Does Iran Have the Payload?

Short answer - no one knows. The new Director General of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano, is a technician who is focusing on the ways and means by which Iran could acquire a nuclear weapon. In particular, Amano is focused on Iran's treaty violations. In contrast, Mohamed ElBaradei, who apparently has political ambitions of his own, has seemed more focused on keeping all parties appeased and at the table.

'In his first report on Iran, the new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, broke with the more cautious style of his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei, and suggested Iran could have looked into the construction of a weapon, and that ­weaponisation work could be under way.

Amano's report to the IAEA board also confirmed that Iran had succeeded in producing 20% enriched uranium, a level of enrichment much closer to weapons grade than it had attempted before. It criticised the Iranian authorities for taking the step without giving IAEA inhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5002651818781399387&pli=1spectors notice.'

Of more urgent concern is whether or not Iran has any concern for an IAEA report or the threat of ramped-up sanctions. Iran has continued to test medium and long-range missiles, the latter with little success, which could be adapted to carry a nuclear payload. However, the thought of a medium-range missile with a nuclear payload has to be of little comfort to any of Iran's neighbors. Israel will certainly not stand for such a development, and Iran's other neighbors are feeling the heat as well (most are Sunni compared to Shiite Iran). Perhaps the greatest impediment, other than technical ones, to Iran moving forward with a nuclear weapon, is its inability to build up a nuclear deterrent (or conversely, threat). At best, Iran can produce a couple of weapons, and these would be untestable. Unless Iran is bent on a suicide mission, it seems unlikely that it would openly load or deploy at this level. More likely scenarios include a repeat of Iraq's verbal deterrence games, or deployment through a surrogate (e.g. - terrorism). Wherever the truth lies, it seems likely that Iran prefers a closed fist to an open hand.

Iran Dithering Over Proposals

While Iran is permitting inspections of the recently -revealed nuclear processing site, near Qom, to go forward, it is by no means certain that it will accept the proposed deal to allow France and Russia to finalize fuel processing. The proposal would ship, either in stages or in bulk, all of Iran's nuclear fuel to Russia and France for final reprocessing. The two countries would ensure that fuel was processed only to the extent required for nuclear medicine. Major concerns about the ability of Iran to either hide reprocessing or to simply continue processing unshipped material (in the case of piecemeal shipments) abound. France has warned that Iran does not seem to be bargaining in good faith, and that it will drag the negotiations out until the process is meaningless. This was born out last week by Iran's decision to postpone a decision. Also of concern is Russia's on-again, off-again bargaining with Iran to directly ship uranium to the country. Whether or not Russian can be relied upon as a partner in this process remains to be seen.

President Obama has stated that Iran is 'on notice to comply' with the plant inspections and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This kind of 'bold' rhetoric has yet to produce results in North Korea, Pakistan or really any country the President has put on notice. It's doubtful that Iran will take much notice of the warnings without some real consequences on the table. France openly scoffed at this language during the G-20 summit, and Russia declared it unhelpful. President Sarkozy seems to have backed off some vis/vis President Obama, holding a telephone conversation yesterday with Obama on Iran, but continues to predict that direct actions (either through strengthened sanctions or turning a blind eye to Israeli action) may be necessary.

Dumbing Down Democracy

Much has been made in the blogosphere of President Obama's apparently contradictory positions on 'meddling' in other countries' affairs. On the one hand, he took a definite and hard position on the outer of the Honduran President Zelaya (who had tried to illegally extend his term, and for whom a legitimate arrest warrant was made out) and feels secure in directing Israel to cease all settlement building, including expansion relative to populations growth. On the other hand, other than threatening tougher sanctions should Iran fail to halt its nuclear program, and asking for a halt to the violence, Obama is unwilling to employ the harder side of diplomacy with regards to Iran.

The real problem to my mind is that President Obama, in his rush to disavow all things Bush and avoid falling into the trap of democratizing the world, is failing to support a genuine yearning for freedom. Thursday's issue of the Wall Street Journal labeled Obama's willingness to abdicate the discussion on Iran that 'dumbing down of democracy.'

'When the people of Iran filled the streets of their country demanding a fair election, the U.S. clutched for a week. Uncertain of whether U.S. interests lay with the nuke-building ayatollahs or the democracy-seeking population, the Obama team essentially mumbled sweet nothings through the first days of the most extraordinary world event in this young presidency's term. That moment of hesitation, when a genuine and strategically useful democratic moment needed support, could prove costly. When the Group of Eight nations tried to shape a response to the Iranian government's repression, Russia knew what to say about Iran. "No one is willing to condemn the election process," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, "because it's an exercise in democracy." Behold the official dumbing down of democracy. ... Dmitry Peskov was defining democracy in a way that could hardly be more different than the system of political pluralism developed over the past 300 years in the West. He couldn't have been clearer: We are changing the rules. Get over it. n this light, President Obama's performance in Moscow was disconcerting, to put it mildly. In Mr. Obama's worldview, political systems apparently don't compete. They simply . . . are. "America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country," he said, "nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country." Mr. Obama's political equivalence, conventional wisdom now among many Western sophisticates, is wrong and dangerous. Unless the West, led by the U.S. under this president, offers active push-back against the Russian definition of democracy, their version inexorably will back out ours.'

Whether we are nation that supports the growth of freedom and democracy in other countries or not, is a question that goes to the heart of nation and should not be decided by knee-jerk opposition to Bush or neo-cons or some other straw man. Supporting freedom doesn't require the use of 'hard power,' but it does require firmness of purpose and acting without fear of being accused of meddling or of being Bush.

Good Call - the US Withdraws from the UN's Conference on Racism

The United States has withdrawn from the UN's upcoming Conference on Racism, largely because (as stated in a Bloomberg report):

"The Geneva conference will review progress on the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, or DDPA. The UN says about 4,000 delegates will attend, including Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

The DDPA was and is a huge problem. It essentially declares Israel to be fully at fault in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and while skirting the line of Holocaust-denial, blames Israel for racist oppression of the Palestinians. The entire conference is an issue as well, since the most vocal member states all enact racist and sexist policies. Any confrontation of these policies is impossible through this body however, as the same members have managed to turn around any criticism, calling it racist offensive. It's a neat trick to accuse your enemies of what they would charge you with, but it doesn't make it more accurate. The article continues:

While the Geneva draft text is an improvement on the 2001 document rejected by the U.S., it still reaffirms “in toto” the DDPA statement, the State Department said on April 18.

“The DDPA singles out one particular conflict and prejudges key issues that can only be resolved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians,” acting State Department spokesman Robert A. Wood said in a statement. “The United States also has concerns with relatively new additions to the text regarding ‘incitement’ that run counter to the U.S. commitment to unfettered free speech.

There has been a lot of worry and bother over whether or not the new Administration would cave to pressure, and participate in the conference, thus giving its members cover. It's good to know that the US is still going to draw a firm line - at least for now.

This is Rich - Iran tells the US to Offer Honest Dialogue and Change

While using the word dialogue, Iran managed to still verbally spank the US and the President. Ahmadinejad offered dialogue only if the US will become honest, and give up its evil ways. In case you thought he meant just President Bush, Ahmadinejad clarified that he meant the US policies that 'go back for tens of years.' Funny, I always thought disguising a weapons program under the guise of an energy program was pretty dishonest. And calling for the destruction of Israel, while denying the Holocaust is just despicable. Meanwhile, the gaftastic VP Biden changed his mind last year, and switched (from allowing that Israel has the right to first strike) to instructing Israel to take to possibility of first strike off the table. If someone had called for my destruction, and then developed a weapon to end all others, I'd go for the first strike. Just saying ....

I wonder if talking to Iran is going to prove any more successfuly than talking to N. Korea. Any takers?

UPDATED: They're Shaking in their Boots!

UPDATE 1: Yup - the UN Security Council will do nada, because two permanent members want it to do nada. Why should we even bother with them?

From Reuters:

'The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity on the sidelines of a G20 meeting in London, said Washington would react if North Korea launched a missile."There are U.N. Security Council resolutions so I would expect we would be talking to the U.N. Security Council about how to respond," the official told reporters.'

I guess that will show the mean old bad man! Because he really pays attention to anything else the UN says, right? I'm not saying we shoot arbitrarily shoot the launch down, but I seriously doubt a verbal spanking from the UN Security Council will cause Kim Jong Il to do anything except laugh. And giving him a 'stern' talking to, isn't likely to change things. Fueling the rocket seems like a pretty good sign of their determination to launch a missile that is no different than an ICBM. S. Korea wants us to shoot it down, but that's also not likely. With a successful missile test, N. Korea will have a valuable item to sell to other countries - say enemies of Israel.