See also: Some Iraq bombs made in Iran - NYTimes report #msg-7254952
-Am
Aug 11, 2005
We have now reached another of those recurring tinderbox moments relating to Iran. On Tuesday, the Iranians officially relaunched their nuclear program, beginning a suspended process of uranium conversion at a facility near Isfahan. In this, Iran's emboldened clerical regime defies the European troika - France, Germany and Britain - with which it has been in negotiations, and perhaps creates a moment for which Bush administration officials have longed, but whose challenging arrival they may now regret.
The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) met Tuesday essentially on an emergency basis and perhaps in the near future the matter of the Iranian nuclear program may even go to the UN Security Council with possible sanctions on the table. (The passage of any sanctions measure there is unlikely indeed, given Russian and Chinese backing for the Iranians, not to speak of "the sympathy of other non-nuclear states on the 35-nation IAEA board"). And then ...? Well, that's the $64 dollar (a barrel) question, isn't it?
The geopolitical fundamentalists of the Bush administration have been itching for a down-and-dirty "regime change" fight with the clerical fundamentalists of Iran at least since President George W Bush, in his 2002 state of the union address, linked Iran, Saddam Hussein's hated neighboring regime with which it had fought an eight-year war of the utmost brutality, and the completely unrelated regime in North Korea into an infamous "axis of evil". (Perhaps what the president meant was "excess of evil".)
As we now know, Saddam's Iraq, with its non-existent nuclear program, was chosen as the administration's first target on its shock-and-awe "cakewalk" through the Middle East (and then, assumedly, the rest of the world) exactly because it was a military shell of its former self, a third-rate pushover compared to either Iran or North Korea. As it happened, the second-cousin-twice-removed of all battles turned into - as Saddam predicted - the mother of all battles and war against the rest of the "axis" fell into abeyance.
Now we're back to a potential face-off with a country that at least has an actual nuclear program, if not (unlike the North Koreans) a weapon to go with it. The nuclear world as imagined by the Bush administration is, in fact, a jaggedly uneven place. On the one hand, you have Iran, considered (like Saddam's Iraq) an imminent proliferation threat (even while that proliferator-in-chief of a nation Pakistan remains our bosom buddy); and yet Iran has, for at least 17 years, had a secret nuclear program (as well as an above-board one) aimed (possibly) at creating the means to create nuclear weapons.
A new US National Intelligence Estimate (the first on Iran since 2001) was just leaked to the press. This is one of those documents brokered every now and then among the 15 agencies that make up the official US intelligence "community" - there are more than 15 actually, but the others are fittingly "in the shadows". It evidently claims that Iran may need another 10 years or so to create the means to make nuclear weapons (not even to have the weapons in hand). If that's accurate, then we have a 27-year-plus-long effort to create one bomb. That - to my untutored mind - is not exactly an overwhelming stat when it comes to threat deployment.
Just at this moment (shades of Iraq), Iranian exiles are releasing new information on supposedly secret and illegal nuclear work being done by the Iranians, while Pentagon Donald Rumsfeld is claiming that US forces have found new weaponry in the hands of the Iraqi insurgency that came "clearly, unambiguously" from Iran and that these will "ultimately [be] a problem for Iran". (Forget that it's quite illogical for the Iranians to be supporting the largely Sunni Iraqi insurgency against an allied, mainly Shi'ite government.)
Exiled Iranian dissident Alireza Jafarzadeh, who runs Strategic Policy Consulting, a Washington-based think-tank, on Tuesday told The Associated Press that Iran had manufactured about 4,000 centrifuges capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade. He said that the centrifuges - which he said are unknown to the IAEA - are ready to be installed at Iran's nuclear facility in Natanz. In 2002, Jafarzadeh helped uncover nearly two decades of covert nuclear activity in Iran. Jafarzadeh said the information - which he described as "very recent" - came from sources within the Tehran regime who had proven accurate in the past.
In the meantime, there's an 800-pound nuclear gorilla sitting starkly at the center of the Middle Eastern proliferation living room. That's Israel, of course, with its extra-legal, super-secret arsenal of nuclear weapons, an estimated 200-300 of them, ranging from city-busters to battlefield-sized tactical nukes, and yet no news piece on the Iranian nuclear danger would be complete without the absence of the Israeli arsenal. Go look yourself. A thousand articles are appearing right now in the US press on the Iranian nuclear crisis and you would be hard-pressed to find a mention of the Israeli nuclear arsenal in any of them.
Israel and India, two nuclear weapons powers that have never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), are treated by the Bush administration with kid gloves - in the Indian case, Bush actually wants to turn over "peaceful" nuclear technology to its government (despite a prohibition against doing so in the NPT).
Meanwhile, in Washington, the Bush administration has just gotten a new energy bill passed that does everything but dig the foundations for new nuclear plants in your backyard (and, should a Chernobyl or two happen, also lifts from the nuclear industry just about all responsibility for covering the costs of catastrophe). And of course, the administration in its shock-and-awe version of a non-proliferation policy simply forges ahead with its own plans to create new, more usable generations of US nuclear weapons and to implant in its global-strike planning various nuclear options, including the option of taking out some of the Iranian nuclear program with nuclear weapons.
Don't even try to make sense of it.
Tom Engelhardt is editor of Tomdispatch and the author of The End of Victory Culture.
China calls for constructive attitudes toward Iran nuclear issue
Anyone who helps China with energy is a friend." This suggested that China might be willing to use its UN veto to protect its new ally from any attempt by the US or the Europeans to impose UN sanctions designed to frustrate its nuclear designs, an impression reinforced in November of 2004, when Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told then-Iranian president Mohammed Khatami that "Beijing would indeed consider vetoing any American effort to sanction Iran at the Security Council." #msg-7302634
Conversely any country that hinders China in her quest for oil is an enemy?
In a world that runs on oil, the nation that controls the flow of oil has great strategic power. U.S. policy-makers want leverage over the economies of competitors -- Western Europe, Japan and China -- that are more dependent on Middle Eastern oil. #msg-4798276
"China will, along with various parties, continue its support to the diplomatic efforts aiming at an early and appropriate solution to this issue within the framework of the IAEA," Wu said.
Various parties seems a reference to Russia.
Ahmadinejad has been anxious to gauge Chinese/Russian loyalty. #msg-7258285
-Am
China calls for constructive attitudes toward Iran nuclear issue
Anyone who helps China with energy is a friend." This suggested that China might be willing to use its UN veto to protect its new ally from any attempt by the US or the Europeans to impose UN sanctions designed to frustrate its nuclear designs, an impression reinforced in November of 2004, when Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told then-Iranian president Mohammed Khatami that "Beijing would indeed consider vetoing any American effort to sanction Iran at the Security Council.
The following excerpt seems an answer to
"China will, along with various parties, continue its support to the diplomatic efforts aiming at an early and appropriate solution to this issue within the framework of the IAEA," Wu said.
-Am
VIENNA, Aug. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- China on Tuesday called for constructive attitudes from the concerned parties toward the Iranian nuclear issue and warned against actions that would further complicate the situation.
Differences should be solved through negotiations and favorable conditions should be created for the final solution of the issue, said Wu Hailong, China's UN ambassador in Vienna.
"Continuation of the negotiation is the most appropriate and realistic approach to the resolution of the issue," said Wu at an emergency meeting on Iran's nuclear programs.
"Only through negotiations can a solution be found that conforms to the interests of all the parties," Wu added.
Iran on Saturday rejected a package of EU economic and political incentives presented by Britain, France and Germany, andresumed some uranium conversion activities at its nuclear facilityin the central city of Isfahan on Monday.
The emergency meeting proposed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), originally scheduled for Tuesday morning, was postponed to Tuesday afternoon as EU diplomats needed more time to discuss the terms of a draft resolution on Iran's nuclear programs.
Earlier, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei called on the EU and Iranto maintain maximum restraint and refrain from taking unilateral actions. He also appealed to Iran to rethink its decision to resume uranium conversion.
Addressing the emergency meeting, Wu also called on the EU and Iran to fulfill their commitments and tackle the crisis with patience.
"The Paris Agreement reached between the EU3/EU and Iran has, to some extent, laid a foundation for seeking a long-term solution. The parties concerned should truly fulfill the commitments they have respectively made under the agreement," saidWu.
"We appeal to Iran to continue to apply the relevant confidence-building measures to increase understanding on the partof the international community and create a favorable atmosphere for the eventual resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue."
He also called the other parties to address the reasonable concerns of Iran in a just and objective manner and respect Iran'sright to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Wu said China hopes the parties concerned will take a long-termvision, exercise restraint and continue negotiations with patience, pragmatism and flexibility to narrow down the differences and solve the crisis at last.
"China will, along with various parties, continue its support to the diplomatic efforts aiming at an early and appropriate solution to this issue within the framework of the IAEA," Wu said. Enditem
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
