1.

News

USE OF FORCE DEBATED AMID DIPLOMACY IN IRAN
By Carol Giacomo

Reuters
February 19, 2006 -- 17:36 UT

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060210/ts_nm/nuclear_iran_force_dc

WASHINGTON -- In a private meeting with European diplomats this week, a former senior U.S. official raised the idea of launching a dozen B2 bombers in an air raid aimed at crippling key Iranian nuclear facilities.

The suggestion was at odds with current U.S. and European strategy, which has emphasized patient diplomacy to resolve a major security challenge for Western powers -- keeping Tehran from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

But it underscored how questions about possible use of force persist even Iran has been reported to the U.N. Security Council this month, triggering a new diplomatic phase that could lead to sanctions and later, anything more.

The military possibility "comes up whenever we've been around (Washington)," talking with administration officials and congressmen, a European diplomat told Reuters, but "we don't see the military option as being anywhere near in view."

Western powers accuse Iran of developing an atomic weapon, while Tehran insists it aims to produce only civilian energy.

U.S. President George W. Bush and top aides have said repeatedly that military action against Iran's growing nuclear infrastructure remains possible. Bush reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated."

But unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, when Bush touted a post-Sept 11 doctrine of pre-emptive action against a gathering threat, the administration has not played up the force option.

Especially in light of continuing turmoil in Iraq, talk of military action against Iran scares many foreign leaders, diplomats say. That made it harder for Western allies to secure last weekend's vote of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency shifting Tehran's case to the more powerful Security Council.

DELAY, NOT DESTROY

"Now that Security Council referral is in prospect, people are saying we must be focusing on the military option," said the European diplomat, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the subject.

"But both on diplomacy and also in terms of how Iran's nuclear program is developing, we have not taken a quantum leap in the last two weeks . . . I don't think the bombers are warming up on the runway," he said.

U.S. warplanes could destroy some Iranian nuclear plants but many facilities are unknown or underground, so the best outcome for the West would be a delay in Iran's nuclear capability, not its destruction, officials and experts say.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, aiming to calm anxieties, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday military action is not inevitable even if Iran develops a bomb.

But others say that force, while fraught with potential dangers like further inflaming hostility in the Muslim world, may ultimately be deemed necessary, at least by Washington.

"There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran," Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a possible 2008 U.S. presidential candidate, told CBS Television.

Barring some dramatic near-term advance in Iran's program, Washington and its allies likely will not have to consider this option for a year or more, officials and experts say.

Some experts have predicted that Israel, feeling threatened by Iran, could take early pre-emptive action. Bush may have eased such concern when he told Reuters last week the United States would "rise to Israel's defense" if needed.

2.

Analysis

U.S. SHIELD BLUNTS ISRAELI MILITARY OPTION ON IRAN
By Dan Williams

Reuters
February 9, 2006 -- 18:44 UT

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L09764669.htm

JERUSALEM -- Israel has long pursued a policy of preemptive attack as its preferred form of defense.

But when it comes to tackling arch-foe Iran, that option may have been put on hold under a protective "umbrella" on offer from the United States.

After years of speculation on whether Israel could launch unilateral strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, some experts now see a major shift in the Jewish state's strategy.

At the core of the change was a vow by U.S. President George W. Bush, in a Reuters interview last week, to "rise to Israel's defense" in the face of increasingly tough talk from Tehran.

Bush's phrasing, with its overtones of Israeli dependency, departed from the language of past U.S. pledges that focused on preserving Israel's military superiority over Middle East foes. Given U.S. efforts to curb Iran's nuclear plans through international diplomacy, experts say Israel will have to shelve any plans for region-rattling, go-it-alone missions like its 1981 bombing sortie against Iraq's atomic reactor at Osiraq.

This thinking is bolstered by the Bush pledge's echoes of Cold War pacts -- NATO in Europe, the "nuclear umbrella" over Japan -- which defended U.S. allies against the Soviets while obligating them to get Washington's nod for any military moves.

"In political life there are no free lunches, and Bush's statements have a price. They remove the possibility -- if there ever was one -- of Israel taking matters into its own hands," wrote Aluf Benn, diplomatic correspondent for the influential Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

"The decision if and when to act against Iran will be made in the White House, not in the underground headquarters of the (Israeli military command) General Staff."

A senior Israeli official, who asked not to be named, acknowledged that Bush's pledge took bilateral ties to "a new level," but said Israel had not promised anything in return.

Asked if Israel was considering military action on Iran, he said: "Our policy is to follow the U.S. lead in this matter."

Iran says its nuclear program is for energy, not arms.

According to Benn, the U.S. deal has already ushered in a rhetorical restraint among Israeli officials who had previously refused to rule out an Osiraq-style operation against Iran.

So guided, Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expunged mention of Iran from a recent major policy speech, Benn said.

LOGIC OF LIMITATION

Such reticence carries no great price for Israel, whose past veiled threats on Iran had rung hollow to many defense experts.

Unlike Saddam-era Iraq, Iran has numerous, dispersed and fortified nuclear sites -- a challenge perhaps beyond the means of Israel's military, and which only U.S. forces could handle.

"This (Bush's pledge) is a landmark bit of phrasing which I am sure was at least partly calculated," said Patrick Cronin of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

But he added that an agreement by Israel to forgo unilateral action on Iran "would not cost a lot, as while tactically (Israeli) military options are not nil, they are close to nil".

Weighed against such assessments are experts like David Ivry, the former Israeli air force chief who masterminded the Osiraq strike. He argues that even limited attacks on Iran's nuclear program could be enough to set it back by years. "Launching such an action is a matter of Israel setting a 'red line' for when the threat posed by Iran is unbearable and, when it is crossed, giving the order," Ivry said.

Asked whether, in light of Bush's pledge, Israel would have to at least coordinate any military operation with its U.S. ally, Ivry said he thought it unlikely. "Coordinating would mean, essentially, asking for permission," he said.

David Hartwell, editor of Jane's Country Risk, disagreed.

"The strategic situation with today's Iran is not what it was with Iraq in 1981," he said. "U.S. policy in the region would be seriously undermined by an independent Israeli action."

While he noted that the U.S.-Israeli understandings had yet to be ratified like the defense pacts of the Cold War, Hartwell saw them as similarly circumscribing future actions by Israel.

"The assumption is that the provision of a nuclear umbrella means you forgo a certain amount of defensive action," he said.

Historical precedent suggests Israel could eventually, under an upgraded U.S. alliance, come clean on an atomic arsenal it has never confirmed having, and even agree to limitations on it.

In the 1960s, France pursued a nuclear program in part because President Charles De Gaulle said he did not want to rely on U.S. protection from the Soviets. By submitting to a U.S. umbrella, some see Israel being drawn in the opposite direction.

"Part of the American strategy now may be to provide a nuclear umbrella to the Israelis, with the hope being that, one day, they disarm," Hartwell said.

Israeli officials, while maintaining a policy of ambiguity over the country's nuclear capabilities, have ruled out any open review of it in the absence of comprehensive Middle East peace.

3.

THE IRAN CRISIS: DIPLOMACY" AS A LAUNCHPAD FOR MISSILES
By Norman Solomon

Guerrilla News Network
February 8, 2006

http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2092/The_Iran_Crisis_Diplomacy_as_a_Launch_Pad_for_Missiles

A time-honored scam: When you're moving toward military action, talk diplomacy.

The current flurry of Western diplomacy will probably turn out to be groundwork for launching missiles at Iran. Air attacks on targets in Iran are very likely. Yet many antiwar Americans seem eager to believe that won’t happen.

Illusion #1: With the U.S. military bogged down in Iraq, the Pentagon is in no position to take on Iran.

But what’s on the horizon is not an invasion -- it’s a major air assault, which the American military can easily inflict on Iranian sites. (And if the task falls to the Israeli military, it is also well-equipped to bomb Iran.)

Illusion #2: The Bush administration is in so much political trouble at home -- for reasons including its lies about Iraqi WMDs -- that it wouldn’t risk an uproar from an attack on Iran.

But the White House has been gradually preparing the domestic political ground for bombing Iran. As the Wall Street Journal reported days ago, “in recent polls a surprisingly large number of Americans say they would support U.S. military strikes to stop Tehran from getting the bomb.”

Above those words, the Journal’s headline -- “U.S. Chooses Diplomacy on Iran’s Nuclear Program” -- trumpeted the Bush administration’s game plan. It’s a time-honored scam: When you’re moving toward aggressive military action, emphasize diplomacy.

Donald Rumsfeld proclaimed at a conference in Munich on Saturday that -- to put a stop to Iran’s nuclear program -- the world should work for a “diplomatic solution.” Yet the next day, the German daily newspaper Handelsblatt reports, Rumsfeld said in an interview: “All options including the military one are on the table.”

Top U.S. officials, inspired by the royal “W,” aren’t hesitating to speak for the world. Over the weekend, Condoleezza Rice said: “The world will not stand by if Iran continues on the path to a nuclear weapons capability.” Meanwhile, Rumsfeld declared: “The Iranian regime is today the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The world does not want, and must work together to prevent, a nuclear Iran.”

Translation: First we’ll be diplomatic, then we can bomb.

Illusion #3: The U.S. won’t attack Iran because that would infuriate the millions of Iran-allied Shiites in Iraq, greatly damaging the U.S. war effort there.

But projecting rationality onto the Bush administration makes little sense at this point. The people running U.S. foreign policy have their own priorities, and avoiding carnage is not one of them.

Non-proliferation doesn’t rank very high either, judging from Washington’s cozy relationships with the nuclear-weapons powers of Israel, India, and Pakistan. Unlike Iran, none of those countries are signatories to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only Iran has been allowing inspections of its nuclear facilities -- and it is Iran that the savants in Washington are now, in effect, threatening to bomb.

With sugar-plum visions of Iran’s massive oil and natural-gas reserves dancing in their heads, the Washington neo-cons evidently harbor some farfetched hopes of bringing about the overthrow of the Iranian regime. But in the real world, an attack on Iran would strengthen its most extreme factions and fortify whatever interest it has in developing nuclear arms.

“The U.S. will not solve the nuclear problem by threatening military strikes or by dragging Iran before the U.N. Security Council,” Iran’s 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi wrote in the Jan. 19 edition of the Los Angeles Times, in an op-ed piece co-authored by Muhammad Sahimi, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Southern California. “Although a vast majority of Iranians despise the country’s hard-liners and wish for their downfall, they also support its nuclear program because it has become a source of pride for an old nation with a glorious history.”

The essay added: “A military attack would only inflame nationalist sentiments. Iran is not Iraq. Given Iranians’ fierce nationalism and the Shiites’ tradition of martyrdom, any military move would provoke a response that would engulf the entire region, resulting in countless deaths and a ruined economy not only for the region but for the world. Imposing U.N. sanctions on Iran would also be counterproductive, prompting Tehran to leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and its ‘additional protocol.’ Is the world ready to live with such prospects?”

While calling for international pressure against Iran’s serious violations of human rights, Ebadi and Sahimi said that “Iran is at least six to 10 years away from a nuclear bomb, by most estimates. The crisis is not even a crisis . There is ample time for political reform before Iran ever develops the bomb.”

Last Friday, the Iranian Student News Agency quoted Iran’s former president Muhammad Khatami, who urged the Iranian government to offer assurances that the country’s nuclear program is only for generating electricity. “It is necessary to act wisely and with tolerance so that our right to nuclear energy will not be abolished,” he said.

Though he failed to develop much political traction for reform during his eight years as president, Khatami was a moderating force against human-rights abuses. His demagogic successor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a menace to human rights and peace. But it’s by no means clear that Ahmadinejad can count on long-term support from the nation’s ruling clerics.

The man he defeated in the presidential runoff last summer, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, wields significant power as head of the government’s Expediency Council. Though he has a well-earned reputation as a corrupt opportunist, Rafsanjani is now a beacon of enlightenment compared to Ahmadinejad.

In early January, a pair of Iran scholars -- Dariush Zahedi and Ali Ezzatyar, based at the University of California in Berkeley -- wrote an LA Times piece making this point: “Contrary to popular belief, the traditional conservative clerical establishment is apprehensive about the possibility of violence inside and outside Iran. It generally opposes an aggressive foreign policy and, having some intimate ties with Iran’s dependent capitalist class, is appalled at the rapid slide of the economy since Ahmadinejad’s inauguration. The value of Tehran’s stock market has plunged $10 billion, the nation’s vibrant real estate market has withered and capital outflows are increasing.”

And the scholars added pointedly: “The history of U.S.-Iran relations shows that the more Washington chastises Tehran for its nuclear ambitions, the more it plays into the hands of the radicals by riling up fear and nationalist sentiment.”

Right now, the presidents of Iran and the United States are each thriving on the belligerency of the other. From all indications, a military assault on Iran would boost Ahmadinejad’s power at home. And it’s a good bet that the U.S. government will do him this enormous favor. Unless we can prevent it.

--Norman Solomon is the author of the new book War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com.