Category: Iran

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.