FOCUS: Iran

Iran Police Kill Two Kurd Rebels

2006-04-19T20:38:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Iranian police have killed two members of a banned Kurdish rebel group operating close to the border with Turkey, Iran's state television reported.

The two, killed late Tuesday, were described as members of the Pejak group who were trying to infiltrate Iran's West Azerbaijan province.

Iran says Pejak is linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year insurgency against Ankara for self rule in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, AFP noted.

Reports have said at least 120 Iranian police were killed and scores wounded in Kurdish rebel attacks last year, many of them blamed on Pejak.

Iran is bound by treaty with Turkey to fight PKK militants on its soil in return for Turkey fighting the Iranian armed opposition group, the People's Mujahedeen.

Iran has blamed US-led forces in neighbouring Iraq for a recent upsurge in violence among the Kurdish and Arab communities in its western border provinces.

Russia to Sell Air Defense Systems to Iran

2006-04-19T20:33:00.000-05:00

Xinhua

Russia will implement the contract to supply Tor-M1 air defense systems to Iran in full, Chief of General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Baluyevsky said here on Wednesday.

Baluyevsky made the statement after his talks with James Johns, Supreme Commander of the United States and NATO forces in Europe.

"I'm sure this equipment is not strategic, but it is obvious that it will be delivered in accordance with Russia's international commitments in the nonproliferation sphere and under control by the appropriate bodies. I'm simply sure of it," Baluyevsky was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

Up to 30 Tor-M1 complexes are planned to be supplied to Tehran which will defend the key state and military facilities, foremost nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Bushehr, Tehran and in the east of the country.

The contract, worth 1.4 billion U.S. dollars, is the biggest arms deal Iran and Russia has ever concluded.

Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov officially confirmed the fact of concluding the contract on December 5, 2005.

Ivanov noted that the contract "is implemented in strictest conformity with the Russian legislation and Russia's international commitments."

Tor-M1 is an all-weather air defense system intended for fulfilling air defense tasks at the battalion unit level. It ensures effective protection from cruise missiles, guided bombs, warplanes, helicopters, and pilotless and remotely controlled attack aircraft.

Reformist Clerics Anxious About Nuclear Programs

2006-04-19T19:57:00.000-05:00

Meysam Tavvab, Rooz Online

In their meeting with ayatollah Khamenei the leader of the Islamic regime, members of the reformist Association of clergies “Majma-e Rohaniyun Mobarez” raised their concerns about the country’s nuclear programs and policies. They called on Khamenei to take responsibility for the nuclear policies, which according to them sway from day to day and contradict official announcements made daily by different senior officials.

The members of the Association also criticized the limited scope of talks with the US, as announced by both parties and asked Khamenei that the government consider the views of all the major political factions and groupings of the country so as to form a national consensus on the nuclear issue.

It should be noted that this meeting took place just a few days after the major reform organizations and groups around the country sent a letter to Khamenei, calling on him to take leadership and control of the nuclear policy and issues of the country.

Also present in the meeting between Khamenei and the reformist clergies, were former president Mohammad Khatami, a prominent reform personality and former editor of influential Salam newspaper Mousavi Khoeniha, the moderate-turned cleric Mousavi Bojnourdi, and a member of late ayatollah Khomeini’s leadership office Tavasoli.

Iran to Step Up U-Enriching Work, Asks EU to Join

2006-04-19T19:45:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Tehran plans to step up uranium enrichment work soon and has asked European countries to help in the effort, a senior French official told AFP.

Speaking after a meeting between Iranian officials and senior diplomats from Britain, France and Germany he said the Iranian officials had "indicated that Iran is preparing soon to launch two new centrifuge cascades" for enriching uranium.

The French official, who took part in a surprise meeting with the Iranian delegation in Moscow, spoke on condition that he not be named.

"They asked the political directors to take note of this situation and invited them to negotiate in taking part in this enrichment program," the official said, after the meeting between the Iranian officials and the diplomats from the "EU-3".

A cascade of basic "P1" centrifuges for uranium enrichment consists of 164 devices. Iran is believed to have one such cascade in operation at a nuclear facility in Natanz at present.

The French official said the European participants in the meeting responded to the invitation by saying there was "no question" of accepting any situation in Iran that ran contrary to resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Those resolutions have called on Iran to suspend all uranium enrichment activity.

The European political directors warned the Iranian officials that Tehran should freeze its sensitive nuclear work in line with UN requests.

"If it does not, then far from creating a situation allowing the resumption of discussions, Iran will face measures that will isolate it further," the official said.

The Iranian delegation was headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Javad Waidi, the deputy head of Iran's national security council and aide to Tehran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani.

The meeting between the Iranian officials and the EU-3 diplomats came at the end of two days of intensive discussions in Moscow among senior diplomats from the UN Security Council's five permanent members and the Group of Eight (G8) states on how to deal with the Iran nuclear impasse.

The EU-Iranian meeting in Moscow had not been expected but was agreed to quickly because "it seemed useful to listen to the Iranian side in order to evaluate the situation and hear its intentions with regard to the IAEA," the French official said.

He said Iran requested the meeting, which was hosted by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak.

Russian Military Won't Intervene in Iran: Official

2006-04-19T19:39:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Russia's military will not intervene on one side or the other should the current Iran crisis lead to an armed conflict, the chief of the Russian general staff said, AFP reported.

"You are asking which side Russia will take. Of course Russia will not, at least I as head of the general staff, suggest the use of force on one side or the other. Just as was the case in Afghanistan," General Yury Baluevsky told reporters, referring to the 2001 US-led intervention to oust the Taliban.

The general, who heads the Russian armed forces, stressed that he did not think a military scenario was likely in relation to Iran and said that diplomacy was "the proper course".

"In my view a military solution to the Iranian problem would be a political and military mistake," Baluevsky said.

He also confirmed that Russia planned to go ahead with fulfilling an order by Iran for a consignment of Tor-M1 mobile air defence systems, despite US concerns about the deal.

"I am absolutely sure that it will be delivered, in accordance with international norms on non-proliferation," he said.

Baluevsky is known for his hawkish position with regard to the United States. In December he accused Washington of "double standards" in its policies towards Iran and North Korea, saying it had closed its eyes to Israel's nuclear arsenal.

His comments on Wednesday came as the Iran issue continued to overshadow talks in Moscow among leaders of the Group of Eight rich nations.

Tehran also sent a high-ranking delegation to Moscow for talks amid renewed efforts to resolve the mounting international crisis.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is purely for civilian energy generation, but the West, led by the United States, suspects the programme is a cover for developing atomic weapons.

Ahmadinejad: Oil Price Is Lower Than Value

2006-04-19T19:22:00.000-05:00

Nasser Karimi, Associated Press

Wading into oil politics for the first time, Iran's hard-line president said Wednesday that crude oil prices — now at record levels — still are below their true value.

In statements likely to rattle world oil markets, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also said developed countries, not producing countries like Iran, are benefiting the most from the current high prices.

"The global oil price has not reached its real value yet. The products derived from crude oil are sold at prices dozens of times higher than those charged by oil-producing countries," state-run Tehran radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

"The developed nations are the biggest beneficiary of the added value of oil products," he said.

The president, who is embroiled with the West and the United Nations over Tehran's nuclear program, stopped short of saying Iran would use oil as a weapon, a tactic much feared by his antagonists on the nuclear issue. Nor did he say what oil prices should be.

Oil prices leapt above $72 a barrel Wednesday, settling at a record high for the third straight day.

"The products derived from crude oil cost over 10 times the price of oil sold by producing states. Developed and powerful countries benefit more from its value-added than any party," Ahmadinejad said.

Oil prices should be determined on the basis of market supply and demand, the Iranian leader said.

"Oil is the major asset of nations possessing it. Its price should not be lowered on the pretext that it will prove harmful to developing states, thus permitting the world powers to benefit the most from it," he said.

George Orwel, an analyst at the New York-based Petroleum Intelligence Weekly said he thought Ahmadinejad was playing the oil card to resist pressure over Iran's nuclear program.

"They are using the oil as a political football. Every time there's an issue with Iran, the oil market freaks out," he said in a telephone interview.

Earlier this week, as oil prices pushed above $70 a barrel, ABN Amro broker Lee Fader said the trigger was heightened fear about U.S. military action against Iran, which has said it would go ahead with plans to enrich uranium in defiance of the United States, Europe and the U.N. nuclear agency.

Iran says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, but the West fears it is intent on arming itself with nuclear weapons.

If the United States were to attack Iran, Tehran might try to cripple the world economy by putting a stranglehold on the oil that moves through the Strait of Hormuz — a narrow, strategically important waterway running to Iran's south.

While discounting Ahmadinejad's seriousness in his Wednesday comments about the value of oil, Orwel conceded the oil industry could not do without the 2.5 million barrels that Iran exports daily.

"Ahmadinejad is trying to show his muscle so that the Bush administration can realize the consequences on the oil market of further confrontation with Iran," Orwel said, adding that he fully expected Iran to threaten to cut off oil if the confrontation with the West continued.

While Ahmadinejad did not say he would use oil as a weapon in his dispute with the West, Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said last month the oil card was in play.

"If (they) politicize our nuclear case, we will use any means. We are rich in energy resources. We have control over the biggest and the most sensitive energy route of the world," he said, referring to the Straits of Hormuz.

In keeping with Iranian leaders' tendency of late to contradict themselves, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki later denied Iran would adopt such a policy.

Iran is the world's fourth-largest oil-producing country and the second in OPEC.

Ahmadinejad urged oil-producing countries — within and outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries — to establish a fund to help alleviate the pressure resulting from high oil prices on Third World nations.

Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit said he considered it unlikely that Iran had any intention of cutting off its oil, the lifeline of its economy.

Gheit noted, however, that there was some truth in Ahmadinejad's comment on developed countries benefiting most from increased oil prices, though the statement would likely be seen as an attempt at "fanning the flames" of a red-hot oil market.

"What he's saying makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, the source of the comment is going to send jitters in the market," Gheit said.

"The street value (of oil) is triple what OPEC is making," Gheit added, referring to the value of a barrel of gasoline versus the value of a barrel of oil.

Gheit estimated that in London, where the retail price of gasoline is about $6 a gallon, about $150 worth of gasoline can be made and sold from every $50 barrel of oil.

"That is why Exxon Mobil and all the rest make so much money," he said.

___

Associated Press reporter Brad Foss in Washington and Tarek al-Issawi in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

War Game Will Focus on Situation with Iran

2006-04-19T19:15:00.000-05:00

Matt Kelley, USA Today

WASHINGTON — Amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran over the future of Iran's nuclear program, the Pentagon is planning a war game in July so officials can explore options for a crisis involving Iran.

The July 18 exercise at National Defense University's National Strategic Gaming Center will include members of Congress and top officials from military and civilian agencies. It was scheduled in August, before the latest escalation in the conflict, university spokesman Dave Thomas said.

It's the latest example of how otherwise routine operations are helping the United States prepare for a possible military confrontation with Iran. On Tuesday, President Bush refused to rule out military action — even a nuclear strike — to stop Iran's nuclear program.

"All options are on the table," Bush said in the Rose Garden.

The exercise is one of five scheduled this year, including others envisioning an avian influenza pandemic and a crisis in Pakistan. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld started the exercises involving members of Congress in 2002 to help the legislative and executive branches discuss policy options.

Such exercises do not involve military members simulating combat. Instead, officials gather for a daylong conference and discuss how to react to various events presented in a fictional scenario.
Prodded by the United States, the United Nations Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all uranium enrichment activities by April 28. Last week, Iran said it has mastered the technology to make fuel that could be used for power plants or bombs, but it insists its nuclear program is only meant to generate electricity. The United States and its allies say Iran is working to build nuclear weapons.

The July exercise may have real-world consequences since Iran could interpret it as evidence the United States plans to attack, said Khalid al-Rodhan, an Iran expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Anything the U.S. will do in the region will be seen as further provocation," al-Rodhan said. "Given what's happening in Iraq, it's clear the Iranians are afraid of U.S. intentions."

In the meantime, the Pentagon is also collecting and interpreting photos and other intelligence data about Iran's facilities, developing weapons to attack hardened targets and laying the policy groundwork for a possible strike, Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said in recent congressional testimony.

For example, the Department of Defense has announced several initiatives to destroy deeply buried facilities such as those used by Iran's nuclear program.

They include:

•Replacing the nuclear warheads on some submarine-launched Trident missiles with conventional explosives. The Pentagon asked Congress for $503 million next year to begin that program.

•Putting hardened tips on existing missiles to help them penetrate further into earth or concrete.

•Setting off a huge explosion to gather data for efforts to improve bunker-busting bombs. In the that test, the military's Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) plans to set off 700 tons of explosives in the Nevada desert to gather data on how to hit buried targets.

The June 2 test is meant to help solve the problems posed by hardened weapons sites in nations like Iran and North Korea, DTRA head James Tegnalia says.

July's war game will be the first on Iran to involve members of Congress, but several other military exercises have focused on Iran. Last week, for example, the British military confirmed a London newspaper's report that it joined the United States in a July 2004 war game involving Iran at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A report in The Guardian said U.S. and British officers played out a scenario involving a fictitious country called "Korona" with borders and military capabilities corresponding with Iran's.

Similarly, a 2003 Marine Corps planning document envisioned a conflict in 2015 with Korona, again a country corresponding to Iran.

A 2004 war game coordinated by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command featured an invasion of "Nair," another Iran equivalent.

Iran Police Crack Down on Unislamic Women's Dress

2006-04-18T21:32:00.000-05:00

"100 vigilantes gathered in front of parliament on Tuesday, demanding an official crackdown on "prostitution" -- women who wear colourful headscarves and figure-hugging coats"
Parisa Hafezi, Reuters India

TEHRAN- Iranian police said on Tuesday they would launch a crackdown on "social corruption" such as women flouting Islamic dress codes, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

"In accordance with the law, the police will confront those who appear in public in an indecent and inappropriate way," Fars quoted Tehran police chief Morteza Talaei as saying. "Police will seize women with tight coats and cropped trousers."

Enforcement of strict moral codes governing women's dress, Western music and mingling of the sexes became more lax after President Mohammad Khatami's election in 1997 on a platform of social and political reform.

But hardliners have been clawing back these concessions since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad swept to power last year with the backing of conservative clerics and the Basij religious forces, who condemn such "un-Islamic" practices.

The Islamic dress code imposed after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution requires women to cover all their hair and wear long, loose-fitting clothes to disguise the shape of their bodies. Violators can receive lashes, fines or imprisonment.

Analysts said that taking a tough line on social offences could backfire on the government just when it wants support in its standoff with the West over Iran's nuclear programme.

"Iran is already under international pressure. A severe crackdown on social issues like the dress code could cause a popular backlash," said political analyst Saeed Leylaz.

Mina, a 17-year-old girl with heavy makeup, tight jacket and bright headscarf that barely covered her hair, said she had no intention of changing her style.

"They are so busy with international issues, they will have no time to pay attention to my improper dress," said Mina, who asked that her full name not be used.

MANY IGNORE CHADOR

Many girls, particularly in wealthier urban areas, ignore traditional head-to-toe black chadors, wearing calf-length Capri pants, tight-fitting, thigh-length coats and brightly coloured scarves pushed back to expose plenty of hair.

Some women, testing the boundaries of the law, have been seen recently with scarves slipped off while parking cars in the street, skiing or travelling to the northern Caspian coast.

The Islamic dress code is less commonly challenged in poor suburbs and rural regions.

The authorities -- whose campaign starts on April 21 -- tend to launch such crackdowns before the hot summer months when women like to wear lighter clothing.

Some parliamentarians, alarmed by the growing number of women wearing colourful scarves and tight coats, have criticised the clerical establishment for not acting sooner.

About 100 vigilantes gathered in front of parliament on Tuesday, demanding an official crackdown on "prostitution" -- women who wear colourful headscarves and figure-hugging coats -- Fars agency reported.

Talaei said the police would target taxis that carry women in "improper dress" and would sweep through popular shopping centres, where such outfits are sold. "Women who do not wear headscarves in public will also be confronted," he said.

Iran Suspends Renault Car Project

2006-04-18T21:25:00.000-05:00

Reuters

TEHRAN - Iran has suspended a joint venture project to produce the L90 or Logan car with French automaker Renault in the Islamic republic, a government official said on Tuesday.

Analysts said the move would be a further blow to foreign investment in Iran, seen as crucial for creating jobs for the country's young population. It also comes at a time of increasing international tension over Iran's nuclear programme.

A dispute over exports of the no frills car appears to be at the heart of the dispute.

"Iran's industry and mines minister has ordered the suspension of the L90 project until Renault company considers this ministry's views regarding the project," said Mohammad Karimi, a spokesman for the ministry.

An official for the L90 project in Iran said that Renault had accepted that 60 percent of the car should be built inside Iran, the car's platform could be used to build other models and that the L90 would not enjoy a monopoly in its class of car in Iran.

But he said: "the main problem remains where Iran wants to have a share of this company's (Logan) exports".

Renault said it was working with Iran to find a solution to the dispute.

"The (Iranian) government wants to put the emphasis on exports, we are studying together all possible solutions," Renault spokesman Stephane Farhi told Reuters.

He said there was no timetable for the discussions.

Renault has said it had set up a joint venture with an Iranian partner to produce the L90 in Iran from 2006.

The L90 is better known as the "Logan", a car that Renault already produces in Romania and which forms a key part of its strategy to boost sales in emerging markets.

Saeed Leylaz, an analyst who has close links to people involved in the project, said the decision would send a bad signal to international investors.

"It is a very bad sign to the world community. It shows they can't trust us again," Leylaz said, adding that it will also have a major impact on the local car parts industry.

He said that the joint venture company had signed contracts worth about $800 million with local firms to supply parts. These contracts were now being threatened, he added.

Leylaz pointed to a previous dispute in which Iran threw out a Turkish operator of a project to run a new Iranian airport, saying it had already damaged Iran's international commercial reputation.

"In this case, we are losing our internal reputation because hundreds of suppliers are involved in this project," he said.

(Additional reporting by Edmund Blair in Tehran and Nick Antonovics in Paris)

Rumsfeld's Fast Iran Planning

2006-04-18T21:09:00.000-05:00

William M. Arkin, Washington Post

More "wild speculation” about Iran war planning, specifically CONPLAN 1025, which I believe is the overall name for the war plan positing major combat operations against Iran.

In response to my Sunday piece, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman predictably chose wittiness over clarification. He told AFP: “This is the United States Defense Department. We plan for all sorts of things."

I made my case, on Sunday and previously in these pages, why the American people would be better served if the U.S. government talked just a little bit about war plans. The danger of evasion and silence is a repeat of Iraq: Before implementation, an Iran war plan would do little to enhance diplomacy. If war came, the fabulous choreography of global strikes and major combat operations could again reflect group think and a flawed Secretary of Defense’s view of warfare.

In June 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued his first formal "Contingency Planning Guidance" to the U.S. military, a new post 9/11 document intended to provide specific top-level guidance on what to plan for.

The Guidance was signed by President Bush early in 2002, institutionalizing the war against terrorism as the highest overseas priority of military commands, and directing each regional command to prepare specific contingency plans relating to adversary nations.

In the case of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), Gen. Tommy Franks, then the commander, was directed to develop Iran war plans, though the looming Iraq war admittedly took all of the headquarters' attention and energy.

The subsequent Contingency Planning Guidance (CPG) for 2003 was more focused on the future, as well as on Rumsfeld’s fetish for flexibility and quickness. The 2003 Guidance instituted a significant change in the production and form Pentagon contingency plans would take in the future. There would still be existing operational plans (either OPLANs, CONPLANs, or “functional plans” that are fully completed), but Rumsfeld directed the transition to a more flexible set of “adaptive plans,” sometimes called “living plans.”

Under this adaptive planning construct, new plans would be designated at one of the four levels depending on the amount of detail necessitated by the contingency. They are called Level 1 through 4 plans.

Level 1 plans require the least amount of planning detail. Level 4 plans require the most detail. At levels 1 and 2, plans have enough content and a sets of options to allow the Chairman of the Joint Chief to issue an “alert order” triggering more detailed “crisis action” planning for quick reaction contingencies: They can be turned into “real” plans quicker and more flexibly. Levels 1 and 2 plans apply to lesser important countries or lower priority concerns.

The more complete Level 3 or 4 plans enable the military to plan for the real contingencies but to do so and more rapidly transition to war in a crisis. These plans have a complete base plan and a set of embedded options. A Level 3 plan most resembles the old Concept Plan (CONPLAN), which is applicable to Iran. It includes a base plan an a set of completed annexes (for the connoisseurs, those include Annexes A, B, C, D, J, K, S, V, and Z). When a level 3 plan is done, the combatant commander writes an estimate of the plan’s feasibility with respect to the availability and readiness of forces, logistics, and transportation. The Secretary of Defense is briefed on the constantly shifting results.

In the olden days, that is, a couple of years ago, the operational planning process was seen as too confining and rigid. Most of the energy went into elaborate force deployment databases and logistical structures to support operations. But the operations, that is, the strategies and operational focus, ironically took a back seat to the details. In the case of Iraq, for instance, there was a completed plan (OPLAN 1003) for fighting Saddam in 2001-2002, but the actual plan implemented in March 2003 (OPLAN 1003V) – avoiding Iraqi cities, driving to Baghdad, quick regime change at all cost – was not in the existing printed plan when 9/11 emboldened the Bush administration to continue its quest.

Under Rumsfeld’s new adaptive method, in theory, time isn’t being wasted on preparing set piece finished plans anymore. The focus instead has shifted to the more adaptive -- read fast -- mode where the “concept” of operations and the projection of contingencies is the centerpiece. It may seem like this was the way things operated in the past – the Defense Department plans for all sorts of things so Whitman says – but the reality is that the process and the form of “finished” plans in the past was far too rigid, particularly if you have a bunch of quick guns at the top who are contemptuous of military advice.

The Defense Department now has a quicker and more “adaptive” system to go to war.

Iran could be the first case. This is all the more reason to debate the plan – earth to Congress. I wonder whether the shift away from logistics and the “old” scut work of war doesn’t have the result of promoting the particular Rumsfeld style of war, which is light and fast and blind to the demands of the real world./span>

US Pressuring Russia to Drop Iran Weapons Sale

2006-04-18T19:39:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Russia is coming under US pressure to cancel a contract to deliver Tor-M1 mobile air defence systems to Iran due to concerns about Tehran's nuclear programme, a respected business daily reporteday.

"Observers say that under pressure from the United States, Russia could cancel this deal and are already saying that it has been suspended," the Vedomosti daily said.

The newspaper cited a political analyst close to the Kremlin, Sergei Markov, as saying that delivery of the air defence systems had been delayed until the autumn out of consideration for US worries.

But the paper also referred to a source close to Russia's arms export agency, Rosoboronexport, as saying that the delay in fulfilling the order, originally signed last November, was due to the need to train personnel.

"The deal with Iran could only be broken in the event of the purchaser failing to pay. Cancellation of the contract under pressure from the United States would damage Russia's reputation as an arms exporter," the paper quoted an analyst, Konstantin Makiyenko of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, as saying.

Under the contract, signed in November, Iran is to pay more than $700 mln for 29 of the sophisticated short-range air defence systems, Russian defence sources said earlier, AFP stated.

Russia is a key ally of Iran's and has been building Iran's first nuclear power station at Bushehr, in the south of the country.

Washington suspects that Iran's stated aim of developing civilian nuclear power is a front for developing nuclear weapons.

Russia Still Opposed to Sanctions on Iran

2006-04-18T19:26:00.000-05:00

Nick Wadhams and Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press

MOSCOW - Russia said it remains opposed to sanctions against Iran, and China expressed hope for a negotiated solution as senior diplomats from six countries converged in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the next step toward solving the Iranian nuclear standoff.

The United States and Britain say that if Iran does not comply with the U.N. Security Council's April 28 deadline to stop uranium enrichment, they will seek a resolution that would make the demand compulsory.

So far, Iran has refused to give up uranium enrichment, which the United States and some of its allies suspect is meant to produce weapons. Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin reaffirmed Moscow's insistence on more diplomatic efforts with Iran. "We are convinced that neither sanctions nor the use of force will lead to the solution of the problem," he said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.

Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai, the country's top nonproliferation official, visited Tehran over the weekend and appealed to Iranian leaders to reach a negotiated settlement to the dispute, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Russia and China, two of the council's five veto-holding members, have opposed punishing Iran.

"A dark cloud is looming above our region, and it is metastasizing as a result of the statements and actions by leaders of Iran, Syria and the newly elected government of the Palestinian Authority," Israel's U.N. Ambassador Dan Gillerman warned.

On Friday, Ahmadinejad called Israel a "rotten, dried tree" that will be annihilated by "one storm." He previously angered many world leaders by calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

Iran's ambassador to Russia suggested that his country would prepare for war if necessary, according to the ITAR-Tass and Interfax news agencies.

"One of the ways to prevent a war is to be prepared for it. But Iran will do everything possible to avoid any war in the region," Gholamreza Ansari was quoted as saying. "We hope the Iranian question will be resolved through negotiations."

Diplomatic officials of Russia, the United States, France, Britain, Germany and China will meet over dinner Tuesday in Moscow to discuss the latest moves in the standoff, a Western diplomat said on customary condition of anonymity.

Discussions were to continue Wednesday during a meeting of envoys from the Group of Eight major industrialized nations, the diplomat said.

Even though Russia continues to call for more diplomacy, analysts said Tehran's stubborn refusal to halt uranium enrichment efforts would make it hard for both Moscow and Beijing to stave off a U.S. push for sanctions.

"Russia will search for ways of settlement without sanctions and the use of force ... but Iran must show wisdom and flexibility," said Alexei Arbatov, head of the Moscow-based Center for International Security. "If Iran doesn't help, Russia won't be able to do anything."

Tuesday's army parade in Iran gave leaders another opportunity to show off the country's modern military equipment, including missiles that are difficult to track with radar, super-fast torpedoes recently tested in war games and other domestically produced weapons.

The United States has said Iran may have made "some strides" in its military but was likely exaggerating its capabilities.

Analysts, too, said Iran's president could have been posturing when he said last week that Tehran is testing a P-2 centrifuge that could be used to more speedily create fuel for power plants or atomic weapons. Such a device would be a vast improvement over the P-1 centrifuges that Iran says it has used to do small-scale enrichment.

His assertion was sure to raise concerns that Iran might have a more sophisticated atomic program than had been believed. The IAEA and some independent groups have long questioned whether Iran might have a parallel, secret program that is further along.

But Anthony Cordesman, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Monday there was no way to gauge either the truth or the significance of Ahmadinejad's statement.

"Just making a claim about individual technical developments doesn't tell you a thing about what progress has really been made, or how it would change their operational capabilities," Cordesman said.

---
Associated Press writers Nick Wadhams and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Ali Akbar Dareini in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this story.

Senior Iranian Aide Irks Washington with US Visit

2006-04-18T19:06:00.000-05:00

Sue Fleming, Reuters

WASHINGTON - As the United States tries to push other nations to impose a travel ban on Iranian government officials over Tehran's nuclear program, a senior Iranian official has created embarrassment in Washington by slipping into the country for a visit this month.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said on Tuesday he had heard that Mohammad Nahavandian, a senior aide to Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, was in Washington but he had not met U.S. officials and his presence was being looked into.

"It's a matter of interest for us and if I have any other information to share on the matter today or in the days ahead, I'll do so," McCormack told reporters.

Nahavandian's successful entry into the United States is embarrassing for Washington, which is pushing hard for other countries to impose travel restrictions on Iranian officials in talks in Moscow this week.

The talks follow Iran's announcement last week that it had enriched uranium for use in fueling power stations for the first time in defiance of a March 29 U.N. Security Council demand that it halt its enrichment program.

McCormack declined to say how Nahavandian got into the United States, where strict restrictions are in place on Iranian officials wanting to visit.

Nahavandian was in the United States legally, but not enter with a visa. This could mean he holds legal permanent residency in the United States or be traveling on the passport of a country where visas were not needed, said McCormack.

"We have no record of issuing a visa to a person with this name," he said, noting that the United States does not have diplomatic ties with Tehran and there are clear restrictions on travel by Iranian officials.

For example, Iranian diplomats at the United Nations in New York can travel only within a limited area.

The Financial Times quoted an Iranian advisor this month as saying Nahavandian was in Washington to float the idea of direct talks between the two countries.

But McCormack ruled out any possibility of U.S. officials meeting Nahavandian and reiterated the United States would not hold direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program.

"We have not issued an invitation to any such individual and at this point have no plans to do so," he said.

While rejecting any talks over Tehran's nuclear program, the Bush administration has given its ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, permission to meet Iranian officials. However, those talks will be limited to Iraq.

Leading Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has urged the Bush administration to hold direct talks with Tehran, a suggestion U.S. officials have rejected.

Inside the Real Iran

2006-04-17T21:09:00.000-05:00

Angus McDowall and Raymond Whitaker, The Independent

Despite the welcome for their President's nuclear bragging and anti-Israel rhetoric, many Iranians have private worries about the economy - and the threat of war. By Angus McDowall in Tehran and Raymond Whitaker

Iran's turbulent President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was compared to Saddam Hussein yesterday by a senior Israeli figure as the rhetoric and recriminations over the Iranian nuclear programme surged ever higher.

On Friday Mr Ahmadinejad said Israel was a "rotten, dried tree" that would be annihilated by "one storm", increasing fears over what Iran might do with the nuclear weapons it is presumed to be seeking. Shimon Peres, the veteran Israeli statesman, retorted that he sounded like Iraq's fallen despot, adding: "Ahmadinejad will end up like Saddam Hussein."

This followed moments of sheer surrealism earlier in the week, when the President told a rapturous crowd in the eastern city of Mashhad that Iranian scientists had successfully enriched uranium, despite the bullying of Western powers. "Iran is now a nuclear power," he said.

Moments later, against the same doves-of-peace backdrop, students danced with enormous plastic vials representing enriched uranium.

The national pride that greeted Mr Ahmadinejad's announcement was heartfelt, and showed how far many Iranians mistrust foreign powers. "We have to resist and achieve things like this that are our legal right," said Kambiz Bayat, a former civil servant. "Fortunately, we are used to hardship. In the [Iran-Iraq] war we went through periods without anything. I have brought up my children to learn they must be ready for such difficulties."

So is Iran a nation of zealots, united behind its messianic President? Is George Bush justified in contemplating the use of tactical nuclear weapons to eradicate the threat from Tehran, as the veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh charged last week?

Many years and much technological development lie between enriching uranium by 3.5 per cent for use in nuclear reactors, which is what Iran claims to have done, and the 90 per cent enrichment needed for warheads. But the more extravagant the Iranian President's language, the less doubt there appears to be that his country will inevitably get nuclear weapons.

What may be less obvious is that as Mr Ahmadinejad is using the issue to overshadow his unpopularity on other matters. Four months ago he was in crisis, reeling from stinging attacks made by critics within and outside his regime. But as he confronts the West with ever greater brio, his domestic opponents find it harder to challenge him in public since to do so looks unpatriotic and divisive.

Behind this façade of togetherness, however, the cracks are very real. The firebrand President has already faced several revolts in a parliament controlled by members of what should be his own faction. And the pragmatic former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, his defeated rival in the elections last year, remains an influential opponent.

It is unclear where the true sentiments of other senior regime figures lie. On Friday the head of the Guardian Council, a constitutional watchdog with extensive powers, joined the chorus of officials attacking the US, calling it a "decaying power". And the military, which is believed to represent one of the President's power bases, has in recent weeks carried out major manoeuvres in the Persian Gulf and announced the development of new weapons systems.

But for all the public support of Iran's right to a nuclear programme, real doubts persist about the cost of it. The Iranian new year dawned three weeks ago - and on the streets people are worried what 1385 holds in store. "Will there be a war?" Iranians frequently ask foreigners. In public, Western officials have dismissed talk of military action, but speculation remains high.
Many people privately say the President should concentrate on the issues that brought him to power, such as corruption, drug abuse and the economy.

"As far as finance is concerned, sanctions are already under way," said a foreign banker in Tehran. "All the foreign banks now are too worried about the political situation and have just stopped lending. That's having a really big impact on all the major industrial projects that Iran is trying to carry out."

"Mr Ahmadinejad means well, but he's not experienced and this is just causing us problems," said a taxi driver who served in the Revolutionary Guard during the war with Iraq. "It's getting very dangerous."

WHAT IRANIAN BLOGGERS SAY...

Iran's acquisition of a full nuclear cycle... is more significant than qualifying for the World Cup... a memorable event in Iran's history

Sharare-ha va Shokufe-ha (Flames and Blossoms)

Iran's nuclear activities [are] just a cover up for continuing violation of human rights, a means to limit freedom of speech and to suppress opposition voices

Jomhur (Republic)

We congratulate Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] and Mr Ahmadinejad for the success of Iranian scientists... and we all chant loudly: 'Down with America!' and 'Long live Revolutionary Guards!'

Basiji-ye Tondro (Extremist Militia)

Recent military exercises, combined with the 'good nuclear news', leave no doubt about issues Iran has repeatedly denied in recent years

Hengameh Shahidi, activist and journalist

[The quake-hit city of] Bam was supposed to be revived. For three years no laughter has been heard in Bam. NO! We don't want nuclear energy!

Armanshahr (Dreamland)

Negotiating with the US... is sheer stupidity
Morteza Shimiyayi

Iran Claims Tests of New Centrifuge

2006-04-17T20:45:00.000-05:00

Nasser Karimi, Yahoo! News

Iran's president has thrown a new wrinkle into the nuclear debate by claiming his country is testing a centrifuge that could be used to more speedily create fuel for power plants or atomic weapons.

But some analysts familiar with the country's technology said Monday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could be deliberately exaggerating Iran's capabilities, either to boost his own political support or to persuade the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to back off.

The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran cease enrichment work, which the United States and some of its allies suspect is meant to produce weapons. Russia and China, two of the council's five veto-holding members, have opposed punishing Iran.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Monday the Kremlin insists on a diplomatic solution to the standoff rather than any tough measures against Iran. And Russia's U.N. ambassador said that Moscow is hopeful that Iran will suspend uranium enrichment before an April 28 Security Council deadline, suggesting that the Islamic republic's tough line so far was a negotiating tactic.
A Western diplomat said officials of the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany would discuss the matter in Moscow on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad, in a speech to students last week, claimed for the first time that Iran is testing a P-2 centrifuge for enriching uranium. Such a device would be a vast improvement over the P-1 centrifuges that Iran says it has used to do small-scale enrichment.

Iran previously told the International Atomic Energy Agency it gave up all work on P-2 centrifuges three years ago. It was not clear if Iran has been doing work all along on the updated model, or recently restarted efforts, or even if Ahmadinejad's comment was accurate.

But his assertion is sure to raise concerns that Iran might have a more sophisticated atomic program than had been believed. The IAEA and some independent groups have long questioned whether Iran might have a parallel, secret nuclear program that is further along.

"Our centrifuges are P-1 type. P-2, which has quadruple the capacity, now is under the process of research and test in the country," Ahmadinejad told students in remarks that were not reported by the official Iranian news agency but were later found on the presidential Web site.

Iran insists it is building up a nuclear program only for peaceful purposes — to generate electricity. But the United States and many of its allies think the Iranians want nuclear weapons.
Iran has come under pressure in recent months to halt all uranium enrichment, but Ahmadinejad is adamant it will press forward.

"He was likely posturing for his own political advantage and playing to national sentiment. We have to remember that the nuclear issue is very popular in Iran," said Khalid R. al-Rodhan, an Iran nuclear expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Anthony Cordesman, also an expert at CSIS, said there was no way to gauge either the truth or the significance of Ahmadinejad's statement.

"Just making a claim about individual technical developments doesn't tell you a thing about what progress has really been made, or how it would change their operational capabilities," Cordesman said.

Officials at the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog based in Vienna, Austria, refused to comment.
The IAEA has believed for some time that Iran obtained the plans for a P-2 centrifuge. Some experts believe the designs were in Iranian hands as long ago as the late 1980s through a black-market network run by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.

Iran previously told the IAEA that the only work it had done on the P-2 design was carried out between 2002 and 2003 and was very limited. It also said the work was halted in 2003, when Iran went back to the P-1 design.

But the IAEA has repeatedly questioned that claim and accused Iran of not coming clean on past efforts.

"We know that they have had the drawings for P-2 centrifuge and they've publicized that," said Gary Sick, professor of international affairs at Columbia University and a former adviser to the U.S. National Security Council.

"But up till now, they have said that they were not in fact pursuing that path. If in fact Ahmadinejad said that, it is a significant change," Sick said.

A diplomat in Vienna who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name because he was not authorized to speak with reporters, said if Iran has secretly developed its P-2 program, that could mean it will be able to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium faster and in greater quantities than previously thought.

The latest estimate from the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies says Iran could not create a bomb before the next decade. But that analysis was based on Tehran using P-1 centrifuges.

Bombs that Would Backfire

2006-04-17T20:17:00.000-05:00

Richard Clarke Steve Simon, New York Times

WHITE HOUSE spokesmen have played down press reports that the Pentagon has accelerated planning to bomb Iran. We would like to believe that the administration is not intent on starting another war, because a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been. A brief look at history shows why.

Reports by the journalist Seymour Hersh and others suggest that the United States is contemplating bombing a dozen or more nuclear sites, many of them buried, around Iran. In the event, scores of air bases, radar installations and land missiles would also be hit to suppress air defenses. Navy bases and coastal missile sites would be struck to prevent Iranian retaliation against the American fleet and Persian Gulf shipping. Iran's long-range missile installations could also be targets of the initial American air campaign.

These contingencies seem familiar to us because we faced a similar situation as National Security Council staff members in the mid-1990's. American frustrations with Iran were growing, and in early 1996 the House speaker, Newt Gingrich, publicly called for the overthrow of the Iranian government. He and the C.I.A. put together an $18 million package to undertake it.

The Iranian legislature responded with a $20 million initiative for its intelligence organizations to counter American influence in the region. Iranian agents began casing American embassies and other targets around the world. In June 1996, the Qods Force, the covert-action arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arranged the bombing of an apartment building used by our Air Force in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans.

At that point, the Clinton administration and the Pentagon considered a bombing campaign. But after long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favorably for the United States.

While the full scope of what America did do remains classified, published reports suggest that the United States responded with a chilling threat to the Tehran government and conducted a global operation that immobilized Iran's intelligence service. Iranian terrorism against the United States ceased.

In essence, both sides looked down the road of conflict and chose to avoid further hostilities. And then the election of the reformist Mohammad Khatami as president of Iran in 1997 gave Washington and Tehran the cover they needed to walk back from the precipice.

Now, as in the mid-90's, any United States bombing campaign would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process. Iran could respond three ways. First, it could attack Persian Gulf oil facilities and tankers — as it did in the mid-1980's — which could cause oil prices to spike above $80 dollars a barrel.

Second and more likely, Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States. Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past as an instrument of Iran. We might hope that Hezbollah, now a political party, would decide that it has too much to lose by joining a war against the United States. But this would be a dangerous bet.

Third, Iran is in a position to make our situation in Iraq far more difficult than it already is. The Badr Brigade and other Shiite militias in Iraq could launch a more deadly campaign against British and American troops. There is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready.

No matter how Iran responded, the question that would face American planners would be, "What's our next move?" How do we achieve so-called escalation dominance, the condition in which the other side fears responding because they know that the next round of American attacks would be too lethal for the regime to survive?

Bloodied by Iranian retaliation, President Bush would most likely authorize wider and more intensive bombing. Non-military Iranian government targets would probably be struck in a vain hope that the Iranian people would seize the opportunity to overthrow the government. More likely, the American war against Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control.

So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer. The president assures us he will seek a diplomatic solution to the Iranian crisis. And there is a role for threats of force to back up diplomacy and help concentrate the minds of our allies. But the current level of activity in the Pentagon suggests more than just standard contingency planning or tactical saber-rattling.

The parallels to the run-up to the war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was "no war plan on my desk" despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion. Congress did not ask the hard questions then. It must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well.

Richard Clarke and Steven Simon were, respectively, national coordinator for security and counterterrorism and senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council.

Iran Vows to Continue Nuclear Work

2006-04-17T20:11:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Iran's top nuclear official vowed on Monday that the clerical regime would press on with its uranium enrichment work despite mounting international pressure to suspend suspect nuclear activities.

"Why should Iran suspend its research activities," Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, was quoted as saying by the official IRNA news agency.

"One should not follow such propositions... which are not rational," he said, adding: "Iran will follow its nuclear program with patience."

Last Tuesday Iran announced it had successfully enriched uranium to the level needed for reactor fuel, defying UN demands to limit its disputed nuclear program, AFP noted.

The UN Security Council has called on Iran to suspend enrichment activities by April 28.
The five permanent members of the Council, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany meet in Moscow Tuesday to discuss the Iranian issue.

"We advise them not to repeat past mistakes... so that a reasonable atmosphere is created to follow up the negotiations," Larijani said.

He also dismissed the proposition by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has called on the Security Council to adopt a resolution which could allow the use of force against Iran.

"Such statements are not new and will not affect our determination to pursue" the nuclear program, he said.

Oil Surges to Fresh High on Iran Fears

2006-04-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

Yvette Essen, Telegraph

Oil has been driven to fresh highs while other commodity prices have hit 20-year records as dealers worry about the deteriorating political situation between the US and Iran.

Markets are fretting that Washington may sanction bombing raids against Iran's nuclear power stations.

Brent crude in London for June delivery ended at $71.46 a barrel, up 87 cents on the day. It opened at $70.99 and has rallied for nine consecutive days from $66.88.

In New York, the stock markets were weak in early trading, the Dow dropping to 11089.66, the S&P to 1285.70 and the Nasdaq to 2312.25, as the oil worries overshadowed strong earnings figures from the likes of Citigroup.

The Iran jitters, plus inflation fears, also caused investors to seek a safe haven in commodities. Gold opened at $603 and rose to a 25-year high of $611.80 while silver hit a 23-year high at $12.95.

Traders said investors had been piling into commodities on concerns over worsening relations with Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer.

Last week, Iran said it had enriched uranium to the level needed to make reactor fuel, sparking worries about its ability to develop nuclear weapons and causing fears that military action is being considered against Iran.

David Buik, market strategist at spread-betting group Cantor Index, said: "People are reacting to these serious political problems in the Gulf, which are causing extreme concern.

Investors have taken significant hedge positions in futures contracts for oil and precious metals, pushing them on to record prices.

"If the UN implements sanctions against Iran or, as a last resort, the US bombs Iran's nuclear reactors, Iran's response could be to cut off oil. Such a move would have serious ramifications for the world's economy."

In the US, crude oil prices also hit $70 - their highest level for nearly eight months when Hurricane Katrina battered oil installations.

Oil prices have also come under pressure in the past week after fresh unrest in Africa. Chad's Doba oil fields produce 170,000 barrels a day, and yesterday Chad accused Sudan of forming a rebel army to attack the country.

The commodity price jump came despite Iran's influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani trying to calm fears yesterday. He said: "We are certain Gulf countries will not back the US in waging an attack on Iran.

"The talk about a US attack is nonsense and we are sure Americans would not want create problems for themselves."

However, Lee Curtis, a sales trader at spread betting group Finspreads, expects commodity prices to continue rising.

"Any uncertainty about Iran is bad. The market has been going this way for the past two weeks. It would be more of a surprise when it stops going up."

US Refuses to Discuss Iran's Nuclear Plans in Face-to-Face Talks on Iraq

2006-04-17T19:36:00.000-05:00

Jonathan Steele and Julian Borger, The Guardian
Although the US is resisting pressure to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions through direct talks with Tehran, rather than sanctions or military strikes, it still intends to meet senior Iranian officials for discussions on Iraq at which it will demand an end to Iranian meddling, according to Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador in Baghdad.

He is to head the US team at face-to-face talks, which will be the first formal diplomatic meeting between the two countries since the Islamic revolution in 1979 and are expected to open in Baghdad shortly.

Leading Republican and Democratic senators have urged the Bush administration to engage Iran in full-scale talks, but in an interview with the Guardian Mr Khalilzad made it clear that the talks would be limited to Iraq. The US wanted Iran to halt aid to Iraq's sectarian militias, and stop smuggling al-Qaida fighters and weapons across the border, he said.

He criticised Iranian "negative propaganda". "The Shias have been the main beneficiaries of this change, yet Iran has been very critical of the liberation and the liberators," he said. "A lot of media in Iran exaggerate the problems here ... They are inciting people against the forces that have come to liberate Iraq."

The talks with Iran have the backing of Iraqi leaders, who also insist on their own representation at the table. "We have no objection," Mr Khalilzad told the Guardian. "We're not going to negotiate on behalf of Iraq." The talks were put on hold until Iraq had a new government because "in this part of the world people always think in great conspiracy theories ... We didn't want people here to think that the Iranians and the Americans are together deciding on the Iraqi government."

Concern over Iran's nuclear intentions was heightened yesterday with the publication of new satellite photographs of its uranium conversion plant at Isfahan and its uranium enrichment complex at Natanz, showing evidence of new tunnels and underground facilities.

The satellite images were analysed by the Institute for Science and International Security, an independent nuclear watchdog group. "They seem to be burrowing away like crazy," said its president, David Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector. "Taking out the nuclear weapons programme in Iran seems to be nearly impossible. They have so many underground sites now, you don't know what to hit ... The times for military strikes that could have taken out the weapons programme are gone."

Mr Albright and Paul Brannan, an expert on the nuclear black market, said the new tunnel at Isfahan was the third at the site. "Mounds of earth can also be found next to the new entrance, suggestive of recent excavation," they wrote in an analysis of the photographs. "This new tunnel entrance is indicative of a new underground facility or the further expansion of the existing one."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said Iranian scientists are "presently conducting research" on an advanced centrifuge that would quadruple the country's capacity to enrich uranium. This would add weight to suspicions that Iran has a parallel, covert nuclear programme built around technology provided by the renegade Pakistani nuclear engineer Abdul Qadeer Khan.

At the forthcoming talks, the US envoy will speak to the Iranians in their own language. Mr Khalilzad was born in Afghanistan in 1951 and his mother tongue is Dari, which differs little from Farsi. The third US overlord in Baghdad since the invasion, Mr Khalilzad is considered the most successful. As a Muslim, educated in Beirut, he understands local culture. But in a constant reminder of the risks he runs, he keeps a tailor's dummy draped with his flak jacket and helmet in his office.

Mr Khalilzad is a neo-con who felt the US should have toppled Saddam Hussein after expelling him from Kuwait in 1991. His technique for countering the fall in support for the war in US opinion polls is to offer lurid scenarios for what might happen "if we were to leave prematurely before Iraq can stand on its own feet".

"One danger would be that the effort by terrorists to provoke sectarian conflict could escalate and produce circumstances in which regional states could be sucked in on one side or the other."
The second scenario was of "al-Qaida taking over part of Iraq, such as Anbar province, to found a 'mini-Talibistan'". What al-Qaida did in remote, poverty-stricken Afghanistan would seem like "child's play compared to what they could do given Iraq's location and resources".

The third risk would arise if Iraq imploded into sectarian war. "The Kurds may take matters into their own hands, saying, 'Look, Iraq isn't going to work, we'd better look after ourselves'. There are territorial disputes with a constitutional path to resolve them. They may say, 'Aha, no, it can't be resolved that way,' and from that Kurdish scenario regional powers could also be drawn in."

Without spelling it out, Mr Khalilzad is suggesting the Kurds might grab the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, which could then prompt intervention by the Turkish army to protect the local Turkoman population.

Mr Khalilzad acknowledges that the militias are now killing more people than the Sunni insurgents. "I don't want it to come across as though we want to disarm the Shias and let Sunnis have arms," he said. "Or vice versa," he quickly added.

Before the war, the neo-cons touted the benefits of regional democratisation that would flow from toppling Saddam. Mr Khalilzad now talks in terms of damage limitation: leaving Iraq would cost more than staying. It is a significant change. Whatever people felt about the invasion, he insists, "the fact that we came to liberate this country gives us a moral responsibility to make it work now". Iraq is going through "a difficult patch", but "we don't have the choice of disengaging".

FAQ

What's wrong with Iran's nuclear programme?

The rest of the world is sceptical that it is intended only for generating electricity, after Iran attempted to hide much of its work under ground. A 2004 agreement with Europe to suspend uranium enrichment broke down after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in June.

Is there proof Iran is making a bomb?

The International Atomic Energy Agency says no, but it is unhappy about Iran's lack of cooperation and wants answers to its questions. It is due to report back to the UN security council by April 28.

And if Iran does not comply by then?

There is a split among the security council's permanent members. The US, Britain and France want a binding resolution with legal weight that could lead to sanctions; Russia and China want a softer approach.

U.S. Seeks a "Change" in Tehran

2006-04-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

It seems that the New York Times is selective in its description of the newly created "program". The name of the program is the ISOG, the Iran-Syria Operations Group. ISOG isn't simply about promoting democracy. It's about helping to craft official policy, doing so not with one but two countries in its sights, and creating a policymaking apparatus that parallels — and skirts. Read my previous post about the eery similarities between the ISOG and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans.

Steven R. Weisman, New York Times

WASHINGTON As the Bush administration confronts the Tehran government over its suspected nuclear weapons program and its alleged support for terrorism, a newly created office of Iranian affairs in the State Department is poring over applications for a rapidly expanding program to change the political process inside Iran.

The project, which is slated to spend $7 million in the current fiscal year, would become many times larger next year if Congress approves a broad request for $85 million that the Bush administration wants for scholarships, exchange programs, radio and television broadcasts and other activities aimed at shaking up Iran's political system.

The effort, which is being overseen by Elizabeth Cheney, a deputy assistant secretary of state who is the daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, has been denounced by Iran's leaders as meddling in their country's internal affairs.

It comes at a time of escalating confrontation between Iran and the United States over Iran's nuclear program, exacerbated by reports, which the administration has played down, that military contingencies are being reviewed, too.

While the United States has marshaled international support for diplomatic pressure on Iran, some allies have expressed misgivings about other avenues of pressure, which are seen as aimed at undermining the regime in Tehran.

One Asian diplomat said the effort was reminiscent of the subsidies that the United States provided to Iraqi exile groups in the 1990s. "They don't call it 'regime change,' but that is obviously what it is," he said. But he had to be promised anonymity before he would discuss it, not wanting to create a rift between his country and the United States on a significant foreign policy matter.

To find people to promote change in Iran, the State Department has opened a competition for grant applications. A Web site announcement says that applicants "must outline activities linked to reform and demonstrate how the proposed approach would achieve sustainable impact in Iran."

A State Department official said numerous applications had been received and that the department would have little trouble spending the allotted funds. But he acknowledged that various groups were squabbling over how best to promote reform and who would be most effective in doing so.

"Iran is governed by an unelected clerical elite not accountable to the people," said the official, speaking anonymously under ground rules imposed by the department. "But despite considerable personal risk, we are seeing some activists willing to step forward."

The biggest problem for the applicants is the amount of risk they could incur. There have been reports in Iran of activists being arrested after they met with American officials at conferences, though some experts charge that Iran has exaggerated those reports to discourage contacts with the West.

Leader unimpressed by Rice

The Iranian president on Friday dismissed remarks by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who said the United Nations must consider strong action to force Iran to comply with demands about its nuclear plans, Reuters reported from Tehran.

"What she said is not important. She is free to speak out," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on the sidelines of a conference in Tehran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

At the conference, which concerned support for the Palestinians, Ahmadinejad fired a series of verbal shots at Israel, saying it was a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He called Israel a "rotten, dried tree" that will be annihilated by "one storm."

Blogger Sentenced to 10 Months in Prison

2006-04-16T16:43:00.000-05:00

Iran Press News, Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

In an interview with the regime-run news agency, ILNA, Mohammad Sayfzadeh, attorney for blogger, Mojtaba Samiinejad, confirmed that his client has been sentenced to 10 months in prison by appeals court branch 34 of Qom. Sayfzadeh said: "Though the sentencing order has not been handed down to me yet, without the courts consideration of our objections, the 10 month sentence, has been confirmed. The court of appeals seems to have forgotten it's own issues with the first ruling; these issues have apparently been resolved by the original tribunal therefore the appeals court disregarded it's own issues and confirmed the sentence anyway."Samiinejad has been charged with printing lies and agitating public opinion.

Iranians Volunteer for "Martyrdom Missions"

2006-04-16T16:05:00.000-05:00

Parisa Hafezi, Reuters

TEHRAN - Some 200 Iranians have volunteered in the past few days to carry out "martyrdom missions" against U.S. and British interests if Iran is attacked over its nuclear program, a hardline group said on Sunday.

The United States and other Western nations accuse Iran of seeking to master enrichment technology to build atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies. Washington says it wants a diplomatic solution, but has not ruled out a military option.

Mohammad Ali Samadi, spokesman for the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, said fresh fears over a possible U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear sites helped attract volunteers during its latest recruitment drive.

"Because of the recent threats, we have started to register more volunteers since Friday," Samadi told Reuters by telephone.

"Some 200 people have registered to carry out operations against our enemies. America and Britain are definitely considered enemies."

Chanting "Death to America" and "Nuclear technology is our right", volunteers registered their names at the former American Embassy in southern Tehran on Sunday.

They signed a document called "Registration form for martyrdom-seeking operations" and pledged to "defend the Islamic Republic's interests".

"We will give a good lesson to those who dare to attack our country," said Ali, a 25-year-old masked volunteer, after filling out registration form.

When asked why he had covered his face, Ali said: "I do not want to be recognized when traveling abroad to harm American and British interests."

TENS OF THOUSANDS REGISTERED

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which says it has no affiliation with the government, was formed in 2004. Since then Samadi said some 52,000 people have signed up to be involved in possible attacks.

The Sunday Times of London, quoting unnamed Iranian officials, reported Iran had 40,000 trained suicide bombers prepared to strike western targets if Iran is attacked.

"The main force, named the Special Unit of Martyr Seekers in the Revolutionary Guards, was first seen last month when members marched in a military parade," the report said.

But Samadi denied the report.

"The Revolutionary Guards have no links to martyrdom-seeking operations. We are the only martyrdom seeking group in Iran," he said. "And we are an independent group."

No Iranians are thought to have directly executed suicide bombings in recent years. But the United States has accused Iran of being a state sponsor of terrorism.

In Sunday's New York Times a former White House counterterrorism expert said Iran's response to any U.S. military attack would be to use "its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world".

"Iran has forces at its command far superior to anything al Qaeda was ever able to field," wrote former White House counter terror chief Richard Clarke and former State Department official Steven Simon.

The "martyrdom" registration coincided with a conference on the Palestinian cause. Iran has refused to recognize Israel and supports anti-Israeli groups like Hamas and Hizbollah.

Inside the embassy, the walls were decorated with pictures of Palestinian suicide bombers. Videos of Israeli army attacks on Palestinians were shown on a wide screen. Books and CDs on the Palestinian uprising were also for sale.

In 1979, the then-American embassy was seized and its staff were taken hostage by militant students in 1979. The 52 hostages were freed after 444 days in captivity.

Update on Political Prisoners

2006-04-16T15:59:00.000-05:00

Iran Press News, Translation by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

1. Mohsen Dorostkar and Elham Afroutan, the two journalists arrested on January 23rd, at the offices of the publication TAMADON'EH HORMOZGAN in the southern city of Bandar Abbass appeared at the revolutionary court on Sunday, April 8th. The judge whose name is Zareh-Dehnavi and goes by the alias Judge Hadod, refused to rule on the case as the actual date for the tribunal had been set for May 8th. In the end of the informal hearing, officers of the court conveyed to the two journalists that the sentencing for their specific charges carries a two year prison sentence and a $17000 cash fine; however, the sentencing order has not as of yet been issued to them. This specific court is known to handle 95% of the political prisoners cases and it has turned out 100% conviction rate of cases that have been sent down from various intelligence and security sources of the Islamic regime.

2. Political prisoner, Behnam Vafa-Seresht has been transferred to an unknown detention location in Kurdistan. There is no news about his whereabouts. After having served his full prison sentence, on the day of his release from prison, Vafa-Seresht was transferred out without any warning. A few days before his release he had indicated to his fellow prisoners that another file regarding his trips abroad and his activities in prison, had been compiled to be used against him.

3. Political prisoner, Heshmatollah Tabarzadi is also now caught up in a new round of conflicts with the Islamic regime's judiciary. He is currently serving a prison sentence without receiving any of the concessions of a regular prisoner; he has been struggling to take back his property and belongings that were confiscated from his home by the revolutionary court during his 1999 arrest. His house is still being held as collateral by branch 6 of the revolutionary court, which refuses to even consider returning the deed to the Tabarzadi family.

Iran: The Other Side of the Enrichment Bombshell

2006-04-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

Amir Taheri, Asharq Alawsat

Was Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad inspired by a Tehrani folk tale to try and lead the Islamic Republic out of what looks like the most serious foreign policy crisis in its history?

The question arose the other day as Iranians watched the firebrand president announce Iran’s “full entry into the nuclear club.”

The announcement was carefully choreographed for maximum effect.

It took place in Mash’had, Iran’s second largest city and the site of the nation’s holiest Shiite shrine. The announcement was also made on the eve of the arrival in Tehran of a negotiating team headed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Muhammad El-Baradei. Ahmadinejad, with a giant Iranian flag in the background, also described the announcement a “special present” on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The show was punctuated by songs and dances performed by men and women dressed in folkloric gears, thus adding to the North-Korean style of the exercise.

All in all it was a clever mixture of Islam, nationalism, science, political braggadocio, and diplomatic flexibility.

The announcement that Iran now masters the full nuclear fuel cycle and that it has enriched uranium to a minimum acceptable level in laboratory conditions, may be no big deal to better informed citizen. In fact, Iran had the scientific and technological capacity to do so in 1977. It lost that capacity when the late Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, who seized power in 1979, shut the nuclear programme as “satanic”, had some scientists executed, and forced others into exile.

Spoil sports may even claim that the knowledge needed to do what Iran claims to have done is available on the internet, and that, provided the money is there, even private citizens could process uranium to such low levels of enrichment.

But the spoil sports would be wrong.

The issue here is not uranium enrichment but the finding of a way for the Islamic Republic to walk out of a high-risk confrontation with the United Nations without losing face.

On that score, Ahmadinejad should get high marks. But he may owe all that to the Tehrani folk tale we mentioned above. That tale is woven around its hero Ali Golabi (Pear-shaped Ali) who is a small chap with big ambitions.

The bigger chaps in the neighborhood dismiss him as a midget, bully him whenever they can, and never offer him a seat at the table in the teahouse which is their haunt. So what does Ali Golabi do? He goes around waving a big knife, making a big noise, breaking a window here and there, and, occasionally, even strangling a street cat to show his strength. His agitations annoy the big chaps who want to sip their tea, puff their hookahs and play a game of backgammon in peace.

Nevertheless, Ali knows where and when to stop. As soon as the big chaps come out of the teahouse to confront him, he declares that he has already done whatever he had wanted to do and is now ready not to do it again. This helps ease the tension and gets Ali off the hook- until the next showdown.

So, if our analysis is right the next step for the Islamic Republic would be to announce that, having done what it wanted to do, it has now decided to stop doing it for a while as a gesture of goodwill.

Tehran has less than two weeks to do that before the 28 April deadline set by the United Nations Security Council.

I may be wrong but I think that the Ahmadinejad announcement provides the first opportunity to stop the crisis from spiraling out of control. The Iranian climb-down, if it has not already happened by the time this column is published, is sure to come soon.

The reason is that Ahmadinejad has achieved his tactical goals and has no reason to provoke a confrontation at this point.

His first goal was to discredit his two predecessors, the mullahs Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, by portraying them as weaklings who had given in to pressure and agreed to stop uranium enrichment in the first place.

Ahamdinejad has succeeded in developing a macho image, built around the myth of his ”austerity and purity”. His claim is that Rafsanjani was vulnerable to pressure by foreign powers because of his business interests, while Khatami craved attention from Western leaders and media. Ahmadinejad, however, is proud of being poor, and demands attention from no one but the “ Hidden Imam.”

Ahmadinejad’s second goal was to appear to be acting from a position of strength, and, once again, he has succeeded.

The Mash’had announcement came as the denouement of a series of dramatic events. These started in February with the biggest ever show of military power that Tehran has seen. Then followed the military manoevures conducted in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. Next came the testing of what was claimed to be “ the world’s fastest underground anti-submarine missile”. In between something called “ the flying boat” was thrown in and presented as “ a miracle in military technology.” Ahmadinejad also highlighted his radical credentials by promising to “ wipe Israel off the map.” It would be hard for anyone to accuse him either of weakness or a lack of revolutionary zeal.

Having developed its image as a major military power that cannot be bullied by anyone, the Islamic Republic is now in a position to show “magnanimity” in the service of peace and understanding.

This would not be the first time that Pear-shaped Ali has helped get the Islamic Republic of the hook. In August 1988 the Islamic Republic launched its biggest ever military operation in the eight-year long war against Iraq as a prelude to announcing that it has accepted a UN-brokered ceasefire which it had rejected for years. Thus what was a humiliating retreat was presented as a great triumph for “ Islam and the Revolution.”

If the US and its European Union allies play the roles assigned to them in the Ahamdinejad script the current crisis is likely to be defused soon. Tehran will announce a new moratorium on uranium enrichment, probably for period of two years that could later be extended to 10 years. It would also agree to submit the additional protocols of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to the Islamic Majlis for approval at an unspecified date, and invite the IAEA to resume inspections in Iran. Since enriching uranium is not illegal under the NPT, there is nothing that the US and its allies could do in response to what Pear-shaped Ali says he has already done but won’t do again.

But while all this might provide yet another respite the crisis generated by Iran’s refusal to accept the new emerging status quo in the Middle East will not be dissipated. The outside world will never be sure that the Islamic Republic is not developing a nuclear bomb. Nor can anyone be sure that the Islamic Republic, casting itself in the role of the leader of a new “ Islamic superpower” in a global “ Clash of Civilisations” will always retain Pear-shaped Ali’s proverbial prudence.

American Strategy and Pre-Emptive War

2006-04-16T15:13:00.000-05:00

I think Mr. Kissinger's assertion that the changes in the international environment has created some form of propensity for pre-emptive strategy is somewhat far reaching, especially considering the inability of the Bush and Blair administrations to be upfront and honest with their true intentions for going to such actions. Kissinger attempts to revise history and states in the article that humanitarian intervention was a significant motivating force in removing Saddam. I believe that being true, though only after the original motivating force, WMD's was found to be difficult to prove.

Henry Kissinger, Tribune Media Services

NEW YORK The recent publication of the second Bush administration statement on national strategy passed without the controversy that marked its predecessor in 2002 even though the new statement reiterates the commitment to a strategy of pre-emption in exactly the same words as the last.

When the doctrine of pre-emption was first put forward, it was attacked as being contrary to generally accepted principles of the international system, which had evolved over three centuries and were enshrined in the United Nations Charter in 1945.

The 2006 report was received with less hostility because other countries have had more experience now with the emerging new threats - and partly because a more conciliatory American diplomacy has left new scope for consultation.

There has evolved a reluctant recognition that pre-emption may be so built into modern weapons technology that some reconsideration of existing rules is overdue.

Pre-emptive strategy involves an inherent dilemma: When the scope for action is greatest, knowledge is at a minimum. When knowledge is high, the scope for pre-emption has often disappeared.

Had Churchill's early warning been heeded, the Nazi plague could have been destroyed at relatively little cost. A decade later, tens of millions of dead paid the price for the quest for certainty.

But how is the threat to be defined, and through what institutions can resistance to it be implemented?

If each nation claims the right to define its pre-emptive rights, the absence of any rules would spell international chaos. Some universal, generally accepted principles need to be matched with the machinery of their operation.

Of course, the United States, like any other sovereign nation, will, in the end, defend its vital national interests - if necessary, alone. But it also has a national interest to make the definition of national interest of other nations as much parallel its own as it can.

A first step is to recognize that the American strategic doctrine does not really talk about what is commonly defined as pre-emptive action. Pre- emption applies to an adversary possessing a capacity to do great damage coupled with the demonstrated will to do so imminently. The right to use force unilaterally in such circumstances is more or less accepted.

The most obvious targets for pre- emptive strategy are terrorist organizations. These cannot be deterred because they have nothing tangible to lose. Nor can they be dealt with by diplomacy, because their objective generally is not compromise but the destruction of their adversary.

The deeper issue raised by the administration's doctrine concerns preventive use of force: measures to forestall the emergence of a threat capable, at some point in the future, of being overwhelming. Here the issue of proliferation emerges as one of the key tasks of preventive diplomacy.

The United States has an obvious incentive to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction, especially of nuclear weapons, into wrong hands. For aspiring great powers, the incentive is precisely the opposite - to acquire weapons of mass destruction as rapidly as possible, either for their own security or as a safety net for assertive or revolutionary policies.

Any outcome to the proliferation issue, therefore, depends in part on whether diplomacy is able to generate security assurances for the country asked to forego nuclear weapons.

How should that balance be struck?

One school of thought holds that mortal danger is inherent in the very process of proliferation.

Before World War II, it was generally considered that a country could legitimately go to war if an aggressor brought about a change in the global balance of power that could threaten international security. Modern weapons of mass destruction bring about an increase in a country's power vastly exceeding what could be achieved by any territorial acquisition.

Deterrence becomes impossibly complicated when many balances have to be considered by many different actors simultaneously. Hence, in this view, the emergence of new nuclear weapons power must be prevented as a last resort by force.

Yet another approach makes a distinction between friendly and threatening countries. The United States has acquiesced in the development of nuclear weapons technology in India, Pakistan and Israel because the purpose of these states was believed compatible with long-range American objectives. At the same time, the United States has strongly opposed the spread of nuclear weapons to Iran and North Korea because they are governed by hostile autocratic regimes.

That implies America's antiproliferation policy is concerned not so much with the fact of proliferation as with the nature of the regime.

A special case is humanitarian intervention, which applies to circumstances that threaten American security only indirectly. This was the basis for the intervention in Kosovo. It was also a significant motive force in the American decision to remove Saddam Hussein. (?? This is Mr. Kissinger's revisionist attempt at the U.S.'s cause for war with Iraq)

But the impulse toward preventive intervention has proved difficult to apply to genocidal events like the massacres in Rwanda and Darfur. The fact that no country felt directly threatened prevented, alas, any action.

These applications of preventive force suggest the following conclusions:

The analysis underlying the Strategic Doctrine document is correct in emphasizing that the changes in the international environment create a propensity toward some forms of preventive strategy.

But stating the theory is only a first step. The concept must be applied to specific, concrete contingencies; courses of action need to be analyzed not only in terms of threats but of outcomes and consequences.

Finally, a policy that allows for preventive force can sustain the international system only if solitary American enterprises are the rare exception, not the basic rule of American strategy.

The other major nations have a similar responsibility to take the new challenges seriously and to treat them as something beyond the sole responsibility of America. The major nations are all dependent on the global economic system. They are all threatened if ideology and weapons run out of control.

The challenge is to build a viable international order without the impetus of having survived catastrophe.

Henry A. Kissinger heads the consulting firm Kissinger & Associates. Distributed by Tribune Media Services. )

France Launches Investigation into Bribing of the Rafsanjani Family

2006-04-16T15:00:00.000-05:00

Iran Press News, Translated by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi

Agence France Presse reports that a French investigative judge has launched an investigation into charges of bribing the Rafsanjani family by the French oil company, Total. Quoting the French newspaper, Le Canard Enchaine, this investigation is being conducted at the behest of Swiss authorities in connection to money laundering in Switzerland. Swiss authorities are following sources that have deposited huge sums of money into several bank accounts that belong to the Rafsanjani family.

Sources investigating the case have indicated that the French oil company Total, has bribed certain authorities of the Islamic regime, including the Rafsanjani family in order to obtain oil contracts. The sources added that it is quite likely that Total did in fact deposit these sums to the Swiss bank accounts of the Rafsanjanis.

Bush, Congress at Odds Over Tactics on Iran

2006-04-15T22:02:00.000-05:00

Check the end of the article for my comments ... it seems that with the backing of Voice of Amercia and Radio Farda the Bush administration is more concerned with regime change than Democracy, and for those that question what that mean, read on.

Eli Lake, NY Sun

The Bush administration and Congress are at odds over whether some of the $75 million President Bush requested for pro-democracy broadcasting into Iran should go toward private broadcasters.

In recent weeks, the State Department has quietly explored funding for an Iranian student radio station to be broadcast inside the country as a part of the aid program Secretary of State Rice requested for opposition activities in February.

The proposal has already been discussed with congressional staffers and could be a bone of contention in talks on how to spend the public money proposed for Iranian opposition activities.
Administration and congressional officials say the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House appropriations panel, dealing with foreign aid, would like the $50 million set aside in the request for broadcasting to go solely toward bolstering the activities of Radio Farda and the Voice of America's television station.

The administration, however, would like some of that money to go to private broadcasters, and in particular a possible start-up affiliated with Iran's student movement.

While the amounts of money are small, the policy fight reflects a broader contest over the Bush administration's approach to providing financial aid to Iranian opposition activities in the twilight of its second term.

Funding the Voice of America's Persian television and radio service would ultimately vest power over the content of the broadcasts with the state-funded Broadcasting Board of Governors. To the institution's credit, it has hired a number of Iranian Americans in recent months to ensure the broadcasts would be credible and effective.

Should money be made available to student groups in Iran, however, the American government would have less control over the content, but the programming would be more attuned to the Iranian people and thereby more effective. However, given the pressures on the opposition inside Iran, the money could place the recipients of the new funding at risk of imprisonment.

A proponent of directing the money to the students, former Ambassador Mark Palmer, who is the vice chairman of the board of Freedom House, said yesterday, "I am so frustrated. Condi Rice announced the $75 million for Iran, but where is all the money going? Some of this should go to private broadcasters. But the Broadcasting Board of Governors is fighting for all of it."

Mr. Palmer has made the case in Congress and at Foggy Bottom for reserving some of the proposed $50 million for private broadcasters and in particular for student run radio stations.

He said the model for private participation would be Dijla Radio, one of the most successful new stations in Iraq, which was started with only $300,000 in aid money from the Swedish government. "It's really critical for there to be some independent stations," he said.

The State Department originally justified the $50 million portion of its new aid request for broadcasting as going largely to create a 24-hour Voice of America television service and to improve broadcasting capabilities into Iran.

A spokesman yesterday for the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Biden of Delaware, yesterday said that while he was unfamiliar with the specifics of the aid request, Mr. Biden generally favored boosting support for the Voice of America's Iranian service.

"Senator Biden has had, as you know. a long-standing appreciation generally of the work of the Broadcasting Board of Governors," Norm Kurz said. "The projects, things like al-Hurra, Radio Sawa, and Radio Farda, while imperfect, are probably the best things going on in these issues and should be encouraged." Mr. Kurz added, "It would not surprise me if he came down on running these things through the Broadcasting Board of Governors and Radio Farda."

The Bush administration's interest in Iran's opposition movement has coincided with an increase in saber rattling between the mullahs and the White House over Iran's quest to master the nuclear fuel cycle. On Tuesday, President Ahmadinejad announced that Iranian scientists had successfully enriched nuclear fuel. Yesterday, Iran's deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi said on Iranian television that uranium enrichment would proceed at an "industrial level" at the Natanz facility.

The Iranians admitted to operating the Natanz centrifuge facility in 2003 after having worked on it for nearly 20 years without declaring it to the International Atomic Energy Agency, as they are obliged to do under international treaties.

Yesterday, Secretary of State Rice countered the recent announcements by calling on the United Nations Security Council to take action. "I do think that the Security Council will need to take into consideration this move by Iran," she said. Ms. Rice added that the international body should consider "strong steps to make certain that we maintain the credibility of the international community on this issue," an argument reminiscent of the one her predecessor made at the United Nations before the Iraq war.

I have always been against Radio Farda in particular and also VOA. If the guests of both channels have had in the last 10 days mean anything, you really have to think twice about whether the U.S. has democracy in its agenda for the country. Both VOA and Radio Farda have had in the last week Hooshang Amirahmadi, a professor from Rutgers who in 2005 ran for President in Iran. All Iranians realize that Mr. Amirahmadi and the various political groups he's created (American Iranian Council, National Iranian American Coalition, etc. are all PRO-ISLAMIC REPUBLIC !) His board of directors for the AIC for example. In between professors and non-profit organizations you'll find exectives from various oil companies, Chevron, Halliburton, Conoco-Phillips, members of the Council on Foreign Relations, executives of Boeing. If the U.S. chooses to fund these two stations than the public should realize it's true intentions. Democracy is not a priority, and once again oil and self-interests for the Bush administration are ... but wait, you already new that, right ?

German Politicians Want Iran's President Barred from World Cup

2006-04-15T21:36:00.000-05:00

Iranians love soccer. I believe this is the first step in the Iranian team being banned from the games ... Senator John McCain has already introduced a resolution for FIFA to ban Iran from the World Cup. The political implications for Ahmadinejad if the team is banned is big, very big. This is something Iranians and expatriates can rally around.

Monsters & Critics UK

Berlin - Politicians in Germany's ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU) called Saturday for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to be barred from Germany during the World Cup.

'It would be a welcome move if the government made clear through diplomatic channels that a visit to Germany by Ahmadinejad is undesirable,' Wolfgang Bosbach told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

Bosbach is the deputy floor leader in parliament of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

Iran is one of the 32 nations participating in the month-long World Cup beginning June 9. There has been speculation the Iranian president might want to visit Germany to watch his team.

CDU parliamentary spokesman Georg Brunnhuber called on football's governing body FIFA to declare Ahmadinejad persona non grata for the duration of the tournament.

'The European Union should coordinate on the matter and support the German government if it decides to declare him an unwelcome visitor,' Brunnhuber said.

The CSU's spokesman on domestic affairs, Hans-Peter Uhl, said: 'We should make it clear to Ahmadinejad that he should refrain from paying a visit to Germany.'

The controversial president has caused an international outcry by denying the existence of the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be 'wiped off the map.'

Denying the Holocaust is a crime in Germany, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Ahmadinejad restoked the controversy on Friday by speaking of Israel's demise and again casting doubt on the Holocaust.

'There might be doubts over the Holocaust, but there are definitely no doubts about the Holocaust happening in the recent years in Palestine,' Ahmadinejad said at a conference in Tehran aimed at raising money for the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority.

Former Officials Warn Against US Attack on Iran

2006-04-15T21:25:00.000-05:00

Reuters

NEW YORK - A U.S. conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to America's interests than the war with Iraq, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote in Sunday's New York Times.

In an op-ed article co-authored with Steven Simon, a former State Department official who also worked for the National Security Council, Clarke wrote reports that the Bush administration is contemplating bombing nuclear sites in Iran raised concerns that "would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process."

Iran's likely response would be to "use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States," Clarke and Simon warned.

"Iran has forces as its command far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field," they said, citing Iran's links with the militant group Hezbollah.

Iran could also make things much worse in Iraq, they wrote, adding "there is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready."

President George W. Bush might then sanction more bombing, Clarke and Simon said, hoping Iranians would overthrow the Tehran government. But "more likely, the American war against Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control."

The authors concluded by warning that "the parallels to the run-up to the war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 President Bush declared that there was 'No war plan on my desk' despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion."

Congress "must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well," they said.

Pope to Urge Dialogue over Iran's N-Program

2006-04-15T20:37:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Pope Benedict XVI will voice fears over Iran's nuclear program in his "Urbi et Orbi" Easter message, the first of his pontificate, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Saturday.

He will press the international community to negotiate with Tehran to assure peaceful cohabitation in the Middle East, ANSA said in an unsourced report.

The pope is to celebrate a Resurrection Mass in St. Peter's Square before delivering the traditional Urbi et Orbi ("The City and the World") message from the loggia of St. Peter's basilica at noon on Sunday, his 79th birthday.

ANSA said the pope would also defend Israel's right to live in peace while calling on the international community to help the Palestinian people build their future.

Benedict was also expected to express the hope that Italy will regain its serenity once official results are announced next week from the country's cliffhanger elections, which the opposition coalition led by Romano Prodi won by a whisker.

The pope was to celebrate an Easter vigil mass at St. Peter's starting at 10:00 pm (2000 GMT) Saturday.

Blair Refuses to Back Iran Strike

2006-04-15T20:11:00.000-05:00

Brian Brady, Scotsman

TONY Blair has told George Bush that Britain cannot offer military support to any strike on Iran, regardless of whether the move wins the backing of the international community, government sources claimed yesterday.

Amid increasing tension over Tehran's attempts to develop a military nuclear capacity, the Prime Minister has laid bare the limits of his support for President Bush, who is believed to be considering an assault on Iran, Foreign Office sources revealed.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is calling on the United Nations to consider new sanctions against Tehran when the Security Council meets next week to discuss the developing crisis. Blair is expected to support the call for a "Chapter 7" resolution, which could effectively isolate Iran from the international community.

But, in the midst of international opposition to a pre-emptive strike on Tehran, and Britain's military commitments around the world, the government maintains it cannot contribute to a military assault. "We will support the diplomatic moves, at best," a Foreign Office source told Scotland on Sunday. "But we cannot commit our own resources to a military strike."

Meanwhile, a new report on the Iran crisis has warned that neo-conservatives in the Bush administration are on "collision course" with Tehran.

The Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), often referred to as Blair's "favourite think-tank", will appeal for a greater effort to find a diplomatic solution in a report to be published later this week. FPC director Stephen Twigg, formerly a Labour minister, explained: "It is essential UK policy on Iran is well informed... We want to engage with the various reformist elements in Iran, both inside and outside the structures of power.

"There is potential for political dialogue, economic ties and cultural contacts to act as catalysts for the strengthening of civil society in Iran."

While the sense of crisis over Iran has been escalated by the fiery rhetoric between Tehran and the West - particularly Washington - many within the British government are now convinced that the impasse can be resolved by repeating the same sort of painstaking diplomatic activity that returned Libya to the international fold.

The approach contrasts sharply with the strategy employed during the run-up to the war in Iraq, when ministers repeatedly issued grim warnings to Saddam Hussein over the consequences of not falling in line with their demands.

"The only long-term solution to Iran's problems is democracy," said Alex Bigham, co-author of the FPC report. "But it cannot be dictated, Iraq-style, or it will backfire. Iran may seem superficially like Iraq but we need to treat Iran more like Libya. Diplomatic engagement must be allowed to run its course. There need to be bigger carrots as well as bigger sticks."

However, the conciliatory language was not reflected in the approach from Washington, where senior figures in the Bush administration remain keen to stress the danger of Tehran's intentions.

In a declaration aimed at America's allies as much as Iran, Rice claimed the Security Council's handling of the Iranian nuclear issue would be a test of the international community's credibility. "If the UN Security Council says: 'You must do these things and we'll assess in 30 days,' and Iran has not only not done those things, but has taken steps that are exactly the opposite of those that are demanded, then the Security Council is going to have to act."

Rice dismissed Iran's declaration that it is only interested in enriching uranium for use in civil nuclear power facilities, saying the international community must remain focused on the potential military applications of this technology.

"The world community does not want them to have that nuclear know-how and that's why nobody wants them to be able to enrich and reprocess on their territory, getting to the place that they can produce what we call a full-scale nuclear plant to be able to do this," she said.
Rice reiterated that President Bush has not taken any option off the table, including a military response, if Iran fails to comply with the demands of the international community.

Iran's "Nuclear University" Conceals Research

2006-04-15T19:53:00.000-05:00

Philip Sherwell, Telegraph

Iranian scientists are secretly conducting crucial nuclear research and development, using university laboratories as cover to avoid international scrutiny, according to highly placed opposition supporters within the Islamic regime.

Teheran's Imam Hossein University, which is run on military brigade lines by Iran's Revolutionary Guards, is the main centre for experiments on nuclear weapon technology, the exiled National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) reported.

Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boasted that Iran had successfully enriched uranium as it forges ahead with the nuclear programme, which he claims is intended solely to generate energy, but which the West believes is intended for atomic weapons.

The belligerent Iranian hardliner followed up that claim with a fresh diatribe against Israel, which he described on Friday as "a rotten, dried tree", which would be annihilated by "a storm". He has previously called for the country to be "wiped from the map".

Teheran is publicly flagging up its "peaceful" nuclear know-how in its showdown with the international community. But, at the same time, scientists with close ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were conducting secret trials on military aspects of the programme, opposition figures said.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, the NCRI official who revealed the existence of the clerics' clandestine nuclear programme to the world in 2002, told the Sunday Telegraph that the latest information came from the same sources within the regime's national security structure.

He named 21 professors and researchers involved in nuclear work at the Imam Hossein University, many of whom also hold senior IRGC posts, as proof that the Revolutionary Guards were running Iran's supposedly "civilian" nuclear programme.

The IRGC's influence in the regime has strengthened since the election last year of Mr Ahmadinejad, who was a brigadier general in its Quds (Jerusalem) Force, the wing linked to a series of international terror attacks.

In a sign of the importance of the Imam Hossein University, Iran's leader visited the campus in September for a briefing shortly after his return from the United Nations in New York, where he robustly defended Iran's nuclear ambitions.

In a photograph not previously published in Britain, the president is shown inspecting students in military cadet uniforms. He was told of "research achievements in the domains of defence and national security, basic sciences as well as technical and engineering fields", the Teheran-based Fars news agency reported.

Clandestine nuclear research is being led by scientists who were student radicals in the Islamic revolution that overthrew the last Shah in 1979, and share the activist background of Mr Ahmadinejad, 49.

Fereydoon Abbasi, 48, head of physics, who fought in the Iran-Iraq war, has overseen the transfer of several nuclear experts to the university from other institutions.

Other key figures include Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 45, a nuclear engineer whom the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has unsuccessfully sought to question, and Mansour Asgari, 48, a laser expert. They both lecture at Imam Hossein, but are based at the Centre for Readiness and New Defence Technology, to which the IAEA has been refused access by the regime.

Dr Abbasi recently oversaw tests on the high-powered emission of neutrons by a neutron generator, Mr Jafarzadeh said. Other work is believed to focus on beryllium oxide (which has possible nuclear applications), laser-enrichment, nuclear trigger experiments and tests on bomb materials.

"Imam Hossein university has a top-notch nuclear physics department," said Mr Jafarzadeh.

"The work they are doing there is crucial to the nuclear programme and it has never been inspected.

"While Ahmadinejad is proudly proclaiming the regime's uranium enrichment success, he is concealing the central role of the Revolutionary Guards corps and its Iman Hossein University in the secret rush to acquire the nuclear bomb."

The United States will urge its allies this week to consider punitive measures - including a freeze on assets, targeted sanctions and travel restrictions - against Iranian leaders. Senior officials from the US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany meet in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss their response to Iran's announcement that it had joined the "nuclear club".

The declaration came the day before a visit to Teheran by Mohamed El Baradei, the IAEA chief, in a clear snub to the UN's atomic watchdog. The UN Security Council has given Iran until April 28 to halt all enrichment activity, but is divided over what to do if Teheran ignores the ultimatum.

The head of the Revolutionary Guards warned the US on Friday not to attack the Islamic republic, saying American troops in Iraq and the region were "vulnerable".

"You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, one of the regime's most powerful figures. "The Americans know that their troops are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error."

Quake hits Shahdad in SE province of Kerman

2006-04-15T13:56:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - An earthquake hit Shahdad district in the southeastern province of Kerman on Friday afternoon. It was measuring 3.7 on the Richter scale, according to IRNA.

According to the seismological base of the Geophysics Institute of Tehran University, the quake occurred at 16:14 hours local time (1244 GMT).

There have been no reports of any casualty or damage to property caused by the quake. Force four quake is no strong enough to cause damage.

Earlier today, an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale hit the outskirts of the city of Zarand in this southeastern province.

Iran is often hit by quakes of varying magnitudes as it sits on some of the world's most active seismic fault lines.

Iran Issues Stark Military Warning to US

2006-04-14T19:36:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Tehran said it could defeat any American military action over its controversial nuclear drive, in one of the Islamic regime's boldest challenges yet to the United States, AFP reported.

"You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it," said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards and among the regime's most powerful figures.

"The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error," he told reporters on the sidelines of a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran.

The United States accuses Iran of using an atomic energy drive as a mask for weapons development. Last weekend US news reports said President George W. Bush's administration was refining plans for preventive strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.

"I would advise them to first get out of their quagmire in Iraq before getting into an even bigger one," General Safavi said with a grin.

"We have American forces in the region under total surveillance. For the past two years, we have been ready for any scenario, whether sanctions or an attack."

Iran announced this week it had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, despite a UN Security Council demand for the sensitive work to be halted by April 28.

The Islamic regime says it only wants to generate atomic energy, but enrichment can be extended to make the fissile core of a nuclear warhead -- something the United States is convinced that "axis of evil" member Iran wants to acquire.

At a Friday prayer sermon in Tehran, senior cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Janati simply branded the US as a "decaying power" lacking the "stamina" to block Iran's ambitions.

And hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told AFP that a US push for tough United Nations sanctions was of "no importance".

"She is free to say whatever she wants," the president replied when asked to respond to comments by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice highlighting part of the UN charter that provides for sanctions backed up by the threat of military action.

"We give no importance to her comments," he said with a broad smile.

On Thursday, Rice said that faced with Iran's intransigence, the United States "will look at the full range of options available to the United Nations".

"There is no doubt that Iran continues to defy the will of the international community," Rice said, after Iran also dismissed a personal appeal from the UN atomic watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief must give a report at the end of April on Iranian compliance with the Security Council demand. In Tehran he said that after three years of investigations Iran's activities were "still hazy and not very clear".

Although the United States has been prodding the council to take a tough stand against the Islamic republic, including possible sanctions, it has run into opposition from veto-wielding members Russia and China.

Representatives of the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany are to meet in Moscow Tuesday to discuss the crisis.

In seeking to deter international action, Iran has been playing up its oil wealth, its military might in strategic Gulf waters and its influence across the region -- such as in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

At the Tehran conference, Iran continued to thumb its nose at the United States and Israel.

"The Zionist regime is an injustice and by its very nature a permanent threat," Ahmadinejad told the gathering of regime officials, visiting Palestinian militant leaders and foreign sympathisers.

"Whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is on the road to being eliminated," said Ahmadinejad, whose regime does not recognise Israel and who drew international condemnation last year when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Unfazed by his critics, the hardliner went on to repeat his controversial stance on the Holocaust.

"If there is serious doubt over the Holocaust, there is no doubt over the catastrophe and Holocaust being faced by the Palestinians," said the president, who had previously dismissed as a "myth" the killing of an estimated six million Jews by the Nazis and their allies during World War II.

"I tell the governments who support Zionism to ... let the migrants (Jews) return to their countries of origin. If you think you owe them something, give them some of your land," he said.

Iran's turbaned supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also accused the United States of seeking to place the entire region under Israeli control.

"The plots by the American government against Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon aimed at governing the Middle East with the control of the Zionist regime will not succeed," Khamenei said.

There was no immediate reaction from Washington, but French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy severely condemned Ahmadinejad for his latest remarks on Israel.

"As I have had occasion to do before, when the Iranian president made similar statements, I condemn these inacceptable remarks in the strongest possible terms," Douste-Blazy said in a statement.

"Israel's right to exist and the reality of the Holocaust should not be disputed," he added.

Iran and the West: Oil and Bad Blood

2006-04-14T19:26:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Bad relations between Iran and the main Western powers, notably the United States and Britain, go back a long way, and at least until the early 1950s, AFP said.

A timeline:

- 1953: Iran's nationalist prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, is overthrown in a coup engineered by the British and US intelligence services, and aimed at preventing a nationalisation of the lucrative oil industry.

The Western powers subsequently back the Iranian monarch, Shah Reza Pahlavi, who sets up a widely feared secret police organisation, assuming dictatorial powers in 1963.

- 1979: After two years of rising unrest culminating in a mass uprising, the Shah is forced to flee the country.

The Shiite Muslim cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who has played a key role in the revolution from exile in France, returns to Iran and sets up an Islamic republic. In November, militant students enter the US embassy in Tehran and take the 63 staff members hostage.

- April 1980: The United States breaks off diplomatic relations with Iran; they have remained broken ever since.

US President Jimmy Carter orders a secret airborne operation to try to free the hostages; it fails disastrously with the deaths of eight US troops.

- September 1980: The forces of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein attempt to profit from Iran's revolutionary turmoil by making a land grab in Iran's oil-rich southwest. The conflict rapidly escalates into full-scale war, with Western powers and many Arab governments secretly supporting Iraq against Iran.

- January 1981: The 52 remaining US hostages are freed from the Tehran embassy after negotiations.

- 1987-88: Iranian attempts to hit at tankers in the Gulf as part of the war with Iraq bring military clashes with US forces in the region.

In July 1988 a US warship shoots down an Iranian passenger plane, which it had allegedly mistaken for a warplane. All 290 people aboard are killed.

In the same month, Iran accepts a UN resolution calling for a ceasefire. The eight-year war has left at least a million dead.

- August 1990: Saddam Hussein's forces invade Kuwait, setting in train a series of events which will bring two US-led military interventions in his country, culminating in the current ongoing conflict.

- January 2002: US President George W. Bush identifies Iran, along with North Korea and Saddam's Iraq, as what he calls an "axis of evil".

- December 2002: Even as it is preparing to invade Iraq, the US administration says it has satellite photos showing that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

- June 2005: Disputed elections in Iran bring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an anti-Western hardliner, to power. Iran's regime senses that its hand has been strengthened by US woes in neighbouring Iraq and by a tight world oil market.

end

Israel Will Be Annihilated in One Storm, Says Iran Leader

2006-04-14T19:07:00.000-05:00

Tim Butcher, Telegraph

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran appeared to threaten Israel with a nuclear attack yesterday when he described it as a "rotten, dried tree" that would be annihilated by "one storm".

In his most vitriolic and anti-semitic attack to date, Mr Ahmadinejad warned that Israel faced imminent destruction.

While he did not refer explicitly to nuclear weapons, his reference to the "one storm" that would do away with Israel was seen as a code for nuclear Armageddon.

Iran does not yet have nuclear weapons but Teheran is widely believed to be bent on developing its own nuclear military capability, in defiance of international protocols and peace treaties. Yesterday's outburst will only worsen the stand-off between Iran and the major powers over its nuclear ambitions.

President George W Bush, like many US leaders before him, is an ardent supporter of Israel and his administration would not stand by if Iran posed a threat to it.

Israel for its part has warned that it would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear capability. Israel is the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons although it never publicly admits this. Speaking at the opening of a conference in Teheran to support the Palestinian cause, Mr Ahmadinejad repeated earlier anti-semitic attacks in Israel, questioning the scale of the Nazi Holocaust and attacking Zionism.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," he said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

And he poured scorn on the established history of the Holocaust, saying that an atrocity committed in Europe should be settled in Europe.

"If such a disaster is true, why should the people of this region pay the price? Why does the Palestinian nation have to be suppressed and have its land occupied?"

The land of Palestine, he said, referring to the British mandated territory that includes all of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, "will be freed soon".

He did not say how this would be achieved, but insisted to the audience of at least 900: "Believe that Palestine will be freed soon." The president provoked world outcry last October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map".

Mr Ahmadinejad was speaking days after an Israeli general spoke of the military potential of Iran's nuclear programme.

The chief of military intelligence, Maj-Gen Amos Yadlin, was quoted on Wednesday as saying Iran could develop a nuclear bomb "within three years, by the end of the decade".

A day earlier, Mr Ahmadinejad had announced that Iran had successfully enriched uranium using a battery of 164 centrifuges, a significant step toward the large-scale production of enriched uranium required for either fuelling nuclear reactors or making nuclear bombs.

Meanwhile, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards yesterday warned the US not to attack the Islamic republic, saying that American troops in Iraq and the region were vulnerable.

General Yahya Rahim Safavi, one of Teheran's most powerful figures, said of the US: "You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it.

"The Iranian armed forces are totally ready to defend the country. If the Americans attack Iran, they will be making a second strategic error after their attack against Iraq."

Speaking at the pro-Palestinian conference in Teheran, the general warned: "The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error."

Iran Rafsanjani Meets Radical Palestinian Leaders

2006-04-14T12:28:00.000-05:00

The Bush administration's decision to put a halt to financial aid to Palestine gives Iran a chance to move in and exert more influence ... you have to wonder if it was intentional ...

Iran Mania

LONDON - Iran's influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani met with leaders of the radical Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad as well as the head of the Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Iranian sources said, according to AFP.

Rafsanjani is on a four-day visit to the Syrian capital amid worldwide alarm over Iran's announcement Tuesday that it had successfully enriched uranium, a process that can lead to the production of fuel for nuclear power plants or the fissile core of an atomic bomb.

"The Palestinian resistance has today reached a new phase which requires the support of all Muslim countries... to reach victory," Rafsanjani said, according to an Iranian source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Rafsanjani met Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah late Wednesday at the Iranian embassy in Damascus, the source said.

Nasrallah said that Iran's ability to enrich uranium would "be a large moral boost to the resistance."

An Iranian diplomatic source also said that on Wednesday night Rafsanjani met Hamas's political supremo Khaled Meshaal and Islamic Jihad's secretary-general Ramadan Shaleh, AFP noted.

"The Muslim world is proud that Tehran has acquired nuclear technology," Meshaal reportedly said during their meeting.

"Uranium enrichment provides a great deal of moral support to the Palestinian people and heroes of the resistance," he said.

Rafsanjani assured that Iran would continue its support for the Palestinian resistance and criticized "Western states that have suspended aid the Palestinian Authority."

Rafsanjani also met with Syrian Prime Minister Naji Otri and Foreign Minister Walid Muallem over "external pressures confronting Syria and Iran," the official SANA news agency said.

On Wednesday, Rafsanjani vowed Tehran would not give in to UN pressures to halt its enrichment of uranium, which he hailed as a great achievement.

Tehran's announcement put Iran on a collision course with the UN Security Council, which has given the country until April 28 to accede to demands that it halt enrichment or face possible sanctions.

Iran insists that its nuclear program is aimed purely at producing nuclear power, but the country is widely suspected of using it to conceal efforts to develop atomic weapons.

Asked about international pressures on Syria over issues ranging from its alleged interference in neighboring Lebanon to alleged support for Iraqi rebels, Rafsanjani said Wednesday: "Iran and Syria are in the same boat."

Rafsanjani, who heads Iran's powerful Expediency Council, is slated to hold talks with President Bashar al-Assad at some point during his visit.

On Friday, Rafsanjani is to visit the tomb in Qarhaba of the president's father and predecessor in office, Hafez al-Assad. The following day, he is set to visit Shiite Muslim holy sites in Damascus before heading home.

"UN should consider binding resolution on Iran"

2006-04-14T12:18:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United Nations should consider adopting a resolution against Iran's nuclear programme under chapter seven of the UN charter, which could allow military action, AFP reported.

Chapter seven sets out specific actions that can be taken when there is a threat to international peace or an act of aggression.

"When the Security Council reconvenes, there will have to be some consequence for that action and that defiance and we will look at the full range of options available," Rice said, referring to Iran's uranium enrichment activities in defiance of a previous non-binding UN Security Council resolution.

Several resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council against Iraq, before the March 2003 US-led invasion, were taken under chapter seven of the charter.

Rice told reporters the Security Council, unlike the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had the authority to order a government to comply with its orders.

"One thing the Security Council has and the IAEA does not have is the ability to compel through chapter seven resolutions member states of the UN to obey the will of the international system," Rice said.

Oil Price Breaks $70 Mark as Iran Nuke Tension Simmers

2006-04-14T12:07:00.000-05:00

China View

BEIJING - Brent North Sea crude oil was traded at 70.20 dollars a barrel for the first time on Thursday evening due to simmering tensions of Iran nuke issue.

However Bloomberg News survey shows that crude oil may fall on speculation that surging inventories will reduce the impact of a possible disruption to Iranian exports.

The price of Brent crude for June delivery jumped 34 cents to reach 70.20 dollars before later falling back slightly to 70.15, an increase of 28 cents from Wednesday's close.

"We're just in this terrific Bull Run right now, and the worries just steepen," said John Kilduff, analyst at Fimat USA.

He added that as long as political tensions continue in Iran, crude futures next week are apt to break their previous trading record of 70.85 dollars, reached Aug. 30, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf coast.

While Bloomberg News survey shows that 26 of 52 analysts, traders and brokers, or 50 percent, said prices will decline next week, 17, or 33 percent, forecast an increase and nine expected little change.

"Prices are reflecting geopolitics while inventories remain at historical highs," said Andrew Harrington, an industry analyst at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Sydney.

"Barring any new developments in Iran, prices should drift downward."

Brent has been striking record high points since Monday also on market concerns that the U.S. might launch military strikes at uranium facilities in Iran.

In Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, no oil exports have been disrupted, but some market participants are worried they might be, depending on the U.N. Security Council's response to the Iran's defiance of council resolutions concerning its nuclear program.

The United Nations has given Iran until the end of April to shut down its nuclear program.

enditem

Iran Democracy Monitor No. 7

2006-04-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

American Foreign Policy Council, Washington, DC
Editor: Ilan Berman

HOMELAND SECURITY, IRANIAN STYLE

As the international crisis over its nuclear program continues to grow, the Islamic Republic is taking practical steps to clamp down on foreign influence within its borders. Iran's majlis, or parliament, is reportedly set to review a new border security motion recently put forth by that body's Foreign Policy Committee. If approved, the measure would require American citizens to be fingerprinted and searched at all entry points into Iran. (Tehran E'temad-e Melli, April 9, 2006)

IRAN'S WAR NEXT DOOR

Iran has launched an "unofficial civil war" in neighboring Iraq, British military officials believe. In recent days, British Special Forces troops and intelligence specialists have been tasked with tracking the activities of as many as forty Iranian agents operating in southern Iraq. In all, some 500 intelligence operatives from Iran are suspected to have entered Iraq over the past couple of weeks, using the cover of the annual Shi'ite religious pilgrimage to the shrine of the Imam Hussein in Karbala. The infiltration, officials in London believe, is part of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's plan to position covert assets and "carve up" the former Ba'athist state once Coalition forces withdraw. (London Sunday Mirror, April 9, 2006)

TEHRAN EXPANDS PUBLIC OUTREACH

Iran's state-controlled broadcasting sector is branching out in a different direction. Ezzattolah Zarghami, the head of Iran's official Voice of the Islamic Republic and Vision of the Islamic Republic radio and television stations, has revealed that government plans are underway for the establishment of a new public diplomacy vehicle: an English-language news station. The new media outlet, which is expected to be launched later this year or in early 2007, is intended for a sympathetic "audience outside the country" and will specifically produce programming for "Iranians residing outside Iran." (Tehran Kayhan, March 19, 2006)

SPECULATION ABOUT AN AMERICAN MILITARY OPTION...

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has ignited a firestorm of controversy with a new investigative report outlining possible preparations for a military attack against Iran in the U.S. government. "The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack," Hersh has written. More provocatively, Hersh alleges that the military scenarios being reviewed by the White House could include use of "bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapons" against fortified Iranian nuclear facilities. Administration officials, for their part, have vehemently denied the rumors, with President Bush asserting publicly that preventing a nuclear Iran "means diplomacy" rather than the use of force. (New Yorker, April 17, 2006; New York Times, April 10, 2006)

...AND THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW

Russian experts, meanwhile, are warning of dire consequences should the United States take military action against the Islamic Republic. A U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities is likely to involve more than 60 strategic sites and result in as many as 15,000 casualties, according to Radzhab Safarov, director of the Center for Modern Iranian Studies in Moscow. "However, the Iranian economy would not be paralyzed and it would not result in a political crisis in the country," according to Safarov. "On the contrary, Iranians would maximally consolidate around their political leaders, Iran would withdraw from all possible legal structures and start full-scale development of its nuclear program." Moreover, Safarov says, a military strike could lead to a complete cessation of Iranian oil exports - with major economic consequences for world markets. (Moscow RIA Novosti, April 11, 2006) (end)

Regime Change in Iran

2006-04-13T18:17:00.000-05:00

Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly

REGIME CHANGE IN IRAN....Remember the White House Iraq Group? And the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans? Basically, they were organizations designed to sidestep the moldy old national security bureaucracy and market the war with Iraq directly to the American public. And while in retrospect some may have questioned their, um, dedication to precise and sober analysis, you can't deny they were effective.

Well, guess what?

Lawrence Kaplan reports that we now have a similar organization for Iran:

"Although a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA) declines to comment on its existence, and the press has yet to carry a single mention of it, last month the administration formed something called the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG) — a group headed by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, the purpose of which is to encourage regime change in Iran. It's no secret that Cheney has over $80 million at her disposal to promote democracy in Iran. But ISOG isn't simply about promoting democracy. It's about helping to craft official policy, doing so not with one but two countries in its sights, and creating a policymaking apparatus that parallels — and skirts " — Foggy Bottom's suspect Iran desk.

Kaplan, for reasons that are obscure, apparently accepts at face value the official explanation that "ISOG has no role to play on security issues, doesn't coordinate at all with White House efforts against Iran at the United Nations, and confines itself to promoting regime change from within." Sure it does. That's why the Vice President's daughter is in charge of it.

In any case, connect the dots. "Promoting regime change from within" = the Iranian exile community. The Iranian exile community = source of dubious intelligence about Iran's nuclear program. Iran's nuclear program = excuse to go to war. Why change a winning game plan?

Iran Says It Won't Retreat on Enrichment

2006-04-13T17:43:00.000-05:00

Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press

Iran's president insisted Thursday his country will not retreat "one iota" on its uranium enrichment, and his negotiator made no such concession in talks the U.N. hoped would head off a confrontation with the Security Council over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

The U.N. nuclear agency chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said that in four hours of discussions Thursday with Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, he put forward the U.N. request for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment until questions over its nuclear program are resolved.
But Larijani indicated suspension was not an option. "Such proposals are not very important ones," he told reporters matter-of-factly while standing next to ElBaradei at a joint news conference after the talks.

ElBaradei looked much less optimistic than when he arrived at Tehran airport early Thursday for a one-day visit and said the time was "ripe" for a political solution to the standoff.

The talks came hours after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said enrichment was a line in the sand from which the Iranians would not retreat.

"We won't hold talks with anyone about the right of the Iranian nation (to enrich uranium), and no one has the right to retreat, even one iota," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

"Our answer to those who are angry about Iran achieving the full nuclear fuel cycle is just one phrase. We say: 'Be angry at us and die of this anger,'" Ahmadinejad said.

Iran says its nuclear work is solely for peaceful, civilian purposes, but the U.S. and a number of its allies believe it is after a nuclear arsenal.

ElBaradei said the extent of Iran's nuclear program was uncertain: "We have not seen diversion of nuclear material for weapons purposes, but the picture is still hazy and not very clear."

During the 20 years of Iran's nuclear program, "lots of activities went unreported," ElBaradei said.

Higher-level enrichment makes uranium suitable for a nuclear bomb, though Western experts familiar with Iran's program say the country is far from producing weapons-grade uranium.

ElBaradei said that in their talks, Larijani had renewed Iran's commitment "to provide clarity to outstanding issues before I write my report to the (International Atomic Energy Agency) board by the end of this month."

The Security Council has given Iran until April 28 to cease enrichment of uranium. But Iran has rejected the demand and announced Tuesday that, for the first time, it had enriched uranium with 164 centrifuges — a step toward large-scale production.

Representatives of the five permanent Security Council members — the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia — discussed the latest development Thursday morning. The U.S. and Europe are pressing for sanctions, a step Russia and China have so far opposed.

"We want to see what the outcome of the discussions between ElBaradei and the Iranian government is. And when we get information on that, we'll consider what to do next," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said after the meeting.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said there will "have to be some consequence" for Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment activities.

"There is no doubt that Iran continues to defy the will of the international community despite the fact that the international community very clearly said stop," Rice said.

Undersecretary for Arms Control Robert Joseph rejected Iran's claims that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes, saying its enrichment "is for a weapons program and that is what we are trying to deal with."

"If it had nuclear weapons, I am sure (Iran) would be even more ambitious in its use of terror to undercut the prospects of peace in the Middle East," Joseph told reporters in Cairo, Egypt.

China said Thursday it was sending its assistant foreign minister to Tehran to convey its concerns about Iran's nuclear program.

Iran's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, said Wednesday that Iran intends to move toward large-scale uranium enrichment involving 3,000 centrifuges by late 2006, and then expand the program to 54,000 centrifuges.

Saeedi said the 54,000 centrifuges would produce enough enriched uranium to fuel a 1,000-megawatt reactor, such as the one Iran has built with Russian assistance at Bushehr. The reactor is due to come on stream later this year.

Iran's nuclear chief, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, said Wednesday that Iran is prepared to give the West a share of Iran's enrichment facilities to allay fears that the country may divert some product to build weapons.

"The best way to get out of this issue is for countries that have concern to become our partners in Natanz in management, production and technology," he said, referring to the site of Iran's enrichment plant.

"This is a very important confidence-building measure," he said.

CHENEY'S SECRET IRAN OPERATING GROUP

2006-04-13T17:18:00.000-05:00

Allen L. Roland, Op-ed News

The real objective of OSP was to justify a war with Iraq which is most likely the case with ISOG.

The Office of Special Plans ( OSP ) fed tainted intelligence directly to Dick Cheney in the run up to the war with Iraq with the objective of regime change.

The Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), has been set up by Dick Cheney's daughter with the same objective of regime change in Iran ~ with a direct line to Dick Cheney.

The real objective of OSP was to justify a war with Iraq which is most likely the case with ISOG.

Are there any doubts as to who is running this country and who George Bush answers to. The Center for American Progress filed this revealing memo today.

IRAN -- RECENT COVERAGE FAILS TO NOTE ADMINISTRATION'S CREATION OF SECRETIVE IRAN GROUP:

American Progress Report / Under the Radar / 6/11/06

Remarking on the recent coverage by the Washington Post and the New Yorker on the Bush administration's preparations for a military strike against Iran, Lawrence Kaplan, a senior editor at The New Republic, writes that "absent from either account...is any mention of the State Department's ramped-up campaign for regime change in Iran -- a campaign that intensifies by the day."

According to Kaplan, the administration has formed what it calls the Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG), a body headed by Vice President Cheney's daughter, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Liz Cheney, and whose purpose is to encourage regime change in Iran.

The State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs is disgruntled by the Bush team's efforts to run its own Iran shop and skirt the traditional bureaucracy.

The administration's pre-Iraq war creations of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP) may suggest one possible answer for why the administration feels the need to set up a secretive Iran operating group.

OSP was created to cull intelligence to make the strongest possible case for war with Iraq, while WHIG helped market the war based on the selective intelligence the administration collected.

Cheney is operating with more than $75 million at her disposal to ostensibly promote democracy in Iran.

Media Misfires on Iran

2006-04-13T17:04:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking the Iraq War experience will give the edge to reason over fear ... people should, by now, realize the sensationalist journalism that has time and again misinformed the public.

Tom Bevan, Yahoo! News

Consider the following two headlines appearing today:

"Analysts Say a Nuclear Iran Is Years Away" - New York Times

"Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says" - Bloomberg

Obviously, somebody got it wrong. Turns out it's Bloomberg, which should be excoriated not only for running a factually false headline - Iran could not produce a nuclear bomb in sixteen days - but also for compounding the error with a grossly misleading report:

"Iran, defying United Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.

So what's the problem? The problem is that Iran only has 164 centrifuges in operation today. Rademaker was responding to a question about how quickly Iran could produce a nuclear weapon once it reached industrial scale capacity. As we learn much later down in the Bloomberg piece, experts estimate it would take more than 13 years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon using just those 164 centrifuges.

There is no mention of how long it would take for Iran to construct and bring online the 54,000 centrifuges needed to build a nuke in sixteen days, though Bloomberg does report that Iran "plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year" (The NY Times differs by reporting that Iran will begin "operating the first of 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz by late 2006").

So Bloomberg built it's news report around a highly sensational, but essentially theoretical, estimate of how quickly Iran could produce a nuclear weapon if it only had 53,836 more centrifuges in operation than it does today. That's sloppy journalism, and it does a great disservice to readers trying to get a better understanding of a most important issue.

Americans Wary of Action on Iran, Gloomy on Iraq, Poll Shows

2006-04-13T16:47:00.000-05:00

Bloomberg

American pessimism about the Iraq war has deepened and may be feeding doubts about President George W. Bush's efforts to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions, the latest Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found.

A majority of those surveyed -- 56 percent -- said Iraq is now in a civil war, and just 37 percent said they believe Bush when he says a lot of progress is being made there, down from 45 percent who said they believed him in January.

Forty-eight percent said they would support military action against Iran if it continues to produce material that can be used to develop a nuclear bomb, down from 57 percent in January. Forty percent oppose military action, up from 33 percent in January.

A majority -- 54 percent -- said they ``don't trust'' Bush to make the right decision about whether the U.S. should go to war with Iran, compared with 42 percent who said they do trust him. Forty percent said the Iraq experience had made them less supportive of military action against Iran, while 38 percent said it had no impact. The poll surveyed 1,357 American adults by telephone April 8-11 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Analysts said negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are driving sentiment on Iran. ``The Iraq experience is very sobering; it tells people that the military solution that looks so easy can be an illusion,'' said Joseph Cirincione, director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

``I expect those numbers to go down,'' Cirincione said of the support for an Iran strike. ``The more war with Iran is discussed, the lower the numbers will be.''

Iran Views Influenced

Michael O'Hanlon, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in Washington who has studied U.S. strategy in Iraq, said Americans' disillusionment with Bush's handling of the war has influenced their thinking on Iran.

``Three or four years ago, the American public might have had such overwhelming confidence in the U.S. military and the Bush administration that it would have essentially taken their word that they could execute a strike effectively, and that it would be worth the overall cost,'' O'Hanlon said.

``While the military remains well-regarded, we are also more painfully aware of the limits of its capabilities in certain situations,'' he said.

The prospect of a military strike on Iran jumped into the headlines after an April 8 article in the New Yorker magazine reported the U.S. is weighing air attacks on suspected weapons facilities in that country.

Bush dismissed the story as ``wild speculation.'' Several experts on the region say U.S. strikes couldn't be certain of complete success -- and might send oil prices soaring while sparking widespread terrorist retaliation or an Iranian counterstrike on Israel.

Iranian Response

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Monday that Iran was in the ``nuclear club'' and would accelerate uranium enrichment to reach ``industrial scale-production.'' He rejected a United Nations Security Council demand for suspension of the program by the end of the month.
Iran insists its nuclear program is purely to generate electricity, while the U.S. says it is aimed at making a bomb. Iran used 164 centrifuges to produce enriched uranium, Iranian officials said earlier this week. Yesterday, the country's deputy nuclear chief, Mohammad Saeedi, said Iran will install 3,000 centrifuges this year as part of a plan to eventually expand the program to 54,000 such devices.

It takes about 1,000 centrifuges working non-stop for a year to enrich enough uranium for a single bomb, according to the UN's nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

``While some believe that Iran's claims are credible, others speculated that Iran made the announcement to send a message that military strikes or sanctions would not deter Iran from achieving a full nuclear cycle,'' said Anthony Cordesman, a specialist on military affairs and the Middle East at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Doubts About Centrifuges

Cordesman said ``the Iranian claims also said nothing about how efficient the claimed use of a small 164-centrifuge chain was, what its life cycle and reliability was, and about the ability to engineer a system that could approach weapons-grade material.''

Crude oil climbed on Monday to the highest level since shortly after Hurricane Katrina last year on concern supplies from Iran could be disrupted by a confrontation over the country's nuclear program.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the Iranian announcement on uranium enrichment ``is going to further isolate Iran'' and urged the Security Council to take action.

Disillusionment on Iraq

While U.S. policy makers grapple with the Iranian nuclear problem, they also face an intensifying insurgency in Iraq aimed at destabilizing the government and driving out foreign forces.

As many as 38,164 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S. invasion in March 2003, Iraqbodycount.net, a research group based in the U.K., said on its Web site yesterday. The daily rate of civilian deaths increased to 36 in the third year of the occupation from 20 in the first, the group said in a press released on March 9.

As of Monday, there have been 2,360 U.S. military deaths, including Defense Department civilian contractors, since the invasion began, according to a Pentagon tally.

The Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll found mounting skepticism about the Iraqi conflict, with 38 percent of Americans saying it was worth fighting compared to 58 percent who said it was not. Seventy-four percent said the situation would worsen or remain the same over the next year while 23 percent thought it would improve.

Americans are split on establishing a deadline for pulling out of Iraq, with 45 percent saying Bush should set a date for withdrawal of all U.S. troops while he is still in office while 49 percent said he should not, a statistically insignificant difference.

Thirty-six percent of respondents said they believed Iraq likely could maintain a democratic government after the U.S. and its allies left, while 52 percent said it was unlikely they'd be able to do so.

Despite Denials, U.S. Plans for Iran War

2006-04-13T13:59:00.000-05:00

William M. Arkin, Washington Post

The U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has been conducting theater campaign analysis for a full scale war with Iran since at least May 2003, responding to Pentagon directions to prepare for potential operations in the "near term."

The campaign analysis, called TIRANNT, for "theater Iran near term," posits an Iraq-like maneuver war between U.S. and Iranian ground forces and incorporates lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In addition to the TIRANNT effort and the Marine Corps Karona invasion scenario I discussed yesterday, the military has also completed an analysis of Iran's missile force (the "BMD-I" study), the Defense Intelligence Agency has updated "threat data" for Iranian forces, and Air Force planners have modeled attacks against "real world" Iranian air defenses and targets to establish new metrics. What is more, the United States and Britain have been conducting war games and contingency planning under a Caspian Sea scenario that could also pave the way for northern operations against Iran.

After new reports of intensified planning for Iran began to circulate over the weekend, the President dismissed the news as "wild speculation."

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld similarly called media speculation about Iran war planning as "fantasyland."

Asked at a Pentagon new conference whether he had in recent days, weeks or month, asked the Joint Staff or CENTCOM to "update, refine, [or] modify the contingencies for possible military options against Iran," Rumsfeld said: "We have I don't know how many various contingency plans in this department. And the last thing I'm going to do is to start telling you or anyone else in the press or the world at what point we refresh a plan or don't refresh a plan, and why. It just isn't useful."

I beg to differ, Mr. Secretary.

World pressure and American diplomacy would be mightily enhanced if Iran understood that the United States was indeed so serious about it acquiring nuclear weapons it was willing to go to war over it. What is more, the American public needs to know that this is a possibility.

Think the U.S. military isn't serious about war with Iran?

Since at least 2003, in response to a number of directives from Secretary Rumsfeld and then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers, the military services and Pentagon intelligence agencies have been newly working on a number of "near term" and "near-year" Iranian contingency studies in support of CENTCOM war planning efforts.

These studies, war games, and modeling efforts have been the first step in shifting the bulk of planning from almost exclusive focus on Iraq to Iran. At CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, Florida, at Army and Air Force CENTCOM support headquarters in Georgia and South Carolina, and at service analysis and operations research organizations like the Army Concepts Analysis Agency in Bethesda, a monumental effort has been underway to "build" an Iran country baseline for war planning.

Under the TIRANNT campaign analysis program, Army organizations, together with CENTCOM headquarters planners, have been examining both near term and "out year" scenarios for war with Iran, covering all aspects of a major combat operation from mobilization and deployment of forces through post-war "stability" operations after regime change.

The core TIRANNT effort itself began in May 2003, when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data sets needed for theater level (large scale) scenario analysis in support of updated war plans. Successive iterations of TIRANTT efforts have updated "blue," (United States), "green," (coalition), and "threat" databases with post-Iraq war information.

The follow-on TIRANNT Campaign Analysis (TIRANNT-CA), which began in October 2003, has calculated the results of different campaign scenarios against Iran to provide options for "courses of action" analysis. According to military sources close to the planning process, in 2002-2003, the CENTCOM commander, Gen. John Abizaid was directed to develop a new "strategic concept" for Iran war planning and potential courses of action for Secretary of Defense and Presidential review.

Parallel with the TIRANNT and TIRANNT-CA analysis, Army and CENTCOM planners have also been undertaking the "TOY study." TOY stands for TIRANNT Out-Year, and posits a U.S.-Iran war in the year 2011. Under the TOY modeling effort, Army division-sized formations as currently organized are sent up against real world models of Iranian ground units. The results are compared to the same engagements when fought by newly reorganized Army brigade combat teams who fight independent of a strict divisional hierarchy. The product gauges not only the impact of military "transformation" efforts in the Army but also the most propitious timing for war.

Under a separate "BMD-I study," for ballistic missile defense - Iran, the Army Concepts Analysis Agency has modeled the performance of U.S. and Iranian weapon systems to determine the number of missiles expected to "leak through" a coalition missile defense in the 2005 (current) time frame. The BMD-I study has not only looked at U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missile performance and optimum placement to protect U.S. and coalition forces, but also the results of combined air, cyber warfare and missile defense operations to disable Iranian command and control capabilities and missiles on the ground before Iran can fire them.

In July 2004, U.S. and British Army planners also met at Fort Belvoir to play the Hotspur 2004 war game, a 2015 timeframe Caspian Sea scenario examining deployment of forces, movement to "contact" with the enemy, and "decisive" operations. A U.K. medium weight brigade operated subordinate to U.S. forces and the game included an assessment of lessons learned in U.S.-British interoperability during similar operations in southern Iraq.

The extremely complex Caspian Sea scenario has become the standard non-Asian platform for education, training and force development in the Army. The current 2005 "high resolution" version model provides analysts with the ability to manipulate thousands of entities using tens of thousands of combat orders to simulate all aspects of major combat operations. The scenario not only has variable "physical battlespace" including urban terrain, but an adaptive enemy, allowing analysis of not just standard military operations but also complex counter-insurgency activity.

In February 2005, after a similar flurry of news reporting on U.S. military options for Iran, the Deputy Commander of CENTCOM Lt. Gen. Lance Smith was asked at a Pentagon briefing if the Tampa based command was in any kind of heightened state of planning when it comes to Iran.
"We plan everything," Smith responded. "We have a requirement on a regular basis to update plans. We try to keep them current, particularly if -- you know, if our region is active. But I haven't been called into any late-night meetings at, you know, 8:00 at night, saying, 'Holy cow, we got to sit down and go plan for Iran.'"

Throughout mid-2002, when a similar public debate about an Iraq war plan swirled in the news, Secretary Rumsfeld, Myers, and then CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks insisted that there were no "war plans," that they hadn't been asked to prepare a war plan, that no decisions had been made, that no war plan sat on the President's desk.

It would take a doctoral dissertation to wade through the chronology of statements and actions to sort out the specifics of the truth, but here is the reality: Iraq war planning consumed the government inner circle all through this period and the government made a knee jerk decision -- never really thoughtfully reviewed -- not to speak about it. "We don't discuss war plans," the mantra goes. And it is dead wrong.

Maybe history will show that the Bush administration was so hell bent on war in 2002-2003, nothing that Saddam Hussein could have done would have prevented it. Still the world went through the motions of U.N. inspections and the Security Council and the U.S. Congress made decisions based upon the allusion that war could still be averted, that all diplomatic options would be exhausted before the decision to go to war was made.

We now also know that the Iraqis themselves didn't quite believe that the United States was serious about regime change and that it would go all the way. Perhaps though, had the United States candidly stated its intentions rather than spending so much time denying reality, Baghdad would have gotten the message and war would have been averted, perhaps in another time and place.

It seems today we face a similar problem with Iran. The President of the United States insists that all options are on the table while the Secretary of Defense insists it "isn't useful" to discuss American options.

I think this sends the wrong message to Tehran. Contingency planning for a full fledged war with Iran may seem incredible right now, and Iran isn't Iraq. But Iran needs to understand that the United States isn't hamstrung by a lack of options, Iran needs to know that it can't just stonewall and evade international inspections, that it can't burrow further underground in hopes of "winning" because war is messy.

As I've said before in these pages, I don't believe that the United States is planning to imminently attack Iran, and I specifically don't think so because Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons and it hasn't lashed out militarily against anyone.

But the United States military is really, really getting ready, building war plans and options, studying maps, shifting its thinking.

It is not in our interests to have Tehran not understand this. The military options currently on the table might not be good ones, but Iran shouldn't make decisions based upon a false view.

Two so-called "experts" are quoted in The Washington Post today saying that there are no options, that there is no Plan B, that the United States will just live with Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. They are fundamentally wrong about the options, and misunderstand the Bush administration as well.

But most important, this constant drum beat in the newspapers and the media sends the wrong message to Iran. This is why Secretary Rumsfeld should be saying that the U.S. is preparing war plans for Iran, and that the United States views the situation so seriously that it would be willing to risk war if Iran acquired nuclear weapons or lashed out against the U.S. or its friends. The war planning moreover, Rumsfeld needs to add, is not just routine, it is not just what military's do all the time. It is specifically related to Iran, to its illegal pursuit of nuclear weapons, to its meddling in Iraq and support for international terrorism.

Iran needs to know the facts and the American public need to know the facts. But most important, the American public needs to hear the facts about American war plans, military options and preparedness from the government so that they can understand where we are and decide whether they think the threat from Iran justifies the risks of another war.

Iran’s Lawmakers Urge Crackdown on Women in Summer

2006-04-13T13:46:00.000-05:00

Iran Focus - a pro-MEK website

Tehran - Iran’s Majlis (Parliament) deputies called for a bill to be adopted to regulate women’s attire during the hot summer months, a state-run daily reported on Wednesday.

Gholam-Reza Mesbahi-Moghaddam, a hard-line deputy from Tehran called for the bill against “mal-veiling” during an open session of Majlis on Tuesday, the daily Sharq wrote.

The report said that each year young people tend to disobey the Islamic dress code more during the Summer months. This year, Majlis deputies were looking to adopt the bill against “mal-veiling”, the report added.

At the same time, Emaad Afroogh, head of the Majlis cultural commission, said that he was trying to table a bill to create a “national costume” to counter the effects of Western fashion in Iran.

Mohammad-Taghi Rahbar, a hard-line deputy from the central city of Isfahan, called for a “cultural revolution”.

“You cannot call the tiny cloths that girls put on their heads as hijabs. The stage must be adequately set to bring about a cultural revolution”, Rahbar said.

In August, Iran’s Justice Minister vowed that “improperly-veiled women” will be treated as if they had no Islamic veil at all.

“Being improperly veiled and not wearing a veil are no different. When it is clear from the appearance of a woman that she has violated the law, then the crime is obvious and law enforcement agents can take legal measures against her”, Jamal Karimi-Rad said.

“Crimes such as mal-veiling or other prohibited acts, which happen before the eyes of a law enforcement agent, are evident crimes and must be dealt with in accordance with the law”.

Women have been facing a harsher crackdown since hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office as President.

Enriching Uranium More Than a Matter of Spin

2006-04-13T13:38:00.000-05:00

Iran Focus - a pro-MEK website

The Times

By Bronwen Maddox

IRAN’S announcement that it has started running 164 centrifuges in Natanz still leaves it a big step away from being able to make weapons (although it denies that that is its aim).

Running a cascade, or linked chain, of centrifuges reliably is the most difficult obstacle to making a bomb. The cylinders, made of hardened steel, must spin fast, day and night, for months without wobbling or crashing.

“I’m a bit sceptical that they can run the cascade continuously,” Mark Fitzpatrick, a proliferation specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said. “They would have to do that for several months to be confident they had overcome the hurdles.”

In the enrichment process, uranium in a gaseous form is fed in at one end of the line of centrifuges and extracted at the other. The spinning separates the rarer form of uranium, U-235, which is needed to sustain a nuclear reaction in the core of a reactor, or to create an explosion. The concentration, or enrichment, of the U-235 increases as it passes through more centrifuges. If it is not enriched enough, it can be returned to the start.

A power plant needs uranium enriched to 3 per cent. Weapons-grade uranium is at least 80 per cent. But those figures are misleading. “Half the work is done in getting to 3 per cent,” Mr Fitzpatrick said. It would take only the same effort again to produce weapons-grade material.

How long that takes depends on the number of centrifuges. A cascade of 164 machines is a pilot plant. It represents a big step forward; previously, Iran had managed to link only a dozen or so. But even 164 is tiny. Using that cascade it would take 13 to 17 years to make the 20kg to 25kg (44lb to 55lb) of highly enriched uranium needed for a weapon.

Iran has said that it plans to build an industrial-scale plant of 50,000 centrifuges at Nat- anz. In theory this could produce material for a bomb in weeks. But constructing the plant — acquiring components for centrifuges or making and testing them — is a huge undertaking.

Gary Samore, of the MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, and a specialist in the Iranian nuclear programme, says that Iran might well want to avoid the confrontation with the UN that a huge centrifuge plant would bring. But with a small cascade, it could build up a stockpile of low- enriched uranium, he said. That would give it “a much quicker breakout capability” if it chose to make the dash for a weapon.

Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says

2006-04-13T13:31:00.000-05:00

I think this article will be one of many to once again invoke fear in the masses ... very irresponsible

Bloomberg

Iran, defying United Nations Security Council demands to halt its nuclear program, may be capable of making a nuclear bomb within 16 days, a U.S. State Department official said.

Iran will move to ``industrial scale'' uranium enrichment involving 54,000 centrifuges at its Natanz plant, the Associated Press quoted deputy nuclear chief Mohammad Saeedi as telling state-run television today.

``Using those 50,000 centrifuges they could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon in 16 days,'' Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, told reporters today in Moscow.

Rademaker was reacting to a statement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said yesterday the country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time, using 164 centrifuges. That announcement defies demands by the UN Security Council that Iran shut down its nuclear program this month.

The U.S. fears Iran is pursuing a nuclear program to make weapons, while Iran says it is intent on purely civilian purposes, to provide energy. Saeedi said 54,000 centrifuges will be able to enrich uranium to provide fuel for a 1,000-megawat nuclear power plant similar to the one Russia is finishing in southern Iran, AP reported.

``It was a deeply disappointing announcement,'' Rademaker said of Ahmadinejad's statement.

Weapons-Grade Uranium

Rademaker said the technology to enrich uranium to a low level could also be used to make weapons-grade uranium, saying that it would take a little over 13 years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon with the 164 centrifuges currently in use. The process involves placing uranium hexafluoride gas in a series of rotating drums or cylinders known as centrifuges that run at high speeds to extract weapons grade uranium.

Iran has informed the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to construct 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz next year, Rademaker said.

``We calculate that a 3,000-machine cascade could produce enough uranium to build a nuclear weapon within 271 days,'' he said. (so why did you say 16 days ???)

While the U.S. has concerns over Iran's nuclear program, Rademaker said ``there certainly has been no decision on the part of my government'' to use force if Iran refuses to obey the UN Security Council demand that it shuts down its nuclear program.

Rademaker is in Moscow for a meeting of his counterparts from the Group of Eight wealthy industrialized countries. Russia chairs the G-8 this year.

China is concerned about Iran's decision to accelerate uranium enrichment and wants the government in Tehran to heed international criticism of the move, Wang Guangya, China's ambassador to the United Nations said.

Spooky Business: CIA Probing Iran's Nuclear Intent

2006-04-13T13:22:00.000-05:00

David Ensor, CNN

WASHINGTON -- What exactly are Iran's nuclear scientists up to?

That's a question the West wants answered, and it's one of extreme focus at the CIA. It's also a question not easily answered. Ask intelligence officials these days whether Iran has a covert enrichment program and they are quick to say, "We just do not know."

That said, intelligence officials -- including senior ones -- express confidence in their key judgment: Although Iran says it is only working toward nuclear power, the U.S. intelligence community believes otherwise -- that Tehran is in fact also working toward a bomb.

U.S. officials will not describe the evidence backing that up, but they say it is credible.

At an agency bruised from its faulty prewar intelligence assessment of Iraq, they want to make sure they get it exactly right this time around.

"People are approaching this with a heck of a lot of vigor," said one U.S. intelligence official. "But they are being very careful not to jump to conclusions."

Like journalists, intelligence analysts are never happy with their sources, and always looking for better information.

"People are dissatisfied, but this is a major priority and we are collecting everything we can on it," this official said.

Experts say Tuesday's announcement by Tehran -- that it used an array of 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium -- is less significant scientifically speaking than Tehran would have the world to believe.

There are many difficult steps ahead before enough enriched uranium hexafluoride can be produced to make electricity and many more still before bomb-grade uranium can be produced. Nuclear weapons require many thousands of centrifuges.

"I think it's mostly about showbiz and politics," said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, now head of the Institute for Science and International Security.

"I think the Iranians want the world to believe that they are like North Korea -- they've accomplished the goal. 'You can't stop us.' But in fact, they are a long way from accomplishing the goal and they can be stopped through diplomatic means."

Lest anyone believe there is an easy military way to eliminate Iran's nuclear program, intelligence officials say they are aware of dozens of facilities in Iran that are connected with it. And some of them are deep underground in hardened facilities. They also believe there may be many more that they do not know about.

And the question remains: What exactly are Iran's nuclear scientists up to? There is no doubt the CIA will keep digging for the answer.

Iran-Make Weapons Cache Discovered in Iraq

2006-04-12T19:42:00.000-05:00

Iran Focus - a pro-MEK website

London – Iraqi military forces recently discovered an Iranian-make weapons cache hidden in the city of Tikrit, north-west of Baghdad.

The weapons, which were all new and of Iranian origin, were found hidden in a large well in the west of Tikrit, according to an Iraqi army officer whose comments were reported by Iraqi media.

The United States and Iraqi officials have accused Iran’s radical Islamic government of sending agents and arms into Iraq to assist the insurgency.

Nuclear 'Breakthrough' May Help Iran to Compromise

2006-04-12T19:13:00.000-05:00

Tony Karon, TIME

Iran's announcement that it has mastered the art of enriching uranium was greeted with a predictable chorus of alarm. But despite expressions of grave concern from Washington and London to Moscow and Beijing, Tehran's nuclear "breakthrough" doesn't necessarily diminish chances for a diplomatic solution. On the contrary, Tehran has long insisted it wants a compromise that both addresses Western concerns and upholds what it says is its "right" to enrich uranium, particularly in a research setting. The latest announcement may well give the Iranians room to show greater flexibility at the bargaining table without appearing to back down.

Iran's defiance of Western demands over its nuclear program is far more popular at home than the regime itself is. But having assured its public that Western efforts to prevent Iran from mastering the fuel cycle have failed, the Iranian leadership may have actually given itself some new room to compromise. The regime reportedly wants a compromise that accepts that Iran's nuclear reactor fuel will be enriched in Russia or elsewhere abroad, but allows it to maintain, under international scrutiny, the small research facility that completed this week's experiment. The U.S. and Europe have flatly rejected that proposal, because they had hoped to deny Iran the means of attaining even the know-how to enrich uranium for fear that this would be used in a covert bomb program. Now, Iran appears to have already achieved that milestone — even though it remains years away from being able to manufacture its own reactor fuel on an industrial scale or create bomb material — which could render that objection moot.

Tehran is also keenly aware of the diplomatic difficulties facing the U.S. in the standoff. Even as they chided Iran for having conducted the latest experiment, Russia and China remain adamantly opposed to even threatening UN sanctions against Iran. And recent reports about U.S. planning for potential military action momentarily turned the conversation from how to deal with Iran's bad behavior to how to restrain the U.S.

The Bush administration's dual objectives of regime-change in Tehran and restraining the current regime from going nuclear also continue to bump up against each other. President Bush rushed to calm speculation over possible military strikes by insisting that the U.S. wants a diplomatic solution, but at the same time he ruled out direct talks with Iran on the nuclear issue — despite such talks being advocated not only by Iran, but also by Washington's closest European allies.

Some analysts have read the leak of hypothetical U.S. military planning on Iran as calculated to spook the Europeans, Russia and China into supporting tougher UN action. Whether or not it has that effect, diplomacy is clearly the only game in town — and both sides are busy trying to shape its outcome to their advantage.

Iran Ready for Non-Aggression Pact with Region

2006-04-12T17:57:00.000-05:00

IranMania

LONDON - Tehran is ready to sign non-aggression pacts with countries in the region, Iranian Defence Minister was quoted as saying, AFP reported.

The comment came less than a week after military exercises were held to trumpet the Islamic republic's "homegrown" military achievements.

"Our exercises were welcomed by Muslims of the world, and they dismayed our enemies. Since (the exercises) were a message of peace and friendship, we are ready to sign non-aggression pacts with the regional countries," Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said.

"Islamic Republic of Iran announces once again its readiness to hold a joint military exercise with regional countries," he was quoted as saying in Iranian dailies.

From March 31 to April 6, Iran staged major exercises along its strategic southern coast. Tehran also unveiled a wide range of homegrown weaponry including various missiles and torpedoes.

The war games were held in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow neck in the Persian Gulf through which a third of the world's oil exports pass.

The minister's comments also came amid reports in the US media that President George W. Bush was considering possible air strikes against Iran's nuclear sites, AFP added.

Rove Says Iran Leader Not Rational

2006-04-12T15:17:00.000-05:00

Erwin Seba, Reuters

HOUSTON - Reaching a diplomatic solution over Iran's nuclear ambitions will be difficult because Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "not a rational human being," a senior White House adviser said on Wednesday.

The United States is pressing for the U.N. Security Council to take further action against Iran for pursuing its nuclear program, which the Bush administration says is a cover for producing weapons while Tehran says is for peaceful energy generation.

"We are engaged in a diplomatic process with our European partners and the United Nations to keep them from developing such a weapon," Karl Rove, deputy White House chief of staff, told an audience of business people at the Houston Forum.

"It's going to be difficult. It's going to be tough because they are led by ideologues who have a weird sense of history," he said.

Rove said his characterization of Ahmadinejad was based on statements the Iranian president made after speaking to the United Nations.

"Ahmadinejad spoke to the United Nations and afterwards was quoted as saying that for the 23 minutes that he spoke, there was a halo around his head that transfixed the audience and caused them to be completely focused on his message," he said.

Rove noted, however, that world leaders speaking before the U.N. General Assembly are often watched attentively in silence by the delegates. Rove said that President George W. Bush, for instance, says that speaking to the General Assembly is like appearing before a "waxworks."

"This guy (Ahmadinejad) had the sense that he was mystically empowered and as a result transfixed the audience -- that is not a rational human being to deal with," he said.

International pressure increased on Iran to halt its nuclear program this week after Tehran declared it had produced enriched uranium.

"We're going to have to use every diplomatic tool with the United Nations, the International Atomic Energy Agency and our partners in Europe to bring pressure to bear to stop this," Rove said.

Ahmadinejad drew international condemnation for saying the Holocaust was a myth. He also said Israel should be wiped from the map.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan, asked about Rove's description of Ahmadinejad, said Bush has spoken out about the Iranian leader's "outrageous and offensive statements." Bush called the Iranian president an "odd guy" in an interview with PBS television in December.

Rice Calls for 'Strong Steps' Against Iran

2006-04-12T15:07:00.000-05:00

Barry Schweid, Associated Press

Denouncing Iran's successful enrichment of uranium as unacceptable to the international community, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Wednesday the U.N. Security Council must consider "strong steps" to induce Tehran to change course.

Rice also telephoned Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to ask him to reinforce demands that Iran comply with its nonproliferation requirements when he holds talks in Tehran on Friday.

While Rice took a strong line, she did not call for an emergency meeting of the Council, saying it should consider action after receiving an IAEA report by April 28. She did not elaborate on what measures the United States would support, but economic and political sanctions are under consideration.

The European Union is considering travel restrictions on Iranian officials, but White House and State Department spokesmen said what the Security Council might be asked to do was under discussion.

"It's time for action and that is what the secretary was expressing," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said. "The president wanted to make sure that she made that very clear to all that were listening."

On March 29, the Security Council adopted a statement that gave Iran 30 days to clear up suspicion that it wants to become a nuclear power. The statement demanded Iran comply with IAEA demands that it suspend enrichment and allow unannounced IAEA inspections.

If Iran goes ahead with its enrichment program the United States and European allies are certain to press for a Council resolution.

"You can be sure that it needs to be more than a presidential statement at this point," McClellan said.

Asked if the United States would be running a risk of a disagreement with other members of the Council by pushing for strong measures, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "There is now a consensus Iran should not be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapons program."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announcing on Tuesday that his country had crossed the line into enrichment, said Iran's objectives were peaceful. Iran is said by many analysts to lack the equipment, including a nuclear reactor, to make nuclear weapons.

But Rice brushed aside suggestions Iran was far from the goal the United States and its allies suspect -- nuclear weaponry.

She said the world believes Iran has the capacity and the technology that lead to nuclear weapons. "The Security Counil will need to take into consideration this move by Iran," she said. "It will be time when it reconvenes on this case for strong steps to make certain that we maintain the credibility of the international community."

"This is not a question of Iran's right to civil nuclear power," she while greeting President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Moasogo of Equatorial Guinea. "This is a question of, ... the world does not believe that Iran should have the capability and the technology that could lead to a nuclear weapon."

At the private Arms Control Association, executive director Daryl Kimball said the administration should consider direct talks with Iran on the nuclear issue. And, he said in an interview, "the administration should be extending non-aggression pledges rather than implied threats in order to weaken Iran's rationale for a nuclear weapons program."

"Otherwise," Kimball said, "the Bush administration is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure and military confrontation."

At the private Center for Strategic and International Studies, analyst Anthony Cordesman said, "What we need to understand when we call for strong action by the Security Council, we may not expect it today or on this particular round."

But, Cordesman added in an interview, "this issue is not going away. The more Iran pushes the tolerance of the international community to its limits, the more support the United States can count on in the future."

"This is a very complex and uncertain process," he said.

UN Body Thaws Caviar Trade Freeze for Iran

2006-04-12T14:53:00.000-05:00

IranMania

LONDON - A United Nations body on Wednesday said it had given Iran a green light to export caviar from wild sturgeon, but maintained a trade freeze on other Caspian Sea nations which was imposed to protect the endangered fish, AFP reported.

The Convention on International Trade in Engandered Species (CITES) approved exports of up 44,370 kilogrammes of caviar from Iran.

Tehran had sought a trade quota of 50,805 kilogrammes, but the CITES approval only covers eggs produced by the Persian sturgeon, one of the five species fished by Iran's caviar industry, AFP added.

"It's the only species which isn't doing too badly in the Caspian Sea," David Morgan, head of CITES scientific division, told AFP.

The UN body maintained its ban on caviar from the rare Beluga sturgeon, which is prized by gourmets.

Every year, CITES asks caviar producing countries for a quota for the following year's catch.

The body, which groups 169 countries, said in January that it could not approve the 2006 quotas proposed by major exporting nations, saying they "may not fully reflect the reductions in stocks or make sufficient allowance for illegal fishing."

CITES said on Wednesday that it was continuing its overall freeze on exports by the other Caspian Sea nations: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan.

They had failed to come up with satisfactory quota proposals at a recent meeting, which were needed if they were to be allowed to restart the money-spinning commerce, Morgan explained.

CITES is unlikely to grant them approval at all this year, he added.

"It's unfortunate not have been able to come up with sustainable quotas," he said. "It was the last chance."

CITES first imposed caviar trade controls in 1998, after a decline in sturgeon stocks following the break up of the Soviet Union.

Fishing increased after the end of communist-era restrictions, raising fears among environmentalists that sturgeon would be wiped out.

CITES has persisently pressed Caspian Sea governments to crack down, pointing in particular to mounting illegal fishing which it has said could be many times greater than the legal catch, AFP noted.

The Caspian is the source of 90 percent of the world's caviar. It was already hit with a temporary ban in 2001.

Morgan acknowledged that experts are still unsure how far trade bans can help replenish sturgeon stocks, given the breakneck rate of poaching.

"It's a permanent battle," he said.

CITES has also repeatedly pushed caviar importing countries to impose stricter controls.

The body this week reminded governments that they should not allow Caspian Sea caviar or other sturgeon products from the region to enter their markets in the absence of quotas, AFP stated.

"There is a certain quantity of dubious caviar on the market," said Morgan. "That necessitates an effort by importing countries."

According to the environmental group WWF, around 1,000 kilos of caviar are consumed on the Russian market every year, some 92 percent of it from sturgeon fished by poachers.

CITES' rules cover shared fishing areas.

Besides the Caspian Sea, these include the Danube estuary and the Black Sea, which are divided between Bulgaria and Romania, who received quotas in February.

CITES has also refused to approve 2006 quotas for caviar from the Amur river, which is shared by Russia and China.

Straw Voices Concern Over Iran Nuclear Announcement

2006-04-12T11:51:00.001-05:00

Guardian Unlimited

The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, today said he was "seriously concerned" by Iran's announcement that it had successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

Senior politicians in France, Germany and Russia also voiced anxiety about yesterday's comments by the hardline Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr Ahmadinejad, speaking in the holy city of Mashhad, said: "Dear Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries."

Mr Straw said he was "seriously concerned about President Ahmadinejad's statement".

"It is contrary to repeated requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency board and now by the [UN] security council that Iran resume full and sustained suspension of all enrichment and reprocessing activities, including research and development," he added.

The foreign secretary said the Iranian regime had to demonstrate that it was not seeking to build nuclear weapons. If Iran did not comply, he said the security council would "discuss further diplomatic measures".

Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, is travelling to Iran for talks aimed at resolving the standoff over the country's nuclear programme.

Britain, France and Germany cut off more than two years of negotiations with Tehran after it said it would resume its enrichment activities earlier this year.

The security council has demanded that Iran stop all enrichment by April 28 because of suspicions the programme is intended to manufacture nuclear weapons.

Mikhail Kamynin, a Russian foreign ministry spokesman, said his country - which has close ties with Tehran - had learned of the Iranian announcement "with concern".

"We believe that this step is wrong. It runs counter to decisions of the IAEA and resolutions of the UN security council," he told the ITAR-Tass news agency.

In Berlin, Angela Merkel's government said the announcement was "another step in the wrong direction by Iran", while French officials said France was "in the process of diplomatic regulation of this affair" and called on Iran to "respect its obligations".

In an address to an invited audience of clerics, military figures and dignitaries yesterday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: "The nation, under the umbrella of God's grace and through its own efforts, has reached this big achievement.

"Today is a big day which will be recorded in Iran's history."

Iranian television broadcast pictures of scientists dancing and waving test tubes apparently marked with chemical symbols.

Mr Ahmadinejad - who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map - said the nuclear programme was for purely civilian purposes.

"All our activities have been carried out under the gaze of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, and we would like to carry on under their eyes," he said.

Some diplomats and analysts in Tehran said they believed the announcement could be a prelude to the regime saying it was ready to bow to UN demands that it suspend enrichment activities and re-enter negotiations.

Is Iran Next ? The Calculus of Military Strike

2006-04-12T02:21:00.000-05:00

Mike Sappenfield, Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON – Time and again this week, President Bush and his team reiterated their position on Iran's nuclear program: America wants a diplomatic solution, and any suggestion it is moving toward an inevitable strike on Iran is "wild speculation."

At the same time, however, Mr. Bush has remained steadfast in his statements that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable and "no option is off the table" to prevent it.

The news Tuesday that Iran is now producing enriched uranium for atomic reactors - considered a first step toward nuclear weapons - has heightened the sense that America and Iran are on a collision course. A new article in The New Yorker claims that the administration is again on a path to war.

Yet amid the tumult is an effort to shape a debate that's more robust than the one before the Iraq war. While military action doesn't appear certain, the hint of it raises questions on the use of force, and what it might - and might not - accomplish.

It seems likely that precision airstrikes could set Iran's nuclear program back at least a year and perhaps several. Whether that delay is worth the probable consequences - the strengthening of a despotic regime within Iran and the increased likelihood of terrorism in nearby Iraq and the broader region - is what's at issue.

"The military option has a lot of costs," says Michael Rubin, an Iran expert at the American Enterprise Institute here. "But is the cost of the Islamic Republic of Iran having a nuclear weapon greater?"

Iran closer to nuclear weapon

Reports out of Iran Tuesday suggested that the country has moved closer to being able to produce a nuclear weapon. Tuesday's announcement claimed that Iran now has 164 centrifuges, which yield more-concentrated uranium. Iran would need thousands of centrifuges to produce enough fuel for a nuclear weapon - and the country's leaders insist that the program is solely for nuclear power - but it is a concern for international officials.

Few security analysts think Iran would actually use a nuclear weapon against the United States. It is an established nation motivated by self-preservation as much as power.

Indeed, Iran's terrorist links are capable of causing much more damage than they do.

But Iran does not desire to prompt the US or Israel to a major response, says Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations. "If Iran used a nuclear weapon against New York - or if it could be traced back to Iran - Tehran would fall ... and the Iranians know that."

More likely, Iran would ratchet up its terrorist activities, knowing that enemies would be less inclined to retaliate strongly against a nuclear foe. For Dr. Rubin, that still makes a military strike "the lesser of two evils" if diplomatic efforts fail.

With the United States Army fully engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, airstrikes against Iran's nuclear facilities are the most likely option. The operation might take five days, says retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, who participated in a war game on the subject in late 2004.

Some sites, like the centrifuge facility in Natanz, are obvious and would be relatively easy to target. Others are less known or more deeply buried, leading to speculation that the United States might use special nuclear weapons designed to penetrate deep into fortified bunkers.

While that remains a possibility, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, called the suggestion "completely nuts," and analysts agree it would be disastrous for American interests in Middle East.

The use of conventional weapons is problematic enough. Not only do experts like Colonel Gardiner question whether America could locate and destroy all the relevant targets, but they also wonder whether even a successful attack is worth the cost.

"None of [the military options] are any good," says Gardiner.

No matter how precise or limited, any airstrike against Iran is likely to be perceived there as a declaration of war. "There is a tendency to think of it as a quick, surgical action short of war," says Dr. Biddle. "That is a mistake."

Surely, Iran would retaliate through a more aggressive terrorism campaign, he and others say, and with US troops close at hand in Iraq, they could become the first targets. Iran could also try to close the narrow Strait of Hormuz - through which all Persian Gulf traffic, including oil tankers, must pass.

Iran's internal strife

In some ways, though, the greatest effect could be within Iran itself. For years, a younger generation seeking democratic reforms has struggled against Iran's government of autocratic clerics, who espouse the destruction of America and Israel.

Yet unlike Iraq, a splintered country that was essentially the creation of British imperialism, Iran has a national history stretching back thousands of years to the days of the Persians. As in any country, an attack from a foreign power would likely rally support for the government.

"Iranians are fiercely nationalistic," says Rubin.

He believes the US could mitigate that somewhat by also attacking symbols of the regime's repression, such as the ministry of information and the guard towers in the country's most infamous political prison.

Others, however, see a different lesson from history. When America helped topple Iran's government in 1953, Iranian outrage spawned the hostage crisis of 1979. Now, the US and Iran could be on a course again to poison their relations for a generation.

The concern is that the US might attack before all other options have been exhausted. Indeed, America and Iran still don't talk to each other diplomatically; they rely on Europe as a mediator.

Given that Iran is surrounded by American troops - in Afghanistan to the east and Iraq to the west - some suggest that there may still be a diplomatic way forward: A direct US offer to Iran of security guarantees for cooperation with its nuclear program.

Says Robert Hunter, a former US ambassador to NATO: "If you try and fail, at least you have a circumstance that clarifies the issue."

Regime Opponent - Iran 2-3 Years from Nuke Bomb

2006-04-12T02:12:00.000-05:00

Iran Mania

LONDON - Iran can deliver on its threat to enrich uranium, said a regime opponent, who claimed the Islamic republic has the know-how and tools to make nuclear bombs within two or three years, AFP reported.

"Once they master the technique, then they will only be a screwdriver's turn away from making fissile material for a bomb," Alireza Jafarzadeh, of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, told AFP.

"Iran has about 5,000 centrifuges ready to be installed in (the) Natanz uranium enrichment facility," he said, backing up claims by Iran's hardline president.

On Tuesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad startled the world by announcing: "Our people, with the help of God, have successfully mastered nuclear technology. Iran has joined the nuclear states."

Jafarzadeh claimed that Iran has the parts to assemble 5,000 centrifuges, used to separate fissile uranium. "Iran is one to three years away from making a bomb," he said.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran has in the past provided accurate information on Iran's secret nuclear programs, revealing in 2002 the existence of sites in Natanz and Arak, where the centrifuges are to be installed in underground halls, Jafarzadeh said.

The next step, he said, is to assemble more than a hundred centrifuges in a "cascade," meaning that each successive machine furthers the enrichment of the previous one.

"The main barrier that Iran crossed is to work 164 together, which is the most difficult first step which Iran has overcome.

"The nuclear clock is rapidly ticking and we don't have much time. Unless the international community acts now, Iran will eventually get a bomb," Jafarzadeh said.

"The announcement that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made is very significant because it will give Iran the ability to enrich uranium beyond the experimental," he said.

"The problem is that this is the first time that Iran was able to operate all those 5,000 centrifuge machines at once."

Iran's atomic energy chief said Tuesday that the Natanz plant had enriched uranium 235 to 3.5%, the purity required for civilian reactor fuel.

Gholam Reza Aghazadeh also said that Iran has 110 tonnes of UF6 uranium gas ready for centrifuge separation.

Further fueling world fears was his statement that Iran would in three years build a heavy water reactor in Arak, which could also potentially produce plutonium for a trigger for a nuclear weapon.

The US government believes Iran is trying to obtain a nuclear bomb, but Iranian government officials have said the country's nuclear program is peaceful.

How to Get Out of the Iran Trap

2006-04-12T01:51:00.000-05:00

Anatol Lieven, Washington Post

The Bush administration's strategy regarding Iran's nuclear program is going nowhere. The U.S. demand that Iran permanently terminate even a limited capacity to enrich uranium has been categorically rejected by every Iranian political figure and group, including all the leading reformists. Given the views on the subject held by both the establishment and the mass of the population, it would be political suicide for them to do otherwise.

Because of the radical difference between the way in which the U.S. and the West treat Iran on the one hand and India, Pakistan and Israel on the other, Western demands have been successfully portrayed in Iran as pressure for yet another "treaty of surrender" of the kind which Western powers forced on Iran in the past. Modern Iranian nationalism originated in fury at such treaties.

It is pointless to dream of a rapid transformation of Iran into a Western-style democracy and a willing supporter of U.S. strategy in the Middle East. By identifying Iranian democrats with submission to America, the present U.S. approach is only damaging them still further in the eyes of most Iranians. The key to changing Iran internally and to producing Iranian co-operation and responsibility in its foreign and security policies therefore must be a slow and incremental approach -- one which will not produce a rapid settlement of the nuclear issue. It also looks virtually impossible for the U.S. to bring sufficient economic pressure to bear on Iran to force an acceptance of U.S. demands, given Iran's revenue from high oil prices and the deeply unwilling stance of Russia and China.

That leaves the military option. But recent weeks have seen repeated warnings by U.S. and British officials and intelligence analysts that such an operation would probably only delay Iran's nuclear program, and might not have any serious effect at all. It would be certain to provoke Iranian retaliation that would drastically worsen the situation in Iraq and possibly destabilize the entire region. In addition, such an attack would most likely greatly intensify Iran's attempts to create nuclear weapons.

As the Truman administration statesman Robert Lovett used to say when faced with this kind of impasse, "Forget the cheese -- let's get out of the trap." The way out of this particular trap is to accept limited Iranian uranium enrichment under strict supervision and focus instead on creating really tough and effective barriers to armament. We need to verifiably freeze Iranian enrichment and other nuclear capabilities at least 18 months short of weapons capacity. This time lag should be sufficient for the U.S. and the international community to receive sufficient warning of Iran's moves and to respond accordingly.

This approach would have a number of great advantages. It would return the U.S. and Europe to the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) signed by Iran, and prevent the Iranians from claiming that they are being subjected to unfair and illegal discrimination. It would hold the Iranian government to its own repeated public statements that it is not seeking nuclear weapons. And in return for bowing to Russian and Chinese concerns about the present U.S. course, it would allow us to bind these states and the rest of the international community to impose extremely tough sanctions on Iran if that country did in fact violate this agreement and move towards armament.

This international response should be agreed in advance by a public treaty signed by the members of the U.N. Security Council, the G8, and other appropriate international organizations. All the existing nuclear powers say that they are strongly opposed to Iran gaining nuclear weapons, and we can believe them. The last thing they want is to expand their exclusive club and thereby diminish their own prestige. What's more, they all know that if Pakistan is followed into the nuclear club by Iran, then Saudi Arabia, Turkey and so on, then the chances that sooner or later terrorists will get their hands on such weapons or materials will be vastly increased.

So we have every basis on which to go to Russia and China and say: We will go back to the letter of the NPT if you will sign a binding international agreement setting out in public, in detail, and in advance what you and the other signatory nations will do if Iran breaks its word and does indeed attempt nuclear armament. These threats should include breaking off diplomatic relations, removing Iran from all international organizations, ending outside investment, imposing a full trade embargo, ending -- as far as possible - all international flights to Iran, and inspecting transport headed to that country.

As far as Russia is concerned, the U.S. should offer an additional incentive to sign, and add a very serious threat. The incentive should be that Russia could be allowed to boost its international prestige (and of course the domestic image of the Putin administration) by taking the public lead in this matter. The resulting international agreement could be signed in Russia and entitled something like "The Moscow Declaration."

The threat would be that the U.S. would make Russia's adherence to its word on this question the top determinant of future U.S.-Russian relations. If Iran built nuclear arms and Russia failed to respond as promised, the U.S. would retaliate across the whole range of relations, from trade links to NATO expansion.

All of this doubtless sounds horribly radical to much of the Washington establishment of today. But I don't think Robert Lovett and his colleagues of 60 years ago would have seen it that way. They would have called this kind of approach simply intelligent and effective diplomacy -- something that American administrations were once very good at, and which the Bush administration should start practicing again.

###

Anatol Lieven is a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. and co-author, with John Hulsman (Heritage Foundation), of "Ethical Realism and U.S. Foreign Policy", which is to be published by Random House in Fall 2006, and which deals amongst other things with U.S.-Iranian relations.

Rafsanjani - Iran Has Begun Uranium Enrichment

2006-04-12T01:42:00.000-05:00

Iran Focus - a pro-MEK website

London - Iran has began uranium enrichment, former Iranian President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced on Tuesday, despite a call by the United Nations Security Council for it to cease all uranium enrichment activities.

“We operated the first unit which comprises of 164 centrifuges, gas was injected, and we got the industrial output”, Rafsanjani, who currently chairs the State Expediency Council (SEC), told the Kuwaiti news agency in Tehran.

“There needs to be expansion of operation if we are to have a complete industrial unit; tens of units are required to set up a uranium enrichment plant”, he added.

Asked what outcome he expected from the upcoming visit of International Atomic Energy Agency director general Mohamed ElBaradei to Iran, Rafsanjani said that the UN nuclear watchdog chief would meet new circumstances. ElBaradei is set to travel to Iran on Wednesday.

The West believes Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program under the guise of atomic energy development.

The Security Council adopted a “Presidential Statement” unanimously on March 29 giving Iran 30 days to suspend all of its uranium enrichment activities and resume its cooperation with the IAEA.

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Monday that the EU should consider sanctions against Tehran for refusing to heed the demands of the UN.

Iran Sunni Rebels Video Shows Killing of Officer

2006-04-11T18:59:00.000-05:00

Reuters

DUBAI - An Iranian Sunni rebel group video broadcast on Arab satellite television on Tuesday showed the killing by firing squad of a man identified as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer.

The Jundollah (God's Soldiers) video broadcast by Al Arabiya television showed militants kill the man. They displayed his identification card bearing the name Zahed Shaykhi.

The video also showed the Baluchi group's leader Abdolmalek Rigi despite official media reports that Iranian forces had killed him.

"These are falsehoods aimed at playing with the emotions of people," a militant reading a statement said.

Iranian officials have said Rigi is the leader of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network in the Islamic Republic.

Rigi appeared on the tape speaking to the Iranian officer who sat nearby with a gunman pointing his rifle at his head and another standing by. The two militants later fired rounds at the officer who was sitting on the ground wearing white robes.

The group has kidnapped Iranian soldiers in the past to try to force the release of detained members.

In March, the group claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 22 people in a remote region in southeastern Iran and said it had taken seven hostages.

The attack was in an impoverished area on the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, the scene of sporadic unrest among Iran's Baluchi minority, most of them Sunni Muslims. There are frequent police clashes with armed drug smugglers in the region.

Some 90 percent of Iran's 69 million people are Shi'ite and the Sunni minority sometimes complains of discrimination.

In July, the rebel group said it had beheaded an Iranian security agent.

Iran also blames Britain for unrest in its restive and mainly Arab southwestern oil province of Khuzestan, across the border from southern Iraq where British troops are stationed. Britain denies supporting the ethnic Arab rebels.

Iran Hits Milestone in Nuclear Technology

2006-04-11T13:09:00.000-05:00

Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press

Iran has successfully enriched uranium for the first time, a landmark in its quest to develop nuclear fuel, hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday. He insisted, however, that his country does not aim to develop nuclear weapons.

In a nationally televised speech, Ahmadinejad called on the West "not to cause an everlasting hatred in the hearts of Iranians" by trying to force Iran to abandon uranium enrichment.

"At this historic moment, with the blessings of God almighty and the efforts made by our scientists, I declare here that the laboratory- scale nuclear fuel cycle has been completed and young scientists produced enriched uranium needed to the degree for nuclear power plants Sunday," Ahmadinejad said.

"I formally declare that Iran has joined the club of nuclear countries," he told an audience that included top military commanders and clerics in the northwestern holy city of Mashhad. The crowd broke into cheers of "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" Some stood and thrust their fists in the air.

The U.N. Security Council has demanded that Iran stop all uranium enrichment activity by April 28. Iran has rejected the demand, saying it has a right to develop the process. The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is due in Iran this week for talks to try to resolve the standoff.

The White House denounced the latest comments from Iranian officials, with spokesman Scott McClellan saying they "continue to show that Iran is moving in the wrong direction."
Ahmadinejad said Iran "relies on the sublime beliefs that lie within the Iranian and Islamic culture. Our nation does not get its strength from nuclear arsenals."

He said Iran wanted to operate its nuclear program under supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency and within its rights and regulations under the regulations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

PARKED - Don't Underestimate Political Acumen of the Iranian President

2006-04-10T21:34:00.000-05:00

PARKED - This piece makes good sense of the recent flurry of provocation between the U.S. and Iran, It was originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle in January, but I thought it would be well worth reading again considering the saber rattling we've all witnessed this week ...

Tim Porteous, San Francisco Chronicle

Why is Iran's new president going out of his way to provoke the United States, Israel and Europe with his brinkmanship over Iran's nuclear program and repeated denial of the Jewish holocaust?

Many commentators have put the international posturing of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad down to inexperience and incompetence. But it would be foolish to underrate a man who has survived the hurly-burly of Iran's Islamic revolution and one of the bloodiest conflicts of the past quarter century (the Iran-Iraq war, where Ahmadinejad served as a Revolutionary Guard commander) to emerge in his 40s as post-revolutionary Iran's first nonclerical president.

The signs are that Ahmadinejad's rhetoric, both on Iran's civil nuclear program (which the West fears is a cover for plans to produce nuclear weapons) and on Israel, is deliberate and calculated. Like much of his political maneuvering since he unexpectedly won last year's presidential elections, Ahmadinejad's international gestures are probably designed with one principle aim in mind: to ensure political survival in the struggle that is now under way at the heart of Iran's fragmented power structure.

It is a struggle that Ahmadinejad is by no means certain to win. The Iranian presidency is the most important elected office in Iran. But it is only one of several centers of power and not the most powerful one, as Ahmadinejad's reformist predecessor in the president's office, Mohammad Khatami, discovered to his cost. The oligarchs who control the unelected institutions of the state and much of Iran's formal and informal economy blocked Khatami's reformist agenda because it threatened their vested interests, and they are likely to block Ahmadinejad's radical Islamist and populist agenda.

Ahmadinejad knows what he is up against and that's why he is pulling out all the stops to secure his position, with populist promises ranging from wealth redistribution and an end to corruption, to the creation of conditions for the return of the Mahdi, Shiite Islam's last imam, who disappeared a little over a thousand years ago and whose return, many Iranians believe, will herald an age of universal justice.

In the power struggle now being played out in Iran, Ahmadinejad may well see international economic sanctions and even military confrontation between Iran and the West as opportunities to consolidate his position within Iran. Given the chance, he would use a showdown with the West to take on the role of Iran's defender against foreign aggression, to wrest control of the economy from the oligarchs and to undermine rival centers of power in the security forces under the cover of a general military mobilization.

If this is indeed Ahmadinejad's strategy, it is not without risks. But the political calculations that underpin it indicate an astute understanding on the part of Iran's president of the new political realities in the region in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and the U.S. military adventures in the Middle East and Central Asia.

With the United States and Britain already in trouble in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the West's options for dealing with Iran are limited. Economic sanctions on Iran would do little to damage the Iranian government -- indeed they could widen the scope for profiteering among the political elite. As for military action, it is doubtful that the United States is capable of launching, let alone winning, the full-scale war against Iran that would be necessary to effect regime change. But any military action that stopped short of regime change could well result in the consolidation of the power of the fundamentalists around the Iranian president, and would set back the prospects of political reform in Iran for years.

Another indication that Iran's president is not the political novice he is made out to be by his enemies is that Ahmadinejad has cleverly chosen to pick his fight with the West over two highly emotive issues that not only unite the otherwise fragmented regime, but are also more or less bound to provoke the kind of knee-jerk Western reaction that will play into his hands.
If the United States and its allies were not so obsessed about the nexus of "rogue states," terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and if their Middle East policies incorporated a more balanced approach toward Israel (the region's unofficially acknowledged nuclear hegemon), then a more sensible and safer Western strategy toward Iran could take shape. Such a strategy would accept the inevitability that sooner or later Iran will, if it wishes, acquire nuclear weapons, and that the West would work diplomatically and politically to ensure that by the time Iran does acquire such capability the country is led by a reforming government that neither feels threatened by nor threatens its neighbors.

If Iran were left alone, the checks and balances of Iranian politics -- Iran is no dictatorship -- would probably lead to the marginalization of Ahmadinejad's brand of revolutionary revivalism and a resurgence of the now-blocked political reformism of the Khatami era.

As things stand, however, the countdown to confrontation between the West and Iran has already started. And such a confrontation may well backfire on the West, assisting the consolidation of radical Islamist politics in Iran and providing Tehran with incentives not only to develop nukes, but to use them.

Bush Critics Alarmed Over Strike on Iran

2006-04-10T16:59:00.000-05:00

Iranmania

LONDON - Critics of the George W Bush administration expressed alarm about explosive new reports that the president is mulling military options to knock out Iran's nuclear program, AFP reported.

Retired General Anthony Zinni, the former head of US Central Command, told US television Sunday that he had no detailed knowledge of the alleged military plans, but he suggested a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear program would be extremely risky.

"Any military plan involving Iran is going to be very difficult. We should not fool ourselves to think it will just be a strike and then it will be over," said Zinni.

"The Iranians will retaliate, and they have many possibilities in an area where there are many vulnerabilities, from our troop positions to the oil and gas in the region that can be interrupted, to attacks on Israel, to the conduct of terrorism," he said.

Zinni made his remarks after the publication of a pair of reports this weekend saying that the administration is seriously considering military action against Iran, amid a stalemate in diplomatic efforts.

The New Yorker magazine reported in its April 17 issue that the administration is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key suspected Iranian nuclear weapons facility.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential "Adolf Hitler."

"That's the name they're using," Hersh quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying. Hersh told CNN's "Late Edition" show that a "messianic" president feels driven to try to contain Iran and that the White House is determined to keep open a nuclear option against strong objections from some top Pentagon officials.

"It's the fact that the White House wouldn't let it go that has got the JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff) in an uproar," he said.

"He (Bush) thinks, as I wrote, that he's the only one now who will have the courage to do it," said Hersh, the reporter who also broke the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.

Hersh reports in his article that the administration already has advance forces on the ground in Iran.

"I think it's fraught with danger. But they're there," he told CNN.

Frederick Jones, spokesman for the National Security Council, which advises the president, told AFP: "The US government has been very clear about its approach in dealing with Iran."

"As the president has said repeatedly, we, the US, along with the international community, are seeking a diplomatic solution."

Democratic Senator John Kerry, one of the administration's most outspoken critics, assailed the White House for what he said is its over-reliance on military might.

"That is another example of the shoot-from-the-hip, cowboy diplomacy of this administration," the former Democratic presidential contender said.

"For us to think about exploding tactical nuclear weapons in some way is the height of irresponsibility. It would be destructive to any non-proliferation efforts and the military assessment is, it would not work," he told NBC television's "Meet the Press" program.

Meanwhile, according to a report Sunday in the Washington Post, Bush is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear program.

Citing unnamed US officials and independent analysts, the newspaper said no attack appears likely in the short term, but officials are using the threat to convince Iranians of the seriousness of its intentions.

The paper said Bush views Tehran as a serious menace that must be dealt with before his presidency ends. The White House, in its new National Security Strategy, labeled Iran the most serious challenge to the United States posed by any country.

Zinni said he shared Washington's concerns about Tehran's motives, but said diplomatic efforts should first be exhausted.

"I believe that if the international community would stand fast, the Russians and the Chinese would stay with us, I think that kind of pressure, the fear of being isolated and condemned as a rogue state could have the effect that we need to halt the program.

"I'm not saying that there isn't a military action that will become necessary at some point," Zinni continued.

"But I believe ... when you take that military action, you have to ask the question, 'and then what?' Because you're going to have a series of those 'and then whats' down the road," he said.
Hersh told CNN however, that the White House has spurned Tehran's overtures for dialogue. "This president is not talking to the Iranians. They are trying very hard to make contact, I can assure you of that, in many different forms," he said.

"He's not talking. And there's no public pressure on the White House to start bilateral talks. And that's what amazes everybody," he said.

Iran arrests seven Kurdish rebels

2006-04-10T16:36:00.000-05:00

IranMania

LONDON - Iranian police have arrested seven members of a banned Kurdish rebel group operating close to the Islamic republic's border with Turkey, a press report said Monday."We have arrested seven members of the illegal Pejak group who had pivotal role in urban unrest," West Azerbaijan province police chief, Hasan Karami, told the Khorasan daily.

He said that during the Iranian New Year holidays in late March, Pejak members killed a policeman and two members of the Basij volunteer militia.

Iran says Pejak is linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year insurgency against Ankara for self rule in the Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast. Reports have said at least 120 Iranian police were killed, and scores injured in major insurgent attacks by Kurds last year, notably by Pejak.

Tehran and Ankara are linked by an accord calling on Iran to fight the PKK and for Turkey to fight the People's Mujahedeen, an outlawed armed Iranian opposition group based in Iraq.

Iran has pointed the finger at international forces in Iraq for the recent unrest in Kurdish and Arab communities in its southwestern provinces that border Iraq.

How Attacking Iran Would (or Wouldn't) Work

2006-04-10T16:20:00.000-05:00

Mark Thomspon, Time

The public saber-rattling over Iran began in earnest this past weekend, as both the Washington Post and the New Yorker magazine reported on internal debates inside the Bush administration on a military option to deal with Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Monday morning, President Bush dismissed the reports as "just wild speculation," saying such mind games "happens quite frequently here in the nation’s capital." But it’s a safe bet — assuming Tehran, which shows no sign of backing down, doesn’t retreat — that such "wild speculation" will ripen into "informed speculation" and finally into a real live war plan for Bush’s approval.

Confused readers — aren’t we already mired in a war started because of a Middle Eastern’s dictator’s nuclear ambitions that didn’t turn out to be quite fulfilled? — need to keep a couple of things in mind as this debate unfolds in the coming weeks. First of all, the U.S. military is always war gaming possible scenarios to attack potentially vexing nations, especially those with a hankering for weapons of mass destruction. Secondly, the U.S. Army and Marines — make no mistake about it — are stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. So if Washington opts for that dubious hat trick — wars underway in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, all at the same time — an Iranian attack will come from the skies, not from the ground.

The last time the U.S. military waged an air war against a WMD-threat, it was in the form of a four-day bombing campaign against Iraq in December, 1998. Dubbed "Desert Fox" by the Pentagon, it got relatively little press because President Clinton’s impeachment and doomed-House Speaker-to-be Bob Livingston’s extra-marital-affair scandal were exploding at the same time. As the attack unfurled, Pentagon officials privately conceded their barrage was based on crude estimates of where Saddam Hussein might be hiding elements of his banned WMD programs.

And indeed, the bombardment didn’t disturb the Iraqis all that much. In fact, some simply shrugged it off. "The Iraqis I spoke with were actually quite satisfied and pleased" following Desert Fox, said Charles Duelfer, the WMD expert who went looking for such contraband inside Iraq both before and after the U.S. invasion. "One individual I spoke with said, `Well, gee, if we knew that that was all you were going to do’ — meaning the four days of bombing — `we would have ended this [standoff with U.N. arms inspectors], you know, earlier,’" Duelfer told a Senate panel in 2004. Following the bombing, the U.N. remained sidelined in Iraq until just before 2003’s invasion. All this suggests that any U.S.-led military attack on Iran designed to root out — or even merely delay — Tehran’s nuclear-weapons program is going to have to be far more violent and sustained than Desert Fox. In other words, any talk of a relatively pain-free surgical strike against Iran would certainly qualify as misinformed speculation.

Israel Backs Iraq War, But Will Not Charge into Iran

2006-04-10T16:05:00.000-05:00

Does attacking Iran's supposed nuclear facilities and then leaving U.S. troops in Iraq to fight the war constitute Olmert's statement that "I genuinely don't think Israel should be on the forefront of this war." ?

IranMania

LONDON - Israel's new Prime Minister Ehud Olmert backs the US-led war in Iraq and the US President George W. Bush, but will keep Israel out of the forefront of any war with Iran, Time magazine reported.

Olmert, who has run Israel since Ariel Sharon's health deteriorated, said: "Iran is a major threat to the well being of Europe and America just as much as it is for the state of Israel."

"I genuinely don't think Israel should be on the forefront of this war."

"I don't know why people think this is first and foremost a war for Israel. It's a problem for every civilized country," he told Time in an interview published Sunday.

Olmert, who plans to continue Sharon's pullback, said disengagement can be accomplished because of the "trust and understanding" he has with US President George W. Bush, AFP noted.
"President Bush will emerge in history as the person who had more courage to change the Middle East than any person before him," he told the New York-based newsweekly, which goes on sale Monday.

"I know the war in Iraq is controversial in the States, but for us in the Middle East it has made a great and significant impact," he said.

EU Paper Outlines Tough Action on Tehran

2006-04-10T15:42:00.000-05:00

Daniel Dombey, Financial Times

Companies doing business in Iran face the prospect of a crackdown on export credits unless Tehran's co-operation with the United Nations over its nuclear programme is improved, according to a confidential European Union paper.

A document drawn up by the staff of Javier Solana, EU foreign policy chief, and sent to the bloc's 25 national capitals also lists possible measures such as a visa ban on Iran's nuclear officials and further controls on "dual use" technology that can have civil as well as military purposes.

In addition, it says, the EU could place restrictions on Iranians studying related technologies at European universities, as well as declaring a formal arms embargo on Iran and announcing the definitive end of stalled trade negotiations with Tehran.

It looks at possible EU actions in a number of other areas where the bloc has problems with Iran, mooting the possibility of supporting satellite transmissions into Iran to aid human rights groups and "civil society".

"A key reason for this policy review is that Iran has taken negative steps in many areas and we have to adapt our tools accordingly," said an EU diplomat. An end to export credits could be a difficult move to agree - Italy alone has €4.8bn ($5.8bn, £3.4bn) of credits underwriting Italian companies' activities in Iran in sectors such as steel, oil and gas.

But the paper - a response to last month's request from foreign ministers for a list of options concerning Tehran - is a recognition that, as the Iran nuclear dispute continues, the EU may find it necessary to act in parallel or ahead of the UN Security Council, which has struggled to forge a consensus on the issue. Any moves by the EU would be significant given the difficulty in getting agreement at the UN and the US's limited scope to tighten sanctions against Tehran.

While the US and EU are increasingly convinced that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons capability, Tehran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful and Moscow and Beijing are keen to avoid a confrontation.

Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is due to visit Tehran this week in the hope of procuring more documentation on Iran's nuclear programme, ahead of producing a report on Iran's compliance by the end of the month for the Security Council and the IAEA board.

Some western diplomats warn that, at present, the EU has "no carrot and no stick" to help any negotiations with Tehran succeed.

Western diplomats also say only technical considerations have slowed Iran's progress in building up uranium enrichment - which can produce weapons grade material - since President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad took office last August.

The US has already called for a "coalition of concerned countries" to consider sanctions on Iran if the dispute continues, but the measures listed by the EU paper are largely steps that would be taken ahead of broad-based economic sanctions.

Iran plans second satellite launch

2006-04-10T11:00:00.000-05:00

Aljazeera.net

Iran hopes to put a second satellite into orbit in two years, a senior telecommunications official has said.

Ebrahim Mahmoudzadeh, director of Sa Iran, a telecommunications firm affiliated to the defence ministry, told the official IRNA news agency on Monday that plans have been set into motion for a second satellite.

"We reached an agreement with Iran's Aerospace Organisation to produce Iran's second satellite called Pars [Sina-2]," Mahmoudzadeh said.

"The contract will be signed next month and it will probably be launched after two years."

Iran launched its Sina-1 satellite from a Russian rocket in October and said it would help Iranian scientists better understand natural disasters such as floods and earthquakes.

Sa Iran declined to give a description of the Pars satellite and it was unclear what it was designed for.

Western suspicion

Sina-1's launch sparked controversy in some Western media which suspected that it could be used for spying. But technical experts said its camera probably lacked sufficient resolution to be effective for espionage.

Most international interest in Iran's satellite programme focuses on the Mesbah (lantern) satellite, which Iran intends to launch on a domestically made rocket.

Military analysts are closely watching Iran's domestic launch plans as satellite-launch technology is usually linked to developments in ballistic weapons.

Iran Says to Give "Good News" on Atomic Progress

2006-04-10T10:56:00.000-05:00

Parinoosh Arami, Reuters UK

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president on Monday promised "good news" within days about the country's nuclear programme and a newspaper said he might declare the Islamic Republic had enriched uranium to a level used in power plants.

"I will give you, the Iranian nation, good nuclear news during the time I am in Mashhad," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in the northeastern city, where newspapers said he was expected to spend around five days.

His comments echoed remarks by other officials suggesting the imminent announcement of progress in Iran's nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover to develop atomic weapons but which Iran insists is for civilian uses.

The daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami wrote: "It was said the good news is related to Iran's achievement of uranium enrichment at 3.5 percent and creating a laboratory platform that will register Iran in the club of nuclear fuel countries."

It gave no source or further details.

Uranium enriched to a low level can be used as fuel to generate electricity. Fuel for use in Iran's only nuclear plant now under construction would need to be enriched to 3.5 percent. Uranium must be enriched to far higher levels for bomb-making.

An announcement this week may coincide with a planned visit to Iran by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, for talks that diplomats at the IAEA in Vienna said were likely to be held on Thursday.

Iran has resumed efforts to enrich uranium this year, defying demands by the United Nations that it halt such work.

"On this (nuclear) issue, it (Iran) will not step back one iota from the right of the Iranian nation," Ahmadinejad told a rally in Mashhad, on one of his regular provincial tours.

"Our enemies know that they are not able to inflict the slightest harm on our nation," he said in the address which was broadcast live on television.

"ABSOLUTE RIGHT"

The United States says it wants a diplomatic resolution to the dispute, but there has been rising speculation that it could resort to military force, an option Washington has kept open.

"Our enemies know that by creating a fuss or with these meetings or by frowning, they cannot impede our nation," the Iranian president told the crowd, which chanted back to him: "Nuclear energy is our absolute right."

European foreign ministers were meeting on Monday to review options for possible measures against Iran, including financial sanctions, if it fails to halt sensitive nuclear activity.

Gholamreza Aghazadeh, head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said in February Iran had started work on uranium fuel but on a very small scale involving injecting uranium gas into only a few centrifuges. He said Iran was still months away from starting a full pilot cascade of centrifuges.

Such chains, each containing 164 centrifuges, refine the uranium gas. Around 1,500 centrifuges running optimally for a year could yield enough material for a bomb, experts say.

An IAEA report in March said Iran had begun vacuum-testing a cascade of 20 centrifuges and was renovating its system for handling uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at its Natanz plant.
Experts have said Iran could have serious difficulties in enriching uranium on an industrial scale because of quality problems with uranium hexafluoride gas. Some also doubt whether Iranian technicians can get the centrifuges to spin in cascades.

Bush’s Salon Revolutionaries Plot an Iran Coup

2006-04-10T03:14:00.000-05:00

Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, Timesonline

Washington Think Tanks are Pushing for the Toppling of Another Regime

For me the alarm bells began to ring in the unlikely surroundings of the ancient Trout Inn near Oxford. A senior Republican party foreign affairs insider, as hawkish as they come and a staunch backer of the Iraq war, made a bitter complaint about the incompetence of George W Bush’s international policy. If my Republican friend is so critical, I thought, the US president must be in real trouble.

The seriousness of his difficulties is shown by the way in which the American administration is courting an unlikely stage army of salon revolutionaries who are promising to provide a painless way to get rid of the nasty regimes of the “axis of evil” in Iran and North Korea.

Peter Ackerman, the very rich chairman of Freedom House, and his International Center on Nonviolent Conflict are engaged in a huge propaganda campaign designed to show how the worst of regimes can be toppled by the methods used — or claimed to have been used — to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia and in the “colour” revolutions that led to pro-western regimes in Ukraine (the orange revolution) and Georgia (the rose revolution).

Political street protests led by organisers trained secretly in the West and supplied with nifty communications gadgets are capable — so the argument goes — of ousting dictators.

But are conditions in Iran the same as those that followed the elections in Ukraine in 2004? Do street protests and similar techniques always work? The disastrous experiences of Tiananmen Square, of Prague in 1968 and Hungary in 1956 are conveniently overlooked. Nor does the State Department have many good ideas about how to spend the $75m recently allocated to promote democracy in Iran. The bulk of the money will be spent on radio broadcasts to be beamed into the country.

In the normal course of events it would not be worth considering the delusional arguments of Ackerman and his supporter Michael Ledeen, a journalist based at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), who was a central figure in the notorious Iran contra affair during President Reagan’s administration. But President Bush and Paula Dobriansky, the undersecretary of state, have both addressed meetings organised by Ackerman’s Freedom House in the past two weeks. There are many other signs that the policy of promoting revolution and regime change in Tehran is gaining ground in Washington.

The US president is very much in a “last-chance saloon” mood as he made clear recently to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. If he is to solve the problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions he must achieve his objective before he leaves office in January 2009. So he is turning to a policy of subversion combined with plans for military action. There is convincing evidence that US diplomats are pressuring Turkish authorities to agree to the use of its main air base for attacks by American B-52 bombers on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Since my time as an adviser to the policy planning staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and as a founder governor of the invaluable Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), I have enjoyed close contact with Washington’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This body and other US organisations that promote democracy are worried that the secretive and subversive activities advocated by Ackerman, and being pressed for with some success on Capitol Hill, at the Pentagon and in the White House, will taint their past 20 years of international activity.

The projects of the NED — like those of the WFD — are funded by government but are transparent. They are not subversive. And they have played a positive role in encouraging democracy in dozens of nations. Respected members of the Iranian exile community in America are also worried that the attempted subversion of the regime in Tehran will backfire, consolidating support for Iranian hardliners and preventing regime change for the next 30 years.

Nevertheless, the seriousness of the underlying problem of nuclear proliferation cannot be denied. Nor will it be possible to negotiate successfully with regimes such as President Ahmadinejad’s unless there is a credible threat of the use of force. However long remains before Iran acquires a military nuclear capacity — itself a matter of uncertainty and misinformation — America and the West will need to decide whether they are prepared to tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb and if they are willing to countenance the spread of such bombs to increasing numbers of unsavoury regimes.

Criticism of the Bush administration’s policy is not based on the fact that it is considering a military option against Iran. Any government needs to do this if it is to negotiate with Ahmadinejad. The problems are, first, that there seems to be no strategic thinking about the prospect of nuclear proliferation. Is it to be tackled by containment (as used against the Soviet Union and China in the cold war)? Or is it necessary to prevent proliferation, even if this requires military action as a last resort?

Second, the US administration lacks consistency. It has come to terms with the North Korean bomb. It is actively supporting India. It necessarily remains on good terms with Pakistan. Foreign policy obviously requires realism and pragmatism. It also requires some consistency of doctrine.

Third, Bush’s Washington still pays far too much heed to some of the wilder propagandists based in think tanks. Increasingly, bodies such as the AEI (for which I once wrote a scholarly volume on British political history) are less keen on sponsoring thinking and research. They are giving desk space and star roles to a breed of fast-talking practitioners of the television soundbite.

Finally, the Bush administration needs to ensure that the transparent, positive activities in the field of democracy promotion conducted in many countries by the NED and by a network of publicly funded bodies are not made casualties of the battle against nuclear proliferation.

Iran Doesn't Spring Forward, Time to Get Mad.

2006-04-10T01:59:00.000-05:00

It's difficult to post such an article while I've currently parked another article that considers Ahmadinejad an astute politician ... Take note of the blog that is cited, webneveshta.com, it is definitely worth a look, especially for those interested in opposing views of the current regime from within the gov't.

Nazila Fathi, New York Times

TEHRAN — A decision by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government not to move the clocks ahead at the beginning of spring this year has caused immense problems and irritations for Iranians.

For the first time in 15 years, the government unexpectedly announced that it was not changing to daylight saving time. The reason, said the government spokesman, Gholamhossein Elham, was that the cabinet had concluded that making the change had not led to energy savings in past years.

But to hedge its bets, the government decided that schools and government offices would start their day at 7 a.m. instead of the usual 8 a.m.

Energy experts dispute the cabinet's conclusion, predicting that the decision is going to cost the government $3.3 billion in additional energy costs anyway, the ISNA state news agency reported. The decision has also caused widespread inconvenience and anger. Many people traveling abroad have missed their flights, confused about what time the planes were actually leaving. Government employees have showed up late at work. Businessmen who work with foreign companies must try to recalculate the time difference. Many parents are having a hard time adjusting their working hours to their children's new school time.

"I used to drop my son at school, go to work and pick him up at 1:30 when I left my office," said Nassim Aradalan, a dentist and the mother of a 9-year-old. "Our schedule is a mess now. I go to the office one hour early but I cannot leave an hour early to pick him up at 12:30."

Saeed Leylaz, an economist and political analyst, said the energy cost of not making the change, which the government has brushed off as insignificant, was equal to three days of Iran's oil revenues. "Mr. Ahmadinejad just wants to do something different and does not care about its costs and consequences," he said.

The public welfare minister, Parviz Kazemi, said the government had the country's 20 million farmers in mind when it decided not to move to daylight saving time. "They usually start their work with the daylight, and changing the time does not affect their lives," the daily newspaper Shargh quoted him as saying.

But opponents of the decision have contended that the government has ignored the benefits of the change for 18 million students and others.

Before the Islamic revolution in 1979, the government enforced daylight saving for a few years, but then it ended after Shiite clerics contended it was anti-Islamic because it changed the hours of prayer. But the government began making the change again in 1991, as a measure to curb energy consumption.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president who is a midranking cleric himself, brushed off the argument that changing time is against Islam on his Web site (webneveshteha.com). He argued that clocks in the modern sense did not exist in the time of Prophet Muhammad. Critics of Mr. Ahmadinejad have said the decision was made without an examination of its consequences. They have compared it to some of his other actions and statements that seemed not to have been weighed against the possible political consequences, like his comments that the Holocaust was a myth and that Israel should be wiped off the map.

"This particular measure has had immediate impact on people's daily lives and people can feel how such decisions can change their lives," said Ahmad Shirzad, a former member of Parliament. "It is clear that the government did not study its consequences, like what Mr. Ahmadinejad said about the Holocaust. It made many wonder if he said it and then thought about it, or thought about it before saying it."

Members of Parliament have called the decision hasty, but have said they will not confront Mr. Ahmadinejad because they want to avoid another conflict with the government. "The government is responsible for bringing order into society, not creating chaos," Hossein Afarideh, a member of Parliament, told ISNA . "Its excuse for not changing the time is wrong and will soon lead to shortage of power."

Misunderstanding Iran

2006-04-10T01:32:00.000-05:00

It is worth noting that Taheri makes on more than one occasion in this piece the conjecture that the 1953 coup that ousted Mossadeq ocurred with no assistance of the United States' CIA. Very odd, considering the leak of CIA documents to James Risen of the New York Times in 2000. (click here for NY Times mini-site of classified report)

Amir Taheri, Arab News

“But what does Iran want?” This was the question frequently hurled at me during a series of lectures and meetings in the United States recently. It indicated the desire of those who posed it to find “a reasonable way” to avoid a conflict that many now regard as inevitable.

To critics of President George W. Bush the Tehran’s policy of deliberate provocation is a result of Washington’s failure “to understand what Iran really wants.” One questioner even claimed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad owed his election as president of the Islamic republic to “Bush’s intransigence” which supposedly weakened the “moderates” in Iran.

Many answers to that question are already in circulation.

One answer, echoing the views of the Council on Foreign Relations, is that the Islamic republic is, in fact, crying out for attention. The Tehran leadership resents being shut out of the regional geopolitics at a time of upheavals prompted by regime changes in Kabul and Baghdad.

But how credible is such an analysis?

Not much. Tehran was given a place at the table when the future of Afghanistan was shaped in Bonn in 2002. But that did not prevent it from doing its bit of mischief on the side. Tehran’s influence has also been present in post-Saddam Iraq from day one, in the shape of Shiite groups and personalities close to the Iranians by blood, marriage, and political affinity. And, yet, that has not prevented Tehran from financing and arming maverick groups, including the one led by Moqtada Sadr, against Iran’s long-time friends in the new Iraqi leadership.

Another answer in circulation is that the Islamic republic, scared of being attacked, is acting as a bully to scare off would-be aggressors. But that does not hold much water either.

The Islamic republic and the US signed an accord in Algiers in 1980 that committed Washington not to endanger the Khomeinist regime. That undertaking was similar to the one given by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 not to destabilize the Castro regime in Cuba.

Although the Islamic republic did not ratify the Algiers accord through its legislature, successive US administrations have taken care not to infringe it. (The accord is often cited to prevent US citizens from suing the Islamic republic for acts of terrorism, hostage taking, and confiscation of property, in American courts.)

Thus the claim that Iranian leaders are aggressive because they fear attacks by the US is false. So far, no American administration has initiated a low— intensity campaign against the Islamic republic, let alone target it with a “regime change” program.

The Islamic republic, however, has not respected the accord by pursuing its low-intensity war against the US and its allies in the region.

Yet another answer to the question is provided by those who subscribe to the myth of “Iran’s legitimate grievances”. According to that myth, the US changed Iran’s “democratic regime” in 1953, angering the Iranians who now want an apology in lieu of actual revenge. That myth is too stupid to merit a detailed debunking here. But even supposing that the US had done what it is supposed to have done, can anyone believe that the present rulers are angry because Iran lost the “democratic regime” it never had?

Can anyone in his right mind present the present rulers of Iran as champions of democracy? In any case, at least two prominent US politicians bought into that myth and did offer “apologies” to the present rulers where none was warranted. President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright did so in 2001 at a banquet organized by a lobby group for the Islamic republic in New York. A few months later it was the turn of Clinton himself who, as always, did one better by apologizing not only for the mythical intervention of 1953 ( Does Taheri deny the basic fact that the U.S. CIA aided in the 1953 coup of Mossadeq ?) but also “ for all the wrongs that my culture has done to you”, thus assuming responsibility for the many wars that Russia and Great Britain had fought against Iran in the 19th and 20th centuries — wars in which the United States had played no part.

The Albright-Clinton apologies prompted Muhammad Khatami, who was the president of the Islamic republic at the time, to propose a form of detente and peaceful coexistence between Iran and the United States. In 1984 the same Khatami had written that the Islamic republic and the US were at war and could not think of peace because a truly Muslim state could never consider itself at peace with an “infidel” power.

Nevertheless, Khatami did work hard to foster his version of detente. That prompted the Clinton administration to come up wit the idea of a “Grand Bargain”.

The “Grand Bargain” as Khatami saw it would create a mini-Yalta under which the Islamic republic and the US would divide the Middle East into their respective zones of influence. Tehran would be recognized as “the regional superpower” with a dominant position in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. It would also preserve its special relationship with Oman, the only country to have signed a security pact with Iran. The US would further acknowledge Iran’s presence in the United Arab Emirates, chiefly Dubai.

In exchange, the Islamic republic would not interfere with the flow of oil from the Gulf, would tone down its opposition to the Israel-Palestine peace efforts, and would not use terrorism against the US and its allies. Under the “Grand Bargain” the US would end up as the dominant power in Egypt, Jordan, Israel, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Azerbaijan, and Turkey.
The problem is that the “Grand Bargain” is no longer on the table.

The Islamic Majlis (Parliament) in Tehran has passed a law making any substantial dialogue with the US illegal. And Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Khatami’s successor as president, is not interested in making any deals with the US that he regards as a “sunset” power. Ahmadinejad is in inspirational contact with the “Hidden Imam” whose return he believes is drawing nigh. Ahmadinejad believes that the world is heading for a clash of civilizations in which Islam, led by Iran, will triumph over the “infidel” led by the United States. Ahmadinejad publicly states his policy as “a Jihad to reshape the world and ensure Islam’s universal dominance.”

Smug foreign policy wonks in the US might dismiss all that as “delusional fantasies.” They may be right. But don’t forget that Ahmadinejad also sees Bush’s claim that the US is mandated by God to bring democracy to the Middle East as “a delusional fantasy.”

The Council on Foreign Relations cannot liberate itself from the typical deal maker’s mentality. It cannot conceive of a regime and a movement that put their messianic mission above conjectural maneuvers and compromises. They do not understand movements and regimes that, given something, would demand more because they believe that they should have it all.

Let us return to the question: What do the Iranian leaders really want?

The answer is simple: They want nothing in particular; they want everything!

Saudi Arabia May Join Nuclear Club

2006-04-10T00:16:00.000-05:00

Can you see Dick Cheney or George Bush say that they will not tolerate a nuclear Saudi Arabia ?

United Press International

DOHA, Qatar -- Kuwaiti researcher Abdullah al-Nufaisi told a seminar in Doha, Qatar, that Saudi Arabia is preparing a nuclear program, the Middle East Newsline reported.

He said Saudi scientists were urging the government to launch a nuclear project, but had not yet received approval from the ruling family.

Riyadh denies any intention to establish a nuclear energy program, but Gulf sources told the Middle East Newsline Saudi officials have been discussing a nuclear research and development program -- and that the program would be aided by Pakistan and other Riyadh allies.

"Saudi Arabia will not watch as its neighbors develop nuclear weapons," a Gulf source said. "It's a matter of time until a Saudi nuclear program begins."

SAS Spy on Iran Agents

2006-04-10T00:03:00.000-05:00

Rupert Hamer, Sunday Mirror

BRITISH Special Forces are tracking up to 40 Iranian agents who have slipped over the border into southern Iraq.

Spy chiefs believe they are there to orchestrate or continue an "unofficial civil war".

They fear the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched an operation to "carve up" the land once troops withdraw.

British surveillance experts and the SAS are monitoring their every movement. The 40 are believed to be part of a group of 500 using a Shia religious pilgrimage to cross over into Iraq.

Most moved to Baghdad and the rest to northern Iraq to give their chiefs insurgency information.

The revelation comes as Iraqi deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal said: "Iraq has been in an undeclared civil war for the past 12 months."

U.S. Officials Discount Risk of Iran-Style Rule

2006-04-10T00:02:00.000-05:00

I think Rumsfeld's statements indicate the inability the U.S. administration has had in truly realizing the significance of Shia' Islam in Iraq, to their detriment. I find fault with Rumsfeld's notion that Iraqi's consider themselves "Iraqi first, Shia' second" . That may be the case for some Iraqi's, but consider the current power grap and who the U.S. and it's allies must contend with. Can Rumsfeld truly believe that Sistani (an Iranian) has the interests of Iraq over the interests of his religious beliefs ?

Bradley Graham, Washington Post

Top U.S. officials expressed confidence yesterday that no Iran-style Islamic government would take hold in Iraq despite the expected rise to power there of religious Shiite parties following last week's elections.

With the Shiites widely predicted to dominate a new constitutional assembly, Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld played down reports that leading Shiite clerics are pushing for strong Islamic terms to be incorporated into the new constitution. They cautioned against predictions at this early stage, noting differences between the situations in Iraq and Iran.

"The Shia in Iraq are Iraqis, they're not Iranians," Rumsfeld said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"And the idea that they're going to end up with a government like Iran with a handful of mullahs controlling much of the country, I think, is unlikely."

Rumsfeld pointed to news reports that Shiite leaders in Iraq are making overtures to the country's Sunni minority, many of whom boycotted last week's elections.

"The Iraqis are going to have a solution for Iraq that's an Iraqi solution," he said, adding that "the Shia in Iraq are Iraqis first and Shia second."

Cheney, speaking on "Fox News Sunday," said he doubted that Iraqi Shiites would be strongly influenced by what he called the failed theocratic approach of Shiites in Iran. He noted with approval the public pronouncements of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's revered Shiite cleric, who had made clear that "he doesn't believe clerics should play a direct role in the day-to-day operations of government."

"I don't think, at this stage, that there's anything like justification for hand-wringing or concern on the part of Americans that somehow they're going to produce a result we won't like," Cheney said.

As for U.S. policy on Iran, Cheney sought to dampen speculation about possible military action on suspected Iranian nuclear targets. He expressed a strong preference for a diplomatic resolution of current tensions over the Iranian nuclear program.

Rumsfeld, in turn, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" that he thought Iran was still years from building a nuclear weapon -- although he added that "intelligence has been wrong before on things like that."

Asked whether he thought diplomatic efforts will be able to forestall Iran's development of nuclear weapons, Rumsfeld responded, "Time will tell."

In an interview on the ABC's "This Week," Rumsfeld was questioned about a report in the New Yorker last month saying that Pentagon officials believed a limited strike could cause the Tehran government to topple.

"That's fiction," he said.

But pressed on his own view about the likely effectiveness of a limited strike against Iran, he replied: "Who knows? I mean, I've been amazed many times in my life. I was amazed at how rapidly the shah of Iran fell and the ayatollahs took over that country. . . . So we can't predict these things."

Asked whether any U.S. military operations were underway in Iran at the moment, Rumsfeld said, "Not to my knowledge."

He also provided new details about his acknowledgment last week that he had submitted his resignation to President Bush twice in connection with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. The first time, he said, came during a meeting in the White House shortly after the scandal erupted last spring. He did so again about 10 days later, during a visit by Bush to the Pentagon.

"I had migrated in my thinking that, from [the president's] standpoint, it might be wiser . . . if he were able to step off fresh," Rumsfeld said on NBC. "And so I tried to persuade him that that was the case. And I failed."

With regard to the military situation in Iraq, Rumsfeld declined to predict when Iraqi security forces would be capable enough to begin to allow for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. But pointing to better protection for U.S. troops, he said he had been told by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., that by Feb. 15, all U.S. military vehicles moving outside a protected compound will have "appropriate armor."

On the possibility of a change in the policy limiting to 24 months the total time a military reservist can be called to active duty, Rumsfeld appeared inclined against it, although he did not rule it out. Senior Army generals have indicated recently that they are considering asking Rumsfeld to raise the limit in order to meet demands in Iraq. But the move carries political risks, and lawmakers have privately warned the Pentagon it would meet strong resistance in Congress.

"We have no plans to change the rulings and the methods that we're operating on at the present time," Rumsfeld said on NBC.

Swiss Magistrate Seeks Arrest of Ex-Iranian Spy Chief

2006-04-09T23:02:00.000-05:00

Associated Press

GENEVA - A Swiss investigator has issued an international arrest warrant for a former Iranian minister for his alleged involvement in the slaying of an exiled Iranian opposition leader, according to a copy of the request obtained Sunday by The Associated Press.

The six-page document, partly reproduced earlier by the Lausanne-based weekly Le Matin Dimanche, requests Swiss federal authorities to demand the arrest of Ali Fallahian, Tehran's hard-line former intelligence minister.

The warrant is dated March 20 and carries the signature of Jacques Antenen, an investigative magistrate in the Swiss canton of Vaud. It is addressed to the Swiss Federal Justice Ministry - which is responsible for transmitting the document internationally - and requests Fallahian's arrest on grounds that he "decided and ordered the execution of Kazem Rajavi," who was shot to death near his suburban Geneva home in 1990.

"We order all bailiffs and police forces to arrest and transfer the following person to the canton of Vaud prison," the warrant said. It then named Fallahian and recounted the details of Rajavi's killing.

The ministry declined to say whether it received the warrant or had acted on it. "We never confirm whether there is an international arrest warrant or not, because searches under such a warrant are confidential," ministry spokesman Folco Galli said.

Antenen, who has been in charge of the investigation since 1997, could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Rajavi, a member of the Mujahedeen Khalq armed resistance movement obtained political asylum in Switzerland in 1973 and publicized human rights violations in Iran.

He was killed in the Lake Geneva town of Coppet, 11 kilometers (seven miles) east of Geneva, when his car was sprayed by machine gun fire.

"Justice has been served," Stephane Rajavi, Kazem's son, told the AP in a telephone interview.

"After 16 years of deadlock because of the refusal of the (Iranian) state, we are at last here," he said, blaming Tehran for previously having thwarted the Swiss investigation.

Dozens of dissidents and other Iranians, considered to be enemies of Iran's fundamentalist government, have been assassinated since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Iranian Intelligence Ministry agents are believed to have been behind the slayings of a number of dissidents abroad during Fallahian's tenure, from 1989 to 1997. By the ministry's own account, "rogue" secret agents were behind the murders of five Iranian dissidents in 1998.

German authorities issued a warrant for Fallahian in March 1996 for allegedly ordering the killing of four Iranian dissidents in Berlin, but there has never been a report of his being arrested.

The following year a Berlin court convicted an Iranian secret agent and three Lebanese men in the assassination of the four Iranian opposition figures in Berlin's Mykonos restaurant on Sept. 17, 1992.

In a finding that led to a crisis in relations between Iran and the European Union, the court said the assassins were acting on the orders of Iran's top leaders.

Le Matin Dimanche said Antenen's predecessor on the case until 1997, magistrate Roland Chatelain, had investigated 13 individuals suspected in the Rajavi slaying, but had decided against pursuing Fallahian for fear of reprisals against "little Switzerland.

"Iranian officials had no immediate comment on the warrant Sunday.

Rajavi originally fled Iran in 1957 to join the resistance against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi. After the overthrow of the shah in 1979, he served for one year as head of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, but broke with the new leadership.