Gavin's Blog

Normally when I find interesting articles I bookmark them in Firefox for addition to my blog later. Last Saturday I added an article from the IHT titled “Blair backs possible UN action on Iran”. The said article appears to have disappeared. It is now titled “Iran court frees a top dissident“. A quick search for the original title on Google led me back to the same changed piece – but also to some other AP releases on the Guardian website.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that Iran should be referred to the U.N. Security Council if it breaches its nuclear obligations, while Tehran vowed to resume some activities that can be part of the process of making nuclear weapons.

I can’t figure out why the frontpage story from the IHT was shifted.

Over at the UN, Iran is not too happy with the US – what’s new.

Iran has escalated its war of words with the US over Tehran’s nuclear programme, calling Washington’s arsenal a major threat to global peace. Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi demanded assurances that the US would not launch a nuclear strike on Iran. And he rejected a call from President George Bush for non-nuclear nations to be denied access to nuclear technology. The US fears Iran is trying to build nuclear arms. Iran says its nuclear programme is for civilian use only. Mr Kharrazi told a UN conference it was unacceptable for an “exclusive club” of nations to deny nuclear technology to others “under the pretext of non-proliferation”.

And here is how the numbers stack up:

Just in case anyone missed this story, it didn’t figure that highly in the news at the time.

Ukrainian arms dealers smuggled 18 nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in 1999-2001, Ukraine’s prosecutor-general has said. The Soviet-era Kh-55 missiles – also known as X-55s – have a maximum range of 2,500km (1,550 miles). They are launched by long-range bombers. Official Ukrainian state bodies were not involved in the sales, the prosecutor-general’s office said. It added that the missiles were not exported with nuclear warheads.

That would put Tel Aviv well in the range of Tehran.

Also in Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Pollack, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow in Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations write about Iran. It’s quite a long piece, but here’s some of the introduction to get you hooked:

The hard part, of course, is making sure that Tehran never gets to that point. It appears to have made considerable progress in many aspects of its nuclear program, thanks to extensive assistance from Chinese, Germans, Pakistanis, Russians, and perhaps North Koreans. Iran’s clerical regime has also shown itself willing to endure considerable sacrifices to achieve its most important objectives.

Yet there is reason to believe that Tehran’s course can still be changed, if Washington takes advantage of the regime’s vulnerabilities. Although Iran’s hard-line leadership has maintained a remarkable unity of purpose in the face of reformist challengers, it is badly fragmented over key foreign policy issues, including the importance of nuclear weapons. At one end of the spectrum are the hardest of the hard-liners, who disparage economic and diplomatic considerations and put Iran’s security concerns ahead of all others. At the opposite end are pragmatists, who believe that fixing Iran’s failing economy must trump all else if the clerical regime is to retain power over the long term. In between these camps waver many of Iran’s most important power brokers, who would prefer not to have to choose between bombs and butter.

This split provides an opportunity for the United States, and its allies in Europe and Asia, to forge a new strategy to derail Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons. The West should use its economic clout to strengthen the hand of Iranian pragmatists, who could then argue for slowing, limiting, or shelving Tehran’s nuclear program in return for the trade, aid, and investment that Iran badly needs. Only if the mullahs recognize that they have a stark choice–they can have nuclear weapons or a healthy economy, but not both–might they give up their nuclear dreams. With concern over Iran’s nuclear aspirations growing, the United States and its allies now have a chance to present Iran with just such an ultimatum.

It looks like US intelligence on Iran is not up to scratch:

A commission due to report to President Bush this month will describe American intelligence on Iran as inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran’s weapons programs, according to people who have been briefed on the panel’s work.

The report comes as intelligence agencies prepare a new formal assessment on Iran, and follows a 14-month review by the panel, which Mr. Bush ordered last year to assess the quality of overall intelligence about the proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

The Bush administration has been issuing increasingly sharp warnings about what it says are Iran’s efforts to build nuclear weapons. The warnings have been met with firm denials in Tehran, which says its nuclear program is intended purely for civilian purposes.

Michael Ledeen’s recent article in National Review came up in conversation with some people on Friday night. I found the article through a Roger Simon’s blog, who believes this is something the blogosphere should get behind. Ledeen’s suggestion:

The great political battlefield in the Middle East is, as it has been all along, Iran, the mother of modern terrorism, the creator of Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and the prime mover of Hamas. When the murderous mullahs fall in Tehran, the terror network will splinter into its component parts, and the jihadist doctrine will be exposed as the embodiment of failed lies and misguided messianism.

The instrument of their destruction is democratic revolution, not war, and the first salvo in the political battle of Iran is national referendum. Let the Iranian people express their desires in the simplest way possible: “Do you want an Islamic republic?” Send Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel to supervise the vote. Let the contending parties compete openly and freely, let newspapers publish, let radios and televisions broadcast, fully supported by the free nations. If the mullahs accept this gauntlet, I have every confidence that Iran will be on the path to freedom within months. If, fearing a massive rejection from their own people, the tyrants of Tehran reject a free referendum and reassert their repression, then the free nations will know it is time to deploy the full panoply of pressure to enable the Iranians to gain their freedom.

I just can’t see the mullahs accepting that gauntlet. I think they would rather silence and imprison some bloggers.

Things are getting very serious with Iran, sooner than I expected. It looks like the Iranians may be throwing down the gauntlet to Bush and Sharon. I do like the double speak from Khatami:

“We give our guarantee that we will not produce nuclear weapons because we’re against them and do not believe they are a source of power,” Mr Khatami told foreign ambassadors in Tehran.

Not a source of power? Well that depends on the kind of power you are talking about Mr. Khatami.

Perhaps the diplomatic tool that Rice is talking are the same ones used before the invasion of Iraq. On the question of an attack:”The question is simply not on the agenda at this point in time.”

Rumours of US special forces in Iran may well be true – and rumour also has it that SAS forces may be deployed to the region soon. Iran is threading a very fine line, and on the back of Bush’s STOU speech, is top of the hitlist. The tacit encouragement of pro-democracy sections within Iranian society by Bush could be hinting at something greater – a want by the administration to see UN sanctions imposed, once European negotiations fail. Sanctions could well encourage an armed uprising, exactly what the US wants, or it may not. If Iran continues to pursue an arms program then either the US or Israel will lose patience within 2005, and air strikes at the very least could result.

Am I the only one that thinks that maybe, just maybe, European countries will be portrayed as the bad guys once negotiations fail, or that they may be sabotaged by the US because of an impatient need for military action?

Steve Clemons mentions a piece about the probing of Iran’s missile defences.

The flights, which have been going on for weeks, are being launched from sites in Afghanistan and Iraq and are part of Bush administration attempts collect badly needed intelligence on Iran’s possible nuclear weapons development sites, these sources said, speaking on condition of strict anonymity.

“These Iranian air defense positions are not just being observed, they’re being ‘templated,’” an administration official said, explaining that the flights are part of a U.S. effort to develop “an electronic order of battle for Iran” in case of actual conflict.

In the event of an actual clash, Iran’s air defense radars would be targeted for destruction by air-fired U.S. anti-radiation or ARM missiles, he said.

It seems pretty likely that this would be happening on an ongoing basis. Satellite technology will only go so far in tracking down SA-7 or SA-9 missile systems, especically mobile or well hidden ones. But once one is turned active it will immediately be known.

In fact missiles like the HARM missile mentioned depend on the radar being active in order to find their target. And other missiles have been developed that are even better. European weapons companies developed a missile that would fire at an active radar system, and the enemy, realising that a missile may be on its way, would turn off their radar systems. The missile would react by climbing up to a high altitude, deploying a parachute, and wait for the radar system to come back on – then it would eject the parachute and kill the target.

It looks like Israel is getting pretty pissed off.

“This problem should be of concern to the whole world and not just Israel.”

Mr Peres, widely regarded as the father of Israel’s secretive nuclear deterrent, dampened suggestions that Israel was planning pre-emptive strikes against Iran, as hinted by Mr Cheney.

“The party that will decide is the United States,” Mr Peres said.

“If we go it alone, we will remain alone. Everyone knows our potential but we also have to know our limits.

“As long as there is a possibility that the world will organise to fight against Iran’s nuclear option, let the world organise.”

Anyone got odds on Israel striking Iran in 2005?

Events in Iran will come to the fore this week, but already some big news from the country. The IAEA will meet tomorrow to discuss the situation in Iran. It is reported that Iran has announced it plans to start processing 37 tons of uranium yellowcake, Western intelligence officials have estimated that amount of the processed uranium could build five nuclear bombs.

Meanwhile in an apparent show of force, to ward off any possible invasion by US forces, hundreds of thousands of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards began military maneuvers Sunday near the border with Iraq, with a top commander saying the exercise was designed to reinforce Iran’s resolve to defend itself against “big powers.”

We shall have to see what course of action the US take through the UN.

Just came across this interview from July, with the UK Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. He makes some curious points.

Well Israel, India and Pakistan are not signatories to the Non Proliferation Treaty. We want and very powerfully committed to a nuclear free Middle East but that has to happen in order. We now have a nuclear free Mahgreb with the decision by the leader of Libya to abandon their nuclear weapons’ programme. We also have a nuclear free Iraq. Iran and, and I have made this point on a number of occasions to President Khatami of Iran also needs to abandon its aggressive stance towards Israel. The fact that for example on national day parades they have three missiles with the legend written in English on the side death to Israel. Now this aggressive stance to Israel is bound to mean that Israel is going to take or seek to take steps to protect itself from annihilation.

And:

Well no one’s threatening Iran’s territorial integrity, no one is saying that Iran should not exist. Israel’s territorial integrity I’m afraid is threatened. I don’t happen to approve of a lot of the actions which the government of Israel takes and I make that very clear but I also say that if you want a nuclear free Middle East then you have to ensure that first of all it is the Arab and Islamic countries which remove their threat to Israel and then we can put a great deal more pressure on Israel to abandon its undoubted nuclear weapons’ programme which has been there whether people like it or not for defensive purposes. But I also just make this point because Iran is in rather paradoxical position. On the one hand as you say it may feel threatened by the presence of American, United Kingdom and other coalition troops on both its eastern and its western borders in Afghanistan and in Iraq but the paradox of our liberation of Afghanistan and our liberation of Iraq from Saddam is actually to make the Iranian position much stronger. Before they were threatened by Iraq and to a degree by the instability in Afghanistan.

But perhaps most curiously:

No one has any intention of launching military action against Iran. Iran has said itself that it does not want nuclear weapons nor in terms of regional stability does it have any reasons to acquire them or build up a programme for them.

The fact that Iran is now bordered with two countries recently invaded by Western powers is an interesting one. I reckon we might see an effort by the US to see the regime in Iran fall, without the use of US forces to any large degree – they are pretty stretched as it is. But the use of Rumsfeld’s much loved light and quick special forces would also be a distinct possibility to halt the construction of Iranian nuclear facilities.