Few Hopes for Iran Breakthrough

February 11, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 08 (IPS) – Despite an agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) to resume long-delayed talks about Tehran’s nuclear programme in Kazakhstan at the end of this month, few observers here believe that any breakthrough is in the offing.That belief was reinforced Thursday when Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appeared to reject a U.S. proposal, most recently put forward by Vice President Joseph Biden at a major security conference in Munich last week, to hold direct bilateral talks.

While Iran’s foreign minister, Ali Akhbar Salehi, initially welcomed the offer, provided Washington desisted from its “threatening rhetoric that (all options are) on the table,” Khamenei said in a speech to air force officers Thursday that such talks “would solve nothing".

“You are pointing a gun at Iran saying you want to talk,” he said. “The Iranian nation will not be frightened by the threats.”

His rebuff confirmed to some observers here that serious negotiations – whether between Iran and the P5 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China) plus German or in bilateral talks between Tehran and Washington – are unlikely to take place before Iran’s presidential election in June.

“(I)t simply doesn’t lie in (Khamenei’s) nature to agree to talks from a position of weakness – and certainly not without the protection of having the talks be conducted by an Iranian President who he can …blame for any potential failure in the talks,” wrote Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), on the ‘Daily Beast’ website Thursday.

“Khamenei would rather wait till after the Iranian elections, it seems, in order to both find ways to shift the momentum back to Iran’s side and to hide behind Iran’s new President in the talks,” according to Parsi, author of two award-winning books on U.S.-Iranian relations.

He was referring to the widespread notion here that the cumulative impact of U.S.-led international economic sanctions against Iran, as well as the raging civil war in Syria, Iran’s closest regional ally, has seriously weakened Tehran and “forced” it back to the table, if not quite yet to make the concessions long demanded by the administration of President Barack Obama and its allies.

Those include ending Tehran’s enrichment of uranium to 20 percent; shipping its existing 20-percent enriched stockpile out of the country; closure of its underground Fordow enrichment facility; acceptance of a highly intrusive inspections regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); and the clearing up of all outstanding IAEA questions related to possible past military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme.

In exchange for those steps, according to U.S. officials, Washington – and presumably the other P5+1 members — would be prepared to forgo further UN. sanctions against Iran; assure the supply of nuclear fuel for Tehran’s Research Reactor (TRR), which produces medical isotopes; facilitate services to Iran’s aging civilian aircraft fleet; and provide other “targeted sanctions relief” that, however, would not include oil- and banking-related sanctions that have been particularly damaging to Iran’s economy over the past two years.

Gradual relief from those more-important sanctions would follow only after full and verifiable implementation of Iran’s side of the bargain.

Until such a deal is struck, however, Washington is committed to increasing the pressure, according to U.S. officials who say the administration remains committed to a strategy of preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon by military means, if necessary.

Indeed, in what one official described as “a significant turning of the screw”, the administration announced Wednesday that it had begun implementing new Congressionally mandated sanctions that would effectively force Iran’s foreign oil purchasers into barter arrangements. To avoid sanctions, buyers would have to pay into local accounts from which Iran could then buy locally made goods.

It’s generally accepted that such so-called “crippling sanctions” are responsible, at least in substantial part, for the 50-percent decline in the value of the riyal, galloping inflation, and a major increase in unemployment in recent months.

At the same time, however, there is growing doubt here that the sanctions are achieving their purpose – forcing Iran to accept the stringent curbs on its nuclear programme demanded by the U.S. – or that they are likely to achieve that purpose within the next 18-24 months.

That is the time frame in which most experts believe Tehran could achieve “breakout capacity” – the ability to be able to build a nuclear bomb very quickly – if it decided to do so.

Indeed, in recent weeks, Iran began installing advanced centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility that, if fully activated, could significantly accelerate the rate of enrichment. The move was seen as an effort by Tehran to strengthen its position before the P5+1 meeting in Almaty Feb. 26.

Moreover, the assumption that the economic woes imposed by the sanctions would drive such a deep wedge between Tehran’s leadership and the population that the regime risked collapse is also increasingly in question.

While a majority (56 percent) of respondents said in December that sanctions have hurt Iranians’ livelihoods “a great deal", according to a poll of Iranian opinion released by the Gallup organisation here Thursday, 63 percent said they believed Iran should continue developing its nuclear programme. Only 17 percent disagreed.

When asked who should be blamed for the sanctions, only 10 percent of respondents cited Iran itself; 70 percent named either the U.S. (47 percent), Israel (nine percent); Western European countries (seven percent); or the U.N. (seven percent).

“This may indicate that sanctions alone are not having the intended effect of persuading Iranian residents and country leaders to change their stance on the level of international oversight of their nuclear program,” noted a Gallup analysis of the results.

Its credibility, however, was questioned by some Iran experts who noted that increased security measures taken by the regime may affect the willingness of respondents to speak frankly to pollsters.

In light of the most recent developments, including Khamenei’s rejection of Biden’s offer and the installation of the new centrifuges at Natanz, Iran hawks here are urging yet tougher sanctions and moves to make the eventual use of force more credible – appeals that are certain to be greatly amplified next month when the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) holds its annual convention here

At the same time, however, there appears to be a growing conviction within the foreign-policy elite that ever-increasing sanctions and threatening military action are unlikely to work, and that Washington should offer be more forthcoming about sanctions relief to get a deal.

Indeed, the administration’s commitment to resorting to military action, if necessary, to prevent Iran from obtaining a weapon is also increasingly being questioned, as a growing number of foreign-policy “greybeards” are calling for a strategy of “deterrence” if and when Iran reaches breakout capacity.

“In the end, war is too costly, unpredictable and dangerous to be a practical option,” noted Bruce Riedel, a former top CIA Middle East and South Asia analyst who was in charge of preparing Afghanistan policy on Obama’s transition team in 2009 and remains close to the White House from his perch at the Brookings Institution.

The “stark choice” between a diplomatic solution and war that Obama’s commitment to prevention has created, he wrote to the “Iran Primer” this week, “is a mistake".

“But there is a good chance that (Secretary of State John) Kerry and Obama will bail themselves out of this trap by re-opening the door to containment, although they would probably call it something else.”

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Diplomacy, Featured, Middle East, Nuclear Weapons, Politics Tagged With: ,

Corruption Case Raises Iran Domestic Tensions

February 4, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

AJ Correspondents

DOHA, Qatar, Feb 04 (Al Jazeera) – Iran’s president has accused the brother of the speaker of parliament of corruption, increasing tensions between two of the country’s most powerful political figures in the run-up to presidential elections in the country.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his cabinet were in parliament on Sunday for the impeachment hearing of Abdolreza Sheikholeslami, the labour minister, when he levelled the accusations against Fazel Larijani, the speaker’s brother.

He played an inaudible audio recording in which Fazel allegedly says he used his family’s status for economic gains, but both brothers dismissed the allegations made by Ahmadinejad.

“Our problem is that our president does not observe the basics of proper behaviour,” Ali Larjani, the speaker, said, retorting to the president’s comments, adding that it had nothing to do with Sheikholeslami’s impeachment process.

“Actually it’s a good thing that you played this tape today, so that the people better understand your character.”

Al Jazeera’s Soraya Lennie, reporting from Tehran, said: “Most of (the reactions) have been quite negative and critical of the president . One parliamentarian said ‘the president is not acting in the manner befitting his post’.”

Request denied

During Sunday’s impeachment hearing, Ali Larijani told Ahmadinejad that parliament was not the proper place for the corruption discussion and that he should take it any accusation to the relevant authorities.

He also denied a request by Ahmadinejad to speak again.

Ahmadinejad claims that the audio recording of a conversation between Saeed Mortazavi, an associate of Ahmadinejad, and Fazel Larijani was proof of Fazel implying that he could use his brothers’ influence to remove obstacles in return for involvement in business endeavours.

The Larijani family is one of the country’s most influential poltical families. Sadeq Larjani, Iran’s judiciary chief, is a brother of Fazel and Ali.

Fazel told Iran’s Fars news agency that he would file a legal complaint against Ahmadinejad and Mortazavi for “spreading lies and disturbing public opinion”.

“This was a conspiratorial step and hypocritical action taken so that Mortazavi could use it as leverage,” he said. “I’m not the first person to be attacked by these Mafia-like individuals.”

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2013.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Middle East, Politics, Report, Transparency Tagged With: ,

Reformists Ambivalent about Participation in Iranian Election

February 3, 2013 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

iran_protester-629x419

Presidential elections in Iran have historically been used by reformists to push for a more open political environment. Credit: Garry Knight/cc by 2.0

Yasaman Baji

TEHRAN, Jan 30 (IPS) – With the June 2013 presidential election drawing closer, Iran’s reformists are debating what they should do in the face of the severe restrictions to which their leaders and political parties have been subject since the popular protests that roiled the country after the last election four years ago.While some reformists have insisted they will boycott the election, others are arguing that it could offer a new opportunity for political organising regardless of whether the Guardian Council, the body that vets potential candidates, will permit their well-known political leaders to run.

Still others say much depends on how the competition among their conservative rivals shakes out in the coming months. Since no conservative or hard-line candidate has yet stepped forward to announce his official candidacy, they argue it is too soon to decide what position to take and that the political environment could yet change in unexpected ways before the election.

Presidential elections in Iran have historically been used by reformists both to push for a more open political environment and to demonstrate their ability to mobilise popular support, particularly among the urban middle classes.

This year, however, reformists appear more ambivalent, especially given the continuing house arrests of their 2009 presidential candidates, Mir Hossein Mussavi and Mehdi Karrubi, and the imprisonment of other key reformist leaders, including former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and the former chair of the Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Relations Committee, Mohsen Mirdamadi.

Their release – as well as those of other political prisoners – has been a top priority for many reformists, even as a condition for their participation in the June election.

But some reformist leaders disagree. Former interior minister Abdullah Nuri believes that addressing the deteriorating economic situation and the continuing external threat against Iran posed by the U.S.-led sanctions regime is more urgent than the release of their political comrades from detention.

In addition, Nuri worries that the insistence on the release of political prisoners before the reformists agree to participate in the election will force them to play a game under rules set by their foes. “We should take the first step and show our opponents that we are determined and serious,” Nuri told the monthly Aseman in October.

Former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, who supported Karrubi in the 2009 election, has taken a similar position.

Also writing in Aseman, he recently asked: “Is it logical to ask our rivals to fulfill our ultimate demands so that we can win the competition with them? If political prisoners were to be released (and)… economic, cultural, and political situation and domestic and foreign policy be improved (before the election), then why should the reformists win power?

"These are in effect the reformists’ future programmes, and they must make an effort to fulfill them when they reach power and not make them conditions for participation in elections.”

Such words, along with rumours regarding the possible candidacy of former first vice president Mohammadreza Aref and former minister of education Mohammad Ali Najafi, have given the impression that at least some reformists are seriously considering participating in the election.

Some reformist groups have even declared that former president Mohammad Khatami will be their candidate despite the latter’s declaration last summer that he will not run.

Even the mention of Khatami’s name as a possible candidate, however, has unsettled the hard-line establishment. Iranian state television has gone so far as showing Khatami – something it had not done for years – and calling him a “companion of sedition". Sedition is a term routinely used to refer to the protests that followed the contested results of the 2009 presidential election.

“Companions of sedition” could participate in the election, the television programme said, only if they renounced or recanted their support of sedition.

In December, the spokesman for the Guardian Council, the body that determines who is eligible to run for office, appeared to echo that view, insisting that the disavowal of sedition will make it more likely that candidates will receive favourable consideration.

The call for renunciation by institutions close to the Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, however, was immediately rejected by key reformists. Cleric Mussavi Khoeiniha, the publisher of the now-banned daily Salaam, pointed out that the reformists had made former Prime Minister Mussavi their candidate in 2009.

“Now we should renounce our support in order to participate in the election so that they can repeat the same story? What kind of political logic would allow us to do this?” he asked, adding that that he is opposed to the view that reformists should participate in the election at any cost.

One well-known reformist who did not want to be identified told IPS that the Leader and his close advisors don’t believe the country is facing such a serious crisis that they need reformists’ participation in the election as a means to enhance the legitimacy of the regime and promote national unity in the face of external pressures.

“They only need the people we can bring to the polls and not us. Why should we then place our votes in their pockets?” he said.

Khatami himself has ignored demands on him to renounce his support for the 2009 protests and has instead, along with former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, called repeatedly for a free and fair election.

In doing so, he has chosen to ignore Leader Khamenei’s criticism of “those who keep saying” that elections must be free. “In which country elections are freer than Iran? Be careful your words do not discourage people from participating in elections,” Khameni has warned.

Khatami reacted to the Leader’s criticism by saying that a free election simply means an election which is not engineered in advance for the purpose of achieving specific results.

“They say we will not give permission; you should participate in the election but only the way we want you to,” Khatami scoffed in a recent meeting with a reformist party.

Still, Khatami has remained vocal and has used the pre-election political environment to repeatedly sound the message that the reformists have not gone away and remain an important voice for articulating unmet needs and demands for political and social reform in the country.

These demands for a more open political and cultural environment tells Abbas Abdi, a well-known reformist journalist, that reformists should do as they did in the 1997 presidential election when Khatami’s surprise victory shocked the conservative establishment.

“Our understanding should be that there is an election, and we should participate in it. In all likelihood, we will not receive a lot of votes but maybe we will,” Abdi stated in an interview with the daily Etemaad.

A university professor who asked not to be identified was even more sanguine. “Even if there is no hope in the benevolence of the Leader, there must be hope in his limitations,” he told IPS.

Pointing to Khamenei’s aversion to being seen as interfering in the political process, the professor believes that, “Between Khamenei’s pretense of impartiality and hidden interventions, a space is created for the activities of political groups, including the reformists.”

As of now, however, it is not clear whether the reformists believe such a space exists and, if it does, whether they will even be allowed to try to seize it.

This week’s arrests of more than a dozen of young journalists who mostly work for reformist dailies and weeklies may be an omen that the traditionally more open pre-election environment may not be repeated this time.

While the charges against these journalists have not yet been announced, indications are that their arrests are not for their writings and relate to their alleged illegal contacts with “anti-revolutionary” Persian-language media outside of Iran.

The move suggests that the current political establishment in Iran remains highly sensitive and continues to treat the reformists not as competitors with different domestic and foreign policy outlooks but as a security challenge to the survival of the Islamic regime.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Elections, Middle East, Politics, Report Tagged With: ,

Avoiding the Slippery Slope to War with Iran

November 27, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jasmin Ramsey

WASHINGTON, Nov 27 (IPS) – Amidst reports that stalled negotiations with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme may soon be jump-started, many here are arguing that a mutually negotiated settlement remains the most effective option for resolving the dispute and averting the threat of war.“We believe there is time and clearly there is an interest from all parties to reach a diplomatic solution,” said Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, co-host with the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) of a conference here today titled, “Making Diplomacy Work”.

“Diplomacy is the obvious option, but it’s not obvious how to make diplomacy succeed,” said NIAC president Trita Parsi, who chaired the event that aired on C-SPAN Monday.

The U.S. and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Iranian revolution. The conflict has been mostly cold, but the threat of war spiked this year following a pressure campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Obama administration has set the U.S.’s “red line” at development of a nuclear weapon, but the Israeli red line is Iran’s acquirement of nuclear weapon-building “capability”, or Iran crossing into a so-called “zone of immunity” where it can create a nuclear weapon at Fordow, the underground uranium enrichment facility that’s impenetrable by Israeli air strikes.

Asked how he would advise the president if the Israelis carried out a strike against Iran, keynote speaker Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Adviser under President Jimmy Carter, said he would have appropriately advised the president before that point and that U.S. national security should not follow that of another country.

“It’s very important for clarity to exist in a relationship between friends. I don’t think there’s any implicit obligation for the United States to follow, like a stupid mule, whatever the Israelis do,” said the famed geostrategist.

Jim Walsh, a nonproliferation expert at MIT, stated that military strikes against Iran would compel it to expel International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) inspectors and dash for a nuclear weapon as a deterrent against future attacks.

“What do we get if there’s war?” asked Walsh. “An Iran with nuclear weapons.”

In contention with the Israeli red line is the notion that Iran already has the ability to create a nuclear weapon, should it make the decision to do so, according to experts.

“Since 2007, Western and U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran is nuclear capable,” said Kimball, who previously told IPS that the objective should thus be aimed at affecting Iran’s will.

“We must be honest about this, there’s no difference between a centrifuge at Fordow and Natanz, it’s only harder to bomb Fordow,” said Walsh.

Walsh also noted that “mistrust” between the U.S. and Iran and a focus on singular issues are impediments to the diplomatic process.

“They both want to get a deal around issue of 20-percent (enriched uranium), they want to play small ball, get something and push the can down the road. This is a mistake. You are shrinking the negotiating space,” noted Walsh.

Ahmed Sadri, a professor of Islamic World Studies at Wolf University, argued that the next few months provide the perfect window of opportunity for the U.S. and Iran to seriously move the diplomatic process forward.

“Now is the right time, after American elections and right before Iranian elections,” he said, adding that “if there is no relationship (between the U.S. and Iran), negative feelings are reinforced.

“Leader Ali Khamenei has a very conspiratorial and paranoid mind…But just because you’re paranoid that there’s a crocodile under your bed doesn’t mean there isn’t a crocodile under your bed,” said Sadri.

According to Rolf Ekéus, the former head of the United Nation Special Commission on Iraq, sanctions-relief must be on the table to provide Iran with enough incentive to give up its alleged ambitions.

“Iraq was praised by the IAEA…but it turned out they were cheating, that’s why one had to create another arrangement…containing a very important U.N. dimension that respected boundaries and the independence of Iraq,” said the Swedish diplomat.

“This was a functioning system which allowed good behaviour to get sanctions relief; bad behaviour was met with tough language from the Security Council, not individual governments, Israel or anyone,” said Ekéus.

Ekéus also emphasised that “regime change must be taken off the table” as Iranians should be “left to take care of it” and the U.S. should stop “hiding behind the P5+1” and engage Iran on mutual regional interests.

“Iran is huge now, its influence is enormous, but it’s shaky all over. The P5+1 is not the appropriate player if you want to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

Brzezinski emphasised that the diplomatic process is not dead, but listed options the U.S. should consider if negotiations completely fail.

The worst choice would be a U.S. joint or Israeli attack, which would “produce a regional crisis and widespread hatred particularly for the U.S.,” said Brzezinski, dismissing it as an “act of utter irresponsibility and potentially significant immorality of the U.S.”

The least objectionable of the worst options – all of which should be considered only after the U.S. failed to achieve its desired outcome through negotiations – would be a type of containment.

“We combine continued painful, but not strangulating sanctions – and be very careful in that distinction – with clear political support for the emergence of eventual democracy in Iran…and at the same time an explicit security guarantee for U.S.-friendly Middle Eastern states, including Israel, modeled on the very successful, decades-lasting protection of our European allies from an overwhelming Soviet nuclear threat,” he said.

Brzezinski added that Iran has not endured as a sovereign state for centuries because it was motivated by suicidal tendencies like initiating a war that would invite a devastating U.S. attack.

“The sooner we get off the notion that at some point we may strike Iran, the better the chances for the negotiations and the better the chance for stability if we couple it with a clear commitment to the security of the region, designed to neutralise any potential, longer-range, Iranian nuclear threat,” he said.

*Jasmin Ramsey blogs at IPS’s foreign policy blog, www.lobelog.com .

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Conflict, Featured, Foreign Affairs, Peace, Politics, United States Tagged With: ,

IAEA Data on Sensitive Iranian Stockpile Mislead News Media

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Gareth Porter

Nov 20 () – News stories on the latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report suggested new reasons to fear that Iran is closer to a “breakout” capability than ever before, citing a nearly 50-percent increase in its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium and the installation of hundreds of additional centrifuges at the Fordow enrichment installation. But the supposedly dramatic increase in the stockpile of uranium that could theoretically be used to enrich to weapons grade is based on misleading figures in the Nov. 16 IAEA report. The actual increase in the level of that stockpile appears to be 20 percent.

The coverage of the completion of the installation of 2,800 centrifuges at Fordow, meanwhile, continued the media practice of ignoring the linkage between large numbers of idle centrifuges and future negotiations on the Iranian nuclear programme.

The latest round of media coverage of the Iran issue again highlights the failure of major news outlets to reflect the complexity and political subtleties of the Iranian enrichment programme.

The IAEA report created understandable confusion about the stockpile of uranium enriched to 20-percent – also called 20 percent LEU (low enriched uranium). It does not use the term “stockpile” at all. Instead, it says Iran produced 43 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium during the three months since the August report and cited a total of 135 kg of 20-percent uranium now “in storage”, compared with only 91.4 kg in August.

Based on those figures, Reuters suggested that Iran might already be two-thirds of the way to the level of 200-250 kg that “experts say” could be used to build a bomb. The Guardian’s Julian Borger wrote that Iran was enriching uranium at a pace that would reach the Israeli “red line” in just seven months.

But analysis of the figures in the last two reports shows that the IAEA total for 20-percent LEU “in storage” actually includes 20-percent LEU that has been sent to the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant in Esfahan for conversion to powder for fuel plates to be used by Iran’s medical reactor but not yet converted.

The November IAEA report includes the information that, as of Sep. 26 – six weeks after the data in the August report were collected – the total amount of 20-percent LEU fed into conversion process in Esfahan stood at 82.7 kg.

That figure is 11.5 kg more than the total of 71.25 kg fed into the conversion process as of the August report.

The difference between the two indicates that 11.5 kg had been taken out of the stockpile and sent to the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant at Esfahan during September 2012.

In another indicator of the difference between the IAEA’s “in storage” figure and the actual stockpile size, the current IAEA report gives the figure of 73.7 kg of 20-percent LEU from the Fordow facility "withdrawn and verified” by the IAEA over the entire period of such enrichment. That total is 23.7 kg higher than the total of 50 kg from Fordow “withdrawn and verified” given in the August report.

A total of 23.7 kg of 20-percent LEU was evidently taken out of the stockpile available for higher level enrichment and sent for conversion to powder for fuel plates during the last quarter.

The current IAEA report nevertheless uses the same overall total of 96.3 kg of 20-percent LEU fed into the conversion process that it used in the August report.

Subtracting the 23.7 kg additional uranium “withdrawn and verified” by the IAEA during the quarter from the total 20-percent enriched uranium production of 43 kg during the quarter reduces the amount added to the stockpile of 20-percent LEU to 19.3 kg.

Adding the 19.3 kg to the August total of 91.4 kg gives a total for the stockpile of 110.7 kg – a 20-percent increase over the August level rather than the nearly 50-percent increase suggested by news stories.

The IAEA declined to respond to the substance of an IPS e-mail query citing the apparent inconsistencies in the data presented in the last two reports. IAEA Press Officer Greg Webb said in an e-mail that safeguards department officials who had been sent the query “reply that the report is clear and accurate as it stands".

However, the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, D.C., which normally supports everything in IAEA reports, said in a Nov. 16 commentary that the current report “does not make it clear if Iran has sent additional near 20 percent LEU hexafluoride to the Esfahan conversion site after August 2012.”

The Washington think tank added, “However, it if did, the near 20 percent LEU remains in the form of hexafluoride.” The comment implied that the IAEA may have included 23.7 kg of 20-percent enriched uranium sent to the Fuel Plate Fabrication Plant during the quarter as being “in storage”.

The IAEA report also said Iran had halted its conversion of 20-percent LEU for fuel plates during the quarter, although it did not indicate how long the halt might last.

Reuters cited that halt as “another potentially worrying development”. But in light of the actual level of the stockpile, that halt could simply reflect the fact that Tehran is content to keep the figure from rising too far above 100 kg.

The spokesman for the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Affairs Committee, Hossein Naqavi, said Oct. 6 that Iran was taking “a serious and concrete confidence-building measure” by converting some of the 20-percent LEU into powder for fuel plates.

More surprisingly, an Israel official leaked to an Israeli daily that Iran was believed to have consciously avoided allowing its stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium to go much beyond 110 kg by diverting much of it for conversion to fuel for its scientific research reactor.

Citing “defense sources”, Ha’aretz military correspondent Amos Harel wrote Oct. 9 that the Israeli policymakers had new information they considered “highly reliable” that each time new production of 20-percent enriched uranium could have brought the total above 130 kg, Iran had “diverted 15 or 20 kg to scientific use".

Harel indicated that the new information was the justification for the Israeli position that the threat of Iranian threat of a breakout capability had receded for many months.

Media coverage of the addition of the last of 2,800 centrifuges added to Fordow enrichment facility over the past year played up the idea that the centrifuges could become operational at any time. “They can be started any day,” a “senior diplomat” from an unnamed country was quoted by Reuters as saying.

The fact that half of those centrifuges have not been put into operation was treated as a mystery. The Los Angeles Times said, “For unknown reasons, Iran has not begun feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into more than half of the machines….”

None of the stories mentioned the obvious connection between Iran’s continuing to add centrifuges but not putting them into operation and its maneuvering for a deal with the United States.

Iran has been suggesting both publicly and privately throughout 2012 that it is open to an agreement under which it would halt all 20-percent enrichment and agree to other constraints on its enrichment programme in return for relief from harsh economic sanctions now levied on the Iranian economy.

Iranian strategists evidently view the unused enrichment capacity at Fordow facility as an incentive for the United States and the P5+1 to seek such an agreement.

*Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Analysis, Energy, Middle East, Nuclear Weapons Tagged With: , ,

U.S. Escalation Against Iran Would Cost Global Economy Billions

November 17, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Jasmin Ramsey

WASHINGTON, Nov 16 (IPS) – The world economy would bear substantial costs if the United States took steps to significantly escalate the conflict with Iran over its controversial nuclear programme, according to the findings of a Federation of American Scientists’ (FAS) special report released here Friday.Based on consulations with a group of nine bipartisan economic and national security experts, the findings showed the effects of U.S. escalatory action against Iran could range from 64 billion to 1.7 trillion dollars in total losses for the world economy.

The least likely scenario of de-escalation, which would require U.S. unilateral steps showing it was willing to make concessions to resolve the standoff, would result in an estimated global economic benefit of 60 billion dollars.

“The study’s findings suggest that there are potential costs to any number of U.S.-led actions and, in general, the more severe the action, the greater the possible costs,” Mark Jansson, FAS’s special projects director, told IPS.

“That being said, even among experts, there is tremendous uncertainty about what might happen at the higher end of the escalation ladder,” added Jansson, the second author of the report after Charles P. Blair, an FAS senior fellow on state and non-state threats.

The six plausible scenarios of U.S.-led actions against Iran included isolation and a Gulf blockade, which would include U.S. moves to “curtail any exports of refined oil products, natural gas, energy equipment and services”, the banning of the Iranian energy sector worldwide (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 325 billion dollars), and a comprehensive bombing campaign that would also target Iran’s ability to retaliate (incurring an estimated global economic cost of 1.082 trillion dollars).

The report is explicit in not endorsing any particular policy recommendation, although others are not so reticent.

United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI) and the neoconservative Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) are leading hardline Washington-based advocacy groups arguing for sweeping economic measures against Iran.

“The White House must build on this momentum, intensifying economic warfare in an effort to shake the Islamic Republic to its core,” wrote FDD executive director Mark Dubowitz in June.

Paul Sullivan, an economics professor specialising in Middle East security at Georgetown University, told IPS that, “The fact that the hardest core of the neoconservative ‘strategists’ have not thought through the costs of escalating conflict with Iran is proof of their group intellectual inadequacy.

“The main effects to the U.S. if there is escalation is through the price of oil and increased military and other national security costs," said Sullivan, who evaluated the scenarios as an expert but could not comment on the specific figures due to Chatham House Rules.

“If there is an attack on Iran, with the expected counterattacks the price of oil could quite easily go to 250 dollars or higher. This could push the U.S. right back into a recession,” he said.

As tensions rise over the decades-long dispute over Iran’s controversial nuclear programme, analysts are increasingly examining a range of costs associated with escalating the so-far cold conflict between the U.S. and Iran.

The Iran Project Report released in September showed that the cost of Iranian retaliation would be “felt over the longer term” by the U.S. and could result in a regional war.

“In addition to the financial costs of conducting military attacks against Iran, which would be significant…there would likely be near-term costs associated with Iranian retaliation, through both direct and surrogate asymmetrical attacks,” according to the report, which was endorsed by a long list of high-level, bipartisan national security advisers.

The Iran Project report’s findings support the notion that greater escalatory action will result in greater costs – shown in financial terms by the FAS findings: “A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war,” notes the report.

An Oct. 19 event on the economic and military considerations of war with Iran at the Center for the National Interest (CNI) offered similar assessments.

“You could lose eight million barrels a day of production, and it would not come back quickly,” said J. Robinson West, who has also held senior positions in the White House, the Energy Department, and the Pentagon under various Republican administrations. “We believe the price of oil will go above 200 dollars a barrel.”

On Oct. 20, the New York Times reported that the U.S. and Iran had “agreed in principle for the first time” to direct negotiations.

But Tehran and Washington did have “limited bilateral talks” in 2009 “when the Iranian leadership saw a potential in the newly elected Obama administration to address some of Iran’s bottom lines regarding the country’s right to enrichment,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar and affiliate graduate faculty at the University of Hawai’i, told IPS.

On Wednesday, President Obama denied the Times report but did not dismiss the notion of one-on-one talks. In fact, he strongly suggested that the U.S. would seriously engage if the Iranians proved their sincerity.

“If Iran is serious about wanting to resolve this, they’ll be in a position to resolve it,” he said during his first press conference following his successful presidential re-election campaign.

“The situation is different now insofar as the Iranian leadership is much more sceptical of Obama’s words regarding his desire to resolve the nuclear issue instead of going for the Islamic regime’s jugular after a show of desire for talks,” said Farhi.

“To be sure, there will always be hardline naysayers in Tehran no matter what. A similar situation exists in the U.S.. But if the past is any guide, Tehran will come around and abandon its current resistance to bilateral talks if it sees a potential for breakthrough,” she said.

Jasmin Ramsey blogs at IPS’s foreign policy blog, www.lobelog.com.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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Police Case for Iranian Bomb Plot Based on Tainted Evidence – Part 2*

August 29, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Aug 28 (IPS) – The "Special Cell" of the Delhi police has identified an Iranian, Houshang Afghan Irani, as the man it believes carried out the Feb. 13 car bombing at the Israeli embassy in New Delhi that injured the wife of an embassy official. The police believe three other Iranians were also involved in the plot.But major questions about the integrity of evidence put forward to prove the existence of an Iranian bomb plot cast doubt on that claim, which is the centrepiece of the Israeli accusation that Iran has been waging a campaign of terrorism against Israelis in as many as 20 countries.

Only Indian journalist Syed Mohammed Ahmad Kazmi has been officially charged in the case, and even the treatment of Irani and the other Iranians as suspects depends very heavily on "disclosure statements" supposedly made by Kazmi but denounced by the journalist as police fabrications.

Although the Special Cell (SC) also claims to have forensic evidence of Irani’s link to the bombing, the evidence appears to be tainted by improper police procedures.

A central problem for the SC case is that it has no eyewitness testimony for its contention that Irani planted the bomb on the Israeli embassy car.

A hotel security camera showed that Irani left the hotel the morning of the explosion wearing a black jacket. Irani had also rented a black Honda Karizma. But eyewitness Gopal Krishanan, who was driving the car that was directly behind the embassy car and thus had a clear view of the motorcycle rider when he attached the bomb to the rear of the car, said he was certain the rider had a red motorcycle and was wearing a red helmet and red jacket.

The police were convinced by his testimony. Tal Yehoshua-Koren, who was injured in the attack but was able to get to the Israeli embassy without assistance, later told investigators she thought the attacker had been riding a black motorcycle and wearing a black jacket and helmet. A senior police officer involved in the case told the Indian Express, however, that Yehoshua-Koren could not be certain of the colour of the motorcycle.

The police continued to search for a red motorcycle after obtaining her statement, as was widely reported in the Indian press. Only after the SC decided that Irani was the bomber did the police switch to the position that the bomber had been riding a black motorcycle and wearing a black helmet and jacket.

Irani became a target of the investigation after the SC learned that a phone number associated with Masoud Sedaghat Zadeh, one of the three Iranians staying in a Bangkok house where an explosion occurred Feb. 14, had allegedly contacted the Indian mobile phone number being used by Irani.

The charge sheet does not include documentation for the claim that Irani’s phone had been called by that of the accused in the Bangkok explosion. And Irani’s receipts shown in the charge sheet for the moped purchased in April 2011 and for the motorcycle rented in early 2012 list Indian mobile phone numbers different from the one cited as having been contacted by Zadeh.

Irani made no effort to hide his identity in either of those transactions, so there would be no reason for him to write a false number on the receipt.

The police claim to have recovered from Irani’s hotel room seven items on which the government’s Central Forensic Science Laboratory found traces of TNT – the same explosive that the bomb affixed to the embassy car contained.

But the SC violated several police procedures in regard to that evidence, suggesting that it may have been planted by the Special Cell.

It was not until Feb. 29, sixteen days after Irani left the hotel, that the room was sealed by police. Even worse, another two weeks passed before it was actually inspected by the Special Cell on Mar. 13, according to the charge sheet. Ordinarily, the passage of that much time between the date the items were allegedly left behind and their discovery would call into question the authenticity of the evidence.

On Jul. 28, a few days before the charge sheet was made public, the manager of the hotel produced an occupancy chart showing that Irani’s room had not been used during the 16 days between his departure and the police order to seal the room.

The chart, which the hotel manager had plenty of time to prepare for the police, makes the highly unlikely claim that Irani’s room was not occupied by any guest during the 16-day period. The effort to show that the room had not been altered after Irani left it still fails to address the awkward question of how so much evidence could have been found in Irani’s room long after it would have been cleaned up by hotel staff.

The belated occupancy chart only makes the forensic evidence claimed by the police appear even more suspicious.

The Kazmi "disclosures" portray an alleged plot that lacked either clear delineation of responsibility for reconnaissance of the embassy or the communication one would expect between the plotters in Tehran and their one local collaborator in Delhi during the crucial months before the explosion.

At one point in a statement attributed to Kazmi but not signed by him, he is portrayed as having returned to Delhi from a trip to Tehran in January 2011 committed to intensive research on "security arrangements and the movement of vehicles and routes travelled to Israeli Embassy".

In discussing Irani’s visit to Delhi in April 2011, however, it does not mention any debriefing of Irani by Kazmi on such reconnaissance. Instead, Irani is said to have carried out the entire reconnaissance operation, with Kazmi’s help, all over again.

When Kazmi’s disclosure comes to the visit of his Tehran contacts, Seyed Ali Mehdiansadr and Reza Abolghasemi, to Delhi in May and June 2011, it makes no reference to any discussion of the reconnaissance Irani had supposedly already done. The two visitors and Kazmi are said to have repeated the same reconnaissance on the embassy yet again, even noting the licence plate numbers of embassy cars.

An even more dramatic divergence from a coherent account of a terror plot is found in the long final Kazmi statement dated Mar. 23 but unsigned by Kazmi. In describing Kazmi’s trip to Tehran in June 2011 the statement says Kazmi’s alleged key contact in the plot, Mehdiansadr, "inquired about the progress of the task assigned me".

But the disclosure statement then says the "task" in question was not gathering detailed information on potential Israeli Embassy targets, but sending "reports on the political developments in the Gulf region, like Syria, Bahrain, Iraq, etc".

In July and August, the same disclosure recounts, Kazmi travelled to Dubai and Syria, and when he communicated with his Tehran contacts, it was not about intelligence for a bombing plan but about his Dubai trip.

Kazmi’s disclosure asserts, in fact, that he did not report to his Iranian contacts on any intelligence gathered on the Israeli Embassy between June 2011 and January 2012, despite allegedly having been given a mobile phone specifically for that purpose.

The questionable character of the police case that the four Iranians conspired on the Delhi bombing does not rule out the possibility that it was an Iranian government operation, but it does indicate that SC investigators could not find convincing evidence of such an Iranian role.

*This story is the second in a three-part series, “The Delhi Car Bombing: How the Police Built a False Case”, in which award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissects the Delhi police accusation against an Indian journalist and four Iranians of involvement in the Feb. 13 bombing of an Israeli embassy car.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in U.S. national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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The Endless War: Saudi Arabia Goes on the Offensive Against Iran

August 27, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / Oilprice.com

By. Felix Imonti for Oilprice.com

Saudi Arabia has gone on the offensive against Iran to protect its interests.  Their involvement in Syria is the first battle in what is going to be a long bloody conflict that will know no frontiers or limits.

Ongoing Disorders in the island kingdom of Bahrain since February of 2011 have set off alarm bells in Riyadh.  The Saudis are convinced that Iran is directing the protests and fear that the problems will spill over the twenty-five kilometer long COSWAY into  oil rich Al-Qatif, where The bulk of the two million Shia in the kingdom are concentrated.  So far, the Saudis have not had to deal with demonstrations a serious as those in Bahrain, but success in the island kingdom could encourage the protestors to become more violent.

Protecting the oil is the first concern of the government.  Oil is the sole source of the national wealth and it is managed by the state owned Saudi Aramco Corporation.  The monopoly of political power by the members of the Saud family means that all of the wealth of the kingdom is their personal property.  Saudi Arabia is a company country with the twenty-eight million citizens the responsibility of the Saud Family rulers.

The customary manner of dealing with a problem by the patriarchal regime is to bury it in money.  King Abdullah announced at the height of the Arab Spring that he was increasing the national budget by 130 billion dollars to be spent over the coming five years.  Government salaries and the minimum wage were raised.  New housing and other benefits are to be provided.  At the same time, he plans to expand the security forces by sixty thousand men.

While the Saudi king seeks to sooth the unrest among the general population by adding more government benefits, he will not grant any concessions to the eight percent of the population that is Shia. He takes seriously the warning by King Abdullah of Jordan back in 2004 of the danger of a Shia Crescent that would extend from the coast of Lebanon to Afghanistan.  Hezbollah in Lebanon, Assad in Syria, and the Shia controlled government of Iraq form the links in the chain.

When the Arab Spring reached Syria, the leaders in Riyadh were given the weapon to break the chain.  Appeals from tribal leaders under attack in Syria to kinsmen in the Gulf States for assistance could not be ignored.  The various blinks between the Gulf States in several Syrian tribes means that Saudi Arabia and its close ally Qatar have connections that include at least three million people out of the Syrian populations of twenty-three million.  To show how deep the bonds go, the leader of the Nijris Tribe in Syria is married to a woman from the Saud Family.

It is no wonder that Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in February that arming the Syrian rebels was an "excellent idea."  He was supported by Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani who said, "We should do whatever necessary to help [the Syrian opposition], including giving them weapons to defend themselves."  The intervention has the nature of a family and tribal issue that the prominent Saudi cleric Aidh al-Qarni has turned into a Sunni-Shia War by promoting Assad’s death.

The Saudis and their Qatar and United Arab Emirate allies have pledged one hundred million dollars to pay wages to the fighters.  Many of the officers of the Free Syrian Army are from tribes connected to the Gulf.  In effect, the payment of wages is paying members of associated tribes.

Here, the United States is not a welcomed partner, except as a supplier of arms.  Saudi Arabia sees the role of the United States limited to being a wall of steel to protect the oil wealth of the Kingdom and the Gulf States from Iranian aggression. In February of 1945, President Roosevelt at a meeting in Egypt with Abdel Aziz bin Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia, pledged to defend the kingdom in exchange for a steady flow of oil.

Since those long ago days when the U.S. was establishing Pax Americana, the Saudis have lost their trust in the wisdom or the reliability of American policy makers.  The Saudis urged the U.S. not to invade Iraq in 2003 only to have them ignore Saudi interests in maintaining an Iraqi buffer zone against Iran.  The Saudis had asked the U.S. not to leave a Shia dominated government in Baghdad that would threaten the Northern frontier of the Kingdom, only to have the last American soldiers depart in December 2011.  With revolution sweeping across the Middle East, Washington abandoned President Mubarak of Egypt, Saudi Arabia’s favorite non royal leader in the region.

Worried by the possibility of Iranian sponsored insurrections among Shia in the Gulf States, the Saudis are asserting their power in the region while they have the advantage.  For thirty years, they have been engaged in a proxy war with the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Syria is to be the next battlefield, but here, there is a critical difference from what were minor skirmishes in Lebanon, Yemen, and elsewhere.  The Saudis with the aid of Qatar, and the UAE is striking at the core interests of Tehran; and they have through their tribal networks the advantage over an isolated Islamic Republic.

Tribal and kinship relations are being augmented by the infusion of the Salafi vision of Islam that is growing in the Gulf States.  Money from the Gulf States has gone into the development of religious centers to spread the fundamentalist belief.  A critical part of the ideology is to be anti-Shia.

Salafism in Saudi Arabia is promulgated by the Wahhabi School of Islam.  The Wahhabi movement began in the eighteenth century and promoted a return to the fundamentalism of the early followers of the Faith.

The Sauds incorporated the religious movement into their leadership of the tribes.  When the modern state of Saudi Arabia was formed, they were granted control of the educational system and much else in the society in exchange for the endorsement of the authoritarian rule. 

When the Kingdom used its growing wealth in the 1970s to extend its interests far from the traditional territory in the battle against the atheistic Soviet Union, the Wahhabi clergy became missionaries in advancing their ideology through religious institutions to oppose the Soviets.  More than two hundred thousand jihadists were sent into Afghanistan to fight the Soviet forces and succeeded in driving them out.

There is no longer a Soviet Union to confront.  Today, the enemy is the Islamic Republic of Iran with what is described by the Wahhabis as a heretical form of Islam and its involvement in the Shia communities across the region.  For thirteen centuries, the Shia have been kept under control.  With the hand of Iran in the form of the Qud Force reaching into restless communities that number as many as one hundred and six million people in what is the heart of the Middle East, the Saudis see a desperate need to crush the foe before it has the means to pull down the privileged position of the Saud Family and the families of the other Gulf State rulers.

The war begins in Syria where we can expect that a successor government to Assad will be declared soon in the Saudi controlled tribal areas even before Assad is defeated.  The territory is likely to adopt the more fundamentalist principals of the Salafists as it serves as a stepping stone to Iran Itself.  It promises to be a bloody protracted war that will recognize no frontier and will know no limits by all of the participants.

 

Source: http://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/Middle-East/The-Endless-War-Saudi-Arabia-Goes-on-the-Offensive-Against-Iran.html

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Iran’s Retreat from the International Energy Sector

August 18, 2012 by

By. Dan Graeber of Oilprice.com

Domestic demand for gasoline in Iran was driving growth in the energy sector for the year. OPEC, in its latest report, said retail gasoline consumption in Iran was up more than 20 percent for the first five months of the year, though overall oil demand was relatively flat. Inflation, meanwhile, was up from stable levels reported last year. Iran has struggled to find a reliable consumer base given international sanctions pressure and the recent levels suggest the Islamic republic is retreating somewhat from the international energy sector.

The Organization of Petroleum Economies, in its August report, said Iranian crude oil production in part led to a decline in overall output from the Vienna-based cartel. OPEC said crude oil production for its members, not including Iraq, was reported at 28.1 million barrels per day in July, a decline of 270,000 bpd compared with the previous month. The decline in OPEC oil production in part was led by Iran, which saw its export options curtailed by sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European governments. Tehran announced it still had a viable consumer base in China, however, which received about 12 percent of its oil needs from Iran. The Indian government, meanwhile, said it would circumvent EU sanctions by extending government-backed insurance to tankers carrying Iranian crude because of the "definite need" for oil.

Sanctions, however, have hurt the Iranian economy and its overall crude oil levels. Italian energy company Eni reported that it’s been unable to get oil out of Iran for the second straight month, however, because of insurance and banking problems. OPEC reported that the Iranian central bank posted an inflation rate of 22.9 percent this year after ending last year relatively flat. Domestically, oil demand reported a growth rate for May of 7.9 percent, or around 100,000 barrels per day. OPEC suggested any growth from Iran’s oil demand was likely the result of gasoline consumption. The Iranian Oil Ministry, however, reported that domestic gasoline consumption was down 6.1 percent during the first two weeks of Ramadan, but has since recovered modestly by 1.8 percent. Gasoline consumption in Iran was up 22 percent during the first five months of the year compared with the same period last year, OPEC said.

Growth in Iranian gasoline demand could be a sign that the country’s energy sector is retracting in response to sanctions pressure. Any external inhibitors fro Iran were in contrast to neighbouring Iraq, whose crude oil production is at least partially handicapped by domestic political disputes. On Monday, Iraqi officials said oil output reached 3.2 million bpd, taking the No. 2 spot from Iran among OPEC members.

Iranian threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in early 2012 caused an increase in oil prices. While recent spikes in crude were in response to Persian Gulf tensions, long-term trends were attributed mostly to economic stimulus initiatives in the United States and European Union.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Sanctions-Force-Iranian-Retreat-from-Global-Stage.html

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GEORGIA: Tbilisi Walks Diplomatic High Wire on Iranian Nuclear Issue

May 16, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Giorgi Lomsadze*

TBILISI, May 15, 2012 (IPS/EurasiaNet) – Georgia is clearly the closest U.S. ally in the South Caucasus, moving in lockstep with American interests on just about every foreign policy issue – except one: Iran.

Not wanting to become embroiled in a potential regional conflict, officials in Tbilisi are trying to finesse relations with Tehran, while staying in Washington’s good graces.

All the sabre-rattling surrounding Iran’s secretive nuclear programme has Georgians on edge. If the United States, European Union and/or Israel try for a forceful solution of the problem, geography suggests that Tbilisi could easily get dragged into a conflict.

"They (Georgian leaders) want to avoid conflict if possible, but they don’t feel in control of the situation," said Thomas de Waal, a longtime Caucasus observer and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.

A series of arrests this year related to alleged Iranian plans for terrorist attacks in neighbouring Azerbaijan against U.S. and Israeli targets, and a recent bomb incident near the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi, have heightened the Georgian government’s sensitivities.

And not without cause, noted de Waal. "Georgia and Azerbaijan are … the closest thing that Israel has to allies in the area around Iran, so that makes them vulnerable to the covert war between Iran and Israel," he said.

To limit the chances of blowback in the event of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, Tbilisi has assiduously courted Iran’s favour, even as it tries to snuggle in the United States’ embrace.

Many heads turned last year when Georgia lifted visa requirements for Iranian citizens and talked trade and tourism expansion with Tehran. In the first three months of 2012, almost 13,600 Iranians visited Georgia; a 91-percent uptick compared to the same period during the previous year, according to Geostat, Georgia’s national statistics service.

During the Nowruz celebrations in March, neighbouring Armenia even complained that it was losing Iranian tourists to Georgia.

Some Iranians interviewed by EurasiaNet.org in Tbilisi say Georgia attracts them for its relaxed culture and the ease with which business can be done. "This is Europe," said one Iranian man, who came to Tbilisi on a business trip. "Things are easy to do, and it feels very open."

Open to a degree. Conscious of American diplomatic and economic support, Tbilisi can only allow so much official friendship with Iran.

U.S. Ambassador to Georgia John Bass commented to EurasiaNet.org that Washington is in "an ongoing conversation with the Georgian government on Iran" and has "encouraged them to adopt the sanctions specified by Section 1245 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012."

Among other measures, Section 1245 authorises the U.S. president to shut off or restrict access to the U.S. financial system for foreign banks found to have transactions with Iran’s Central Bank or certain Iranian financial institutions.

Ambassador Bass did not specify if Washington is happy with Tbilisi’s stance on the sanctions, or how it views economic ties between Tbilisi and Tehran. Georgian Foreign Ministry officials responsible for Iranian policy could not be reached for comment.

While Tbilisi may not have made official declarations in support of sanctions against Iran, de-facto restrictions on banking activities by Iranian citizens in Georgia appear to exist.

One Iranian citizen employed in Tbilisi told EurasiaNet.org that TBC Bank, one of Georgia’s largest private banks, had turned him down for a checking account, indicating that the background check for his under-50,000-dollar deposit was not worth its while. Others, including one Iranian-born U.S. citizen, had similar tales. All Iranians who spoke with EurasiaNet.org declined to be identified by name.

In response to an inquiry from EurasiaNet.org, a spokesperson for TBC Bank said that the bank’s policy toward non-resident customers is "based on a risks assessment and … international regulations and recommendations, which sometimes means restrictions."

Another private Georgian bank official, who asked not to be named, said that they only provide such basic services as currency conversion and payment of Georgian state taxes to Iranians. Beyond this, the bank shuns any operations with Iranian passport holders to avoid possible problems with the U.S. Treasury Department, the official said.

The National Bank of Georgia did not respond to questions.

Arguably, such restrictions could explain why trade and investment ties between the two countries remain relatively modest. Iranian foreign direct investment peaked in 2010 at 1.1 million dollar – five times its amount in 2009, but still some 29 times less than American investment.

Imports increased by 10 million dollars in 2011, the year the visa requirement for travelers between Iran and Georgia was dropped, to reach 65 million dollars, but exports only stand at 16.2 million dollars.

Trying to stay on friendly terms with both Iran and the U.S. simultaneously can create some delicate situations for Tbilisi. In March, the Georgian government invited an Iranian defense attaché to attend joint U.S.-Georgian military exercises for Afghanistan, where Iran is believed to be backing insurgents that are battling NATO forces.

At the time, Ambassador Bass declined to comment about the U.S. reaction on the Iranian observer.

Lincoln Mitchell, an associate research scholar specialising in the Caucasus at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute, believes that Georgia’s ties with Iran do not have too "much salience" in Washington for now, but notes that that "may change, if push comes to shove on Iran".

If it does, Tbilisi may look to its past for some balancing lessons. In the late 18th century, Georgia turned to Russia for protection against Persia; the result was its 1801 annexation by the Russian Empire, a fact bitterly resented today.

Veteran Georgian foreign policy expert Alexander Rondeli, president of the Tbilisi-based Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, believes that Georgia can hold its own. "Tbilisi will have to maintain neutrality and a careful diplomatic policy, but that’s what the government is for," Rondeli said.

*Editor’s note: Giorgi Lomsadze is a freelance journalist based in Tbilisi. He is a frequent contributor to Eurasianet’s Tamada Tales blog.

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


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