Intelligence

Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’

Israelis ‘blew apart Syrian nuclear cache’ - Times Online

Secret raid on Korean shipment Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv, Sarah Baxter in Washington and Michael Sheridan IT was just after midnight when the 69th Squadron of Israeli F15Is crossed the Syrian coast-line. On the ground, Syria’s formidable air defences went dead. An audacious raid on a Syrian target 50 miles from the Iraqi border was under way.

At a rendezvous point on the ground, a Shaldag air force commando
team was waiting to direct their laser beams at the target for the
approaching jets. The team had arrived a day earlier, taking up
position near a large underground depot. Soon the bunkers were in
flames.

Ten days after the jets reached home, their mission was
the focus of intense speculation this weekend amid claims that Israel
believed it had destroyed a cache of nuclear materials from North Korea.

The
Israeli government was not saying. “The security sources and IDF
[Israeli Defence Forces] soldiers are demonstrating unusual courage,”
said Ehud Olmert, the prime minister. “We naturally cannot always show
the public our cards.”

The
Syrians were also keeping mum. “I cannot reveal the details,” said
Farouk al-Sharaa, the vice-president. “All I can say is the military
and political echelon is looking into a series of responses as we
speak. Results are forthcoming.” The official story that the target
comprised weapons destined for Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese
Shi’ite group, appeared to be crumbling in the face of widespread
scepticism.

Andrew Semmel, a senior US State Department official,
said Syria might have obtained nuclear equipment from “secret
suppliers”, and added that there were a “number of foreign technicians”
in the country.

Asked if they could be North Korean, he replied:
“There are North Korean people there. There’s no question about that.”
He said a network run by AQ Khan, the disgraced creator of Pakistan’s
nuclear weapons, could be involved.

But why would nuclear
material be in Syria? Known to have chemical weapons, was it seeking to
bolster its arsenal with something even more deadly?

Alternatively,
could it be hiding equipment for North Korea, enabling Kim Jong-il to
pretend to be giving up his nuclear programme in exchange for economic
aid? Or was the material bound for Iran, as some authorities in America
suggest?

According to Israeli sources, preparations for the
attack had been going on since late spring, when Meir Dagan, the head
of Mossad, presented Olmert with evidence that Syria was seeking to buy
a nuclear device from North Korea.

The Israeli spy chief apparently feared such a device could eventually be installed on North-Korean-made Scud-C missiles.

“This
was supposed to be a devastating Syrian surprise for Israel,” said an
Israeli source. “We’ve known for a long time that Syria has deadly
chemical warheads on its Scuds, but Israel can’t live with a nuclear
warhead.”

An expert on the Middle East, who has spoken to Israeli
participants in the raid, told yesterday’s Washington Post that the
timing of the raid on September 6 appeared to be linked to the arrival
three days earlier of a ship carrying North Korean material labelled as
cement but suspected of concealing nuclear equipment.

The target
was identified as a northern Syrian facility that purported to be an
agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river. Israel had been
monitoring it for some time, concerned that it was being used to
extract uranium from phosphates.

According to an Israeli air
force source, the Israeli satellite Ofek 7, launched in June, was
diverted from Iran to Syria. It sent out high-quality images of a
northeastern area every 90 minutes, making it easy for air force
specialists to spot the facility.

Early in the summer Ehud Barak,
the defence minister, had given the order to double Israeli forces on
its Golan Heights border with Syria in anticipation of possible
retaliation by Damascus in the event of air strikes.

Sergei
Kirpichenko, the Russian ambassador to Syria, warned President Bashar
al-Assad last month that Israel was planning an attack, but suggested
the target was the Golan Heights.

Israeli military intelligence
sources claim Syrian special forces moved towards the Israeli outpost
of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights. Tension rose, but nobody knew why.

At
this point, Barak feared events could spiral out of control. The
decision was taken to reduce the number of Israeli troops on the Golan
Heights and tell Damascus the tension was over. Syria relaxed its guard
shortly before the Israeli Defence Forces struck.

Only three
Israeli cabinet ministers are said to have been in the know � Olmert,
Barak and Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister. America was also
consulted. According to Israeli sources, American air force codes were
given to the Israeli air force attaché in Washington to ensure Israel’s
F15Is would not mistakenly attack their US counterparts.

Once the
mission was under way, Israel imposed draconian military censorship and
no news of the operation emerged until Syria complained that Israeli
aircraft had violated its airspace. Syria claimed its air defences had
engaged the planes, forcing them to drop fuel tanks to lighten their
loads as they fled.

But intelligence sources suggested it was a highly successful Israeli raid on nuclear material supplied by North Korea.

Washington
was rife with speculation last week about the precise nature of the
operation. One source said the air strikes were a diversion for a
daring Israeli commando raid, in which nuclear materials were
intercepted en route to Iran and hauled to Israel. Others claimed they
were destroyed in the attack.

There is no doubt, however, that
North Korea is accused of nuclear cooperation with Syria, helped by AQ
Khan’s network. John Bolton, who was undersecretary for arms control at
the State Department, told the United Nations in 2004 the Pakistani
nuclear scientist had “several other” customers besides Iran, Libya and
North Korea.

Some of his evidence came from the CIA, which had
reported to Congress that it viewed “Syrian nuclear intentions with
growing concern”.

“I’ve been worried for some time about North
Korea and Iran outsourcing their nuclear programmes,” Bolton said last
week. Syria, he added, was a member of a “junior axis of evil”, with a
well-established ambition to develop weapons of mass destruction.

The
links between Syria and North Korea date back to the rule of Kim
Il-sung and President Hafez al-Assad in the last century. In recent
months, their sons have quietly ordered an increase in military and
technical cooperation.

Foreign diplomats who follow North Korean
affairs are taking note. There were reports of Syrian passengers on
flights from Beijing to Pyongyang and sightings of Middle Eastern
businessmen from sources who watch the trains from North Korea to China.

On
August 14, Rim Kyong Man, the North Korean foreign trade minister, was
in Syria to sign a protocol on “cooperation in trade and science and
technology”. No details were released, but it caught Israel’s attention.

Syria
possesses between 60 and 120 Scud-C missiles, which it has bought from
North Korea over the past 15 years. Diplomats believe North Korean
engineers have been working on extending their 300-mile range. It means
they can be used in the deserts of northeastern Syria � the area of the
Israeli strike.

The triangular relationship between North Korea,
Syria and Iran continues to perplex intelligence analysts. Syria served
as a conduit for the transport to Iran of an estimated £50m of missile
components and technology sent by sea from North Korea. The same route
may be in use for nuclear equipment.

But North Korea is at a
sensitive stage of negotiations to end its nuclear programme in
exchange for security guarantees and aid, leading some diplomats to
cast doubt on the likelihood that Kim would cross America’s “red line”
forbidding the proliferation of nuclear materials.

Christopher
Hill, the State Department official representing America in the talks,
said on Friday he could not confirm “intelligence-type things”, but the
reports underscored the need “to make sure the North Koreans get out of
the nuclear business”.

By its actions, Israel showed it is not interested in waiting for diplomacy to work where nuclear weapons are at stake.

As
a bonus, the Israelis proved they could penetrate the Syrian air
defence system, which is stronger than the one protecting Iranian
nuclear sites.

This weekend President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
sent Ali Akbar Mehrabian, his nephew, to Syria to assess the damage.
The new “axis of evil” may have lost one of its spokes.

September 16, 2007 at 02:32 AM in Iran, Syria | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Eye on Iran, Rivals Pursuing Nuclear Power - New York Times

By WILLIAM J. BROAD and DAVID E. SANGER Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.

Source: Eye on Iran, Rivals Pursuing Nuclear Power - New York Times

So, too, Turkey is preparing for its first atomic plant. And Egypt has announced plans to build one on its Mediterranean coast. In all, roughly a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting their own nuclear programs. While interest in nuclear energy is rising globally, it is unusually strong in the Middle East.

“The rules have changed,” King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. “Everybody’s going for nuclear programs.”

The Middle East states say they only want atomic power. Some probably do. But United States government and private analysts say they believe that the rush of activity is also intended to counter the threat of a nuclear Iran.

By nature, the underlying technologies of nuclear power can make electricity or, with more effort, warheads, as nations have demonstrated over the decades by turning ostensibly civilian programs into sources of bomb fuel. Iran’s uneasy neighbors, analysts say, may be positioning themselves to do the same.

“One danger of Iran going nuclear has always been that it might provoke others,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, an arms analysis group in London. “So when you see the development of nuclear power elsewhere in the region, it’s a cause for some concern.”

Some analysts ask why Arab states in the Persian Gulf, which hold nearly half the world’s oil reserves, would want to shoulder the high costs and obligations of a temperamental form of energy. They reply that they must invest in the future, for the day when the flow of oil dries up.

But with Shiite Iran increasingly ascendant in the region, Sunni countries have alluded to other motives. Officials from 21 governments in and around the Middle East warned at an Arab summit meeting in March that Iran’s drive for atomic technology could result in the beginning of “a grave and destructive nuclear arms race in the region.”

In Washington, officials are seizing on such developments to build their case for stepping up pressure on Iran. President Bush has talked privately to experts on the Middle East about his fears of a “Sunni bomb,” and his concerns that countries in the Middle East may turn to the only nuclear-armed Sunni state, Pakistan, for help.

“It’s a constant source of discussion,” a senior administration official said recently. “But it’s not something the president thinks he can discuss publicly” after the imbroglio over faulty weapons intelligence on Iraq.

The Middle East has seen hints of a regional nuclear-arms race before. After Israel obtained its first weapon four decades ago, several countries took steps down the nuclear road. But many analysts say it is Iran’s atomic intransigence that has now prodded the Sunni powers into getting serious about hedging their bets and, like Iran, financing them with $65-a-barrel oil.

“Now’s the time to worry,” said Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East expert at the Nixon Center, a Washington policy institute. “The Iranians have to worry, too. The idea that they’ll emerge as the regional hegemon is silly. There will be a very serious counterreaction, certainly in conventional military buildups but also in examining the nuclear option.”

No Arab country now has a power reactor, whose spent fuel can be mined for plutonium, one of the two favored materials — along with uranium — for making the cores of atom bombs. Some Arab states do, however, engage in civilian atomic research.

Analysts caution that a chain reaction of nuclear emulation is not foreordained. States in the Middle East appear to be waiting to see which way Tehran’s nuclear standoff with the United Nations Security Council goes before committing themselves wholeheartedly to costly programs of atomic development.

Even if Middle Eastern nations do obtain nuclear power, political alliances and arms-control agreements could still make individual states hesitate before crossing the line to obtain warheads. Many may eventually decide that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits — as South Korea, Taiwan, South Africa and Libya did after investing heavily in arms programs.

But many diplomats and analysts say that the Sunni Arab governments are so anxious about Iran’s nuclear progress that they would even, grudgingly, support a United States military strike against Iran.

“If push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a U.S. military strike, then the Arab gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the U.S.,” said Christian Koch, director of international studies at the Gulf Research Center, a private group in Dubai.

Decades ago, it was Israel’s drive for nuclear arms that brought about the region’s first atomic jitters. Even some Israeli leaders found themselves “preaching caution because of the reaction,” said Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the University of Maryland and the author of “Israel and the Bomb.”

Egypt responded first. In 1960, after the disclosure of Israel’s work on a nuclear reactor, Cairo threatened to acquire atomic arms and sought its own reactor. Years of technical and political hurdles ultimately ended that plan.

Iraq came next. But in June 1981, Israeli fighter jets bombed its reactor just days before engineers planned to install the radioactive core. The bombing ignited a global debate over how close Iraq had come to nuclear arms. It also prompted Iran, then fighting a war with Iraq, to embark on a covert response.

Alireza Assar, a nuclear adviser to Iran’s Ministry of Defense who later defected, said he attended a secret meeting in 1987 at which the commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Iran had to do whatever was necessary to achieve victory. “We need to have all the technical requirements in our possession,” Dr. Assar recalled the commander as saying, even the means to “build a nuclear bomb.”

In all, Iran toiled in secret for 18 years before its nuclear efforts were disclosed in 2003. Intelligence agencies and nuclear experts now estimate that the Iranians are 2 to 10 years away from having the means to make a uranium-based bomb. It says its uranium enrichment work is entirely peaceful and meant only to fuel reactors.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s concerns peaked when inspectors found evidence of still-unexplained ties between Iran’s ostensibly peaceful program and its military, including work on high explosives, missiles and warheads. That combination, the inspectors said in early 2006, suggested a “military nuclear dimension.”

Before such disclosures, few if any states in the Middle East attended the atomic agency’s meetings on nuclear power development. Now, roughly a dozen are doing so and drawing up atomic plans.

The newly interested states include Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and the seven sheikdoms of the United Arab Emirates — Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Al Fujayrah, Ras al Khaymah, Sharjah, and Umm al Qaywayn.

“They generally ask what they need to do for the introduction of power,” said R. Ian Facer, a nuclear power engineer who works for the I.A.E.A. at its headquarters in Vienna. The agency teaches the basics of nuclear energy. In exchange, states must undergo periodic inspections to make sure their civilian programs have no military spinoffs.

Saudi Arabia, since reversing itself on reactors, has become a whirlwind of atomic interest. It recently invited President Vladimir V. Putin to become the first Russian head of state to visit the desert kingdom. He did so in February, offering a range of nuclear aid.

Diplomats and analysts say Saudi Arabia leads the drive for nuclear power within the Gulf Cooperation Council, based in Riyadh. In addition to the Saudis, the council includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — Washington’s closest Arab allies. Its member states hug the western shores of the Persian Gulf and control about 45 percent of the world’s oil reserves.

Late last year, the council announced that it would embark on a nuclear energy program. Its officials have said they want to get it under way by 2009.

“We will develop it openly,” Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said of the council’s effort. “We want no bombs. All we want is a whole Middle East that is free from weapons of mass destruction,” an Arab reference to both Israel’s and Iran’s nuclear programs.

In February, the council and the I.A.E.A. struck a deal to work together on a nuclear power plan for the Arab gulf states. Abdul Rahman ibn Hamad al-Attiya, the council’s secretary general, told reporters in March that the agency would provide technical expertise and that the council would hire a consulting firm to speed its nuclear deliberations.

Already, Saudi officials are traveling regularly to Vienna, and I.A.E.A. officials to Riyadh, the Saudi capital. “It’s a natural right,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the atomic agency’s director general, said recently of the council’s energy plan, estimating that carrying it out might take up to 15 years.

In all, 85 percent of the gulf states — all but Iraq — have declared their interest in nuclear power. By comparison, 15 percent of South American nations and 20 percent of African ones have done so.

One factor in that exceptional level of interest is that the Persian Gulf states have the means. Typically, a large commercial reactor costs up to $4 billion. The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council are estimated to be investing in nonnuclear projects valued at more than $1 trillion.

Another factor is Iran. Its shores at some points are visible across the waters of the gulf — the Arabian Gulf to Arabs, the Persian Gulf to Iranians.

The council wants “its own regional initiative to counter the possible threat from an aggressive neighbor armed with nuclear weapons,” said Nicole Stracke, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center. Its members, she added, “felt they could no longer lag behind Iran.”

A similar technology push is under way in Turkey, where long-simmering plans for nuclear power have caught fire. Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for three plants. “We want to benefit from nuclear energy as soon as possible,” he said. Turkey plans to put its first reactor near the Black Sea port of Sinop, and to start construction this year.

Egypt, too, is moving forward. Last year, it announced plans for a reactor at El-Dabaa, about 60 miles west of Alexandria. “We do not start from a vacuum,” President Hosni Mubarak told the governing National Democracy Party’s annual conference. His remark was understated given Cairo’s decades of atomic research.

Robert Joseph, a former under secretary of state for arms control and international security who is now Mr. Bush’s envoy on nuclear nonproliferation, visited Egypt earlier this year. According to officials briefed on the conversations, officials from the Ministry of Electricity indicated that if Egypt was confident that it could have a reliable supply of reactor fuel, it would have little desire to invest in the costly process of manufacturing its own nuclear fuel — the enterprise that experts fear could let Iran build a bomb.

Other officials, especially those responsible for Egypt’s security, focused more on the possibility of further proliferation in the region if Iran succeeded in its effort to achieve a nuclear weapons capability.

“I don’t know how much of it is real,” Mr. Joseph said of a potential arms race. “But it is becoming urgent for us to shape the future expansion of nuclear energy in a way that reduces the risks of proliferation, while meeting our energy and environmental goals.”

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April 14, 2007 at 04:10 PM in Iran, Iraq, Israel, Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

The face: Sir Nigel Sheinwald-News-Politics-TimesOnline

Penny Wark The release of 15 British sailors and Marines from Iran is both the Prime Minister's triumph and further evidence that Margaret Beckett lacks credibility as Foreign Secretary. On this occasion Tony Blair is indebted to his foreign policy adviser, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, who held secret talks with Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. The telephone call between the two men is regarded as the breakthrough encounter.

Source: The face: Sir Nigel Sheinwald-News-Politics-TimesOnline

A diplomatic success for a seasoned career diplomat, then. But the curious thing about Sir Nigel is that for all his cool-headed skill and the experience accrued during a 31-year career, he is not noted for having a delicate touch.

Rather, those who have worked with him describe him as outspoken, abrasive and ambitious. Yet if this is all that he is, he would not have pulled off a succession of sensitive, clandestine missions involving visits to such cities as Damascus, Tripoli, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Ramallah and Khartoum. Most notably he was involved in the secret negotiations that resulted in Libya’s abandonment of its nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

He is certainly brusque, says one who knows him, and he is regarded with awe. Another says he is all right if you stand up to him; he is fun too, he can be indiscreet, and as the father of three sons he is a dedicated family man. A nanny once called him a pussycat, which might surprise those who have seen only the rottweiler, but which indicates that there is more to Sir Nigel than a fierce front — and we all know that being forceful and scary is a way of keeping people at a distance.

He sees himself as someone who asks the tough questions and has no time for prevarication. A Middle East analyst recalls that his first comment to him was: “Are you in fa-vour of suicide bombers?”

After an education at Harrow County School for Boys and Balliol, Oxford, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1976. A Moscow posting ended suddenly after an accident in which a Russian was killed by the car he was driving. He has since worked in Washington, done two stints in Brussels, and a range of policy jobs in London, where he headed the Foreign Office news department from 1995 until 1998.

He served as spokesman for Douglas Hurd and Malcolm Rifkind, but the turning point of his career was the arrival of new Labour in 1997. He quickly established a good relationship with Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary, though his job was not to represent his Foreign Office colleagues but to implement the Prime Minister’s views. At 53 his appointment as the next Ambassador to the US makes it clear that he is very much Blair’s man. Will he be Brown’s too? Certainly it is easy to imagine that they will understand each other.

April 12, 2007 at 09:51 PM in Iran, Middle East, Syria | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

U.S. has little data on Iranian unit under suspicion - International Herald Tribune

 

WASHINGTON: Like so much else about the Iranian state, the Quds Force, which conducts overseas operations for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, remains remarkably mysterious even to those who closely study the country. The Quds Force is under intense scrutiny by U.S. intelligence agencies because it is suspected of supplying sophisticated explosives to Shiite militants in Iraq. Among those detained in recent U.S. raids on Iranian offices in Iraq were several Iranians identified by the U.S. military as Quds operatives, including a diplomat said to be the No. 2 official in the Quds Force.

Source: U.S. has little data on Iranian unit under suspicion - International Herald Tribune

Questions about what exactly Quds Force officers have done and whether they acted at the direction of the Iranian leadership have taken on particular urgency as the Bush administration sends more troops to damp the violence in Baghdad and ratchets up its rhetoric against Iran.

Administration officials have made new claims that advanced improvised explosive devices are being provided by the Iranians. Even so, they have vehemently denied they have any plans to go to war against Iran.

Though the U.S. allegations about the Quds Force have received attention from administration officials and the media only in recent weeks, they are not new. On several occasions over the last year, senior Pentagon officials have spoken publicly about the Iranian role in Iraq.

But by all accounts, the imperfect nature of U.S. intelligence agencies' reporting on Iran makes certain conclusions difficult to reach. "I just don't think we have a very acute understanding of the internal workings of the regime in Iran," said Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

The competing power centers inside the Iranian government, and the intense secrecy that obscures decision- making, make answers elusive.

"We know that the Quds Force is involved," Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters on Thursday. "We know the Quds Force is a paramilitary arm of the IRGC," he added, using the abbreviation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

"So we assume that the leadership of the IRGC knows about this," Gates said. "Whether or not more senior political leaders in Iran know about it, we don't know."

Most independent experts say it is only logical to assume that Iran deployed large numbers of operatives in Iraq as soon as Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. Many of Iraq's Shiite clerics, politicians and militia leaders have close ties to Iran, where some spent years in exile while Saddam and his Baath Party ruled Iraq.

And the past role of the Quds Force as the long arm of the Islamic revolution abroad, performing a mix of military, intelligence and training operations, has been widely reported in past conflicts like those in Lebanon and Bosnia. Its name, which is also the Arabic name given to Jerusalem, symbolizes the Iranian government's commitment to driving Israelis out of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Quds Force "is the handpicked elite of an already elite ideological army," said Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.

As part of the Revolutionary Guard, the force officially answers to the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and not the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, though Ahmadinejad is believed to have personal ties to many senior Guard officials.

But the Quds Force is cloaked in secrecy inside Iran and the subject of considerable guesswork from scholars in the United States, who in interviews this week offered estimates of its size ranging from 3,000 to 50,000 men. The true number, along with details of the strength and budget of the entire Revolutionary Guard, is hidden even from Parliament, said Milani, according to legislators he has spoken with.

Some specialists even question whether the Quds Force exists as a formal unit clearly delineated from the rest of the Revolutionary Guard.

"It could be that anyone with an intelligence role in the Revolutionary Guard is just called 'Quds,'" said Vali R. Nasr, who studies Iran and political Islam at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Whether properly identified as part of the Quds Force or not, members of the Revolutionary Guard mobilized intelligence and paramilitary agents in Lebanon in the 1980s, where they trained the Shiite militia Hezbollah; in Afghanistan, during the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s and episodically since then; in the former Yugoslavia, supporting the Bosnian Muslims against Serbian forces; and in other trouble spots.

The Guard has also been accused of supporting terrorist attacks outside Iran, notably the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. servicemen. In December, a federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the Khobar Towers attack and ordered Tehran to pay survivors of those killed more than $253 million.

The Revolutionary Guard was created after the Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah in 1979. The government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not trust the existing Iranian military, where support for the monarchy remained strong. The new rulers established the Guard as a parallel military force, recruited from among the revolution's most devout religious supporters.

In the past 25 years, the Revolutionary Guard, whose strength is estimated by Western specialists at 125,000 to 300,000, has gradually evolved into more of a conventional military and has become deeply involved in lucrative business enterprises inside and outside Iran. But all along, it has conducted overseas operations, both covert and overt, often under the Quds Force name.

The actions of the Quds Force are not necessarily ordered by Khamenei, and the supreme leader may not even get reports of all its actions, said Hooshang Amirahmadi, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. "The Iranian government is a very loose grouping of power centers," blurring lines of control and authority, he said.

There have been past instances of actions by rogue intelligence officers that the Iranian government has disavowed. In 1999, for example, Iran's Intelligence Ministry blamed rogue officers for the killings of five prominent critics of the government's conservative wing.

But Amirahmadi said he did not think the Iranian leadership should be allowed to sidestep responsibility for actions by its operatives in Iraq. "The Bush administration can't say, 'We have a CIA but we don't control it,"' he said, adding that the same rules should apply to Tehran.

February 18, 2007 at 12:37 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

US forces turn on Iranians

Telegraph | News | US forces turn on Iranians

By Philip Sherwell in New York, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 12:30am GMT 14/01/2007

President George W Bush has ordered US forces to launch a military offensive against Iranian officials and Revolutionary Guards officers behind a support and funding network for anti-American fighters in Iraq.

Mr Bush signed the clandestine directive after he was given new intelligence on the scale of Iranian operations to foment violence in Iraq.

US troops were operating under the new instructions when they raided an Iranian "liaison office" in northern Iraq last week, detaining five men, in the latest showdown with Teheran's agents.

The swoop, which was condemned by Iran and its political allies in Iraq, came less than two weeks after a senior Revolutionary Guards commander was seized in another raid near Baghdad with documents linked to the bloodshed. It has fuelled fears of direct armed clashes between US forces and Iranian operatives.

In a further development, US intelligence has learnt that the Shia-led Islamic regime is backing Sunni insurgents in Iraq, as well as the murderous militia operated by its fellow Shia clerics.
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Iran's policy of pursuing "managed chaos" in Iraq is mainly conducted by the Revolutionary Guards' Quds (Jerusalem) Force, the military's foreign arm, which also supports the Shia Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Sunni Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

Shia and Sunni armed factions have for months been fighting a vicious sectarian conflict, murdering thousands of civilians. But the top Quds commander arrested late last month - known by the alias Chizari - was carrying documents that showed links with both sides, according to a senior official.

It comprised "a smoking gun," he told The New York Sun. "We found plans for attacks, phone numbers affiliated with Sunni bad guys, a lot of things that filled in the blanks on what these guys are up to," he said.

One document contained a Quds assessment of the Iraqi conflict that throws fresh light on the growing battle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for influence in the region. It said that because Iraq's Sunni neighbours - including Saudi Arabia - were likely to intensify their support for Sunni insurgents in Iraq, Iran should also step up its aid to those groups.

Iran has set up a network of fake import-export companies in Iraq's Anbar province to channel funds to Sunni fighters, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

At secret meetings, tribal sheikhs with close ties to the insurgents revealed details of the money-laundering to Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.

"Truckloads of Iranian appliances like televisions are shipped into Iraq, apparently legitimately, and then sold for cash that can be channelled to Sunni insurgents," said Mr Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute think-tank. "The Iranians are very pragmatic about who they will deal with.

"The underlying assumption of those like Tony Blair and the Iraq Study Group, who back talks with Teheran, is that a stable Iraq is somehow in Iran's interests. But that's not so. Iran does not want a new Somalia on its borders, but nor does it want to live next to Switzerland. They are happy with managed chaos."

Iran has worked with individuals linked to al-Qa'eda-related groups responsible for some of the worst atrocities against Iraqi Shias, including the attack on the Golden Mosque in Samarra last February.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the Iranian exile leader who first revealed Teheran's secret nuclear programme to the world, has compiled a dossier detailing the vast network run by Quds in Iraq. Its operations are centred on Basra and Najaf, and use a series of supposed religious and cultural organisations as well as diplomatic consulates across the country to develop, fund and arm militia and rebel groups.

Thousands of Shia militiamen have reportedly travelled to Iran for training and indoctrination, while Quds sends millions of dollars cash in the other direction each month, through diplomatic pouches and border crossings it controls.

British and American officials have also identified Iran as the source of the materials and manufacture of a new, more lethal variety of roadside bomb that has claimed coalition lives.

"New information from sources in Iran further confirms that the Revolutionary Guards Corps and its notorious Quds Force are the biggest threat inside Iraq," said Mr Jafarzadeh. "Unless Iran's influence is curbed, its agents arrested and brought to justice and its proxies exposed, a genuine national unity government cannot take shape in Iraq."

In a sign of Iran's influence at the highest levels in Baghdad, the Quds Force commander captured by US forces last month was released at the insistence of the Iraqi government. He was said to have diplomatic status.

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, revealed in an interview published yesterday that President Bush had signed the order authorising force to break Iranian networks in Iraq.

She said: "I don't think there is a government in the world that would sit by and let the Iranians, in particular, run networks inside Iraq that are building explosive devices of a very high quality, that are being used to kill their soldiers."

Some Democrats have accused Mr Bush of using events in Iraq as an excuse to plan military action against Iran. His spokesman, Tony Snow, denied that any "war preparations were underway", but said the president was determined to defend US forces.

January 14, 2007 at 12:29 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Japan police plan arrests over nuclear parts

Japan police plan arrests over nuclear parts: report | Top News | Reuters.com

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo police were planning on Friday to arrest several executives from a Japanese company suspected of exporting equipment that could be used in producing nuclear weapons, Kyodo news agency said.

Mitutoyo Corp., which produces precision measuring equipment, is suspected of exporting to Malaysia without a license two devices that could be used in uranium enrichment, the report said.

Television showed police entering Mitutoyo premises in Kawasaki, near Tokyo.

A police spokesman said he had no information on the arrests, and no one answered the phone at the company's head office.

Police have been investigating possible export routes from Japan after a device made by the firm was found at nuclear facilities in Libya inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency between December 2003 and March 2004, media reports said earlier this year.

Mitutoyo is also suspected of exporting equipment to Iran, and police have raided an Iranian trading company in Tokyo in connection with the case, Kyodo said.

Mitutoyo, founded in 1934, has some 2,300 employees in Japan and 2,000 overseas.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved

August 25, 2006 at 12:07 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Focus: The nuclear fanatic

Focus: The nuclear fanatic - Sunday Times - Times Online

Iran's president is the West's looming nightmare - and this week he's promising to make matters worse. Sarah Baxter reports
If some Iran-watchers in America are to be believed, we could be 48 hours away from the day of judgment.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, has promised to deliver on Tuesday his response to international demands that Iran stop enriching uranium for nuclear use.

By the Islamic calendar, Tuesday is also a holy date: the night when Muhammad rose to heaven from the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on a “buraq”, a fabulous winged beast with the body of a horse and the face of a woman, and reappeared in Mecca.

Will Ahmadinejad seize the moment to unveil the possession of some new fissile material or weapons system — perhaps a nuclear-tipped one?

Bernard Lewis, the West’s foremost scholar of Islam, has even warned that on such a symbolic date it would be wise to bear in mind the possibility of a “cataclysmic” event such as a strike on Israel.

The messianic Shi’ite president could have waited another nine days for the deadline set by the United Nations for his response on nuclear enrichment; but his obsession with theology and numerology appears to be hastening his decision.

He seems in no mood to retreat. “Nuclear power is our right. No one can take this away from us,” he told cheering crowds recently. “Our main task is to develop and build the Iranian nation. No one will stop us.”

That is no idle boast. While all eyes have recently been focused on Israel and the Lebanon, the world may have been looking in the wrong direction. The most serious challenge to the West is not a resurgent Hezbollah but Iran, the guerrillas’ oil-rich patron.

This week, to coincide with Ahmadinejad’s “judgment day” speech, Iran is launching a new round of sabre-rattling military manoeuvres. Nobody has stopped it on its path to nuclear power — and nobody looks likely to.

The European Union, represented by Britain, France and Germany, has spent the past three years trying to talk Iran out of its nuclear programme — to no effect. Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have been given the run-around, and last April the Iranian president laid on a ceremony with dancers and doves of peace to celebrate the glorious news, as he put it, that “Iran has joined the countries with nuclear technology”.

The Bush administration, once impatient with EU-IAEA pussyfooting in Iran, is now chastened and divided by its own failure in Iraq.

The war there has been a strategic disaster as far as containing Iran is concerned. Power in Iraq has reverted to the majority Shi’ites, including factions close to the Iranian mullahs; Iranian agents poured into Iraq from the moment Saddam Hussein fell; and, after its experiences of the past three years, the American military has no appetite to take on the well armed and nationalistic Iranians.

The brief war in southern Lebanon — a proxy conflict in which America backed Israel to destroy Iran’s client, Hezbollah — has also failed to fulfil its aims.

John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, is not alone in regarding George W Bush’s Middle East policy as “crap”. There is almost as much unhappiness among American conservatives over his mistakes as there is in the Labour party at Tony Blair’s.

How immediate is the Iranian threat?

AN expert on the Middle East, Ilan Berman, is based at the American Foreign Policy Council. He said last week: “I’m not in the camp that believes the end of the world will come about on Tuesday, but there is a strong apocalyptic strain in Ahmadinejad and his group. He is positioning Iran to be in the vanguard of the clash of civilisations with the West.”

Even those experts who say that Ahmadinejad is no more apocalyptic than fundamentalist Christians (including Bush himself), who believe there will be a day of “rapture” when the faithful will be lifted to heaven, agree that the Iranian president has his eyes firmly set on nuclear weapons.

In their view, on Tuesday Ahmadinejad will offer the West a few measly compromises or at best a temporary freeze, while playing for more time to build a nuclear bomb — and western governments will again fail to stop him.

In an interview with Mike Wallace, the veteran American journalist, last week, the Iranian president presented himself as a mild-mannered man of the people who was merely standing by the suffering Lebanese and pursuing a peaceful nuclear energy programme.

He looked appealingly diffident and laid into Bush for wanting “to solve everything with bombs. The time of the bomb is in the past . . . Today is the era of thoughts, dialogues and cultural exchanges”.

It was Ahmadinejad the “blogger” and letter writer to the White House on show, while out of sight his thugs continue to harass dissidents such as Mansour Ossanloo, leader of the bus drivers’ union, part of whose tongue has been removed by the Iranian security forces.

The mask slipped for a moment when Ahmadinejad went on to accuse Israel of being a “fabricated state” and failed to deny that he wanted it “wiped off the map”.

The son of an ironworker, Ahmadinejad, 49, hero-worshipped Ayatollah Khomeini as a student and was in the vanguard of the 1979 revolution. He went on to join Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, where he became known as a persecutor of dissidents. In 2005 he was catapulted into the presidency by the mullahs as a trusty hardliner who had impressed working-class Iranians with his homespun lifestyle as mayor of Tehran.

There is no doubt that he is a millenarian who believes in the coming of the 12th imam, the mahdi (or messiah) of Sh’ite theology. In his first speech to the UN last year, he startled his worldly audience by begging “O mighty Lord” to “hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace”.

While his piety is no pose, Ahmadinejad is a shrewd political opportunist. He has consolidated his power by playing the game of “holier than thou”. Vali Nasr, a professor at the US Naval Postgraduate school and author of an influential book, The Shia Revival, says: “The leaders of Iran are hardline, revolutionary militants and men of power, but they are not crazy.”

Nasr, who attended a private briefing with Bush on the Middle East last week, is convinced that Iran’s growing regional superpower status poses an all too secular challenge to America.

“The Iranians think the Israel war showed that shock and awe doesn’t work,” he said. “They believe their hand has been strengthened in negotiations with the UN because nobody has the appetite for military action.”

Inside the Pentagon, defence officials have glumly come to the same conclusion.

“Hezbollah has really empowered the Iranians,” said a defence source. “If Hezbollah is a surrogate for Iran and you can’t bomb it successfully, you are not going to be able to bomb Iran with a whistle-clean shot. It may sway some decisions.”

THE Iranian president was in a celebratory mood last week, boasting at a massive rally that Hezbollah had “hoisted the banner of victory” over Lebanon. For the Iranians it was a sign that they could continue to thumb their nose at an enfeebled America.

Who can argue with them? Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, believes he has his hands full in Iraq, where 160,000 American troops are vulnerable to Iranian meddling.

Adding to the caution of military planners, the Pentagon has been warned that US intelligence has not yet mapped out all of Iran’s nuclear installations and that, in the short term, it lacks the weaponry to penetrate the deep bunkers under granite mountains.

Iran, moreover, could retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow strip of water through which 40% of the world’s oil passes.

Some observers believe a “grand bargain” must be struck with Iran, a diplomatic deal that recognises and settles all the quarrels back to 1979. But quite how that might be achieved is not clear. Others, such as Edward Luttwak, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, still believe that military action might be necessary and feasible.

Luttwak is one of the originators of the theory of the short, sharp US bombing strike on Iran. A few months ago his views were all the rage in hawkish circles. He sees no reason to believe that circumstances have changed because of the failure of Israel’s air war.

“Look at what happened in Lebanon,” Luttwak said. “The Israelis couldn’t go after guerrillas but they did go after bunkers. Using only one squadron of their air wing they were able to shut down every physical structure they wanted.

“Attempts to go after mobile targets mostly don’t work. But precision bombing works.”

The most-favoured plan A among neoconservatives is to foster regime change in Iran; that prospect now looks increasingly forlorn. The likelihood is that by the time Bush and Dick Cheney, the vice-president, get ready to leave office at the end of 2008, Iran will be perilously close to having the bomb.

If Bush and Cheney remain faithful to their promise that Iran will not go nuclear on their watch, they may ride roughshod over Rumsfeld’s inhibitions. “If Bush and Cheney feel morally obligated to stop Iran, they probably will,” said Luttwak.

The alternative is to follow the UN route and impose sanctions if Ahmadinejad refuses to give up his nuclear ambitions. But is the UN capable of imposing meaningful sanctions? American diplomats speak confidently of gaining the agreement of Russia and China for limited sanctions, such as a travel ban. If that is not enough, the Americans will attempt to assemble a “coalition of the willing”, with Britain’s support, which will seek to ban trade and investment in Iran.

Curbing the importation of refined oil could hit ordinary Iranians, who need it to run their cars and factories. “Iran has only a month and a half of gasoline in the country and after that they run out,” said Berman. “They have no strategic reserves.”

The hope is that sustained economic pressure will force Ahmadinejad to be more accommodating.

It is not much of a plan B but for now, as Berman has said, “it’s the best purchase we have” on a president and a regime eager for regional power and the day of judgment.

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August 20, 2006 at 01:59 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Hezbollah's weaponry surprises Israelis

TheStar.com - Hezbollah's weaponry surprises Israelis

Anti-tank missiles called main threat
Guerrillas well-prepared: Army officials
Aug. 11, 2006. 05:38 AM
CONAL URQUHART
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

MEDULLA, Israel—Israeli forces have been astonished at the discovery of networks of bunkers and computerized weapons in Hezbollah positions, officials say.

Soldiers have discovered air-conditioned bunkers 40 metres below ground and anti-tank weapons that originate in France, the United States and Russia. Many of the tactics and weapons employed by Hezbollah have neutralized Israel's military superiority and made a complete victory difficult to achieve.

Its use of rockets to attack Israel was not unexpected, but Israeli armed forces have been repeatedly surprised since they went on the offensive a month ago. The first major shock was when Hezbollah narrowly missed sinking an Israeli destroyer with a Chinese shore-to-sea missile. Four crew were killed in the attack.

"There were some weapons which we did not know about," said Gen. Ido Nehushtan. "There were others, such as the unmanned aerial vehicles which we had detected before."

The revelations have increased since Israeli ground forces invaded southern Lebanon.

"The main threat is the use of sophisticated anti-tank weapons against our armoured vehicles. One of the most effective is the Kornet, which was supplied by Russia to Iran and then to Hezbollah," said Lt. Col. Olivier Rafowicz.

"We have been very surprised by the quantity of weapons and the incredible building that has been carried out in the last six years. We have found trench systems and 40-metre deep bunkers. We knew they were preparing for war, but we did not realize to what extent."

Soldiers have discovered bunkers with air-conditioning, electricity generators and sophisticated listening and observation devices working in tandem with computers.

The bunkers meant that Hezbollah fighters could shelter from Israeli air and artillery bombardment and then surprise advancing Israeli forces. Often the bunkers were so well hidden that the fighters could wait until the soldiers had passed and then attack them from behind.

Israel has lost more than 80 soldiers in combat.

The Israeli army has historically relied on highly mobile armour and air support to dispatch its enemies. However, air power is less effective against guerrilla fighters who operate in small, dispersed groups.

Israeli armour has been neutralized by Hezbollah's acquisition of state-of-the-art anti-tank weapons.

Hezbollah's older anti-tank weapons have been effective against armoured personnel carriers and against buildings used by soldiers for shelters. Its newer weapons such as the Russian Kornet and the American TOW missiles have succeeded in piercing the armour of Israel's main battle tank, the Merkava, reputed to be one of the best-defended tanks in the world.

As a result, some of Israel's major advantages have been neutralized.

One member of a tank crew who had just left Lebanon said: "It's terrible. You do not fight anti-tank teams with tanks. You use infantry supported by artillery and helicopters. Wide valleys without shelter are the wrong place to use tanks."

In addition, Israel has restricted its use of helicopters, particularly the Apache gun ships. The helicopters have been used to hit coastal targets, but not in the inland valleys and hills for fear of Hezbollah anti-aircraft weapons.

"It's clear that Iran has provided major financial and practical support to Hezbollah. Two-thirds of their weapons are made in Iran or supplied by Iran. Many come initially from Russia," said Rafowicz.

However, he admitted that Hezbollah's prowess also stems from its morale and organization.

"They are very keen to engage our forces. They are not wearing suicide bomb belts but they are not afraid to die, which makes deterrence very difficult," he said.

Nehushtan said Israel believes it may have killed 500 Hezbollah fighters.

"We have to recognize that we will be dealing with new definitions of victory. There will be no white flags being raised on this battlefield," he said.

Conal Urquhart is a freelance journalist based in the Middle East

August 11, 2006 at 08:27 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Wider war in Middle East? Not likely

Wider war in Middle East? Not likely. | csmonitor.com

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – Of the dangers presented by the conflict between Israel and Hizbullah in southern Lebanon, the possibility of a broader Middle East war is among the less likely.

In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war - and repeatedly since - Israel has shown its clear military supremacy. So dominant has been Israel's advantage in both technology and tactics that former foes such as Jordan and Egypt sued for peace in those wars, while Tel Aviv's avowed enemies - Syria and Iran - have turned to backing terrorists.

At this moment, the calculus doesn't appear to have changed. There is no coalition of Arab governments willing to unite militarily against Israel. Syria's military prowess has crumbled since the fall of the Soviet Union - its greatest benefactor - while Iran remains too geographically remote to strike effectively.

The result is a new paroxysm of the proxy war that has existed in the region for a generation - ebbing and flowing as Hizbullah, armed and financed by Iran and Syria, harass Israel without provoking a major Middle East war, military analysts say.

"No state is willing to deal with Israel conventionally," says Seth Jones, a terrorism expert at the RAND Corp.

The shape of the conflict so far - sparked by Hizbullah's raid into northern Israel and capture of two Israeli soldiers - reveals both the capabilities and limitations of each side.

Historically, Hizbullah has been able to do little more than nip at Israel's northern border with incursions and sporadic rocket attacks. By and large, its arsenal is primitive, comprising various short-range rockets that can destroy buildings only with a direct hit, yet are difficult to aim with any precision. It has continually fired rockets into northern Israel.

Hizbullah's longer-range rockets

Yet there are signs of increasing sophistication, perhaps due to help from Iran, experts say. On Friday, Hizbullah launched a more advanced missile, which struck an Israeli warship. Hizbullah rockets are also penetrating deeper into Israel than ever before, with several striking Haifa, Israel's third-largest city, on Sunday. Israel claims that four of the missiles were the Iranian-made Fajr-3, with a 28-mile range.

For its part, Israel has so far relied mostly on air strikes as its military response. Monday, Israel acknowledged that its forces had invaded Lebanon, though they returned shortly after. Israel invaded southern Lebanon in 1982. Its army occupied the territory for three years, then withdrew because of the strain of the occupation and broad international condemnation.

History also offers a note of caution to Israel's foes. In 1967, Israel responded to Egyptian aggression by taking the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Years later, when Syria and Israel fought over control of Lebanon in 1982, Israeli jet fighters reportedly shot down 80 Syrian planes without losing any of its own.

Israel's military superiority is built on American support and a skill honed by decades of fighting for the very existence of the nation. Israel receives the best equipment that the United States can offer its allies. "They have some of the most highly advanced weapons systems in the world," says Dr. Jones.

Israel's air force, in particular, has no rival in the region, which makes air strikes the most effective - and most probable - means of Israeli retaliation and aggression. Yet Israel has so far focused most of its attacks on Lebanon, despite Hizbullah's links to Syria and Iran. Indeed, both sides have long used Lebanon as a way to harass the other, since Lebanon's military is almost irrelevant, analysts say.

Even though Israel accuses Syria and Iran of backing Hizbullah's attacks, it hesitates to attack them directly. The reason is simple: Though Syria's aging military is no match for Israel's, it has missiles that could strike any part of Israel, as well as stocks of chemical weapons. Moreover, the 60 miles from the Israeli border to the Syrian capital of Damascus is one of the most heavily fortified zones in the world.

"Syria doesn't have the capacity to win [a war against Israel], but it can cause lots of suffering," says Nadav Morag, former senior director for domestic policy in the Israel National Security Council.

Iran more formidable than Syria

By contrast, Iran presents a far more formidable challenge - but one that is so remote from Israel geographically as to make hostilities difficult. As with Syria, Iran's greatest threat lies in its missiles. Yet the prospect of firing missiles at America's greatest ally - at a time when it is surrounded by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan - is decidedly risky.

Likewise, the notion of an Israeli air strike against Iran presents enormous logistical hurdles. Although Iran does not possess a credible air force and has only mid-grade Russian air-defense systems to contend with Israeli jets, Israel would surely be denied overfly rights by the Arab countries that surround them, meaning it would have to take a circuitous and difficult oversea route to Iran.

It would probably be a measure taken only as a last resort., Mr. Morag says.
(Map)
SOURCE: STRATEGIC FORECASTING INC.; RICH CLABAUGH - STAFF

July 17, 2006 at 09:36 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Government in secret talks about strike against Iran

Telegraph | News | Government in secret talks about strike against Iran

By Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 02/04/2006)

The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.

It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.

Tomorrow's meeting will be attended by Gen Sir Michael Walker, the chief of the defence staff, Lt Gen Andrew Ridgway, the chief of defence intelligence and Maj Gen Bill Rollo, the assistant chief of the general staff, together with officials from the Foreign Office and Downing Street.

The International Atomic Energy Authority, the nuclear watchdog, believes that much of Iran's programme is now devoted to uranium enrichment and plutonium separation, technologies that could provide material for nuclear bombs to be developed in the next three years.

The United States government is hopeful that the military operation will be a multinational mission, but defence chiefs believe that the Bush administration is prepared to launch the attack on its own or with the assistance of Israel, if there is little international support. British military chiefs believe an attack would be limited to a series of air strikes against nuclear plants - a land assault is not being considered at the moment.

But confirmation that Britain has started contingency planning will undermine the claim last month by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that a military attack against Iran was "inconceivable".

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, insisted, during a visit to Blackburn yesterday, that all negotiating options - including the use of force - remained open in an attempt to resolve the crisis.

Gen Sir Michael Walker
General Sir Michael Walker

Tactical Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from US navy ships and submarines in the Gulf would, it is believed, target Iran's air defence systems at the nuclear installations.

That would enable attacks by B2 stealth bombers equipped with eight 4,500lb enhanced BLU-28 satellite-guided bunker-busting bombs, flying from Diego Garcia, the isolated US Navy base in the Indian Ocean, RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire and Whiteman USAF base in Missouri.

It is understood that any direct British involvement in an attack would be limited but may extend to the use of the RAF's highly secret airborne early warning aircraft.

At the centre of the crisis is Washington's fear that an Iranian nuclear weapon could be used against Israel or US forces in the region, such as the American air base at Incirlik in Turkey.

The UN also believes that the production of a bomb could also lead to further destabilisation in the Middle East, which would result in Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia all developing nuclear weapons programmes.

Click to enlarge

A senior Foreign Office source said: "Monday's meeting will set out to address the consequences for Britain in the event of an attack against Iran. The CDS [chiefs of defence staff] will want to know what the impact will be on British interests in Iraq and Afghanistan which both border Iran. The CDS will then brief the Prime Minister and the Cabinet on their conclusions in the next few days.

"If Iran makes another strategic mistake, such as ignoring demands by the UN or future resolutions, then the thinking among the chiefs is that military action could be taken to bring an end to the crisis. The belief in some areas of Whitehall is that an attack is now all but inevitable.

There will be no invasion of Iran but the nuclear sites will be destroyed. This is not something that will happen imminently, maybe this year, maybe next year. Jack Straw is making exactly the same noises that the Government did in March 2003 when it spoke about the likelihood of a war in Iraq.

"Then the Government said the war was neither inevitable or imminent and then attacked."

The source said that the Israeli attack against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 proved that a limited operation was the best military option.

The Israeli air force launched raids against the plant, which intelligence suggested was being used to develop a nuclear bomb for use against Israel.

Military chiefs also plan tomorrow to discuss fears that an attack within Iran will "unhinge" southern Iraq - where British troops are based - an area mainly populated by Shia Muslims who have strong political and religious links to Iran.

They are concerned that this could delay any withdrawal of troops this year or next. There could also be consequences for British and US troops in Afghanistan, which borders Iran.

The MoD meeting will address the economic issues that could arise if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president - who became the subject of international condemnation last year when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" - cuts off oil supplies to the West in reprisal.

There are thought to be at least eight known sites within Iran involved in the production of nuclear materials, although it is generally accepted that there are many more secret installations.

Iran has successfully tested a Fajr-3 missile that can reach Israel, avoiding radar and hitting several targets using multiple warheads, its military has confirmed.

April 2, 2006 at 12:48 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Leaked letter in full: UK diplomat outlines Iran strategy

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online

By Times Online

John Sawers, a leading British diplomat, outlined his strategy for winning Russian and Chinese support for tougher action against Iran in a confidential letter dated March 16. It was addressed to his counterparts in France, Germany and the US:

"Stanislas de Laboulaye, Michael Schaefer, Nick Burns, Robert Cooper.

Nick, Michael and I had a word yesterday about how to handle the E3+3 meeting in New York on Monday. We agreed that we would need to have a shared concept of what would happen in the Security Council after the period specified by the proposed Presidential Statement. I agreed to circulate a short paper which we might use as a sort of speaking note with the Russians and Chinese. This is attached.

Implicit in the paper is a recognition that we are not going to bring the Russians and Chinese to accept significant sanctions over the coming months, certainly not without further efforts to bring the Iranians around.

Kislyak might argue that those diplomatic efforts should start straightaway after a Presidential Statement is adopted. Our own assessment here is that the Iranians will not feel under much pressure from PRST on its own, and they will need to know that more serious measures are likely. This means putting the Iran dossier onto a Chapter VII basis. We may also need to remove one of the Iranian arguments that the suspension called for is ‘voluntary’. We could do both by making the voluntary suspension a mandatory requirement to the Security Council, in a Resolution we would aim to adopt I, say, early May.

In return for the Russians and Chinese agreeing to this, we would then want to put together a package that could be presented to the Iranians as a new proposal. Ideally this would have the explicit backing of Russia, China and the United States as well as the E3, though Nick will want to consider the scope of presenting this in that way. Our thought is that we would need to finalise this during June, and the obvious occasion to do so would be in the margins of the G8 Foreign Ministers’ meeting. The period running up to the G8 Summit will be when our influence on Russia will be at its maximum, and we need to plan accordingly.

In parallel with agreeing a new proposal, we will also want to bind Russia and China into agreeing to further measures that will be taken by the Security Council should the Iranians fail to engage positively. That would be reflected in Step Four. We would not, at this stage, want to be explicit about what would be involved then – there will need to be extensive negotiations on that in May/June.

I am not sure how far we will get on Monday. The prospect of an E3+3 Ministerial in Berlin on 30 March would give Kislyak the opportunity to push this down the road by ten days. But I suspect we will need a meeting at Ministerial level anyway to get agreement to this sort of approach, including an early Chapter VII Resolution.

We have earmarked a conference call between the five of us on Friday afternoon. Can I suggest that we do this at 1530 GMT. We will need to be circumspect on an open line, but as we are not planning to hand a paper over to the Russians and Chinese, I don’t think we need to go into detailed drafting. What we need is agreement on the concepts.

Looking forward to seeing you all in New York on Monday."

March 22, 2006 at 08:31 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Israelis consider attack on Iran

Lateline - 09/03/2006: Israelis consider attack on Iran

Reporter: Matt Brown

TONY JONES: As the diplomatic brinkmanship between Iran and the United States continues, there is mounting concern in Israel about Iran's continued calls for it to be "wiped off the map". Senior Israeli intelligence analysts within and outside the government are weighing the need for a military attack, preferably conducted by others, to bring Iran to heel. Middle East correspondent Matt Brown reports from Jerusalem.

MATT BROWN: Inside this Iranian nuclear enrichment plant, the engineers are involved in a dangerous game of brinkmanship. Iran is developing the technology that will certainly deliver nuclear energy and possibly also a nuclear bomb. Much of the world is warning Iran that this work must stop, but it's not clear what the ultimate sanction would be.

JOHN BOLTON, US AMBASSADOR TO THE UN: The Iranian regime must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences.

MATT BROWN: Tehran has already proved it's willing to gamble. Iran has a history of building research facilities in secret and underground. And, 1,500 kilometres away, Major General Giora Eiland, the National Security Advisor to Israel's Prime Minister, is weighing the options.

GIORA EILAND, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL CHIEF: It is obvious that if Iran has nuclear weapons, then every other conflict in the Middle East, whether Israel is involved or is not involved, will take place under Iranian nuclear umbrella. The implications are much more than severe.

MATT BROWN: Most Israelis know they live here within range of the best Iranian missiles. They have their own formidable nuclear arsenal, but most believe they can't afford to accept the existence of even one Iranian nuclear weapon. Officially, Israel still puts in faith in diplomacy and sanctions and, to some extent, in the people of Iran.

GIORA EILAND: Most of the people in Iran do want to be part of the international community. They don't want to be isolated.

MATT BROWN: But in 1981, Israel successfully brought Saddam Hussein's nuclear program crashing to the ground with a strike on his nuclear reactor. If diplomacy fails, the former head of research in Israeli military intelligence, Ami Dror, says the same fate must now befall Iran.

AMI DROR, FORMER MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: I think that the alternative of nuclear Iran is so dangerous to the world that nothing could be more dangerous than that.

MATT BROWN: Some Israeli analysts even believe that, rather than inflaming the Middle East, a successful military strike could give Israel's other enemies pause for thought.

AMI DROR: The Iranians will lose part of their influence in some of these organisations and countries and I think that that, for itself, is very important.

MATT BROWN: In Iran, the newspapers have been full of defiance, arguing Iran's right to enrich uranium for the peaceful purposes it's declared. Mohammad Mahmoudi, a school teacher in Tehran, says, "Nuclear energy is an absolute right and the Westerners want to make us reliant on them". But if Iran ever does build an atom bomb, some believe Israel will have to respond with the kind of threat only a nuclear arms state could deliver.

AMI DROR: The Iranians understand that if Israel will be hit by any missile, the Iranians will not have enough people to count their dead. It will lead to the destruction and the end of Iran and as a civilisation.

MATT BROWN: Clearly if the diplomats fail to stop the research underway in Iran, a new series of grave dilemmas will unfold. Matt Brown, Lateline.

March 10, 2006 at 08:37 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites

Telegraph | News | US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites

By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 12/02/2006)

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.

The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.

Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran factfile

Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.

The White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off, but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated".

Sen John McCain, the Republican front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, has made the same case and Mr Bush is expected to be faced by the decision within two years.

By then, Iran will be close to acquiring the knowledge to make an atomic bomb, although the construction will take longer. The President will not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran's ayatollahs to go atomic.

In Teheran yesterday, crowds celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution chanted "Nuclear technology is our inalienable right" and cheered Mr Ahmadinejad when he said that Iran may reconsider membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He was defiant over possible economic sanctions.

February 12, 2006 at 12:13 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Hawks have warplanes ready if the nuclear diplomacy fails

World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online

By Richard Beeston, Diplomatic Editor
IT IS the option of last resort with consequences too hideous to contemplate. And yet, with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme is being actively considered by those grappling with one of the world’s most pressing security problems.

For five years the West has used every diplomatic device at its disposal to entice Iran into complying with strict conditions that would prevent its nuclear programme being diverted to produce an atomic bomb.

Those efforts, however, are now faltering. US leaders are openly discussing the looming conflict. A recent poll showed that 57 per cent of Americans favoured military intervention to stop Iran building a bomb.

Tehran scoffs at threats by the West, has pledged to press on with its nuclear progamme and defend itself if attacked.

The military option may be the only means of halting a regime that has threatened to annihilate Israel from developing a bomb and triggering a regional nuclear arms race.

Experts agree that America has the military capability to destroy Iran’s dozen known atomic sites. US forces virtually surround Iran with military air bases to the west in Afghanistan, to the east in Iraq, Turkey and Qatar and the south in Oman and Diego Garcia. The US Navy also has a carrier group in the Gulf, armed with attack aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles. B2 stealth bombers flying from mainland America could also be used.

The air campaign would not be easy. The Iranians have been preparing for an attack. Key sites are ringed with air defences and buried underground. Sensitive parts of the Natanz facility are concealed 18 meters (60ft) underground and protected by reinforced concrete two meters thick. Similar protection has been built around the uranium conversion site at Esfahan.

“American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq centre in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq,” said the Global Security consultantcy.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former US Air Force officer, predicted that knocking out nuclear sites could be over in less than a week. But he gave warning that would only be the beginning.

Iran has threatened to defend itself if attacked. It could use medium-range missiles to hit Israel or US military targets in Iraq and the region. It could also use its missiles and submarines to attack shipping in the Gulf, the main export route for much of the world’s energy needs. “Once you have dealt with the nuclear sites you would have to expand the targets,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Gardiner. “There are another 125 to deal with including chemical plants, missile launchers, airfields and submarines.”

While this huge US offensive is underway Iran would almost certainly deploy its most powerful weapon. It would unleash a counter-attack through proxies in the region. Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia, would attack Israel. Moqtadr al-Sadr, the militant Iraqi Shia religious leader, could order his Mahdi Army to rise up against American and British forces in Iraq. Iranian-backed groups could wreak havoc against Western targets across the world.

What began as a military operation to maintain a balance of power in the Middle East, could instead plunge the region into another conflict.

“It will have to be diplomats, not F15s that stop the mullahs,” said Joseph Cirincione, an expert on non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “An air strike against the uranium conversion facility at Esfahan would inflame Muslim anger, rally the Iranian public around an otherwise unpopular government. Finally, the strike would not, as it often said, delay the Iranian programme. It would almost certainly speed it up,” he wrote in an article.

PUBLIC OPTIONS

‘All options — including the military one — are on the table’

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defence Secretary

‘There is only one thing worse than military action, that is a nuclear armed Iran’

John McCain, Republican senator for Arizona and US presidential hopeful

‘We are not seeking a military confrontation, but if that happens we will give the enemy a lesson that will be remembered throughout history’

Abdolrahim Moussavi, head of Iran’s joint chiefs of staff

‘Give another year to make HEU (highly-enriched uranium) for a nuclear weapon and a few more months to convert the uranium into weapon components, Iran could have its first nuclear weapon in 2009’

David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, Institute for Science and International Security

‘There isn’t a military option. There certainly isn’t one on the table, let’s be clear about that.’

Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary

‘Obviously we don’t rule out any measures at all’

Tony Blair

February 6, 2006 at 10:55 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Iran accuses West over bombs

Iran accuses West over bombs - World - Times Online

From Associated Press
Iran blamed Britain and the US for two bombings on Tuesday that killed at least nine people and injured forty-six others in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.

State television reported that President Ahmadinejad had ordered an investigation into the possibility that “foreign hands” were responsible. He said: “Traces of the occupiers of Iraq are evident in the Ahvaz events. They should take responsibility in this regard.”

He did not offer evidence to support his assertion. Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan, an oil-rich province that borders Iraq. The bombs detonated inside a bank and outside an environmental agency building, the state news agency reported.

Ahvaz has a history of violence involving its Arab minority. Bombings last June and October killed a total of 14 people and, in April, residents rioted for two days over fears that the Government was planning to reduce the number of Arabs in the area.

January 25, 2006 at 09:40 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Iran extends nuclear plant in secret

Telegraph | News | Iran extends nuclear plant in secret

By Philip Sherwell in Washington
(Filed: 22/01/2006)

Iran has secretly extended the uranium enrichment plant at the centre of the international controversy over its resumption of banned nuclear research earlier this month, satellite imagery has revealed.

Seven buildings have been erected around the concealed centrifuges which Western governments fear will be used to manufacture weapons-grade uranium at the Natanz site, 200 miles south of Teheran.

The discovery has heightened fears that Iran is stepping up the pace of its suspected weapons programme, in breach of international agreements, since it removed International Atomic Energy Authority seals on nuclear equipment at the site 10 days ago.

Western intelligence agencies are focusing on alarming similarities in satellite imagery of Iran's nuclear sites, which the regime claims are for civilian purposes, and atomic facilities in Pakistan used to make the raw materials for nuclear weapons, as they try to identify the purpose of the Natanz construction spree.

The building work took place unannounced during a 16-month pause in research and development at the site, while Iran engaged the West in protracted talks over its professed desire to develop nuclear power. The existence of the Natanz site was kept secret until it was exposed by an Iranian opposition group in 2002. Iran started to move funds out of the European banks on Friday to avoid possible financial sanctions after its scientists resumed work. The showdown has contributed to soaring world oil prices and a slump on Wall Street stock markets.

The Sunday Telegraph has seen recent United States intelligence analysis of satellite photographs of nuclear sites in Iran and Pakistan that strengthens fears that the Islamic regime is secretly developing atomic weapons under the guise of a supposedly peaceful power programme. "Iran's facilities are scaled exactly like another state's facilities that were designed to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons," the US report concluded, using the phrase "another state" to refer to Pakistan for diplomatic reasons.

The intelligence briefing also studies Iran's heavy water plant and reactor at Araq and its ballistic missile programme and compares them with Pakistan's facilities. The world learnt that Islamabad had built nuclear weapons only when it conducted first tests in 1998.

John Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, an independent Washington defence research consultancy that specialises in analysing satellite images, told this newspaper: "These pictures indicate that Iran is replicating every major step that Pakistan took in its atomic bomb programme."

Both US intelligence and Mr Pike's independent analysis highlight the Araq site, where Iran claims it is processing heavy water for a medical isotope programme. It bears a striking resemblance to Pakistan's site at Khushab.

Heavy water production reactors can be designed to covert uranium into weapons-grade plutonium without the need for further enrichment. Pakistan, India, Israel North Korea, Russia and the US are all believed to have used them for this purpose.

The US intelligence assessment concludes that Iran could produce enough plutonium each year at Araq for up to three nuclear bombs.

In other parallels, Iran's scientists are conducting their latest round of research using Pakistani-designed centrifuges at Natanz. The two countries are also both developing similar ballistic missiles, able to carry nuclear warheads.

Evidence of new building at Natanz has further fuelled concerns about Iran's intentions. "It is surprising to see how much construction work has taken place," said Mr Pike. "The Iranians have been very busy even while the seals were in place."

The Iranians kept the existence of the Natanz and Araq sites secret until 2002 when IAEA inspectors confirmed opposition claims that Iran had been conducting a nuclear programme for 18 years. Teheran is widely believed to have received help during this time from A Q Khan, the maverick scientist who developed Pakistan's bomb and sold his know-how to rogue states around the world. The two countries have denied any official co-operation.

Iran factfile

The US intelligence report that draws the parallels between the Iranian and Pakistani sites also concludes that while Iran's uranium reserves are not enough for its claimed goal of nuclear energy independence, they are large enough for atomic bomb production.

British, French and German diplomats from the so-called EU3 negotiating team, backed by Washington, are this weekend discussing with Russian and Chinese counterparts the contents of a draft resolution on Iran before an emergency IAEA meeting next month. Russia and China are unwilling to back early calls for sanctions.

January 22, 2006 at 03:51 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Keep your enemy closer

Keep your enemy closer | thebulletin.org

The best way to know the full extent of Iran's nuclear doings is to offer it help.

By Jack Boureston and Charles D. Ferguson
November/December 2005 pp. 25, 76 (vol. 61, no. 6) © 2005 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Subscribe today!

It now appears a foregone conclusion that Iran will continue its nuclear program no matter what the United States and the European Union offer to stop it.

Short of a U.N. Security Council resolution--which is unlikely, given the reluctance of veto-wielding nations such as China and Russia to impose sanctions--Israel or the United States might seek to end the Islamic Republic's nuclear program through force. But bombing nuclear facilities or launching a preventive war runs the risk of futility because Iran has hardened and dispersed its nuclear complex. Moreover, military action may spark reprisal by Iranian-backed jihadist groups at a time when the U.S. military is already stretched to the breaking point by the insurgency in Iraq.

In pursuing a civilian nuclear program, Iran has international law on its side. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty gives signatories "the inalienable right" to peaceful nuclear technologies contingent on not making nuclear explosives. Although Iran has been less than forthcoming about many of its nuclear activities, inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency have not revealed evidence of a nuclear weapons program.

Despite the U.S. government's fears, the president's "WMD Commission" concluded that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little" about Iran. And in August, the Washington Post reported that a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) projects that Iran is about 10 years from having the capability of making nuclear weapons--double the time predicted by earlier estimates.

The new NIE, if correct, provides more time for active engagement. The United States and other international partners should seize the opportunity to work closely with Tehran to ensure that its nuclear program complies with the most rigorous safeguards while preserving its right to perform peaceful nuclear activities. Close involvement also can serve as an important source of data on Iranian nuclear activities and can act as a reality check on U.S. intelligence community estimates.

Such collaboration would open interesting avenues to shape the development of Iran's nuclear program in a positive manner. In the near term, the United States could work with the nuclear industry to provide a steady supply of fresh fuel to Iran through direct contracts with individual companies or through a multinational consortium. (Such a "fuel bank" was recently proposed at an international conference in Moscow.) In parallel to the provision of guaranteed fresh fuel as needed, Iran would implement part of its own proposed agreement with the European Union to restrict the number of enrichment centrifuges it operates for research purposes.

A key to successful implementation, however, is to enhance the monitoring of Iranian enrichment facilities. Unfortunately, the United States is ill-prepared for this task, since efforts to improve safeguards technologies have languished. Safeguards techniques include video surveillance to monitor daily activities at a nuclear facility, satellite imagery analysis to assess movements to and from a country's nuclear sites, and environmental sampling to determine what types of nuclear materials are present at a facility. In a May report titled "Nuclear Power and Proliferation Resistance: Securing Benefits, Limiting Risk," the American Physical Society found that less than $5 million was devoted to such research and development in fiscal 2005.

No technology is proliferation-proof, but more can be done to make nuclear technology proliferation-resistant. To that end, the American Physical Society recommends that the United States "expand efforts in international technical collaborations" with an eye toward "designing safeguards directly into critical nuclear systems." Probably the most effective built-in safeguards technologies are "use-control" systems that would automatically shut down a facility if a violation occurs. (For example, a use-control system could stop operation of a uranium enrichment plant if highly enriched, bomb-usable uranium is produced.) Iran's nuclear program could be a valuable test bed for such enhanced safeguards. And increased transparency would yield important diplomatic benefits by minimizing the distrust that currently characterizes Tehran's relationship with the United States and other countries.

Over the long term, if confidence builds that Iran is fully complying with more rigorous safeguards--and if Iran's nuclear energy needs continue to grow--the United States and its international partners can assist Iran with developing next-generation fuel cycles that have built-in proliferation-resistant technologies. One such option would be to spike low-enriched uranium hexafluoride with thorium. If the spiked material is introduced into an enrichment plant to make highly enriched uranium, as opposed to the low-enriched uranium used for nuclear fuel, the presence of radioactive thorium would sound an alarm.

To make all this happen, the nuclear industry has to play an essential role. Some industry officials are gradually coming around to the concept that proliferation is bad for business because a well-publicized diversion of commercial nuclear technology into a military program would likely hurt sales. However, the industry has yet to make proliferation-resistance a top priority in all new fuel-cycle technologies under development.

Critics would likely label our proposal as appeasement. Rather than being starry-eyed Neville Chamberlains proclaiming nuclear "peace in our time" with Iran, we would hinge implementation of our initiative on Iran agreeing to rigorous, continuous monitoring of their nuclear program through active involvement with the United States and the European Union. Only by keeping our enemy closer can we increase confidence that Iran is living up to its commitments.

January 18, 2006 at 11:47 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

West battles to pull Iran's leader back from Judgment Day bomb

West battles to pull Iran's leader back from Judgement Day bomb - Sunday Times - Times Online

Sarah Baxter, Washington and Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv

WHEN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the United Nations for the first time last September, he had a mystical, out of body experience. On his return to Iran he said: “One of our group told me that when I started to say, ‘In the name of the God, the almighty and merciful’, he saw a light around me and I was placed inside this aura.”

Sheer flattery? Not according to the Iranian president. “I felt it myself,” he continued.

“I felt the atmosphere suddenly change and for those 27 or 28 minutes the leaders of the world did not blink . . . They were rapt. It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.”

Ahmadinejad is said to believe in the return of the 12th imam, the Mahdi, who will restore peace and justice at the end of the world.

Middle Eastern commentators have noted the delicious irony of having two sparring, devout leaders — President George W Bush and Ahmadinejad — who believe in the second coming of a messiah on judgment day. But only the Iranian leader has vowed to “wipe” another nation, Israel, off the map, adding an apocalyptic air of menace to his country’s quest to acquire supposedly peaceful nuclear power.

Iran’s decision to break the UN seals at its nuclear enrichment plant in Natanz last week has placed the international community in a quandary.

Was it a shrewd piece of Iranian realpolitik designed to win approval at home and to spread fear abroad, or the actions of an Islamic fanatic and avowed Holocaust denier obsessed with destroying the Jewish state? And whatever the Iranian president’s motivation, can he be stopped?

Bush is expected to invite Ehud Olmert, the acting Israeli prime minister, to Washington next month for talks on Iran. The timing is sensitive. Israel goes to the polls in March and it would be bad form for the White House to give the successor to Ariel Sharon an apparent electoral boost. But the Iranian threat is considered so serious that Bush may not want to wait.

Before the massive stroke that left him in a coma, Sharon had declared: “Israel will not accept a nuclear weapon equipped Iran.” He had quietly ordered the Israeli Defence Forces to be ready to launch airstrikes against nuclear sites in the Islamic republic if necessary.

“The whole issue is now with the Americans,” said an Israeli defence source. “Once we get the green light, we’re ready.”

For now the light has stalled on amber. Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, chastised Iran last week for its “dangerous defiance” and warned that “the president of the United States never takes any of his options off the table”. She added, however, that diplomacy was the best way to solve the crisis: “If the international community stays united, it has a chance to work.”

The European Union Three (EU3) of Britain, France and Germany spent 2½ years trying to coax Iran into a “grand bargain” whereby it would be welcomed into the community of nations with trade and technology sweeteners in exchange for suspending its nuclear programme.

That policy lies in ruins after the election of Ahmadinejad in June radically changed the political calculus.

Meeting in Berlin last week it took less than an hour for Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and his French and German counterparts to agree that talks with Iran had reached a “dead end”. It was time, they concluded, for the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation board of governors to refer the matter to the UN security council.

That was the easy part, confirmed over tea and biscuits. Whether sanctions will be imposed on Iran remains a matter of intense debate and negotiation. If they are, the Iranians have vowed to raise the stakes further by ending unannounced inspections and other co-operation with the agency.

In Tehran yesterday a defiant Ahmadinejad accused the West of hypocrisy and arrogance. “They think they have the power and want to deprive Iran of its rights,” he declared. Iran would not compromise “one iota” but insisted that it was seeking only to develop nuclear energy.

It is a claim greeted with scepticism by western experts who believe that Iran has plentiful supplies of fuel for its nuclear reactor at Bushehr without conducting uranium enrichment, a process that can produce either low-grade reactor fuel or the highly enriched material needed to make a nuclear bomb.

The next round of diplomacy opens tomorrow in London when senior EU3 officials will meet their counterparts from Washington, Moscow and Beijing at the Foreign Office. Top of the agenda will be an attempt to persuade the Russians and the Chinese, who have veto powers at the UN, to agree to a common front against Iran.

“We want to reassure them about what we intend to do at the next stage,” said a Foreign Office official. But there is no unanimity on the best course of action; nor is it obvious who will emerge the ultimate victor in the showdown between the Iranians and the West.

The EU3’s decision to recommend Iran’s referral to the security council should be a moment of vindication for the Americans, who have sought for years to persuade the Europeans that there is no point in dallying with the Iranians. As long ago as 2001 the neo-conservative hawk Richard Perle, then a senior adviser to the Pentagon, had accused Straw of “grovelling” to the mullahs.

Perle’s opinion of British and European negotiating efforts has not improved. “They’ll still be talking when the Iranians detonate their first bomb,” he said last week. “Ahmadinejad’s rantings are deeply rooted in an apocalyptic concept of the 12th imam which welcomes mass destruction. We may think it’s crazy, but the question is whether the Iranians are capable of acting on this madness. I’d rather not take the risk.”

Yet as Perle readily admits, much has changed in America in the past couple of years. “The (Bush) administration has become paralysed. It’s lost all clear sense of direction with regard to Iran and is all too content not to face difficult decisions,” he said.

In other words, as Straw said last week: “To quote the White House, Iran is not Iraq.”

There was a time when American officials boasted of “turning right after we march to Baghdad” — towards Tehran. The toppling of Saddam Hussein in Iraq was supposed to be a warning to the remaining members of the “axis of evil”, Iran and North Korea, that nuclear proliferation was a fool’s game. Instead, Iran has been able to thumb its nose at the West while America struggles to prevent civil war in Iraq.

It is more commonly said in Washington these days that America does not have to worry about Iran because, if push comes to shove, Israel will do the dirty work needed to stop the Iranians from acquiring an “Islamic” bomb. But will it?

Some Israelis have declared themselves willing to shoulder the burden. “We should attack and we are capable of completing the job,” said General Uzi Dayan, former head of Israel’s national security council, last week. “Iran is an imminent danger to Israel.”

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, has backed the destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities, although Olmert’s Kadima party looks the more likely election winner.

At the Hatzerim air base on the edge of the Negev desert, the elite 69 strategic F-15 I squadron is ready to attack. Months of preparations have been completed and the young pilots have finished training for the long-haul flights that will be necessary to reach Iran and back without refuelling.

The planes, costing £60m each, are equipped with secret state-of-the-art weaponry and precision bombs that have yet to be tested in battle.

Two submarines capable of launching cruise missiles are on standby: one hidden in the depths of the Persian Gulf, the other stationed in the Israeli port of Haifa. In an attack they will be used to receive high quality signal intelligence.

Israel’s elite special forces are also prepared for their role — flying into Iran by helicopter to sabotage the underground targets that cannot be bombed from the air.

That Israel has a plan of action surprises nobody, but it is a long way from pressing the start key. Its air force successfully bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 but, mindful of the lessons of that attack, the mullahs have dispersed their nuclear sites around Iran. There are thought to be at least 40 targets, some buried deep in the ground.

“What we now have is a lot of targets, which makes the operation much more difficult,” said Ze’ev Raz, the former pilot who led the attack on Osirak.

It is inconceivable that the Israelis could strike without the support of the Americans. “The reality is that it would have to be a sponsored mission because the Israelis would have to fly across Iraqi or Turkish air space,” said a senior British defence official.

“Then there is the question of retaliation. Iran has got ballistic missiles and some chemical weapons. What would happen if they used them?”

A wave of terrorism could be unleashed against Israeli and Jewish targets. On Israel’s southern border with Lebanon, Iran’s Hezbollah allies could fire off rockets — although, as with Osirak, there would be plenty of Arab nations relieved that Iran had been de-fanged.

The consequences, however, are so unpredictable that Perle believes it would be safer for America to take on the job itself. “If the only credible solution to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons is an airstrike to destroy their facilities, we are far better able to do it than the Israelis. The worst thing would be to attack and not succeed.”

If Olmert comes to Washington next month, Bush is certain to warn him against acting precipitately. “Our working assumption is that the Americans will try to pour water on our military plans,” said an Israeli defence source.

One of the questions uppermost in the policymakers’ minds is the state of public opinion in Iran. It is overwhelmingly likely that an attack would inflame people against the American “Great Satan” and Israel.

Not only would Iranian national pride be wounded; civilian casualties could also provoke fury at a time when pro-western sentiment in Iran had been on the rise.

For Perle, the correct strategy is obvious: hold off military action for now and extend vigorous support to the internal opposition in Iran. As he sees it: “There’s nothing being done there. We’re giving the mullahs a free ride.”

Mounting international pressure on Iran could test the unity of the Islamic regime and the Iranian people. The son of an ironworker, Ahmadinejad’s humble background and simple lifestyle have won him the respect of many of the poorest Iranians, who still hope he will fulfil election promises to fight unemployment and corruption.

The country’s political elites, although aghast at his gaucheness, mostly support his nuclear policy out of national pride. “Ahmadinejad is using the nuclear question to play to the domestic gallery,” said a Foreign Office official. “He has revived the sentiments of the 1980s. That’s his philosophy.”

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, has been one of Ahmadinejad’s most outspoken critics but he has remained silent on the nuclear issue. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran who has the final say on all matters, is said to favour Ahmadinejad’s uncompromising stance.

Some reformists are concerned by Iran’s defiance of world opinion. Mohammad Reza Khatami, the younger brother of Ahmadinejad’s predecessor as president, believes that the country should not risk international isolation.

“It’s impossible to put very strict and broad sanctions in place against Iran. The world is not unified and it needs Iran’s oil,” said Khatami. “But it is important that Iranians feel they are part of the world and their isolation would have a very heavy effect on them.”

How to put pressure on the regime without punishing its citizens is a vexing question for the security council. One idea floated last week was to ban Iran from the World Cup, for which the country has qualified for the first time.

“It would give a very clear signal to Iran that the international community will not accept what they are doing,” said Michael Ancram, the Conservative MP.

That was not the view from the terraces in Tehran on Friday, where the Iranian team Persepolis was playing Germany’s Bayern Munich in front of a home crowd for the first time since 1972. Many fans expressed relief that the German team had ignored the political fallout over the nuclear issue and turned up to play.

In London, Straw soon rejected the idea anyway, saying he was “not certain” that sports sanctions would help. “Sports sanctions hurt the people, not the regime,” said a spokesman.

Other suggestions for sanctions include blocking travel visas for the political elite and halting Iran’s application for membership of the World Trade Organisation.

China — Iran’s top oil importer, with burgeoning energy needs — is likely to veto all but the mildest of diplomatic sanctions. “It would be a replay of the Iraq debate,” said one western diplomat gloomily.

Only last month a high-level Chinese delegation slipped into Tehran for talks on an oil and gas deal worth more than $57 billion. The two nations also have military links stretching back to the Iran-Iraq war.

The Russians are furious that their attempt to play the go- between with Iran and the West has gone nowhere. They had hoped that Ahmadinejad would take up their offer to enrich uranium in Russia for Iran’s civilian needs. His humiliating lack of interest led to some unusually sharp criticism of the Iranians last week.

Even so, it is highly doubtful that President Vladimir Putin would support stringent sanctions jeopardising Moscow’s huge economic and strategic interests in the region. Even the French and Germans have warned that economic sanctions are “premature”.

As a first step, the UN security council president is likely to issue a stern statement condemning Iran, a move likely to be interpreted in Tehran as a sign of western weakness. The pressure will then be increased by degrees but it is a risky gambit that will allow Iran to continue its nuclear work.

The Israelis believe that time is running out. Its nuclear scientists claim that Iran is fast approaching the “point of no return” when it will have the technical expertise to enrich uranium to bomb-grade purity.

According to a study by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, Iran will be three years away from producing a nuclear bomb if it can feed the uranium through 1,000 centrifuges that it hopes to operate at Natanz. A 50,000-centrifuge plant being built nearby could hasten the process considerably.

The 2½ years of talks with the Iranians have already sped by. By the time the talking stops, Iran may have the know-how to build what the rest of the world dreads: an “Islamic” bomb.

Additional reporting: Michael Sheridan, Bangkok, Mark Franchetti, Moscow, Tom Walker and Flora Bagenal

Where sanctions have succeeded and failed

The easiest sanctions the United Nations security council could impose on Iran would be travel restrictions on members of the Tehran theocracy and a freeze on assets held abroad. But any sanctions affecting trade and investment would probably be vetoed by China and Russia, given their reliance on energy deals with Iran. An oil embargo is extremely unlikely.

If the UN fails to agree on measures, the European Union could impose its own sanctions. These would probably mirror those applied to Zimbabwe and would include a travel ban and an assets freeze, plus a halt to investment and exploration.

Whatever the eventual package, sanctions have an extremely mixed record and have rarely proved effective.

Among cases where sanctions have worked without military force are:

Libya 1992-99

An arms embargo, assets freeze, flight bans and a ban on imports of oil equipment led the Gadaffi regime eventually to hand over the Lockerbie bombing suspects; later it gave up its nuclear research programme.

South Africa 1974-94

Arms embargo and ban on cultural and sporting links helped to end apartheid.

Instances where sanctions largely failed and regimes were overthrown by military intervention include:

Iraq 1990-2003

Comprehensive sanctions prevented Saddam Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction but caused widespread suffering. Saddam was removed by the US-led invasion in 2003.

Yugoslavia 1992-96

Comprehensive sanctions may have increased Slobodan Milosevic’s popularity at home. Nato’s bombing in 1999 pressured the Serbian population into pushing him from office.

Afghanistan 1999-2002

Despite aviation and financial sanctions, the Taliban regime continued to shelter Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden until US attacks ended its rule.

In Somalia, Liberia, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Eritrea and Ethiopia in the 1990s, embargoes proved useless in ending fighting and the black market in small calibre arms.

January 15, 2006 at 04:10 PM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Bush: Iran's 'grave threat' to global security

Iran threatens to cut links with nuclear watchdog - World - Times Online

By Simon Freeman and agencies

President Bush said today that the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran was unnacceptable and posed a "grave threat" to global security.

Appearing at a White House press conference following talks with Angela Merkel, on her first visit to Washington as German Chancellor, the President condemned what he said were Tehran's clandestine attempts to gain nuclear expertise through the guise of a civilian programme.

"The development of know-h