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Change you can’t beleive in
The auguries are poor that President Obama will engage in a significant shift of policy toward Iran in the first months of his new Administration. As noted by Glenn Greenwald in Salon, his recent public statements reflect that he has fully signed on the mainstream rejection of the 2007 NIE’s statement that Iran was not currently engaging in a nuclear weapons program. Instead, together with the overwhelming sentiment in Congress, Obama takes as a given that Iran is moving as quickly toward the development of atomic weapons as is feasibly possible despite years of IAEA inspections on the ground. All this happens even though there has been no hard evidence to back up this claim.
President-elect Barack Obama in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
Iran is going to be one of our biggest challenges and as I said during the campaign we have a situation in which not only is Iran exporting terrorism through Hamas, through Hezbollah but they are pursuing a nuclear weapon that could potentially trigger a nuclear arms race.
The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, the consensus opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies:
We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.
Naturally, Stephanopolous asked Obama — as any competent, professional journalist would — to explain why he disagreed with the findings of the intelligence community and of the international inspectors on the ground:
STEPHANOPOULOS: And you have to do something about it in your first year.
So it goes. There’s usually no shortage of people willing to defend Obama’s statements and explain what he really means.
This attitude dangerously parallels President Kennedy’s view of Cuba when he took office in January 1961 as a Soviet satellite. This unthinking, uncritical view caused Kennedy to sign off on the disastrous Bay of Pigs adventure later in 1961, which in turn precipitated the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Kaveh Afrasiabi identifies the problem as on of “centrality”, namely a dominant hegemonistic view toward Middle Eastern issues and events in a some hypothetical “even handed” but ultimately favoring the status quo , free markets and resource domination, and established order. Afrasiabi reviews the December 2008 Brookings Institute publication Restoring the Balance which was critiqued in this blog a number of weeks ago, and reaches the same conclusions. Apart from acknowledging that some incremental, non-punitive diplomacy with Iran is now in order, there is nothing in this latest mainstream ‘moderate’ study that challenges the fundamental American mid-set that the Islamic Republic is developing a nuclear weapon and exporting terrorism.
However, the trouble is that beyond the semantics of “reorientation” and “major adjustments”, there is little to suggest that the proposed strategies contain the necessary ingredients in terms of their content to match their seductive appearance; the book’s title is a misnomer and the centrality attached to Iran’s nuclear and other threats reflects an unreconstructed diplomatic mindset that, if implemented by the next president, will inevitably culminate in the extension of the present status quo of stalemated relations between US and Iran for the foreseeable future.
The authors’ self-checkmating of their noble effort to instigate a sea change in Middle East policy is mainly due to the common theme that binds the chapters, the primacy of Iran’s threat, as a result of which the entire edifice of “new diplomacy” or “game-changing diplomacy” falls by the wayside and gets devoured by the corrosive influence of diplomatic atrophy; this even applies to the contribution by Ray Takeyh, who espouses the lofty notion of a US-Iran rapprochement. Takeyh’s recycling of the other authors’ Iranophobic false assumption that Tehran is on the march toward nuclear weapons, and thus represents a clear and present danger of nuclear proliferation, ultimately undermines his arguments in favor of rapprochement.
But the blame for the rather egregious shortcoming of this book, giving it a distinct alarmist flavor, belongs to the lead authors, Richard Haass and Martin Indyk, whose adamant calls for “renewed emphasis on diplomacy as a tool of American foreign policy” is ill-matched with their blatant Iranophobia: “By the time the next president enters the Oval Office the hands of Iran’s nuclear clock will be approaching midnight.” This leads the authors to advise the next US president to pursue the “military option” that “should be explored closely for what it could accomplish”. Sound familiar?
Haass and Indyk naturally do not limit themselves to Iran’s nuclear threat and, instead, perceive this as part of a broader Iranian “challenge to the existing order”. They blame the Bush administration’s “mishandling of Iraq and Afghanistan” that has ostensibly “opened the door to an Iranian bid for regional primacy”, accuse Iran of following a hegemonic “my way works” policy and promise that if the next president listens to their advice then “considerable American influence can be recouped” and the US president will be “able to say that ‘America’s way works”.
Clearly, the book’s intention is to restore American hegemony in the Middle East and design a better strategy for dealing with the native anti-hegemonic forces in the region.
This is rather unfortunate and quite simply will not help US national interests that are currently bedeviled by the pursuit of hegemonic policies in the Middle East and beyond. Washington requires a post-hegemonic worldview at the White House, not the neo-hegemonic attitude put forward by the likes of Haass and Indyk, prescriptions that in the final analysis are a recipe for disaster. For instance, the necessity of furthering the Middle East peace process and addressing the Palestinian “issue” has been relegated behind the top priority status assigned to the Iran threat. And what exactly does the nature of this threat consist of? Answer: Iran’s “breakout capability”, the fact that Tehran is on the verge of being “capable of producing large amounts of weapons grade fuel”. In turn, this raises a pertinent question: does Iran’s latent potential represent a grave threat when there are objective mechanisms in place that tie its hands and restrict its ability to turn manifest or reach its latent potential?
Unfortunately, neither Haass nor Indyk nor Gary Samore, another contributor who is a vocal voice of the anti-Iran lobby group United Against Nuclear Iran, bother with such questions. The failure to do so undermines their false assumptions about Iran’s breakout capability. Nor do they bother to delve into the specifics of Iran-International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) cooperation, or the fact that, per the admission of an IAEA official quoted in a recent report by Anthony Cordesman and Khalid Al-Rodham, “the biggest smoking gun that anyone was waving is now eliminated” as per the conclusions of the recent Work Plan that addressed Iran’s six “outstanding issues”.
Add to this the fact that Thomas Fingar, the number two US intelligence official and deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence, has recently admitted, in his interview with the Washington Times, that “I stand by that estimate”, which appeared in the November 2007 US Intelligence Estimate on Iran (NIE). The NIE report stated that Iran’s nuclear program has been peaceful since 2003 and that “Iran has not diverted its nuclear activities to a nuclear program.”
Fingar should receive a medal of honor for his bravery, standing up to all the heat applied on the US intelligence community to either recant or revise its conclusion. Thus another question: why didn’t the NIE report cite Iran’s uranium enrichment activities as evidence of weapons proliferation, just as a number of US pundits such as Henry Kissinger, who has criticized the NIE report precisely on this point, have done?
The answer is straightforward. In the absence of any smoking gun or evidence of military diversion, no US intelligence official in his or her right mind could appease Kissinger and others in light of the legality of Iran’s nuclear program under the articles of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But, perhaps, with Fingar stepping down, we must await a worse replacement, someone willing to stoop below the NPT standards and flat out accuse Iran of engaging in nuclear proliferation due to its mere involvement in enrichment activities. If so, then this would be nothing short of another giant step backward for US diplomacy, much as it may satisfy the likes of Haass and Indyk.
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Festival of lights
Iran’s Press TV is covering the Gaza war 24/7, although it is hampered by Israeli press restrictions which has denied nearly all foreign press from entering the war zone. Despite the fact that Press (like everyone else) is reduced to a collection of talking heads, it is a rare shaft of light in the near-total darkness of the media. It appears that Israel has taken a leaf from the US’ press playbook in the 2003 Iraqi war and pushing it to the limit, forcing the press to take up residence on a hillock many miles from Gaza City. Apart from occasional flashes and smoke, there is not much to see. Aljazeera’s normally good in-the-trenches coverage is likewise hampered by the absolute cone of silence that Israel has imposed. This is the new, 21st century Israel – no press, nowhere, unless you want our side of the story.
In the US, Israel has won the propaganda war hands down. Today’s New York Times on page one shows a colour picture of tired Israeli soldiers, while the Gazans are relegated deep inside section A. So it goes. Yesterday’s editorial by Thomas Friedman (“The Mideast’s Ground Zero”) clinched the US discussion by again casting the Gaza war as an intricate geopolitical chess game between Israel, the US and Iran. Friedman is the moderate’s intellectual, and actually cites history (most don’t) but in the process erroneously reverts to a “great game” view of the Middle East with to little regard for the fate of the masses who live there. His views are likely to hold much sway in the Obama White House.
Today’s main events are two: a missile attack from Lebanon upon Israel, and the pullout of UNRWA from Gaza after repeated Israeli attacks on UNRWA buildings, personnel and aid convoys. Since UNRWA is one of the last of the so-called neutral institutions in Gaza, another light in the ghetto is being stilled. I will posit that UNRWA is being deliberately targeted by Israel for just this reason, not only to maximize pain but to silence witnesses to the carnage.
The missile attack brought forth the expected “Iran launches second front!” headlines in the West, but it remains unclear who launched the Katyusha rockets. Press TV is denying it was Hezbollah. Israel has retailiated with its own bombardment.
Lights in the West
Not everyone in the US has joined the pro-war pile on. Here is a sample to hold out hope:.
”Neoconservatism dies in Gaza,” by Juan Cole in Salon:
“The Gaza War of 2009 is a final and eloquent testimony to the complete failure of the neoconservative movement in United States foreign policy. For over a decade, the leading figures in this school of thought saw the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the institution of a parliamentary regime in Iraq as the magic solution to all the problems in the Middle East. They envisioned, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, the moderation of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the overthrow of the Baath Party in Syria and the Khomeinist regime in Iran, the deepening of the alliance with Turkey, the marginalization of Saudi Arabia, a new era of cheap petroleum, and a final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on terms favorable to Israel. After eight years in which they strode the globe like colossi, they have left behind a devastated moonscape reminiscent of some post-apocalyptic B movie. As their chief enabler prepares to exit the White House, the only nation they have strengthened is Iran; the only alliance they have deepened is that between Iran and two militant Islamist entities to Israel’s north and south, Hezbollah and Hamas.”
Professor Richard Falk’s “Understanding the Gaza catastophe”, reprinted at the Huffington Post:
”The people of Gaza are victims of geopolitics at its inhumane worst: producing what Israel itself calls a ‘total war’ against an essentially defenseless society that lacks any defensive military capability whatsoever and is completely vulnerable to Israeli attacks mounted by F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters. What this also means is that the flagrant violation of international humanitarian law, as set forth in the Geneva Conventions, is quietly set aside while the carnage continues and the bodies pile up. It additionally means that the UN is once more revealed to be impotent when its main members deprive it of the political will to protect a people subject to unlawful uses of force on a large scale. Finally, this means that the public can shriek and march all over the world, but that the killing will go on as if nothing is happening. The picture being painted day by day in Gaza is one that begs for renewed commitment to international law and the authority of the UN Charter, starting here in the United States, especially with a new leadership that promised its citizens change, including a less militarist approach to diplomatic leadership.”
Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s statement on Gaza on December 29, 2008:
“Today I sent a letter to Secretary General Ban ki-Moon urging the United Nations to establish an independent inquiry of Israel’s war against Gaza. The attacks on civilians represent collective punishment, which is a violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm). The perpetrators of attacks against Israel must also be brought to justice, but Israel cannot create a war against an entire people in order to attempt to bring to justice the few who are responsible. The Israeli leaders know better. The world community, which has been very supportive of Israel’s right to security and its right to survive, also has a right to expect Israel to conduct itself in adherence to the very laws which support the survival of Israel and every other nation,” Kucinich said.“Israel is leveling Gaza to strike at Hamas, just as they pulverized south Lebanon to strike at Hezbollah. Yet in both cases civilian populations were attacked, countless innocents killed or injured, infrastructure targeted and destroyed, and civil law enforcement negated. All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law. Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable. It is time for the UN to not just call for a cease-fire, but for an inquiry as to Israel’s actions.”According to published news reports, since the commencement of aerial strikes, over 300 Palestinians have been killed and approximately 1,400 have been wounded. The dead include 20 children under the age of 16–nearly half of them killed while on a school bus, according to the United Nations–and 9 women. The attack aggravated a humanitarian crisis wrought by the Israeli-imposed blockade of food, fuel, and medical supplies. With a population of 1.5 million people, the Gaza Strip is among the most densely populated territories in the world.”
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Not that much doubt should have ever existed, but on Saturday the US threw its full blessing behind Israel’s Gaza offensive by killing off a mildly-worded UN Security Council draft statement that would have urged an immediate cease-fire. At this point, the US stands alone against most of Europe and the rest of the world. According to Toronto’s Globe and Mail:
“The United States thwarted an effort by Libya on Saturday to persuade the United Nations Security Council to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza after Israel launched a ground invasion, diplomats said. French UN Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert, currently Security Council president, told reporters after a closed-door session “there was no agreement, but there [were] serious convergences to express serious concern” about the crisis.
The “convergences” of opinions among council members included the need for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and easing the humanitarian crisis Gazans are in, Mr. Ripert said. British Ambassador John Sawers said he was “very disappointed” about the council’s failure to agree on a statement during Saturday’s 4-hour emergency meeting. Libya, the only Arab member of the council, had circulated a draft statement expressing “serious concern at the escalation of the situation in Gaza, in particular, after the launching of the Israeli ground offensive” and urged all parties “to observe an immediate ceasefire.”
But diplomats said the United States refused to back the Libyan-drafted text and killed the initiative, since council statements must be passed unanimously. Later the United States refused to back a watered-down call for a truce, the diplomats said. The United States, one of five permanent Security Council members, insists that any statement or resolution state that the Palestinian militant group Hamas is a terrorist organization that seized power in Gaza from the legitimate Palestinian Authority. U.S. envoy Alejandro Wolff said there was no point in issuing statements that Hamas, which unilaterally declared an end to a 6-month old ceasefire last month, would ignore.”
American intransigence is certainly facilitated by the non-stop pro-Israeli handwaving in the progressive and liberal camps. There is just something about Palestine, and Hamas in particular, that causes many social progressives to foam at the mouth and excuse Israeli cluster-bombig of civilians in Lebanon, and shelling of children in Gaza. Today, Marty Kaplan, an ordinarily sound thinker, lights up on today’s Huffington Post:
“First I saw a young protester telling a CNN reporter in Trafalgar Square, “Every single day, as soon as we turn on the TV, we see children there die in the hospitals, adults dying, children dying on the floor. Why, why, why? Why do children have to die? Why do innocent children have to die on the floor? Why?”
And I thought, She’s right, those children in Gaza are innocent, every human life is precious, civilians aren’t combatants. Doesn’t everyone deserve basic human rights like food and water and life itself?
But then I thought, Where was she when 80 or 90 Hamas rockets a day were raining down on Israel? Where were all the television cameras when innocent children in Ashkelon and Sderot were being maimed and killed?
But then I saw pictures of massive devastation in Gaza on the front pages of the newspapers, and I thought, What good does it do if Israel appears to act like its enemies?
But then I heard Shimon Peres tell George Stephanopoulos that Hamas “did things which are unprecedented in the history even of terror. They made mosques into headquarters. They put bombs in the kindergartens, in their own homes. They are hiding in hospitals.” Where were all the people of Gaza rising up in outrage when Hamas used them as human shields?
Then I heard Palestinian negotiator Hannan Ashwari say that Gaza was a secondary issue, that the real imperative was to reach a lasting political agreement, not a temporary military outcome, and I thought, She’s right, there will be no peace and security for Israel unless a viable two-state solution is reached.
But then I read a blog by Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg recounting his interview with Nizzar Rayyan, the Hamas leader who was killed by Israeli bombs last week. “This is what he said when I asked him if he could envision a 50-year hudna (or cease-fire) with Israel: ‘The only reason to have a hudna is to prepare yourself for the final battle. We don’t need 50 years to prepare ourselves for the final battle with Israel.’ There is no chance, he said, that true Islam would ever allow a Jewish state to survive in the Muslim Middle East. ‘Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God… You [Jews] are murderers of the prophets and you have closed your ears to the Messenger of Allah…. Jews tried to kill the Prophet, peace be unto him. All throughout history, you have stood in opposition to the word of God.’”
And I thought, How can you negotiate with people who reject your nation’s right to exist, and whose version of religion calls you a murderous race? If someone claimed that the best way for America to deal with Bin Laden is to reach a political agreement with al-Qaeda, I’d say that they’re nuts, that there can be no negotiation or accommodation with people lusting for a final battle to rid your people from the earth.
But then I heard an Arab diplomat railing against Israel’s continuing tolerance of illegal settlements, and I thought, As long as Knesset coalition governments are dependent on ultra-Orthodox parties who have no respect for the law, how can anyone expect Arab moderates to gain enough political power for Israel to negotiate with them, when Israeli moderates can’t muster that clout either?
Then I reminded myself that the people of Gaza overwhelmingly voted for Hamas in a democratic election, and I thought, What good is democracy, if it can put terrorists in charge of governments?
But then I read that tens of thousands of Israeli Arabs in the Israeli town of Sakhnin had rallied against Israel’s Gaza offensive, and I thought, What Middle East nation except Israel would ensure that anti-government protesters had the right to hold such a demonstration?
And then I remembered reading that former Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon warned Israelis not to delude themselves about Israel’s Arab population, that Israeli Arabs – a fifth of Israel – constitute a potential fifth column.
This Broadway Tevye crap (“on this hand… on the other hand…”) has got to stop. There is no equivalence between the Estes hobby rockets popped off by Hamas, and what is happening in Gaza today. It is the same logic which compelled the US to firebomb Japanese cities and atomize two more. Israel is not exempt from international law, the US is not exempt from international law, the law that requires multilateral diplomacy and settlement of disputes except in extremis. Gaza did not just happen, nor did Satan magically descend to become Hamas. Gaza was inhabited by refugees after 1948 and became a ghetto after 1967. Israel ignored UN Resolution 242 and others calling for return to the pre-1967 borders. It created the settlements, and for the last year has imposed a brutal blockade on Gaza. What do we expect under such circumstances?
This is the same two-faced logic that had us intervene in Serbia but not in Darfur or Rwanda. It is ahistorical and illogical, and classic liberals such as Kaplan will foreverwring their hands over ‘bad’ US wars, without ever realizing the cul-de-sacs created by their own way of thinking that got us there.
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The invisible Palestinians
On Saturday the Israeli army began its long awaited ground offensive into the Gaza strip, preceded by a thundering artillery barrage. All of this military activity is taking place in one of the densest urban areas in the world, a ghetto which has been heremetically sealed by Israel.
Western press coverage of the Gaza war confounds and irritates. The New York Times, the ever-faithful bulwark of the Eastern establishment of Cuomo and Clinton, strives to reach the impossible balance of force between Hamas’ homebuilt rockets and Israel’s 21st century overkill. On Saturday, the Gaza conflict was safely tucked inside at page 5 – the very day Merkava tanks swarmed across the border.
The established press is also obsessed with treating the war as one of proxies, in this case, declaring Hamas to be ‘proxy’ of – you guessed it – Iran. Like Lucy, Charlie Brown and the football, Americans have fallen for the proxy argument so many times it would be laughable if not so tragic. The classic example is, of course, Vietnam, in which successive US governments insisted that the indiginous Vietnamese insuregncy was simply a stand-in for Soviet-Chinese masters – a calculated lie uncloaked by the Pentagon Papers.
Media characterisation of a national movement or government as someone else’s proxy seductively reduces the role of the resisting populace to mere puppets. In this case, Hamas – a functioning, elected government – is neutered to yet another geopolitical pawn by some evil Klingon state. The quite reasonable aspirations of the Palestinians to a modicum of self determination, water, food, health care, jobs and movement are ignored.
Case in point is Sunday’s edtorial by Jim Hoagland, a well-heeled ’moderate’ Washington Post correspondent who should have been put to pasture long ago. Entitled “Countering Iran in Gaza and beyond,” leads with the declarative that:
“Israel’s brutal assault on Hamas rocketeers — and the Palestinian civilians among whom they hide in the Gaza Strip — is not just another tactical round of mutual, if unequal, bloodletting by ancient adversaries. Israel’s campaign was skillfully conceived with strategic aims that involve Iran, the American political calendar and perhaps the nature of pan-Arabism today.”
He decries Bush’s incoherent Middle East policy, and offers this prescription:
“In the interim, U.S. policy must concentrate on limiting any political gains the spasm of violence in Gaza could bring for Iran and Syria, which are both happy to fight Israel to the last Palestinian. Israel launched the Gaza operation to disrupt the enervating proxy warfare that Iran wages through Hamas and to demonstrate to Iran that Israel is not a toothless tiger that can be ignored.”
Why is it so difficult for Americans to recognize genuine movements of national determination, instead of reviving visions of toppling dominos all over the world? This is the very question that the late Palestinian scholar Edward Said explored as he dwelled on Western attitudes toward th Middle East, which at its most extreme finds voice in the Zionist explanation of “a people without a land (Jews) for a land without a people (Palestine).” (Film reference: Exodus). Hoagland, Bernard Lewis, and countless others engage in perpetuating Western nostrums on Palestine, namely that Palestinians are (1) congenital terrorists, (2) incapable of self governance, (3) crazed Shi’a fundamentalists (they are actually Sunni), (4) benevolently protected from their worst impulses by a democratic Israel, (5) anti-Semitic, and (6) an incubus of gratuitous evil. (See Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward Said (2001)).
Gaza is in reality one of the world’s largest bantustans, and we are witnessing Israel’s paramount effort to crush a massive prison revolt. The orientalist tendancy in the US and elsewhere to render Palestinians as invisible pawns in some “great game” facilitates Israel’s indiscriminate slaughter of civilians, health care workers, children and elderly. As with the Vietnamese, the Palestinians are relegated to the status of insects in the liberal dialogue.
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Crime against humanity
As the well-to-do in the West put away their holiday trimmings after Boxing Day and rushed to exchange unwanted gifts at the mall, the Isralis launched their most massive aerial attack ever on the unhappy residents of the Gaza ghetto. Earlier asssaults were bad enough, but the indiscriminate character of these raids apparently even have fence-sitters gasping in disbelief. The Israeli objective is quite simple and direct, namely to render Gaza hamas-frei.
A raw CNN feed of the aftermath of one bombing is here.
Aljazeera’s latest mobile bulletin is here. Israel is reportedly massing tanks, and is calling up reservists. UNRA students in Gaza were killed by a bomb strike.
This may be an operation as consqeuntial as Israel’s ultimately failed invasion of southern Lebanon in 2006. However, Hamas does not have access to anything remotely like the resources at Hezbollah’s disposal. The Israelis are mincing few words:
“Israeli officials have likened the aerial onslaught launched throughout the Gaza Strip on Saturday to the opening strategy of the 2006 Lebanese war, where a border ambush by Hezbollah guerrillas triggered a devastating surprise bombing campaign. The fact Israeli troops and tanks then poured into Lebanon, gaining ground and pressuring the international community into imposing a ceasefire, suggests what might come next for Gaza if Hamas does not halt cross-border rocket attacks.
”There are definite similarities to what we are seeing now and the execution of the war in Lebanon,” said Yigal Palmor, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry.”
The Arab world is united once more to condemn the war (An Associate Press video is here.)
This is an international emergency, a violation of the UN Charter, and truly outrageous. The US response? According to a White House spokesperson, Hamas are “thugs” and while superficially calling for “restraint”, the US has once more greenlighted Israel to use disproportionate force without regard to civilian casualties or conseqeunces. Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni took to Fox on Sunday (of course) to blame Hamas and deny civilian targeting.
American coverage is of course “even handed” as always, obsessing over the single Israeli death by a qassam rocket as opposed to at least 280 Palestinians killed in the last two days. Some things never change.
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Gareth Porter
Instead of watching Its a Wonderful Life on the telly for the 97th time, you may find it worth your while to see this intelligent interview of Gareth Porter discussing US-Iran relations and Obama on The Real News. The video is here.
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Domestic disturbances
Progressives dealing with the poor state of US-Iran relations, particular over the nuclear issue, have to also confront the complex and dispiriting state of domestic Iran. It would certainly be helpful to those of us opposing sanctions or an armed confrontation with Iran if the Iranian government and its ruling elites were not so damned … prickly. Sure, on the scale of things, there are far worse and repressive societies – Saudi Arabia, for one – but the fundamentalist social laws and repression of basic internationally recognized human rights (press freedoms, association and discrimination) beggar most apologias. The enormous tragedy of Iran is that it has the historical potential to be culturally vibrant, diverse, tolerant and unique, as well as a thriving economic milieu instead of a petrochemical monoculture like Saudi Arabia or the UAE.
Case in point is the current controversy once again involving Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Association for Support of Children’s Rights in Tehran. On Sunday, Iranian police shut down the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, associated with Ebadi, as it was preparing to mark the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Most western nations and humans rights organizations roundly condemned the raid.
Mentioning Ebadi raises complex issues in the anti-war crowd, since Iranian émigrés appear to view Ebadi either as a tireless and heroic champion for human rights, or as a pernicious virus of Western cultural imperialism. In the latter view, progressive human rights groups that “pile on” to Establishment condemnation of the Tehran regime’s internal societal controls risk allying themselves with neo-con forces preparing the next “regime change.” The foregoing is obviously a simplistic binary analysis, and not particularly fact-laden – but placed on the table for sake of discussion.
Western opponents to war/sanctions can be mindful of being non-Islamic outsiders, and paying attention to when and where to criticize another’s cultural choices. Moreover, Americans anesthetized to the media and commercial glop that passes for culture in our society, and the veneer of respecting individual dignity and worth (especially now), are not in the best position to be in the vanguard trumpeting human rights to the “lesser peoples” of the world like characters in a Rudyard Kipling story. A little rectitude goes a long way.
But human rights are not a relative value or a pro-Western norm. They are enshrined in United Nations charters and treaties. They are not “globalist.” Western progressives have been sold down the river many, many times by having to excuse bad behavior by “left” regimes because of this or that. We do not have to check in our values when we talk about Iran, or act if basic freedoms were a mere bourgeois ‘luxury.’ We do not have to ignore when any country – the UK, the US, or Iran – violates basic human rights. It is possible to oppose sanctions/war and the oppression of domestic dissent. We just have to remember where we come from, and the glass that makes up the walls of our own house.
OK, you can plant one right on the ‘ol keester, or denounce me as a revisionist swine. Really.
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Russia’s view
Of all of the existing nuclear states, Russia has the most unfettered access to Iran based upon its continuing assistance in building Iran’s nuclear power plants, and filling the vacuum left by the decision by the German company Siemens years ago to pull the rug out from its nuclear technology contracts. Russian commentary on Iran’s nuclear program gets little attention in the Western press, since it is all but drowned out by the Israel-AIPAC noise machine.
A small comment by Vladimir Voronkov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of European Cooperation, impeached the widely shared US-Israel consensus that Iran is running a covert nuclear weapons program. As reported by Sreeram Chaulia in yesterday’s Asia Times:
The contention of a senior Russian diplomat, Vladimir Voronkov, that Iran is presently incapable of developing nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them has reopened an international Pandora’s box.
The comments by Voronkov, head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department of European Cooperation, cast doubts on, if not contradict, Israel’s assessment that Iran is rapidly gaining nuclear-weapons capability in the guise of “peaceful” electricity generation.
Russia’s word has a notable significance on the matter because it enjoys unparalleled access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. Russian engineers working for a Russian company are building Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor and are in daily touch with Iranian ground realities. Voronkov buttressed his claim by adding, “This information is confirmed by all the services responsible for the collection and analysis of information.”
If Moscow’s combined intelligence agencies are in agreement that Iran does not have nuclear-weapons capability, it calls for serious rethinking about whether the “crisis” built up over Tehran going nuclear was nothing but a bogey to roll back its rise as the impresario of a Shi’ite resurgence in the Middle East.
Voronkov’s comments are consistent with both the 2007 NIE and three years of IAEA safeguards reports on Iran. The question that remains unanswered by Israel and the US is, “where is the data?” What about it is so secret and threatening to national security that it cannot be revealed to anyone?
This is a flaw in the so-called “breakout” theory being advanced by the somewhat liberal arms-control establishment such as the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and others, to the effect that even if Iran has no active weapons programme now, having a large enrichment capacity certainly pushes the needle closer toward the possibility of developing nuclear weapons. This is small beer indeed to support sanctions, let alone a preemptive war. Nuclear weapons require a considerable infrastructure; after all, whole forests have been sacrificed by the US’ National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to justify a multi-billion upgrade in the existing nuclear weapons infrastructure.
One of the key suppositions of the expensive program is that as the number of warheads in the US declines, the need (and hence expense) of maintaining reliability of each warhead increases, since the military could no longer count on a redundant number of warheads to strike essential targets. Applied to Iran, the idea that Iran would risk so much in rushing to put one, two or three laboriously acquired atomic warheads on top of vintage-designed liquid-fueled rockets to blast Israel into cinders stands the NNSA’s rationale on its head. It is improbable that Iran, which at this moment is subject to IAEA inspections, would make this effort, or that the Russians would permit it to happen under their watch.
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The shoe fits
This is more about Iraq than Iran, but I couldn’t help a little thrill of affirmation upon seeing the courageous journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi heave two shoes at George Bush at a press conference in Iraq. Yes, this probably blew past those nonviolence guidelines we are sworn to apply and protect, but (a) he missed and (b) the point was made. It is the nature of things in the Middle East that this symbolic act resonates so strongly as it does – and Islam can hold its head a little higher today for what al-Zaidi has done.
Politics revolves around the science of spectacle and appearances. An ancient and equally post-modern gesture, Zaidi’s shoe somehow resonates and recalls the 4000 dead US soldiers, tens of thousands of maimed American veterans, or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed because of this Administration. For at least a day, al-Zaidi stripped the Emperor of his clothes and revealed him as the fraud. It emphasizes that wherever these people go, and whatever they say, the shoe will follow them, and they are lower than the shoe. We can take this example for the potential for direct action it presents. Pepe Escobar wrote in the Asia Times:
These shoes also metaphorically hit the huge Bush administration army of advisers, analysts, sycophants, politicians, diplomats, generals, UN bureaucrats, businessmen, “human-rights” wags, media hacks and assorted profiteers that made the Iraqi tragedy possible. These shoes put to immense shame US public opinion, which overwhelmingly condoned the 2003 invasion and occupation and only turned against it when facts on the ground and horrific non-stop carnage spelled out that this was an “unwinnable” war.
For its part, US corporate media, with predictable inanity – or rather as still more evidence of its spinelessness in confronting the Bush administration – chose to endlessly dwell on Bush’s cat-like reflexes (“I saw his sole”) when he dodged al-Zaidi’s flying size 10s.
Predictably adding (real) injury to the insult, and therefore amplifying its already formidable impact, Iraqi TV al-Sharqiya reported that al-Zaidi is for all practical purposes being tortured at Camp Cropper – the sinister, sprawling, US-controlled Baghdad airport prison; and his older brother, Dargham, told the BBC he has a broken hand, broken ribs, an eye injury and suffers from internal bleeding. Al-Sharquiya also points to signs of torture on his thighs and an immobile right arm. Al-Sharqiya has had firsthand experience on the matter – they just lost four reporters who uncovered and reported widespread torture in Green Zone prisons.
Thus also the smiling face of democracy shows itself as a torturer, if someone actually has the temerity to say something that truly matters. Escobar continues:
Contrast the shoes targeting Bush with Bush’s last throes – his mandated “Operation Legacy” conducted by Texan Macchiavelli Karl Rove (consisting of a two-page list of talking points now endlessly spun by outgoing Bush administration officials to gullible corporate media). Instead, a real-life “Operation Legacy” shortlist should include all the aspects of the Bush doctrine (“In what respect, Charlie?”, as Sara “Barracuda” Palin would say); the destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, with the option of illegal raids into the Pakistani tribal areas and a pre-emptive attack on Iran; the complete normalization of torture – and outsourcing of torture – as an “American value”; a monstrous national deficit that spells national bankruptcy; the destruction of the US economy; and a repressive police state which spies on its citizens – ripping the constitution and the Bill of Rights to shreds.
Only a few days before al-Zaidi’s act, in an interview published in the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, president-elect Barack Obama promised, “We’ve got a unique opportunity to reboot America’s image around the world and also in the Muslim world in particular … So we need to take advantage of that.”
If Obama really wants to seize the “opportunity” and “reboot” America’s image, he must convince the Muslim world that the US will renounce pre-emptive wars against Muslim countries; will stop demonizing them; will renounce the silly and misguided concept of “Islamofascism”; will practice an equitable foreign policy; and will not tolerate the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by the state of Israel. He could start with a speech in Baghdad. Not a Bush-style ultra-secretive appearance at a military base or in the Green Zone, but a speech in real-life, open-air Baghdad, in Firdous Square for instance.
Till then, this is what the US gets – a flicker of poetic justice still shining in the post-everything era: a little emperor cowering behind a lectern dodging a flying shoe.
As someone else said on another site, if only the White House press corps, let alone the endless panels of “experts”, had the same cajones as Mr al-Zaidi these last arid 8 years.
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The nuclear breakout myth
Several days ago I criticized the latest Brookings Institute report on engaging Iran as fundamentally flawed, based upon its baseline assumption of Iran’s mala fides development of a weapons program despite IAEA reports to the contrary. Since I am just another country solicitor, this observation no doubt had the impact of a hummingbird striking the Queen Mary. But today’s column by the far more illustrious Kaveh Afrasiabi in Asia Times takes a congruent swing at Brookings and another favourite of the progressive arms control community, David Albright’s Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS). Afrasiabi challenges both reports’ reliance on the fundamental belief that Iran is intentionally moving quickly to a “breakout point”, the theoretical moment when all the ingredients for a deployable nuclear weapon are at hand and all that is left is the political decision to make it happen.
The Brookings report considered breakout as a temporal assumption for the need for immediate “engagement” with Iran. The ISIS release (December 2) by Albright and Shire posits an empirical approach to conclude that the breakout is a near term likely event:
As noted above, 700-800 kilograms of LEU (in terms of U) corresponds to 1,030-1,180 kilograms of low enriched uranium hexafluoride. Iran must therefore produce another 275-375 kilograms of LEU (in terms of U) or 400-550 kilograms of low enriched uranium hexafluoride to achieve a break-out capability. Iran is bringing into operation a second centrifuge module at the FEP, which will result in the operation of about 6,000 centrifuges. Assuming that the first module continues to operate at its current level and the second gradually increases its enriched uranium output, ISIS estimates that Iran needs another three months to produce enough LEU to have 700 kilograms of LEU. The upper limit of 800 kilograms would be reached about a month or two later. If the cascades operate better than historically achieved levels, these dates could occur earlier. If the second module does not operate as well as the first one, these dates could be delayed by several months. …
Some experts believe ISIS’s estimate of 700-800 kilograms of LEU (mass of U) is too low to signify a break-out capability. One expert believes that the minimum value should be 900 kilograms of LEU (mass of U), given the expected large losses Iran might encounter. A senior official close to the IAEA in September 2008 placed that value at over 1,000 kilograms. Others argue that Iran would want enough LEU for two or three nuclear weapons before it could be said to have a break-out capability. A 900 kilogram estimate would delay the date of Iran achieving a nuclear weapons capability by only one or two months. The other estimates would add months to that date.
Despite these differences over defining “break-out,” the estimate of 700-800 kilograms of LEU represents a level of accomplishment that would permit Iran with a good chance of success to produce enough weapon-grade uranium to fashion a crude nuclear weapon, small enough to fit on a ballistic missile. Smaller quantities of LEU might be enough for a nuclear weapon, but they might also overestimate Iran’s ability to produce such a nuclear weapon. Quantities greater than 1,000 kilograms appear overly conservative about Iranian capabilities or assume a definition of break-out as more than one weapon’s worth of LEU. The latter also assumes knowledge about Iranian intentions that cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. Because of the cumulative effect of weakened inspections, there are growing uncertainties about Iran’s gas centrifuge capabilities, particularly the size of its stock of centrifuges and any efforts to build clandestine centrifuge plants. Faced with these uncertainties, a more technically defensible approach is to focus on the amount of LEU needed to make one nuclear weapon.
The Kimball report is good-old fashioned bean counting worthy of 1970s and 1980s arms-contollers. This truly sounds like an awful of trouble to go through for just one warhead, during which surely inspectors and the EU would be in fits. It is notable that the IAEA has not detected any effort by Iran to even try to boost enrichment above 5%. And if I were you, I’m not sure I would stand that close to that vapour-venting North Korea-designed liquid-fueled monster upon which would sit the pinnacle of three years’ solid work of uranium enrichment.
Why is this important? Unfortunately, both ISIS and the Brookings Institute are “pipeline” foundations to the DLC and progressive arms-control minded Democrats in Congress and the new administration. Their mistaken assumptions become the Administration’s mistaken assumptions.
Back to Kaveh Afrasiabi, he appropriately weighs in:
One such false assumption that has been adopted like an article of faith by nearly all the pundits and nuclear experts in the US today, is that Iran is fast approaching a “nuclear breakout capability” – in light of Iran’s double process of mastering the nuclear fuel cycle and advancing its missile technology. This has warranted the word “crisis”, to quote US Senator Jon Kyl. Not to be outdone by politicians, a number of nuclear experts, such as David Albright, have echoed the sentiment.
In his latest report, co-authored with two colleagues from the Institute for Science
and International Security (ISIS), Albright contends that Iran “is moving steadily toward the nuclear breakout capability”, and puts a firm dateline on it. “This capability is expected to reach that milestone during 2009.” The authors’ next concluding sentence deals with the search for solutions: “In the short-term, the response should include increasing economic sanctions on Iran and accelerating the timetable for US-led negotiations with Iran over the fate and transparency of its nuclear program.”
But if Iran is thought to be reaching a critical threshold of capability to make one nuclear bomb in the near-term, as this report contends, wouldn’t this undercut the validity of the proposed “short-term” response? Not even the authors themselves believe economic sanctions could lead Iran to halt its supposed march toward nuclear might, but a more important question, however, is on what legal grounds can the authors justify their position on sanctions on Iran?
After all, this latest ISIS report is built on a sand castle of conjectural “ifs”, for example, “if Iran decides to breakout”. Troubled by the complicating factors fueling “uncertainty about the circumstances of a breakout”. The authors’ main fault is that they adopt their hypothetical “maybes” as facts. One example is the statement, “Iran may delay the inspectors access” to the Natanz enrichment facility, which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) “may” not be able to quickly discover that some enriched uranium “may” be missing.
This flawed logic, which superimposes the authors’ uncertainties on Iran’s objective realities, is a line of thinking that simply evades the obvious: that is, the fact that Iran’s entire stock of enriched uranium is kept in containers sealed by the IAEA and the whole fuel enrichment plant is constantly monitored by the IAEA’s surveillance cameras. Contrary to their false assertion, any Iranian attempt to tamper with the IAEA seals and or divert some of the stored low-enriched uranium to some clandestine facility would be quickly uncovered.
By ignoring these issues completely, the respected nuclear experts seem unconvincing in their quasi-alarmist projections of Iran’s near-term nuclear weapon capability – the same projections which are indirectly fueling the argument of the more hawkish experts for the military option.
In other words , the idée fixe of Western arms controllers toward Iran has nothing to do with objective relatity, but only assumptions of subjective intent. This is a bizarre way to run international relations. Afrasiabi continues:
Their report serves as a half-cooked meal for new US policy-makers gearing up for action come next January. But it will surely give them indigestion, as it replicates the coercive approach that is centered on the theology of Iran’s “nuclear intentions” and “capability”.
It ignores the empirical signs that point at the need for an entirely different approach, one that would respect Iran’s nuclear rights, avoid the George W Bush administration’s addiction to disinformation, and set realistic goals on the issues of transparency and implementation of the IAEA’s intrusive inspection regime.
Another flaw of the latest ISIS report is that the authors claim Iran has recently degraded its cooperation with the IAEA. But the Iran-IAEA work plan of August 2007, after an extensive discovery of documents and physical inspection of Iran’s facilities, all the six “outstanding issues” were favorably resolved. That is, Iran was absolved of lingering questions hovering around connections to clandestine proliferation. Naturally, the IAEA has not since fulfilled its part of the bargain, as mandated by the concluding paragraph of the work plan, which stipulated the normalization of Iran’s file. It has instead sung the US’s tune of new “outstanding issues” caused by fresh evidence “provided by several countries”, pertaining to “alleged weaponization studies”.
Iran has reacted in kind, showing its displeasure at the agency’s weaknesses, not to mention the IAEA’s foray to the no-man’s land of setting forth the unreasonable demand that Iran must prove the absence of such a weapons program. Such excessive, unreasonable demands must be limited by the IAEA, which must stick to the terms of its bilateral inspection and verification standards.
Concerning the latter, various Iranian officials have hinted that Iran may be willing to re-adopt the intrusive Additional Protocol (AP) of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), if Iran’s file is brought back from the UN Security Council and treated as “normal” at the IAEA. No doubt, if Iran is presented with the carrot of an end to UN sanctions and a just treatment of its nuclear dossier, the Iranian government’s willingness to embrace the IAEA’s demands for greater nuclear transparency via the AP is almost guaranteed. Unfortunately, such tangible, perfectly reachable goals, which would be tantamount to a mutually satisfactory solution of the Iran nuclear standoff, are held back by relentless nuclear suspicions that are, as stated above, partly fueled by various experts.
They may be apt in cold calculations of how many kilograms of low-enriched uranium are needed to build a bomb, yet are wide off the mark when concluding this means Iran is “marching toward” nuclear weapons. Their leap of faith is undermined by the robust IAEA inspection regime in place at Natanz and other nuclear facilities in Iran, as well as by the IAEA’s declared confidence that it has been able to “continue to confirm the absence of any diversion”. This is not to mention the IAEA’s other important admission that it has not detected any diversion of nuclear material toward the “alleged weaponization studies”.
The fact is that Iran’s breakout incapability, constantly ignored by the Western experts and pundits alike, is highlighted by Iran’s pattern of nuclear transparency and cooperation with the IAEA. It is a sheer error on the part of Albright, Jacqueline Shirer, Paul Brannon, and other nuclear experts in the US and Europe, to minimize or undervalue the IAEA’s current ability to detect any Iranian steps toward a nuclear breakout.
This does not wash, and a more strident effort on the part of these experts to align their analyses and reports with the NPT legal standards is called for. Their present call for more economic sanctions on Iran, simply because it is legally pursuing nuclear fuel production, remains unjustified.
Unless the consensus paradigm is challenged once, and that is, continuously, we will be fed nothing but beans for the next four years,
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