Diplomacy > sabre-rattling.

[Direckshun]

Iran: it's a really good start.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/02/iran/

Iran: more accomplished in one day of negotiations than in 8 years of threats
by Glenn Greenwald
Friday Oct. 2, 2009 07:03 EDT

Here are two stories from the last 24 hours which provide an interesting and glaring contrast:

McClatchy, reporting on yesterday's meeting with Iran in Geneva (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/76369.html):

Iran also pledged that within weeks it would allow the inspection of a previously covert uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, announced that he'd head to Tehran to work out the details.

Eli Lake, The Washington Times, this morning (http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/02/president-obama-has-reaffirmed-a-4-decade-old-secr/?feat=home_cube_position1):

President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.

The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.

Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.

In addition to agreeing to allow full inspections of its Qom facility, Iran yesterday also did this:

Iran agreed in principle Thursday to ship most of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim, measure to ease concerns over its nuclear program. . . .

Under the tentative uranium deal, Iran would ship what a U.S. official said was "most" of its approximately 3,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be further refined, to 19.75 percent purity. That is much less than the purity needed to fuel a nuclear bomb.

French technicians then would fabricate it into fuel rods and return it to Tehran to power a nuclear research reactor that's used to make isotopes for nuclear medicine.

Steve Hynd explains (http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/10/a-good-beginning-with-iran.html) why Iran's willingness to agree to this process was both so surprising and so significant. As is true for any tentative agreement with anyone, there is always the possibility that something could happen prior to compliance, but this was a deal reached after a single-day meeting. Just consider that, as Hynd said on Twitter (http://twitter.com/SteveHynd/status/4545328801), the "Obama WH already got more from one buffet lunch with Iran than Bush WH did in 8 years of saber-rattling." For that reason, it's hard to disagree with this (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/76369.html): "In Washington, President Barack Obama said the talks marked 'a constructive beginning' and showed the promise of renewed engagement with Iran . . . ." Charles Krauthammer picked a bad day to haul out the tired neocon "appeasement" platitude (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/01/AR2009100104208.html?hpid=opinionsbox1) and apply it to Obama, claiming -- as always -- that negotiations and diplomacy can accomplish nothing, while railing like a madman against Obama's "naivite," "fecklessness," and "wasting time with feel-good posturing."

Related to all of this, actual Middle East expert Juan Cole has written an excellent article (http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/01/cole/) for Salon pointing out the "top 10 facts" which many Americans (and, definitely, most American journalists) do not know about Iran. Many of these suppressed facts -- and that's what they are -- are the ones I've been trying to highlight, including during my MSNBC discussion (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/29/iran/index.html) the other day. Just contemplate how different -- and how vastly improved -- our discussions would be if these basic facts were acknowledged by journalists reporting on Iran and by pundits opining on the subject.

[wild1]

Great! Peace In Our Time!

[Direckshun]

http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2009/10/a-good-beginning-with-iran.html

A Good Beginning With Iran
By Steve Hynd
October 01, 2009

When I first read President Obama's remarks after the talks with Iran (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/01/AR2009100103794_pf.html) today I saw this:

The IAEA proposal that was agreed to in principle today with regard to the Tehran research reactor is a confidence-building step that is consistent with that objective, provided that it transfers Iran's low- enriched uranium to a third country for fuel fabrication.

As I've said before, we support Iran's right to peaceful nuclear power. Taking the step of transferring its low-enriched uranium to a third country would be a step towards building confidence that Iran's program is in fact peaceful.

And I thought "That's a deal-breaker." Iran has said in the past that it doesn't trust Russia not to turn the fuel tap off whenever it wants to pressure Iran - just as Russia has done with customers of its gas pipelines. Not wanting to be held hostage by another nation as fuel provider was always an ostensibly believable reason Iran wanted to master the whole fuel cycle itself. After all, neither the U.S. nor any other major power would willingly put itself in such a weakened position for energy blackmail.

But almost right away I say that McClatchy was saying Iran had agreed in principle (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/76369.html).

Under the tentative deal reached here, Iran would ship what a U.S. official said was "most" of its approximately 3.300 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia where it would be further refined. French technicians would then fabricate it into fuel rods and return it to Tehran, to insert into a nuclear research reactor that is used to make isotopes for nuclear medicine.

I'm frankly amazed that Iran agreed to this, given past rhetoric. I really thought it would hold out for an internationalized fuel bank on Iranian soil - which is still the best long-term fix in that it assuages both sides' doubts. I can only imagine that the increased talk of crippling sanctions and even attacks following the disclosure of the Quom plant has been a even more of a game-changer than expected, convincing Iran it needs to make some serious short-term concessions if it wants to get anything at all in its interest long-term.

But Obama is still wrong about this:

This is not about singling out Iran; this is not about creating double standards. This is about the global nonproliferation regime and Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy, just as all nations have it, but with that right comes responsibilities.

Nonsense. Of course its at least in part about double standards. India, Pakistan and Israel all have nuclear arsenals developed outside the NPT framework but are all getting aid and trade from the West. Can anyone seriously imagine that if they hadn't been making friendly noises to the U.S. that they'd have gotten off as lightly as they have for ignoring their responsibilities? The U.S. and its allies cannot ignore the three allied elephants in the room forever.

[Garcia Bronco]

It really depends on the situation. Diplomacy didn't work with Hitler at all.

[Amnorix]

The U.S. and its allies cannot ignore the three allied elephants in the room forever.


Really, why not if they're allies?

Not to be completely Machiavellian, but in the real world if you play nice with the big boys, you don't get smacked down. If you want to play up what a little punk you are, then you're going to get punked.

[wild1]

It really depends on the situation. Diplomacy didn't work with Hitler at all.

It would be great if every person, nation and culture were motivated by this desire to hold hands and be accepted by the rest of the world.

[Direckshun]

It really depends on the situation. Diplomacy didn't work with Hitler at all.

That's fair -- I should have specified.

WTF's been up with you lately? You've been making a lot more sense than usual.

[HonestChieffan]

Conclusion...Iran won first round of "talks"; they still are a credible threat to the US and our allies; Israel will be the one to decide what to do or not do; Russia owns O; The French and Germans will work closly with Israel since the US cannot be counted on at this point.

Here is a better look at the situation:


Oct 1, 2009 21:58 | Updated Oct 2, 2009 5:09
'Let inspectors into plant in 2 weeks'
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, HERB KEINON AND YAAKOV KATZ
WASHINGTON


US President Barack Obama characterized Thursday's landmark meeting with Iran as a "constructive beginning," following Iran's apparent agreement to open its nuclear facilities to inspection, to meet again later in the month and in principle to have a third party provide it with nuclear energy.




"Today's meeting was a constructive beginning, but it must be followed by constructive action by the Iranian government," Obama said during a brief White House appearance following the talks held in Geneva. He gave Iran two weeks to allow IAEA inspectors into its recently revealed second uranium enrichment facility at Qom.

"Iran must take concrete steps to build confidence that its nuclear program will serve peaceful purposes - steps that meet Iran's obligations under multiple UN Security Council resolutions," said Obama of resolutions that demand Teheran stop enriching uranium. He called Iran's willingness to import such material for its research reactor "consistent with that objective - provided that it transfers Iran's low-enriched uranium to a third country for fuel fabrication."

Obama also stressed that "we're not interested in talking for the sake of talking," and warned that "if Iran does not take steps in the near future to live up to its obligations, then the United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move toward increased pressure."

Iran will have two weeks, Obama said, to follow through on the commitments Western officials announced following the seven-way Geneva meetings, the first in which the United States held substantive direct discussions on the Iranian nuclear program with Teheran.

Israel, though, had no expectation that Thursday's talks, which EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said would continue with at least another session before the end of the month, would culminate in any dramatic development. Rather, one government official said, this is another round in a more than decade-old process to stop Iran's nuclear development.



While Israel is skeptical overall with regard to the talks, assessments in the IDF are that Iran, while radical, is still a practical country that would be open to the possibility of reaching a deal with the West.

The government official said the revelation last Friday of the clandestine uranium enrichment facility being constructed in a mountain near Qom, a facility Solana said the Iranians agreed Thursday to open up to IAEA inspection, had given the Western powers - at least temporarily - the upper hand in that they could say they had caught the Iranians cheating red-handed.

US State Department Under Secretary of Political Affairs William Burns held a bilateral conversation with chief Iranian delegate Saeed Jalili during the lunch break of the day-long meetings held under the auspices of the P5+1 group, which includes the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.

State Department officials said that during that conversation, Burns had reiterated America's concerns about Iran's nuclear program, as well as raised the issue of human rights in Iran and American citizens being held by Teheran.

Though Iranian officials had originally said they would not even address the nuclear issue, that subject formed the heart of the talks, according to participants.

In his remarks following the Geneva meetings Thursday, Obama said UN International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei would be traveling to Iran in a few days and had "my full support, and the Iranian government must grant the IAEA full access to the site in Qom."

The Associated Press quoted the IAEA as announcing that ElBaradei was "invited to Teheran by Iranian authorities." ElBaradei recently described Teheran as "on the wrong side of the law" regarding the second enrichment site near Qom, saying that Iran should have revealed its plans as soon as the decision was made to build the plant.

Western intelligence agencies, meanwhile, suspect that Iran likely has additional secret nuclear installations scattered throughout the country. The assessment in some Western countries is that Iran likely has additional facilities that are either connected to the enrichment center discovered near Qom or are independent.

But not everyone is convinced about Friday's revelation of the facility near Qom.

Visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Victor Zubkov, when asked whether the revelations of the facility would alter Russia's so-far reticent position on sanctions, told The Jerusalem Post, "There has been no proof yet or confirmation, and we need to verify and know what has been done, and since there has not been enough proof and evidence, we have to work on that. I think the rumors might be exaggerated. However, a strong monitoring mechanism should be in place."

Still, Zubkov stressed that "we in Russia cannot accept in any way that Iran could possess nuclear weapons. That is totally unacceptable to us."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to answer questions on whether the US believed Iran had additional undisclosed nuclear sites.

But earlier Thursday, Sen. Joseph Lieberman indicated that he thought the Islamic Republic could well have further facilities.

"In the wake of last week's disclosure, there is renewed urgency and imperative surrounding the question of what else the Iranians have been hiding. Given that the international community has now twice uncovered secret enrichment facilities in Iran, it is reasonable to suspect there are likely others as well," he said at an American Enterprise Institute event.

"Their past actions put the burden of proof on Iran," he said. "The only way for the Iranians to prove otherwise is for them to provide the IAEA with full, unrestricted access to every site, every scientist, every scrap of paper, and every piece of equipment that they want to see."

He stressed that "it is not enough for the Iranians to engage in a process in Geneva today. That process needs to yield results, and quickly. My own belief is that the current Iranian leadership will only consider stepping back from the nuclear brink when they are convinced that if they fail to do so, there will be consequences so severe that the continuity of their regime will be threatened."


http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1254393078667

[Direckshun]

Conclusion...Iran won first round of "talks"; they still are a credible threat to the US and our allies; Israel will be the one to decide what to do or not do; Russia owns O; The French and Germans will work closly with Israel since the US cannot be counted on at this point.

Aside from the facts that (a.) the basis for your point of view in this case is from the Jerusalem Post, and (b.) virtually nothing you just said to open up your post is argued by the Post, I still think you're pretty much full of it, compadre.

Nobody argues that Iran's a threat, or that Israel runs our foreign policy (though that grip is loosening during the Obama administration), but some of the other things you're saying here make no sense.

On what planet did Iran win the first round of talks?

On what planet did Russia become the USA's overlord because of these talks?

[Jenson71]

This is quite an interesting development. (Of course, not as amazing as the Olympics)

Do we think the U.S. and Russia can come together with common goals? Will applied pressure from the United States and Russia both ease up the Iranian leadership?

I agree with Direckshun: I'm in support of what Obama is doing right now. It's vastly superior to the previous administration's. Of course, the right wingers in our country will continue to play into the hands of Ahmadinejad. I hope no one pays attention.

[BigRedChief]

It really depends on the situation. Diplomacy didn't work with Hitler at all.jeeezzz right to the Hitler references.

Hitler was hell bent on world domination. Iran has smaller goals. Not the same thing.

[Brock]

jeeezzz right to the Hitler references.

Hitler was hell bent on world domination. Iran has smaller goals. Not the same thing.

So it would have been okay if all Hitler wanted was Czechoslovakia and Poland?

[Halfcan]

Obama has already done more than Bush and he has 3 plus years to go.

Plus 4 more-lol

[Garcia Bronco]

jeeezzz right to the Hitler references.

Hitler was hell bent on world domination. Iran has smaller goals. Not the same thing.

Maybe. All I can tell you is after Hitler invaded Poland he said that was it to his European neighbors when he had no intention of stopping. And was it world domination at first or just revenge?

[wild1]

So it would have been okay if all Hitler wanted was Czechoslovakia and Poland?

Yeah, they just want to do is wipe ONE entire nation off the map. Not all of them. Jeez.

[Donger]

Am I correct in assuming that Iran did not agree to cease enriching uranium during these talks?

[Donger]

I'm frankly amazed that Iran agreed to this, given past rhetoric. I really thought it would hold out for an internationalized fuel bank on Iranian soil - which is still the best long-term fix in that it assuages both sides' doubts. I can only imagine that the increased talk of crippling sanctions and even attacks following the disclosure of the Quom plant has been a even more of a game-changer than expected, convincing Iran it needs to make some serious short-term concessions if it wants to get anything at all in its interest long-term.

Why? They are only agreeing to ship out "most" of their LEU. That leaves a sizable portion that they can continue to enrich. Enough, in fact, for at least one physics package.

[Jenson71]

Why? They are only agreeing to ship out "most" of their LEU. That leaves a sizable portion that they can continue to enrich. Enough, in fact, for at least one physics package.

What's it take to enrich their sauce from a 3.5 to whatever it is that can make a sizable weapon?

[Donger]

What's it take to enrich their sauce from a 3.5 to whatever it is that can make a sizable weapon?

That depends on how you define weapon. A warhead that will actually fission? About 80% will do it.

[BucEyedPea]

Yeah, they just want to do is wipe ONE entire nation off the map. Not all of them. Jeez.

"They" whose they? And no the president of Iran never said he wanted to wipe a nation off the map. It was a farsi mistranslation.

The Soviets wanted to knock down every country until we were left too. Did they do it?

[wild1]

"They" whose they? And no the president of Iran never said he wanted to wipe a nation off the map. It was a farsi mistranslation.

I feel like there should be very thick glass between you and all of us.

[banyon]

"They" whose they? And no the president of Iran never said he wanted to wipe a nation off the map. It was a farsi mistranslation.
The Soviets wanted to knock down every country until we were left too. Did they do it?

Why repeat this nonsense again?

Why not state what the correct translation was supposed to be?

"the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time."

http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

Vanish from time actually sounds worse than wiped off the map to me.

[patteeu]

So it would have been okay if all Hitler wanted was Czechoslovakia and Poland?

If Hitler would have limited his focus to the Jews and taken care of business instead of getting sidetracked with world domination, we wouldn't have all these problems in the middle east today. /TFG

[patteeu]

Is jAZ advising Obama these days? Can I see a show of hands from the people who think we'll actually be inspecting the newly disclosed facility when Obama's "deadline" arrives two weeks from yesterday?

More importantly, how many people actually believe that this is the beginning of preventing Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? It doesn't matter how many inspections we are allowed to do or how much enrichment Iran outsources to Russia if, in the end, they retain enough capability to continue with their weapons program and succeed in deploying a weapon.

Here's a sober counter-opinion from The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-02/america-is-getting-hustled/full/), a centrist Republican blog:


America Is Getting Hustled

by Reihan Salam

After the revelation of Iran's previously secret uranium-enrichment near facility Qom, home to the country's clerical elite, Barack Obama, flanked by Gordon Brown and the hawkish Nicolas Sarkozy, eloquently condemned Iran for its contemptuous disregard for international law. The visuals were powerful: while the Bush administration had been condemned for its unilateralism, here was President Obama standing with the leaders of America's allies, all of them offering a single forceful message. It didn't hurt that Obama towered over the perpetually hunched-over British prime minister and the charmingly elfin French president. This display followed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's odd statement earlier that week that "sanctions are seldom productive but they are sometimes inevitable," a sign that Russia might be willing to exert pressure on Iran—long one of the most enthusiastic consumers of high-tech Russian military hardware.

This week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has agreed to transfer most of his country's acknowledged low-enriched nuclear fuel out of the country for purposes of further enrichment, and Iranian negotiators have signaled a willingness to engage in further talks. All of this sounds like good news, and it is. Unfortunately, it is also extremely good news for Iran and Ahmadinejad, who has managed to buy still more time to build his weapons program.

There's little doubt that the Qom facility is just part of a vast network of secret nuclear facilities that the Iranians have been building for years to evade inspectors. It solves the "puzzle" of why the Iranians haven't been able to account for large amounts of uranium from one of their mines. Imagine a conversation with Iranian nuclear officials offer the missing uranium: "Oh, well, we use it as part of a traditional Persian headache remedy." While international inspectors sought full access to Iran's Potemkin nuclear program, the Iranians, having learned the lesson of Iraq's Osirak facility, destroyed by an Israeli air attack in 1981, have created a hardened weapons program that will be difficult if not impossible to destroy.

So while the Iranians will hand over low-enriched nuclear fuel they've said they have, they're not about to give up the nuclear they haven't said they have. Get it? As for the further talks, the United States wants to talk about ending Iran's nuclear program. The Iranians want to talk about… virtually everything else, ranging from "creating a world filled with spirituality, friendship, prosperity, wellness, and security" to "the management and fair use of space" to, yes, abolishing all the world's nuclear weapons. Suffice it to say, this is a fairly broad agenda. Indeed, it is so broad that one wonders if the Iranians are taking this process as seriously as we'd like to think.

The rumor is that Iran "revealed" the Qom facility after discovering the Western intelligence officials had learned of its existence, and that Sarkozy was planning on making a dramatic announcement at the United Nations General Assembly. But of course the Iranians didn't invite U.N. inspectors to drop by immediately after making the announcement. When Iranian nuclear officials say that they need time—weeks if not months—before inspectors can arrive, their motivation could be the fastidiousness of gracious hosts, e.g., they want to be sure the pillows are fluffed and that various Iranian delicacies are seasoned to perfection. Or they could be hard at work scrubbing the enrichment facility of any incriminating evidence that goes beyond the massively incriminating evidence that they built it in the first place. One gets the uncomfortable sense that the United States is getting hustled, just as we were hustled by North Korea.

Back when we started negotiating with the North Koreans over their nuclear program, we were convinced that continued discussions were vitally important, and that we could deal with temper tantrums and half-hearted non-concessions. Now, of course, the North Koreans have nuclear weapons, and they are arguably more dangerous than ever.

While the Iranians have conceded virtually nothing of value, President Obama has conceded a fair bit, particularly to the Russians. If the Russians were serious about aiding the United States in its efforts to contain Iran's nuclear efforts, they could pledge not to sell Iran the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system. The S-300 is capable of destroying all but the most advanced American military aircraft, and it is one of the main reasons the Pentagon has invested billions in the Joint Strike Fighter and the F-22.

Earlier this month, the United States abandoned its Bush-era effort to deploy a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The Bush White House insisted that the system was designed to deal with an Iranian missile threat, but Moscow was convinced that it represented a threat to their own deterrent. It seems clear that President Obama decided to abandon the missile-defense system to win favor with the Russians, which could later be used in a showdown with Iran. But would it have been too much to ask for a concrete concession on the S-300 in return? The danger here is that the Poles and the Czechs would see this as a new Yalta, in which they were being sold out for a grand strategic design. Instead, they were sold out—to put it harshly—in the vague hope that the Russians would be pleased.

To be sure, Medvedev's slippery statement about "inevitable" sanctions was very well-timed—and it may have even spooked the Iranians. Unfortunately, there's real doubt about whether Medvedev is running Russian foreign policy; many if not most observers believe that Vladimir Putin still dominates, and that he has no intention of disrupting Russia's amicable, and very profitable, relationship with the Islamic Republic. Some argue that Russia intends to keep Iran's nuclear program before the U.N. Security Council in an effort to constrain the options of the United States and its NATO allies.

Were the Russians to be totally frank about not cooperating with Western efforts, it's easy to imagine Obama and Sarkozy and Brown walking away from the Security Council. Instead, Medvedev and Putin are still stringing the United States along, all while Iran's not-so-secret secret weapons program keeps plugging away. President Obama is, like President Bush, doing his best to deal with an almost impossible situation, and it's hard not to sympathize. One hopes that the Iranians will come to their senses, and that the Russians aren't playing a double-game and that Obama's diplomatic approach will work. But my fear is that this won't end well.

[patteeu]

Direckshun, how do you reconcile the fact that the Iranians had a secret enrichment facility that they only disclosed when they found out we knew about it with the notion that they are just interested in peaceful nuclear technology?

[patteeu]

P.S. Sabre-rattling, or the credible threat of force in some form, is an indispensable component of diplomacy. If we hit the lotto here and Iran has actually caved-in, they're doing it because they thought the jig was up not because we finally started talking sweet to them. But as I indicated earlier I don't believe we've actually accomplished the objective here.

[Brock]

Obama has already done more than Bush and he has 3 plus years to go.

Plus 4 more-lol

Please, feel free to inform us of all these major accomplishments.

[Direckshun]

Direckshun, how do you reconcile the fact that the Iranians had a secret enrichment facility that they only disclosed when they found out we knew about it with the notion that they are just interested in peaceful nuclear technology?

I don't.

[Direckshun]

P.S. Sabre-rattling, or the credible threat of force in some form, is an indispensable component of diplomacy.

"Component" being the key word.

[Direckshun]

Here's a sober counter-opinion from The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-02/america-is-getting-hustled/full/), a centrist Republican blog:

[indent][i]
America Is Getting Hustled

by Reihan Salam

I see your reasonable counter-opinion by one of my favorite conservative bloggers in Reihan Salam, and raise you one counter-counter opinion, equally reasonable, by one of my favorite Middle East experts in Juan Cole:

http://www.juancole.com/2009/10/obama-pwns-bush-cheney-on-iran-first.html

Obama pwns Bush-Cheney on Iran;
First day of Talks Yields Significant Confidence-Building Steps
Friday, October 02, 2009

For 8 years, Bush-Cheney practiced what I call "belligerent Ostrichism" toward Iran. They refused to talk to Tehran. They wanted to ratchet up sanctions on it. Bush sent 2 aircraft carriers to the Gulf to menace Iran. Bush's spokesmen professed themselves afraid of Iran's unarmed little speedboats in the Gulf. Aside from issuing threats to attack and destroy Iran the way they did Iraq, Bush-Cheney had nothing else to say on the matter. During the 8 years, Iran went from being able to enrich to .2% to being able to enrich to 3.8%, and increased its stock of centrifuges significantly. Bush-Cheney gesticulated and grimaced and fainted away at the horror of it all, but they accomplished diddly-squat.

Barack Obama pwned Bush-Cheney in one day, and got more concessions from Iran in 7 1/2 hours than the former administration got in 8 years of saber-rattling.

Delegates of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany met with representatives of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for 7 and a half hours on Thursday for talks on Iran's nuclear research program.

Amazingly, there were signs of significant progress even on the first day, which most seasoned observers had not expected.

1. Iran agreed to allow inspectors from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the newly announced facility near Qom within the next two months.

2. Iran agreed to meet again at the end of October.

3. Iran agreed to send "most" of its stock of low enriched uranium (3.5%) to Russia for processing to the roughly 20% degree of enrichment needed to run its small reactor producing medical isotopes. Iran has about 3200 pounds of low-enriched uranium, and is willing to send 2600 to Russia. That is a little over a ton, or about what a single Ford Focus weighs.

Iran does not anyway have the ability to enrich to more than about 4.8% at the moment, and the medical reactor will be out of fuel in a little over a year, so if they continued to want the medical isotopes they would be forced to take this step anyway.

Russia Today has video:

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The NYT report on all this adds in all kinds of extraneous and unproven allegations, of a network of secret enrichment plants or secret stores of low-enriched uranium or nefarious Iranian plans to make a bomb, or of Iran having enough nuclear material to make a bomb (irrelevant if they can't enrich to 90%), and what Israel thinks of all this (since the Israelis really have thumbed their nose at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and made a whole arsenal of bombs, thus further destabilizing the Middle East, why they aren't under UN sanctions I'll never understand; but they certainly don't have standing to dictate anything to other countries on the proliferation issue). It reminds me of all the NYT front page stories about aluminum tubes and Iraqi WMD of Judy Miller in 2002. Isn't it bad journalism to report completely unproven allegations for which there is no evidence?

Back to the real world: The steps outlined above are only pledges on Iran's part, of course, and we have to see if they are implemented.

President Obama made much the same points, demanding that Iran follow through on fuller IAEA inspections, a long-time demand of the US.

Presumably the regime is being so forthcoming because it needs a win on the international stage to shore up its flagging legitimacy at home, in the way of presidential elections widely viewed as fraudulent. It is possible that hard liners like the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps will attempt to torpedo these positive moves.

For further proof that Congress has numerous brain-dead people in it, its reaction to Iran's being forthcoming in Geneva was to authorize legislation that would try to punish companies for supplying gasoline to Iran. Somehow I think someone will take the contract, and anyway Iran will up its petroleum refining capacity in the coming couple of years. Congress should worry how the US is going to fuel its transportation in coming years.

[mlyonsd]

What I get from the thread article is if Iran does develop a deliverable nuke it's all on Obama's shoulders since he is so close now to talking them down.

Check. I'll bookmark this.

Good luck to him btw. I sincerely hopes he stops Iran. He can't do it alone. He needs Russia and China to actually stop it from happening. We'll really see how much of a world player Obama really is with this issue alone.

And, of course if it happens, we must give the Bush administration some credit for keeping the Iranian secrets quiet until such time they could be exposed for the best effect.

[wild1]

A leader like Obama will always have rings run around him by someone like this, because he'll never demand specific performance from them. They know this.

So they agree to something less than what is really needed, because compromise is valued over results. Then they deliver even less than that knowing he won't get tough on them past a certain point, making this diplomacy a stall tactic at best.

Obama won't keep Ahmadinejad up late at night, unless he throws him a White House ball. He's no bark and no bite.

[NewPhin]

A leader like Obama will always have rings run around him by someone like this, because he'll never demand specific performance from them. They know this.

So they agree to something less than what is really needed, because compromise is valued over results. Then they deliver even less than that knowing he won't get tough on them past a certain point, making this diplomacy a stall tactic at best.

Obama won't keep Ahmadinejad up late at night, unless he throws him a White House ball. He's no bark and no bite.

Wow, man. You should have been Secretary of State. You really know your shit.

[KILLER_CLOWN]

A tale of two speeches: Ahmadinejad’s and Netanyahu’s

Jerry Mazza
Online Journal
Friday, Oct 2nd, 2009

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s Speech at the UN General Assembly on September 23 was titled The End of Capitalism, more brusquely titled on the YouTube clip: Greedy Capitalism Has Failed And Will Be Swept Away.

He proceeded, quite fairly I might add, to scour the US for its political, financial, colonial, war-making policies.

Starting by criticizing discrimination, lack of equality and respect for the human community, he spoke of two conflicting outlooks in our world, one based “on the predominance of materialistic interests through spreading inequality and oppression, poverty and deprivation, occupation and deception,” which “tends to bring the entire world under its control and impose its will on other nations. “This outlook has produced nothing but frustration, disappointment and a dark future for the entire humanity.”

Ahmadinejad mentioned specifically the US economy. “It is no longer possible to inject thousands of billions of dollars of unreal wealth to the world economy simply by printing worthless paper assets, or transfer inflation as well as social and economic problems to others through creating severe budget deficits.” In fact, he said, “The engine of unbridled capitalism with its unfair system of thought has reached the end of the road and is unable to move.” I would say that is an opinion shared by any number of economists.

He elaborated, “The era of capitalist thinking and imposition of one’s thoughts on the international community, intended to predominate the world in the name of globalization and the age of setting up empires is over. It is no longer possible to humiliate nationals and impose double standard policies on the world community.”

He talked, too, about the people of this country and the world “waiting for real and profound changes,” not the ersatz brand we’re presently experiencing. He went on to discuss the injustices heaped on Palestine that have forced and continue to force the entire population out of their country for the last 60 years, through force and coercion, attacking Palestinians with all kinds of weapons, “denying them of their legitimate right of self-defense, while much to the chagrin of the international community calling the occupiers the peace-lovers, and portraying the victims as terrorists.”

This was tough stuff. No punches were pulled, whether on the recent 22-day deconstruction of Palestine, the violation of human rights, allowing genocide to take place and “the heaviest economic blockade being denied of their basic needs, food, water and medicine.” He went on to say, “It is no longer acceptable that a small minority would dominate the politics, economy and culture of major parts of the world by its complicated networks, and establish a new form of slavery, and harm the reputation of other nations, even European nations and the U.S., to attain its racist ambitions.”

He said, “It is no longer possible to bring a country under military occupation in the name of fight against terrorism and drug trafficking while the production of illicit drugs has multiplied, terrorism has widened its dimensions and has tightened its grips, thousands of innocent people have been killed, injured or displaced, infrastructures have been destroyed and regional security has been seriously jeopardized; and those who have created the current disastrous situation continue to blame others. How you can talk about friendship and solidarity with other nations while you expand your military bases in different parts of the world, including in Latin America.”

Ahmadinejad even lambasted communism though he predicted capitalism would meet with the same fate: “By the grace of God, Marxism is gone. It is now history. The expansionist capitalism will certainly have the same fate. Because based on the divine traditions referred to as a principle in the Holy Quran, the wrong like the bubbles on the surface of water, will disappear. There remains only what that can be used forever towards the interest of human societies. We must all remain vigilant to prevent the pursuit of colonialist, discriminatory and inhuman goals under the cover of the slogans for change and in new formats.”

He continued with the change theme so often elaborated by our own president: “The world needs to undergo fundamental changes and all must engage collectively to make them happen in the right direction, and through such efforts no one and no government would consider itself an exception to change or superior to others and try to impose its will on others by proclaiming world leadership. All problems existing in our world today emanate from the fact that rulers have distanced themselves from human values, morality and the teachings of divine messengers.”

”Regrettably,” he said, “in the current international relations, selfishness and insatiable greed have taken the place of such humanitarian concepts as love, sacrifice, dignity, and justice. The belief in the One God has been replaced with selfishness. Some have taken the place of God and insist to impose their values and wishes on others. Lies have taken the place of honesty; hypocrisy has replaced integrity and selfishness has taken the place of sacrifice. Deception in interactions is called foresight and statesmanship; looting the wealth of other nations is called development efforts; occupation is introduced as a gift towards promotion of freedom and democracy, and defenseless nations are subjected to repression in the name of defending human rights.” Whether you believe in god or not, there is a great deal of truth in these words that applies to your own US conundrum.

My continuing to quote his speech is my concern that you may not have heard or read it. I want you to get a sense of the man, his concerns and his candor. Ahmadinejad pointed out that “Our country [Iran] has been a main victim of terrorism and the target of an all-out military aggression during the first decade of the revolution. All through the past 30 years we have been subject to hostile attitudes of those who supported Saddam’s military aggression and his use of chemical weapons against us, and then they took military action in Iraq to get rid of him,” which is all true, including the ongoing embargos, the war we fomented between Iraq and Iran for eight years, arming Saddam, even the Iranians, and causing losses of life and human displacement on both sides that ran in the millions.

Skipping to his conclusion, I find it surprisingly religious, spiritual, and hopeful: “Therefore, we emphasize that: the only path to remain safe is to return to Monotheism (believing in the Oneness of God) and justice, and this is the greatest hope and opportunity in all ages and generations. Without belief in God and commitment to the cause of justice and fight against injustice and discrimination, the world architect would not get right.” Whether you believe in a deity or not, he followed that with a purely humanistic connection . . .

“Man is at the center of the universe. The man’s unique feature is his humanity. The same feature which seeks for justice, piety, love, knowledge, awareness and all other high values. These human values should be supported, and each and every fellow human should be given the opportunity to acquire them. Neglecting any of them is tantamount to the omission of a constituting piece of humanity. These are common elements which connect all human communities and constitute the basis of peace, security and friendship . . . The divine religions pay attention to all aspects of human life, including obedience to God, morality, justice, fighting oppression, and endeavor to establish just and good governance.”

Having inserted the religious traditions into political affairs, Ahmadinejad goes on to unite the traditions: “Prophet Abraham called for Oneness of God against Nimrod, as Prophet Moses did the same against Pharaohs and the Jesus Christ and Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon them) did against the oppressors of their own time. They were all threatened to death and were forced out of their homelands. Without resistance and objection, the injustices would not be removed from the face of the earth . . . Dear friends and colleagues; the world is in continuous change and evolution.

”The promised destiny for mankind is the establishment of the humane pure life. Will come a time when justice will prevail across the globe and every single human being will enjoy respect and dignity. That will be the time when the Mankind’s path to moral and spiritual perfectness will be opened and his journey to God and the manifestation of the God’s Divine Names will come true. The mankind should excel to represent the God’s ‘knowledge and wisdom,’ His ‘compassion and benevolence, His ‘justice and fairness,’ His ‘power and art,’ and His ‘kindness and forgiveness’ . . .

”They [religious prophets] will come to put an end to war and aggression and present the entire knowledge as well as spirituality and friendship to the whole world. Yes; indeed, the bright future for the mankind will come. Dear friends, in waiting for that brilliant time to come and in a collective commitment, let’s make due contributions in paving the grounds and preparing the conditions for building that bright future. Long live love and spirituality; long live peace and security; long live justice and freedom. God’s Peace and blessing be upon you all.”

With the exception of my removing a few simple typos, which probably occurred in the translation transcription, and my omitting a number of passages for brevity’s sake, this is the substance of Ahmadinejad’s speech. Albeit grounded in religion, it is a call for justice, fairness, equality for all, to help make a better world. Ahmadinejad is obviously the president of a theocracy and not a democracy as know it and such as it is, but this is not Khrushchev banging an angry shoe on the table at the UN.

No, this is the president of Iran, which country again has been accused of a nuclear weapons program. Yet even the usually conservative New York Times reports in A Nuclear Debate: Is Iran Designing Warheads?, “When President Obama stood last week with the leaders of Britain and France to denounce Iran’s construction of a secret nuclear plant, the Western powers all appeared to be on the same page.

“Behind their show of unity about Iran’s clandestine efforts to manufacture nuclear fuel, however, is a continuing debate among American, European and Israeli spies about a separate component of Iran’s nuclear program: its clandestine efforts to design a nuclear warhead.

“The Israelis, who have delivered veiled threats of a military strike, say they believe that Iran has restarted these ‘weaponization’ efforts, which would mark a final step in building a nuclear weapon. The Germans say they believe that the weapons work was never halted. The French have strongly suggested that independent international inspectors have more information about the weapons work than they have made public.

“Meanwhile, in closed-door discussions, American spy agencies have stood firm in their conclusion that while Iran may ultimately want a bomb, the country halted work on weapons design in 2003 and probably has not restarted that effort — a judgment first made public in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate.

“The debate, in essence, is a mirror image of the intelligence dispute on the eve of the Iraq war [italics mine].”

This is a more than veiled comparison to using a flawed premise to start a war with Iran as we did with Iraq over its so-called weapons of mass destruction, which were supposedly about to be used immediately.

What Netanyahu said and what’s behind it

In a speech of rebuttal by Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a day later, there is no mention whatsoever of Israel’s nuclear reactor and facility at Dimona in the Negev desert, , which has existed since the mid-50s, built with the help of the French, in return for their own nuclear facility built with the help of Israeli scientists. It wasn’t until 1986 that whistleblower and then orthodox Jew Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the plant, exposed the fact with words and pictures in the London Times that the Israelis stocked between 200 and 400 nuclear warheads. His reward was 18 years in solitary confinement, and house arrest when he came out for speaking to a reporter.

It is the unmitigated hysteria of hypocrisy of Israel that glares most from Netanyahu’s speech, never even mentioning his country’s long-standing involvement with nuclear weapons, dating back to 1948, the first searches and finding of nuclear material in the Negev under then Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. As early as 1945, Golda Meir and Ben Gurion realized what a potent stone in the slingshot the nuclear bomb would make for themselves as a David facing the Goliaths of the world. This was just as the US exploded two nuclear bombs on Japan, one on Hiroshima, one on Nagasaki, singling out people of color for the opening of this Pandora’s box. Yet, the US joins adamantly in the hypocrisy to buttress its little big buddy Israel against Iran’s dubious nuclear weapons. And what is Netanyahu’s speech about?

Wayne Madsen reports in his article that Netanyahu equates Iranian government and Hamas with Nazis, “In a speech before the UN General Assembly on September 24, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu invoked the Nazi holocaust to launch a blistering attack on Iran and Hamas. Netanyahu said that 62 years ago, the UN recognized the right of the Jewish people to a state of their own in Israel, which he emphasized is a ‘Jewish state.’” Of course, his statement wasn’t true. Israel was supposed to be a ‘two-state’ nation, even as illegal and compromised as that was.

Madsen goes on, “Netanyahu told the General Assembly, minus the delegation of Iran, which had walked out prior to his arrival, that the previous day the president of Iran ‘spewed anti-Semitic rants.’ Netanyahu produced copies of the Nazi minutes from the Wansee meeting which outlined how the Nazi government would carry out the extermination of the Jewish people. He also held up the concentration camp plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp that were signed by Heinrich Himmler.

“Thanking those delegations that walked out on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech, Netanyahu criticized those who gave the Iranian leader a hearing, declaring, ‘Have you no shame, no decency? What a disgrace!’ Netanyahu added that delegations that listened to Ahmadinejad were making ‘a mockery of the UN Charter.’ But he of course is not. Here is the complete text of Netanyahu’s speech.

The truth is, it is Netanyahu who makes a mockery of the truth. Robert Parry noted in What Did Ahmadinejad Really Say?: “Press TV quoted Ahmadinejad as saying, ‘If the Holocaust, as you claim, is true, why don’t you allow a probe into the issue?’ Press TV added that Ahmadinejad was ‘calling the Zionist regime a symbol of lies and deception founded on “colonialist” attitudes. The Iranian president also asked why Palestinians had to pay for the genocide of Jews at the hands of Europeans.’

“So what did Ahmadinejad really say?”

Parry continues, “In the English-language account of the speech published on the official Web site of the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad calls the ‘pretext’ for founding the state of Israel ‘a lie,’ but he doesn’t spell out precisely what he means by ‘pretext.’ In the context, the word seems to refer to the Holocaust, but arguably his reference to ‘a lie which relies on . . . a mythical claim’ could be about Biblical claims to the land of Palestine that Zionist organizations cite.

“As Press TV says, Ahmadinejad frames his skeptical comments about the Holocaust within Western hostility toward the scholarship of some European and American Holocaust skeptics (often called ‘deniers’) who dispute details such as the estimated number of six million Jews killed by the Nazis.

“But some of that supposed scholarship has been widely viewed as an excuse by neo-fascists and anti-Semites to diminish the horror of the Nazi extermination campaign against Jews and other groups considered undesirable by Adolf Hitler and his German Third Reich.

“Though interpretations of Ahmadinejad’s words can be debated, two things appear undeniable. First, Ahmadinejad continues to make provocative statements that are offensive to many people around the world.

“And second, the New York Times and other Western news organizations are failing to live up to their own principles of objectivity, apparently out of an intense animosity toward Iran’s president.

“Shortly after Iran’s disputed presidential election in June, a ‘news analysis’ coauthored by New York Times executive editor Bill Keller opened up with an old joke about Ahmadinejad looking into a mirror and saying ‘male lice to the right, female lice to the left,’ a reference to his rise from the street and his conservative Islamic religious views. Later, the Times editors joined defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi in rejecting the notion of a vote recount by Iran’s Guardian Council, which oversees elections. The Mousavi camp instead demanded an entirely new election, which they failed to get. ‘Even a full recount would be suspect,’ the Times wrote in an editorial. ‘How could anyone be sure that the ballots were valid?’

“But the resistance of Mousavi and his backers to a partial or complete recount prevented the uncovering of solid evidence that might have proven that Ahmadinejad did rig the election, a point that has become conventional wisdom in the Western media but which lacks solid proof (unlike, for instance, the widespread evidence of fraud in the recent Afghan election.)


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/world/middleeast/29nuke.html?em

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/index.html?inline=nyt-geo

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iran/nuclear_program/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/i/us_intelligence_community/national_intelligence_estimates/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier

http://www.nowpublic.com/world/benjamin-netanyahu-un-speech-full-text-transcript-sep-24-2009

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2009/091909.html

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=106601&sectionid=351020101

http://www.president.ir/en/?ArtID=17832

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/world/middleeast/15assess.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/18/opinion/18thu2.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/061809.html

http://www.monthlyreview.org/090511hersh.php


more at

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5192.shtml

[Mr. Kotter]

What I get from the thread article is if Iran does develop a deliverable nuke it's all on Obama's shoulders since he is so close now to talking them down.

Check. I'll bookmark this.

Good luck to him btw. I sincerely hopes he stops Iran. He can't do it alone. He needs Russia and China to actually stop it from happening. We'll really see how much of a world player Obama really is with this issue alone.

And, of course if it happens, we must give the Bush administration some credit for keeping the Iranian secrets quiet until such time they could be exposed for the best effect.

Direckshun has a knack for painting himself into corners, like this....heh.

[Mr. Kotter]

Why repeat this nonsense again?

Why not state what the correct translation was supposed to be?

"the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time."

http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

Vanish from time actually sounds worse than wiped off the map to me.

Unless it's a Rockwell article, or there-abouts....BEP just doesn't care. You know? :shrug:

[KCWolfman]

Simple diplomacy worked great with Stalin - After all, he stopped massacring everyone when he died.

[patteeu]

http://www.weaselzippers.net/.a/6a00e008c6b4e588340120a66f2dcf970c-320wi

Just another predictable failure of Obama-style no-consequence diplomacy. :shake:

Iran reply on nuclear deal called 'inadequate' (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-nuclear30-2009oct30,0,2021427.story)

...

[A]ccording to the diplomat, Iran wants to send its uranium abroad in smaller batches over an undetermined stretch of time rather than the lump transfer by year's end outlined under the proposal offered by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

Such a change would allow Iran to quickly replenish its stock.