Thursday, July 20, 2006

Iran says determined to make atomic fuel at home

Thu Jul 20, 2006 5:55 AM ET



"nuclear iran"- Iran said on Thursday it was determined to produce nuclear fuel on its territory in defiance of international calls to halt the work and accused the United States of trying to prevent a negotiated solution to its dispute with the West.

"Based on law, Iran has planned to produce 20,000 MW of nuclear electricity in the next 20 years and needs to produce nuclear fuel inside the country for those reactors," chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said in a statement, read out on state television.

He said Iran was still reviewing nuclear proposals backed by six nations and wanted talks to solve the dispute. But said the United States "has been trying to create obstacles in the way of talks and a diplomatic solution to this issue".
source:reuters
posted by ali ghannadi -irannuk

Iran says it will deliver response Aug. 22

July 20, 2006, 7:58AM



By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer


"nuclear iran"-— Iran said Thursday it would formally respond on Aug. 22 to a Western package of incentives aimed at resolving the standoff over its suspect nuclear program _ the first time the Islamic republic has set a specific date for its reply.

The Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top security decision-making body, also threatened that the country would reconsider its nuclear policies if sanctions were imposed by the United Nations.

The council did not elaborate, but Iranian officials repeatedly have suggested that Tehran may withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and stop cooperating with U.N. inspectors.

"The package of incentives requires a logical time to study it ... Aug. 22 has been set for declaring (our) views," the council said in a statement read on state-run television.

"In case the path of confrontation is chosen instead of the path of dialogue ... and Iran's definite rights are threatened, then there will be no option for Iran but to reconsider its nuclear policies."

The statement came a day after Russia said the U.N. Security Council is in no rush to pressure Iran over its nuclear program, striking a more conciliatory tone than the United States as diplomats began discussing a resolution to put legal muscle behind demands that Tehran suspend uranium enrichment.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of seeking to produce highly enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear weapons. Tehran says its nuclear program is peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.

In Thursday's statement, Iran said it plans to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear energy in the next 20 years.

The Western nations on June 6 offered Iran a package of incentives _ including advanced technology and possibly even nuclear research reactors _ if Tehran suspended enrichment.

But the frustrated powers agreed last week to send Iran back to the U.N. Security Council for possible punishment, saying Tehran had given no sign it would bargain in earnest over its nuclear ambitions.

Iran has said the incentives package was an "acceptable basis" for negotiations.

Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad initially said Iran would respond to the package in mid-August, but the republic then pushed back its response to late August. Thursday's statement was the first time a specific date was set.

The United States has accused Iran of stalling while it continues to pursue suspect technology, but Tehran accused Washington on Thursday of putting up "obstacles."

The Iranian council said special committees in key state agencies were still studying the offer by the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany, and it invited the United States and its allies to return to the negotiating table.

It said it was "surprising" that the United States was creating obstacles for a negotiated settlement while Iran was seriously studying the offer.

"Iran is not after tension, but if others push things toward tension and create problems, then all will face problems. Iran believes dialogue is the most logical solution. It is serious in this path. We want the other side to return to the negotiating table," the statement said.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is committed to a negotiated settlement through diplomacy. The United States, by changing the path of talks toward the Security Council, is trying to create obstacles."

A senior Iranian lawmaker said Tuesday the country's parliament was preparing to debate withdrawal from the nonproliferation treaty if the U.N. Security Council adopts a resolution that would force Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.

Withdrawal from the treaty could end all international oversight of Iran's nuclear program.

In February, Iran for the first time produced its first batch of low-enriched uranium, using a cascade of 164 centrifuges. The process of uranium enrichment can be used to generate electricity or in building a bomb, depending on the level of enrichment.

Iran has said it will never give up its right under the treaty to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel, but it has indicated it may temporarily suspend large-scale activities to ease tensions.
© 2006 The Associated Press
posted by ali ghannadi -irannuk

The drums of war sound for Iran

july 21,2006
By Jim Lobe

"nuclear iran"-- The week-old Israeli-Hezbollah conflict is likely to boost the chances of US military action against Iran, according to a number of regional experts who see a broad consensus among the US political elite that the ongoing hostilities are part of a broader offensive being waged by Tehran against Washington across the region.

While Israel-centered neo-conservatives have been the most aggressive in arguing that Hezbollah's July 12 cross-border attack could only have been carried out with Iran's approval, if not encouragement, that view has been largely accepted and echoed by the US mainstream media, as well as other key political



factions, including liberal internationalists identified with the Democratic Party.

"In my reading, this is the beginning of what was a very similar process in the period, between [the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon] and the Iraq war," said Gregory Gause, who teaches Middle East politics at the University of Vermont.

"While neo-cons took the lead in opinion formation then, eventually there was something approaching consensus in the American political class that war with Iraq was a necessary part of remaking the Middle East to prevent future 9/11s," he said.

"That strong majority opinion was bipartisan [and] crossed ideological lines - neo-cons supported the war, but so did lots of prominent liberal intellectuals," he said. "I think it is very possible that a similar consensus could develop over the next few years, if not the next few months, about the necessity to confront Iran."

Indeed, almost as if to prove the point, the US Senate voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a resolution that not only endorsed Israel's military actions in Gaza and Lebanon without calling on it to exercise any restraint, but also urged US President George W Bush to impose across-the-board diplomatic and economic sanctions on Tehran and Damascus. The House of Representatives was expected to pass a similar resolution on Thursday.

To Gause and other analysts, Tehran, even before the current crisis, offered a tempting target of blame for Washington's many frustrations in the region.

In addition to its long-standing support for Hezbollah, whose political power has, in Washington's view, stalled last year's so-called "Cedar Revolution", Iran has backed both Hamas, including the Damascus-based military wing that last month precipitated the current round of violence by abducting an Israeli soldier outside Gaza, and Shi'ite militias that have helped push Iraq to the brink of a sectarian civil war.

"The world needs to understand what is going on here," wrote the influential liberal New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman last week as Israel launched its military counter-offensive against Hezbollah.

"The little flowers of democracy that were planted in Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian territories are being crushed by the boots of Syrian-backed Islamist militias who are desperate to keep real democracy from taking hold in this region and Iranian-backed Islamist militias desperate to keep modernism from taking hold."

But Iran can be blamed for other ills, as well. By allegedly promoting instability throughout the region, as well as fears of an eventual military confrontation with Washington, Iran can also be blamed for the rise of oil prices, from which it is profiting handsomely, to record levels.

And its repeated rejection of US demands that it respond to the pending proposal for a deal on its nuclear program adds to the thesis that Iran is engaged in its own form of asymmetric warfare against Washington. Indeed, it has become accepted wisdom in Washington that Iran encouraged Hezbollah's July 12 raid as a way to divert attention from growing international concern over its nuclear program.

"There has been a lot of connecting of the dots back to Iran," said retired Colonel August Richard Norton, who teaches international relations at Boston University. "This goes well beyond the [neo-conservative] Weekly Standard crowd; we've seen the major newspapers all accept the premise that what happened July 12 was engineered in some way by Iran as a way of undermining efforts to impede its nuclear program."

Graham Fuller, a former top Central Intelligence Agency and RAND Corporation Middle East expert, noted that there has been a "buildup of domestic forces that now see Iran as inexorably at the center of the entire regional spider web".

"The mainstream is unfortunately grasping for coherent explanations, [and] the neo-con/hard right offers a fairly simple, self-serving vision on the cause of the problems, and their solution," Fuller said.

In much the same way that Saddam Hussein was depicted, particularly by neo-conservatives, as the strategic domino whose fall would unleash a process of democratization, de-radicalization, moderation and modernization throughout the Middle East, so now Iran is portrayed as the "Gordian Knot" whose cutting would not only redress many of Washington's recent setbacks, but also renew prospects for regional "transformation" in the way that it was originally intended.

The notion that, as the puppetmaster behind Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Shi'ite militias in Iraq, an aggressive and emboldened Iran is the source of Washington's many problems has the added virtue of relieving the policy establishment in Washington of responsibility for the predicament in which the US finds itself or of the necessity for "painful self-examination, or serious policy revision", said Fuller.

"Full speed ahead - no revision of fundamental premises is required. And even though we revel in being the sole global superpower, God forbid that anything the US has done in the region might have at least contributed to the present disaster scene," he said.

As was the case with Iraq, the only dissenters among the policy elite are the foreign-policy "realists", who argue that the Bush administration, in particular, has made a series of disastrous policy errors in the Middle East - especially by providing virtually unconditional support for Israel and invading Iraq.

They also include regional specialists such as Norton, who maintain that the depiction of Hezbollah, for example, as a mere proxy for Iran - let alone the notion that Tehran was behind the July 12 attack - is a dangerous misreading of a much more complex reality.

These forces have been arguing for some time that Washington should engage Iran directly on the full range of issues - from Tehran's nuclear program to regional security - that divide the countries. But the current crisis, and Israel's and the neo-conservatives' success in blaming Iran for it, is likely to make this argument a more difficult sell.

(Inter Press Service)
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Iranian pres. threatens to revise nuclear cooperation with West

11:43 | 13/ 07/ 2006
July 13
"nuclear iran"-- Iran's president said his country could review its nuclear cooperation with the West, Iran's state television said Thursday.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made this statement after France's foreign minister said Wednesday that the six nations working to resolve the crisis around Iran's controversial nuclear program had no option other than to refer Tehran's nuclear file to the UN Security Council.

"Until today, the way we chose was peaceful, within the framework of [IAEA and NPT] regulations," Ahmadinejad said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.

He added that if the Iranian nation saw that Western countries were insincere in their actions, it would revise its policy in the field of nuclear programs.

Ahmadinejad also said on television that his country would not respond to the Iran 6 proposals before mid-August.

Iran's nuclear program has been a source of major controversy since the beginning of the year, as many countries suspect the Islamic Republic of pursuing a covert weapons program under the pretext of civilian research, despite its claims to the contrary.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana presented a package of incentives for Iran, which many countries suspect of pursuing a secret weapons program, in return for its consent to halt uranium enrichment during his visit to the Islamic Republic on June 6. Ahmadinejad earlier said Iran would respond to the Iran-6 proposals by August 22.
Source:ria novosti
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Wrong decision of 5+1 under US influence (News Analysis)

Tehran, July 13


"nuclear iran"--Ministers of foreign affairs of the five UN Security Council veto yielding powers, plus Germany, during the course of a meeting in Paris on Wednesday night, under US influence, agreed to return Iran's nuclear dossier to UNSC once again.

The hurried and hasty decision of the Europeans was declared while the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, had in his Tuesday meeting with the EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana emphasized that the doors were still open to negotiations, adding that patience was needed for solving the matter through diplomatic channels.

The EU's decision to bounce Iran's nuclear dossier to the UNSC, keeping in mind the previous similar experience, and the tough current conditions that make holding any talks useless, is in fact holding tight to a rope extended by Washington in order to delve into the depths of an abbeys.

The move is meanwhile observing serious double-standards in an effort aimed at demolishing the absolute right of a nation that has on hundreds of occasions emphasized its nuclear program is merely aimed at absolutely peaceful purposes.

The 5+1 foreign ministers's decision on Wednesday was adopted following the poisonous propaganda of the US officials and mass media during the course of the past few days, and would serve no purpose, save for aggravating the atmosphere of mutual mistrust in a context that is in need of full trust for problem solving.

EU must realize the important point that "threats" can only further complicate the process of problem solving, under such conditions that they have felt the humiliation of defeat in confrontation with the strong will of the Iranian nation, and that they are naturally responsible for any further delays in finding a lasting solution to the US-made problem.

Iran has on numerous occasions during the course of the past month considered the 5+1 package as "a positive step forward" and stressed during the recent days that it would present its response to it after the elimination of its ambiguities.

source:irna
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

world powers refer Iran to Security Council

July 12, 2006.

"nuclear iran"-- World powers agreed Wednesday to send Iran back to the United Nations Security Council for possible punishment, saying the iran has given no sign it means to negotiate seriously over its disputed nuclear program.

The United States and other permanent members of the powerful U.N. body said Iran has had long enough to say whether it will meet the world's terms to open bargaining that would give Tehran economic and energy incentives in exchange for giving up suspicious activities.

"The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on behalf the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, the five permanent Security Council members, plus Germany and the European Union.

Expressing "profound disappointment," the ministers said, "we have no choice but to return to the United Nations Security Council" and resume a course of possible punishment or coercion that the powers had set aside in hopes of reaching a deal.

Any real punishment or coercion at the Security Council is a long way off, but the group said it will seek an initial resolution requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Debate could begin as soon as next week.

If Iran does not comply, the group said it would then seek harsher action. The group's short statement did not give any specifics, but it cited a section of the world body's charter that could open the door to economic or other sanctions.

Though Russia and China signed on to Wednesday's statement, the two traditional commercial partners of Iran have previously stated their opposition to imposing the toughest of sanctions on Tehran.
Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday that any forcible sanctions against Iran were out of the question.

"I would like to emphasize that today the Iran-6 members clearly confirmed the previous statements that rule out any possibility of forcible actions against Iran sanctioned by the UN Security Council," Sergei Lavrov said after a Paris meeting of foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members and Germany.

"We are convinced that this [forcible] path would not lead us nowhere other than to another crisis in the region," the minister said. "The only way to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem lies through negotiations."
previous to this development,President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Sanctions against Iran could wreck the current positive process in the talks on Iran's controversial nuclear program,

"We are not favor of allowing everybody to buy nuclear weapons or delivery vehicles," Putin said in an interview with Canadian television channel CTV. "We are in favor of finding coordinated decisions together, including within the G8. We will be trying to achieve this."

"But if today, without receiving Iran's response to the proposals made by six countries, we impose some kind of sanctions, we will wreck the positive process that has only just emerged," Putin said.

at same time,Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the Bush administration's chief negotiator on the Iran issue, said the United States is pleased by what it called strong action by the Security Council group.

"This is a significant decision that frankly reflects the disappointment and frustration of our countries over the lack of a serious response."

The group said it could stop the Security Council actions at any time should Iran cooperate. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency has already told Iran it must put uranium enrichment and related disputed activities on hold, and doing so is the condition for opening negotiations on the incentives package presented to Iran last month.

If Iran agrees to the group's terms for negotiations, it would mean the first high-level face-to-face talks between the United States and Iran after more than a quarter century of estrangement.

Iran ruled out responding this week to international incentives to suspend disputed portions of its nuclear program. The United States and other nations wanted an answer by Wednesday on whether Iran would meet terms to begin negotiations on a package of economic and energy incentives for Iran in exchange for at least the short-term end to Tehran's rapidly advancing program to enrich uranium.

"The indications are that Iran's response has been disappointing and incomplete," Rice had reporters aboard her flight here.

Iran repeatedly has said it will not respond to the offer before August.

The six countries had been pushing for an agreement before world leaders meet this weekend in Russia for the Group of Eight summit of leading industrial democracies.

Enrichment can produce fuel for a civilian reactor or fissile material for a bomb. The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran's nuclear program is cover for a weapons program, despite Tehran's repeated denials.

"If we go to the Security Council we'll take our time in terms of putting together the best response," to make sure Iran understands that it cannot continue to pursue enrichment while talks are ongoing, and that it also understands it can still choose to bargain, Rice said.

The Security Council would also make clear the consequences of rejecting the deal, Rice said.
source"afp,ria novosti
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

US's zero-sum diplomacy toward Iran

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

"nuclear iran"--On the eve of the Group of Eight (G8) summit in Russia, President George W Bush and his top policymakers openly boast about the US's multilateralist diplomacy toward Iran and, yet, their all-or-nothing approach with respect to Iran's nuclear enrichment program represents a zero-sum pseudo-diplomacy bound to fail.

While pressing Iran to provide a response to the international package prior to the much anticipated summit in St Petersburg, the US government has preemptively rejected the middle-of-the-road option of putting Iran's enrichment program on standby while the talks continue.

In talks in Brussels on Tuesday, the two sides made no headway with Iran, which is still refusing either to accept or reject the offer



of incentives made five weeks ago by six of the world's powers in return for giving up its uranium enrichment program.

In a recent interview with the Arms Control Association, the US envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), George L Schulte, clarified that the US opposes the idea of Iranian centrifuges running on "empty". Suspension, Schulte, explained, "means all enrichment activities to include research and development. We are not looking to parse that in some fashion. We're looking for a full suspension".

Lending a scientific hand to this maximalist US demand, the nuclear scientist David Albright has stated: "Among the proposals and counterproposals seeking a resolution to this issue, one that is especially gaining momentum in some quarters of Europe and Iran is to allow Iran's centrifuges to spin but with no uranium hexafluoride. This would give Iran important knowledge of centrifuge cascade operations with proliferation risks of its own, and must not be part of the negotiated settlement".

Yet, what Albright misses is the reason this option is gaining momentum in Iran and Europe, that is, its feasibility as a viable third option that, as stated by this author in a previous article, can potentially break the present impasse on nuclear talks, since anything beyond that, that is, full suspension, is simply not in the realm of political possibilities in Iran today.

In addition to readily dismissing a viable option increasingly favored by the Europeans, the US diplomacy is suffering from a chronic lack of creativity thinly cloaked by pseudo-solutions aimed at capturing the headlines more than providing substantive grounds for multilateral diplomacy.

In the latest development from Washington the US is about to start negotiations with Moscow for disposing some of its nuclear waste in Russia. Per the reports in both the Washington Post and the New York Times, this deal would be closely linked to Russia's cooperation on Iran. According to the National Security Council spokesman, Frederich L Jones, "we have made clear to Russia that for an agreement on peaceful nuclear cooperation to go forward, we will need Russia's active cooperation in blocking Iran's attempt to obtain nuclear weapons".

But, this is clearly a US misstep for three main reasons. First, as the host for the G8 summit, Russia hopes to utilize the opportunity to sell its new image as an energy superpower, not the dumping ground for nuclear wastes by the US and other third countries using US-made power plants, and this can hardly be said to favor Russia's global image.

Second, Russia's growing environmentalist movement is adamantly opposed to President Vladimir Putin's initiative in this regard and, consequently, any such US-Russia deal, is bound to add to Putin's unpopularity at home.

Russia today is already threatened by "widespread contamination of the environment", per a recent report of the environmentalist group, Ekozashachita, which has predicted "minimum profit and maximum radioactive waste", If the deal goes through "each Russian citizen will get an average of 140 grams of nuclear waste and $3.50".

Presently, Russia has 26 nuclear waste sites, many of them causing serious environmental problems. They include the city of Moscow, the Northwest region of Russia, the Kara Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Ural mountains, the Techa River. Even the G8 host city of St Petersburg is put at risk by the train shipments of nuclear waste tunneling through town, per the complaints of Greenpeace activists who cite the numerous problems with Russia's aging and malfunctioning train system, bedeviled by a long list of incidents.

Third, the strong linkage between the nuclear waste deal and Moscow's Iran policy is also bound to backfire with the Russian nationalists surrounding Putin who would be risking his reputation if he consents to this linkage. One thing is certain, precisely because of the US linkage diplomacy, the nuclear waste agreement will likely take longer to ink, perhaps not even during the remainder of Bush's presidency. Much ado about nothing then?

Not necessarily, in light of the rather robust US-Russia cooperation on strategic threat reduction, both sides have agreed to renew until 2013 their historic agreement to cooperate in reducing threats involving their nuclear arsenals. That agreement outweighs other, less important considerations and tensions, between Russia and the US, which is why the Bush administration's explicit linkage of normal nuclear cooperation to Russia's Iran policy is both illogical, untimely and unworkable.

This brings us to the agenda overload of the upcoming G8 summit. With North Korea's missile tests dropping in at center stage, the world leaders, including China's president, attending the summit might end up devoting more attention to North Korea than to Iran.

This, in turn, puts China at center stage, takes some of the heat from Russia, and simultaneously alleviates some of the pressure from Iran that has been somewhat cornered by the mounting pressure to respond to the package. Already, one of Putin's top aides, Sergi Prikhodko, has clarified that Iran will "not be a central international topic" at the summit. Both Prikhodko and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have kept up hopes that Iran will in the end adopt Russia's proposal for nuclear fuel production for Iran inside Russia, and that is probably one of the strongest common denominators of the White House and Kremlin at the moment.

Everything else has the bittersweet taste of zero-sum diplomacy unlikely to find too many converts either in Tehran, Moscow or elsewhere in Europe.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-authored "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume X11, issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review. He is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction .

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

world powers refer Iran to Security Council

July 12, 2006.

"nuclear iran"-- World powers agreed Wednesday to send Iran back to the United Nations Security Council for possible punishment, saying the iran has given no sign it means to negotiate seriously over its disputed nuclear program.

The United States and other permanent members of the powerful U.N. body said Iran has had long enough to say whether it will meet the world's terms to open bargaining that would give Tehran economic and energy incentives in exchange for giving up suspicious activities.

"The Iranians have given no indication at all that they are ready to engage seriously on the substance of our proposals," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on behalf the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, the five permanent Security Council members, plus Germany and the European Union.

Expressing "profound disappointment," the ministers said, "we have no choice but to return to the United Nations Security Council" and resume a course of possible punishment or coercion that the powers had set aside in hopes of reaching a deal.

Any real punishment or coercion at the Security Council is a long way off, but the group said it will seek an initial resolution requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Debate could begin as soon as next week.

If Iran does not comply, the group said it would then seek harsher action. The group's short statement did not give any specifics, but it cited a section of the world body's charter that could open the door to economic or other sanctions.

Though Russia and China signed on to Wednesday's statement, the two traditional commercial partners of Iran have previously stated their opposition to imposing the toughest of sanctions on Tehran.
Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday that any forcible sanctions against Iran were out of the question.

"I would like to emphasize that today the Iran-6 members clearly confirmed the previous statements that rule out any possibility of forcible actions against Iran sanctioned by the UN Security Council," Sergei Lavrov said after a Paris meeting of foreign ministers of the five permanent Security Council members and Germany.

"We are convinced that this [forcible] path would not lead us nowhere other than to another crisis in the region," the minister said. "The only way to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem lies through negotiations."
previous to this development,President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday that Sanctions against Iran could wreck the current positive process in the talks on Iran's controversial nuclear program,

"We are not favor of allowing everybody to buy nuclear weapons or delivery vehicles," Putin said in an interview with Canadian television channel CTV. "We are in favor of finding coordinated decisions together, including within the G8. We will be trying to achieve this."

"But if today, without receiving Iran's response to the proposals made by six countries, we impose some kind of sanctions, we will wreck the positive process that has only just emerged," Putin said.

at same time,Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, the Bush administration's chief negotiator on the Iran issue, said the United States is pleased by what it called strong action by the Security Council group.

"This is a significant decision that frankly reflects the disappointment and frustration of our countries over the lack of a serious response."

The group said it could stop the Security Council actions at any time should Iran cooperate. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency has already told Iran it must put uranium enrichment and related disputed activities on hold, and doing so is the condition for opening negotiations on the incentives package presented to Iran last month.

If Iran agrees to the group's terms for negotiations, it would mean the first high-level face-to-face talks between the United States and Iran after more than a quarter century of estrangement.

Iran ruled out responding this week to international incentives to suspend disputed portions of its nuclear program. The United States and other nations wanted an answer by Wednesday on whether Iran would meet terms to begin negotiations on a package of economic and energy incentives for Iran in exchange for at least the short-term end to Tehran's rapidly advancing program to enrich uranium.

"The indications are that Iran's response has been disappointing and incomplete," Rice had reporters aboard her flight here.

Iran repeatedly has said it will not respond to the offer before August.

The six countries had been pushing for an agreement before world leaders meet this weekend in Russia for the Group of Eight summit of leading industrial democracies.

Enrichment can produce fuel for a civilian reactor or fissile material for a bomb. The U.S. and its allies suspect Iran's nuclear program is cover for a weapons program, despite Tehran's repeated denials.

"If we go to the Security Council we'll take our time in terms of putting together the best response," to make sure Iran understands that it cannot continue to pursue enrichment while talks are ongoing, and that it also understands it can still choose to bargain, Rice said.

The Security Council would also make clear the consequences of rejecting the deal, Rice said.
source"afp,ria novosti
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Advantage Iran

By Ehsan Ahrari

"nuclear iran"--Iran is the source of much discussion and dismay in the West. Yet it is reportedly becoming quite popular in the world of Islam. What is the reason for this ostensibly split vision of Western governments and Muslims at large regarding Iran?

The simple answer is that the country's decision to defy the United States, the lone superpower and a leader of the "West", But the reason is more complex than that. To be sure, no one in the Muslim world wants Iran to become a nuclear power. In fact, Iran itself continues to insist that it has no such intentions.

However, the Bush administration is equally convinced that Iran nurtures aspirations to become the next nuclear power. For



Muslims, who are craving some semblance of leadership from their region, Iran's defiance of the US is gathering enormous support, and a lot of kudos and cheers for the role of President Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Iran back at the UN

The US, France, Britain, Russia and China - the five permanent UN Security Council members - plus Germany on Wednesday agreed in Paris to send Iran before the United Nations Security Council for possible punishment.

Tehran has refused to say whether it agrees to terms to begin negotiations on a package of economic and energy incentives in exchange for at least a short-term end to its program to enrich uranium.

Expressing "profound disappointment", the nations said, "We have no choice but to return to the United Nations Security Council and resume a course of possible punishment or coercion."

Any real move to punish Iran at the Security Council is a long way off, but the group said it would seek an initial resolution requiring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment. Debate could begin as soon as next week.
Since its creation after the revolution of 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have been mostly hostile toward one anther. The best phrase to reflect that reality was coined by an Iranian specialist, Professor Rouhollah Ramazani, who depicted that attitude as "mutual Satanization".

A popular depiction of America in Iran is the "Great Satan", while the US regularly calls Iran a state that sponsors terrorism. It was once described as a "rogue state". Then, under President George W Bush, the White House phrasemakers lumped Iran under a new dark phrase - "axis of evil", along with Iraq and North Korea. Most recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was swept away by her desire to come up with another loathsome phrase when she called Iran "one of the outposts of tyranny".

It is hard to be objective on the subject of US-Iran relations (or the lack thereof), since the friends and foes of the US and Iran are keen on questioning the objectivity of any author on the issue. However, it is fair to state that in this exercise of mutual Satanization, neither side is free from blame.

The US never got over the humiliation that its diplomats encountered during the hostage crisis in the immediate aftermath of the revolution of 1979. In fact, that very emotion drove the Ronald Reagan administration to take sides against Iran during the Iran-Iraq War that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It was because of the American intervention in that conflict that Iraq emerged as a "victor". Saddam Hussein decided to pay for the American and Arab support of his aggression against Iran (since Iraq started the war) by invading Kuwait in July 1990.

The Islamic Republic, in turn, continued its own policies of anti-Americanism throughout its existence. It was allegedly involved in the Western hostage-taking binge of Beirut in the 1980s, a charge that Tehran has denied. It never accepted the peaceful negotiations between the Arabs and Israelis as a way to resolve that conflict, and emerged as a major supporter of the Hezbollah Party of Lebanon, which the US depicted as a terrorist organization.

From time to time during the 1980s and 1990s, there were rumors of a potential rapprochement between Washington and Tehran; however, this never happened. When the US decided to invade Afghanistan to dismantle the Taliban regime in 2001, according to some reports, Iran cooperated with the US by informing its officials "of major Afghan fault lines and helped them target Taliban sites for bombing missions". Expectations rose then that there might be some sort of warming between the two countries. However, Bush put a damper on that by labeling Iran as part of "axis of evil" in his state of union speech in January 2002.

Iran was initially ambivalent about the US invasion of Iraq. It was happy to see the end of the dictatorship of Saddam, who was one of the most hated international figures in Iran. However, the leaders of Iran remained wary of the potential long-term US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, their country's eastern and western flanks.

The US's continued presence in Afghanistan and Iraq has to be understood from the Iranian perspective. When it sees the world's most powerful country staying in those countries with the intention of making them its client states - America's denials notwithstanding - Iran is of the view that it has to take countermeasures. Those are primarily based on asymmetric warfare.

Two important aspects of this are low-level support for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and constant endeavors to promote instability in Iraq. However, in both instances, Iran has purposely kept its involvement so muddled and murky that the US has a tough time proving it to the international community.

This is an important point when one examines the explicit depiction of the Bush administration of Iran as a major threat. The leaders in Tehran know that they remain quite vulnerable to the potential implementation of the Bush's much-hated and equally feared "regime change". However, not taking any countermeasures has never been an option for Iran. They know that the Bush administration dismantled the regime of Saddam, despite the fact that it was not an aggressor. The Iranian leaders have no intention of repeating Saddam's policy of inaction.

Ideally speaking, it would like to develop nuclear weapons. However, it knows that its indigenous knowledge has not reached that stage yet. At the same time, Iran is aware that the Bush administration would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons under any circumstances. The timing of developing nuclear weapons is not right, even if Iran had the native ability to do so.

Thus, Iran has decided to play the US depiction of its alleged nuclear ambition to the hilt. It wishes to employ all its diplomatic power to engage the US and other major powers to extract ironclad guarantees from the Bush administration that it will forthwith cease all activities related to regime change.

Second, Iran wants to receive from the West an elaborate package of economic assistance and transfer of cutting-edge technology in the realm of the peaceful use of nuclear energy, oil-related technology and technology in the field of civilian avionics.

Third, it wants the Bush administration to stop its diplomatic maneuvers aimed at excluding Iran from future international oil pipeline agreements.

As can be imagined, Iran, despite the wide prevalent asymmetry between its and the US military power, has other options.

First, China and Russia are determined to shelter it from any stringent United Nations economic sanctions, although they have agreed to refer the case back to the UN (See side panel).

Second, it has an elaborate network of agents in Iraq who are ready to keep US security forces engaged for a long time. How bloody or intractable that engagement becomes depends on how threatened Iran feels about the US presence in Iraq.

Third, despite the fact that al-Qaeda maintains harsh theological perspectives toward Shi'ites, Iran has demonstrated a remarkable capability of engaging that organization purely on the basis of pragmatism. In the aftermath of the dismantlement of the Taliban regime, Iran reportedly wanted to relinquish some high-valued al-Qaeda functionaries - including Osama bin Laden's son, Saad, and al-Qaeda's chief of operations, Saif al-Adel - in exchange for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, an organization that Saddam was using to terrorize Iran.

However when the Bush administration did not show any interest in that exchange, Iran lost interest. Finally, Iran has proved itself to be of an enormously deft global player of balance-of-power politics.

Iran's decision to make the US and other powers wait until August for its response to their elaborate economic package and their offer to conduct further negotiations regarding its nuclear enrichment program is the outcome of its maneuver to drive a wedge between the Group of Eight (G8) countries.

These countries wanted an Iranian response by July 5, so that they could use their summit in St Petersburg (July 15-17) to formulate a coordinated reaction. Iran knew that an earlier response had the potential to unify the G8 countries.

However, by making them wait until after the meeting, it makes it logistically difficult for them to get together and come up with any agreement on sanctions against Iran. The leaders in Iran are also cognizant of the fact that the G8 had already failed to agree on how to respond if it did not reply by July 5.

From the Muslim point of view, the Iranian maneuvers are not that relevant. What is pertinent, however, is the fact that a Muslim country is standing up to the US. There is an enormous amount of ill-will building toward America as a result of its sustained occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and regarding the enduring sufferings of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

The international community received a glimpse of the popularity of Ahmadinejad among Muslims when he visited Indonesia. It should be recalled that he visited that country in the immediate aftermath of writing his famous letter of May 8 to Bush. Even though Washington dismissed it as not worthy of response, it received huge publicity and captured a lot of attention in the world of Islam. That was just another reason why Ahmadinejad was greeted with so much euphoria in Indonesia. Large crowds showed up to hear him.

In an era when the Muslim world is starving for heroes and leaders, Ahmadinejad is certainly being perceived in that role by young Muslims. He is young, feisty and is willing to confront the US, when all other Muslim leaders opt for cooperation and quiet diplomacy, whose modalities remain secret as a matter of tradition.

A retired Indonesian official probably spoke for millions of Muslims when he observed about the Iranian president, "He should be the role model for other Muslim leaders in the world."

The Iranian president also knows how to couch his country's present conflict with the US over the nuclear issue in a language with which millions of Muslims all over the world not only directly relate to, but also wholeheartedly agree.

He has asked Bush, "Why is it that any technological and scientific achievement reached in the Middle East regions is translated into and portrayed as a threat to the Zionist regime? Is not scientific R&D [research and development] one of the basic rights of nations?"

And, according to Guardian of London, "Mr Ahmadinejad's rising political fortunes run counter to American attempts to isolate Iran, which it brands a rogue state. US officials have described the Iranian president as a threat to world peace and claim that he faces a popular insurrection at home."

The same dispatch also quoted an Iranian observer saying, "Certainly his popularity is increasing. People like what he says. It's not so much because he stands up to the West but because he's not corrupt. This is very important."

What are the implications of the preceding for Iran? Students of "hard power" may not be very much impressed by Iran's penchant for defying the United States, or Iran's decision to make the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq gory, or by its sustained endeavors to drive a wedge between the G8 countries for its own advantage.

However, there is little doubt that Iran's activities in all these realms are enabling it to become a major actor in the calculation of world powers. As such, it may yet extract most from the US through negotiations, including security guarantees against regime change, and a sizeable economic package that would also include transfer of the world-class technology that it direly needs.

In this entire intricate process, Iran is also winning the hearts and minds of Muslims all over the world, an issue on which the Bush administration remains increasingly hapless, maladroit and, indeed, clumsy. In the final analysis, Iran is gaining a lot of advantages from this ostensible split vision of it in the West and in the world of Islam.

Ehsan Ahrari is the CEO of Strategic Paradigms, an Alexandria, Virginia-based defense consultancy. He can be reached at eahrari@cox.net or stratparadigms@yahoo.com. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.

(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .)
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

EU-Iran nuclear talks end in stalemate

By HANNAH K. STRANGE


July 11,2006
"nuclear iran"-- Talks between the European Union and Iran aimed at persuading the Islamic Republic to accept a deal on its nuclear programs ended with no sign of a breakthrough Tuesday.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said that that talks on Tehran's atomic program will be a "long process," urging patience and dashing hopes that agreement could be reached by a Wednesday deadline.

Speaking after a Brussels meeting with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, he said: "We have discussed a wide range of important issues together, consultations will now be done by both sides. We will be in contact together in order to see how to proceed.

"We have to go into a long process, we must be patient and do everything exactly."

Solana meanwhile was equivocal in his appraisal of the meeting, saying only: "We will make (an) analysis and we will see how to proceed."

A spokeswoman for Solana later refused to comment on the content of the talks, which lasted four hours and had earlier been postponed on two occasions.

The United States and Europe had been hoping for a positive response to a six-nation package aimed at dissuading Tehran from continuing with uranium enrichment.

Britain, the United States, Russia, China, France and Germany had offered economic and trade incentives as well as access to peaceful nuclear technology in exchange for a pledge by Iran to suspend uranium enrichment activities during nuclear talks.

The six nations -- who are to meet in Paris Wednesday to discuss the stand-off -- wanted a response before the G8 summit of industrialized nations in St. Petersburg, Russia, this weekend.

However, Tehran has insisted it will not respond formally to the offer until August. Arriving in Brussels Tuesday, Larijani said: "We have expressed our view regarding the deadline. We are not used to acting before thinking."

In a hint that Iran might be moving towards a positive response, he added that there was "no need for pessimism."

But a senior official from the British Foreign Office told United Press International that Iran had not indicated "any flexibility" at the meeting, particularly on the suspension of enrichment activities.

"Everyone who attended was disappointed. Our ministers will decide how to proceed at Wednesday's meeting in Paris," he said.

He would not comment on whether Iran would be given more time to respond, saying this was a matter for ministers.

Meanwhile in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice again raised the specter of sanctions against the Iranian regime should it not sign up to the deal.

"We hope that the Iranians choose the path before them for cooperation, but of course we can always return to the other path should we need to," she said.

The six nations have not confirmed the details of the package but it is understood to include provision of light water nuclear reactors and enriched fuel, access to U.S. agricultural and civilian aircraft technology and support for Iranian membership of World Trade Organization.

Concern has been mounting about Iran's nuclear ambitions since it emerged in 2003 that the Islamic Republic had been operating a uranium enrichment program in secret for 18 years. Britain, France and Germany -- the so-called EU Three -- held talks with Tehran aimed at ensuring its nuclear programs were peaceful; however these collapsed last summer.

The stand-off escalated sharply in January when Iran removed United Nations seals from three nuclear facilities, ending a two-year suspension of uranium enrichment-related activities.

Under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, countries are allowed to enrich uranium for peaceful nuclear energy purposes; this, Iran maintains, is its only intention.

However the same technology can be used to create nuclear weapons, which some countries, notably the United States and Israel, fear is Tehran's true objective.

Confrontational exchanges between Washington and Tehran have heightened international tensions. U.S. President George W. Bush has made clear that the use of force against Iran remains an option, while Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei warned last month that it could disrupt shipments of oil from the Gulf if the United States made a "wrong move" in the dispute. Iran has also suggested it could use its influence to stir up trouble in the region, particularly in neighboring Iraq.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remained defiant during a tour in northwest Iran Tuesday.

"The Iranian nation will not retreat one iota on its way to realizing all of its rights, including complete nuclear rights and employing the capacities to produce nuclear fuel," Iranian news agency IRNA quoted him as saying.

Should Iran ultimately reject the six-nation offer, the United States will likely press for sanctions against the regime. However such a move could be thwarted by resistance from Security Council veto-holders Russia and China, both of which have key interests in the country. Russia has a $1 billion contract to build Iran's first atomic reactor at Bushehr, while China is heavily reliant on Iranian oil exports for its energy supplies.

According to a British diplomatic figure with knowledge of the negotiations, the latest incentive package had been put forward largely at the request of Moscow and Beijing.

However in the face of "continued Iranian intransigence," it was likely that discussions at the Security Council would be reactivated and measures to increase pressure on the regime adopted, the official told UPI.

Ministers at Wednesday's six-nation meeting would be seeking to devise a "concerted game plan," he said, and would also attempt to broker a united and resolute position on the issue at the G8 summit.

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

US Says Major Powers Prepared to Seek Punitive Action Against Iran

By David Gollust
State Department
11 July 2006



"nuclear iran"--The United States says world powers are fully prepared to seek punitive action against Iran after it failed to provide a clear answer to their overture to Tehran to halt uranium enrichment and return to nuclear negotiations. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will discuss the issue Wednesday in Paris with her foreign minister counterparts from the permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany.

Officials here say the next move in the nuclear confrontation will be up to the so-called P5 Plus 1 foreign ministers to decide in Paris.

But they are making clear the major powers are prepared to move ahead with the punitive side of their so-called carrots and sticks offer to Tehran in the absence of a clear response to the initiative.

Iran has had six weeks to consider the offer of incentives for it to suspend uranium enrichment and related activities, and return to negotiations with the European Union on its nuclear program.


Ali Larijani (l) and Javier Solana
What U.S. officials had hoped would be a decisive meeting between EU chief diplomat Javier Solana and Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani turned out to be inconclusive Tuesday in Brussels, with the Iranian envoy talking about ambiguities in the big-power proposal and the need for more talks.

A Solana spokesman described the Brussels meeting as disappointing.

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack reiterated that the Iranians have had plenty of time to consider a proposal that basically required them only to accept an enrichment freeze in order to avoid punitive action.

McCormack said he did not want to prejudge what Secretary Rice and her colleagues would decide, but insisted the six-powers are united in their intention to pursue penalties if Iran spurned the pathway of incentives and negotiations:

"There is a positive pathway that could lead to potential benefits to the Iranian people," he said. "That is the pathway of negotiation, and we are fully prepared to go down that pathway. We are also fully prepared, as are the other members of the P5 Plus 1 to go down the other pathway. That is the pathway of the U.N. Security Council. So in the absence of a clear answer, the P5 Plus 1 has in the past stated their willingness to go down that other pathway."


Condoleezza Rice
The spokesman said Secretary Rice got an initial telephone briefing from Solana on his talks with the Iranian envoy, and that the EU diplomat would provide a fuller assessment to the six foreign ministers Wednesday in the French capital..

The details of the six-power offer to Iran are still officially secret. But it is understood to include assistance for what Iran's nominally peaceful civilian nuclear program and other incentives to return to negotiations including spare parts for its U.S. aircraft.

The disincentives would begin a U.N. Security Council resolution against Iran that could be followed by various sanctions, either through the United Nations or by like-minded countries acting on their own.

Although Spokesman McCormack said there were no divisions among the P5 Plus 1 countries on their willingness to move to punitive action, there have been differences between the United States and its European allies on one hand, and Russia and China opposing U.N. sanctions on the other.

Despite Iranian denials, the United States has long maintained that Iran's nuclear program has a covert weapons component.
Source:VOA news
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Russia believes Iran decades from nuke

By ELIZABETH NEWELL


July 11 (UPI)
"nuclear iran"-- Russia believes Iran to be 25 to 30 years away from possession of nuclear arms, but U.S. experts disagree.

"We should look at the real possibilities of Iran," Val Spector, the president of the International Academy of Sciences on Problems of National Security, said Monday. "Their progress is kind of stopped. Their enrichment process is not very successful, even on a production level - the problem is of purification of initial materials. Unless they come to a solution of this purification problem, which is the most complicated part of any chemical production, the side reaction will impure the initial materials and spoil the final product."

In a Woodrow Wilson Center lecture, Spector said Russia's assessment was based on the opinion of military experts who had visited Iranian nuclear sites. It contradicts, however, the assessments of the United States and its allies.

"That's a surprising assessment given that most estimates from intelligence organizations in the west see Iran from two to ten years away," said Jim Phillips, research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation, told UPI. "Twenty-five years seems like a very optimistic estimate from my perspective, I think they're a lot closer than that."

At the lecture, Spector did address the possibility that Iran could have come into possession of nuclear material illegally, making it easier for them to achieve nuclear armament sooner than Russia expects. However, he does not see that as a serious threat.

"Our military intelligence is connected to the technological capability of Iran, not on some kind of supposed delivery of illegal materials," Spector said. "The efficiency of a nuclear device depends on the precision of the arrival of the parts that come to the critical mass. Without the right timing, there will be contamination, but the bomb will fizzle, not blow."

Russia sees the discussion of Iranian nuclear capabilities as more of a political issue than a security issue, according to Spector, who referenced the U.S. role in Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi's return to power in 1953. Spector said the perception in Iran was that the United States hoped to force its way of life onto Muslims in the Middle East and that this belief infused the nuclear discussion with anti-imperialist sentiment.

"The issue of nuclear independence has coincided with the issue of national independence in Iran," Spector said. "If we took politics out, it would be much better. (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, though he is looking very fanatical, he is not. He's trying to put a semblance of order that was lost after the death of (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini and he's trying to start the relaxation of his regime."

Spector said that bringing Iran to the United Nations Security Council would also be a political move. He called that option "unjust," because other countries had developed nuclear capabilities and had not been brought before the Security Council.

However, Phillips said the Security Council option was an appropriate one for dealing with Iran. "Other countries don't have the same long history of supporting terrorism and violating international law as Iran does," he said. "If [Spector] was talking about India and Israel, I think the importance difference is neither of those countries signed a non-proliferation treaty while Iran did sign it."

Spector indicated that Russia takes at face value Iran's statement that it will not create a nuclear weapon.

"Iran said, 'We're not going to create a nuclear weapon as we understand that such development will lend legitimacy to nuclear weapons of Israel and Israel will be able to improve its nuclear arsenal and threaten security of Iran and the whole region directly,'" Spector said.

According to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to enrich uranium for its civilian nuclear energy program, but many in the west believe Iran is using its civilian nuclear energy program as a guise to enrich uranium for the development of nuclear weapons. Many in the United States and European Union, especially, believe taking Iran's word for it that it will not build or use a nuclear weapon is extremely risky.

"That's a very dangerous assumption," Phillips said. "I think Iran would use weapons it sees as in its own interests without relating it to what Israel has or doesn't have."

Phillips believes that differing stances on Iran will cause friction between the United States and Russia in the future.

"I think Russia's foot-dragging on the Iranian nuclear issue will become an increasingly problematic source of tension in bilateral relations. What makes me pessimistic is that right now Russia is on its best behavior in the run-up to the G8 summit. It will likely become even less forthcoming after that summit."

© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

North Korea in the Eyes of Iran

"nuclear iran"--As the U.S. tries to unite a divided international community around its its strategy over North Korea, Iran finds itself in an unusual position in the nuclear proliferation diplomacy wars -- as spectator.

It's probably no surprise that North Korea's July 4 missile test made front page news in the Islamic republic.

Though the biggest missile failed, Pyonyang's salvo impressed the Iranian online media as a demonstration of the limits of U.S. power. Pro-government and anti-government news sites alike see North Korea's provocation as a plus for the Iranian government, which is in the midst of preparing a response to the Bush administration's offer to negotiate over the establishment of international controls of Iran's nuclear program.

The Iran News in Tehran wonders if North Korea was imitating Iran by taking a "resolute" stand.

"The thinking in Pyongyang may be that Iran got a better deal on its nuclear proram from the West by standing resolute and the North should try its luck by forcing the U.S., South Korea, Japan, Russia and China to give Pyongyang more incentives," say the editors.

The news site, which made news recently for its open criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad's economic policies, says the United Nations has a limited appetite for punitive actions against North Korea.

"It remains doubtful the Security Council could reach a consensus on sanctions (let alone military action) against Pyongyang anytime soon. The fact is that diplomacy remains the only game in town."

Defying the United States, they conclude, may "actually help the six-party talks and eventually bring the reclusive Pyongyang leadership back to the table."

Bush policy toward North Korea, said the conservative Mehr News, "has only given rise to an intensification of animosity and talk of an arms race in Northeast Asia, encouraging Japan to make moves to revise its pacifist constitution, to the alarm of its neighbors, who still have bitter memories of World War II."

Professor Kim Yeon-Chul of Korea University's Asiatic Research Centre told the Tehran news and culture site that "North Korea's nuclear and missile capability has been ever growing under the Bush administration. This raises questions about the moralistic approach in diplomacy by Washington."

"Extremism begets extremism," says Mehr News. "This is not an acceptable policy for dealing with regional and international issues.

The Iran News, another pro-government site, took care last week to distinguish Iran from North Korea and with the suggestion that U.S. efforts to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council are unwarranted.

"Iran is neither Iraq under Saddam Hussein nor North Korea under Kim Il Song and Kim Jung Il. Iran is a very important geo-political, geo-strategic and geo-economic power regionally and internationally. Iranians do not deserve the humiliation associated with referral to the UN Security Council and being branded as a pariah within the international community."

But an editorial in E'temad, one of the few reformist publications still allowed to publish, implied the strategies of Pyonyang and Tehran are not all that different.

North Korea is diverting attention from its internal difficulties to "foreign enemies," said the editors.

The government has "has obstructed protests and the peaceful transition [of power]" while seeking to "rally the people behind them and instill pride in them."

The North Koreans, they say, seek to identify "foreign contention and stone-throwing by the West" as "the causes of the country's internal problems."

That sounds like what many Iranian dissidents say about the Tehran government: that it uses the nuclear issue to distract attention from its failure to deliver economic growth.

Not surprisingly, E'temad-e Melli's solution for the North Korean crisis closely mirrors the solution to the Iranian nuclear impasse favored by many Iranian reformists.

"Interaction with the West and reaching some guarantees in return for a two-sided deal will not only lift the heavy burden of unnecessary expenses from the shoulders of the government, but will also put bread on the people's tables," the editors said.
source:http://blog.washingtonpost.com
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Iran's Waiting Game

Iran's Waiting Game

By David Ignatius
Wednesday, July 12, 2006; A15

"nuclear iran"--"To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war," Winston Churchill said famously in 1954 about negotiations to end the Korean War, and the Bush administration embraced this precept in proposing talks with Iran over its nuclear program. But yesterday, the Party of Jaw hit an Iranian obstacle -- forcing all sides to consider less pleasant alternatives.

The chance of any quick breakthrough on the nuclear issue evaporated when Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani said in Brussels that Iran wasn't ready yet to respond to a European-American offer of incentives in exchange for halting its nuclear program. The Bush administration had been expecting an ambiguous Iranian response, and it agreed weeks ago with its allies that anything short of a clear "yes" would be taken as a "no." But for administration officials who had argued for the diplomatic opening to Iran, Tehran's non-response was still a disappointment.

U.S. officials saw nothing positive in Larijani's meeting with Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief. The Iranian official didn't come close to accepting the European-American proposal for talks, one knowledgeable official said, or to accepting the West's precondition that Iran halt its enrichment of uranium. This outcome was a setback, if not a surprise. Administration officials had been warning privately last week that a divided and suspicious Iran didn't yet appear ready to make significant concessions.

The Party of War waits in the wings, in Washington and Tehran, but Washington's strategy for now is one of diplomatic pressure. The first step will be to push the Iranian nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council. Administration officials say that Russia and China had promised they would back at least some limited U.N. measures against Iran if Tehran balked at negotiations, and President Bush wants a strong statement criticizing Iran at the Group of Eight summit this weekend in St. Petersburg. The Iranians appear to be counting on Russia as their secret protector, but here they may have misjudged. Russian President Vladimir Putin will take the stage in St. Petersburg as the West's friend, not Tehran's.

U.S. officials expect a period of jockeying over the next few months -- a long summer of pressure and counterpressure, in which the parties test and probe each other's resolve and diplomatic clout. The administration wants to avoid rhetorical bombast and an American-Iranian confrontation, preferring a steady international pressure campaign that makes clear to the Iranians that they must make a choice. For that strategy to be credible, Russia will have to stand tough with America and Europe. That means Putin holds the high cards in this poker game.

The danger now, as in any diplomatic standoff, is miscalculation. For months the Iranians have been almost dismissive of U.S. warnings -- apparently convinced that America is so bogged down in Iraq that it lacks any real leverage against Tehran. That Iranian overconfidence is potentially dangerous. Spurning a superpower is never a good idea, especially a wounded one, and the Iranians arguably missed their best chance this week to begin making a deal that would address all sides' security concerns.

"I always expected that Iran would say 'yes' and 'no,' and that it would be taken by Washington as a 'no,' " said Hadi Semati, a professor of political science at Tehran University who is a visiting fellow this summer at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He cautions that Iran remains deeply suspicious of American policy, because many in Iran believe that it's the Americans who are adopting a strategy to delay, while maintaining a hidden agenda of regime change. Still, says Semati, "Iran should not overplay its hand" and "miss an honorable chance" to resolve security issues with the West.

After 27 years of not speaking to each other, it's hardly surprising that a July wedding isn't in the cards for Mr. Great Satan and Ms. Axis of Evil. Perhaps the best outcome from the stillborn U.S. proposal for talks is that it has produced some real debate within Iran, with the clergy and the political elite mulling the proper response. That ferment will intensify this fall, when the Iranians hold elections for their Assembly of Experts, a sometimes contentious body dominated by the clergy.

The Bush administration, in the new post-cowboy phase of its diplomacy, has made a big bet on the steadfastness of its friends and allies. It has decided, for now, to rely on the United Nations and its ability to respond seriously to the crisis posed by Iran's nuclear program. The next few weeks will show whether that bet was wise.

davidignatius@washpost.com

© 2006 The Washington Post Company
posted by ali ghanandi-irannuk

Monday, July 10, 2006

Iran won't give final nuclear response Tuesday

Monday, July 10, 2006; 12:23 P
"nuclear iran"-- Iran will not give its final answer at a meeting today to a package of proposals backed by six world powers that aims to end a nuclear standoff with the West, an Iranian nuclear official said on Monday.

Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani meets European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana on Tuesday, when the EU has said it wants a "substantial response" to the offer.

Iran previously said it would not give a final response on Tuesday but, by repeating the comment a day before the meeting, the official undermined any prospects of a breakthrough.

"Tomorrow, we will not give a definite answer. We will only discuss questions and ambiguities regarding the offer," the official said.

Asked if Iran would give a final response if Solana answered all the queries, the official said: "It is very unlikely."

The United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany offered Iran a package of economic and diplomatic incentives to give up uranium enrichment, a process the West says Iran is using to make atomic bombs despite Iranian denials.

Iran, which says the package contains ambiguities that need clearing up, has said it would give an answer by August 22. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said on Sunday that Solana was not able to answer all Iran's questions.

Mottaki also said the Group of Eight countries, which meet in Russia in mid-July, should not take decisions that could harm the current positive atmosphere in efforts to resolve the issue.

The nuclear package is expect to be one of the issues dominating the G8 meeting.

© 2006 Reuters
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Iran to reply to six-nation proposal in mid-August: FM

"nuclear iran"--Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Sunday that his country would present its response to a six-nation nuclear proposal from Aug. 15 to 22.

Mottaki gave the timing to a news conference at the end of a two-day regional ministerial conference on Iraq.

He said that there are still some questions and ambiguities in the proposal, on which EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was not able to give answers.

Referring to upcoming talks between Iran's top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and Solana, the top Iranian diplomat stressed that the talks should be comprehensive and attended by all the relevant parties involved in the issue.

On June 6, Solana offered Iran a six-nation incentive package concerning the Iranian nuclear issue, which had been agreed by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

The United States has accused Iran of secretly developing nuclear weapons under a civilian front, but Iran has said its nuclear program is for peaceful purpose.

Source: Xinhua

posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Iran, West have chosen “diplomacy”

July 10, 2006
"nuclear iran"-– The Mehr News Agency talked to some political analysts on Sunday to learn their views about the latest developments in the nuclear issue and reports that the West has set a deadline for Iran to respond to the package of nuclear proposals.

Saeed Leylaz said that Iran and the West have both chosen “diplomacy” to resolve the issue.

It seems that Iran’s overall response to the offer will be positive, he opined, adding that there are good prospects for possible talks between Iran and Europe.

Leylaz cast doubts on reports that the West has set a deadline for Iran to answer the offer, saying the issue would not significantly influence the process of nuclear talks.

The West, upon delivering its proposals to Iran, stressed that the offer is confidential and that there is no need for Iran to make haste in giving a response, Ali Khorram explained.

“But it (West) immediately reneged on its commitments and by calling on Iran to make haste in responding to the offer, it actually put pressure on the Islamic Republic, instead of trying to resolve the issue.”

“At the current juncture, the ball is in Iran’s court and Iran seriously seeks to resolve the issue and prevent it from turning into a crisis,” he noted.

The West thinks that if Iran fully accepts the nuclear offer then the issue will be resolved, but Iran will not halt its nuclear activities so at the current circumstance only a middle approach can prove successful, Khorram observed.

Iran can accept the general points of the package but it will refuse to suspend or freeze its nuclear activities, the former diplomat to international organizations noted.

“In order to do so it needs to conduct extensive diplomatic negotiations.”

Saeed Leylaz said that Iran and the West have both chosen “diplomacy” to resolve the issue.

It seems that Iran’s overall response to the offer will be positive, he opined, adding that there are good prospects for possible talks between Iran and Europe.

Leylaz cast doubts on reports that the West has set a deadline for Iran to answer the offer, saying the issue would not significantly influence the process of nuclear talks.

The West, by pressurizing Iran, wants to put the country in a situation where it will have to choose between accepting the offer fully or rejecting it entirely, Mehdi Alikhani commented.

Alikhani noted that by setting a deadline the West is trying to wage a psychological war against the Islamic Republic so Iran should try not to lose the initiative.
source:tehran times
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Why Iran Today?

ZIYA US SALAM

Dilip Hiro talks about his interest in West Asia, especially Iran.


"nuclear iran"--TO call him a prolific author would be to state the obvious. Yes, he writes with great ease. More importantly, every time he wields the pen, he raises a few questions, answers a few himself. An expert on West Asia politics, he has been exposing the lies behind the U.S. proclamations of peace and democracy in the region. Having already penned two well-selling books on Afghanistan and Iraq, Dilip Hiro's Iran Today has just hit the stands. He shares some nuggets about his book as also the changing politics of the region.

After Iraq: A Report from the Inside, and Secrets and Lies: The True Story of the Iraq War, we now have Iran Today. Are you focusing on the countries of the "Axis of Evil" as defined by U.S. President George Bush in 2002?

Two of the three countries — Iraq, Iran and North Korea — allegedly forming Bush's "Axis of Evil" happen to be in West Asia, my area of specialisation for more than a quarter century. West Asia is also the most violent area on earth, being the site of four major armed conflicts in the post-Second World War era. The 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War was the longest conventional warfare of the 20th Century. And the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003 has proved to be the most expensive war in history — if you leave aside the tens of thousands of civilian lives it has claimed. Although Bush bracketed Iran with Iraq, forgetting their bitter war, which resulted in 5,00,000 deaths, the two neighbours are different in many ways. Even Condoleeza Rice says, "Iran is not Iraq".

How different?

Iran is four times larger than Iraq, and three times more populous. Iraq emerged as an independent state in 1932. Iran is one of the few non-European countries, which was not colonised.

Unlike Arabic, Persian is an Indo-European tongue, which was used as court language not only in the Indian subcontinent for seven centuries but also at the court of the Ottoman Turks. Sharing land frontiers with seven countries and fluvial borders with two (Russia and Kazakhstan), and having shorelines on the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and Caspian Sea, Iran is the most strategic country on earth.

So long as Bush is stuck in the quagmire of Iraq, he does not have the option of a conventional invasion of Iran. As for "surgical strikes", the Pentagon will have to mount almost 1,000 strike sorties to hit all the factories and workshops making centrifuge parts for uranium enrichment and yellow cake conversion equipment.

Some of the suspect sites will turn out to be innocuous factories or schools. Imagine then the reaction not only in Iran but also among the Shia communities in the region and outside, and the upsurge of anti-American feelings in the Muslim world already running high, as the recent international poll by the U.S.-based Pew Research Centre has shown.

After the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, Bush's "Axis of Evil" is reduced to Iran and North Korea. When referring to North Korea, Bush never says, "The military option is on the table" which he does whenever he mentions Iran. Why?

The contrast between Iran and North Korea is truly striking. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, North Korea has weapons-grade plutonium for half a dozen bombs. It claims to have assembled an atom bomb or two, a statement that remains unverified. It withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003, and it has the most advanced missiles in the world after the U.S. and Russia. By contrast, Iran has only just enriched uranium to a degree suitable for civilian power plants on an experimental basis. It remains a signatory to the NPT, and its nuclear activities are being conducted under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Its medium-range missiles are capable of carrying only conventional weapons.

One could argue that because North Korea has advanced so far on its nuclear weapons programme, the Bush administration is treating it with kid gloves and has got bogged down in six-nation negotiations with North Korea. These multi-lateral talks involve China and Russia with a veto at the United Nations Security Council.

China and Russia were the big players at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Conference (SCO) summit in Shanghai. Why did Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attend this meeting? And isn't the SCO a mere pressure group in international politics?

The six-member SCO - consisting of China and Russia and their four Central Asian neighbours - invited all the four nations accorded observer status last year - Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. All of them, except India, sent their chief executives. That is how Ahmadinejad turned up. In Shanghai while Russian President Vladimir proposed that the SCO should form an "energy club", Ahmadinejad invited SCO members to a meeting in Teheran to discuss energy exploration and development in the region, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf highlighted the geo-strategic position of his country as an energy and trade corridor for SCO members.

Significantly, Petroleum Minister Murli Deora represented India. All observer countries applied for full membership. If that comes to pass, the 10-member SCO will represent more than half of the human race. It will bring together energy-hungry China and India with hydrocarbon-rich Russia, Kazakhstan and Iran. Remember Iran was the first West Asian country where petroleum was found (in 1908). Now it has the second largest oil reserves in the world and is the third largest supplier of petroleum to India. It also has the second largest natural gas reserves on the planet. So you can see why my latest book is called Iran Today.
source:http://www.hindu.com
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Friday, July 07, 2006

thuesday,iran will response prelininary to incentive package

Thursday 06 July 2006


Larijani (L) will meet Solana for formal talks on Tuesday

"nuclear iran"--Iran says it will give a preliminary response next week to a package of economic, technological and political incentives offered to persuade it to halt uranium enrichment.


"We are serious about continuing negotiations and will start next Tuesday with talks," said Ali Larijani, Iran's nuclear negotiator, after meeting Javier Solana, the European Union policy chief.

International leaders have said they want a reply from Tehran by a Group of Eight (G8) summit in St Petersburg on July 15. Tehran has said it will not give a final answer before August 22.

Iran postponed talks with Solana in Brussels on Wednesday, apparently over a visit by an exiled opposition leader to the European parliament, but Larijani said he had agreed to meet Solana for a private dinner on Thursday "out of respect".

Larijani added that formal talks would be held with Solana on Tuesday.

Solana said the process was beneficial to both sides.

EU upbeat

at same time The European Union said on Friday it expected a "substantial response" from Iran at talks next week on a package of incentives to end a nuclear standoff, describing an initial meeting as constructive.

"It's a good start for what we expect will be a positive meeting on July 11," Cristina Gallach, spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said of his meeting late on Thursday with Iran chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani.

"We expect on Tuesday that they will be able to give us a substantial response," she said by telephone on Friday of a second round of July 11 talks on a package of technology, trade and other incentives for Iran to halt uranium enrichment.

Asked whether the EU was confident Iran would comply with Western demands for a full answer by a summit of Group of Eight industrial powers in St Petersburg four days later, she said:

"We want to create the conditions for the start of negotiations as soon as possible ... I have always said we are not using the word 'deadlines'," she said, adding the summit and an earlier meeting of major power foreign ministers in Paris on July 12 were nonetheless key dates.

She gave no details on the content of the talks between Solana and Larijani, which she described as a "tete-a-tete" meeting with just an interpreter, saying only that Solana stressed the benefit to Iran of accepting the offer.

No Iranian officials were available to comment on the talks. Larijani flew to Madrid for a previously scheduled meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos on Friday.

"The minister indicated to him that the Spanish government hopes Iran will respond to the proposal within a short period of time," the Spanish Foreign Ministry said in a news release.

Larijani was due to give a news conference in Madrid at 5.30 pm local (1530 GMT).

The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany have offered Iran a state-of-the-art nuclear reactor with a guaranteed fuel supply, economic benefits and other incentives if it halts uranium enrichment.

PATIENCE RUNNING OUT

Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told reporters before meeting Solana he would give a preliminary response next week.

"We are serious about continuing negotiations and will start next Tuesday with talks," he told reporters.

A U.S. official later told State Department reporters in an email that Larijani had not responded to the proposal during his first meeting with Solana.

U.N. nuclear watchdog head Mohamed ElBaradei warned Iran on Wednesday the world was running out of patience.

"The earlier they can provide an answer is better for everybody," ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told reporters while visiting Turkey.

The United States has accused Iran of having a secret program to build nuclear weapons. Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, denies the charge and says its nuclear work is solely for power generation.

Diplomats say that since Russia and China are unlikely to back any U.N. sanctions against Iran at this stage, there is little pressure on Tehran to respond either at the Brussels talks or before the G8 summit in Russia.

source:reuters& algezira
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Iranian-U.S. pre-summit maneuvering

17:52 | 07/ 07/ 2006



"nuclear iran"-- Talks between EU representative Javier Solana and the Secretary of the Iranian Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, on Iran's nuclear program have been postponed as far as possible, until July 11.

Washington demands that Iran reply by July 12 to the proposals of the Iran Six (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany). This is the last day when it will still be possible to discuss Iran's response at the G8 summit in St. Petersburg. It is clear that the resolution of the problem largely, if not wholly, depends on a compromise between Tehran and Washington. The question is whether they will reach one.

What prevents Iran and the U.S. from holding direct talks in the framework of the Six? Obviously, Washington's increasingly frequent statements about the benefits of getting rid of the ayatollah regime are causing confusion in Tehran. It has grounds to believe that even if it starts seeking a compromise with the U.S., the latter will not give up its goal of regime change and will start pressing it on the UN, just as it did with Iraq. In general, Tehran explains Washington's vague position on guarantees of non-interference in Iran's domestic affairs by its reluctance to give up the role of the world policeman.

But there are some things that worry the U.S. and other members of the Six. Iran considers uranium enrichment in its centrifuges a fait accompli that cannot be abandoned. In its view, the sides should discuss not a moratorium on uranium enrichment but an acceptable number of centrifuges (some sources say that Tehran insists on 3,000-4,000 centrifuges). To resume full-scale negotiations (and engage in complete cooperation with the IAEA, including observance of the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), Tehran primarily needs national security guarantees (non-interference in its domestic affairs), and a right to enrich uranium on a limited scale. Only the U.S. can provide the required guarantees.

It is clear that guarantees should be mutual and fair to both sides. Washington believes that by stopping all work on uranium enrichment before the talks, Tehran would show it is serious about the recent proposals of the Six, which contain clear concessions to Iran. Moreover, Washington regards suspension of uranium enrichment as the main condition for the start of the talks.

Needless to say, Tehran will not accept this condition, and is justified in saying that it sounds like an ultimatum and makes talks pointless.

It is abundantly clear that both sides have reason to suspect the other of hiding its real intentions. Nevertheless, both sides are futilely trying to break the vicious circle with threats.

The U.S. Administration has made it very clear that it will resort to action in the UN Security Council if Tehran does not reply to the Six before July 12. U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns refused to specify what action would be taken. In turn, Tehran came up with its usual asymmetrical response. It suspended the talks in Brussels because Mariam Rajavi happened to be there at the time. She is a leader of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), which is banned by the government. Tehran declared to its European partners that the presence of "anti-Iranian terrorist groups, backed by the Zionist regime of Israel and some European countries" threatened the lives of the members of the Larijani delegation. This is a serious argument, and the talks were postponed.

Nevertheless, it would be good timing if Iran and the U.S. found a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear problem by the G8 summit. Although it is not a key issue on the summit's agenda, its solution (a consensus with Tehran on the proposals of the Six) would logically fit into energy security, which is one of the main topics.

Hopefully, both sides will be more responsive to each other's grievances and suspicions and will eventually resolve the issue diplomatically without resorting to sanctions, not to mention more radical measures. Moscow would like to hear Tehran's response to the proposals, not necessarily a final answer.
source:ria novosti
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Iran’s new gambit

7 July 2006

"nuclear iran"--THE crucial talks between the European Union and Iran on Teheran’s nuclear programme and incentives aimed at ending the stand-off have been postponed for a week, giving no immediate official reason for the delay.


Iran, while responding to a call by the G-8 countries insists it needs time until August to assess an international offer of incentives to halt its controversial nuclear programme. While the international community agrees that Iran has a right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, the West, particularly the US, does not believe Iran will confine its nuclear programme to power generation and not utilise it for making weapons. That’s the credibility gap between Iran and the West. Besides, Iran’s seeking time till next month could be a ploy to buy time and speed up with its nuclear plans.

Then, there appears to be a thinking within Iran’s ruling circles that with the US busy in Iraq and Bush’s dwindling popularity ratings, Washington will not be able to engage in another military adventure. But such thinking is misplaced, as the US will protect its interests at any price, and if it sees them being threatened, it would not hesitate to embark on another mission, risky as it might be. Even Saddam did not believe till quite late in the day that the US would attack Iraq, but it did because Washington saw Saddam as a threat to its interests in the region.

G-8 nations urged Iran yet again yesterday to respond to the recent proposals made by the UN Security Council members and Germany. The world community including G8 nations are increasingly worried over the absence of an official Iranian response to what they considered ‘positive proposals’.

What must have emboldened Iran to take its own sweet time is the emerging North Korea missile crisis, besides of course, the ongoing Iraq imbroglio. With Pyongyang looming large on Washington’s radar, Teheran may be temporarily out of focus, but it is certainly not out of range. This is the time when Iran should in fact be showing seriousness about the EU proposals as they offer a respectable meeting point with the West. Should Iran lose this opportunity and think that Baghdad and Pyongyang will take care of its problems, it would be making a grave mistake.

A problem does not vanish by wishing it away, or hoping that newer problems will diminish its seriousness. In any case, it is always better to seek an honourable settlement than trying devious ways to get out of a tricky situation.
source:http://www.khaleejtimes.com
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Putin favors Iran nuclear problem returning to IAEA

18:05 | 06/ 07/ 2006

July 6,2006
"Nuclear iran"-- President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Iran's nuclear file had to return to the UN's nuclear watchdog.

Several nations secured the referral of Iran's nuclear program from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the UN Security Council after the Islamic Republic failed to reinstate a moratorium on nuclear research. Iran said its nuclear program was designed to generate energy, but Western nations, in particular, suspect it of pursuing a bomb-making capacity.

"It would be right if the problem returned not to the UN Security Council and we did not talk about any sanctions, but to the professionals at the International Atomic Energy Agency," he told an Internet conference arranged by the BBC and Russian Web portal Yandex in the Kremlin.

As one of the six negotiators on Iran's nuclear program, Russia opposed the transfer of Iran's nuclear file to the UN Security Council and has consistently been against any economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

"I think it [the transfer back to the IAEA] is possible if Iran positively responds to the incentives," the president said referring to the package of incentives that the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, China, and Russia had put forward to Iran on June 6 to persuade the country to abandon nuclear research.

"I would not hurry to talk about sanctions," Putin said. "I would rather concentrate on the proposals that the Iran-6 negotiators have drafted and that are very constructive."

Putin said that Tehran was ready for a dialogue and had promised to respond to the incentives in August.

"As the host of the G8 summit, I would personally prefer dialogue to start before G8 leaders gather in St. Petersburg," the president said.

Russia is presiding over the Group of Eight industrialized nations this year and will host a summit on July 15-17.
source:ria novosti
posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk

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Slow-motion progress in Iran nuclear talks

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

"nuclear iran"--When Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani and the European Union’s top diplomat Javier Solana meet today, July 6, it is a foregone conclusion that the two will fall short of the “clear and substantive response” from Iran demanded last week by a meeting of G8 foreign ministers.

The EU's decision to press Iran on their delayed response to the recent international package offered to encourage Tehran off its collusion course with the US misses a crucial point: Larijani doesn’t yet have an answer. Tehran’s Kayhan daily newspaper in a July 5 editorial criticized Iran's "incompetence" for allowing the West to "throw the ball in Iran's court". Iran's counter-strategy, it now appears, is to switch the momentum by pointing out the



package's "ambiguities" and Tehran’s need for further "clarification" on certain points.

On the whole, the diplomatic climate is warming for Iran. The escalating North Korean missile crisis has to some extent shifted global attention away from Iran’s nuclear program. Moreover, if China is pressured by the US to go along with a draft Security Council statement condemning Pyongyong's "provocations", it is possible that Beijing could lower its guard on defending Iran to balance strategic interests closer to home. Meanwhile, Tehran has, somewhat provocatively, hailed North Korea's defiant missile test as standing up to US power in Asia.

At the same time, Iran's leader has recently hinted at a new drive toward economic privatization, widely interpreted as a move to facilitate Tehran’s quest to eventually join the World Trade Organization. This alone puts Iran in sharp contrast with North Korea's state-controlled economy and reinforces the possibility that the economic linkages offered as part of the nuclear package may prove decisive, along with the security guarantees, in softening Iran's initial objections to the package.

Iran's refusal to abide by the July 12 deadline could actually turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the upcoming G8 summit in St Petersburg, Russia, which recently decided to put the Iran nuclear issue on its agenda. That’s one reason why International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei is now planning to attend the summit.

An outright negative or even partially negative Iranian response would have greatly tested the G8's unity, adding to already fractious US-Russian relations. That’s presumably one reason why the White House's spokesman recently backtracked from the US’s earlier strict July 12 deadline for an Iranian response. Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair has already backed away from a strict timetable, saying at his latest press conference that there was "no deadline for Iran".

Blair's softening position and Germany's recent refusal to recant a statement by its defense minister in support of Iran’s uranium enrichment program are two important signals that the US's now favored multilateral diplomacy towards Iran has imposed limits on its previous hard-nosed diplomatic tactics.

A recent authoritative article by David Albright in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists states that, "Iran could have its first nuclear weapons in 2009." This assessment represents a sharp contrast to consensus estimates that Iran is at least five, if not 10 years away from acquiring nuclear weapon capabilities. According to Albright, Iran is now, "on the verge of mastering a critical step in building and operating a gas centrifuge plant". Still, Albright's hypothetical timeline is based on a yet to be substantiated accusation that Tehran is running a clandestine nuclear weapons program.

In the absence of any hard evidence that Iran's civilian nuclear program is being applied for military purposes, the upper hand still belongs to Russia, China and the Non-Aligned Movement, which has steadfastly opposed the US’s push to impose UN sanctions against Tehran. Moscow’s and Beijing’s occasional prodding of Iran to accept the nuclear package should be viewed more as obligatory diplomacy rather than a softening of their pro-Iran stance inside the UN. Revising up the timeline for when Iran might possess nuclear weapons, baldly based on purely hypothetical assumptions rather than firm empirical evidence, is unlikely to sway international opinion in Washington’s favor.

It is hardly surprising, then, that there is an emerging US ambivalence about bogging the Security Council down in the near future with more unsubstantiated claims about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. In fact, Washington has recently been trying to ingratiate itself with the UN community in the wake of US ambassador to the UN John Bolton’s recent flip-flop on an earlier announced UN budget cap, which arguably would have put the UN into serious financial straits. One hopes that the same pragmatism Bolton recently displayed on the UN budget can be duplicated by Washington in its dealings with Iran.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", The Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review. He is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

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posted by ali ghannadi-irannuk