Two Views, Pages, Pages 30-31

Iran's Nuclear Program

Dangerous Hysteria Over Iran’s Nuclear Program

Patrick Seale

IRAN’S announcement that it is to start enriching uranium to close to 20 percent, under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to produce radioisotopes for its medical reactor in Tehran has triggered a fresh outbreak of hysteria. There have been renewed calls for sanctions to force it to close down its nuclear program.

But the more Iran is threatened, the more defiant it becomes—and the more remote the chance of an agreement. The latest quarrel seems to be about the quantity of low enriched uranium Iran is ready to swap with Russia and France in exchange for nuclear fuel rods for medical purposes—rods which cannot be used to make weapons.

As Iran is deeply suspicious of Western intentions, it has proposed sending its uranium abroad in batches. But its Western interlocutors want it to surrender the bulk of its uranium supplies all at once—some 1,200 kilograms—so as to preclude any possibility of enrichment to weapons-grade levels.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki held talks in February with Yukiya Amano, the new Japanese IAEA chief, who replaced the Egyptian Muhammad elBaradei. Mottaki described the talks as “very good,” while a more sceptical Amano called for an “accelerated” dialogue.

Two rival coalitions now confront each other on the international scene: The first wants to impose harsher sanctions on Iran and, if sanctions prove ineffective, to bomb its nuclear facilities; the second recommends a patient dialogue with Tehran, and nothing but dialogue.

Somewhere between the two—and uneasily holding the ring between them—is U.S. President Barack Obama. His early policy of engagement with Iran has hardened into something like impatient opposition to the Islamic regime, and even into a reluctant acceptance that tougher sanctions may be necessary. This is a serious blow to his policy of reaching out to the Arab and Muslim world.

Israel and its hard-line friends in the United States are prominent in the first coalition. They have long campaigned for resolute action against Iran—as they did for the overthrow of Saddam Hussain in the 1990s. Their claim is that an Iranian bomb would pose an “existential” threat to Israel as well as a global menace. “We must recruit the whole world to fight [Iran’s President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad,” President Shimon Peres declared recently, echoing the bellicose tone Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu adopts whenever he refers to Iran.

Israel has repeatedly hinted that it would resort to military action on its own if diplomacy failed to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Among European countries, France has been the most vocal in calling for harsher sanctions, with some voices in Britain not far behind.

In his recent appearance before the Iraq inquiry in London, Tony Blair, Britain’s unrepentant former prime minister, mentioned Iran no fewer than 58 times. There was a need to “deal” with Iran, he suggested—much as he and former U.S. President George W. Bush had dealt with Iraq in 2003!

The coalition advocating dialogue with Tehran includes China, Turkey, Brazil, and—with more or less unanimity—Iran’s Arab neighbors. Arab states have no wish to see a nuclear-capable Iran, but they are far more frightened of an Iranian-Israeli war, which could have devastating consequences for the security and stability of the region and for Arab oil exports.

China, Iran’s leading trading partner, is opposed to sanctions and seems ready to veto any move at the Security Council to impose them. “To talk about sanctions at this moment will complicate the situation and might stand in the way of finding a diplomatic solution,” Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said in Paris in February. Turkey, in turn, has long advocated negotiations with Iran and has resolutely opposed military action against it—which is undoubtedly one of the reasons why Turkish-Israeli relations have cooled this past year. Brazil, which now occupies a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council, has also advocated a dialogue with Tehran. Ahmadinejad was in Brazil last November, while President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is expected in Iran in May.

Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, has urged the Arabs to take the initiative in talking to Iran, with the aim of drawing it into some sort of regional security arrangement. The idea is gaining some ground in Arab circles.

As Iran presses ahead with uranium enrichment—as it has the right to do for peaceful purposes under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)—the contest between the two coalitions is likely to sharpen. On balance, however, the scales are tilted against punishing Iran more than it is already being punished. Obama may agree to some tightening of the sanctions regime (in Paris in February Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said “the only path that is left to us...is the pressure track”) but he has by no means joined those hawks who blatantly recommend bombing Iran. Indeed, Obama is widely believed to have warned Israel that an attack on Iran would damage U.S. interests.

Obama’s pro-Israel critics have accused him of “appeasement.” At February’s Munich security conference, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, declared: “We have a choice here: to go to tough economic sanctions to make diplomacy work or we will face the prospect of military action against Iran.” And he added, “A nuclear-armed Iran would provoke chaos in the Middle East, send world oil prices soaring and end any hope of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

These predictions would seem to be entirely mistaken. Far from provoking chaos, an Iranian bomb could stabilize the region and curb Israel’s aggressive behavior toward its neighbors—something the Arabs have not managed to achieve in the past six decades. Indeed, by creating a balance of power with Israel, and thereby limiting its freedom of action, Iran might actually encourage Israel to make peace with its neighbors, including the Palestinians. The only development which would send oil prices soaring is an Israeli attack on Iran.

All the indications are that the debate concerning what to do about Iran will continue without either side landing a decisive blow. It may be that events inside Iran will bring matters to a head. February 11 was the anniversary of the 1979 revolution. The whole world was watching to see whether anti-government protests would manage to affect the future policies of the Islamic Republic.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire. Copyright © 2010 Patrick Seale. Distributed by Agence Global.

Is Iran Running a Bluff?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Did Robert Gibbs let the cat out of the bag?

On Feb. 11, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the world that Iran, unable to get fuel rods from the West for its U.S.-built reactor, which makes medical isotopes, had begun to enrich its own uranium to 20 percent.

From his perch in the West Wing, Gibbs scoffed: “He [Ahmadinejad] says many things, and many of them turn out to be untrue. We do not believe they have the capability to enrich to the degree to which they now say they are enriching.”

But wait a minute. If Iran does not “have the capability” to enrich to 20 percent for fuel rods, how can Iran enrich to 90 percent for a bomb?

What was Gibbs implying?

Is he confirming reports that Iran’s centrifuges are breaking down or have been sabotaged? Is he saying that impurities, such as molybdenum, in the feed stock of Iran’s centrifuges at Natanz are damaging the centrifuges and contaminating the uranium?

What explains Gibbs’ confidence? Perhaps this.

According to a report last week by David Albright and Christina Walrond of the Institute for Science and International Security, “Iran’s problems in its centrifuge program are greater than expected....Iran is unlikely to deploy enough gas centrifuges to make enriched uranium for commercial nuclear power reactors [Iran’s stated nuclear goal] for a long time, if ever, particularly if [U.N.] sanctions remain in force.”

Thus, ISIS is saying Iran cannot make usable fuel for the nuclear power plant it is building, and Gibbs is saying Iran lacks the capability to make fuel rods for its research reactor.

Which suggests Iran’s vaunted nuclear program is a busted flush.

ISIS insists, however, that Iran may still be able to build a bomb. Yet, to do that, Iran would have to divert nearly all of its low-enriched uranium at Natanz, now under U.N. watch, to a new cascade of centrifuges, enrich that to 90 percent, then explode a nuclear device.

Should Iran do that, however, it would have burned up all its bomb-grade uranium and lack enough low-enriched uranium for a second test. And Tehran would be facing a stunned and shaken Israel with hundreds of nukes and an America with thousands, without a single nuke of its own.

Is Iran running a bluff? And if Gibbs and Albright are right, how long can Iran keep up this pretense of rapid nuclear progress?

Which brings us to the declaration by Ahmadinejad on the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, which produced this headline in The New York Times: “Iran Boasts of Capacity to Make Bomb Fuel.”

Accurate as far as it went, this headline was so incomplete as to mislead. For here is what Ahmadinejad said in full:

“When we say that we don’t build nuclear bombs, it means that we won’t do so because we don’t believe in having it....The Iranian nation is brave enough that if one day we wanted to build nuclear bombs, we would announce it publicly without being afraid of you.

“Right now in Natanz we have the capability to enrich to more than 20 percent and to more than 80 percent, but because we don’t need to, we won’t do so.”

On Feb. 11, Ahmadinejad sounded like Ronald Reagan: “We believe that not only the Middle East but the whole world should be free of nuclear weapons, because we see such weapons as inhumane.”

Now if, as Albright suggests, Tehran cannot produce fuel for nuclear power plants, and if, as Gibbs suggests, Iran is not capable of enriching to 20 percent for fuel for its research reactor, is Ahmadinejad, in renouncing the bomb, making a virtue of necessity?

After all, if you can’t build them, denounce them as inhumane.

Last December, however, the Times of London reported it had a secret document, which “intelligence agencies” dated to early 2007, proving that Iran was working on the final component of a “neutron initiator,” the trigger for an atom bomb.

If true, this would leave egg all over the faces of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies whose December 2007 consensus was that Iran stopped seeking a bomb in 2003.

The Times credited an “Asian intelligence service” for having ably assisted with its story.

U.S. intelligence, however, has not confirmed the authenticity of the document, and Iran calls it a transparent forgery. When former CIA man Phil Giraldi sounded out ex-colleagues still in the trade, they, too, called the Times”˜ document a forgery.

Shades of Saddam seeking yellowcake from Niger.

Are the folks who lied us into war on Iraq, to strip it of weapons it did not have, now trying to lie us into war on Iran, to strip it of weapons it does not have?

Maybe the Senate should find out before voting sanctions that will put us on the road to such a war, which would fill up all the empty beds at Walter Reed.

Patrick J. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist. Copyright Creators Syndicate, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Patrick J. Buchanan and Creators Syndicate, Inc.