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The Ticking Clock Of Iran's Nuclear Program
June 14, 2004
EurasiaNet
Reza Bulorchi
The International Atomic Energy Agency convened a board of governors meeting June 14, debating how to respond to Iran’s nuclear program, which critics say is dedicated to the development of nuclear weapons. The head of the United Nations’ agency, Mohammad ElBaradei, announced that Tehran’s cooperation has been "less than satisfactory."
The most recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program chronicles a long list of deceit, defiance, contradictory accounts and denial of access to some key sites. The report says the agency’s inspectors found more traces of highly enriched uranium that could be bomb-grade, and that Iran had admitted importing parts for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges to enrich uranium. Equally troubling, the IAEA revealed that Iran told a black-market supplier it was interested in obtaining thousands of magnets for the P-2 centrifuges. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Experts believe, with two magnets per uranium enrichment centrifuge, Iran’s desire to obtain such a large number of magnets means that its nuclear research activities significantly exceed what Iranian officials insist is just an experimental program. If the magnets are an accurate indicator of the scale of the nuclear program, Iran could soon be capable of generating enough weapons-grade nuclear material to produce several warheads a year.
The IAEA’s revelations clearly depict a long-term pattern of denial and deception in Iran’s behavior that can be only explained by Tehran’s scheme to buy time and mask its military nuclear program. An Iranian opposition group, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance (NCR), alleged recently that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are supervising the nuclear program. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The Revolutionary Guards, according to the NCR, are supposedly pursuing this project through four military organs; the Center for New Defense Preparedness and Technology, the Headquarters for New Warfare, the Nuclear Research Division of the Revolutionary Guards’ Imam Hussein University and the Special Industries Division in the Military Industries Organization. If the program moves ahead without encountering obstacles or unexpected delays, Tehran could develop a nuclear weapon within two years, the NCR claims.
At the IAEA governing board meeting, the jockeying has already started over the expected resolution on Iran’s program. Europe’s big three - Britain, France and Germany – have reportedly circulated a draft resolution that "deplores" Iran’s hindering of inspections. At the same time, the draft is said to lack a meaningful trigger mechanism to bring Iran’s case before the UN Security Council in the event that Tehran does not improve its cooperation with the IAEA. Without such a trigger mechanism, Tehran could potentially drag the inspection issue out, as it worked towards developing an atomic weapon.
Iran’s primary objective in its cooperation with the IAEA is to buy time for weapons development by creating the impression that inspections are working. That the existing inspection regime is shedding new light on Tehran’s secret nuclear program, however, does not mean it is hindering the development of a bomb. Conducting inspections just for the sake of having inspections, as time is running out, is a recipe for disaster. What is at stake is the IAEA’s reputation as an effective non-proliferation agency. In addition, stability in the Persian Gulf region will take a substantial hit if Iran’s mullahs come into possession of nuclear weapons.
In the mid-1980’s, Tehran’s leaders concluded that they needed a non-conventional arsenal to achieving their strategic aim of becoming a dominant power in the Persian Gulf region. They adopted asymmetric warfare as the cornerstone of their military doctrine. It would be simply naìve to suggest that Iran’s rulers have since had a change of heart. If anything, the recent reports about Iran’s increasing meddling in Iraq indicate that Tehran is determined to extend its influence. [For background information see the Eurasia Insight archive].
Given their huge commercial ties with Tehran - which seems to be in a big rush to grant them lucrative contracts in exchange for concessions in the IAEA and other areas – European nations, including France and Germany, may feel they have good reasons to adopt a conciliatory approach towards Iran. However, the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran – the most active state sponsor of terrorism – is far too ominous to let appeasers in the EU dictate policy toward Tehran. By being soft on Iran, the EU could inadvertently be pushing the issue of Tehran’s nuclear program toward a military solution, a scenario nobody welcomes.
For now, Iran’s breach of its nuclear obligations must be reported to the UN Security Council. UN sanctions are arguably the best available way to slow down Tehran’s drive to develop atomic weapons. The IAEA does not need to find an actual bomb to conclude Iran is indeed running a nuclear weapons program. There is already enough evidence to refer the case to Security Council.
In the long term, however, only a democratic secular government, not the ruling theocracy, could ensure a WMD-free Iran. To this end, the EU capitals and Washington should embrace Iran’s democratic opposition forces that are working to unseat the ruling mullahs. The clock is ticking.
Editor’s Note: Reza Bulorchi is the Executive Director of the US Alliance for Democratic Iran.
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav061404.shtml
White House urges Iran to 'Come Clean' on Nuclear Program
Reuters - World News
Jun 14, 2004
WASHINGTON - The White House said on Monday it had serious concerns about Iran's cooperation with U.N. inspectors but stopped short of publicly calling for a deadline to be set for compliance.
"Iran needs to come clean and abide by its international agreements," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told Reuters.
The United States has accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons and has been pushing to put the issue before the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
Tehran says its atomic ambitions are limited to generating electricity.
McClellan said the United States shared the "serious concerns" expressed by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei.
"These are concerns shared by the international community," McClellan said. "There is no reason why they (the Iranians) need a nuclear program."
ElBaradei said earlier Iran is not fully cooperating with U.N. inspectors and must provide full answers within months on the extent of its nuclear program.
Diplomats said the United States would be pushing at the IAEA board meeting in Vienna, expected to last at least several days, for the agency to set Iran a deadline to cooperate fully.
McClellan declined to comment on possible next steps, including setting a deadline.
A deadline could be used to force Iran to keep the promises it made to the Europeans in October 2003, when Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment activities in exchange for peaceful atomic technology.
Washington would also like a "trigger mechanism" that would call for the board to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions if its cooperation remains sluggish.
Bush said in April that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose an intolerable threat to peace in the Middle East and a mortal danger to Israel.
"They will be dealt with, starting through the United Nations," Bush said at the time.
The stand-off comes at a time of turmoil for U.S. policy in the Middle East, including Iran's neighbor Iraq, which the United States invaded last year after alleging it possessed weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons have been found.
Earlier this month, Bush's former counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, said it would have made more sense to invade Iran than Iraq.
http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_6611.shtml
US State Dept. seeks tough IAEA resolution on Iran
AFP - World News (via Yahoo)
Jun 14, 2004
WASHINGTON - The United States demanded that the UN nuclear watchdog pass a tough resolution demanding Iran's cooperation to assure that its nuclear program is not for military ends.
"The US believes the board of governors this week must adopt a strong resolution that calls on Iran to cooperate with the IAEA and to resolve all the outstanding issues regarding its nuclear program," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
The United States accused Iran of trying secretly to develop nuclear weapons, of which uranium enrichment is a crucial stage.
Boucher did not comment on possible UN Security Council sanctions, but the United States does want an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board resolution.
"At this point we think it is the appropriate step," Boucher said.
IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei told the executive board Monday in Vienna: "It is essential for the integrity and credibility of the inspection process that we are able to bring these issues to a close within the next few months and provide the international community with the assurances it urgently seeks regarding Iran's nuclear activities."
Elbaradei said the IAEA has been aware of "Iran's undeclared nuclear program" for almost two years but had been kept from getting to the bottom of it due to "less than satisfactory" cooperation from Iran.
Tehran needed to be "proactive and fully transparent" from now on as "we can not go on forever," ElBaradei said.
http://www.daneshjoo.org/generalnews/article/publish/article_6612.shtml
Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Over Iranian Hostage-Taking
June 14, 2004
The Associated Press
KPHO TV 5
Supreme Court -- The Supreme Court is refusing to let a suit filed by former American hostages against Iran move forward. The high court won't consider reinstating the 33 billion dollar class-action suit filed four years ago.
The hostages were kept for 444 days, before being freed in 1981. The international agreement that led to the release banned legal action against Iran.
Congress has tried to help the former hostages get around that deal, by passing bills authorizing lawsuits. But a federal appeals court ruled last year that the agreement remains in effect.
http://www.kpho.com/Global/story.asp?S=1939539&nav=23Ku8Pn1
Feeding the Minotaur
Our strange relationship with the terrorists continues.
Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
June 14, 2004, 8:11 a.m.
As long as the mythical Athenians were willing to send, every nine years, seven maidens and seven young men down to King Minos's monster in the labyrinth, Athens was left alone by the Cretan fleet. The king rightly figured that harvesting just enough Athenians would remind them of their subservience without leading to open rebellion — as long as somebody impetuous like a Theseus didn't show up to wreck the arrangement.
Ever since the storming of the Tehran embassy in November 1979 we Americans have been paying the same sort of human tribute to grotesque Islamofascists. Over the last 25 years a few hundred of our own were cut down in Lebanon, East Africa, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, and New York on a semi-annual basis, even as the rules of the tribute to be paid — never spoken, but always understood — were rigorously followed.
In exchange for our not retaliating in any meaningful way against the killers — addressing their sanctuaries in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, or Syria, or severing their financial links in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and their various state-sanctioned kindred operatives agreed to keep the number killed to reasonable levels. They were to reap their lethal harvests abroad and confine them mostly to professional diplomats, soldiers, or bumbling tourists, whose disappearance we distracted Americans would predictably chalk up to the perils of foreign service and exotic travel.
Despite the occasional fiery rhetoric, both sides found the informal Minoan arrangement mutually beneficial. The terrorists believed that they were ever so incrementally, ever so insidiously eroding America's commitment to a pro-Western Middle East. We offered our annual tribute so that over the decades we could go from Dallas to Extreme Makeover and Madonna to Britney without too much distraction or inconvenience.
But then a greedy, over-reaching bin Laden wrecked the agreement on September 11. Or did he?
Murdering 3,000 Americans, destroying a city block in Manhattan, and setting fire to the Pentagon were all pretty tough stuff. And for a while it won fascists and their state sponsors an even tougher response in Afghanistan and Iraq that sent hundreds to caves and thousands more to paradise. And when we have gotten serious in the postbellum reconstruction, thugs like Mr. Sadr have backed down. But before we gloat and think that we've overcome our prior laxity and proclivity for appeasement, let us first make sure we are not still captives to the Minotaur's logic.
True, al Qaeda is now scattered, the Taliban and Saddam gone. But the calculus of a quarter century — threaten, hit, pause, wait; threaten, hit, pause, wait — is now entrenched in the minds of Middle Eastern murderers. Indeed, the modus operandi that cynically plays on Western hopes, liberalism, and fair play is gospel now to all sorts of bin Laden epigones — as we have seen in Madrid, Fallujah, and Najaf.
Much has been written about our problems with this postmodern war and why we find it so difficult to fully mobilize our formidable military and economic clout to crush the terrorists and their patrons. Of course, we have no identifiable conventional enemy such as Hitler's Panzers; we are not battling a fearsome nation that defiantly declared war on us, such as Tojo's Japan; and we are no longer a depression-era, disarmed, impoverished United States at risk for our very survival. But then, neither Hitler nor Mussolini nor Tojo nor Stalin ever reached Manhattan and Washington.
So al Qaeda is both worse and not worse than the German Nazis: It is hardly the identifiable threat of Hitler's Wehrmacht, but in this age of technology and weapons of mass destruction it is more able to kill more Americans inside the United States. Whereas we think our fascist enemies of old were logical and conniving, too many of us deem bin Laden's new fascists unhinged — their fatwas, their mythology about strong and weak horses, and their babble about the Reconquista and the often evoked "holy shrines" are to us dreamlike.
But I beg to differ somewhat.
I think the Islamists and their supporters do not live in an alternate universe, but instead are no more crazy in their goals than Hitler was in thinking he could hijack the hallowed country of Beethoven and Goethe and turn it over to buffoons like Goering, prancing in a medieval castle in reindeer horns and babbling about mythical Aryans with flunkies like Goebbels and Rosenberg. Nor was Hitler's fatwa — Mein Kampf — any more irrational than bin Laden's 1998 screed and his subsequent grainy infomercials. Indeed, I think Islamofascism is brilliant in its reading of the postmodern West and precisely for that reason it is dangerous beyond all description — in the manner that a blood-sucking, stealthy, and nocturnal Dracula was always spookier than a massive, clunky Frankenstein.
Like Hitler's creed, bin Ladenism trumpets contempt for bourgeois Western society. If once we were a "mongrel" race of "cowboys" who could not take casualties against the supermen of the Third Reich, now we are indolent infidels, channel surfers who eat, screw, and talk too much amid worthless gadgetry, godless skyscrapers, and, of course, once again, the conniving Jews.
Like Hitler, bin Ladenism has an agenda: the end of the liberal West. Its supposedly crackpot vision is actually a petrol-rich Middle East free of Jews, Christians, and Westerners, free to rekindle spiritual purity under Sharia. Bin Laden's al Reich is a vast pan-Arabic, Taliban-like caliphate run out of Mecca by new prophets like him, metering out oil to a greedy West in order to purchase the weapons of its destruction; there is, after all, an Israel to be nuked, a Europe to be out-peopled and cowered, and an America to be bombed and terrorized into isolation. This time we are to lose not through blood and iron, but through terror and intimidation: televised beheadings, mass murders, occasional bombings, the disruption of commerce, travel, and the oil supply.
In and of itself, our enemies' ambitions would lead to failure, given the vast economic and military advantages of the West. So to prevent an all out, terrible response to these predictable cycles of killing Westerners, there had to be some finesse to the terrorists' methods. The trick was in preventing some modern Theseus from going into the heart of the Labyrinth to slay the beast and end the nonsense for good.
It was hard for the Islamic fascists to find ideological support in the West, given their agenda of gender apartheid, homophobia, religious persecution, racial hatred, fundamentalism, polygamy, and primordial barbarism. But they sensed that there has always been a current of self-loathing among the comfortable Western elite, a perennial search for victims of racism, economic oppression, colonialism, and Christianity. Bin Laden's followers weren't white; they were sometimes poor; they inhabited of former British and French colonies; and they weren't exactly followers of the no-nonsense Pope or Jerry Falwell. If anyone doubts the nexus between right-wing Middle Eastern fascism and left-wing academic faddishness, go to booths in the Free Speech area at Berkeley or see what European elites have said and done for Hamas. Middle Eastern fascist killers enshrined as victims alongside our own oppressed? That has been gospel in our universities for the last three decades.
Like Hitler, bin Ladenism grasped the advantages of hating the Jews. It has been 60 years since the Holocaust; memories dim. Israel is not poor and invaded but strong, prosperous, and unapologetic. It is high time, in other words, to unleash the old anti-Semitic infectious bacillus. Thus Zionists caused the latest Saudi bombings, just as they have poisoned Arab-American relations, just as neo-conservatives hijacked American policy, just as Feith, Perle, and Wolfowitz cooked up this war.
Finally, bin Laden understood the importance of splitting the West, just like the sultan of old knew that a Europe trisected into Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism would fight among itself rather than unite against a pan-Islamic foe. Hit the Spanish and bring in an anti-American government. Leave France and Germany alone for a time so they can blame the United States for mobilizing against a "nonexistent" threat, unleashing the age-old envy and jealously of the American upstart.
If after four years of careful planning, al Qaedists hit the Olympics in August, the terrorists know better than we do that most Europeans will do nothing — but quickly point to the U.S. and scream "Iraq!" And they know that the upscale crowds in Athens are far more likely to boo a democratic America than they are a fascist Syria or theocratic Iran. Just watch.
In the European mind, and that of its aping American elite, the terrorists lived, slept, and walked in the upper aether — never the streets of Kabul, the mosques of Damascus, the palaces of Baghdad, the madrassas of Saudi Arabia, or the camps of Iran. To assume that the latter were true would mean a real war, real sacrifice, and a real choice between the liberal bourgeois West and a Dark-Age Islamofascist utopia.
While all Westerners prefer the bounty of capitalism, the delights of personal freedom, and the security of modern technological progress, saying so and not apologizing for it — let alone defending it — is, well, asking a little too much from the hyper sophisticated and cynical. Such retrograde clarity could cost you, after all, a university deanship, a correspondent billet in Paris or London, a good book review, or an invitation to a Georgetown or Malibu A-list party.
Nearly three years after 9/11 we are in the strangest of all paradoxes: a war against fascists that we can easily win but are clearly not ready to fully wage. We have the best 500,000 soldiers in the history of civilization, a resolute president, and an informed citizenry that has already received a terrible preemptive blow that killed thousands.
Yet what a human comedy it has now all become.
The billionaire capitalist George Soros — who grew fabulously wealthy through cold and calculating currency speculation, helping to break many a bank and its poor depositors — now makes the moral equation between 9/11 and Abu Ghraib. For this ethicist and meticulous accountant, 3,000 murdered in a time of peace are the same as some prisoners abused by renegade soldiers in a time of war.
Recently in the New York Times I read two articles about the supposedly new irrational insensitivity toward Muslims and saw an ad for a book detailing how the West "constructed" and exaggerated the Islamic menace — even as the same paper ran a quieter story about a state-sponsored cleric in Saudi Arabia's carefully expounding on the conditions under which Muslims can desecrate the bodies of murdered infidels.
Aristocratic and very wealthy Democrats — Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Howard Dean, and John Kerry — employ the language of conspiracy to assure us that we had no reason to fight Saddam Hussein. "Lies," "worst," and " betrayed" are the vocabulary of their daily attacks. A jester in stripes like Michael Moore, who cannot tell the truth, is now an artistic icon — precisely and only because of his own hatred of the president and the inconvenient idea that we are really at war. Our diplomats court the Arab League, which snores when Russians and Sudanese kill hundreds of thousands of Muslims but shrieks when we remove those who kill even more of their own. And a depopulating, entitlement-expanding Europe believes an American president, not bin Laden, is the greatest threat to world peace. Russia, the slayer of tens of thousands of Muslim Chechans and a big-time profiteer from Baathist loot, lectures the United States on its insensitivity to the new democracy in Baghdad.
Meanwhile, in Europe, Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, we see the same old bloodcurdling threats, the horrific videos, the bombings, the obligatory pause, the faux negotiations, the lies — and then, of course, the bloodcurdling threats, the horrific videos, the bombings...
No, bin Laden is quite sane — but lately I have grown more worried that we are not.
— Victor Davis Hanson, an NRO contributor, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Soul of Battle and Carnage and Culture, among other books. His website is www.victorhanson.com.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200406140811.asp
Reagan's lessons for Islamism
Diana West
June 14, 2004
With the 60th anniversary of D-Day and the nearly coinciding death of Ronald Reagan, Americans have been compelled to reflect on the past, seeing rocky, bloody eras fall into the clean arc of history that appears only in a flash of hindsight.
Looking back on Nazism and communism, we see the seamless succession and demise of totalitarian threats once poised to rob the West of its liberties. In this sweeping history lesson, it becomes clearer still that the rise of Islamism -- or Islamic totalitarianism, or Islamic radicalism, or Islamofascism (we haven't yet settled on a term) -- has now succeeded these vanquished foes. Whatever it is called, this ideology is now the principle menace to freedoms treasured by 21st-century Western civilization, a secular society still rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition.
Totalitarian Islam, however, is totalitarianism with a difference. Unlike both Nazism and communism, it is not godless. I can't help wondering what Ronald Reagan would have done had Marx and Engels been deemed prophets of God. What would he have said had the Communist Manifesto been regarded as a holy book?
Communists always glowed with the zeal of religious fanatics, but communism, of course, is explicitly opposed to religion. Still, imagine that Lenin's tomb had been built as a holy shrine for sacred relics, not a ghoulish mausoleum for a moldering corpse: Would the history of the Cold War have been any different? Would Ronald Reagan have dared to define a religious faith in communism as the evil that launched the empire?
I ask this unanswerable question having just read a brief essay by Islam expert Robert Spencer, author of "Islam Unveiled" (Encounter, 2003) and "Onward, Muslim Soldiers" (Regnery, 2003). Writing in frontpagemag.com, Spencer compares totalitarian foes immediately past and present -- communists and jihadists -- to lament that our age lacks a calls-it-like-he-sees-it leader such as Ronald Reagan, someone to flip the conventional wisdom that once denied the evils inherent in communism and now denies the evils inherent in totalitarian Islam.
"Today's stifling orthodoxy remains largely unchallenged," Spencer writes. "Not just liberal publications and spokesmen, but conservatives who claim to wear Reagan's mantle temporize and dissimulate about our current despotic antagonist in a way that the man himself would have found contemptible. Leaders and pundits must cling to fond fictions about Islam being a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists. They thus pass up the opportunity to call for worldwide reform of Islam."
In other words, "fond fictions" overwrite the urgent truth that Islam requires moderating and modernizing reform if ever it is to co-exist peacefully with Western democracies. The reform starts, Spencer explains, "by identifying the elements of Islam that give rise to violence and extremism." The place to begin is with the twin Islamic precepts of jihad, or holy war, and dhimmitude, the institutionalized inferiority of non-Muslims and women living under Muslim rule. Reform is doomed, however, if these elements are ignored, obscured and denied.
Alas, I can think of no political leader, and precious few historians and commentators, who have made this point. We hear "terrorism" and "murderous ideology" denounced, but we never hear "terrorism" and "murderous ideology" defined. We hear nothing about the religious roots of jihad's bloody violence that must be exposed if they are ever to wither. Ronald Reagan was never reluctant to define the "terrorism" and "murderous ideology" of his day as being specifically communist-driven manifestations of the "evil empire." I like to think he would have identified Islam's evil elements -- jihad and dhimmitude -- and provided a level-headed explanation of why domination and repression, whether serving a secular totalitarian state or a religious totalitarian movement, are forces America opposes.
A profound respect for religious freedom informs our tortured silence -- although "holy" justifications for terror attacks on civilians offered by mainstream Islamic authorities surely deserve no such respect. But there's another angle to consider. Ronald Reagan believed the United States could transform communism through freedom's triumph. The transformation of Islam is necessarily a Muslim affair.
This is all the more reason not to flinch, rhetorically speaking. As Spencer writes, "By vilifying and attempting to marginalize those who dare tell the truth about Islamic radicalism as Reagan did about Communism, today's intelligentsia provides ample cover to radical Islamic terrorists, allowing them to operate under the radar screen of media scrutiny and even law enforcement."
This isn't only terrifying; it's tragic. It's also downright un-Reaganesque.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/dianawest/dw20040614.shtml
Iran Will Strongly Respond to Europe’s Negative Approaches: MP
TEHRAN June 14 (MNA) –- MP Seyyed Ahmad Musavi said here Sunday that Iran will continue its cooperation with Europe only if the three European countries -- Britain, Germany and France -- remain honest toward their commitments as stated in the Tehran Declaration.
He said that Tehran would strongly respond to the European big three if they adopt a negative approach toward Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.
In an interview with the Mehr News Agency (MNA) he said that Iran has absolute right to find access to peaceful nuclear technology, adding that no one can forgo this right.
He said that Europe, the U.S. and other western countries know that coercive measures toward Iran have never bear fruit.
Musavi said that Iran should adopt a logical approach in its foreign policy in order to protect the country’s national security.
http://www.mehrnews.com/wfNewsDetails_en.aspx?NewsID=87007&t=Political
IAEA tackles Iran on nuclear imports
By Mark Huband, Security Correspondent
Published: June 15 2004 5:00 | Last Updated: June 15 2004 5:00
Iran was accused yesterday of failing to co-operate fully with United Nations nuclear inspectors, who demanded that Tehran provide clear information on its nuclear activities within a few months.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), yesterday challenged Iran to be "pro-active and fully transparent" in its response to demands by the UN nuclear watchdog that it give details on its imports of nuclear material.
Mr ElBaradei's demands were made at a meeting of the IAEA board, which was discussing a report on Iran's nuclear programme. IAEA inspectors have been examining Iranian installations since Tehran agreed last October to halt uranium enrichment and permit intrusive inspections to its nuclear sites in order to prove that it was not developing nuclear weapons.
The IAEA report cast doubt on Iran's claim that components found at sites in the country were contaminated by enriched uranium before being imported. Inspectors have also questioned why Iran placed large orders to import magnets for use in centrifuges that could enrich uranium when it had previously said the components were produced in Iran. The report says the information provided by Iran on this issue is unlikely to "contribute further to the resolution of the contamination issue unless more information becomes available about the origin of the components".
Hossein Mousavian, Iran's senior delegate to the IAEA meeting, said yesterday that Iran was providing "full co-operation" to the inspectors, supplying all information requested and narrowing down the range of outstanding issues.
But Mr ElBaradei said yesterday: "Clearly this pattern of engagement on the part of Iran is less than satisfactory if it wishes to build confidence in the international community that Iran has indeed revealed the full extent of its nuclear programme. After a year of difficulties encountered by the inspectors, Iran needs to be pro-active and fully transparent."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1086940218226
China Helping Iran, North Korea on Weapons-Panel
Tue Jun 15, 2004 12:06 AM ET
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is sending nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for oil and allowing North Korea to use Chinese air, rail and seaports to ship missiles and other weapons, congressional investigators reported on Tuesday.
Although the Bush administration has emphasized a growing convergence with Beijing on halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and countering terrorism, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission took a much harder line.
"China's continued failure to adequately curb its proliferation practices poses significant national security concerns to the United States," the commission said in its annual report.
It also raised the possibility the administration is using "inducements" -- such as not being tough enough with Beijing on trade infractions -- to reward China for its cooperation on the North Korea nuclear crisis.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, established by Congress in 2000, tends to be skeptical of Beijing, and its conclusions are often controversial.
"China's assistance to weapons of mass destruction-related programs in countries of concern continues, despite repeated promises to end such activities and the repeated imposition of U.S. sanctions," the commission concluded.
This "calls into question the effectiveness" of Washington's partnership with Beijing, the panel said.
Unlike the 1990s, "Chinese transfers have evolved from sales of complete missile systems to exports of largely dual-use nuclear, chemical, and missile components and technologies; qualitatively, these transfers are equally worrisome," it said.
DEBATE CONTINUES
Dual-use refers to items that could be used for either weapons-related or peaceful pursuits.
"Continuing intelligence reports indicate that Chinese cooperation with Pakistan and Iran remains an integral element of China's foreign policy," the commission reported.
It said cooperation on North Korea is a "critical test" of U.S.-China relations, but Beijing is not using its substantial leverage to force Pyongyang to end its nuclear programs.
While making made much of hosting six-party talks aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis, Beijing "continues to permit North Korea to use its air, rail and seaports to trans-ship ballistic missiles and WMD-related materials," the commission reported.
U.S. officials, in recent public testimony and interviews with Reuters, put different emphases on China's behavior, underscoring continued differences over proliferation issues.
Chinese leaders have told the Americans any nuclear-related trafficking is done without the government's knowledge.
The State Department recently sanctioned five Chinese companies for trading with Iran, but the commission faulted this focus, saying many companies have direct ties to top level government and military officials.
The commission said China's growing energy needs are "driving it into bilateral arrangements ... that may involve dangerous weapons transfers." Iran is a key oil producing country.
"This need for energy security may help explain Beijing's history of assistance to terrorist-sponsoring states, with various forms of WMD-related items and technical assistance, even in the face of U.S. sanctions," it said. ((Reporting by Carol Giacomo, editing by Mike Rhea; tel: 202-898-8300; Reuters messaging: carol.giacomo.reuters.com@reuters.net)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5421201
If ao many people in Iran are disapproving of the leadership, then where is the removal of that leadership?
This just in from a student from inside of Iran...
"There was a big teachers protest in front of the Parliament this morning.
Police clashed with the teachers but no injuries reported from the scene."
Iranian Experts in N. Korea to Conduct Joint Nuke Experiments
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1153635/posts
'The World Could Be in a New Arms Race'
June 15, 2004
The Guardian
guardian.co.uk
Jerusalem Post
Editorial, June 14
"In October, the foreign ministers of the UK, France and Germany went to Tehran and came back with a deal: Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions in exchange for better trade relations with the west ... Eight months later, the jury is in.
"On June 1, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA], Mohamed ElBaradei, issued a report ... It caught Iran in lie after lie ... Iran is bent on enriching nuclear fuel in a way that points in only one direction: nuclear weapons ...
"It is not too late to attempt, by economic means alone, to force Iran to go the way of Libya and get out of the nuclear and terrorism business. The longer Europe and the US wait ... the more the options will become limited to living with Iran as a terrorist base with a nuclear umbrella, or taking military action."
Economist
Editorial, US, June 12
"The hope in Europe that 'soft power', offering engagement in place of confrontation, would encourage Iran to give up its dangerous nuclear ambitions seems set to collide with hard reality ... Iran threatens consequences if the IAEA will not drop the issue ... It could quit the nuclear non-proliferation treaty ... And what would the Europeans do then? Little but bellyache, Iran may calculate. If it is to be persuaded differently ... Europe's soft power needs to be given a harder edge ... If Iran won't keep its side of the October bargain, Britain, France and Germany should join America in insisting that Iran's nuclear rule-breaking go directly to the [UN] security council, where ... sanctions could be contemplated."
Farhang-e Ashti
Editorial, Iran, June 10
"In the course of the past year, the issue of Iran's nuclear activities has been turned into a sad and prolonged affair ... The western world is pursuing a single strategy towards ... Iran's nuclear activities ... The EU and the US are trying to control Iran, the EU through the policy of 'dialogue' and the US by relying purely on threats ...
"It is clear that in order to get out of the boxing ring in the field of foreign policy, Iran needs to restructure its domestic policy. But can anyone be hopeful about such a prospect in the ... domestic policies of ... Iran under the present circumstances?"
Wall Street Journal Europe
Editorial, June 14
"If Iran goes nuclear within the next year or two, don't blame ... the IAEA ... [It is] the international community ... that is treating it all as a matter of indifference ...
"With the presumed American security umbrella jeopardised by the mullahs' bomb, the political calculations of every Middle East government would change. Many countries may conclude they have no choice but to go nuclear, and the world could be off to another nuclear arms race ...
"Last year the US deferred to the Europeans as they brokered an inspection agreement ... that the mullahs have since violated with impunity. The 'multilateral' diplomatic path is failing. We at least hope that Washington is preparing covert andmilitary options to sabotage the Iranian programme ... History will not look kindly on the leaders who let Iran get the bomb on their watch."
Chicago Tribune
Editorial, June 13
"Allowing Iran to develop the bomb is tantamount to giving it to terrorists ... That's why it is essential that the world speak with one voice ...
"It is time to send an unequivocal message to the Islamic fanatics who run the country: the world will not accept another member in the nuclear weapons club, and nations will use all means necessary to stop that from happening. Iran must be convinced, as Libya was, that seeking nuclear weapons is not a guarantee of strength, but a road to isolation and ruin."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/editor/story/0,12900,1238748,00.html
EU Draft to IAEA Reflect US View
June 15, 2004
Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting
IRIB News
Tehran -- Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi said here on Monday that the draft resolution drawn up by European trio on Iran's nuclear program is line with the US policies. Describing the resolution as 'very hostile', Shahroudi said they want to compensate the arrogance's defeat in Iraq in this manner.
Shahroudi said the plots would be foiled however in light of experience, prudence, courage, and strong will of Iranian nations and officials.
European trio -- Britain, Germany and France -- have forwarded a draft resolution at the disposal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors on Iran's nuclear program.
The board is, in a meeting in Vienna which started on Monday, examining the resolution as well as a report by the IAEA Chief Mohamed Elbaradei on Iran.
http://www.iribnews.ir/Full_en.asp?news_id=205941&n=33
Iranian Forces Preparing to Strike Iraq After U.S. Pullout
June 15, 2004
The Media Line
themedialine.org
Iranian military forces have recently moved close to the Iraqi border. According to the London-based daily A-Sharq Al-Awsat, four Iranian army divisions are now based near the border, awaiting orders to invade Iraq once the American forces retreat.
Citing ‘reliable Iraqi sources’, the paper says Iranian secret agents have infiltrated into Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in order to evaluate the internal situation. Iran plans to exploit an expected power vacuum in Iraq following the American evacuation, according to the sources.
http://themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=6257
Iran Threatens UN Nuclear Watchdog as Pressure Mounts
June 15, 2004
AFP
Khaleej Times
TEHERAN -- Iran reacted to fresh pressure from the UN nuclear watchdog on Tuesday by threatening to reconsider its cooperation with inspectors trying to verify suspicions the Islamic republic is secretly developing atomic weapons.
As diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna mulled a tough European-drafted resolution that criticises Iran’s failure to fully come clean, top regime officials here said they would not tolerate what they saw as a US-Israeli plot.
The new conservative speaker of parliament, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, warned the assembly might not ratify Iran’s signature of the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allowing tougher UN inspections.
“The three European countries are demanding parliament adopt the protocol, but I say to France, Germany and Britain not to tell the Iranian parliament what to do,” he told deputies.
“The Iranian parliament does not take orders from foreigners, because these orders do not reflect the interests of the Iranian people. If we consider it to be in the interests of the Iranian people we will adopt it, if not we will not,” he said.
He also warned the Europeans not to “fall into the trap of the Zionists”, a reference to Iran’s oft-mentioned enemies in Israel and the United States.
And according to press reports, President Mohammad Khatami has also told Britain, France and Germany in writing to ease the pressure, or risk pushing Iran to consider “other alternatives”.
Khatami also reportedly accused the so-called Euro-3 of aligning themselves with Iran’s arch-enemy, the United States.
According to the Tehran Times newspaper, Khatami wrote that ”Iran will not forego its inalienable right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”, and that “if such confrontational behaviour continues... Iran will contemplate other alternatives.”
It was not clear what Khatami, a reformist, meant by “other alternatives”, although some hardliners in the regime have been calling for Iran to respond to the pressure by pulling out of the NPT altogether.
Khatami’s office was not immediately available for comment.
Iran asserts that is is only seeking to generate nuclear power to meet future energy needs, and contends that it has completely abided by its commitments to the NPT and has cooperated with the IAEA.
Iran’s compliance with a string of IAEA demands was brokered in October last year by the three European states, who pledged that Iran could eventually hope to receive technological assistance if it managed to quash suspicions over its nuclear activities.
But EU diplomats appear to be running out of patience as key questions over Iran’s activities -- notably surrounding the discovery of highly-enriched uranium that is possibly bomb-grade -- continue to go unanswered.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in Vienna on Monday that Iran’s cooperation had so far been “less than satisfactory” and that the clerical regime needed to be “proactive and fully transparent”.
Iran signed the additional protocol in December 2004, but the text still has to be ratified by the Iranian parliament, or Majlis, which fell into the hands of religious right-wingers in February after most reformist candidates were barred from contesting the polls.
Even though the text has not yet been approved, Iran has nonetheless pledged to submit to the tougher and surprise IAEA inspections it prescribes. But a rejection of the text by the Majlis would spell a return to the only limited probe exacted by the NPT.
Hadad-Adel complained the draft resolution put forward by Britian, France and Germany was effectively aimed at forcing Iran to abandon all of progress in the nuclear field, and said this was ”against our interests”.
“As the senior Iranian officials have said on a number of occasions, Iran does not have the intention of using nuclear technology for non-peaceful means,” he added.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2004/June/middleeast_June416.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
Euro Big 3 Propose Swift End to Iran Nuclear Probe at IAEA Talks
June 15, 2004
AFX
Ample News
VIENNA -- The UK, France and Germany have proposed a draft resolution to the UN atomic agency calling for a probe into Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program to be wrapped up within months, diplomats said.
A diplomat close to negotiations on a draft resolution told Agence France-Presse that the Euro big 3, helped by the US and other members of the 35-nation IAEA board of governors, had revised their original text after UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei called for the International Atomic Energy Agency to conclude its probe soon regarding Iran's nuclear activities.
Calls to resolve the probe in a few months and references to ElBaradei's criticism of Iran's lack of cooperation had now been incorporated into the draft text, he said.
The diplomat said the text had been softened in one point, however, backing off from a demand that Iran halt construction of a heavy water research reactor that is a key part of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Iran reacted angrily to the fresh pressure from the UN nuclear watchdog by threatening to reconsider its cooperation with inspectors.
"The three European countries are demanding parliament adopt the protocol, but I say to France, Germany and Britain not to tell the Iranian parliament what to do," the new conservative speaker of parliament, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel told deputies.
The IAEA board is not expected to debate the draft resolution until later in the week, possibly Thursday or Friday, diplomats said.
http://www.iii.co.uk/shares/?type=news&articleid=4999840&action=article
Iran's Nuclear Anger
June 15, 2004
BBC News
BBC Monitoring
The Iranian press has reacted angrily to comments on Iran's nuclear programme by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Mr ElBaradei said on Monday that Tehran was not co-operating satisfactorily with the IAEA.
Some papers accuse the agency of following policies set out by the United States and Europe, while another says Iran should consider withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.