Iranian Alert - December 13, 2004 [EST] - Feith to 'Post': US action against Iran can't be ruled out

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Dec. 12, 2004 3:24 | Updated Dec. 12, 2004 16:06
Feith to 'Post': US action against Iran can't be ruled out
By CAROLINE GLICK

Douglas Feith
Photo: DOD

The Natanz nuclear facility in Iran is seen in this Aug. 29, 2002, satellite image taken by DigitalGlobe's high-resolution imaging satellite QuickBird.
Photo: AP (File)

The US hopes that Iran will follow Libya's lead in abandoning its nuclear program, but nobody should rule out the possibility of military action against Teheran's nuclear sites if it does not, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview.
Feith stated that the US is now concentrating on "a process to try to get the existing international legal mechanisms – the nonproliferation treaty [and] the International Atomic Energy Agency – to work, to bring the kind of pressure to bear on Iran that would induce the Iranians to follow the path that Libya took in deciding that they were actually better off in abandoning their WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs."

Feith stressed that the Americans are interested in seeing whether the suspension of uranium-enrichment activities that the Iranians agreed to last month in a deal with France, Germany and Britain "can get turned into a permanent abandonment."
But strikingly, whereas British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last month ruled out any possibility of military action against Iranian nuclear sites should the diplomatic path lead to failure, Feith said that "I don't think that anybody should be ruling in or ruling out anything while we are conducting diplomacy."
In the wide-ranging interview conducted on Friday, Feith, who will be remaining in his position during US President George W. Bush's second term, told the Post that democratic reform of the Arab world, including in US-allied Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, will be the linchpin of Bush's foreign policy in the next four years.
He was speaking a day before outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell told a conference of Islamic leaders in Morocco that the Arab world had to implement political and economic reform and stop "pointing to the [deadlocked] Middle East peace process as a pretext for delay."
Feith recalled that "the president has said over and over again that he believes that the world will be a better place, there will be a better treatment of people [and] there will be a more secure international environment if there is a development of representative, democratic-type institutions in the Middle East."
The undersecretary said he saw signs that Bush's democratization platform was having an effect on the public discussion now taking place in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan about democracy, dialogue that barely existed before Bush began discussing the issue in 2002.
"The kinds of things that the president has been saying are stimulating talk about reform throughout the Middle East," said Feith. "There is more attention being paid to the subject. People who are aware of what's going on in the world at large cannot fail to see that the countries that have democratic governments and free economies have a greater degree of prosperity, of political stability [and] of peaceful politics as opposed to violent domestic politics, and they are happier. And that kind of observation, in part because the president is stressing it, is getting more and more play throughout the entire region."
As a principal architect of the US war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, Feith is one of the most controversial members of the Bush administration. Disliked in liberal circles in the US and internationally, Feith, a staunch supporter of Israel, began his government career in 1981 as an assistant to Soviet expert Richard Pipes at the US National Security Council in the Reagan administration. In that position, as he does today for the Middle East, Feith advocated the advancement of the cause of democracy and human rights in the former Soviet bloc as a means of bringing about the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

When asked about the failure thus far of the US to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world, where levels of anti-Americanism have risen sharply since September 11, 2001, Feith admitted, "There are a lot of things that need to be done to improve communications. Part of it is how we're organized: how the combatant commands relate back to headquarters here in the Pentagon; how the Pentagon relates to the State Department and the other agencies."
Feith argued that the media's need to grab the attention of viewers motivates news organizations to concentrate on violence at the expense of giving news consumers an accurate portrayal of what life is like in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Comparing the news coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan to the news coverage of Israel, Feith said, "If you live in Israel and you see the way life is there and then you go abroad and see the way Israel is reported on, the way that Israel gets reported on night after night is simply pictures of bombings or military actions. And there are people who have an image that that's all that's going on in the country and people have similar images about Afghanistan or Iraq.
One of the problems is how do you communicate that, while there are things like that going on and they're a big problem, there's also an enormous amount of life going on that is commerce and culture and education and happy ordinary life."
Feith was highly critical of the role that Syria is playing in fueling the insurgency against Iraqi and coalition forces in Iraq. "Their role is unhelpful," he said. "We know that there are various activities important to the insurgents in Iraq that are occurring in Syria. There are people that have safe-havened there. There are people passing through Syria to join the insurgents [and] to supply them. And it's a bad thing."
One of the elements of prewar planning for which Feith has come under a barrage of criticism from US military commanders was his intention to train an exiled Iraqi military force to fight with the US during the March 2003 invasion. Feith continues to defend his recommendation.

"I did think it was important to do what we could to train up Iraqis as a security force in advance of our military operation. We saw lots of benefits of that – both with regard to the military operation itself and with regard to the post-major combat period. There were certain obvious benefits that trained Iraqis could bring, as people who know the language, who know the lay of the land who know the local culture, [and] work with our forces and help liberate their own country. And then afterward these would be people that we knew and whose views and whose leadership qualities we knew and who could help identify other Iraqis who could play a useful role in the building of a new Iraq.
"We saw lots of benefits in that effort," he continued. "We were hoping to get thousands of Iraqis trained before the war and as it turns out we were only able to train a few score and that was unfortunate. I think it would have been better if we had had thousands who were trained."
While Feith indicated that the US was doing nothing at present to encourage the Iraqis to end their enmity toward Israel, he dismissed the possibility of the post-Saddam Iraq going to war against it.
"If all goes well, the Iraqis are going to have a country that's going to have a representative government and will be at peace with its neighbors and in the region," said Feith. "And if that happens, the whole Middle East will be better off."

Straw presses Iran to respect nuclear freeze

Mon Dec 13, 8:06 AM ET

BRUSSELS (AFP) - Iran must respect the spirit as well as the letter of an agreed nuclear fuel cycle freeze, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said ahead of EU-Iran talks on confidence measures to show Tehran is not making atomic weapons.

AFP/File Photo

But Tehran hinted it was ready to reintroduce a demand, already refused by the European Union (news - web sites), for some nuclear equipment to be exempted from the freeze.

"What is important is that each side accepts both the spirit as well as the letter" of an agreement on Iran suspending all uranium enrichment activities that was reached in Paris November 7, Straw told reporters before the gathering in Brussels.

Straw, along with German and French foreign ministers Joschka Fischer and Michel Barnier, as well as EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana, were to meet with top Iranian nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani to discuss the Paris agreement.

The accord, endorsed by the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), promises Tehran trade, technology and security rewards in return for fully suspending enrichment, a crucial fuel-making process that can also be used to make atomic weapons.

The European trio refused at an IAEA meeting in Vienna last month to let Iran withhold 20 centrifuges -- the machines that enrich uranium -- from the freeze in order to do research, saying the halt must be total and involve all related enrichment activities.

Straw said: "We'll be discussing ... the full implementation of the Paris agreement."

"The words of the Paris agreement mean what they say," he said.

But in Tehran government spokesman Abdollah Ramazanzadeh said Iran was sticking to its demand that 20 centrifuges be excluded.

"The question of halting research is not on the agenda," he said.

Ramazanzadeh said however: ""We are optimistic over the results of the negotiations given the good faith that we have shown and they have shown."

Straw said the European trio and Iran would be setting up "three working groups to take forward the Paris agreement and after that meeting I will have a bilateral discussion with Dr Rowhani."

The working groups cover the incentives Iran is to be offered over the long term. They are in technology and cooperation, nuclear issues, politics and security, diplomats said.

"This process is going to take off today," a senior European diplomat told AFP, adding that it would take "a bit longer" than the three-month deadline the Iranians have set.

The road is fraught with difficulties since Iran says its suspension of uranium enrichment is a temporary measure designed to show its intentions are peaceful, while EU negotiators Britain, France and Germany want it to become permanent, diplomats said.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran's nuclear programme for almost two years on US charges, which Tehran denies, that the Islamic republic is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Iran said Sunday that it was not prepared to accept a permanent freeze as it claims it has the right to do enrichment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Rowhani warned that the Islamic republic would abandon the talks, and the suspension, if no progress was being made.
The two sides will be negotiating a long-term accord that includes "objective guarantees" Iran will not develop the bomb.
Iran will get incentives such as promises to help it join the World Trade Organization (news - web sites) and to obtain a light water research reactor. Tehran would in turn abandon plans to build a heavy water reactor that would be more capable of producing bomb-grade material.
The IAEA had on November 29 decided against referring Iran to the UN Security Council for threatened sanctions, as the United States wants, after Tehran agreed on the suspension.
In a sign of continuing concern about Iran's intentions, diplomats said last week that the Islamic Republic was conducting secret high-energy neutron experiments that could be civilian-oriented or directed towards making nuclear weapons.
The diplomats told AFP in Vienna there was concern since the experiments are allegedly taking place under military supervision.
The IAEA is trying to look into claims from the United States and the main exiled Iranian opposition group that Iran is hiding nuclear weapons development at military facilities

How to Approach Iran

Monday, December 13, 2004; Page A21

The following article was signed by Madeleine Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration, and by seven former foreign ministers: Robin Cook of Britain, Hubert Vedrine of France, Lamberto Dini of Italy, Lloyd Axworthy of Canada, Niels Helveg Petersen of Denmark, Ana Palacio of Spain and Jozias van Aartsen of the Netherlands.
Foreign ministers from France, Germany and Britain meet with Iran's top nuclear negotiator this week at a moment of enormous consequence. The United States will not be there, but the subtle signals it will send from a distance will have a tremendous impact on the outcome. There are some who believe that Washington expects, and perhaps hopes, that the talks will collapse altogether. But if the United States and Europe are to be successful in preventing a radical regime from gaining nuclear weapons, there will have to be much greater coordination and new approaches on both sides of the Atlantic.
We are a group of former foreign ministers from Europe, Canada and the United States who are very concerned about the current state of transatlantic relations and the effect it is having on our ability to join together to address a number of global challenges. Halting Iran's nuclear ambitions is a case in point. We have met a number of times under the auspices of the Aspen Institute to consider why habits of cooperation are yielding to a psychology of competition and strain. We believe that genuine transatlantic cooperation is the only path to viable solutions.
As a result of the work of the British, French and German foreign ministers, the Iranians agreed last month to suspend their nuclear programs while negotiations for economic and technical cooperation take place. This agreement represents progress, but it will not be successful until Iran permanently suspends any attempt to create a nuclear weapons capacity. As people who have experienced firsthand the challenge of balancing carrots and sticks in these sorts of delicate and serious negotiations, we offer the following ideas on obtaining full cooperation from the Iranians.
First, the United States and Europe must be clear about their collective purpose. The Iranians have made splitting the Atlantic partnership their modus operandi, hoping that disagreements between the United States and Europe will buy them the time to progress down the nuclear path to the point of irreversibility. In order to counteract this strategy, European and U.S. policymakers must repeatedly and jointly articulate that they seek to hold Iran to the obligations it has accepted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to refrain from building nuclear arms. In the same breath, American and European heads of state must emphasize that the West does not seek to deny Iran the right to a peaceful civilian nuclear energy program under the necessary safeguards.
Second, the major nuclear suppliers (Russia, the United States and Europe) should provide a firm guarantee to supply fresh reactor fuel for civilian nuclear power and to retrieve and dispose of spent fuel in exchange for Iran's agreement to permanently forswear its own nuclear fuel-cycle capabilities, including enrichment, reprocessing, uranium conversion and heavy-water production.
Third, the Bush administration should support the recent agreement the three European countries negotiated with the Iranians as an important first step. While it is unclear whether this deal will ultimately halt Iran's nuclear ambitions, only a unified approach will enable Europe and the United States to find out. Washington should put its full support behind this diplomatic effort and consider launching commercial and diplomatic engagement with Iran. That country's political leadership and culture have changed dramatically over the past two decades and are much more complex than many realize. Understanding the various political operatives inside Iran and their motivations requires the United States to instigate face-to-face interaction. Doing so could bring direct benefits to the United States as disagreements over the nuclear question need not, for example, disrupt efforts to achieve cooperation on such matters as narcotics enforcement, Iraq, the fight against terrorism and peace in the Middle East.
If the Americans need to increase their support for diplomatic efforts, Europeans must prove to the Iranians that severe political and economic consequences will result if Iran does not renounce the nuclear weapons option. In the event that diplomacy fails and Iran decides not to abandon its efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Europeans should be ready for alternative courses of action, including going to the U.N. Security Council, and they should repeatedly stress their willingness to act. The transatlantic community should not be trying to force a confrontation with Iran, but we must not fear one if that's what is necessary to prevent the introduction of another nuclear weapons program into the combustible Middle East.
The interests of every nation will be served by an arrangement that gives Iran the civilian nuclear program it says it wants and the international community the insurance it needs. Together, with sufficient patience and resolve, Europe and America must push as hard as possible to achieve that outcome and stand together, as well, in the event the effort does not succeed.

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