How Iran Buys Friends

[igloo]

HOW IRAN BUYS FRIENDS

By PETER BROOKES

January 30, 2006 -- MASTERFULLY pitting the East versus the West, this week Iran is once again likely to slip the noose over its nuclear (weapons) program — avoiding a vote of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors, meeting in emergency session in Vienna, to refer the Iran case to the U.N. Security Council.

It really should come as no surprise.

Why this failure of the best efforts of the United States and the European Union to heel Iran's atomic aspirations? Tehran is countering via increasingly cozy relationships with China, Russia and India.

And why are Beijing, Moscow and New Delhi dragging their feet on dealing decisively with Iran's nuclear program? Raw self-interest.

Take China: Now perhaps the world's No. 4 economy, China is also the No. 2 energy consumer — scouring the globe for new energy sources to stoke a decade of double-digit economic growth. And Iran is now China's third-largest oil supplier.

Moreover, China has invested nearly $100 billion in developing Iranian oil/gas fields. By some estimates, Iran will provide China with over 250 million tons of natural gas and 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day over the next 30 years.

Plus, Iran buys Chinese conventional weapons, including anti-ship cruise missiles and anti-tank missiles — and technology and equipment for WMDs and ballistic missiles, such as missile control/guidance systems, chemical-weapon precursors and nuclear materials and technology.

Iran is also a commercial cash cow for China. Chinese firms are building Tehran's billion-dollar subway system. And Beijing plans to invest over $200 million to help finance a new highway connecting Tehran to the Caspian Sea coast; other projects are in the works.

And, strategically speaking, Beijing certainly doesn't mind keeping the United States off balance in the Middle East with a nuclear-armed Iran (plus Iraq, Afghanistan and war on terror) while the People's Republic increases its influence in Asia, Africa and even Latin America.

Russia is also heavily vested in Iran. Moscow is trying to broker a self-serving deal to supply and reprocess uranium for Iranian reactors, ostensibly preventing Tehran from turning nuke fuel into bomb material. Iran isn't sold on it yet; the next round of talks is Feb. 16.

Russia has already built a $1 billion nuclear reactor for Iran at Bushehr, and Tehran has expressed interest in two to three more reactors. Actually, it's considering building more than 100 nuclear reactors in the years ahead. Russia unquestionably wants a cut of that fat action . . .

A security relationship exists, too. In December — to our horror — Russia agreed to sell Iran $1 billion in arms, including $700 million worth of advanced surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), the TOR-M1.

Each TOR unit is capable of tracking 48 bogies and firing at two targets at the same time. The SAMs pose a deadly threat to aircraft involved in any strike against the tens of Iranian nuclear-related targets, including the high-value sites at Bushehr, Natanz, Arak and Isfahan.

Reportedly, Moscow and Tehran have also discussed the sale of billions of dollars of other weapons, including more diesel submarines, air-defense systems and anti-ship missiles — and fighters, ground-to-ground missiles and armored infantry vehicles.

India has its own stake in the Iranian nuclear standoff: Delhi's developing economy also craves access to world energy supplies. Iran and India, along with Pakistan, have agreed to build a $7 billion pipeline to move Iranian natural gas to India via Pakistan.

The pipeline would ease India's energy crunch by delivering affordable gas, while providing impoverished Pakistan with much-needed transit-fee income. The joint project might improve always testy Indo-Pakistani relations, too.

While India, along with 21 others, voted last September in favor of referring Iran from the IAEA to the UNSC, Delhi's stance has softened. (Abetting Iran's atomic ambitions may come with a high price, such as scuttling congressional support for a pending U.S.-India civilian-nuclear-cooperation pact — and forget about gaining a permanent Security Council seat . . .)

Also working against U.S.-E.U. efforts is the fact that an IAEA report on Iranian cooperation with IAEA inspectors isn't due before March. This — and the pending Russian deal — make decisive IAEA action this week improbable.

On the merits, this should (finally!) be the week for referring Iran to the Security Council for tougher measures such as punitive economic sanctions. But the diplomatic stars may not yet be quite aligned in our favor.

Worse: The same self-serving national interests make it less likely that Beijing/Moscow/Delhi will support action when and if we go to the mat at the United Nations over Iran.

Peter Brookes (peterbrookes@heritage.org) is a Heritage Foundation senior fellow and author of "A Devil's Triangle: Terrorism, WMD and Rogue States."

[bigpoppanils]

(Abetting Iran's atomic ambitions may come with a high price, such as scuttling congressional support for a pending U.S.-India civilian-nuclear-cooperation pact — and forget about gaining a permanent Security Council seat . . .)

India is abstaining from the vote.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-30T174928Z_01_L28259606_RTRUKOC_0_UK-NUCLEAR-IRAN.xml

[destruction]

Which shows how wrong iglooser's propaganda whores are. hahaha.

Owned.

[igloo]

January 31, 2006, 8:11 a.m.

Making China Pay

To get at Iran and North Korea, we’ll have to go through Beijing.

By William R. Hawkins

The looming crisis over Iran's nuclear weapons program is turning attention to China's role as the protector of the two remaining "axis of evil" regimes. On January 9, the day before Iran removed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seals at its uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, its deputy foreign minister Mehdi Safari met with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui in Beijing. The official Chinese statement was that "Zhang reiterated the principled position of the Chinese side on properly settling the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiation. Safari briefed Zhang about the views and considerations of the Iranian side in this respect." It is hard not to suspect that the meeting was to clear Tehran's impeding action with Beijing.

After the news broke, foreign-ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters on Jan. 10, "We believe that the Iranian nuclear issue should be resolved within the framework of IAEA. In the current context, the most feasible approach is still the negotiation between the three EU countries and Iran." Beijing knows that two years of EU talks have gone nowhere. Beijing also knows that talking is the alternative to acting. As long as the only country acting is Iran, Tehran will prevail.

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Weeks earlier, Chinese officials pledged to veto any U.S. or European attempt to impose U.N. sanctions on Iran, particularly any involving an embargo on oil shipments or energy development. In 2004, Iran agreed in principle to sell China 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas over 30 years, a deal valued at $70 billion. China already imports 14 percent of its oil from Iran. Sinopec, a state-owned energy company, hopes to develop Iran's enormous Yadavaran oil field. These deals violate the U.S. Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which penalizes foreign companies for investing more than $20 million in Iran. China will not hesitate to oppose (or violate) similar sanctions if imposed by the U.N. or by a U.S.-EU coalition.

Other sanctions, such as bans on the sale to Iran of high-tech products or military gear, will also not be acceptable to Beijing. Iran is a growing market for its manufacturing exports, which China uses to pay for Iranian oil. Indeed, Beijing would like to use the crisis to cut into Europe's trade with Iran, a factor that will dampen the eagerness of the EU to levy its own sanctions on Iran.

China has also been "hosting" the Six-Party Talks on North Korea's nuclear program. As does Tehran, Pyongyang acts while everyone else just talks — or prepares to talk. There have been only four actual rounds of negotiations since the process started in August 2003, and no progress. Beijing's insistence on a "diplomatic solution" is code for its opposition to any use of pressure or sanctions against North Korea.

So before there can be effective pressure on Iran or North Korea, there must be pressure on China. Beijing is very dependent on exports to the American market as the primary engine of its rapid economic growth. China's trade surplus with the United States in 2004 was $162 billion and probably topped $200 billion in 2005. There is also a considerable flow of American capital and technology into China. These flows give Washington considerable leverage, which Beijing is well aware of. Indeed, on December 12, the State Council of the People's Republic of China published a white paper entitled "China's Peaceful Development Road" which sought to insulate economic issues from diplomatic issues. Yet, when this same paper proclaims "the principle economic target is to double the 2000 per-capita GDP by 2010," the implications for such an increase in the resources available to the Beijing regime cannot be ignored in other capitals, and not just in Washington.

Beijing's claim in "Peaceful Development" that it will never turn its increasing wealth into international power is no more credible than the claims it has made in other white papers issued in 2005. The list includes: "Building a Political Democracy in China" (October); "China's Endeavors for Arms Control, Disarmament and Non-Proliferation" (September); "New Progress in China's Protection of Intellectual Property Rights" (April); and "China's Progress in Human Rights" (April).

Making Our Money Talk

There is growing support for doing something to pressure Beijing to change its ways. Last year, when state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) tried to buy California-based Unocal Corp, the outcry on Capitol Hill ultimately forced CNOOC to withdraw its bid. The House of Representatives, in a healthy show of bipartisanship in foreign policy, passed a resolution declaring "a Chinese state-owned energy company exercising control of critical United States energy infrastructure and energy production capacity could take action that would threaten to impair the national security of the United States." This resolution passed by a vote of 398-15.

The strongest support for continued U.S. appeasement of Beijing has come from large American corporations which have invested in China. However, continued failure to protect intellectual property, the theft of which the U.S. Trade Representative's 2005 report on Chinese trade barriers called "epidemic," is causing many companies to rethink their bets on China as a market in which they will be allowed to thrive. The Heritage Foundation's 2005 Index of Economic Freedom ranked China a lowly 111 out of 161 countries (tied with Zambia and behind Pakistan), with property rights, foreign investment, regulation, and financial markets rated as typical of a "repressed" economy. American manufacturers and their congressional allies are also turning up the heat on Beijing's manipulation of international currency values.

American diplomats should advance the argument that Beijing needs to act more responsibly as a member of the global community to curb the dangerous behavior of Iran and North Korea. Unfortunately, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, who raised the "stakeholder" concept in regard to China's role in world affairs last September, apparently made no progress with Premier Wen Jiabao or other officials on the Iranian issue during his January 24 visit to Beijing. At his press conference after the talks, he dodged questions related to Iran, whereas the press conference conducted by the Chinese Foreign Ministry restated its previous position on negotiations with Tehran. Two days later, Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, arrived in Beijing to further coordinate diplomatic strategy. A former Revolutionary Guards leader, Larijani is Tehran's top negotiator on the nuclear issue.

As a former U.S. trade representative, Zoellick remains wedded to the notion that international economics can be divorced from international politics. This is clearly not a tenable concept, as shown by China's own strategic behavior. Beijing must be told that its continued easy access to global markets, upon which its rapid development depends, will be at risk if it continues to ally itself with rogue states that pose a threat to global security.

— William R. Hawkins is senior fellow for national-security studies at the U.S. Business and Industry Council in Washington, D.C.

[igloo]

Iran: Referral Means End of Diplomacy

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI

The Associated Press

Tuesday, January 31, 2006; 8:13 AM

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran struck back Tuesday at the Big Five's decision to refer the country's nuclear file to the Security Council, saying the move has no legal justification and would be the end of diplomacy.

At a London meeting that lasted into the early hours of Tuesday, envoys of the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia agreed to recommend that the International Atomic Energy Agency report Iran to the U.N. Security Council.

They also decided the Security Council should wait until March to take up Iran's nuclear file after a formal report on Tehran's activities from the U.N. agency, which meets Thursday in Vienna.

"Reporting Iran's dossier to the U.N. Security Council will be unconstructive and the end of diplomacy," said Iran's leading nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. State television quoted him as sayiny Iran still believes the issue can be resolved peacefully.

Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also runs Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said it was difficult to predict how the IAEA meeting on Thursday would develop, the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency reported.

"The biggest problem for the West is that they can't find any (legal) justification to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council," ISNA quoted him as saying.

Larijani also reproached Europe for the London decision, which was taken at the home of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and attended by the foreign minister of Germany and the foreign policy chief of the European Union.

"Europeans should pay more attention. Iran has called for dialogue and is moving in the direction of reaching an agreement through peaceful means," Larijani said.

Hours earlier, British, French and German representatives had met Larijani's deputy, Javad Vaedi, in Brussels for last-ditch talks on the dispute, but failed to make any progress.

Last week, Larijani flew to Moscow and Beijing to seek Russian and Chinese support against the Western drive to refer Iran to the Security Council.

The decision by Russia and China to vote for referral surprised observers as the two nations have consistently counselled caution on Iran's nuclear file. Both have major economic ties with Iran.

A French government official, speaking on the customary condition of anonymity, said the Russian and Chinese ministers had been persuaded of the need to show a united front.

The United States accuses Iran of trying to build atomic weapons. Iran denies this, saying its nuclear program is only for generating electricity.

Iran broke IAEA seals at a uranium enrichment plant Jan. 10 and resumed small-scale enrichment. The decision provoked an outcry as enrichment is a process that can produce material for nuclear reactors or bombs. Britain, France and Germany, who had been negotiating with Iran, said they would press the IAEA to refer the matter to the Security Council.

If the IAEA votes to refer Iran to the Security Council on Thursday, Iran is likely to retaliate immediately.

Iran's parliament has approved a law requiring the government to stop all voluntary cooperation with IAEA in the event of referral. This would mean that Iran stops allowing IAEA inspectors to carry out intrusive searches of its facilities and the country resumes large-scale enrichment of uranium.

Iran insists it has the right as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to build nuclear power stations and produce their fuel by enriching its own uranium.

But the United States and Europe do not trust that Iran would enrich uranium only for peaceful purposes because the country has concealed significant aspects of its nuclear program in the past.

While the IAEA has said it has found no evidence of Iran's building nuclear weapons, it has refused to give Iran a clean bill of health because of numerous unanswered questions over its atomic program.

[bigpoppanils]

Iran struck back Tuesday at the Big Five's decision to refer the country's nuclear file to the Security Council, saying the move has no legal justification and would be the end of diplomacy.

i find it particularly strange that Iran would be this bold at this stage of the game.....which leaves me wondering if the international community is underestimating Iran's nuclear capabilities.

[igloo]

i find it particularly strange that Iran would be this bold at this stage of the game.....which leaves me wondering if the international community is underestimating Iran's nuclear capabilities.

I do not think the intl community is underestimating their capabilities....although their is certainly precedence (i.e. Pakistan, India, Iraq in 1991).

I just think the intl community can't do anything about it, and Iran knows it....as always, this issue should have been tackled years ago..but like everything else, it does not become an "issue" until it is too late....

The West better realize that regimes like Iran literally laugh at the Western "diplomatic" approach.....they know it is toothless, for the most part, and it too easy to exploit "holes" in "united" fronts......and unfortunately, the track record of toothless diplomacy is long...

[igloo]

Agency: Iran Papers Are for an Atomic Bomb

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 15 minutes ago

VIENNA, Austria - A document obtained by

Iran on the nuclear black market serves no other purpose than to make an atomic bomb, the

International Atomic Energy Agency said Tuesday.

ADVERTISEMENT

The finding was made in a report prepared for presentation to the 35-nation IAEA board when it meets, starting Thursday, on whether to refer Iran to the

U.N. Security Council, which has the power to impose economic and political sanctions on Iran.

The report was made available in full to The Associated Press.

First mention of the documents was made late last year in a longer IAEA report. At that time, the agency said only that the papers showed how to cast "enriched, natural and depleted uranium metal into hemispherical forms."

The agency refused to make a judgment on what possible uses such casts would have. But diplomats familiar with the probe into Iran's nuclear program said then that the papers apparently were instructions on how to mold highly enriched grade uranium into the core of warheads.

In the brief report obtained Tuesday, however, the agency said bluntly that the 15-page document showing how to cast fissile uranium into metal was "related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components."

Asked about the finding, a senior diplomat close to the IAEA declined to elaborate but emphasized that the documents had no other use.

The report said the document was under agency seal, meaning that IAEA experts were able in theory to re-examine it, but "Iran has declined a request to provide the agency with a copy."

Diplomats familiar with the IAEA investigation of Iran said earlier Tuesday that part of the document recently was given to the agency in an effort to deflect building international momentum to report Iran to the Security Council. But the report did not mention Tehran handing over any papers.

The document was given to Iran by members of the nuclear black market network, the IAEA said. Iran has claimed it did not ask for the document but was given it anyway as part of other black market purchases.

The same network provided Libya with drawings of a crude nuclear bomb which that country handed over to the IAEA as part of its 2003 decision to scrap its atomic weapons program.

[igloo]

The International Atomic Energy Agency says it has evidence that suggests links between Iran's ostensibly peaceful nuclear program and its military work on high explosives and missiles, according to a report from the agency that was released to member countries on Tuesday and will be debated on Thursday....

The four-page report, which officials say was based at least in part on intelligence provided by the United States, refers to a secretive Iranian entity called the Green Salt Project, which worked on uranium processing, high explosives and a missile warhead design.

The combination suggests a "military-nuclear dimension," the report said, that if true would undercut Iran's claims that its nuclear program is solely aimed at producing electrical power.

The agency says it has repeatedly confronted Iran with the allegations, which Tehran dismissed as "baseless," adding that "it would provide further clarifications later," the report said.

Iran also reiterated that all of its nuclear projects were conducted under the authority of its national atomic energy agency and not the military....

It is highly unusual, Western experts said, for a group of uranium conversion experts ostensibly making fuel for nuclear reactors to also have administrative ties to people doing studies on explosives and re-entry vehicles, the technical name for missile warheads....

The agency for the first time stated its own conclusions on the matter and did so quite bluntly, saying the document that Iran obtained from the black market "related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components."

The I.A.E.A., in a report issued in November, made reference to suspicious documents that the nuclear black market had offered to Tehran. While making no reference to weaponry, the report indicated that the black market had offered to help Iran shape uranium metal into "hemispherical forms," which Western experts said at the time had suggested the making of nuclear bomb cores.

European Resolution Would Refer Iran to the U.N.

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

Published: February 1, 2006

VIENNA, Feb. 1 — Britain, France and Germany introduced a draft resolution on Wednesday asking the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency to report Iran’s nuclear case to the United Nations Security Council. The proposed resolution can be modified when it is discussed by the decision-making board during an emergency session here on Thursday.

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

In Tehran, Ali Larijani, the chief nuclear negotiator, said that Iran would remove some atomic agency cameras used in nuclear monitoring.

Behrouz Mehri/AFP – Getty Images

A female Iranian security guard keeps watch as women attend a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of Islamic revolution in Tehran.

In its current form, the resolution recalls Iran’s “many failures and breaches of its obligations†under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and “the absence of confidence that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes resulting from the history of concealment of Iran’s nuclear activities.â€

It asks the agency’s director, Mohamed ElBaradei, to report to the Security Council “on the steps required from Iran†and asks the board to submit all agency reports and resolutions about the nature of Iran’s nuclear activities to the Council.

But in an important concession to Russia and China, which initially resisted any Security Council involvement, the resolution delayed for another month any action concerning Iran in the Council.

The Russians also succeeded in making sure that the resolution that did not include the word noncompliance, which they argued had important legal consequences that would automatically require Iran’s case to be referred to the Security Council under the agency’s statutes.

But a senior State Department official maintained that the question was academic. With or without the word, the proposed measure would require the nuclear agency to report to the Security Council all relevant resolutions and findings previously approved, which would include a resolution passed last fall holding Iran in noncompliance.

The leading powers closed ranks on Wednesday, seemingly in intentionally public fashion. President Bush spoke to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia by telephone, thanking him for his offer to enrich uranium for Iran on Russian soil, and the two leaders agreed that it was “important to stay in close contact†on the Iran nuclear issue, said the White House spokesman, Scott McLellan.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei I. Kislyak, said that “our friendly advice to our Iranian colleagues†is that they must cooperate.

In London, Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, said he had told the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, that Iran should end its defiance. “He really needs to see this agreed position by the leaders of the international community not as a threat but as an opportunity for Iran to put itself back on track†for meeting obligations “which it entered in to,†Mr. Straw said on the “Today†program on BBC radio.

Sometimes the Europeans seem to be talking tougher than the Americans. In an interview published Wednesday in the popular tabloid Le Parisien, for example, France’s foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, said, “The complete range of sanctions is conceivable.â€

Bush administration officials have said repeatedly that they want a go-slow approach, avoiding sanctions that might enrage the Iranian people, like banning Iran from playing in the World Cup soccer championships, for example.

The United States, Russia and China did not co-sponsor the resolution, although Gregory L. Schulte, the American ambassador to the nuclear agency, told reporters that the resolution “has the support†of the three big nuclear powers. A Russian diplomat said Wednesday night that his country would reluctantly accept the draft resolution.

The three European countries sponsoring the resolution entered into an agreement with Iran in November 2004 that froze most of its nuclear activities. It was Iran’s violation of that voluntary accord by reopening its uranium enrichment plant at Natanz last month that triggered the call for the emergency session here.

The United States and the Europeans expressed confidence that they would receive the majority vote needed to pass the resolution. Unlike the Security Council, the atomic energy agency allows no vetoes, and abstentions are not counted. With a monthlong reprieve from Security Council action, the official Iranian position is that the country wants to keep talking with the Europeans and the Russians to resolve the mounting nuclear crisis.

But Iranian officials inside and outside the country have insisted that they have no intention of closing the Natanz plant again, as demanded by the agency, the five permanent members of the Security Council, Germany and a host of other countries.

In what might be called megaphone diplomacy, Iranian officials in various capitals on Wednesday repeated the threat that any action involving the Security Council would force Iran to carry out a law suspending all “voluntary measures†with the agency.

In that case, the agency would be barred from conducting inspections on short notice and would be blocked from certain sites, like Iran’s uranium mines and heavy water reactor program, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, Iran’s ambassador to the agency, said here on Wednesday.

Mr. Soltaniyeh, whose experience in nuclear matters predates the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, also confirmed that his country would resume its program to eventually build 50,000 centrifuges at Natanz and begin full-scale production of “tons†of enriched uranium there. In Tehran, Ali Larijani, the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, echoed Mr. Soltaniyeh’s threats. “They should expect us to take reciprocal action,†he said. “There is no winning for them this game.â€

In a two-hour news conference, Mr. Larijani stressed that Iran would honor its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but not those it made outside the pact.

Mr. Larijani’s most animated comments concerned reports that nuclear agency’s inspectors had identified a secretive Iranian entity called the Green Salt Project, which worked on uranium processing, high explosives and a missile warhead design. The agency based its findings at least in part on a document that it said provided information on the design of a missile “re-entry vehicle.â€

“One point five is really the number of pages,†he said, referring to the document. “If any of you could make a bomb out of one and a half pages, I will make gold out of you. Is this reasonable?â€

Wednesday was the 27th anniversary of the return of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s revolution, after the monarchy’s fall and the revolution’s triumph, a day that is reserved for emotional speeches about the greatness of the Islamic Republic.

In a speech to thousands of people at the nuclear plant at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad branded President Bush a criminal stained with “the blood of other nations†who should be put on trial.

Iran correctly proclaims its right under its treaty obligations to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and Mr. Ahmadinejad, addressing what he called “the fake superpowers,†said, “The Iranian people will continue until they master nuclear energy, which is their right.â€