Comments on: IAEA Condemnation of Iran: An Omen of New Sanctions or a Symbolic Slap on the Wrist?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:02:16 +0000

Your belief that Iran seeks a rapid breakout capabilty does not account for irans offers to open their nuclear program to multinational participation, to forego plutonium extraction, to immediately convert all enriched uranium to fuel rods, and to impose additional voluntary restrictions on their nuclear program that well exceed even the Additional Protocol to which they are not a party or what other countries such as Brazil, Argentina, SKorea or Egypt have agreed.
Also your suggestion that iran has been suspiciously secretive is not factual. For one thing as Cyrus Safdari. Has pointed out on IranAffairs.com, the degree of "secrecy" around the program has been exaggerated. Iran, plans for enrichment go back to the days of the Shah and in 1983 the US prevented the IAEA from providing technical assistance to the enrichment program. Iran announced the discovery of uranium reserves and plans to use them in the mid 1980s on national radio, and invited IAEA inspectors to visit it's uranium mines in mid 1990s. Iran entered into an overt contract for nuclear technology with several countries that fell thru under US pressure. When the Chinese withdrew from building a uranium conversion facility in 1996 due to pressure by Clinton (gore specifically went to china over this) the Iranians informed the IAEA that the would build the plant themselves, and did so by 2000 whenthe declared it to the IAEA. In short, while Iran resorted to some clandestine means to acquire the centrifuge technology it was entitled to have but denied due to US pressure, the enrichment program as a whole was hardly a secret. Also, you fail to take into account that demands for "transparency" by iran that go beyond irans safeguards agreement not only are themselves illagal and violate Irans rights and establish a poor precedent of making Iran a defacto second class citizen of the NPT regime, not only are exploited to obtain targetting information (which is why Iran built fordo to protect it's centrifuges in case of attack) but more importantly, past experience has shown that providing such transparency is useless since the US will still demand that Iran abandon enrichment regardless of how transparent Iran is. Remember, Iran suspended enrichment for two years and allowed instensive inspections during the course of the Paris Agreement negotiations, with no evidence of a weopons program found, and the EU3 still demanded that Iran abandon enrichment anyway. So Iran has already been down this path and was cheated.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:00:37 +0000

Shortly said: US shortsighted politics will keep the world form becoming stable…

By: Mark Pyruz

Mark Pyruz — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:41:16 +0000

While technically not a member of the IRGC, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi did publicly voice his support for the fuel transfer deal. Firouzabadi can be considered the highest ranking figure of the Iranian military establishment.

While not exactly contradicting the assertion that the IRGC has turned the tables on Iran's acceptance of the Western proposal, it does raise doubt.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 23:17:48 +0000

Ok, the revolutionary guards want a rapid-breakout capability, which requires some degree of secrecy, but Israel and the US simply will not accept any level of secrecy, and the BRIC (minus the B) is being blackmailed with the threat of third -party sanctions in order to join the condemnation of Iran.

Clear enough, but can the analysis be turned into a prediction? Something obviously has to give first in this scenario; I suspect it might be the ability of the US to engineer sanctions. Since the US currency is overvalued, and propped up largely by China (which is rapidly looking to diversify its foreign currency reserves and export markets away from the US) just how credible will the threat of third-party sanctions be a couple of years from now, when US demand drops sharply?

At the moment, all that Russia and China can be cajoled into doing is signing on to a toothless, no-sanctions condemnation of Iran. If no crippling sanctions materialise in the next couple of years, then the US-Israeli push to cripple Iran will backfire, and their hawks will start to look quite powerless.

So the hawks best bet is to provoke the Iranian regime into assisting its own isolation in the next couple of years. If Iran can be provoked into suspending all cooperation with the IAEA, the BRIC will fall into line with the USA.

So expect a major ratcheting-up of provocation; lots more terrorist attacks by the MEK and the Sunni separatists, lots more espionage and lots more support to different Iranian opposition parties. Maybe even more assassination of leading Guards, and perhaps a false flag attack on US warships. But time is on Iran's side.
SM

By: JamesL

JamesL — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:03:05 +0000

Of course Iran would like the option of owning a bomb. What country wouldn't? Is any country currently possessing nukes standing in line to give them up based on steady and believable US affirmations of the right to exist? Nuclear bombs are the only broad spectrum antibiotic effective against the virus of US imperialism. Neither their uselessness in real life (remember the great US-USSR nuclear war?) nor their efficacy is questioned by any nation that hoardes them.

All the US has to do to change this is guarantee Iran's right to exist. Alas, this phrase is reserved for Israel, and Israel alone. Iran (and any other nation in their turn at the stake)instead receives a steady diet of threats, sanctions, and labels of ultimate evil. Given US actions, I find those of Iran entirely predictable. The charge of "change or be die" being foisted on Iran (or any selected US enemy) is just another US projection: that is exactly the message the US needs to give itself. Leading into....

"But it is entirely possible that Indian energy hunger will cause its firms to write off the $14 trillion US market and to partner with Iran." Thank you Professor Cole. This is the nut, equally applicable to BRIC, or any subsequent acronym for nations of questionable subservience to the US (and there will be subsequent lists), and the rippling outward from those centers into the future. Future US security will emanate from its own energy self sufficiency, and its international perception as a sane, benevolent, and benign neighbor, not from a politically arrogant US with a national policy of military domination of every square foot of the globe on a moment's notice.
Nuclear missiles and the unfettered quest for power are the motes in America's eyes.

By: MonsieurGonzo

MonsieurGonzo — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:46:28 +0000

ref : “I personally suspect that most Western officials involved in this matter know perfectly well that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program and does not want an actual bomb.” Yes, but that's not the issue, Juan. The issue is IRAN = the Supreme Leader's intransigence (unwillingness to move forward, e.g. the 11th-hour scuttling of the agreement, apparent with Russia), his lack of forthrightness = credibility (not only to US, but with his own people), and I daresay the question of whether Mr. Ali Khamenei is, himself a rational man! i.e., Is this man = Iran's theocratic dictator capable of humanely leading an intellectually modern nation, much less any nuclear programme ~ whether it be for civilian or military deterrent purposes? Our dilemma is that we have no way of sanctioning him for his irrational (or even criminal) behaviour without collectively affecting his country, literally, "the country that this man presumes to possess."

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:48:04 +0000

Fine analysis, thanks so much.