Foreign Policy In Focus

The West may not use nuclear weapons on Iran, but attacking its nuclear enrichment facilities will have a similar effect.

As you can tell by the title, this 61-page paper, The Ayatollah's Nuclear Gamble, is not Tehran-friendly. The report, released in September, is the product of Khosrow B. Semnani, an Iranian-American industrialist and philanthropist with, according to his bio, "extensive experience in the industrial management of nuclear waste and chemicals." I'm in the midst of reading it in its entirety.

In the meantime, an excerpt from the executive summary (also available to those non-executives just as time-pressed as executives!) provides a good indication of exactly where Omid for Iran, Semnani's organization, which released the report along with the Hinckley Institute of Politics and the University of Utah, is coming from.

The best long-term strategy would be a democratic, transparent, and accountable government in Iran. In such a scenario, political leaders would quickly understand that their people want jobs, dignity, opportunity, and political freedoms, not the false promise of nuclear weapons bought at a heavy, even existential, cost. A military strike would not only kill thousands of civilians and expose tens and possibly hundreds of thousands to highly toxic chemicals, it would also have a devastating effect on those who dream of democracy in Iran. Ayatollah Khamenei has proven that he cares little for the Iranian people. It is up to us in the international community, including the Iranian-American diaspora to demonstrate that we do.

Semnani et al state that while (all emphases theirs)

… there has been considerable debate about the timing and targets of military strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, the costs and consequences of such strikes have not received sufficient atten­tion. Military planners at the Pentagon do provide policymakers with estimates of civilian casualties; these estimates are typically for operational purposes and not made available to the general public. Virtually no one has presented a scientific assessment of the conse­quences of military strikes on operational nuclear facilities. What is certain is the gravity of the risk to civilians: The IAEA has verified an inventory of at least 371 metric tons of highly toxic uranium hexafluoride stored at Iran’s nuclear facilities. The release of this material at sites that are only a few miles from major population centers such as Isfahan warrants a thorough and comprehensive assessment of the potential risks to thousands of civilians living in the vicinity of Iran’s nuclear sites.

Nor have Iran's leaders shown any inclination to present such an assessment.

[They] have had no interest in making the risks of their reckless nuclear policies obvious to its citizens even though the resulting economic toll—inflation, unem­ployment, and the loss of international credit—has devastated the Iranian people. The Iranian military has not provided the Iranian people with any description of potential casualties resulting from attacks on these nuclear facilities. Nor has the parliament encouraged an open assessment of the grave implications of the government’s policies for Iranian scientists, soldiers and civilians working at or living within the vicinity of Iran’s nuclear facilities. This study seeks to address this deficit.

In regards to the Western and IAEA view that Iran is developing nuclear capacity, they write:

While no smoking gun has emerged to prove that Iran is pursuing a weapon. … Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, is making a deadly nuclear gamble.

Whether or not Iran is pursuing a weapon

… the political reality is this: Israel continues to threaten military strikes, should diplomacy fail. In a post-election United States, either a newly re-elected President Barack Obama or an incoming President Mitt Romney will face a ticking clock that will add an element of urgency to their decisions on Iran’s nuclear program. The risks to the Iranian people of military strikes have never been greater.

Holding all parties liable, they write:

By quantifying the costs of military strikes, we have sought to make the scale of the Ayatollah’s reckless gamble and the gamble of possible U.S. and/or Israeli strikes apparent not only to the Iranian people but also to the international community, including policymakers in the United States and Israel.

That the West isn't contemplating nuclear strikes provides scant solace.

Conventional strikes involving the systematic bombing of nuclear installations can be far more devastating than nuclear and industrial accidents such as Chernobyl, Fukushima, Three Mile Island or Bhopal. The damage from strategic aerial bombardment is planned to be total and irreversible. It leaves no time for intervention, no chance for evacuation and no possibility for containment.

Exactly what do Semnani et al see as the targets?

Beyond the sites, some military planners have suggested that any strike against Iran could extend to more than 400 targets, or “aim points.” The goal of the strikes would be to permanently cripple Iran’s ability to revive its nuclear program by targeting site personnel as well as the auxiliary and support infrastructure.

For the purposes of this study, we have assumed a conservative strike scenario and analyzed the impact of conventional military strike against four targets: Isfahan, Natanz, Arak and Bushehr. … We have not included the deeply buried Fordow site near Qom in our analysis due to the incomplete nature of information about this site. However, it is almost certain that Fordow would be targeted with powerful bunker busters. … We have restricted our estimates of casualties to those injured or killed as a direct result of strikes at the four nuclear facilities and the immediate vicinities only.

What kind of numbers are we talking about?

Based on the best information available as well as discussions with Iranian and Western nuclear experts, we have estimated the total number of people—scientists, workers, soldiers and support staff—at Iran’s four nuclear facilities to be between 7,000 and 11,000. … However, unlike traditional targets, the risks to civilians extend well beyond those killed from exposure to thermal and blast injuries at the nuclear sites. Tens, and quite possibly, hundreds of thousands of civilians could be exposed to highly toxic chemical plumes and, in the case of operational reactors, radioactive fallout. … Additionally, the environmental deg­radation due to the spread of airborne uranium compounds, and their entry into water, soil and the food chain would introduce long-term, chronic health risks such as a spike in cancer rates and birth defect

You get the idea. Beyond that, the attack and radiation will work its synergistic black magic in conjunction with Iran's meager disaster management and emergency preparation capabilities. In other words, bombing Iranian nuclear facilities is like setting off nuclear weapons on the ground.

Semnani et al eloquently summarize (and remember this is just the executive summary):

Rather than dismiss them as collateral damage, it is time to factor the Iranian people into any equation involving military strikes. There is a strong moral, strategic, political and military argument for counting the Iranian people’s interests as a key factor in the nuclear dispute.

Compared to the interests of Jerusalem, Tehran, and Washington, those of the Iranian people come in a distant last.

Iran's nuclear concessions roll off the P5+1 like water from a duck's back.

At Sic Semper Tyrannis (Pat Lang's blog), Dr. Christopher Bolan of the U.S. Army War College wrote about "the relative ease with which the US and Iran could now easily drift toward war with dire consequences for both sides." He cited five reasons:

Fear and honor, "rational" or not, can motivate as much as interest [can].

Iranians and Americans remain largely ignorant of each other's history and culture.

Economic sanctioning can be tantamount to an act of war.

The presumption of moral or spiritual superiority can fatally discount the consequences of an enemy's material superiority.

"Inevitable" war easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

This last point correlates with my theory that sometimes the simple need to relieve the mounting tension of looming war leads to war. As with a temptation that gnaws at you, in the end you give in less to what's tempting you than to just rid yourself of the relentless feeling of being tempted.

Greasing the skids to war can also occur if one party appears to be conducting negotiations in good faith, when, in fact, it's sabotaging them. At IPS News, Gareth Porter explains in a piece titled Iranian Diplomat Says Iran Offered Deal to Halt 20-Percent Enrichment.

Iran has again offered to halt its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, which the United States has identified as its highest priority in the nuclear talks, in return for easing sanctions against Iran, according to Iran’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, who has conducted Iran’s negotiations with the IAEA in Tehran and Vienna, revealed in an interview with IPS that Iran had made the offer at the meeting between EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton and Iran’s leading nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in Istanbul Sep. 19.

Soltanieh also revealed in the interview that IAEA officials had agreed last month to an Iranian demand that it be provided documents on the alleged Iranian activities related to nuclear weapons which Iran is being asked to explain, but that the concession had then been withdrawn.

“We are prepared to suspend enrichment to 20 percent, provided we find a reciprocal step compatible with it,” Soltanieh said, adding, “We said this in Istanbul.”

Soltanieh is the first Iranian official to go on record as saying Iran has proposed a deal that would end its 20-percent enrichment entirely, although it had been reported previously.

 “If we do that,” Soltanieh said, “there shouldn’t be sanctions.”

Makes sense, right? Not, apparently, to the P5+1 nations (U.S., Russia, China, France, U.K. plus Germany), nor even the IAEA.

Even if Iran agreed to those far-reaching concessions the P5+1 nations [U.S., Russia, China, France, U.K. plus Germany] offered no relief from sanctions.

The uranium enrichment facility at Fordow, near the city of Qom, is a sticking point (emphasis added).

“It’s impossible if they expect us to close Fordow,” Soltanieh said.

The U.S. justification for the demand for the closure of Fordow has been that it has been used for enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, which makes it much easier for Iran to continue enrichment to weapons grade levels.

But Soltanieh pointed to the conversion of half the stockpile to fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, which was documented in the Aug. 30 IAEA report.

…That conversion to powder for fuel plates makes the uranium unavailable for reconversion to a form that could be enriched to weapons grade level.

Soltanieh suggested that the Iranian demonstration of the technical capability for such conversion, which apparently took the United States and other P5+1 governments by surprise, has rendered irrelevant the P5+1 demand to ship the entire stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium out of the country.

Also …

Soltanieh revealed that two senior IAEA officials had accepted a key Iranian demand in the most recent negotiating session last month on a “structured agreement” on Iranian cooperation on allegations of “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear programme – only to withdraw the concession at the end of the meeting.

Why?

The issue was Iran’s insistence on being given all the documents on which the IAEA bases the allegations of Iranian research related to nuclear weapons which Iran is expected to explain to the IAEA’s satisfaction.

The Feb. 20 negotiating text shows that the IAEA sought to evade any requirement for sharing any such documents by qualifying the commitment with the phrase “where appropriate”.

… Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei recalls in his 2011 memoirs that he had “constantly pressed the source of the information” on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons research – meaning the United States – “to allow us to share copies with Iran”. He writes that he asked how he could “accuse a person without revealing the accusations against him?”

In answer to ElBaradei's question: only if you wanted to stack the deck against that party. Another unresolved issue, according to Soltanieh is "whether the IAEA investigation will be open-ended or not."

The Feb. 20 negotiating text showed that Iran demanded a discrete list of topics to which the IAEA inquiry would be limited and a requirement that each topic would be considered “concluded” once Iran had answered the questions and delivered the information requested.

But the IAEA insisted on being able to “return” to topics that had been “discussed earlier”, according to the February negotiating text.

Furthermore …

“The objection we have is that the DG [IAEA Director General Yukio Amano] isn’t protecting confidential information,” said Soltanieh. “When they have information on how many centrifuges are working and how many are not working (in IAEA reports), this is a very serious concern.”

Iran has complained for years about information gathered by IAEA inspectors, including data on personnel in the Iranian nuclear programme, being made available to U.S., Israeli and European intelligence agencies.

In other words, it seems as if there's no way that Iran can win unless it entirely abrogates its self-respect and lets the P5+1 walk all over it.

Cross-posted from Colorado Progressive Jewish News.

An open clash between Israelis at a major meeting in New York City gives ample evidence of a growing  divide in Israel over attacking Iran.

The tensions have been brewing under the surface for some time now, with hints of the depth of the antagonism surfacing from time to time. But just a few days ago, on April 29, 2012, in New York City, before a mostly Jewish, and mostly pro-Netanyahu audience of 1,000 attendees, the political boil was publicly lanced, and nothing Alan Dershowitz had in his bag of articulate tricks could paste over the bitter polarization that has erupted. The meeting was sponsored by the generally conservative and right wing Jerusalem Post.

The issue: Iran.

Just how nasty and deep is the split can be seen from a detailed article  published in May 2 edition of the New York City-based Forward -- one of America's longest running and most prestigious Jewish newspapers. In an article entitled Explosive Dust Up Over Iran Policy, Forward journalist J.J. Goldberg exposed the Israeli internal riff over Iran in which it seemed that high-level Israeli officials ripped into one another over claims of "an Iranian threat."

Sounded like quite the ideological slugfest that ripped the veil off of any semblance of Israeli unity concerning Iran. On the one hand, representatives of Prime Minister Netanyahu openly attacked President Obama’s Middle East policies, with, according to the Forward, “widespread cheering” from the audience. On the other hand, former Israeli Prime Minister Olmert and former Mossad Director Meir Dagan attacked Netanyahu’s Iran saber rattling. Last year Dagan had publicly called Netanyahu’s war talk "stupid."  In one exchange on April 29, Dagan called Giliad Erdan, Israel’s Environmental Minister and a Netanyahu man, "a liar." Ergan responded in kind, claiming Dagan was "threatening Israeli security."

The Meshuggeneh Fringe vs. the Intelligence Apparatus

In one corner, the ample meshuggeneh fringe of Israeli politics -- Prime Minister Netanyahu and his increasingly right-wing and religious followers, including West Bank settlers whose rhetoric has long ago approached "foaming at the mouth" levels concerning "the existential Iranian threat" to Israel. Netanyahu and company have been warning the world of the development of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon since the early 1980s.

In the other corner, strange as it seems at first -- but not so strange for those who know anything about the sober (if reactionary) assessments of the Israeli intelligence -- security and military communities. Joining them is a growing element of Israeli public opinion so hammered with anti-Iranian vitriol that is something approaching a miracle that they could see through the swamp of lies and exaggerations, and actually speak out for peace. Going against the position of the Israeli prime minister, this element in Israel has been openly contradicting Netanyahu. They argue that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon, doesn’t have plans to build one and even it did, wouldn’t represent a threat to Israel.  

The breach is nothing new in Israel where it has been discussed for months in the Israeli press; but to see controversy spill over so openly in the United States and then to be picked up by the mainstream media (the New York Times) and a publication like The Forward -- this is striking.

The struggle over Iran at top of the Israeli political pyramid only reflects the tension at the grass roots. In a related development and  unprecedented gesture, an Israeli posted a message on Facebook -- a teacher made a public appeal -- both to the people of Israel and the people of Iran -- against war. The appeal struck a chord in Iran where it was read, viewed positively and widely circulated; it is circulating heavily in Israel and now around the world.

For the Israeli intelligence and security establishment,  it is not Iran which poses a danger to Israeli security but Netanyahu’s rhetoric which has not only increased regional tensions but has in recent months undermined U.S.-Israeli relations, so much so, that at this year’s March 2012 AIPAC annual meeting, U.S. President Barack Obama publicly called on AIPAC -- and Israel -- to tone down the war talk.

In classic style, Netanyahu responded to Obama’s request by announcing more Israeli settlement building in the Occupied Territories and ratcheting up his anti-Iran rhetoric in an effort to reconstruct the anti-Iranian alliance (the U.S., Israel, Saudis and other conservative Arab Regimes). This alliance had been strained to the breaking point by the eruption of the Arab Spring which temporarily found Israel more isolated and confused in the region than it had ever been.

Looking for an Election Issue, U.S. Republicans Egg on Netanyahu

Egged on by Republicans, right-wing Zionists and neoconservatives here in the United States, Netanyahu’s anti-Iranian hysteria had reached such subjective heights, that even important elements of Israel’s own circles of power have found it necessary to call their prime minister on the carpet. Besides trying to push the United States into a war with Iran that Israel cannot in any way shape or form fight on its own, Netanyahu’s goal is to make the non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons program an election issue here in the USA. At the very least, Netanyahu reasoned, the saber rattling would force Obama to make concessions to Israel . I call it "rage management" --  yell and scream enough and you might not get everything you want, but some juicy consolation prize -- which did come forth in the form of bunker buster bombs to Israel and silence on the Palestinian issue.

But that wasn’t enough for Netanyahu for whom political moderation is something approaching a cardinal sin. And, with the support of the usual suspects (AIPAC, neoconservative nuts like John Bolton, and that  Christian fundamentalist nut case John Hagee), Netanyahu kept up the anti-Iranian drumbeat for war. Of course he’d crossed the line of decency -- and outright interfered in U.S. politics so often -- and gotten away with it…that why stop now! Having let Israel off the lease for so long, it has proven to be difficult now to rein it in. Can’t blame all that on Netanyahu either.

The Republicans here in the United States whose primary campaign, pushed to the right by the likes of the Tea Party and neoconservatives, had something else in mind. As Netanyahu’s saber rattling grew louder and louder, the price of oil, always subject to political insecurity, began to rise. The bet was racheting up oil prices through fear of war would cut into the weak U.S. (and global) recovery which the Republicans and Netanyahu would help engineer. The Republican candidate -- now apparently Romney -- could blame the failed recovery on Obama.

Obama -- Tactical Retreat From Military Confrontation

Obama  understood the Republican-Likud game for the danger it is both to world peace and his re-election possibilities, given American sensitivities to rising oil prices. He acted to help defuse the situation -- making it clear in his own pronouncements and those of U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, that there will be no military strike against Iran (at least until after the elections). All this challenges -- at least in part -- that in terms of U.S.-Israeli relations that "it is the tail wagging the dog." The dog can wag the tail too -- when it finds it necessary. While the connections/coordination between Obama and the Israeli military-intelligence community on this issue have not been openly spelled out, the fact that this is the sector that receives gobs of U.S. financial aid since 1979 and is closely coordinated with NATO plans and operations in the Middle East, might just have something to do with it.

It is not so much that the Obama Administration has changed its goal of regime change in Iran -- the moral implications are of course brushed aside (again). But with the situation in Afghanistan melting daily before the world’s eyes, with tensions in Pakistan over drone strikes, Iraq in an increasingly explosive mood and Syria in a state approaching civil war, the U.S. is in no position to open up another front militarily, even if it so desired.

Of course, inching back from the brink even if it is for short-sighted election purposes -- is a relief. Is it simply a breather from a policy that in the long run inextricably will lead to a military conflict, or the first step away from a policy of arrogance and lunacy that threatens to take us all down with it?

It seemed like we were hearing some encouraging words on U.S.-Iran relations. On April 27, Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times reported:

In what would be a significant concession, Obama administration officials. … said they might agree to let Iran continue enriching uranium up to 5% purity, which is the upper end of the range for most civilian uses, if its government agrees to the unrestricted inspections, strict oversight and numerous safeguards that the United Nations has long demanded.

But it turned out to be one of those "not much to see here, move along" situations. At the Arms Control Association blog Arms Control NOW, Peter Crail reported:

The conclusions drawn by the L.A. Times misreads the history of the U.S. position and U.S. efforts to resolve the Iran nuclear issue with the P5+1.

In fact, Crail writes, potential discussions with Iran over (emphasis added)

… the conditions under which it could continue enrichment is not new. In fact, it is built into the proposals that the P5+1 have offered Iran since 2006, spanning the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. … The shift by the Obama administration appears to be more a matter of its willingness to publicly state that there could be conditions under which Iran could maintain some enrichment capabilities, rather than a willingness to entertain the idea in the first place.

Meanwhile, at Al Jazeera, Gareth Porter explains what Iran is talking about when it's talking about its right to enrich uranium.

Iran's diplomacy strategy is to accumulate centrifuges, not in order to support a weapons programme, but rather to negotiate a larger bargain with the United States.

Because …

Contrary to the convenient argument that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei resists agreement with the United States, he and leading officials on the Supreme National Security Council have long viewed negotiations with the United States as the only way that the Iran can achieve full security and emerge as a full-fledged regional power.[At one point] the biggest source of leverage, the Iranians believed, was the Bush administration's dramatically increased concern about Iran's ability to enrich uranium, which had taken US intelligence by surprise. 

In other words, enriched uranium is the coin of Iran's international realm.

One can't help but suspect that a key reason the public and even many policymakers believe that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons is the sheer length of time that the words "Iran" and "nuclear" have been uttered in the same sentence by the media. Way back in 1957 Iran signed an agreement to participate President Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace program. But Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini temporarily halted Iran's nuclear efforts, both peaceful and weapons.

In the late eighties and early nineties, AQ Khan, lord of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program as well as the nuclear black market, shared know-how and components with Iran. Then, in late 2002, it was learned that Iran had built a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water plant at Arak. It appears, though, that in 2003 all but vestigial research toward an Iranian nuclear-weapons program ended. 

For better or worse, that's 55 years, off and on, that Iran's name has been linked with the word nuclear and 25 years since Iran initiated actual work on developing nuclear weapons. By contrast, the United States developed nuclear weapons from scratch in four years during what, compared to today, was the technological dark ages. In the interim, many other states have also succeeded in relatively short timeframes. Thus, it doesn't strike most in the West as plausible that a developed state like Iran has yet to bring its program -- if you're among those who believe that, in fact, it exists -- to fruition.

Jacques E. C. Hymans of the School of International Relations at the University of Southern California addresses Iran's inability (again, if you accept that it's trying) to close the nuclear circle in an article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs titled "Botching the Bomb: Why Nuclear Weapons Programs Often Fail on Their Own -- and Why Iran’s Might, Too" (behind a pay wall). He begins by providing an example of an official skeptical of how long it's taking Iran to close the circle (again, assuming you're among those who believe that's what it seeks). [Emphasis added.]

"Today, almost any industrialized country can produce a nuclear weapon in four to five years," a former chief of Israeli military intelligence recently wrote in The New York Times, echoing a widely held belief. Indeed, the more nuclear technology and know-how have diffused around the world, the more the timeline for building a bomb should have shrunk. But in fact, rather than speeding up over the past four decades, proliferation has gone into slow motion. … Seven countries launched dedicated nuclear weapons projects before 1970, and all seven succeeded in relatively short order. By contrast, of the ten countries that have launched dedicated nuclear weapons projects since 1970, only three have achieved a bomb.

In Iran's case -- and I'll issue this disclaimer just once more: assuming you believe that they're trying to develop nuclear weapons -- a number of factors have contributed to the delay. Foremost among them is that because Iran signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it's subject to monitoring and verification. Other reasons include imported nuclear components that the West has sabotaged and killing of scientists, the reduction of the nuclear black market to but a shadow of itself, and sanctions. But here, according to Hymans, is the essential reason in Iran as well as other states:

The great proliferation slowdown. … is mostly the result of the dysfunctional management tendencies of the states that have sought the bomb in recent decades. Weak institutions in those states have permitted political leaders to unintentionally undermine the performance of their nuclear scientists, engineers, and technicians.

In fact, according to Hymans,

… most rulers of recent would-be nuclear states have tended to rely on a coercive, authoritarian management approach to advance their quest for the bomb, using appeals to scientists' greed and fear as the primary motivators. That coercive approach is a major mistake, because it produces a sense of alienation in the workers by removing their sense of professionalism. As a result, nuclear programs lose their way. Moreover, underneath these bad management choices lie bad management cultures. In developing states with inadequate civil service protections, every decision tends to become politicized, and state bureaucrats quickly learn to keep their heads down. Not even the highly technical matters faced by nuclear scientific and technical workers are safe from meddling politicians. The result is precisely the reverse of what the politicians intend: not heightened efficiency but rather a mixture of bureaucratic sloth, corruption, and endless blame shifting.

He uses Iraq as an example. On the other hand, Hymans writes:

… military attacks by foreign powers have tended to unite politicians and scientists in a common cause to build the bomb. Therefore, taking radical steps to rein in Iran would be not only risky but also potentially counterproductive, and much less likely to succeed than the simplest policy of all: getting out of the way and allowing the Iranian nuclear program's worst enemies -- Iran's political leaders -- to hinder the country's nuclear progress all by themselves. … The world is lucky that during the past few decades, the leaders of would-be nuclear weapons states have been so good at frustrating and alienating their scientists. The United States and its partners must take care not to adopt policies that resolve those leaders' management problems for them.

Unfortunately policymakers vulnerable to the conventional wisdom that Iran is developing nuclear weapons may well be too susceptible to pressure from hawks to exhibit that degree of patience and restraint.