The Iranian Threat

[donsaeid]

Bolton: Bush 'doesn't see sanctions can't stop Iran now'


Sanctions and diplomacy have failed and it may be too late for internal opposition to oust the Islamist regime, leaving only military intervention to stop Iran's drive to nuclear weapons, the US's former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Worse still, according to Ambassador Bolton, the Bush administration does not recognize the urgency of the hour and that the options are now limited to only the possibility of regime change from within or a last-resort military intervention, and it is still clinging to the dangerous and misguided belief that sanctions can be effective.

As a consequence, Bolton said he was "very worried" about the well-being of Israel. If he were in Israel's predicament, he said, "I'd be pushing the US very hard. I am pushing the US [administration] very hard, from the outside, in Washington."

Bolton, interviewed by telephone from Washington, was speaking a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency announced it would send a team to Teheran, at Iran's request, to work jointly on a plan ostensibly meant to clear up suspicions about the nuclear program. Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani had met on Sunday with IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei, and a day earlier with top EU foreign policy envoy Javier Solana.

Bolton, however, was witheringly critical of the ongoing diplomatic contacts with Teheran, which he said were merely playing into the hands of the regime.

"The current approach of the Europeans and the Americans is not just doomed to failure, but dangerous," he said. "Dealing with [the Iranians] just gives them what they want, which is more time...

"We have fiddled away four years, in which Europe tried to persuade Iran to give up voluntarily," he complained. "Iran in those four years mastered uranium conversion from solid to gas and now enrichment to weapons grade... We lost four years to feckless European diplomacy and our options are very limited."

Bolton said flatly that "diplomacy and sanctions have failed... [So] we have to look at: 1, overthrowing the regime and getting in a new one that won't pursue nuclear weapons; 2, a last-resort use of force."

However, he added a caution as to the viability of the first of those remaining options: While "the regime is more susceptible to overthrow from within than people think," he said, such a process "may take more time than we have."

Overall, said Bolton, it was clear that Iran had surmounted "all the technical problems of uranium enrichment," and it "may well be that we have passed the point of Iran mastering the nuclear fuel cycle." If so, it was now merely a matter of time before Iran reached a bomb-making capability - "a matter of resources and available equipment," he said - and it was solely up to Iran to set the pace.

To his dismay, however, the Bush administration was still clinging to the empty notion that the sanctions route could work, "even though [the UN's sanction] Resolutions 1737 and 1747 were full of loopholes. The US is still seeking another sanctions resolution and Solana is still pursuing diplomacy," he said bitterly.

Bolton lamented that the Bush administration today was "not the same" as a presumably more robust incarnation three years ago, because of what he said was now the State Department's overwhelming dominance of foreign policy. "The State Department has adopted the European view [on how to deal with Iran] and other voices have been sidelined," he said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "is overwhelmingly predominant on foreign policy."

Asked where this left Israel, Bolton said simply: "Israel's options are as limited as those of the US, except that you are in more danger in that you are closer. I hate to say that."

Bolton, who served as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security from 2001 to 2005, before taking the ambassadorial posting to the UN from August 2005 to December 2006, said the failed handling of the Iran nuclear crisis was one of the reasons he had left the Bush administration. "I felt we were watching Europe fiddling while Rome burned," he said. "It's still fiddling."

(The full interview will appear in Friday's Jerusalem Post.)

[donsaeid]

For more info from jerusalem post and how israeli media sees iran visit

here

[donsaeid]

migam mike farda miad to jerusalem post begir bekhonesh bad baramon bego dige chi gofte in bolton!

[mike435]

i only read headlines i look at the front page of many online news papers from cnn to farsnews to aljezira to hamas homepage to most of the israeli papers ncluding some undergorund papers

[donsaeid]

jeddan migam mike! bekhon baghiasho! inja jerusalem post nist! vaela khodam mikharidam! chon really mikham bedonam in bolton dige chia gofte!

[donsaeid]

Israel sees hope in Iranian unrest

Defense officials expressed satisfaction Thursday with reports emerging from Teheran claiming that Iranians had set fire to a dozen gas stations in the capital on Wednesday angered by the sudden start of fuel rationing.

The fuel rationing, which was announced by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, is part of a government attempt to reduce billions of dollars in subsidies it pays to keep gas prices low.

Iran is one of the world's biggest oil producers, but it is sorely lacking in refineries - meaning it has to import more than 50 percent of its gasoline needs.

The government says money saved from subsidies can go to building refineries, improving public transportation and job creation.

Defense officials noted that while the violence was localized, it showed the tremendous potential impact tough sanctions could have on the Iranian economy.

One potential sanction that has been raised by Israel is stopping the flow of refined fuel to Iran.

"If the refined fuel were to come to a stop, the Iranian people, as shown by Wednesday night's riots, might completely turn against their president," one defense official predicted.

While Iran claimed that the fuel rationing had been in the planning for a year, defense officials said that it could have to do with the threat of stronger economic sanctions by the United Nations.

Iranians are accustomed to gasoline at rock bottom prices. After a 25 percent hike in prices imposed May 21, gas sells at 1,000 rials per liter (38 US cents/gallon).

But to maintain those prices, the government must heavily subsidize gas. To reduce its payments, the new rationing allows private drivers only 100 liters of fuel per month at the subsidized price. Taxis can get 800 liters a month. Anything above that must be bought at a higher price, as yet undefined.

[mike435]

jeddan migam mike! bekhon baghiasho! inja jerusalem post nist! vaela khodam mikharidam! chon really mikham bedonam in bolton dige chia gofte!

any time when one idea is so hevily concentrated in one mn it means it is either very weak or very credible and we havnt realized it yet

as for me i am hoping it is the first one and that he is just to heavly concentrated in one idea which hopefully is flawed

i dont think you should give it much credibility

[mike435]

Israel sees hope in Iranian unrest

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offcourse they are
i bet in some way most people are
infact when i read the report first and your reply that was how the first one got started i wasnt happy but i was sad either
i much rather see this than UN boycotts and g-d forbid a war

[donsaeid]

almost everything looks like pre-1979! so something is on way to burst!

[donsaeid]

Ahmadinejad says Iran is nuclear, cannot be turned back
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Israel Radio reported Saturday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has released a statement saying Iran has become a nuclear nation and no one can cause the country to backtrack.

"Our enemies cannot harm us, not because they don't wish to, but because they cannot do so due to their difficult situation," Israel Radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

Ahmadinejad and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday defended a controversial fuel rationing plan in Iran, state-television IRIB reported.

According to Isral Radio, Ahmadinejad said the rationing of fuel has made Iran better able to withstand pressure from the international community. He was referring to sanctions placed on the country following its refusal to halt uranium enrichment as part of its nuclear program.

He said the enemies of Iran have acknowledged the fact that the rationing of fuel has made his country "undefeatable," the radio reported.

Khamenei said in a meeting with government officials that the surplus from the rationing plan and non-import of oil could be used for other development plans in the country.

Although Iran is a leading OPEC member and the world's fourth biggest oil producer with a daily oil production of 4.2 million barrels, the Islamic state must import more than 40 per cent of the country's oil needs and spend 5 - 8 billion dollars annually on imports due to a lack of refineries and a preference for oil exports.

Riots broke out in protest against the decision, and several gas stations were set on fire.

Ahmadinejad defended the plan as a complex decision that required national will to help the country gain invulnerability to international threats.

Iranian officials had earlier said the plan should also be regarded as a precautionary move in case of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear projects.

Ahmadinejad further called for a switch from oil to natural gas in order to further decrease the necessity of oil imports.

The harsh protests confirmed the government's fears that the move would dent Ahmadinejad's popularity before parliamentary elections in March next year and even negatively affect his chances for re-election in 2009.


Report: IAEA team to visit Iran
A team from the UN nuclear watchdog will visit Iran on July 11-13 to discuss how to resolve questions about Tehran's disputed nuclear program, the ISNA news agency quoted an Iranian official as saying on Saturday.

The International Atomic Energy Agency last week said Iran had invited it to send a team after Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, agreed a "plan of action" for clearing up issues with IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei.

"A team consisting of the agency's deputy and some officials? will come to Tehran to study a working plan that will answer all the remaining issues in regard to Iran's nuclear program," Iran's IAEA envoy, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told ISNA.

[donsaeid]

[mike435]

wow intresting prespective