WILL THE “ARAB SPRING” USHER IN A “TEHRAN WINTER”?

 

THE DANGER OF A TEHRAN WINTER
Joel E. Starr
The Diplomat, March 30, 2011

 

“Welcome to the earthquake!” boomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to our congressional delegation last month in Jerusalem. “An Arab earthquake,” he told us, “that has been shaking the Middle East politically, affecting all countries in the region except Israel. Why? Because Israel represents the only existing democracy in the Middle East where all of its citizens—Jew and Arab—already have a voice in their society.”

“But,” he added, “do not be distracted from the single most important pre-existing threat to Israel and the United States: Iran.”

In the midst of what some are calling the Arab Spring (after the 1968 Prague Spring) the United States should heed Netanyahu’s warning, and redouble efforts to contain and defeat the nuclear threat posed by Iran.…

Of course Netanyahu’s warning isn’t new—he was warning about Iran as far back as 1996, when he addressed the US Congress during his first tenure as prime minister. US Sen. James Inhofe, who led our congressional delegation and is a member of both the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, has also been making such warnings on the Senate floor since 2002. But it’s clear that events in the Maghreb demand refocused attention on halting Iran’s nuclear and radical Muslim fundamentalist ambitions.

There’s no time to lose. Netanyahu said that we are in a ‘pivot of history’ where, unless we do something now, Iran will become the first militant Islamic regime to possess nuclear weapons.

Regardless of such warnings, it’s clear that the public at large doesn’t fully realize the nuclear threat posed by Iran to Israel and the United States (or as the Iranian mullahs call us, the “Little and Big Satan”). And to date, Arab “earthquakes” haven’t interfered with Iran’s ability to fund terrorist organizations or develop its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. The swift and deadly punishment meted out to Iranian Green Movement revolutionaries after their 2009 presidential election with no international repercussions speaks for itself.

This has meant that Iran has continued to provide terrorist organizations with arms and resources, including militants in Iraq, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and allegedly also the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

To fulfill its goals, Iran has over the last decade aggressively pursued the development of medium-and long-range missiles, including the continued development of the Ashura and Shahab-3 missiles and the launching of the Safir Space Launch Vehicle and the Kavoshgar 3 (Explorer) rocket. According to the US Missile Defense Agency, by successfully launching multi-stage, liquid fuelled rockets, Iran has demonstrated the key technologies of propulsion, staging, and guidance to deliver a weapon of mass destruction globally.…

In response to requests from envoys representing the United States, European Union, and the United Nations for Iran to abandon its nuclear programme or face more isolation and sanctions, Iran has either ignored or mocked such efforts to bring it into the community of non-proliferating nations. It continues to play cat-and-mouse with the international community about holding talks, while clinging to its fig-leaf claim that it is seeking nuclear development only for civilian energy purposes.

To combat this threat, the United States and Israel are now working together to develop air defence systems and a multi-layered missile defence system—the two countries have signed an agreement for 20 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters worth an estimated $2.7 billion, with deliveries scheduled to begin in 2016. The two countries have also successfully conducted the 19th test of the Arrow system, with an Arrow II missile intercepting a simulated Iranian ballistic missile, and we are developing the Arrow III to intercept missiles outside the Earth’s atmosphere so there is no toxic debris.

Meanwhile, the United States is…also funding “David’s Sling”—also known as “Magic Wand”—to intercept rockets with a range of hundreds of miles. It should be completed by 2013. And finally, the United States and Israel will continue to integrate, operate and train together in exercises such as the Juniper Cobra 10—the first major joint exercise integrating THAAD, Patriot, Aegis, and Arrow defence missile systems and the largest joint missile defence exercise in the world.…

Taken collectively, all of these air and missile defence systems must be fully funded and constantly upgraded to protect against the regional and global Iranian nuclear threat. It isn’t good enough to simply trust intelligence estimates predicting when Iran will have a certain ballistic or nuclear capability—intelligence estimates have been wrong in the past, and we don’t have the luxury of being able to be wrong about this threat. Just look at how surprised we were back in 1998 when North Korea launched a long-range ballistic missile that sailed over Japan.

As Netanyahu pointed out in our meeting, US support to Israel is a “bargain basement investment” in providing security to the United States from the Iranian threat when compared to the billions already spent legitimately in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sustained and unwavering US support of Israel, while refocusing on the threat from Iran, will keep the pressure on this repressive regime, inhibit its nuclear development, and perhaps stunt ideological and materiel support to anti-democratic forces in the Middle East. Unless we continue to fight the nuclear and terrorist threat from Iran, there’s a genuine chance that we’ll be facing not an Arab Spring, but a Tehran Winter.

(Joel E. Starr serves as Counsel and Legislative Assistant
to US Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma.)

 

HOW THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
CAN GET SERIOUS ABOUT IRAN SANCTIONS
Mark Dubowitz & Laura Grossman
Weekly Standard, March 31, 2011

 

The Obama administration…[has imposed sanctions on a company for doing business with Iran,for only the second time since taking office in 2009.] But it’s small beer—Belarusneft, [the offender], is hardly a major player in Iran’s energy industry. And this latest announcement of sanctions suggests to some in Congress that the administration is not really that serious about enforcing sanctions on Iran after all.

Last year, Congress passed the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act by overwhelming majorities in both houses, and President Obama signed the bill into law in July 2010. The sanctions bill was supposed to be a strengthening of the bill already on the books—the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) of 1996. And Congress crafted last year’s bill to send a clear message to the White House, the Iranian leadership, and energy firms around the world: The U.S. government was finally getting serious about Iran.

Under the enhanced ISA, when provided with credible information that any entity might have invested $20 million or more in Iran’s energy sector, the administration is required to investigate them. The law also prohibits companies from supplying Iran with refined petroleum and any related technology, goods, or services.

In 2007, in clear violation of U.S. sanctions, Belarusneft struck a $500 million agreement with Naftiran Intertrade Company to develop Iran’s Jofeir oil field. And even more recently, the company has completed deals with other Iranian companies to develop the Band-e-Karkeh and Azagedan oil fields. In 2010, Naftiran, an Iranian company operating out of Switzerland, became the first company sanctioned under the Iran sanctions bill.…

President Obama made sanctions on Iran’s energy sector a central part of his strategy in dealing with Tehran. With Iran continuing its march toward obtaining nuclear weapons, the selection of a single Iranian company and now a lone Belarusian one—among scores of companies that are now likely in violation of U.S. sanctions law—has not inspired congressional confidence. Nor are these sanctions likely to frighten major players in the international energy industry.…

Congress [is] justifiably concerned. On March 29, after the Belarusneft designation announcement, Senators Mark Kirk, Joseph Lieberman and Jon Kyl sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner a letter expressing disappointment over what they see as the lack of “full compliance with the sanctions regime put in place by Congress.” The senators wrote that they are “deeply concerned with what appear to be sanctionable activities by other entities involving energy investments in Iran, the provision of refined petroleum products to Iran, financial relationships with Iran, as well as the regime’s proliferation activities.”

A number of major international companies from Turkey, China, Venezuela, and elsewhere remain active in Iran, and continue to sign new deals. In a letter to Secretary Clinton in March 2011, 10 senators identified China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), the China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (SINOPEC), China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), Zhuhai Zhen Rong of China, Tupras of Turkey, the PDVSA trading unit of Venezuela, and Unipec of China, amongst other companies, as potential violators. The administration understands that the business dealings of these companies and others are of far greater consequence than those of Belarusneft.…

The time for an incremental approach has come and gone. Only tough sanctions against meaningful targets will inspire confidence that the administration is committed to exhausting every means short of war to stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon.

(Mark Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies(FDD).
Laura Grossman is a senior research analyst for FDD’s Iran Energy Project.)

 

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD ON IRAN
Robert Dreyfuss

The Diplomat, March 12, 2011

 

In mid-February, the 16 agencies that make up the US intelligence community began circulating a comprehensive new evaluation of Iran’s nuclear programme. The document, a National Intelligence Estimate, is the first on Iran since a controversial 2007 estimate declared that Iran had “halted its nuclear weapons programme.” That determination led to howls of protest from neoconservatives, hawks, and pro-Israel lobbyists in Washington, and so this time Iran watchers collectively held their breath to see whether the new report would reach a different conclusion.

It didn’t.

Unlike the 2007 estimate, the 2011 version won’t be declassified. However, according to press reports—and to statements from senior US officials such as James R. Clapper, the director of national intelligence—the new estimate seems to shy away from concluding that Iran has resumed the pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Instead, it suggests that at the highest levels of Iran’s national security apparatus—which means inside Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s office, within the Supreme National Security Council, and among President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s aides—there’s a serious debate over whether or not to proceed with a militarization of the programme.…

[However], one crucial assumption among the drafters of the US NIE is open to question and could be seriously flawed. This relates to the usefulness of the sanctions imposed on Iran’s economy by the UN Security Council, and the even stronger unilateral measures imposed by the United States and other nations.… According to a US official quoted by the Wall Street Journal, the debate inside Iran has been sparked to a significant degree by the effectiveness of sanctions. “The bottom line is that the intelligence community has concluded that there’s an intense debate inside the Iranian regime on the question of whether or not to move toward a nuclear bomb,” a US official told the Journal. ‘There’s a strong sense that a number of Iranian regime officials know that the sanctions are having a serious effect.’

That’s questionable. It is also unlikely that a covert campaign of sabotage, assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, and the well-publicized Stuxnet computer worm have intimidated Iran into having second thoughts, either. In fact, on the nuclear front at least, things seem to be going Iran’s way.

The revolt in the Arab world has riveted the world’s attention, shifting it away from Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme. The turmoil in the Middle East has driven oil prices up sharply and funnelled billions of dollars into Iran’s coffers, giving Ahmadinejad cash to spread around to ease budget pressures, provide for social welfare programs, and ease the pain of recent cuts in government subsidies for fuel and food. The uncertainty in the oil markets, as a result of instability in Libya and the Arab Gulf states, has weakened calls for an embargo on Iranian oil exports and helped Iran to find new buyers among independent oil traders in Asia. There’s little chance that the United Nations Security Council will consider another round of economic sanctions against Iran.…

Meanwhile, despite pressure from neoconservatives and Republicans in Congress for a tougher policy toward Iran, the Obama administration and the US military have continued to virtually rule out a military strike against Iran’s facilities. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said recently that an attack might have “unintended consequences” that could be destabilizing. And his deputy, Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright told Congress that it would be several years at least before Iran could build and deploy a deliverable weapon, even if wanted to.

As recently as January, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that because of sanctions, sabotage, and technical difficulties, Iran’s enrichment programme had suffered serious, even debilitating setbacks. But in February, reports by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), the International Institution of Strategic Studies (IISS), and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) all concluded that Iran had weathered recent setbacks unscathed.

Reports of those setbacks dated back to December 2009, when Iran took 984 centrifuges off line—six cascades of 164 centrifuges each—for unexplained reasons. In November 2010, Iran halted enrichment entirely for one week, and IAEA observers saw nearly a thousand centrifuges carted off. Much credit was given to the Stuxnet worm, which was jointly developed by Israel and the United States, according to the New York Times, for a reported slowdown in Iran’s production of enriched uranium. But according to ISIS, IISS, FAS, and the IAEA itself, Iran has managed to repair or replace its damaged units, and throughout 2010 it continued to stockpile low-enriched uranium (LEU) at a steady pace.

In fact, according to ISIS, Iran increased its output of LEU from 80 kilograms a month to 115 kilograms a month. In all, the IAEA reports, Iran had stockpiled 3,135 kilograms of LEU by October 2010, when the IAEA carried out a round of inspections, and added another 471 kilograms of LEU by February 2011. And, perhaps in a sign of defiance, when Ali Akbar Salehi resigned as head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization after being named foreign minister he was replaced by Fereydoun Abbasi. Last November, Abbasi was wounded in a bomb attack allegedly carried out by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service.

All of this doesn’t mean that Iranian officials aren’t weighing the pros and cons of plunging ahead with their nuclear programme…but if the United States is making its calculations based on a belief that Iran is feeling so much pain from sanctions…they’re likely wrong.

Indeed, if anything, Iran’s leaders may be feeling overconfident. So far, they’ve managed effectively to put down demonstrations sparked, in part, by contagion from the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Libya. They’ve isolated Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and this week, hardline clerics forced the removal of Mousavi’s ally, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, from his post as chairman of the Assembly of Experts, the elected body that appoints the supreme leader and, theoretically, can oust him. Most worryingly, Tehran has concluded that the fall of long-time US allies such as Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, and the revolts in Libya, Bahrain, Jordan, and elsewhere can only weaken the US position in the region, creating space for Iran to seek new relationships and new alliances.

If so, Iran won’t be in a mood to compromise. At the end of February, Salehi met with Catherine Ashton, the European Union representative, declaring, “I hope that the meeting today will facilitate the work for the upcoming meeting of the P5+1.” Since the last round of talks between Iran and the P5+1, held in late January in Istanbul, however, there has been no sign of renewed momentum for talks.

For the United States, that means that it may be time to go back to the drawing board.

 

CAN THE US BLOCK IRAN’S DRIVE FOR REGIONAL HEGEMONY?
Dan Meridor
Jerusalem Post, April 11, 2011

 

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, the addition of a religious layer to the conflict is new. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah are all religiously-based. When one speaks and acts for God, there is no compromise.… Egypt’s Nasser never said that he fights for Allah against the Jews, nor did the Syrians or Jordanians. Now one hears from Iran…that there cannot be a non-Muslim state here [in Israel].

The most important conflict that is developing in the world today is the Iran-America conflict over the nuclearization of Iran. If Iran does go nuclear, this will have implications for the world order as we know it. First, it may spell the end of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) regime. Some countries, such as Egypt, have said that if Iran goes nuclear, they would too. Others may do it without saying it.

In a world in which more countries are going nuclear, rather than giving up on nuclear weapons or playing within the rules, the ability of the superpowers to intervene will be harder and perhaps non-existent.

The alliance between the West and the Arab Gulf area states has been based on those states giving access to oil—a key element in the world economy. At the same time, the West/America is leading the defense of those regimes against radical movements. Those countries have been concerned with Iranian nuclearization, which would mean Iranian hegemony, coupled with the declared Iranian policy of exporting its revolution. If America and the West cannot protect them, they might go along with Iran. Think of a world where Iran and its allies have such an influence over the price of oil.

Out of the 1.4 billion Muslims, [many] want…a good life and stability, although not necessarily democracy. Yet in all these societies there are minority groups that want to destabilize this way of life and create something new and more religiously observant, as they understand it. They are fighting a battle against Western ideas, such as equality of women, and against basic freedoms, such as freedom of speech. All of them are looking at the Iran-America conflict to see who will win. A victory for Iran is a victory for all these groups. Think of how arrogant Hezbollah may become if Iran wins over America. Think of how arrogant Hamas will be vis-à-vis the PLO.

Iran has added the religious element to the conflict in a very detrimental way, playing its hand through the proxies it has in this area. Hezbollah is a unique phenomenon, a Lebanese party that is also Syrian and Iranian. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah calls himself the personal emissary of Iran’s Supreme Leader. Here you see more evidence of a change from a national to a religious identification. Nasrallah is an Arab and Lebanese by nationality, and a close friend and military ally of a non-Arab, non-Lebanese, Persian Iranian called Ahmadinejad, fighting against other Arabs and Lebanese. This is because Nasrallah and his followers are first and foremost Shiites, which is more important to them than all the other components.…

What is the exact point at which we say that Iran is nuclear? Every day of enrichment, Iran gets closer to its goal. Every day in which they build more missiles with which to launch warheads, they get closer. Every day they proceed with the weaponization process, they get closer. It has not happened as quickly and as successfully as they wanted it to happen, but the world needs to act so that the world order is not totally undermined by an Iranian nuclear capability as well as its possible hegemony within the Muslim world.…

As the Iranians continue with their nuclear plans, they defy the West, the UN, and the International Atomic Energy Agency.… In the end, this battle will determine not only the standing of Iran, but, to a large extent, the standing of the United States and its power and role in the world in the 21st century. Iran says that America is an empire of the past, and that the American economy, the bedrock of American strength, is weak. I believe that America has enough power to reinvent itself economically and restore its power, but the perception that Iran is spreading is just the opposite.

Israel did not need WikiLeaks to know what some neighboring regimes think of Iran. In meetings with an important American politician who was in Israel after having visited six or seven Arab countries regarding the Palestinian-Israeli issue, he said that on average each meeting was 10 percent about the Palestinian issue and 90% about Iran. If the countries which oppose Iran get weaker, it is better for Iran. Egypt was one of those countries which stood against Iran with the West. We do not want to see the strengthening of the radical axis and the weakening of the moderate axis.

The role of the free world is to support the Iranian opposition. Not that support will immediately bring them victory, but support is the main source of their confidence in the possibility of victory. Many people who lived in the Soviet Union and fought against the Soviet regime to let the Jews out have said that as long as nobody in the world knew about them, from the time of Stalin to Brezhnev, there was little chance of success. When the world started to know and react, the Jews knew there was a chance of success and this reinforced their struggle.

It is important that Iran’s perception does not gain a hold on the thinking of people in the Middle East and around the world. If America takes an openly stated, clear lead and coalesces with its natural partners in this campaign, this can improve America’s role in the world order that all of us want to see. Even though we all have different state interests, we are part of the camp that America has been leading for the last 70 years in terms of values, way of life, and democracy. It is important to us that this camp not lose its power in the world, and that is why a strong America is a very clear Israeli interest.…

(Dan Meridor is Israel’s deputy prime minister
and minister of intelligence and atomic energy.)