Iranian Alert - January 18, 2005 - Statement from Pentagon on Latest Seymour Hersh Article & others

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin

That sounds good!

Join Us At Today's Iranian Alert Thread – The Most Underreported Story Of The Year!

"If you want on or off this Iran ping list, Freepmail DoctorZin”

Is Seymour Hersh Being Played?

Sometimes it seems as if Seymour Hersh -- the seeming bete noire of the Bush administration -- has an open "leak line" from disgruntled CIA agents and surly State Department officials permanently plugged into his ear. When I heard about his latest infusion of goo in The New Yorker this morning, to wit that the US is spying on Iranian nuclear installations and trying to figure out what to do about them (planning special ops, air raids, etc.), I thought "Here he goes again, leaking top secret information!" But then I thought - duh, what top secret information? Is it possible that any US administration, Democrat or Republican, at this juncture in history would not be directing its intelligence agencies to take a long hard look at Iranian nukes and game plan how to deal with them? Of course not. In fact it would be at the very top of anybody's agenda.
So then why The Big Leak? Well, if I were someone in the government who wanted to announce that we were taking a tough line and had some nasty surprises for the mullahs (to scare them, of course), but didn't want to make this an official public policy statement, what would I do? I'd leak it to Seymour Hersh and count to five.
Am I wrong? The President of the United States has now essentially corroborated Hersh.

Monday, January 17, 2005

It's not often the Pentagon calls a reporter a liar...
... but that's what Rumsfeld's spokesman-type people did to Seymour Hersh today.

Hersh penned a piece in the New Yorker, summarized in the in NY Daily News. Hersh claimed his anonymous, well-informed sources told him that
“Iraq is just one campaign,” the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. “The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign."
And, says Hersh, a "Pentagon advisor" told him that the fight against terrorism has turned the world into "a global free-fire zone."
Hersh told CNN that if targets are lined up by this summer, U.S. attacks could soon follow.

They "want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible," a Pentagon consultant told Hersh.
Rummy's folks responded fiercely:
The Iranian regime’s apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organizations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides in the New Yorker article titled “The Coming Wars.”

Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed. ...

By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history” novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present” that he has developed in several recent articles.
Which is to say, "Seymour Hersh is a lightweight and a liar." The message couldn't be clearer.

Update: Doug Petch has more history of Hersh's apparent fabrications.

by Donald Sensing, 5:12 PM. Permalink |

Seymour Hersh: "Next stop: Iran"

From the New York Daily News:

U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism.
“It’s not if we’re going to do anything against Iran. They’re doing it,” an ex-intelligence official tells this week’s issue of The New Yorker.
Since at least last summer, the U.S. teams have penetrated eastern Iran, reportedly with Pakistan’s help, the magazine said.
“Iraq is just one campaign,” the official told investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. “The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign."
9 OTHER military secrets intelligence officials have recently entrusted to Seymour Hersh

By 2009, Syria will be “a super big Wal-Mart” with “some really great deals on chick peas"
Once the US has puppet control over Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, the next move is to instigate a velvet revolution in Pakistan—culminating in a pro-Democratic Islamic country that will gratefully change its name to “Margaritaville"
Israel’s so-called “atomic capabilities”? Nothing but lava lamps wrapped in tin foil
“Natural" disasters in the coastal areas of Southern California and New York will ensure Republican control of the White House and Congress for at least a generation. Trust us on this
Todd Beamer? A CIA plant. “Let’s Roll”? Code for “scramble the fighter jets and shoot this puppy down. But make it look like we did it, okay?"
Usama bin Laden has been dead for years, his remains kept in a shoebox at Langley; his recent “appearances” were actually staged using an actor whose previous credits included “Goofy” and “Hillbilly Bear” at Disney World, Orlando
"John Ashcroft” is actually an animatronic unit completed in 1983 by Lockheed Martin; modeled after “The Robot Gunslinger” character in Michael Crichton’s Westworld, “Ashcroft” was modified to fit then-President Reagan’s request to “make the thing more Christiany"
Ayman Al Zarqawi’s birth name is actually Schlomo Edelstein, born Yonkers, NY, 1963, and up until 1991 a social studies teacher in Fairlawn, New Jersey.
The real reason for the breakup of Ellen Degeneres and Anne Heche? Two words: Condi Rice

****
update: Pentagon reacts to the Hersh report (via Malkin)
****
update 2: I would say that it’s quite likely we have (or have had) special forces units poking around in Iran. At least, I hope that’s the case. What I find humorous is Hersh’s hyperbole and his ubiquitous use of the unnamed military intelligence source. For the record.

DanielDrezner.com:

Open Sy Hersh thread
Feel free to comment on the veracity and implications of Sy Hersh's latest New Yorker essay here. This is how it opens:

George W. Bush’s reëlection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way.
Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. It has reaffirmed the position of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership who advocated the invasion, including Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and Douglas Feith, the Under-secretary for Policy. According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.
“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

This paragraph is the one that -- if true -- disturbs me the most:

The former high-level intelligence official told me, “They don’t want to make any W.M.D. intelligence mistakes, as in Iraq. The Republicans can’t have two of those. There’s no education in the second kick of a mule.” The official added that the government of Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani President, has won a high price for its coöperation—American assurance that Pakistan will not have to hand over A. Q. Khan, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, to the I.A.E.A. or to any other international authorities for questioning. For two decades, Khan has been linked to a vast consortium of nuclear-black-market activities. Last year, Musharraf professed to be shocked when Khan, in the face of overwhelming evidence, “confessed” to his activities. A few days later, Musharraf pardoned him, and so far he has refused to allow the I.A.E.A. or American intelligence to interview him. Khan is now said to be living under house arrest in a villa in Islamabad. “It’s a deal—a trade-off,” the former high-level intelligence official explained. “‘Tell us what you know about Iran and we will let your A. Q. Khan guys go.’ It’s the neoconservatives’ version of short-term gain at long-term cost. They want to prove that Bush is the anti-terrorism guy who can handle Iran and the nuclear threat, against the long-term goal of eliminating the black market for nuclear proliferation.”

If this is true, it suggests the administration really believes that the threat posed by nuclear-armed states is greater than the threat posed by a black market proliferation network that could sell to states and non-state actors alike.
That said, here's the paragraph that makes me wonder just how much Hersh's sources are speaking without knowing:

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls “action teams” in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. “Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. “We founded them and we financed them,” he said. “The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.” A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, “We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.”

Read David Adesnik's posts on the U.S. role in El Salvador in the early eighties to see why the statement about the death squads is wildly off the mark.
One obvious dynamic at work is that some of Hersh's intelligence sources have to be victims of the Porter Goss regime at Langley. On the one hand, that probably gives these officials a strong incentive to spll their guts. On the other hand, it also gives them an incentive to stick it to the Bush administration by any means necessary.
For the record, here is the Defense Department's press release in response to the Hersh essay -- in which precise facts contained in Hersh's piece are challenged; for interpretation of the DoD's statement, check out CNN's take.

Belmont Club

Monday, January 17, 2005

Backward, Please

Stratfor reacts to Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker outlining the covert war that is being waged against terrorism. (Hat tip: MIG)

Logic tells us that these operations are going on. There is a gap between logic and confirmation that Hersh has chosen to bridge. More precisely, if Hersh is to be believed, a former U.S. intelligence officer allowed him to bridge this gap by providing him with information so sensitive that its disclosure would put in danger the lives of the members of the reconnaissance team, as well as the lives of Pakistani scientists cooperating with the United States.
... It comes down to this: On the broadest level, Hersh's story simply restates what is known or logical. On a deeper level, it reveals details that, if true, could cripple U.S. intelligence collection in Iran. That Hersh would publish this is a given. That he could get hold of information like this from the CIA is a crisis. Or, Hersh could simply have been the victim of U. S. information operations.

According to Hersh the operations are defective because they are an extension of current Bush policies by a new and more extreme means and can only lead to further and worse disasters. The Washington Post has carried an interview with President Bush which they argued showed he regarded the election as blanket absolution over any mistakes it may have made. But Hersh is making a subtly different point: he is suggesting that President Bush regardes the election as having given him a hunting license.

Despite the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, the Bush Administration has not reconsidered its basic long-range policy goal in the Middle East: the establishment of democracy throughout the region. Bush’s reëlection is regarded within the Administration as evidence of America’s support for his decision to go to war. ... Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing. “This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

The key to the plan is a secret warfighting arm whose job is to undertake operations "off the books", a prospect that Hersh finds chilling.

Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders, to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox ... The order specifically authorized the military “to find and finish” terrorist targets, the consultant said. It included a target list that cited Al Qaeda network members, Al Qaeda senior leadership, and other high-value targets. ... “If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda,” Arquilla wrote, referring to John Walker Lindh, the twenty-year-old Californian who was seized in Afghanistan, “think what professional operatives might do.”

As the earlier post on the supposed "blanket absolution" argued, the dialogue over a war now going into it's fourth year shows no closure or consensus at all. The argument between liberals and conservatives over the War on Terror is not limited to the specifics of Iraq policy, as is often alleged, but extends to the very issue of whether terrorism should be fought at all. From the outset many liberals believed, often sincerely, that a conciliatory rather than a combative approach should have been adopted towards radical Islamism. Any admiration professed for American efforts to destroy Al Qaeda in Afghanistan was articulated for the sole purpose of comparing it to the more difficult conditions in Iraq. The idea of appeasement never died. Hersh practically pitches for it in his article in the New Yorker:

For more than a year, France, Germany, Britain, and other countries in the European Union have seen preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon as a race against time—and against the Bush Administration. They have been negotiating with the Iranian leadership to give up its nuclear-weapons ambitions in exchange for economic aid and trade benefits. ... The Europeans have been urging the Bush Administration to join in these negotiations. The Administration has refused to do so.
There are many military and diplomatic experts who dispute the notion that military action, on whatever scale, is the right approach. Shahram Chubin, an Iranian scholar who is the director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, told me, “It’s a fantasy to think that there’s a good American or Israeli military option in Iran.”

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita has gone on the record attacking Hersh's piece, ripping its specifics to pieces, while remaining silent on the key issue of whether there is in fact an unseen component to the Global War on Terror.

Mr. Hersh’s article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed. Mr. Hersh’s source(s) feed him with rumor, innuendo, and assertions about meetings that never happened, programs that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made. A sampling from this article alone includes:

The post-election meeting he describes between the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff did not happen.
The only civilians in the chain-of-command are the President and the Secretary of Defense, despite Mr. Hersh’s confident assertion that the chain of command now includes two Department policy officials. His assertion is outrageous, and constitutionally specious.

Arrangements Mr. Hersh alleges between Under Secretary Douglas Feith and Israel, government or non-government, do not exist. Here, Mr. Hersh is building on links created by the soft bigotry of some conspiracy theorists. This reflects poorly on Mr. Hersh and the New Yorker.

Mr. Hersh cannot even keep track of his own wanderings. At one point in his article, he makes the outlandish assertion that the military operations he describes are so secret that the operations are being kept secret even from U.S. military Combatant Commanders. Mr. Hersh later states, though, that the locus of this super-secret activity is at the U.S. Central Command headquarters, evidently without the knowledge of the commander if Mr. Hersh is to be believed.

By his own admission, Mr. Hersh evidently is working on an “alternative history” novel. He is well along in that work, given the high quality of “alternative present” that he has developed in several recent articles.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=420027

DoctorZin Note: More disinformation?

Now US ponders attack on Iran
Hardliners in Pentagon ready to neutralise 'nuclear threat' posed by Tehran

Julian Borger in Washington and Ian Traynor
Tuesday January 18, 2005
The Guardian

President Bush's second inauguration on Thursday will provide the signal for an intense and urgent debate in Washington over whether or when to extend the "global war on terror" to Iran, according to officials and foreign policy analysts in Washington.
That debate is being driven by "neo-conservatives" at the Pentagon who emerged from the post-election Bush reshuffle unscathed, despite their involvement in collecting misleading intelligence on Iraq's weapons in the run-up to the 2003 invasion.
Washington has stood aside from recent European negotiations with Iran and Pentagon hardliners are convinced that the current European-brokered deal suspending nuclear enrichment and intensifying weapons inspections is unenforceable and will collapse in months.
Only the credible threat, and if necessary the use, of air and special operations attacks against Iran's suspected nuclear facilities will stop the ruling clerics in Tehran acquiring warheads, many in the administration argue.
Moderates, who are far fewer in the second Bush administration than the first, insist that if Iran does have a secret weapons programme, it is likely to be dispersed and buried in places almost certainly unknown to US intelligence. The potential for Iranian retaliation inside Iraq and elsewhere is so great, the argument runs, that there is in effect no military option.
A senior administration official involved in developing Iran policy rejected that argument. "It is not as simple as that," he told the Guardian at a recent foreign policy forum in Washington. "It is not a straightforward problem but at some point the costs of doing nothing may just become too high. In Iran you have the intersection of nuclear weapons and proven ties to terrorism. That is what we are looking at now."
The New Yorker reported this week that the Pentagon has already sent special operations teams into Iran to locate possible nuclear weapons sites. The report by Seymour Hersh, a veteran investigative journalist, was played down by the White House and the Pentagon, with comments that stopped short of an outright denial.
"The Iranian regime's apparent nuclear ambitions and its demonstrated support for terrorist organisations is a global challenge that deserves much more serious treatment than Seymour Hersh provides," Lawrence DiRita, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said yesterday: "Mr Hersh's article is so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed."
However, the Guardian has learned the Pentagon was recently contemplating the infiltration of members of the Iranian rebel group, Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) over the Iraq-Iran border, to collect intelligence. The group, based at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad, was under the protection of Saddam Hussein, and is under US guard while Washington decides on its strategy.
The MEK has been declared a terrorist group by the state department, but a former Farsi-speaking CIA officer said he had been asked by neo-conservatives in the Pentagon to travel to Iraq to oversee "MEK cross-border operations". He refused, and does not know if those operations have begun.
"They are bringing a lot of the old war-horses from the Reagan and Iran-contra days into a sort of kitchen cabinet outside the government to write up policy papers on Iran," the former officer said.
He said the policy discussion was being overseen by Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy who was one of the principal advocates of the Iraq war. The Pentagon did not return calls for comment on the issue yesterday. In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, Mr Feith's Office of Special Plans also used like-minded experts on contract from outside the government, to serve as consultants helping the Pentagon counter the more cautious positions of the state department and the CIA.
Crazy
"They think in Iran you can just go in and hit the facilities and destabilise the government. They believe they can get rid of a few crazy mullahs and bring in the young guys who like Gap jeans, all the world's problems are solved. I think it's delusional," the former CIA officer said.
However, others believe that at a minimum military strikes could set back Iran's nuclear programme several years. Reuel Marc Gerecht, another former CIA officer who is now a leading neo-conservative voice on Iran at the American Enterprise Institute, said: "It would certainly delay [the programme] and it can be done again. It's not a one-time affair. I would be shocked if a military strike could not delay the programme." Mr Gerecht said the internal debate in the administration was only just beginning.
"This administration does not really have an Iran policy," he said. "Iraq has been a fairly consuming endeavour, but it's getting now towards the point where people are going to focus on [Iran] hard and have a great debate."
That debate could be brought to a head in the next few months. Diplomats and officials in Vienna following the Iranian nuclear saga at the International Atomic Energy Agency expect the Iran dispute to re-erupt by the middle of this year, predicting a breakdown of the diplomatic track the EU troika of Britain, Germany and France are pursuing with Tehran. The Iran-EU agreement, reached in November, was aimed at getting Iran to abandon the manufacture of nuclear fuel which can be further refined to bomb-grade.
Now the Iranians are feeding suspicion by continuing to process uranium concentrate into gaseous form, a breach "not of the letter but of the spirit of the agreement," said one European diplomat.
Opinions differ widely over how long it would take Iran to produce a deliverable nuclear warhead, and some analysts believe that Iranian scientists have encountered serious technical difficulties.
"The Israelis believe that by 2007, the Iranians could enrich enough uranium for a bomb. Some of us believe it could be the end of this decade," said David Albright, a nuclear weapons expert at the Institute for Science and International Security. A recent war-game carried out by retired military officers, intelligence officials and diplomats for the Atlantic Monthly, came to the conclusion that there were no feasible military options and if negotiations and the threat of sanctions fail, the US might have to accept Iran as a nuclear power.
However, Sam Gardiner, a retired air force colonel who led the war-game, acknowledged that the Bush administration might not come to the same conclusion.
"Everything you hear about the planning for Iraq suggests logic may not be the basis for the decision," he said.
Mr Gerecht, who took part in the war-game but dissented from the conclusion, believes the Bush White House, still mired in Iraq, has yet to make up its mind.
"The bureaucracy will come down on the side of doing nothing. The real issue is: will the president and the vice president disagree with them? If I were a betting man, I'd bet the US will not use pre-emptive force. However, I would not want to bet a lot."

US Congress targets Iran for regime change
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: January 17 2005 22:05 | Last updated: January 17 2005 22:05
Support for “regime change” in Iran is growing in Congress, encouraging new exiled opposition groups supported by Washington's neoconservatives to spring up in the hope of receiving US funding.

Having adopted legislation in the past aimed at Cuba and Iraq, Republicans and Democrats in both houses are starting to champion political reform in Tehran.
The activity comes amid a magazine report that the US has been carrying out secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran in preparation for possible military strikes.
However, Dan Bartlett, a counsellor to George W. Bush, US president, said the article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine was “riddled with inaccuracies”.
Lawrence DiRita, Pentagon spokesman, said Mr Hersh had been fed with “rumour, innuendo and assertions about meetings that never happened, programmes that do not exist, and statements by officials that were never made”.
One Washington exile group the Alliance for Democracy in Iran describes itself as an opposition umbrella group that would act as a “clearing house” for US taxpayers' money dedicated to advancing the cause of democracy.
“Our true purpose is to empower the Iranian people, to change the regime to become more democratic,” said Kamal Azari, the alliance president. He stressed that the group renounced violence.
In Congress, the proposed Iran Freedom and Support Act calls on the Bush administration to back “regime change” and promote alliances with opposition groups that renounce terrorism.
A similar bill in the House does not mention regime change but would back pro-democracy groups.

Bush won't rule out action vs Iran over nukes

WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush said on Monday he would not rule out military action against Iran if that country was not more forthcoming about its suspected nuclear weapons program.

I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table," Bush said in an interview with NBC News when asked if he would rule out the potential for military action against Iran "if it continues to stonewall the international community about the existence of its nuclear weapons program."

Iran denies it has been trying to make nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is geared solely to producing electricity.

Bush's comments followed Pentagon criticism on Monday of a published report that it was mounting reconnaissance missions inside Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets.

Pakistan denies report it helps US on Iran nukes
Islamabad, Jan 17 (Reuters) Pakistan today denied a U S magazine report that it was providing information to help the United States conduct secret reconnaissance missions in Iran to identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets.

The New Yorker magazine, in an article yesterday by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions had been going on since at least last summer to identify target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.

The report said an American commando task force in South Asia was working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists who had dealt with their Iranian counterparts.

Pakistan's foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan strongly denied the report and said it was pure conjecture.

''There is no such collaboration,'' Khan told a weekly news conference.

''We do not have much information about Iran's nuclear programme, so I think this report is far-fetched and it exaggerates facts which do not exist in the first place.'' The New Yorker reported that the task force, aided by information from Pakistan, has been penetrating into eastern Iran in a hunt for underground nuclear-weapons installations.

In exchange for this cooperation, an intelligence official told Hersh, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf received assurances that his government would not have to turn over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to face questioning about his role in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Masood Khan said Pakistan was not providing any information on Iran's nuclear facilities to Washington, or to any international agency, because Islamabad was not privy to such information.

''Our contacts in the past were between some individuals and some shady characters. There has been no government-to-government contact in the field of nuclear energy,'' he said.

Nuclear-armed Pakistan has been under the international spotlight since early 2004 when a scandal broke that some of its scientists, led by Khan, were involved in nuclear proliferation to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Hersh is a tool, always has been. It he's our tool now it's because he's too stupid to know when he's being played.

Unless, of course, he actually is CIA, in which case I should be happy to apologize to him.

No Sticks, No Carrots
[Excerpt] January 17, 2005
Review & Outlook

Where the European Union's revived trade talks with Iran will lead is anyone's guess. What's more certain is that the process shouldn't inspire confidence in the union's ability to defuse international crises.

Negotiations resumed last week, 18 months after the EU broke off earlier talks and two months after Britain, France and Germany struck a bargain in which Tehran agreed to suspend its uranium enrichment activities while the two parties discussed a new trade accord. ...

All the back-slapping -- if not the trade talks themselves -- should have ended Wednesday when Hasan Rowhani, Tehran's top nuclear negotiator, said, "Suspension of enrichment is for a limited period to win the confidence of the international community." In other words, as soon as Tehran has secured more-favorable trade terms, it sees no reason to continue with its cooperative charade. Tehran has made no bones about its nuclear intentions in the past, but this might have been its most brazen avowal yet.

The negotiations, of course, went on -- not least because the EU has gone to great lengths to explain that the trade talks are not linked to developments in the nuclear deal. If the EU-3 become dissatisfied with progress on the uranium-enrichment front, they'll have to petition the entire bloc to have the trade talks halted.

The EU -- having removed the sticks from the Americans' and Israelis' hands -- has started feeding the carrots to Tehran before the mullahs have offered any real concessions. This is not a low-stakes diplomatic polka. Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze'evi, head of Israeli military intelligence, said last week that Iran could be able to enrich uranium within six months; within two years, he said, Tehran could have atomic weapons that "can reach Portugal." "This doesn't worry the Europeans," the Haaretz newspaper quoted Gen. Ze'evi as saying in a lecture at Haifa University. "They tell me that during the Soviet regime as well they were under a nuclear threat, and I try to explain to them that Iran is a different story."

That's the problem with the EU's diplomacy-always-works philosophy. Détente and the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) might have deterred the Soviets. But Iran is a different story. For starters, MAD was enforced by American might, which ultimately convinced the Soviets that they would lose the arms race and brought their downfall. Perhaps Europe has forgotten about the rather important role the U.S. played in this affair.

We're no fans of economic sanctions for reasons both philosophical and pragmatic. But neither do we favor trade concessions to rogue states that promote terrorism and have nuclear ambitions. Whatever Europe thinks it is doing, we can only guess. But whatever it is, the problem of Iran is coming no closer to a solution. And it is important for everyone to know that the penalty for failure could be very high, a nuclear-armed radical regime making big trouble for both Europe and the U.S.

No country dares to attack Iran due to its deterrent military capabilities: Shamkhani
TEHRAN, Jan. 17 (MNA) -- Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said on Monday that due to the power of its flexible strategy, Iran has attained military strength such that no country dares to attack it because no country has been able to determine Iran’s military might.

“We are able to say that we have strength such that no country can attack us because they do not have precise information about our military capabilities due to our ability to implement flexible strategies,” Shamkhani told reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony to present awards for the best military equipment.

“We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment that has resulted in the greatest deterrent,” the defense minister added.

He also stressed the need to make use of talented people to upgrade Iran’s defense capabilities.

“In production power, we should be the pioneer, otherwise we lose.”

He also said that the main duty of the Defense Ministry is devising flexible military strategies meant to deter enemies.

“The capabilities of the opponent are not static and they are shaped by the prevailing political, economic, and technical conditions. Therefore, we can not counter them with static power.”

One can only have deterrent power vis-à-vis an opponent by identifying the opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, he said in conclusion.

Iran spent over $1 billion on meddling in Iraq: Defence Minister
Mon. 17 Jan 2005
Iran Focus

Baghdad, Jan. 17 - The Iraqi Defence Minister, Hazem al-Shaalan today accused Iran of interference, saying, "Iran has spent more than $1 billion on meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq".

In a telephone interview with the Arab language Ilaf website, al-Shaalan also accused candidates on the opposition list of Shiite figures led by Abdol Aziz Hakim as a group trying to invite sectarian and religious strife among the people of Iraq.

He blasted Ahmad Chalabi, the disgraced Iraqi opposition candidate who was discovered to be secretly passing on U.S. intelligence to the Iranian regime.

Al-Shaalan has repeatedly called Iran "Iraq's number one enemy" and consistently accused the clerical state of funding insurgent attacks against the Iraqi people.

Al-Shaalan had previously said that the reason Iraq’s interim deputy-Prime Minister, Barham Saleh, had been dispatched to Iran was to warn Iran’s leaders to halt their actions.

Over the past year, a string of Iraqi officials, including Iraq’s interim-Prime Minister, Ayad Allawi, and the interim-President Ghazi al-Yawar, have accused Iran of meddling in Iraq. In December al-Yawar accused Iran of pouring “huge amounts of money” into fundamentalist Shiite parties hoping to create an Iraqi Islamic Republic.

Separately, sources within the Iranian opposition yesterday confirmed to Iran Focus that they were able to obtain a classified document from within Iran's intelligence and security apparatus showing Iran's connections to insurgents carrying out attacks in Iraq.

The document is a report written by an Iraqi group mounting armed attacks on Iraqi civilians and U.S. and Coalition troops in Iraq. It was addressed to Revolutionary Guards Brigadier General Obeydavi, a senior commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) Force.

The Qods Force is the extra-territorial arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and oversees the Iranian regime's external military activities in Iraq.

The report described how attacks were "successfully carried out". It acknowledged that the Iraqi group was primarily mounting attacks in Baghdad and provinces to its west.

That report mentioned that the fatwa calling for the group to carry out operation in Iraq was issued in Iran's holy city of Qom.

Neocons turn their attention to Iran
By Guy Dinmore in Washington
Published: January 18 2005 00:07 | Last updated: January 18 2005 00:07
Having adopted legislation in the past aimed at Cuba and Iraq, similar groups of Republicans and Democrats in Congress are currently setting their sights on promoting “regime change” in Iran.

As a result, new exiled Iranian opposition groups backed by some of Washington's neoconservatives are springing up in the hope of seeing large doses of US funding.
One such group the Alliance for Democracy in Iran is taking shape, strategically located in the heart of the capital's think-tank quarter. Activists described it as an opposition umbrella group that would act as a “clearing house” for US taxpayers' money dedicated to advancing the cause of democracy.
“Our true purpose is to empower the Iranian people, to change the regime to become more democratic,” explained Kamal Azari, its president, stressing that the group renounced violence. Its aim is a referendum on whether to restore the monarchy under the ousted Shah's son, Reza Pahlavi, who lives in Virginia.
Its board members are relatively obscure; some of them are monarchists. Its Oxford-educated chairman, Bahman Batmanghelidj, (known as “Batman”), opened a ski resort near Tehran before the 1979 Islamic revolution. A property magnate in Virginia, he filed for personal bankruptcy protection in 1996.
The group has an Accountability Project to identify friends and foes in the US. Alix Boucher, spokeswoman, fires off letters to editors and academic institutions to denounce advocates of engagement with the Islamic regime.
The Alliance says it is in partnership with the rightwing Hudson Institute. Alliance members are also inspired by Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, an influential neoconservative policy group, who is a veteran campaigner for regime change.
Mr Ledeen said he had not advised the group. “Change in Iran depends on people inside the country and on western government policies,” he commented.
A prominent backer of the Alliance is Jerome Corsi, well known for his role in the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth campaign against John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate. He believes the freeze on nuclear development agreed between Iran and the European Union will collapse by March and that Israel, supported by the US, will then launch military strikes.
In Congress, the proposed Iran Freedom and Support Act, sponsored by senators Rick Santorum and John Cornyn, calls on the administration to back “regime change” and promote and fund the transition to a democratic government through alliances with opposition groups that renounce terrorism.
Some exiles believe around $100m (€75m, £55m) will be laid out. Others say this figure is too high.
A similar bill in the House is proposed by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida republican and fierce anti-Castro campaigner. Regime change is not in the language, but the bill would back pro-democracy groups. It also seeks to strengthen existing legislation that would penalise foreign companies investing in Iran's energy sector.
The proposed act draws on experience gained from the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act which enshrined regime change and the 1996 Helms-Burton law on sanctions on Cuba. It has the backing of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobby group.
Funding of $3m for Iranian opposition activities has already been inserted by Congress in the 2005 budget on the initiative of Senator Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican.
Despite these efforts, neoconservatives as a whole are divided over the merits of promoting the exiled opposition, recognising that the parties are torn by internal rivalries and enjoy little support inside Iran.
The administration is not very enthusiastic about the legislation either, despite the president's oft cited support for the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people.
One official said present policy was not to embrace the regime change option. But there was interest in supporting groups that would help to “modify” Iran's behaviour through promoting democracy. Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy doubts “regime change” will make it through Congress, and says the exiles' funding hopes are just “dreams”.
The State Department's Middle East Partnership Initiative has sought to identify pro-democracy groups inside Iran for funding, but has not found any. Officials are also aware that any group known to receive US money would be targeted by the regime immediately. Congress says their identities would be kept secret.
Some analysts say the proposed legislation, whether explicit about regime change or not, is a foolish waste of “feel-good” money that will only undermine diplomatic efforts by the EU to negotiate a way out of the nuclear crisis.

I think this defence minister needs a psychologist to cure him.
He sounds like Rafsanjani as he said the US spends 100 milions dollars a week in Iraq to spoil the people.

Bush blocks Euro plan to woo Iran over nuclear freeze
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
(Filed: 18/01/2005)

America has hobbled an effort by Britain and other European countries to persuade Iran to freeze its nuclear programme.
Senior officials said privately that the US would not offer economic or political concessions to woo Teheran.
President George W Bush is trying to improve relations with Europe and will visit London and Brussels next month.
But in private, American officials are furious at the European Union's "engagement" with Teheran. They say they will not co-operate with what they see as the dangerous policy of giving the regime "rewards for bad behaviour".
The New Yorker magazine reported yesterday that teams of US special forces had infiltrated Iran to scout suspected weapons sites that would be targeted in future air strikes.
Seymour Hersh, the magazine's award-winning journalist, quoted a US official as saying that after Afghanistan and Iraq "we're going to have the Iranian campaign".
However, a senior US administration source said Mr Bush was unlikely to take any decisions on dealing with Iran for the next six months, while the issue was "blocked" by the European diplomatic initiative.
Another well-placed US source said "military action is only the last resort after other options have been exhausted".
He said Washington wanted first to exert pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear programme through an escalating series of diplomatic and economic sanctions at the United Nations Security Council.
Iran is widely believed to be pursuing a secret programme to build a nuclear bomb. The nation says it only seeks to develop nuclear power to save its oil reserves.
Under an agreement in November between Iran and Britain, France and Germany, Teheran was spared a referral to the security council after it agreed to suspend "voluntarily" the most sensitive parts of its nuclear programme: the enrichment of uranium and the reprocessing of plutonium. In return, the Europeans made a commitment to improve relations.
Working groups met in Geneva yesterday to discuss three issues: Iran's nuclear programme; improved technological and economic co-operation; and "firm commitments on security issues".
The EU has agreed to move ahead with co-operation even before an overall agreement is reached and has resumed talks on a trade pact with Iran.
But many of the benefits that Teheran seeks - advanced technology, investment in its oil industry and greater international acceptance - can be provided only with US agreement.
The Europeans hoped to entice the new Bush administration into the diplomatic process.
American officials dismiss the idea out of hand. One said the European effort was "comical". Another said the Iranians would break out of whatever constraints the Europeans imposed.
Washington believes that any concessions made by Teheran are temporary, and often imposed by their own technical problems. British officials admit their initiative is running into the sand.
Without US support, the Europeans believe their initiative is doomed and it will be only a matter of time before the Iranians resume their nuclear activities.
The US will not publicly denounce the initiative but appears content to watch it collapse.
It then hopes to bring the issue to the security council. Britain says such a move would be pointless because any sanctions would be blocked by Russia and China.

Top News Story

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Statement from Pentagon Spokesman Lawrence DiRita on Latest Seymour Hersh Article

Is Seymour Hersh Being Played?

Monday, January 17, 2005

Backward, Please

Now US ponders attack on Iran

US Congress targets Iran for regime change

Bush won't rule out action vs Iran over nukes

Pakistan denies report it helps US on Iran nukes

No Sticks, No Carrots

No country dares to attack Iran due to its deterrent military capabilities: Shamkhani

Iran spent over $1 billion on meddling in Iraq: Defence Minister

Neocons turn their attention to Iran

Bush blocks Euro plan to woo Iran over nuclear freeze