Iran Sanctions: War By Other Means
Now that the talks with Iran on its nuclear program appear to be on the ropes, are we on the road to war? The Israelis threaten it almost weekly, and the Obama administration has reportedly drawn up an attack plan. But in a sense, we are already at war with Iran.
Carl von Clausewitz, the great theoretician of modern warfare, defined war as the continuation of politics by other means. In the case of Iran, international politics has become a de facto state of war.
According to reports, the annual inflation rate in Iran is 22.2%, although many economists estimate it at double that. In the last week of June, the price of chicken was up 30%, grains up 55.8%, fruits up 66.6%, and vegetables up 99.5%. Iran’s Central Bank estimates unemployment among the young is 22.5%, although the Financial Times says “the official figures are vastly underestimated.” The production sector is working at half its capacity.
The value of the Iranian rial has fallen 40% since last year, and there is a wave of business closings and bankruptcies because of rising energy costs and imports made expensive by the sanctions.
Oil exports, Iran’s major source of income, have fallen 40% in 2012, according to the international Energy Agency, costing the country just under $32 billion over the past year. The 27-member European Union (EU) ban on buying Iranian oil will further depress sales, and a EU withdrawal of shipping insurance will make it difficult for Tehran to ship oil and gas to its diminishing number of customers. Loss of insurance coverage could reduce Iran’s oil exports by 1.5 million barrels a day, or $4.5 billion a month. Energy accounts for about 80% of Iran’s public revenues.
Whipsawed by energy sanctions, the worst may be yet to come. The U.S. has already made it difficult for countries to dealing with Iran’s Central Bank, and the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that would declare the Iranian energy sector a “zone of proliferation concern” that would strangle Tehran’s ability to collect payments for its oil exports. Other proposals would essentially make it impossible to do business with Iran’s banks. Any country that dared to do so would find itself unable to conduct virtually any kind of international banking.
If the blizzard of legislation does pass, “This would be a significant ratcheting-up of the economic war against Iran,” Mark Dubowitz told the Financial Times. Dubowitz is executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which has lobbied for a series of economic assaults against the Palestinians, China, and Hezbollah.
But the “war” has already gone far beyond the economic sphere.
In the past two years, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated. The hits have been widely attributed to the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), an organization the U.S. designates as “terrorist.”
Last year, a massive explosion rocked the Bid Ganeh military base near Tehran, killing 17 people, including the founder of Iran’s missile program, Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam. According to Israeli media, the camp was sabotaged by the MEK working with the Mossad. Deadly attacks directed at Iran’s Revolutionary Guard have been tied to Jundallah, a Sunni group with ties to U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
It is no secret — indeed, President Obama openly admitted it — that under the codename “Olympic Games,” the U.S. has been waging cyber war against Iran. The Stuxnet virus shut down a considerable portion of Iran’s nuclear program, although it also infected infrastructure activities, including power plants, oil rigs, and water supplies. The virus was designed to attack systems made by the German company Siemens and has apparently spread to China, Pakistan, and Indonesia.
The U.S. is also suspected of being behind the Flame virus, spyware able to record keystrokes, eavesdrop on conversations near an infected computer, and tap into screen images. Besides Iran, Flame has been found in computers in the Palestinian West Bank, Lebanon, Hungary, Austria, Russia, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates. Because “malware” seeks out undefended computers no matter where they are, it has a habit of spreading beyond its initial target.
Most of the media is focused on whether the failure of the talks will lead to an Israeli or American attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and there is certainly considerable smoke out there.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have been threatening to attack Iran for the past two years. According to Gideon Rachman,a leading columnist for the Financial Times, some Israeli officials have told him Tel Aviv will attack sometime this summer or early fall. One source told him “Israel will wait until September or October because the weather is better and it’s closer to the U.S. elections.”
But the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn, one of the more reliable analysts on the Middle East, thinks the Israeli threats are “the bluff of the century.” Cockburn argues that there is simply no reason for Tel Aviv to go to war, since the Iranian economy is being effectively strangled by the sanctions. But the saber-rattling is useful because it scares the EU into toughing up the siege of Tehran while also shifting the Palestinian issue to a back burner.
There are serious divisions within Israel on whether to go to war, with the Israeli intelligence and military generally opposed. The latter’s reasons are simple: militarily Tel Aviv couldn’t pull it off, and politically an attack would garner worldwide sympathy for Iran. Recent statements downgrading the threat of Iran by Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz suggest the Netanyahu government is finally feeling the pressure from divisions within its own ranks and may be backing off from a military confrontation.
And the U.S.?
According to Paul Rogers, a Department of Peace Studies professor at Bradford University and OpenDemocracy.net’s international security editor, the Pentagon hasdrawn up plans for a concentrated attack on Iran’s nuclear industry, using a combination of bombers and cruise missiles. The U.S. recently beefed up its military footprint in the region.
But while the possibility of such an attack is real — especially if congressional hawks get their way — the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence establishment are hardly enthusiastic about it. And in any case, the U.S. is carpet-bombing Iran’s economy without firing a shot or sending air crews into harm’s way.
While Iran is generally depicted as the recalcitrant party in the current nuclear talks, it has already compromised, even agreeing to ship some of its enriched uranium out of the country and to guarantee the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) access to all nuclear facilities. Tehran has also converted one-third of its 20% enriched uranium into plates, making it almost impossible to use the fuel for nuclear weapons. Weapons-grade uranium is enriched to 90%.
In return, Tehran is demanding the right to enrich to 3.5% — the level one needs to power a civilian reactor — and an end to sanctions.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not ban enriching uranium — indeed, it is guaranteed by Articles III and IV — as long as the fuel is not weaponized. “Iran is raising eyebrows,” says Yousaf M. Butt of the American Federation of Scientists, “but what it is doing is a concern — not illegal.”
However, the P5+1 — the permanent U.N. Security Council members, Britain, France, the U.S., Russia, China, plus Germany — is demanding an end to all enrichment, shipping the enriched fuel out of the country, and closing the enrichment plant at Fordow: “stop, shut, and ship.” In return Iran would get enriched fuel for medical use and some spare parts for its civilian airlines. The sanctions would remain in place, however, although it would open the subject up for discussion. The problem is that many of the more onerous sanctions are those independently applied by the U.S. and the EU. Russia and China have expressed opposition to the independent sanctions but so far have not shown a willingness to openly flout them.
It will be hard for Tehran to make further concessions, particularly if there is no light at the end of the sanction tunnel. Indeed, some of the demands seem almost crafted to derail a diplomatic solution, raising the suspicion that the dispute is less about Iran’s nuclear program than about a concerted drive to marginalize a country that has resisted European and U.S. interests in the Middle East. Isolate Iran enough, the thinking goes, and it might bring about regime change. Moscow and Beijing don’t support such an outcome, but they have little influence over what Washington and Brussels do independently.
There is no evidence that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. Indeed, the body of evidence suggests the opposite, including the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that Tehran mothballed its program in 2003. But evidence is irrelevant when the enormous economic power of the U.S. and the EU can cow the rest of the world and force a country to its knees without resorting to open hostilities.
In short, war by other means.
Originally published at Dispatches From the Edge.
The unspoken secret at the heart of US-Israel coordination on Iran
Hillary Clinton’s visit is the latest in a series of top-level contacts aimed at thwarting Tehran’s nukes. But even the closest partnership has its limits
July 15, 2012, 7:50 pm http://www.timesofisrael.com/the-unspoken-secret-at-the-heart-of-us-israel-coordination-on-iran/
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Shimon Peres speak about the Middle East at the Brookings Institution's 12th anniversary in Washington in June (photo credit: Amos Ben Gershom/GPO/Flash90)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Israel constitutes the latest in a series of intensive trips across the pond by American and Israeli political leaders, top officials, senior generals and security chiefs, at which the issue of how to stop Iran’s nuclear drive continues to dominate the agenda.
The degree of coordination between the US and Israel is extraordinarily high. The goal, of ensuring that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapons capability, is emphatically shared.
But there have always been understandable tensions between the allies — Israel is closer to Iran than the US, feels more acutely threatened by Iran than the US, and has less capacity to do military harm to Iran than does the US. And those tensions are only deepening as the months go by and Iran shows absolutely no sign of slowing its nuclear program. Quite the reverse: In its latest presentations to the P5+1 powers, Iran has spoken of its plans to build more nuclear reactors and a new uranium enrichment facility.
The way the US sees it, the sanctions pressure on Iran is growing, and the economic and political impact is palpable. The Iranian economy is in a tailspin, and Iran is having trouble selling its oil, the very life blood of the regime. While there is some cheating by international players, providing some oil sale avenues, this a relatively minor irritant, not a major flaw. No, Iran has not given ground at the various ministerial and technical levels during rounds of talks, but its very presence there underlines its discomfort. And it has conspicuously failed to break up the P5+1′s united front against it.
In the American view, there’s no knowing when, or whether, Iran may crack under the international pressure and agree to the constraints needed to safeguard its nuclear program. There’s no knowing, as the US sees it, whether the Iranians will persist in making the wrong decision. But if and when the US feels all else has failed, President Barack Obama has made abundantly clear that he will do whatever is necessary to thwart Iran’s nuclear weapons goals. He doesn’t want to use the military option. Nobody wants to use it. But it’s on the table.
Israel, however, reads much of the very same information very differently. It too sees the sanctions impacting Iran’s economy. It too sees the diplomacy continuing. But the only question that really matters here is whether the pressure is affecting Iran’s nuclear program. And Israel’s answer — with which the US cannot argue — is an emphatic, absolute no. However much the Iranians may be hurting, their nuclear program is in the rudest good health.
The warm public words expressed by both sides about US-Israeli coordination are heartfelt. Behind the scenes, the exchanges of information and assessment are truly open, serious and constructive. The US representative to the P5+1 talks, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, to give just one example, is in constant communication — in person, by phone and via video — with key Israeli officials including National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror, seeking their input, consulting them on P5+1 tactics.
But there is one great unspoken secret at the complicated heart of this highly sensitive relationship between two true allies facing what, for one of them — the weaker and more immediately threatened one — is a potentially existential danger: There is no circumstance, absolutely no circumstance whatsoever, in which the United States will empathize with an Israeli decision to strike alone at Iran’s nuclear facilities.
No American official will come out and say this. No Israeli official will acknowledge it. But that is the case, notwithstanding Obama’s declared support for “Israel’s sovereign right to make its own decisions about what is required to meet its security needs.”
The United States subscribes to what might be described as the Meir Dagan assessment, the argument advanced by Israel’s outspoken former Mossad chief that a premature strike by Israel at Iran’s nuclear program would have limited practical impact — setting the Iranians back two or three years at best — while providing ostensible legitimization for Iran to subsequently redouble its efforts to get the bomb, in part because of the need for a greater capacity to deter demonstrably trigger-happy Israel.
And what, for the US, constitutes a “premature” strike by Israel? Well, any strike by Israel, actually.
How so? Because if the United States concludes that only military action can thwart Iran, then the president will order precisely such action, officials insist. And he will do so having made clear to the international community that diplomacy and sanctions had failed, and that there really was no alternative. And that were Iran to restart the program after a US-led military strike, the US would have no compunction about striking again if necessary, as often as was deemed necessary.
By definition, therefore, any resort to force before an American resort to force — by Israel or by anyone else, not that anyone else is considering it — would be “premature.” It would come before the US had given up hope that diplomacy and sanctions could render military action unnecessary. It would come before the US had made plain to the international community that there was no alternative. It would contradict US policy. In short, and at the risk of understatement, it would not go down well in Washington.
Neither side rules out the possibility of an Israeli strike, although both feel that the level of nuanced coordination makes it less likely. Israeli officials, to a man — and they are all men — utterly prefer to see Iran’s program halted without military intervention.
But if it turns out that Israel’s red lines are plotted very differently from those of the Americans, how might the US respond? What would the US do and say if Israel, as Washington saw it, were to jump the gun? If Israel, believing that it had no alternative because its very existence was at stake, resorted to military intervention?
That’s a question American officials hope devoutly they will not have to answer. Make no mistake, it’s also a question that Israeli officials hope devoutly they won’t have to ask.
Clinton: US will use ‘all its power’ to prevent nuclear Iran
Secretary of state says diplomacy going nowhere, but Tehran still has time to make the right choice; calls on Israel and PA to break status quo
July 16, 2012, 11:08 pm http://www.timesofisrael.com/clinton-tells-israel-us-will-use-all-its-power-to-prevent-nuclear-iran/
Hillary Clinton and Benjamin Netanyahu Monday. (photo credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool/Flash90)
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up her visit to Israel Monday night, saying the US would do everything in its power to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Clinton spoke after meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
Clinton told reporters she “compared notes” on Iran with Netanyahu and that pressure on Tehran would continue to ramp up.
“Iran’s leaders still have the opportunity to make the right decision,” she told reporters, adding “we will use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.”
The secretary of state added that she did not see Tehran making any move toward coming to an agreement with the international community over its nuclear program.
“The proposals we have seen thus far are nonstarters,” she said. “Despite three rounds of talks, Iran has yet to make a strategic decision to address the international community’s concerns. So we are pressing forward in close consultation with Israel. I think its absolutely fair to say we are on the same page trying to figure our way forward to have the maximum impact.”
Clinton also said Israel could not allow the status quo between it and the Palestinians to continue, calling it “unsustainable.”
“The proof is in the security threats Israel faces,” she said.
Clinton reportedly told Netanyahu that Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas were the best options for peace and he shouldn’t wait to see who comes next.
According to Ynet, Clinton also pressured Israeli leaders to offer small arms transfers to the PA and release prisoners as a way to jump start peace talks.
Clinton told reporters that moves for peace had to be made now.
“To those who say the other side needs to move first, I say: peace won’t wait,” she said. “The responsibility falls on all of us to keep pressing forward. We’ll keep pushing our friends to do what they can to move the agenda forward. We will do everything possible to try to see this vision of peace realized.”
Speaking to Netanyahu earlier, Clinton urged him to work to repair ties with Turkey, which have drooped since 2010.
Clinton is in Israel for two days wrapping up a swing across Asia.
Before coming to Israel, she spent two days in Egypt, meeting with new president Mohammed Morsi and military head, Hussein Tantawi.
She said she told the two that she expected Egypt to uphold its agreements, including its peace treaty with Israel, which she called a “backbone of regional peace and stability.”
Aside from Netanyahu and Fayyad, Clinton met Monday with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minisyter Avigdor Liberman, and President Shimon Peres.
In her meeting with Barak, the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program topped the agenda. ”The Americans consistently and constantly backup Israel’s security needs,” Barak said before the meeting.
“We see eye to eye on many issues. On some topics we have certain differences, but these differences are put into perspective in view of the enormous importance of the US in the region, as well as the unique status and sensitiveness of Israel in the region,” he added.
Earlier in the day Clinton met with Peres, stressing the need for cooperation in tumultuous times.
“I always benefit from your advice,” Clinton told her host during their meeting at the President’s Residence. “This is a time of uncertainty, but also opportunity. It is at times like this that friends such as us need to think together, to act together. We have a calling to be wise, creative, and brave, and no one understands that better than President Shimon Peres.”
Israel's Mossad trained assassins of Iran nuclear scientists, report says
U.S. officials confirm link between clandestine Israeli operations and People’s Mujahedin of Iran activists, according to NBC News report.
Ahmadi Roshan's car following the explosion in Tehran, January 11, 2012.
Mossad officials are training Iranian dissident activists to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, a NBC News report citing U.S. officials said on Thursday. The report noted, however, that Washington was not directly involvement in the alleged attacks.
The report by NBC News followed Iranian accusations that Israel and the U.S. had been orchestrating attacks against Iranian scientists and military officials associated with Iran's nuclear program.
These accusations resurfaced following the most recent alleged attack, as Iranian media reported last month that nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was killed by a bomb placed on his car by a motorcyclist in Tehran.
According to the semi-official Fars news agency, Ahmadi Roshan, 32, supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province.
The United States has denied involvement in the killing and condemned it. Israel has declined to comment.
Just days following the bombing, Foreign Policy, quoting U.S. intelligence memos, reported that Mossad agents posed as CIA officers in order to recruit members of a Pakistani terror group to carry out assassinations and attacks against the regime in Iran.
Foreign Policy's Mark Perry reported that the Mossad operation was carried out in 2007-2008, behind the back of the U.S. government, and infuriated then U.S. President George W. Bush.
Later, a Sunday Times report claimed that agents associated with Israel's secret services were behind Ahmadi Roshans' assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
On Thursday, U.S. officials speaking to NBC news claimed that Mossad agents were training members of the dissident terror group People’s Mujahedin of Iran in order assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, adding that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was aware of the operation, but had no direct link to them.
The U.S. officials reportedly confirmed the link between Israel and the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), with one official saying: "All your inclinations are correct.”
Yet another American official would only tell NBC “It hasn’t been clearly confirmed yet.” All officials in question denied any U.S. involvement.
A Foreign Ministry comment to the story said that as "long as we can't see all the evidence being claimed by NBC, the Foreign Ministry won't react to every gossip and report being published worldwide."
The NBC report also cites a senior aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as describing what he said were strong links between Israel and Iranian dissident groups.
Mohammad Javad Larijani is quoted as saying that the these relations are "very intricate and close."
"[Israelis] are paying … the Mujahedin. Some of their (MEK) agents … (are) providing Israel with information. And they recruit and also manage logistical support,” the reported quoted Larijani as saying.
Iranian parliament to consider nuclear powered ships
Bill symbolically reinforces Tehran’s claim to uranium rights
July 15, 2012, 9:39 pm..http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-parliament-to-consider-nuclear-submarine/
Iranian technicians work at the Bushehr nuclear power plant in 2010. (photo credit:AP /IIPA,Ebrahim Norouzi)
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A Iranian parliamentary committee has approved a bill requiring the government to design nuclear-powered merchant ships and provide them with nuclear fuel, an Iranian news agency reported Sunday.
The bill appears to be a symbolic gesture to bolster Tehran’s argument that it has a right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. The West suspects Iran’s nuclear program is aimed at developing weapons technology, a charge Tehran denies.
Nuclear-powered vessels other than warships are rare, and the International Atomic Energy Agency has said in the past that nuclear-powered merchant ships would be uneconomical.
Lawmaker Mohammad Bayatian was quoted by the semi-official Mehr news agency as saying sanctions are forcing Iran to use different fuel for its oil tankers and other large vessels, to avert the need to refuel during long voyages. Some countries refuse to provide fuel to Iranian ships in line with Western sanctions.
Iran is seen to be far from a capability to build nuclear-powered ships. Iran says it is designing a nuclear submarine.
The West has raised concerns that Iran might cite submarine and other nuclear-powered vessel construction as a justification for producing weapons-grade 90 percent enriched uranium.
Nuclear submarines are powered by fuel ranging from 20 percent purity to more than 90 percent. Many U.S. submarines use nuclear fuel enriched to more than 90 percent, the same level used to build atomic bombs.
Bayatian said the bill has been approved by a parliamentary committee and will be debated in the house next week.
“Given the sanctions that enemies have imposed against our country, the bill must be enacted,” he said.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.
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