
Iran's Offers (27 Feb 07): In a few places, I have come across stories that Iran has, in the recent past, offered to settle the nuclear issue and cease support for terrorists, provided the US ceased its hostility. I haven't found much on this, but it seems like major news to me, if true, so I will collect articles here as they arise. It would be grossly irresponsible of the US not to pursue such leads, however cautiously. But due to the controversial nature of these stories, they had perhaps best be classified as 'intelligence'. It seems that the key pieces involved in going to war are often the most controversial, such as whether this or that threat really exists, or whether this or that adversary wants to negotiate or to attack.
Gordon Prather: Iran's Golden Offer
Gareth Porter: Iran Nuke Offer Snubbed
Gareth Porter: Bush Ensured Iran Offer Would Be Rejected
BBC: Washington 'snubbed Iran offer'
WP: Rice Denies Seeing Iranian Proposal in 'A03
Washington Note: No Talks with Evil People in the 'Axis'
Antiwar Radio: Barbara Slavin on Iran
Back to Iran Intelligence
My 2006 Articles
(Mostly old and naive material)First Thoughts
NOTE: Some of these 'first thoughts' are modified later. This website is intended to record what I was thinking at a given time. This does not preclude the possibility of learning something new as time goes by.
April 06: My website is full of criticism of the Iraq war: the distorted WMD evidence, the failure to consider the social reality on the ground, the foolishness and arrogance of trying to socially engineer another country, the highly questionable morality of a pre-emptive strike under such a flimsy pretext... So what do I think about the looming nuclear threat in Iran? Is this not like Iraq all over again? Or is the danger far more serious? Remember, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has denied the Holocaust and called for Israel's extermination. Along with many Shias, he believes that an Armageddon and Muslim Messiah are soon to come. If this is not a fanatic and a nutcase, what is? Everyone seems to agree that Iran is intent on developing a nuclear weapon. The gravity of the situation is indicated by the fact that the Europeans are now cooperating with us, contrary to their behavior before the Iraq invasion. It is common knowledge that Iran has supported terrorist groups such as Hezbollah. Note that Hezbollah is fanatically Islamic, as opposed to the relatively secular Fatah. Is it not plausible that the hardline Iranian regime might give a nuclear weapon to Hezbollah to use against Israel? Or perhaps even to Al Qaeda to use against the United States, especially if we attack?
Therefore, it would seem that we must do whatever it takes to keep Iran from getting a weapon. Is this not like the situation Bush faced with Saddam prior to the invasion of Iraq? Does this not invalidate all that I have said elsewhere about the foolishness, if not the immorality, of using 'regime change' as an excuse to invade a nation that does not like us and has not asked for regime change? Am I not irresponsible if I say that we must not strike Iran under any circumstances? This shows how exceedingly difficult it is to decide on questions of war and peace, and why we must give some benefit of the doubt to Bush, even if he did blunder in Iraq.
One might argue that Iraq and Iran are not entirely analogous. The evidence for WMD in Iraq was shaky, even if the general belief was that Saddam may well have been working on them. By contrast, there is no doubt that Iran wants a nuclear weapon and is actively working on it, in blatant defiance of the UN and the international community. Furthermore, one could have argued that Saddam, despite his cruelty, was basically rational and secular. He wanted above all to stay in power and would not have recklessly provoked his destruction by using a WMD against us. No such assumption can be made of suicidal religious fanatics such as the ones presently governing Iran. And many military experts did believe that Saddam was basically 'in a box' prior to our invasion. The situation is really far more serious with Iran, and there are no good options.
I will say this. Let us not delude ourselves that the Iranian people will welcome a strike in order to get rid of a hated regime. Some voices are repeating the same wishful thinking that helped get us into Iraq. Whatever the Iranians think of their leadership, I have no doubt that most of them are fervently Islamic and even more fervently patriotic. It is worth noting that, according to Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch, no less pre-eminent a Middle East expert than Bernard Lewis of Princeton University predicted in 2002 that The demonstrations for joy in
Kabul will seem like funeral processions compared to the demonstrations for
joy that will break out in Baghdad, Tehran and perhaps even Damascus, if the west brought about the expulsion of the despotic inefficient regimes that rule in these countries. Talk about a failure of intelligence! So much for 'experts'. Even the ones from 'elite' institutions are just guessing when it comes to war (and perhaps a lot else).
Right now we are facing a momentous challenge from Iran. They have just declared their ability to enrich uranium, a crucial step towards being able to manufacture a nuclear weapon. So far the quantity is too small for a bomb, but that could change soon. Some, like Brent Scowcroft, still wish to restrain Iran within the NPT framework, while others are suggesting that we could and should consider demolishing their nuclear facilities with an air strike before it is too late. Let us not forget that Iran has promised massive terrorism in America if we strike, and we know that they have supported groups like Hamas, who are said to have well-established cells in the US. It doesn't take much to suicide-bomb a shopping mall, other than willing volunteers, which they have.
One might remark in passing that this is one reason to criticize Bush for Iraq, namely, that we are now bogged down in a war that retrospectively turned out to be unnecessary. Not only do we have our hands tied behind our backs, but the president's popularity has sunk so low that the public may not be willing to accept military action in Iran that may be necessary. One lesson that we should have learned from Vietnam is never to go into war without full public support as well as overwhelming force. As I argued above, Bush may not have been intentionally lying about Iraq WMD, but by slanting the evidence, and then failing to find WMD in Iraq, he has squandered the public's trust. On the other hand, Congress fully backed him, so they must share in the blame.
Since the question of how to deal with Iran is extremely difficult, I will simply gather some good articles for now and think about it:
First, in the absence of an imminent threat (and the Iranians are at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without a formal congressional declaration of war, an attack would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the president. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the United Nations Security Council, either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).
Second, likely Iranian reactions would significantly compound ongoing U.S. difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan, perhaps precipitate new violence by Hezbollah in Lebanon and possibly elsewhere, and in all probability bog down the United States in regional violence for a decade or more. Iran is a country of about 70 million people, and a conflict with it would make the misadventure in Iraq look trivial.
Third, oil prices would climb steeply, especially if the Iranians were to cut their production or seek to disrupt the flow of oil from the nearby Saudi oil fields. The world economy would be severely affected, and the United States would be blamed for it. Note that oil prices have already shot above $70 per barrel, in part because of fears of a U.S.-Iran clash.
Finally, the United States, in the wake of the attack, would become an even more likely target of terrorism while reinforcing global suspicions that U.S. support for Israel is in itself a major cause of the rise of Islamic terrorism. The United States would become more isolated and thus more vulnerable while prospects for an eventual regional accommodation between Israel and its neighbors would be ever more remote.
In short, an attack on Iran would be an act of political folly, setting in motion a progressive upheaval in world affairs. With the U.S. increasingly the object of widespread hostility, the era of American preponderance could even come to a premature end. Although the United States is clearly dominant in the world at the moment, it has neither the power nor the domestic inclination to impose and then to sustain its will in the face of protracted and costly resistance. That certainly is the lesson taught by its experiences in Vietnam and Iraq. Here the United States faces what the military refers to as a 'branches and sequels' decision — that is, an assessment of best and second-best outcomes. It would prefer that Iran never obtain nuclear weapons. But if Iran does, America would like Iran to see itself more or less as India does — as a regional power whose nuclear status symbolizes its strength relative to regional rivals, but whose very attainment of this position makes it more committed to defending the status quo. The United States would prefer, of course, that Iran not reach a new level of power with a vendetta against America. One of our panelists thought that a strike would help the United States, simply by buying time. The rest disagreed. Iran would rebuild after a strike, and from that point on it would be much more reluctant to be talked or bargained out of pursuing its goals — and it would have far more reason, once armed, to use nuclear weapons to America's detriment.
Frontline: Robert Baer on Iran [more]
Reuel Mark Gerecht: To Bomb, or Not to Bomb?
Christopher Layne: Iran: The Logic of Deterrence
Andrew Sullivan: General Bush's lose-lose Iranian war options
Pat Buchanan: An October Surprise?
Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney: A Strike Can Work
Edward Luttwak: Three Reasons Not to Bomb Iran - Yet
Fred Kaplan: The Case for Negotiating with Iran
US intelligence chief: Iran still years away from having nukes
Russia says no Iran sanctions without proof
HERE WE GO AGAIN IN IRAQ
Zbigniew Brzezinski, LA Times, 23 Apr 2006
But there are four compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities:
WILL IRAN BE NEXT?
James Fallows, The Atlantic Monthly, Dec 2004
What about a pre-emptive strike of our own, like the Osirak raid? The problem is that Iran's nuclear program is now much more advanced than Iraq's was at the time of the raid. Already the U.S. government has no way of knowing exactly how many sites Iran has, or how many it would be able to destroy, or how much time it would buy in doing so. Worse, it would have no way of predicting the long-term strategic impact of such a strike. A strike might delay by three years Iran's attainment of its goal — but at the cost of further embittering the regime and its people. Iran's intentions when it did get the bomb would be all the more hostile.
Kenneth R. Timmerman: Negotiating with Evil
UPDATE (06 Feb 07): Due to the Iraq fiasco, I am now even more reluctant to strike Iran than I was when I first wrote this. I am also no longer so sure that the Mullahs are as crazy as I thought; Ahmadinejad is, but he has no real power. Iran has suffered from past American policy, and it has not started a war in recent decades (such as our pre-emptive invasion of its neighbor Iraq). Therefore, I can now see rational reasons why it would want a bomb, i.e. to deter American aggression. Just look at how useful the bomb has been to North Korea, or even our 'friend' Pakistan (which has supported terror as much as Iran). I am no longer swayed by neocon views that the Iranian bomb can only be to annihilate Israel or nuke NYC or DC.
At the moment, deterrence seems like the best option, as well as negotiations. I can no longer accept that Iran is such an existential threat, to either Israel or the US, that a pre-emptive strike is absolutely necessary, before it gets the bomb. And I doubt that a mere air strike would be sufficient, or that a ground strike is even possible, given the situation in Iraq. This is all discussed at length in what follows, which ultimately leads via a link to my US Foreign Policy page. This 'update' is simply to alert the reader that my views have changed over time. You could say that I am more 'conservative' in the real sense of the word, i.e. very cautious and fearful of the inevitable unintended consequences.
Also, I increasingly feel that any decent nation will go to war only as a very last resort, when directly threatened or after an attack, not to strike pre-emptively at hypotheticals, while irresponsibly ignoring the legitimate concerns of the other side. I have come to hate foreign policy based on simplistic and biased Powerpoint type arguments, whose deceptively clean logic ignores the horrible human cost. I remain as worried about Islam as ever, but even Iran's support of terrorism could be seen, at least partly, as a geopolitical move against a perceived threat, a game we have often played ourselves. This is not 1939; the Iranians have no vast army, nor have they invaded any neighbors. The 'only' danger is that they might be crazy enough to use their bomb first, and I doubt that the Mullahs are crazy. They might become crazy, however, if we attack them first. We must try to negotiate, wihtout sacrificing Israel. We must at least try.
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Ahmadinejad's Sanity
09 May 06: A major factor in our alarm over Iran's nuclear program is the currently accepted 'fact' that Iranian president Ahmadinejad has called for the annihilation of Israel. His exact words were, supposedly, that Israel should be 'wiped off the map'. Recently, there was on online fracas between journalist Christopher Hitchens and Middle Eastern studies Professor Juan Cole over the translation of Ahmadinejad's speech, with Cole arguing for a more benign and 'metaphysical' interpretation. Now Cole is someone whose opinion I have learned to discount, due to the cogent criticism of Steven Plaut, Martin Kramer and others, who argue that he is a sloppy scholar who has a pronounced bias against Israel. It should be noted that Cole has become a kind of oracle to the left-leaning blogosphere, due to his criticism of the Iraq war. On the other hand, Robert Wright is a left-leaning commentator and blogger I have come to respect, and on a recent Blogging Heads TV video, he claims that Cole has a point. He also refers to a post by another liberal blog called Liberal Oasis. This matters, because whether or not we pre-emptively attack Iran will depend to a considerable extent on just how crazy we think Ahmadinejad and the clerics are. Ahmadinejad's millennial and apocalyptic theology has already alarmed just about everybody who is rational (though one wonders about the many Christian counterparts in the Republican party). This issue, as many others, is too important to allow partisan prejudice to dictate our conventional wisdom. All reasonable sources of information must be studied. Who has the time or inclination? (And I wonder how many of these think-tank hired guns are really free to say what they wish. The tenured academics presumably are, but many of them seemed blinded by the anti-American ideology of their ivory tower hothouses.)
As usual, my Hindu correspondent SRK has a perceptive comment:
With his recent letter to Bush, Ahmadinajad, in the Islamic viewpoint, is merely imitating the prophet. He invites Bush to Islam in his letter. The modus operandi is to 'invite' you to Islam. When you refuse, you are branded an 'agressor', and believers have to take 'suitable action' as a result. Of course, this means that you have to re-learn the meaning of the word 'aggressor', even though you happen to be a native speaker of English.
You can read about a famous historical precedent here. I'm sure all this went clean over the head of George 'Islam is Peace' Bush, as did the gift of Sun Tzu from President Hu a few weeks ago.
More background:
Yet the series, titled Zero Degree Turn, is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. Scenes show men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.
The series could not have aired without being condoned by Iran's clerical leadership. The state broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, who has final say in all matters inside Iran.
[...] The show's appearance now may reflect an attempt by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make — that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people. What does Michael Ledeen think?
I think the accusation of insanity against the Iranian president is the unfortunate outcome of Western secularism. This prevents us from actually understanding the framework he works within. Daniel Pipes, who doesn't want you to read the Koran, merely uses the old 'Hitler' cussword. The end result is that the Islamic underpinnings of Ahmadinajad's statements (Israel off the map!) are completely ignored and the Iranian president's sanity is sacrificed to save the reputation of Islam in the western world.
Simon Tisdall: US underestimates Ahmadinejad at its peril
Daniel Pipes: More Messianism from Ahmadinejad in New York
CHOMSKY ON IRAN AND AHMADINEJAD
Alternet, 26 Feb 07
The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many ways. For example, the West absolutely adores Ahmadinejad. Any wild statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated. They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn't have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Khamenei. But they don't report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn't exist, but they don't like it when Khamenei right afterwards says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I'm aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei's more conciliatory positions in the Financial Times, but not here. And it's repeated by Iranian diplomats but that's no good. The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations ith Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for 30 years. And that's not a good story, so it's either not mentioned or it's hidden somewhere.
HOLOCAUST DOCUMENTARY IN IRAN
Andrew Sullivan, 18 Sep 07
A pretty staggering event: a major television series in Iran on the Holocaust, which clearly concedes that it did take place and sympathizes with its victims. Who knew? Yourish wonders:
I can't quite figure out why the mullahs did this, either. If they're doing it to prove that Iran is not anti-Semitic, they've unwittingly done just about the best thing they could possibly have done to make Jews more sympathetic in Israel. And that seems to be how the series is affecting Iranians.
That's surprising enough in a country where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What's even more surprising is that government media produced the series, and is airing it on state-run television.
Even without Ahmadinejad's past comments, the series would be a surprise. The Holocaust is rarely mentioned in state media in Iran, school textbooks don't discuss it and Iranians have little information about it.
Juan Cole: Turning Ahmadinejad into public enemy No. 1
Stephen Zunes: My Meeting With Ahmadinejad
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Should we Strike?
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Introduction (15 May 06): If diplomacy and sanctions fail to stop Iran's ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, then should we attack? Would bombing suffice? Or would a land invasion be necessary? Who would join us? These are momentous questions. We must also consider Iranian intentions. Would they ever resort to first-use of a nuclear weapon against us or against Israel? Would deterrence work? Might they give a bomb to Al Qaeda or another such organization? Can we take that chance? What do we really know about Iran? Could we exploit the opposition within Iran, or would that backfire? Can we live with a nuclear armed Iran as we seem to be doing with North Korea? Do we have a choice? For now, I will continue collecting articles.
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Neocons At It Again (19 May 06): One quick comment. The unrepentant neocons in the FrontPageMag Symposium are already talking about how easy it would be to democratize Iran! They say the regime is hated and that we would have many allies among the opposition. Have they learned nothing from Iraq? It seems that neocons love to talk to dissidents who make the right kind of noises, and then they extrapolate wildly to the nation as a whole. (Wasn't a similar kind of extrapolation behind, say, pieces of paper with the words 'yellowcake uranium' on them?) If we do invade Iran, then I don't think we should count on much local cooperation! Let's be realistic about this, please.
Introduction
Neocons At It Again
Is Iran Rational After All?
Brzezinski Urges Patience
The Unspoken Truth
The Apocalytic Quandary
James Carney: Why the US won't talk directly to Iran
Pat Buchanan: 'Comrade Wolf' and the mullahs
Bret Stephens: How to Stop Iran (Without Firing a Shot)
Joseph Cirincione: Controlling Iran's Nuclear Program
FrontPageMag Symposium: To Strike Iran?
Paul Starobin: Of Mullahs And MADness
Richard Haass: Regime Change and Its Limits
Oliver Miles: France is right about Iran
Sarah Baxter: Fugitive pleads with US to 'liberate' Iran