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Iran Braces for War
// The US Stockpiles Bombs and Allies
Representatives of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, met in London yesterday to discuss means of resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis. Now that Iran has yet again refused to stop enriching uranium, the Group of Six discussed the possibility of introducing harsher international sanctions. If pressure on Tehran does not yield results, the Bush administration does not rule out the possibility of military strikes against Iran. Preparations for that eventuality are apparently already going ahead full throttle.
"The Train of the Iranian Nation Has No Brakes"
The consultation in the British capital between deputy foreign ministers from the six world powers that are trying to stop an escalation of the Iranian nuclear crisis took place behind closed doors. The format of the London meeting did not offer the assembled representatives of the US, Great Britain, France, Germany, China, and Russia (Russia's representative was Sergei Kislyak) the opportunity to adopt any final resolutions. It was reported on the eve of the meeting that the diplomats would be discussing a raft of new, harsher sanctions against Iran before dispersing to their home countries to meet with their leaders and to report on the positions of the other members of the Group of Six regarding possible goads for Tehran after Iran snubbed the carrot proffered by the international community. February 21 was the expiration date of the two-month UN ultimatum delivered to Tehran by the UN Security Council last December in the form of resolution #1737, which called on Tehran to stop enriching uranium. Given that the sanctions included in the resolution have had no effect at all on the position of the Iranian side, the Group of Six is faced with the question of what additional levers can be employed to bring sufficient pressure to bear on Tehran.
That the members of the Group of Six so far have no ready answers to the question of how to make Tehran return to the negotiating table was confirmed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. On the eve of the London talks, Mr. Lavrov told Russian President Vladimir Putin that "the Iranian leadership so far is not giving satisfactory answers to the IAEA's questions" and that the participants in the consultation in the British capital were facing "a difficult task."
Yesterday a senior British diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Group of Six would consider cutting off $20 million in European trade credits to Iran. The sanctions under consideration also include an embargo on the delivery of arms to Iran and a ban on international travel for Iranians with ties to the nuclear program.
While Russia and China still do not consider sanctions to be the optimal solution and are busy playing the good cop in the negotiations, Washington is pushing its partners in the Security Council towards the harshest possible resolution on Iran. According to a Kommersant source in Washington, during Condoleezza Rice's recent visit to Berlin, the US secretary of state attempted to convince the other members of the Quartet of Middle East negotiators (Russia, the UN, and the EU) of the necessity of taking decisive steps. "The point of Security Council action has always been to try to get to a negotiating track. The idea is not that somehow the sanctions will…produce the desired result. We would like to do that in negotiations, so the hope is that the sanctions show the Iranians…that [their] isolation is likely to increase over time, and that it's time to take a different course," she said last week at a press conference in Berlin.
As if in response to the US secretary of state, on Sunday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad confirmed Tehran's readiness to pursue its own course independently of whatever actions may be taken against Iran. "The train of the Iranian nation has no brakes or reverse gear. We took off the brakes and the reverse gear and tossed them aside a long time ago," said President Ahmadinejad in his characteristic provocative manner at a meeting with Islamic clerics in Tehran.
The tirade from the president about the "Iranian train with no brakes" made a strong impression in Washington. In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Condoleezza Rice replied immediately, saying, "they don’t need a reverse gear. They need to stop and then we can come to the table and we can talk about how to move forward." She added that she is "prepared to meet [her] counterpart or an Iranian representative at any time if Iran will suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities."
The statement from Condoleezza Rice had no impact whatsoever on the Iranian side, which yesterday maintained that suspension of uranium enrichment cannot serve as a condition for holding negotiations. "Setting conditions means indicating the outcome of talks prior to holding them. Therefore, such a policy is unacceptable," said Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's National Security Council. However, he did add that Tehran welcomes "fair negotiations." The necessary conditions remain anyone's guess.
The Road to War
Opinion in Washington remains divided over what measures should be taken against Iran if international pressure on Tehran continues to be ineffective. At his meeting yesterday with President Putin, Foreign Minister Lavrov maintained that a US military strike against Iran without the approval of the United Nations is not just a hypothetical scenario. Expressing "unease over indications that a strike may be launched against Iran," Mr. Lavrov referenced recent remarks by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, in which Mr. Cheney mentioned the possibility of an attack on Iran.
Meanwhile, according to Kommersant sources close to the White House, the Bush administration is divided between two possible approaches. While Secretary of State Rice continues to insist on diplomacy, Vice-President Cheney believes that diplomatic attempts to convince Iran are futile and that the matter will end in a military showdown that needs to be planned for immediately.
President Bush himself has so far declined to participate in the fracas in his administration. On the one hand, the president has given Secretary Rice time to attempt to resolve the crisis by diplomatic means, but on the other hand, he has not applied the brakes to preparations for possible air strikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. According to Kommersant's sources, Mr. Bush's hand is being guided by the Pentagon, which has requested at least seven to nine months to prepare for military strikes. The development of the plan of attack against Iran's nuclear facilities has reportedly been entrusted to deputy defense secretary Gordon England, who will work closely with US intelligence services and several countries in the Middle East. Assistant secretary of state Nicholas Burns has been charged with attempting to forge an American-European diplomatic alliance that will convince Russia and China to vote in the Security Council in favor of harsh sanctions against Iran. Mr. Burns will also need to secure the consent of the EU for a possible military strike against Iran and to receive a guarantee of technical support, such as fuelling stops and flyover rights for American bombers, from America's allies in the Middle East, which include Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey.
In the opinion of Kommersant's sources, at the end of the seven to nine months of preparations, the American Air Force will be outfitted with new "long-range penetration" bombs that will be significantly more powerful that those that were used in Iraq in 2003. In the invasion of Iraq, the US dropped more than two tons of bombs on each Iraqi military or intelligence target.
The Quiet American in Iran
Stories appearing in the American media testify that victory in the standoff with Iran has become one of the Bush administration's top international priorities. In the administration's ongoing struggle with the Iranian regime, however, sanctions and air strikes are not the only weapons being employed. The magazine The New Yorker has reported that the US is also undertaking secret intelligence operations on Iranian territory. In the article, the well-known journalist Seymour Hirsch claims that the operations are being carried out by special operations teams from the US military that have infiltrated Iran from neighboring Iraq with the goal of collecting intelligence data and "pursuing Iranian operatives from Iraq." According to Mr. Hirsch, the hand behind this strategy is none other than Vice-President Cheney, whose policies "have brought the United States closer to a open confrontation with Iran." There are increasingly few people either in Washington or in Tehran who would disagree.
Dmitry Sidorov (Washington) and Sergey Strokan
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 27, 2007
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