Iran update

It's difficult for me to tell if the recent events relating to Iran's nuclear program are really critical elements that signify a possible breakthrough, or are just more of the same bluff and bluster that has characterized much of the negotiations over the past months. Last Wednesday, the United States and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council issued a joint statement stating their commitment to the NPT and urged all non-signatory countries with nuclear programs to accede to the treaty as non-nuclear weapons states.

There has been some talk that the Obama administration may be adjusting the US's tacit acceptance of Israel's nuclear program, and seeing it as an intractable stumbling block to negotiations with Iran. Israel, not surprisingly, has not recognized any change in its relationship with the United States.

Also of note is the progress that Brazil and Turkey have made mediating a resolution between Iran and the West. Iran has agreed "in principal" to a Brazil-Turkey fuel swap proposal that would involve Iran trading 3.5% enriched uranium for 20% enriched uranium for use in Tehran's medical research reactor.

I can't help but get excited about events like these. They make me think that a mutually beneficial resolution might actually be feasible. However, I am pretty sure that the level of trust needed to conclude any resolution between Iran and the United States is lacking.

I usually do not like drawing comparisons between Iran and Iraq, but I think there is a strong similarity between the weapons inspections that were carried out prior to the Iraq invasion, and the current push for IAEA inspectors in Iran. The US did not trust that Saddam Hussein was not manipulating the inspectors, and Iraq did not have any assurances that the US would keep its promise not to invade if it gave up any weapons that it had. Whether or not Iraq possessed chemical or biological agents was beside the point: once the US made a commitment to invade Iraq based on a condition that it could never verify with any certainty, the administration was stuck between carrying out its threat or backing down and losing credibility.

The Obama administration has taken pains to avoid the appearance that it is even considering invading Iran, but it is still suffering from the same problem the Bush Administration had with Iraq: if Iran and the US cannot trust each other to abide by any agreement they reach, then negotiations will always break down when they come to commitment and verification mechanisms. Whether or not Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program is just as irrelevant as whether or not chemical and biological agents were in Iraq. If the US cannot trust Iran to abide by the NPT, then any inspections and negotiations are meaningless.

However, there is a way out of this problem and the Obama administration knows it: unilateral commitment. If one party decides to take on a burden in order to show that it is committed to a deal, it will signal to the other party that they should do the same if they are truly interested in a resolution. The US's recent change in its nuclear posture is a good start. It shows that the US is truly committed to nonproliferation and disarmament. Increased pressure on Israel to join the NPT will also go a long way toward showing Iran that the US is serious. Now would be a good time for Iran to make some accommodations, but if they keep holding war games then that warm, fuzzy optimism I had earlier will quickly evaporate.

Slim, Frosty: what are your thoughts and opinions on the Iran nuclear talks?

Gates' Nuclear Iran Memo

A lot to chew on here, hope to have a post up on this sometime soon.

Track of the Day: Busted!

This song goes out to North Korea. The news today is that the plane seized by Thai authorities was shipping 35 tons of arms to Iran, according to Thai sources. These new sanctions seem to actually have teeth! Nice.

Some Positive Signs on Iran & Nukes

While I have generally been pessimistic about what the endgame in the standoff between Iran and the West over the former's nuclear program will be, an article in today's NYT provides some--well maybe not hope, but some positive signs for both the direction of the nuclear program and US policy:

1. First, it looks like the Obama Administration has convinced Israel to hold off attacking Iran.

[An] administration official said that Israeli officials, while still publicly hinting that they might take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, “now feel that what’s happening in Iran makes the country vulnerable to real sanctions,” and might give Mr. Obama more time to persuade China and Russia to go along. A senior Israeli diplomat in Washington said that in back-channel conversations “Obama has convinced us that it’s worth trying the sanctions, at least for a few months.”

I'm pretty skeptical that Russia and China will ever "go along," but I think that war or air strikes would probably be the worst option possible here. I think it's pretty obvious why war would be bad. Air strikes, while seemingly a more benign option, would a) kill civilians, b) not be certain to end the nuclear program, c) strengthen Iran's resolve to pursue nukes, and d) alienate the Greens, who are Iranian nationalists first. So, I think the fact that attacks are unlikely to occur soon is a good thing.

2. Second, it seems that things aren't looking so hot for the prospects of the Iranian nuclear program in general. There are a number of reasons for this:

a) the Qom site revelation

...the Obama administration officials said they believed that the bomb-development effort was seriously derailed by the exposure three months ago of the country’s secret enrichment plant under construction near the holy city of Qum. Exposure of the site deprived Iran of its best chance of covertly producing the highly enriched uranium needed to make fuel for nuclear weapons...

American officials say that the Qum plant is now useless to the Iranians. “They spent three years and tens of millions of dollars on a covert plant that they will probably never turn on,” said the senior official involved in the White House strategy.

b) "technical problems"

...international nuclear inspectors report that at Iran’s plant in Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges spin to enrich uranium for nuclear fuel, the number of the machines that are currently operating has dropped by 20 percent since the summer, a decline nuclear experts attribute to technical problems.

...administration officials and experts say that another factor slowing Iran’s nuclear development is that it is working with older centrifuge technology that keeps breaking down.

By the recent count of inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency, there were 3,936 centrifuges running at Iran’s enrichment plant in the desert at Natanz — down from a peak of 4,920 centrifuges in June.

Administration officials say Iran began producing almost all of its own centrifuge components after discovering that the United States and other Western countries had sabotaged some key imported parts, and they have made a series of manufacturing errors.

R. Scott Kemp, a Princeton University physicist, said that another factor was in the basic design of the centrifuges, obtained from Pakistan nearly two decades ago. “I suspect design problems,” Mr. Kemp said. “The machines run hot and have short lives. They’re terrible. It’s a really bad design.”

If Mr. Kemp and others are right, it suggests that Iran has a long way to go before it can make good on its recent vow to open 10 new enrichment plants. Iranian officials have said publicly that those plants will use a new version of the centrifuges. But Paul K. Kerr, a nuclear analyst at the Congressional Research Service, said research on the new generation of centrifuges had apparently proved “less successful” than the original, primitive design.

c) pushing back of the "breakout window"

These factors have led the administration’s policy makers to lengthen their estimate of how long it would take Iran to accomplish what nuclear experts call “covert breakout” — the ability to secretly produce a workable weapon.

“For now, the Iranians don’t have a credible breakout option, and we don’t think they will have one for at least 18 months, maybe two or three years,” said one senior administration official at the center of the White House Iran strategy.

3. Third, the Obama Administration seems poised to pursue sanctions targeted against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The White House wants to focus the new sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the military force believed to run the nuclear weapons effort.

While I'm not all that convinced that sanctions are the key to success here, this seems to be the best possible target for any new sanctions. The IRGC is a major economic player in Iran and targeting their transactions and front companies could hurt them without alienating the reformers. Unfortunately, Congress does still seem poised to pass counterproductive gas sanctions this year that could cancel out any positive effects from the IRGC sanctions.

4. Fourth, we're probably using covert action, and it's probably working!

Others, including some European officials, believe the problems may have been accentuated by a series of covert efforts by the West to undermine Iran’s program, including sabotage on its imported equipment and infrastructure.

Another possible problem for Iran is the Western sabotage efforts. In January, The New York Times reported that President Bush had ordered a broad covert program against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, including efforts to undermine electrical and computer systems that keep the nuclear program running. The Obama administration has been silent about the progress of that program, one of the most heavily classified of the United States government.

I think some on the left probably would have a problem with this, but this seems to me exactly the type of situation where covert action is useful (rather than manipulating political events and overthrowing leaders).

5. In conclusion, the new formula for dealing with Iran & nukes seems to be becoming:

Diplomacy+Targeted Sanctions+Covert Action-(Sabre Rattling+Bluster)

I think that, overall, this may be the best possible approach to dealing with an incredibly difficult situation.

Yemen: More Questions Than Answers

So, how prescient was Unleashing Chiang? Just a day after this blog highlights the problems the US faces in dealing with Yemen, the Fruit of the Loom Bomber puts Yemen squarely in the national debate and Americans start to take notice.

So I've been reading the new spurt of articles out on Yemen and thinking more about how the US should approach Yemen in the past couple of days. Some thoughts and questions below.

1.) My last post stated that Islamic Jihad of Yemen was the main AQ-affiliate in Yemen, but I have since learned that IJoY has merged with the Saudi branch of AQ to form Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The group has its roots in a 2006 jailbreak of many AQ members from a jail in Sanaa.

2.) The northern Houthi rebellion is often described as a Shi'ite minority group fighting against a Sunni central government. This requires sort of a "yes, but..." President Saleh and many other leading figures are actually members of the Zaydi sect of Shi'ism--practiced by the Houthis--as well. According to the Jamestown Foundation, the Zaydi sect probably has more in common theologically with Yemeni Sunnis than with the Ayatollahs in Qom or Tehran.

3.) And what exactly is Tehran's role here? Both Sanaa and Riyadh claim that Tehran is giving support and assistance to the Houthis. This certainly doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility, given the Iranian regime's history of supporting Shi'ite groups working against Sunni regimes. But I haven't seen much actual evidence. There is, of course, clear evidence that Saudi Arabia is interfering on behalf of the Yemeni government.

Stratfor is more sure than I am. They even claim that the recent Iranian deployment of ships to the Gulf of Aden was actually in support of the Houthis and was not actually sent as a pirate deterrent, as was claimed:

While Somali pirates may be a security issue in the Gulf of Aden, this is not the only reason for the deployment. Iran is engaged in an escalating proxy battle with Saudi Arabia in the Saudi-Yemeni borderland, where Iran has been arming a Shiite Houthi rebellion to threaten Saudi Arabia’s underbelly. Iran appears to be using the naval assets to protect its supply lines to the Houthi rebels.

Though there is no shortage of weapons in Yemen, Iran has ensured that the Houthis remain well-stocked. STRATFOR sources have reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are training Houthis on how to produce improvised explosive devices for use in their insurgent campaign against Saudi and Yemeni forces.

According to STRATFOR sources, the traditional supply route Iran uses to arm the Houthis starts at Asab Harbor on the Eritrean coast. IRGC officers buy and transport weapons in Somalia and Eritrea, and then load them onto ships at the harbor. The ships then cross the Red Sea northward to Salif on the Yemeni coast. From Salif, the supplies pass through Hajjah and Huth in northern Yemen before reaching Saada, where the Houthi rebels are concentrated.

This route, however, has become more problematic for the Iranians ever since Saudi naval forces deployed three warships along the Red Sea coast of northern Yemen on Nov. 12 to interdict the arms, though STRATFOR is still examining Saudi interdiction tactics and the quality of the intelligence used to identify arms shipments. This traditional route is still being used to transport light arms, but given the Saudi deployment, Iran has shifted to a longer route that also begins at Asab Harbor, but then snakes around the heel of the Arabian Peninsula in the Gulf of Aden before reaching Shaqra on the southern Yemeni coast. From Shaqra, the supplies go to Marib in central Yemen, on to Baraqish and finally reach the Saada Mountains. Throughout the supply chain, bribes are paid to various tribes to facilitate the arms shipments.

The IRGC also has been involved in ferrying Hezbollah fighters to Yemen to support the Houthi insurgency. A STRATFOR source claims that around 60 of Hezbollah’s fighters have died in the conflict thus far. Their corpses were sent by boat to Asab Harbor in Eritrea, from which the IRGC flies them to Damascus. From the Syrian capital, the bodies are transported by land to the fighters’ home villages for burial.

Is an Iranian-Eritrean-Houthi-Hizbollah axis forming (can there even be a 4-pronged axis?)? Who knows?

4.) How intertwined are the 3 different problems I addressed in my previous post in Yemen: Al Qaeda, the Houthi Rebellion, & the southern secessionist movement? I really have no clue. Some expert on the teevee said that there were "jihadists" leading the southern movement. I can't imagine, though, that AQ would be much interested in helping the Houthis given their tendency to mass murder Shi'ites whenever possible.

5.) Can the U.S. aid Sanaa in the fight against AQ without indirectly helping them against the Houthis or southerners? It certainly seems that military training, equipment, and aid is fungible and that all of these skills and resources can be redirected against the regime's other opponents. Are we okay with this? Is there any way to avoid this? Do the benefits of attacking AQ outweigh the costs of propping up the Saleh regime against its domestic opponents?

Track of the Day

In awe of the Iranians in the streets.

QOTD

Matt Duss, via Marc Lynch.

...if we don't have an Iran war, how are we supposed to have an awesome Iran surge?

Death of a Hero

R.I.P. Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri. Hopefully his dream of a free Iran will be fulfilled in the near future.

Crowds of mourners are gathering in the Iranian city of Qom following the death of leading reformist cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri at 87.

Some pro-reform websites say thousands of people are travelling to the city ahead of Monday's funeral.

Other unverified reports say opposition supporters are also gathering in some squares in Tehran, fuelling government concern of increased political tension...

...Montazeri, one of Shia Islam's most respected figures and a leading critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, himself said in August that the turmoil following the election "could lead to the fall of the regime".

He said Iran's clerical leadership was a dictatorship and issued a fatwa condemning the government after the election.