Iran-U.S.A

[RedWine]

An Iranian diplomat has been kidnapped by gunmen in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, Tehran has confirmed.
Jalal Sharafi, the embassy's second secretary, was abducted from his car on Sunday in central Karrada district by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms.

Iran condemned the kidnapping and said it held the US responsible for his life. A US military spokesman said no US or Iraqi troops had been involved.

The news comes amid US-Iranian tension over Iranian activities in Iraq.

Last month in a dramatic pre-dawn helicopter raid, the Americans detained five Iranians in northern Iraq, prompting Iran to issue a formal protest to the US.

The US has denied any involvement in the latest incident, but recently has been expressing increasing concern about alleged Iranian support for militant activity in Iraq.

Correspondents say the stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme is adding to the tension.

On Tuesday, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Iran of "a strategy to create maximum trouble" in the Middle East.

Identification puzzle

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told the Isna news agency that Mr Sharafi had been kidnapped by a group linked to Iraq's defence ministry "which works under the supervision of American forces".

We've checked with our units and it was not a [multinational forces - Iraq] unit that participated in that event

Lt Col Christopher Garver,
US military spokesman

"The Islamic Republic of Iran holds the American forces in Iraq responsible for the life and safety of the Iranian diplomat," he said.

Iraqi officials earlier said the gunmen were wearing uniforms of the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion - a special Iraqi unit under US direction.

US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt Col Christopher Garver, could not confirm the diplomat's abduction.

However, he said: "We've checked with our units and it was not a [multinational forces - Iraq] unit that participated in that event."

Mr Sharafi was reportedly kidnapped outside the Baghdad branch of the Iranian state-owned Bank Melli.

But the details of the abduction are still confused.

Kidnapping 'common'

An Iraqi government official told Associated Press news agency there had been a gun battle and a chase after the kidnapping but the car carrying the diplomat escaped.

RISING US-IRAN TENSION
Dec 2006: US forces detain several Iranians in Iraq suspected of planning attacks. Iran says two are diplomats, who are later freed
10 Jan: US President Bush says in a major speech he will take a tough stance on Iran, whom he accuses of destabilising Iraq
11 Jan: US troops in Irbil raid a building Iran says was consulate, arresting five men
18 Jan: Iran demands the release of the five "diplomats". The US says they are Revolutionary Guard arming Shia fighters


Blair: No Iran attack planned

Some men were captured but the New York Times quoted Iraqi officials as saying they had legitimate defence ministry identification.

An official told the paper the men may have kept the identification after being dismissed. It is not thought they are still being held.

The BBC's Mike Wooldridge, in Baghdad, says the fact that the kidnappers were wearing uniforms can mean anything in Baghdad.

Kidnapping is common - often criminal rather than political - and frequently carried out by people in some kind of official uniform, he says.

But against the background of the ongoing disagreements between the US and Iran, this is quickly becoming another source of diplomatic tension, our correspondent adds.

Speaking to a committee of MPs in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair accused Iran of "a strategy to create maximum trouble" in the Middle East.

Mr Blair said Tehran was trying to prevent reconciliation in Iraq.

"People are alarmed at the strategy they are pursuing," he said.

[RedWine]

From the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to terrorism, from human rights to democratization, the Islamic Republic of Iran cuts across a wide range of American concerns. The American leaders routinely characterize Iran’s meddling in Iraq and its nuclear ambitions as a grave threat, while often musing about the eventual necessity of using military force against the recalcitrant theocracy. To properly contemplate the Iranian challenge, I shall focus on two areas of contention: Iran’s Iraq policy and its ambitious nuclear program. Through a better understanding of Iran’s motivations, one can best assess how to address its essential goals and objectives on these two critical issues.

Revolution versus Stability: Iran in Iraq
On July 7, 2005, a momentous event took place in Tehran. Saadun al-Dulaimi, Iraq’s then-defense minister, arrived in Iran and formally declared, “I have come to Iran to ask forgiveness for what Saddam Hussein has done.” The atmospherics of the trip reflected the changed relationship, as Iranian and Iraqi officials easily intermingled, signing various cooperative and trade agreements and pledging a new dawn in their relations. In yet another paradox of the Middle East, it took a hawkish American government with its well-honed antagonism toward the Islamic Republic to finally alleviate one of Iran’s most pressing strategic quandaries.

Since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, the Bush administration has periodically complained about Iran’s mischievousness and intervention in Iraq’s politics. The question then becomes, what are Iran’s priorities and objectives in Iraq? Does Iran seek to export its revolution next door and create another Islamic Republic? Is it in Iran’s interest to intensify the prevailing insurgency and further entangle America in its bloody quagmire? Do Iran and the United States have common interests in the troubled state of Iraq?

As Iraq settles into its disturbing pattern of violence and disorder, the Islamic Republic has contending and at times conflicting objectives next door. The overarching priority for Tehran is to prevent Iraq from once more emerging as a military and ideological threat. Since the end of the Iran-Iraq war an uneasy consensus has evolved among Iran’s officials that the cause of Iraq’s aggressive behavior was the Sunni domination of its politics. Thus, the empowerment of a more friendly Shiite regime is an essential objective of Iran’s strategy. However, given the fears of a spillover from a potential civil war and the fragmentation of the country, Iran’s leaders also seek to maintain Iraq’s territorial integrity. Finally, there is the menacing U.S. military presence in Iraq. Contrary to the notion that Iran seeks to fuel the insurgency as a means of deterring the United States from attacking its suspected nuclear facilities, Tehran appreciates that a stable Iraq is the best means of ending the American occupation. These competing aims have yielded alternative tactics, as Iran has been active in subsidizing its Shiite allies, dispatching arms to friendly militias, and agitating against the American presence.

Although Iraq’s Shiite political society is hardly homogeneous, the two parties that have emerged as the best organized and most competitive in the electoral process are the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party. Both parties have intimate relations with Tehran and allied themselves with the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq war. SCIRI was essentially created by Iran, and its militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guards. For its part, Dawa is Iraq’s longest surviving Shiite political party, with a courageous record of resisting Saddam’s repression. Under tremendous pressure, Dawa did take refuge in Iran, but it also established a presence in Syria, Lebanon and eventually Britain. However, despite their long-lasting ties with the Islamic Republic, both parties appreciate that in order to remain influential actors in the post-Saddam Iraq they must place some distance between themselves and Tehran. The members of SCIRI and Dawa insist that they have no interest in emulating Iran’s theocratic model, and that Iraq’s divisions and fragmentations mandate a different governing structure. Their persistent electoral triumphs reflect not just superior organization, but a successful assertion of their own identity. Still, Dawa and SCIRI do retain close bonds with Iran, and have defended the Islamic Republic against American charges of interference and infiltration. In the end, although both parties have no inclination to act as Iran’s surrogates, they are likely to provide Tehran with a sympathetic audience, and even an alliance that, like all such arrangements, will not be free of tension and difficulty.

Although less well-publicized by Tehran, it does appear that Iran has established tacit ties with Moqtada al-Sadr and has even supplied his Mahdi army. In a sense, unlike their relations with SCIRI and Dawa, Iran’s ties to Sadr are more opportunistic, as they find his sporadic Arab nationalist rhetoric and erratic behavior problematic. Nonetheless, given his emerging power-base, strident opposition to the American occupation and his well-organized militia group, Tehran has found it advantageous to at least maintain some links with Sadr. Among the characteristic of Iran’s foreign policy is to leave as many options open as possible. At a time when Sadr is being granted an audience by the Arab leaders and dignitaries across the region, it would be astonishing if Iran did not seek some kind of a relationship with the Shiite firebrand.

Finally, there is Iran’s relation with Iraq’s most esteemed and influential Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. The Grand Ayatollah stands with traditional Shiite mullahs in rejecting Khomeini’s notion that proper Islamic governance mandates direct clerical assumption of power. As we have noted, Khomeini’s innovation contravened normative Shiite political traditions, making its export problematic, if not impossible. Thus far, both parties have been courteous and deferential to one another, with Sistani refusing to criticize Iran, while Tehran has been generous with crediting him for the Shiite populace’s increasing empowerment. Rafsanjani made a point of emphasizing Sistani’s role after the elections of the interim government, noting, “The fact that the people of Iraq have gone to the ballet box to decide their own fate is the result of efforts by the Iraqi clergy and sources of emulation, led by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.”

For his part, Sistani maintains close ties to Iran’s clerical community and routinely meets with visiting Iranian officials -- a privilege not yet granted to U.S. representatives. Moreover, even though Sistani has not pressed for a theocracy, he still insists that religion must inform political and social arrangements.

The professions of the region’s Sunni elite notwithstanding, as clerical regime plots its strategy toward Iraq, it does not seem inordinately interested in exporting its failed governing model to an unwilling Shiite population. As an influential Iranian politician, Muhammad Javad Larijani, plainly noted, “Iran’s experience is not possible to be duplicated in Iraq.” As such, Tehran’s promotion of its Shiite allies is a way of ensuring that a future Iraqi government features voices who are willing to engage with Iran. The clerical rulers have no delusions about the Iraqi Shiite community subordinating its communal interests to Iran’s prerogatives; they merely hope that promotion of Shiite parties will provide them with a suitable interlocutor. It is important to note that Iran’s policy toward Iraq, as elsewhere in the Gulf, is predicated on carefully calibrated calculations of national interest, as opposed to a messianic mission of advancing the revolution.

Today, the essential estrangement of the Iraqi Shiites from the larger Arab world, and the Sunni dynasties unease with their empowerment makes the community more attractive to Iran. The ascendance of the Shiites maybe acceptable to the Bush administration with its democratic imperatives, but the Sunni monarchs of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the presidential dictatorships of Egypt and Syria are extremely anxious about the emergence of a new “arch of Shiism.” At a time when the leading pan-Arab newspapers routinely decry the invasion of Iraq as an U.S.-Iranian plot to undermine the cohesion of the Sunni bloc, the prospects of an elected Shiite government in Iraq being warmly embraced by the Arab world seems remote. Iraq’s new Shiite parties, conservative or moderate, are drawn to Iran, as they look for natural allies. It is unlikely that this will change, as the political alignments of the Middle East are increasingly being defined by sectarian identities.

[RedWine]

The Nuclear Conundrum
The Islamic Republic of Iran is a regime continuously divided against itself. Even in the era of conservative political hegemony, there are factions, as on issues of economic reforms, regional priorities and even relations with America, conservative frequently find themselves at odds with one another. However, today, a unique consensus has evolved within the regime on the nuclear issue. Iran’s cantankerous conservatives seem united on the notion that the Islamic Republic should have an advanced nuclear infrastructure that will offer it an opportunity to cross the nuclear threshold at some point. Whether Iran will take that step or will remain satisfied with a presumed capability just short of an actual breakout, as India did prior to 1997, will depend on a range of domestic and international developments.

From the outset it must be emphasized that for all the factions involved in this debate, the core issue is how to safeguard Iran’s national interests. The Islamic Republic is not an irrational rogue state seeking such weaponry as an instrument of an aggressive, revolutionary foreign policy. This is not an “Islamic bomb” to be handed over to terrorist organizations or exploded in the streets of New York or Washington. The fact is that Iran has long possessed chemical weapons, and has yet to transfer such arms to its terrorist allies. Iran’s cautious leaders are most interested in remaining in power and fully appreciate that transferring nuclear weapons to terrorists could lead to the type of retaliation from the United States or Israel that would eliminate their regime altogether. For Iran this is a weapon of deterrence and power projection.

The primary supporters of the nuclear program are now officials in command of key institutions such as the Revolutionary Guards and the Guardian Council. A fundamental tenet of the hardliners’ ideology is the notion that the Islamic Republic is in constant danger from predatory external forces, necessitating military self-reliance. This perception was initially molded by a revolution that sought not just to defy international norms but also to refashion them. The passage of time and the failure of that mission have not necessarily diminished the hardliners’ suspicions of the international order and its primary guardian, the United States. Jumhuri-ye Islami, the conservative newspaper and the mouthpiece of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sounded this theme by stressing,

The core problem is the fact that our officials’ outlook on the nuclear dossier of Iran is faulty and they are on the wrong track. It seems they have failed to appreciate that America is after our destruction and the nuclear issue is merely an excuse for them.

In a similar vein, Resalat, another influential conservative paper, sounded out the themes of deterrence and national interest by claiming, “In the present situation of international order whose main characteristics are injustice and the weakening of the rights of others, the Islamic Republic has no alternative but intelligent resistance while paying the least cost.” Given its paranoia and suspicions, the Iranian right does not necessarily object to international isolation and confrontation with the West. Indeed, for many within this camp, such a conflict would be an effective means of rekindling popular support for the revolution’s fading élan.

Iran’s nuclear calculations have been further hardened by the rise of war veterans, such as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to positions of power. Although the Iran-Iraq war ended nearly twenty years ago, for many within the Islamic Republic it was a defining experience that altered their strategic assumptions. Even a cursory examination of Ahmadinejad’s speeches reveals that for him the war is far from a faded memory. In his defiant speech at the UN General Assembly in September 2005, Iran’s president pointedly admonished the assembled dignitaries for their failings:

For eight years, Saddam’s regime imposed a massive war of aggression against my people. It employed the most heinous weapons of mass destruction including chemical weapons against Iranians and Iraqis alike. Who, in fact, armed Saddam with those weapons? What was the reaction of those who claim to fight against WMDs regarding the use of chemical weapons then?

The international indifference to Saddam’s war crimes and Tehran’s lack of an effective response has led Iran’s war-veteran president to perceive that the security of his country cannot be predicated on global opinion and treaties.

The impact of the Iran-Iraq war on Tehran’s nuclear calculations cannot be underestimated. Iraq’s employment of chemical weapons against Iranian civilians and combatants has permanently scarred Iran’s national psyche. Whatever their tactical military utility, in Saddam’s hands, chemical weapons were tools of terror, as he hoped that through their indiscriminate use he could frighten and demoralize the Iranian populace. To a large extend, this strategy did succeed, as Iraqi attacks did much to undermine the national support for the continuation of the war.

Beyond the human toll, the war also changed Iran’s strategic doctrine. During the war, Iran persisted with the notion that technological superiority cannot overcome revolutionary zeal and a willingness to offer martyrs. To compensate for its lack of weaponry, Iran launched human wave assaults and used its young population as a tool of an offensive military strategy. The devastation of the war and the loss of an appetite for “martyrdom” among Iran’s youth has invalidated that theory. As Rafsanjani acknowledged, “With regards to chemical, bacteriological and radiological weapons, it was made clear during the war that these weapons are very decisive. We should fully equip ourselves in both offensive and defensive use of these weapons.” Moreover, the indifference of the international community to Saddam’s crimes also left its mark, leading Iran to reject the notion that international agreements can ensure its security. As Mohsen Rezai, the former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said in 2004, “We cannot, generally speaking, argue that our country will derive any benefit from accepting international treaties.” Deterrence could no longer be predicated on revolutionary commitment and international opinion, as Iran required a more credible military response.

The legacy of the war only reinforces a nationalistic narrative that sees America’s demands for Iran to relinquish its fuel cycle rights under the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty as inherently unjust. As a country that has historically been the subject of foreign intervention and the imposition of various capitulation treaties, Iran is inordinately sensitive of its national prerogatives and sovereign rights. The rulers of Iran perceive that they are being challenged not because of their provocations and previous treaty violations, but because of superpower bullying. In a peculiar manner, the nuclear program and Iran’s national identity have become fused in the imagination of the hardliners. To stand against America on this issue is to validate one’s revolutionary ardor and sense of nationalism. Ali Husseini Tash, the Deputy Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, stressed this point, saying, “A nation that does not engage in risks and difficult challenges, and a nation which does not stand up for itself can never be a proud nation.” Thus, the notion of compromise and acquiescence has limited utility to Iran’s aggrieved nationalists.

Despite their bitterness and cynicism, the theocratic hardliners are eternal optimists when it comes to their assessment of how the international community will respond to Iran’s nuclear breakout. Many influential conservative voices insist that Iran would follow the model of India and Pakistan, with the initial international outcry soon followed by an acceptance of Iran’s new status. Thus, Tehran would regain its commercial contracts and keep its nuclear weapons. The former Iranian foreign minister Akbar Velayati noted this theme when stressing, “Whenever we stand firm and defend our righteous stands resolutely, they are forced to retreat and have no alternatives.” The right thus rejects the notion that Iran’s mischievous past and its tense relations with the United States would militate against the international community’s accepting Iran’s nuclear status.

However, should their anticipations prove misguided, and Iran becomes the subject of sanctions, it is a price that the hardliners are willing to pay for an important national prerogative. Ahmadinejad has pointedly noted that even sanctions were to be imposed, “the Iranian nation would still have its rights.” In a similar vein, Ayatollah Jannati has noted, “We do not welcome sanctions, but if we are threatened by sanctions, we will not give in.” The notion of the need to sacrifice and struggle on behalf of the revolution and resist imperious international demands is an essential tent of the hardliners’ ideological perspective.

For the foreseeable future, the United States confronts an Iranian state whose strategic vulnerabilities, regional ambitions and internal political alignments press it in the direction of nuclear capability. Moreover Iran’s nuclear empowerment comes at a time when it is bound to be the leading state in the strategically critical Persian Gulf region. These trends can neither be easily reversed through a policy of coercion or pressure, as in the end, a diplomatic engagement between the United States and Iran maybe the only manner of tempering the theocracy’s more troublesome designs.

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US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice faced a blistering challenge in Congress over the administration's failure to provide evidence to back up allegations Iran is building nuclear weapons and fueling attacks on US forces in Iraq.


"Unproven charges against Iran's nuclear intentions are eerily reminiscent of the false charges made against Iraq before we invaded that country," said Ron Paul (news, bio, voting record), a lawmaker from President George W. Bush's own Republican Party, during an appearance by Rice before a congressional panel.

He said "unproven accusations of Iranian support for the Iraqi insurgency" were also serving as a pretext for "escalating our sharp rhetoric toward Iran."

"Pressed for proof of dramatic claims of Iranian involvement in Iraq, the administration keeps promising that they are compiling it," he said.

"This sounds like Iraq, where accusations came first and proof was supposed to come later -- only that proof never came because the accusations turned out to be false," he said, referring to now discredited allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime was building weapons of mass destruction.

US officials have been promising for weeks to make public what State Department spokesman Sean McCormack described as a "mountain of evidence" to back up US allegations about Iranian involvement in attacks on US and allied forces in Iraq.

But the proof has yet to be forthcoming.

Rice rejected suggestions the administration was exaggerating its case against Iran to pave the way for military action.

"We are not planning or intending an attack on Iran," she said.

"What we are doing is that we are responding to a number of Iranian policies both in Iran and around the world that are actually quite dangerous for our national security," she said.

Rice asserted that Iranian support for terrorism was "well known and well-understood" and included providing arms and training to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon and backing sectarian death squads in Iraq.

She said British forces in Iraq had also linked Iran to attacks on allied forces in the country, notably with sophisticated bombs able to penetrate armored vehicles.

"I don't think any government in the world would stand by and not react to that," she said.

McCormack meanwhile rejected suggestions the administration had yet to reveal its proof of Iranian involvement in Iraq because the evidence was not strong enough to sway skeptics.

"We're going to do this on our own timeline," he said, arguing that it took time to vet the "rich fact base" pointing to Iran's guilt so as not to compromise US intelligence sources.

"There are always going to be doubters, critics, skeptics, that's fine, we accept that," he said.

"It's not going to influence us into hurrying through something that we don't think is ready or appropriate."

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TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's top authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Thursday the Islamic Republic would target U.S. interests around the world if it came under attack, state television reported.

Iran and the United States are locked in a dispute over Tehran's nuclear program, which Washington says is being used to build atomic bombs. U.S. officials say they want diplomacy to end the standoff but have not ruled out force if that fails.

"The enemies know well that any aggression will lead to a reaction from all sides in the Iranian nation on the aggressors and their interests around the world," Khamenei was quoted as saying by state television.

"We believe that no one will make such an unwise and wrong move (to attack Iran) that would endanger their country and interests. Some say that the U.S. president is not the type who acts based on calculations or thinks about the consequences of his action. But even these people can be brought to their senses," he said.

U.S. President George Bush has said he has no intention of invading Iran, though he has pledged to step up pressure on the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program and what Washington calls Iran's meddling in Iraq.

Tehran insists its nuclear program is purely civilian and says it is not backing militants in Iraq.

[RedWine]

Washington DC, February 7, 2007 - Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) last week introduced the most substantive measure (HR 770) yet in favor of constructive US-Iran engagement this year. Addressing a range of topics, including Iraq Study Group (ISG) recommendations, nuclear development, the need for diplomacy, and the risks of military action, Rep. Lee’s bill explicitly rules out a preemptive war on Iran without Congress’ consent and prohibits the use of funds for regime change or military action in Iran. Meanwhile in the Senate, Sen. Robert Byrd’s recent resolution (S. Res 39) adds to the list of non-binding resolutions in Congress that seek to curb the President’s authority to conduct military action.

Known as the “Iran Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 2007,” the Lee bill finds that dialogue and deeper relations with Iran would “help foster greater understanding between the people of Iran and the people of the United States and would enhance the stability and security of the Persian Gulf.”

With respect to Iraq, the bill’s findings touch on the importance of bringing Iran aboard as an ally, and cite an ISG report conclusion that explains, “Iran’s interests would not be served by a failure of US policy that led to chaos and territorial disintegration of the Iraqi state.” The bill goes on to consider common US-Iran interests of strengthening Iraqi society to be a starting point for broader dialogue.

Among the foreign policy objectives that can be achieved through negotiations is the containment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the bill suggests. It recognizes the importance of creating safeguards to prevent Iranian nuclear weaponization and halting Iran’s support for militant groups, but would establish Congress sense that “the attainment of these policy objectives should not constitute preconditions for any diplomatic dialogue.”

Whereas HR 770 makes an exception in the event of an imminent threat being posed by Iran, the bill sets a policy of no preemptive military action against Iran and bars the use of US government funds for any regime change or military activities.

HR 770’s language represents the most far reaching and substantive opposition to a US military option out of Congress so far -- since most other activity has been limited to non-binding resolutions that focus on constitutional separation of powers, with the exception of Rep. Walter Jones’ (R-SC) bipartisan H.J. Res 14. While that two-paragraph bill would bindingly prohibit funding for military force against Iran, it fails to discuss diplomacy, ISG recommendations, and other related findings.

Sen. Byrd’s carefully worded nonbinding resolution is milder than most of its counterparts in the House, and does not once reference Iran in the text of the measure. Similar in spirit to the House’s H. Con Res. 33 by Rep. Peter Defazio (D-OR), the Byrd resolution would establish the Senate’s sense that offensive military action “against another country” would require Congress’ approval.

Joining Rep. Lee as original cosponsors of HR 770 are Reps. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), John Conyers (D-MI), and Maxine Waters (D-CA).

As of this writing, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was the only other cosponsor to S. Res 39.

[RedWine]

Iran will strike against US interests worldwide if it is attacked, the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned.
"The enemies know well that any aggression will lead to a reaction from all sides," he said.

Washington accuses Tehran of secretly trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and has not ruled out using military force.

The Iranians insist their nuclear programme is purely civilian and aimed at meeting their energy needs.

The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says Ayatollah Khamenei was defiant about the prospect of a possible American military strike.

The supreme leader said he hoped nobody would risk attacking Iran because the nation would stand up for itself and only become stronger militarily and economically.

Iran also denounced remarks by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair that Tehran was determined to stir up maximum trouble in the Middle East.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini said Mr Blair's comments were "insolent" and "undiplomatic".

Mr Hosseini said Britain had played a key role in sabotaging talks on the nuclear issue in the past and had followed the US and Israel in imposing destructive wars on the Middle East.

War games

Another key Iranian figure, ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani, has also warned against a strike, saying it would carry a heavy cost for those who tried it.


Diplomats were shown the Isfahan nuclear plant at the weekend
The warnings came as Iran's navy and air force conducted war games.

Iran said it had successfully test-fired a land-to-sea missile with a range of 350km (220 miles).

Tehran said it had also tested a new Russian-made air defence system.

Officials have refused to confirm whether the system has been deployed around nuclear sites.

At the weekend ambassadors from non-aligned countries were allowed to visit an Iranian nuclear facility, on what was billed as a transparency visit.

The UN's chief nuclear inspector is to report on Tehran's compliance with the UN Security Council's demands later this month.

In December the UN imposed limited sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

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A Vancouver businessman has pleaded guilty in Texas to a charge under American law banning trade with Iran, and could be sentenced to up to five years in a U.S. prison and a $250,000 fine.

Farshid Rohani's lawyer, Kurt May, told CBC News that his client agreed to the guilty plea in exchange for authorities dropping more serious charges punishable by 20 years in jail.

Rohani, 44, also known as Seyed Abolghassen Rohani Eftekhari, was arrested in San Antonio in September after trying to buy a $72,000 piece of equipment that tests for defects in pipes and other metal structures. He has been in jail ever since.

Authorities say he was the middleman in a deal between an engineering company in Iran and a supplier in Texas.

When Rohani flew to San Antonio in September for training on the device, he was arrested by police acting on a tip from the equipment supplier.

The U.S. has banned exports to Iran for almost 20 years under a law that declares trade with the Mideast country a threat to U.S. national security.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Rohani's guilty plea acknowledges the money for the purchase came from an Iranian company, and that the device may have ended up in Iran.

Court records in B.C. show Rohani, a management executive of a Vancouver-based company called Sutcast Foundry Technologies, has had financial troubles. His bank seized one of his properties after he failed to make payments.

Rohani will remain in jail until his sentencing in March.

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US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.
The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.


Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."
But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Deployment

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most vocal supporters of such a strike.

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."

Opposition support

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various notions of what the policy should be."

In spite of the president's veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture, the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation, said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor and the US is looking away."

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental war".

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had evidence - serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives - of Iraqi militants' weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of the increased tension, Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

War of words

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly"
George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

"I think it's been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled waters"
Dick Cheney

"It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux"
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation"

[RedWine]

America today blamed Iran for the deaths of 170 US troops inside Iraq, accusing Teheran of supplying insurgents with increasingly sophisticated bombs.

Senior defence officials in Baghdad said that Iranian-supplied "explosively formed projectiles" were frequently being used against coalition forces.

They said the "highest levels" of Iran’s regime were responsible for giving them to Shia militias in Iraq.

These bombs are specially designed to penetrate heavily armoured military vehicles and are capable of crippling the US army’s main battle tank, the Abrams M1.

They have killed 170 US troops since June 2004, according to the American officials. They added that some weapons have been captured and they bore the hallmarks of having been manufactured in Iran.

Many were made as recently as last year – ruling out the possibility that they could have been left over from the many arms caches scattered across Iraq by Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The "machining" on the weapons could only have been completed in Iran, the officials added. They said that only the "highest levels" of Teheran’s regime would have authorised the transfer of these arms into Iraq.

A US helicopter was lost north of Baghdad today – the sixth to be shot down in the last three weeks.

The Apache attack helicopter was reportedly struck by a surface-to-air missile. There is no evidence that Iran has supplied weapons of this kind.

The latest allegations against Iran came as the Teheran regime delivered mixed messages about the future of its nuclear programme.

Speaking at a rally to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution in Teheran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed to press ahead with enriching uranium, a process which could produce the material needed to make a nuclear bomb.

"If you are willing to negotiate why do you insist on a suspension [of enrichment]? If we suspend our activities then what are we going to talk about?" asked Mr Ahmadinejad.

"If your nuclear plants are working 24 hours a day, why must Iran be pressured to shut ours down? We are ready to negotiate but under fair and even conditions."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2007/02/11/uiran.jpg

Last July, the United Nations passed Resolution 1696, giving Iran 30 days to "suspend all enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, including research and development".

Teheran ignored this deadline and continued enriching uranium at Natanz nuclear plant.

Western governments say that Iran must abide by the UN’s demand before any deal can be reached.

But Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, told a security conference in Munich that he was willing to settle every issue by negotiation within weeks.

"The political will of Iran is aimed at a negotiated settlement of the case. We don’t want to aggravate the situation in the region," he said.

Mr Larijani, whose official title is secretary of the supreme national security council, added that he wanted a rapid agreement with Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

"I have written to Mr ElBaradei to say we are ready within three weeks to have the modality to solve all the outstanding issues with you," he said.

Mr Larijani said Iran’s nuclear programme was solely for civilian purposes. But the IAEA has declined to endorse this claim and western governments believe Teheran is pursuing a nuclear capability.

Mr Larijani, 48, is a conservative figure who ran for president in 2005. A former western diplomat who served in Iran described him as an "apparatchik" and a "dedicated servant of the Islamic Republic".

But Mr Larijani is also a pragmatic figure, "willing to explore what might work".

The key question, said the former diplomat, was whether Mr Larijani was only a "Yes man - or is he willing to stand up to the powerful?"

Iran’s nuclear policy will be finally decided by its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, repeated the West’s demand that Iran must stop enriching uranium "without ifs and buts and without tricks".

She added: "What we are talking about here is a very, very sensitive technology and so we need a high degree of transparency, which Iran has failed to provide. If Iran does not do this it risks falling deeper into isolation."

[RedWine]

Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq.

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Pace told Voice of America during a visit to Australia. "What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this."

"It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," he continued, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

Pace's comments came a day after U.S. military officials in Baghdad alleged that the "highest levels" of the Iranian government have directed use of weapons that are killing U.S. troops in Iraq. No information was provided to substantiate the charge. Administration officials yesterday deflected requests for more details, even as they repeatedly implied Tehran's involvement.

In an interview yesterday with ABC's "Good Morning America," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the administration is "pointing fingers at others" when its troop presence in Iraq is the source of most of the country's problems.

While not denying that Iranian weapons may have been found in Iraq, Ahmadinejad implied that if they were, it was not his government's doing. "Can Americans close their long borders?" he asked, noting that "millions" of Iranians cross the border into neighboring Iraq each year. "The position of our government . . . and the position of the Revolutionary Guard is also the same: We are opposed to any kind of conflict in Iraq."

On Sunday, in a briefing for reporters, U.S. military officials in Baghdad offered a slide show and examples of armor-piercing explosives that they said bore writing and serial numbers from Iran. Briefers, speaking anonymously for what they said were security reasons, said the weapons had caused the deaths of 170 U.S. soldiers in the past two years. No cameras were allowed in the briefing room, and a transcript of the session was not provided.

The officials also showed what they said were false identity cards of Iranians whom U.S. forces had recently detained in Iraq. The men were described as members of the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that U.S. officials believe is under the control of Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"We have been able to determine that this material," especially sophisticated roadside explosives called explosively formed penetrators, "is coming from the IRGC-Quds Force," said a briefer, identified only as a senior defense analyst. Direction for operations using the weaponry, he said, came from the "highest levels" of Iran's government.

Asked by reporters yesterday to provide more information on the charge, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "The Iranians are up to their eyeballs in this activity." He called the Baghdad presentation a "very strong circumstantial case," saying he was "not going to try to embellish that briefing" and "any reasonable person . . . would draw the same conclusions."

White House spokesman Tony Snow offered similar responses. "Let me put it this way," he said. "There's not a whole lot of freelancing in the Iranian government, especially when it comes to something like that."

Pressed repeatedly, Snow answered, "Look, the Department of Defense is doing this. What I'm telling you is, you guys want to get those questions answered, you need to go to the Pentagon."

A call to the Defense Intelligence Agency brought a referral to the main Pentagon press office. That office referred a caller to the Washington office of the Multi-National Force-Iraq, which responded with an e-mailed copy of Sunday's briefing slides -- containing no mention of the "highest levels" allegation and a request for questions in writing. Written questions brought no response. An official from the Pentagon Joint Staff said last night that Pace had seen the briefing slides but had "no personal knowledge of any senior involvement by senior Iranian officials."

Members of Congress have repeatedly asked whether the administration is planning a repeat in Iran of its 2003 invasion of Iraq. Intelligence findings that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and had close ties to al-Qaeda turned out to be almost entirely false.

Sunday's briefing on Iran, originally scheduled for last month, had been delayed as officials said they were trying to avoid "overstating" what they could prove.

"There are certainly those who are in favor" of war with Iran, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said Sunday of the Bush administration on CBS's "Face the Nation." "We've seen that in the past that they would like nothing more than to build a case for that."

In recent weeks, the administration has denied any war plans, saying it is committed to a strategy of pressure and diplomacy against Iran's nuclear activities, operations in Iraq and other aggression.

In an interview yesterday with C-SPAN, President Bush described his policy as "comprehensive" and complained that charges he is planning to attack Iran are politically motivated and "typical Washington."

[RedWine]

Bush administration officials, intelligence analysts and some leading Democrats in Congress all agree that a particularly lethal class of roadside bomb is killing American troops at an increasing rate. But fissures have emerged as to whether senior leaders of Iran’s government are directly involved in the attacks.
The disagreements have laid bare a fundamental tension in intelligence analysis: how and when to draw firm conclusions from battlefield intelligence about the motivations of foreign leaders.

Based on evidence gathered inside Iraq, American intelligence analysts have concluded that a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps known as the Quds Force is supplying Shiite groups with Iranian-designed weapons, called explosively formed penetrators.

Because the Quds Force, which operates outside Iran, has historically fallen under the command of Iran’s senior religious leaders, intelligence agencies have concluded that top leaders in Tehran are directing the attacks. Adding to that view is the assertion by intelligence officials that Iran has been arming and training Shiite militants for several years.

“Based on our understanding of the Iranian system and the history of I.R.G.C. operations, the intelligence community assesses that activity this extensive on the part of the Quds Force would not be conducted without approval from top leaders in Iran,” a senior intelligence official said, referring to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Intelligence officials have cast this view as an “assessment,” a logical inference based on years of studying the Revolutionary Guard.

But some senior American officials are hesitant to make this deductive leap. Twice during his recent trip through Asia, Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, broke with military officials in Baghdad and said he was not ready to conclude that Iran’s top leaders were behind the attacks.

During a stopover in Jakarta, Indonesia, General Pace told reporters that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but “that does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this,” he said, The Associated Press reported.

There is a larger lesson about the way intelligence analysis is carried out. Intelligence officials say that while forensic analysis can determine how a weapon is engineered and where its components are manufactured, the hardest task they face is discerning the strategy and intent of a hostile government.

Last month, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said during an interview that the United States still had far too few intelligence resources inside Iran to draw any conclusions about the intent of senior Iranian leaders.

Still, American intelligence agencies have concluded that over the past year the Iranian government had adopted a new policy of directly confronting the United States inside Iraq. The policy, officials assess, is aimed partly at raising the cost of American involvement in the Middle East, teaching the Bush administration a lesson about the cost of regime change and putting pressure on American forces to leave.

But another reason, they say, is to dissuade the Bush administration from taking a more confrontational policy toward Tehran by sending a message that Iran can ratchet up the attacks on American forces in Iraq.

The assertion that senior Iranian leaders are linked to roadside bombings in Iraq carries echoes of American assessments of Iran’s role in the 1996 bombing of a housing complex in Saudi Arabia, an attack that killed 19 American servicemen.

Government investigators said then that they had collected damning evidence linking Iran to the attack, and in 2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft said that Iranian officials “inspired, supported and supervised members of Saudi Hezbollah” in the attack. But in the end, the American prosecutors stopped short of charging any Iranian officials in the attack.

Regarding the current situation in Iraq, a Pentagon official who supports the allegations of Iranian activity in Iraq sought to dispel the notion that the analysis of American intelligence agencies and the views of the nation’s top military officer were fundamentally at odds.

The official said intelligence on the extent of Quds Force activity in Iraq suggested that the Iranian operatives had not been freelancing or conducting rogue operations. But while he said that it was reasonable to assume that the Iranian authorities had been aware of the Quds Force operations, he said it was not clear what level of the Iranian government was involved.

A variety of senior intelligence and military officials have discussed the findings in the past few days, but always on condition of anonymity.

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, tried to paper over the apparent disagreement on Tuesday. Mr. Snow disclosed that he had called General Pace on the matter and that he and the general were “on the same page” with regard to Iran’s role in the roadside bomb attacks in Iraq.

“Do we have a signed piece of paper from Mr. Khamenei or from President Ahmadinejad signing off on this?” Mr. Snow asked, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president. “No. But are the Quds Forces part of the army — part of the government? The answer is yes.”

[RedWine]

The specter of the war in Iraq -- a war the Bush administration denied it was planning, supported by evidence that turned out to be false -- looms large over administration policy toward Iran.

Skeptical members of Congress have questioned administration charges of Tehran's support for Iraqi insurgents and President Bush's insistence that his plans for dealing with Iran remain purely diplomatic. The administration, conscious of its low credibility, believes it has gone out of its way to convince doubters that Iran is not Iraq all over again.

"No, no, no, no," White House spokesman Tony Snow said Monday in response to questions about whether the administration embellished evidence against Iran in a U.S. military briefing in Baghdad the previous day. "I'm almost ready to hit my head on the microphone."

Much as the Vietnam Syndrome dogged the foreign and military policies of a generation of U.S. presidents, the Iraq Syndrome has become an ever-present undercurrent in Washington. "Everyone is reliving the whole thing again in everything we do," said one administration official, referring to the tumultuous months surrounding the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

"In the old days, if the U.S. government had come out and said, 'We've got this, here's our assessment,' reasonable people would have taken it at face value," the official said of the Baghdad briefing. "That's never going to happen again."

In yesterday's White House news conference, Bush grappled with the issue head-on. "What makes you so certain," a reporter asked Bush, of the military's charge that "the highest levels of Tehran's government" are responsible for shipments of lethal weapons to Iraq for use against U.S. troops?

Bush contradicted the military's account, saying, "We don't know . . . whether the head leaders of Iran ordered" it.

"But here's my point," he added. "Either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that [the weapons] they're there."

Yet, as questions that have peppered senior officials all week suggest, what matters in the post-Iraq invasion era is whether the administration can prove it.

The bottom line for many congressional Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans was reflected Tuesday by Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) during the House debate on the Iraq war. "The president said Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with al-Qaeda terrorists," Etheridge said. "I took the president at his word."

Burdened by its troubles in Iraq, the Bush administration is being doubly scrutinized over its policy toward Tehran. For weeks, despite occasional saber rattling, officials from the president on down have insisted there are no plans to attack Iran. Instead, they have said they are fully committed to a peaceful resolution of all outstanding grievances, including Iran's nuclear weapons activities, support for terrorists in Lebanon and support for insurgents in Iraq.

"We've been very careful in what we've said over the last few weeks," Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, the administration's point man on Iran, said in an appearance yesterday at the Brookings Institution.

[RedWine]

VIENNA (Reuters) - Western and developing nations broadly accept a U.N. nuclear agency plan to cut almost half its aid projects in Iran, diplomats say, easing fears of a row over how strictly to apply U.N. sanctions against Tehran.

The plan, to cut technical aid projects based on a review by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts, must be approved at a March 5-9 meeting of the agency's 35-nation Board of Governors.

But members ranging from Iran's arch-foe the United States to its close ally Cuba raised no objections when IAEA aides, at a briefing this week, explained their criteria for shutting down some projects while continuing others, diplomats present said.

"No one is totally satisfied. But the review is as balanced as can be under the circumstances. I see no one wanting to pick a fight when the board convenes," a senior diplomat from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which includes Iran, told Reuters.

This suggested the board may ratify the review by consensus rather than amend and vote on it, averting a damaging split.

Iran was hit with U.N. sanctions over its failure to prove to the IAEA that its efforts to enrich uranium are geared only toward generating electricity, as it maintains. Western powers suspect Iran wants to produce fuel suitable for atom bombs.

The December 23 resolution bans transfers of sensitive nuclear materials and expertise to Iran as well as IAEA technical aid -- traditionally given to bolster peaceful uses of nuclear energy -- if it has any possible use in yielding atomic fuel.

Of the 55 IAEA aid projects in Iran, 10 were frozen and 12 others restricted to comply with the sanctions.

U.S. "PLEASED"

"We are pleased that the IAEA has decided to cut technical assistance to 22 projects," Gregory Schulte, U.S. ambassador to the Vienna-based U.N. nuclear watchdog, said after the briefing.

"We are still studying the report. But our preliminary analysis is that the IAEA approach meets the requirements of U.N. Security Council resolution," he said in a statement.

Before the IAEA Secretariat issued its review on February 9, diplomats said the United States and allies like France and Australia favored more sweeping cuts of aid for Iran.

[RedWine]

ABU DHABI (AFP) - Washington is not seeking a military confrontation with Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme, a senior Pentagon official told a Gulf security conference.

"We are not seeking a military showdown with Iran. We are not seeking military confrontation," Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for the Middle East Mark Kimmitt told the conference in the United Arab Emirates capital on Saturday.

"We believe that diplomacy remains the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear problem," added Kimmitt, rejecting mounting accusations from some Democratic lawmakers that the Republican administration is seeking a new war in the region.

Kimmitt said Washington was concerned about the regional ambitions of Iran's hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his efforts to take advantage of the turmoil in iraq since the US-led invasion of 2003.

"We have concerns about the hegemonic aspirations of Iran," he said.

"They seem to think that the removal of Saddam from power in Iraq and the absence of a regional counterweight provides them with the licence to expand their influence and presence throughout the Gulf."

Opening the one-day security conference, UAE Education Minister Sheikh Nahayan Mubarak al-Nahayan stressed the "importance for the whole world" of the security of the six oil-rich Gulf Arab states.

The seminar precedes the Middle East's biggest arms show, IDEX-2007, which opens Sunday and runs to Thursday.

[RedWine]

PRESIDENT BUSH'S actions toward Iran are consistent with two very different underlying strategies. Both start with a correct reading of Iran's behavior at home and in the region as dangerous to U.S. interests and to the prospects for peace and democracy in the Middle East. Both mix pressure -- economic, rhetorical, military -- with diplomatic overtures. In one scenario, these are employed with the hope of success. In the other they are employed with the hope of success but an expectation of failure, in which case military force would be brought to bear with a justification that every other reasonable approach had been tried.

We have seen no evidence that the administration has Option B in mind, but it's plausible enough to merit stating that such a course for this president would be folly. There is much speculation in Washington about how Mr. Bush views his "legacy": about how he ostensibly wouldn't want to kick the Iran problem to his successor as he believes President Bill Clinton left North Korea to him, or to be known as the president who invaded the country without nukes while allowing the two other "axis of evil" nations to go nuclear. Concern about historical judgment is natural, but it should play no part in such decisions.
Given the intelligence fiasco that preceded the invasion of Iraq, any claims by this administration about Iranian misbehavior will be viewed with intense suspicion, as we saw last week. Given the debacle of postwar planning in Iraq, there is no reason to trust Mr. Bush with the execution of another war of choice. Someday a future president may decide, in consultation with a future Congress, that the risks of seeking to contain a nuclear-armed Iran are greater than the risks of seeking to degrade or destroy its nuclear capability by force. Most intelligence estimates suggest that such a decision need not be faced in the next two years.

Meanwhile those concerned about Option B shouldn't urge the administration to abandon Option A. It's not acceptable that Iran defy U.N. demands to abandon its nuclear program, nor that it undermine a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon or a U.N.-approved military mission in Iraq. The international coalition the administration has painstakingly assembled to pressure Iran seems to be having some effect on the mullahs; it should be maintained and strengthened. U.S. financial pressure and assurances of support to Iran's neighbors also are appropriate. All of these might have a greater chance of working, as we've said before, if the administration also remained open to diplomatic overtures, at least in a regional context. That, and not secret military plans, is the missing component of U.S. strategy right now.

[Nutcase]

MANAMA (AFP) - A second US aircraft carrier has arrived in Middle Eastern waters as promised by US President George W. Bush in January amid an escalating crisis with nearby Iran over its nuclear program.

The USS John C. Stennis and its accompanying strike group joined the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Sea of Oman but has not yet entered Gulf waters, the US Fifth Fleet said Tuesday from its base in Manama.


The Stennis "entered the US 5th Fleet area of operations... to conduct maritime security operations in regional waters, as well as to provide support for ground forces operating in Afghanistan and Iraq," said a US statement.


Bush on January 10 unveiled his new strategy for Iraq which included deploying a second aircraft carrier group and a Patriot anti-missile defense system "to reassure our friends and allies."


Washington accuses arch-foe Tehran of stoking the insurgency in Iraq and of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb, charges denied by the Islamic republic.


Days after Bush's announcement, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the Stennis's redeployment was a signal to Iran, which, he said, has a "very negative" attitude.


Iran has also been carrying out military exercises in the region, including test-firing missiles and building drones that military commanders boasted could hit the US Navy.


The White House has repeatedly insisted it has no plans to strike Iran, and downplayed the significance of reinforcing the US military presence in the Gulf region.


Earlier this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised the US military build-up in the Gulf, saying it did not fit in with Washington's Iraq strategy.

[RedWine]

STOCKHOLM: Will the United States use armed force against Iran? Hardly any foreign policy issue is hotter right now. American planes are reported to be patrolling along the border between Iraq and Iran, and U.S. forces have been authorized to kill Iranian agents in Iraq. Two U.S. aircraft carriers are in the Gulf and missile defenses have been installed in Gulf states. The military buildup is either to scare Tehran or to prepare for American attacks on Iran.

Many remember that there was a U.S. military buildup in the Gulf during the autumn of 2002 and the first months of 2003 and that the U.S. attack on Iraq followed in March. Is something similar underway now?

Most commentators note that a large part of the American people would disapprove of more military adventures. Yet many worry that the Bush administration might be tempted to play up Iran's activities as an important reason for the anarchy in Iraq and to reduce the attention to the debacle in Iraq by opening a new front through bombings in Iran.

Many governments share the conviction of the Bush administration that the aim of Iran's program for the enrichment of uranium is to give Tehran at least the ability to make a nuclear weapon in a few years. They support the demand of the UN Security Council that Iran stop the program and believe that economic sanctions that prohibit the delivery of material and equipment for the program may influence Iran. However, practically all are of the view that a military attack would be disastrous. Although it might delay the program of enrichment a few years, it would, at the same time, probably lead to full national acceptance of the program, increased Iranian support for terrorism and perhaps a crisis in the supply and delivery of oil.

Iran's response to the action of the Security Council has so far been to reduce UN inspectors' access to Iranian nuclear installations and at the same time declare a readiness for talks — provided that the council drop the demand that the program for enrichment must be suspended before talks are opened. Iran is thus on collision course with the resolution adopted by the council. While Washington declares that diplomacy rather than military action is on the agenda, the administration evidently believes that naval demonstrations may have an impact. A recent column in the Washington Times suggested an even more explicit demonstration: the launching of a missile on the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran — now used by the Iranian revolutionary guards.

In Europe and elsewhere, people are worried that mistakes might lead to an armed conflict or to an Iranian withdrawal from the Nonproliferation Treaty or refusal of inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. So, what can be done?

In the case of North Korea, the United States seems able to sit down for talks without demanding that the production of plutonium be stopped prior to the talks and even to indicate that an agreement could constitute the opening of diplomatic relations and guarantees against attacks in return for denuclearization.

It is difficult to understand why, in the case of Iran, the suspension of the program for enrichment of uranium has been made a precondition for any talks in which such suspension is the main subject. It is not long ago that an American commission led by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Representative Lee Hamilton declared that the United States ought to engage in talks with Iran and Syria. Yet, despite the dire situation in Iraq, the Bush administration prefers to talk to Iran and Syria through public statements and military threats. It is a little like the boss who said that he liked to have exchanges of views with his subordinates: They should come in to present their views and walk out with his views.

A less humiliating approach might give better results. Such an approach is now being tested in the case of North Korea. Why not in Iran, too?

[RedWine]

وزير امور خارجه جمهورى اسلامى ايران گفت:ايران براى مقابله با هر گونه اقدام نظامى احتمالى آمريكا آماده است.
به گزارش خبرگزارى فرانسه از استانبول، منوچهر متكى وزير امور خارجه ايران امروز چهارشنبه در پايان سفر دو روزه خود به تركيه در جمع خبرنگاران گفت: ايران براى مقابله با هرگونه اقدام نظامى احتمالى آمريكا در خصوص برنامه*هاى هسته*اى اين كشور آماده است.
وى همچنين افزود: معتقدم گفتگو بهترين راه براى حل و فصل اين مناقشه است.
وزير امور خارجه ايران تصريح كرد، آمريكا دو گزينه را مطرح كرده است: نخست توسل به خشونت و دوم همكاري؛ ما براى هر دو احتمال آماده*ايم ولى ما طبعا هميشه همكارى را ترجيح داده*ايم.
متكى بر لزوم حل اين منازعه از راه مسالمت آميز تاكيد كرد و گفت: "ديپلماسى" تنها راه حل*وفصل اين مشكل است.

[RedWine]

Washington has said it will now push for tougher sanctions against Iran over its continuing nuclear activities.
The United Nations Security Council gave Tehran 60 days to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.

But the deadline has expired and a UN report is soon expected to confirm that Iran is pressing ahead with developing its own nuclear fuel cycle.

US Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns accused Iran of "brazenly pursuing" its nuclear ambitions.

Mr Burns said that over the next few weeks there would be efforts within the UN Security Council to establish "additional sanctions" on the Iranian Government.

Internal opposition

On Wednesday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran would try to achieve nuclear capability as soon as possible, according to reports by Iran's Isna news agency.

However, for the first time a political party in Iran has also called on Mr Ahmadinejad to accept the UN's demands.

Iran denies Western claims that it is seeking nuclear weapons, saying its programme is for purely peaceful ends.

A UN resolution, adopted on 23 December 2006, imposed sanctions against Iran's nuclear and missile programmes and opened the way for further measures if it failed to halt uranium enrichment within two months.

Following the deadline's expiry on Wednesday, the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is expected to report that Iran has defied the 60-day ultimatum.

Security dangers

Iran resumed uranium enrichment last year. The process can produce fuel for power stations or, if greatly enriched, material for a nuclear bomb.

Speaking in the northern town of Siahkal, Mr Ahmadinejad said: "Obtaining this technology is very important for our country's development and honour. It is worth it to stop other activities for 10 years and focus only on the nuclear issue."

But one small radical reformist political party, the Islamic Revolutionary Mujahadin Organisation, has complained that Iran's drive to produce nuclear energy has endangered national security, the national interest and the destiny of the Iranian people.

The BBC's Frances Harrison says this is the first time there has been open criticism of Mr Ahmedinejad's nuclear policy. Allies of the president in parliament were quick to say it came from lackeys of the United States who did not even know the basics of politics, our correspondent adds.

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The U.S. Tries Quiet Diplomacy on Iran

Now that Iran has officially missed the UN Security Council deadline for stopping its uranium enrichment work, Western leaders have decided on a deliberately muted response. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in meetings in Berlin Wednesday with European, Russian and United Nations diplomats, is sticking to the agenda — easing Israeli-Palestinian tensions, and keeping her remarks low-key. Her European counterparts also hope to pass the day without a drama over Tehran's defiance. The reason is purely tactical." We don't need a war of rhetoric," says a European diplomat.

Iranian leaders have been making conciliatory noises lately. Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, in Vienna to meet with International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed El Baradei, said Tuesday that Iran was "looking for ways and means to start negotiations." Still, avowed radical President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that Iran was willing to freeze its enrichment program and return to talks only if the US and the other members of the nuclear club also stopped enriching uranium." Do you believe that's a serious offer?" White House spokesman Tony Snow scoffed.

As the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prepares to release a report which confirms Iran's non-compliance, Rice and her European counterparts have sworn off strident words that that could play into Tehran's hands, since its strategy has been to portray the big industrialized powers as heavy-handed, unjust and biased against developing nations that aspire to the nuclear club. Iran, says former State Department proliferation chief Robert Einhorn," has been reasonably effective in driving wedges" between the industrialized and developing worlds.

That's why, when she emerged from a meeting with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Rice tried to extend the olive branch to Tehran, stressing her desire to meet face to face with the regime's representatives. "In May of last year we offered, the Bush Administration offered, to reverse 27 years of American policy to engage in the context of the six with our Iranian counterparts," she told reporters. "I've said I would meet my Iranian counterpart anyplace, anywhere, anytime should the Iranians decide to suspend their activities. And so that and the fact that there is a very positive package that the six countries have put together that should incent Iran to engage in a positive way with the international community. I think we're all still hopeful that the day is going to come when the Iranians decide to pursue that course, rather than one of confrontation."

Despite the muted voices, US and Western diplomats have already begun discussing a second sanctions resolution to be tabled in the Security Council. It won't be sweeping or harsh: last winter, Russian and Chinese objections to stringent sanctions proposed by the US and Europeans locked up the Security Council for two months of agonizing debate. A watered down resolution finally passed Dec. 23.

But it passed unanimously, and to the Western nations, that's far more important than what it actually said. Officials involved in the process say that this time, they've learned to avoid the perils of over-reaching. So the strategy hammered out by the Rice team and its European counterparts is to propose very modest, incremental sanctions that will have little actual economic impact on Iran. "What we don't want to do is have a repeat of last time," says a European diplomat." After much pain, we kept the international community together, which is one of the most powerful levers that we have."

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In a rare move, for the first time since the repeal by Congress in 1971 of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorising the Vietnam War, the House of Representative has voted 246-to-182 formally repudiating President Bush's decision to send 21,500 new combat troops to Iraq. Below Farhang Jahanpour examines the background to this momentous decision.

The events of the past few months in the United States have been as bewildering as they have been tragic. The mid-term elections held in November had shown that the majority of Americans had decisively turned against President George Bush's failed policies and the threadbare plots of the Neoconservatives. The Democrats' control of both the House and the Senate had provided the hope of a change of direction or at least a course correction.

The unexpected dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld, one of the main architects of the Iraq war, and his replacement by pragmatic Richard Gates, who had been a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, and the sudden forced resignation of the Neoconservative UN Ambassador John Bolton had provided grounds for optimism. That feeling of optimism was further strengthened by the long awaited and much anticipated bipartisan Iraq Study Group's report. The Iraq Study Group, led by two respected veteran politicians, the former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and the former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, included some of the most experienced and prominent US politicians.

Domestic and Foreign Reversals
Having suffered major reversals in Iraq and in mid-term elections, President Bush and members of his Administration had indicated that they would welcome that report. Coming on the heels of the Administration's humiliating defeats at home and abroad, the success of the report seemed to be a certainty. As the level of chaos and killings in Iraq had increased, leading to a state of virtual civil war, even the president and some of his staunchest allies could no longer repeat the mantra of 'staying the course'. With the number of US casualties exceeding three thousand – not to mention over half a million Iraqis killed and the creation of two million refugees – the majority of Americans had turned against the continuation of the war.

According to a recent CNN poll, only 20 per cent of the American people supported it, a huge drop compared to the 75 per cent that had supported it at the beginning of the invasion when it was wrongly linked to the war against terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Therefore, it seemed that the time had come for the US Administration to take a fresh look at the realities and cut its losses, and also save Iraq from the continuing catastrophe.

Baker-Hamilton Report
The report did not pull any punches. After painting a dismal picture of America's options in Iraq, the report stated that there was an urgent need for a complete change of direction. It pointed out that the continuation of US policies in Iraq and the region would at best only postpone the most probable scenario: Iraq’s collapse into a failed and fragmented state, an intensifying and long-lasting civil war, as well as an increased risk of foreign meddling in Iraq. It pointed out that the US forces were seen as occupiers and not as liberators and their continued presence in Iraq acted only as a provocation and intensified the insurgency.

What was needed was a clean break both in the way the U.S. and other international actors dealt with the Iraqi government, and in the way the U.S. dealt with the region as a whole.

The report advocated an end to unilateral policies and a new multinational effort to achieve a new political compact between all relevant Iraqi constituents.

The Baker-Hamilton Iraqi Study Group made three important recommendations:

1. Withdrawal of US forces from Iraq;

2. A new U.S. regional strategy, including engagement with Iran and Syria, and an end to efforts at regime change;

3. Revitalisation of the moribund Arab-Israeli 'peace process'.

Supporting the findings of the report, Senior Fellow of the Centre for American Progress Lawrence J. Korb testified before the House Armed Services Committee, and spoke about many mistakes over the past 46 months that had created the current quagmire. He said:

1. The United States cannot solve Iraq’s problems militarily; resolving Iraq’s civil war requires a new political strategy.
2. Open-ended U.S. combat deployment fosters a culture of dependency.
3. The absence of a new diplomatic and political strategy is the missing link to Iraq’s neighbours playing a more constructive and necessary role.
4. The consequences of continued chaos in the Middle East would be disastrous.
5. Military escalation will not tackle the core problems with Iraq’s security forces and would likely exacerbate the situation.
6. An escalation in Iraq prevents soldiers from being re-deployed to other places.
7. Those who support military escalation lack credibility due to the fact that they are the ones responsible for this misadventure.
8. Congress must not let the president continue to ignore the American people and must exercise its constitutional powers to halt the escalation.
9. The United States must change course now rather than heed the dictates of a president who has continued to mislead us about this war.

The Baker-Hamilton report pointed out that President Bush's desire to bring peace to the Middle East, while at the same time providing total backing for all Israeli expansionist policies while pursuing a hostile policy towards Iran and Syria, were contradictory and unachievable. Senior members of the Congress from both parties urged the president to talk to Iran.

According to a recent poll, three-quarters of the American public also want the president to talk to Iran (including 72 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of Democrats). Even Secretary of Defence Robert Gates—when he was the co-chair of a 2004 Council of Foreign Relations task force—urged the president to talk to Iran. Three high-ranking former US generals opposed a troops surge in Iraq and warned against an attack on Iran.

A much-anticipated US intelligence report warned that the rising violence in Iraq could permanently tear the country apart and, in the worst case, create a state of anarchy with no legitimate authority that would combine "extreme ethnosectarian violence with debilitating intragroup clashes."

Rejection of Baker-Hamilton Report
While everybody was waiting to see how President Bush would implement that important bipartisan report, the president did exactly the opposite.

Far from withdrawing forces from Iraq, he ordered 21,500 extra troops to be sent to Baghdad and to Anbar province. Instead of initiating a meaningful dialogue with Iran and Syria, he adopted an even more hostile policy towards those two countries and openly called on American troops to arrest or kill Iranians that they suspected of involvement in helping the insurgents in Iraq.

Meanwhile, simultaneously with the president's new directive, US forces attacked an Iranian liaison office in Erbil that was functioning with the knowledge and approval of the Iraqi government, and took five Iranian diplomats hostage. The Iraqi foreign minister said that the office was due to be formally turned into a consulate, the work that it had been doing in practice for the past 15 years. The illegal arrest of Iranian diplomats resulted in open condemnation by the Iraqi president and prime minister, as well as by the leader of the Iraqi Kurdistan, Mas'ud Barzani. Earlier on, US forces had arrested three Iranian diplomats who had been invited to Iraq by the Iraqi president during his visit to Tehran, and after extensive protests US forces released them.

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A Neoconservative Plan
While all this might have come as a complete surprise to all those who were looking for a saner and more even-handed US policy in the Middle East, those who were familiar with the stranglehold that the neocons and the pro-Israeli lobbies have imposed on the Bush Administration were not surprised at all.

As soon as the contents of the Baker-Hamilton report were leaked, the neocons started a feverish campaign to undermine it. A leading Neoconservative ideologue, Frederick W. Kagan of American Enterprise Institute prepared a report entitled "Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq." He argued:

* Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion. Victory in Iraq is vital to America’s security. Defeat will lead to regional conflict, humanitarian catastrophe, and increased global terrorism.

* Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break America’s will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly controlled.

He further argued that all the three courses of action that had been proposed would fail: 1) Withdraw immediately; 2) Engage Iraq’s neighbours, and 3) Increase embedded trainers dramatically. He suggested a fourth option: Increase American forces and crush opposition. He advocated a 'surge' of between 20,000-30,000 extra troops to directly fight the insurgents.

When one reads President Bush's major policy speech on 10 January or his State of the Union address, one will see that his policy is taken almost word for word from the above-mentioned document. All this shows that while the Neoconservatives are down, they certainly are not out and still exert a pernicious influence on the US Administration.

It is interesting that the Iraqi government was not consulted regarding the new strategy. President Jalal Talabani openly admitted that he had no idea of the new American plan. It is also clear that the Americans have no intention of leaving Iraq, as was openly admitted by Robert Gates who said that American forces would remain in Iraq for a long time.

The important point to bear in mind about the 'surge' of forces in Iraq is that it is not intended solely to fight the insurgents – there had been at least two such surges in the past and both had failed – but to intensify the pressure on Iran and Syria.

False intelligence on Iran
In the same way that false intelligence was used prior to the invasion of Iraq in order to establish a link between Saddam's regime and al-Qa'ida, the neocons are busy doing the same in the case of Iran and Syria. Without providing any evidence, President Bush linked the Sunni insurgency with al-Qa'ida and Syria, and the Shi'i insurgency with Iran. He again linked the situation in Iraq with the events of 9/11. In the State of the Union address the president said: "This war is an ideological struggle. ... To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come to kill us." He continued: "What every terrorist fears most is human freedom – societies where men and women make their own choices."

More than 90 per cent of attacks on US forces have come from Sunni insurgents. Iraqi officials allege that the Sunni insurgents receive most of their support from Jordan and Saudi Arabia, yet President Bush singled out Iran for blame as a country that supported Iraqi insurgents. The overwhelming majority of those who are killed in suicide bombings and attacks are in Shi'i districts, yet President Bush blamed Iran for helping the Shi'is.

Leading neocons jumped on the bandwagon. Senator Joseph Lieberman repeated the threat-conflation mantra on Meet the Press on January 14. Trying to rally support for an escalation of the war in Iraq, he appealed to “the American people, who have been attacked on 9/11 by the same enemy that we’re fighting in Iraq today, supported by a rising Islamist radical super-powered [sic] government in Iran.” National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley declared the war in Iraq to be part of “a broad struggle going on in the Middle East between the forces of freedom and democracy and the forces of terror and tyranny—and Iran is behind a lot of that.”

Ominous signs of a new conflict
These threats have not remained purely at the level of rhetoric, but there are ominous signs of preparations for a conflict, this time involving Iran. These are some of the measures taken by the Bush administration in recent weeks. It has:

* Deployed additional aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf.
* Deployed US Patriot missiles to the Arab states in the Persian Gulf.
* Deployed F16 fighter planes to the Incirlik base in Turkey.
* Increased the number of US nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf.
* There has been increased rhetoric and provocation against Iran.
* It has cut off two of Iran’s largest banks from the U.S. financial system.
* Admiral Fallon has been named Centcom commander, a useful person in case of a naval attack on Iran.
* It has arrested several Iranian diplomats in Iraq in December and in January, arrested six more in a raid on an office opened in Kurdistan in 1992 that has been functioning as an Iranian consulate.
* Furthermore, Israeli pilots have undergone training for Iran bombing missions.
* In his January 10 speech to the nation the president said: “We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

Suspicions about the new plan
The exaggerated rhetoric also seems to signal a more sweeping intent. Official statements parrot claims prominent for the past year in the Neoconservative press, bizarrely linking Iran to September 11 and the president’s declared “war on terror.” This feverish campaign has even worried many US senators and congressmen. Senator Bill Nelson (D- FL) told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at a January 11 Senate hearing: “I have supported you and the administration on the war, but I cannot continue to support the administration's position...I have not been told the truth over and over again."

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who has recently taken control of the intelligence committee, said that the administration was building a case against Tehran even as American intelligence agencies still know little about either Iran’s internal dynamics or its intentions in the Middle East. “To be quite honest, I’m a little concerned that it’s Iraq again,” Senator Rockefeller said during an interview in his office. “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.”

The former commander of CENTCOM, General John Abizaid and the former commander of US forces in Iraq General Casey in testimonies before the Senate opposed the need for a troop surge. Both of them were simply replaced.

Immediately after the president announced his new policy, both the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toured the Middle East to form an alliance of regional democracies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan against Iran and Syria. During her trip to the Middle East Condoleezza Rice said: "On one side are reformers and responsible leaders", in which she included "Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the Gulf, Egypt, Jordan, the young democracies of Lebanon, of the Palestinian territory led by Mahmoud Abbas [not the popularly elected government led by HAMAS], and in Iraq... But on the other side of that divide are Iran, Syria and Hezbollah and Hamas" who "...use violence to spread chaos, to undermine democratic governments, and to impose agendas of hatred and intolerance," she declared.

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Negative reactions to the plan in the Middle East
The new US plan has come under a barrage of criticism at home and abroad. Opinion polls in the United States have shown that nearly two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the Bush plan. Even the countries that are supposed to be the recipients of US favour do not seem to have been persuaded by this new policy.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr al-Thani chastised Washington for failing to consult the Gulf Co-operation Council before formulating its new policy. He went on: "I think it's important for American friends to coordinate their policies with countries in the region ... before adopting them." "The region's countries will be the first to be affected by their policies," he said in Doha at a press conference with his Italian counterpart Massimo D'Alema. "Those policies that led to this situation have harmed the region."

The comments in most of the Middle East press, even in countries that are friendly to America, have been dismissive of the plan.

In Saudi Arabia, the Okaz newspaper wrote: "The American administration has no right to ask Iraqis and other countries of the region to follow its strategy... when the administration itself is incapable of convincing even Americans of this policy." It continued: "A good number of observers do not expect the new American strategy to succeed in improving the situation in Iraq. On the contrary, they believe that it will lead to more chaos, more terrorist acts and more victims." The US government should "first of all convince its own people about the strategy before trying to convince the world," it said.

In the United Arab Emirates, the headline on the Al-Khaleej mocked: "Rice comes... as a tourist." "If Rice has come only to listen, it's a mixture of sarcasm and provocation. Rice knows only too well the positions of the countries she is visiting and doesn't need to listen further." The paper asked: "And even after listening and understanding what others want, will she take that on board?"

In Jordan, another key US regional ally, the independent Al-Arab Al-Yawm also dismissed the chance of Rice winning support for Bush's plans for Iraq. It wrote: "Rice is not expected to be successful in promoting Bush's strategy. When the secretary of state asks moderate Arab countries to support the Maliki government, she is in fact asking them to support Iran's influence in Iraq."

“The former pressure was an illusion and the lack of any pressure now will push the crisis between the people and their rulers to the edge,” said Ibrahim Eissa, the editor of Al Dustoor, a weekly independent newspaper in Egypt that is critical of the government. That eliminates “all false appearances that the Arab regimes are against the United States in defense of their independent sovereignty and that the United States is supporting democracy when it is in strict alliance with the oppressive regimes,” he added.

The leading Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram carried an article by Hassan Nafaa, professor of political science at Cairo University, entitled "Time to say no". It argued: "To continue kowtowing to the US administration's demands over Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine would be suicidal."

Referring to the recent US policies towards Iran and Iraq, Nafaa wrote: "Arab leaders who believed the claims that ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein would eliminate one of the greatest impediments to regional stability should look at what has in fact been eliminated. It is Iraq as a state that has been destroyed... As important as the strategic relationship with the US might be, Arab leaders should realise that Bush and his gang of neo-conservatives are not synonymous with the United States. They are a band of thugs bent on steering the world to unmitigated disaster, a fact grasped by the majority of the American people upon whom it has dawned that this administration is no less fanatical and racist than Hitler and the Nazis."

These are strong words by a major commentator in a country that is allegedly friendly towards the United States.

The complete bankruptcy
All this shows the complete bankruptcy of US foreign policy and the state of confusion in which the American foreign policy-makers find themselves.

Theirs is a foreign policy that has gone totally berserk. It is opposed by the vast majority of the American people. It is opposed by a sizeable majority of senators and congressmen. It is opposed by many in the military. It was initiated behind the back of the 'democratically-elected' Iraqi government. It is rejected by the people in the Middle East. It is simply meant to please a shrinking number of fanatical neocons who do not seem to have had their fill of war and bloodshed yet.

The Neoconservatives that pushed America towards perhaps the worst disaster in her history, namely the illegal war in Iraq, are likely to push her towards an even more disastrous decision if they can manufacture an American invasion of Iran. The first time many Americans were fooled by their false intelligence and extensive propaganda.

If they allow themselves to be fooled a second time, it will be unforgivable.

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Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by American spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, according to diplomatic sources in Vienna.
The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran, and raises the possibility that the US might resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

At the heart of the debate are accusations, spearheaded by the US, that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons. However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.
"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," said a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations. "They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities."

"Now [the inspectors] don't go in blindly. Only if it passes a credibility test."

One particularly contentious issue concerned records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran. In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forgeries and there are still reservations about its authenticity in the IAEA, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate inside the agency.

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said. "The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer."

IAEA officials do not comment on intelligence passed to the watchdog agency by foreign governments, saying all such assistance is confidential.

A western counter-proliferation official accepted that intelligence on Iran had sometimes been patchy but argued that the essential point was Iran's failure to live up to its obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.

"I take on board on what they're saying, but the bottom line is that for nearly 20 years [the Iranians] were violating safeguards agreements," the official said. "There is a confidence deficit here about the regime's true intentions."

That deficit will be deepened by yesterday's IAEA report. It concluded bluntly: "Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities", in defiance of a December UN ultimatum to stop. The report noted that Iran had continued with the operation of a pilot enrichment plant.

Furthermore, the report said that Iran had informed the agency of its plan to install 18 arrays, or cascades, of 164 centrifuges in an underground plant by May - a total of nearly 3,000. At the moment, Iran's centrifuges are being used to make low-enriched uranium, but if they were switched to making highly enriched, weapons-grade uranium, they could produce enough for a bomb in less than a year.

Dr ElBaradei's report said that Iran had so far not agreed to the IAEA installing remote monitoring devices in the enrichment plant to keep constant tabs on what the Iranians were doing with them.

Furthermore, the IAEA still has a string of questions about the Iranian programme that remain unanswered. Until they are, the agency will not give Iran a clear bill of health.

One of the "outstanding issues" listed in yesterday's report involves a 15-page document that appears to have been handed to IAEA inspectors by mistake in October 2005. That document roughly describes how to make hemispheres of enriched uranium, for which the only known use is in nuclear warheads. Iran has yet to present a satisfactory explanation of how and why it has the document.

Last night Iran, which says its nuclear fuel programme is designed only to produce electricity, remained defiant. "Regarding the suspension mentioned in the report, because such a demand has no legal basis and is against international treaties, naturally, it could not be accepted by Iran," Muhammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, told Reuters in Tehran. Mr Saeedi said the report showed that returning to talks was the best way to resolve the dispute.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said he was "deeply concerned". "I urge again that the Iranian government should fully comply with the demands as soon as possible and engage in negotiations with the international community so that we can resolve this issue peacefully."

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Nuclear weapons have a way of forcing presidents to reverse policies thought to be carved in stone. So it was with Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union, and so it may be now with George W. Bush and the two surviving members of the "axis of evil."

To the outrage of some supporters and the mockery of his critics, President Bush has blessed a tentative, quarter-loaf diplomatic deal aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear arsenal. And he has a shot at reaching a modus vivendi with Iran on nuclear proliferation as well -- if he disregards both the outrage and the mockery, as he should.

"There is movement behind the scenes," a European diplomat who closely follows Iran told me last week. "The Iranians are nervous and want to get engaged." Details of a confidential Iranian proposal that has been circulating in Brussels and Tehran for four months support the view that there could be an opening on the Iranian front despite the angry rhetoric from Iran triggered by last week's new indictment of its nuclear ambitions by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Bush vigorously ruled out rewarding bad behavior by foreign adversaries in his first term. Saddam Hussein's manipulation of the international community was a driving force in Bush's labeling Iraq, along with North Korea and Iran, as irredeemably evil in 2002 and invading Iraq a year later.

But now Bush countenances providing economic and diplomatic rewards to North Korea, and ultimately to Iran, to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of two regimes that behave as badly as anyone could want. The bravado of the first Bush term has been replaced by a sadder and quieter way of doing business abroad as Iraq has sapped U.S. capabilities and political cohesion.

The sense of a U-turn is reinforced by Bush's reliance this time on the negotiating skills of his diplomatic corps and on European and Asian partners to reach, enforce and pay for the projected deals, which would serve as twin tombstones for a brief era of U.S. unilateralism.

The change on North Korea is described by former administration officials as a strategic decision by the president to start "to pry the lid off" of that starving, tyrannized remnant of the Cold War by offering Pyongyang a path for peaceful change. Cooperation in the six-party negotiations would also help stabilize China's relations with Japan and the United States, in this view.

The president reportedly surprised Chinese President Hu Jintao during their lunch at the White House last April by suggesting that, if the nuclear impasse could be resolved, the time was right for a formal peace treaty to end the Korean conflict. And when North Korea defied Chinese "advice" by conducting a nuclear test in October, China became more engaged in pulling Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

Unfortunately, Bush cannot rely on Russia to play a similarly helpful role with Iran. President Vladimir Putin seems willing to take enormous risks with global stability for short-term, largely commercial reasons. And divisions in Iran's leadership make the reaching of a "mutual suspension" accord -- under which Tehran will suspend enriching uranium in return for the suspension of U.N. sanctions -- more difficult.

But U.S. and European policy should play on those divisions, which have visibly surfaced as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rants on in full-throated belligerence while officials closer to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, offer proposals that have the virtue at least of identifying the chief remaining obstacles to a deal.

Last autumn, Iran's Ali Larijani told European Union negotiator Javier Solana that Iran could accept the Russian-E.U. proposal for an international consortium to enrich and reprocess nuclear fuel for Iran -- if the enrichment and reprocessing were done on Iranian soil.

A diplomatic device known as a nonpaper (so its existence can be denied) and dated Oct. 1, 2006, describes a "gentlemen's agreement" by the two diplomats to use the proposal "to help open the way to negotiations." When I telephoned him in Berlin last week, Solana affably but deftly warded off questions about the nonpaper, then added: "Nothing has been agreed. Nothing has been put forward in formal terms."

Precisely. The Iranian condition is unacceptable to Washington. But the fact that it was put forward at all suggests that the pressures generated by the U.S. Treasury's campaign to limit finance and export credits to Iran and condemnation by the United Nations are taking a toll on the Iranians -- as these tools did on North Korea.

Bush seems to have decided to employ strategic patience in seeking a verifiable nuclear deal with North Korea and to have taken a long-range view of regional stability. He should do no less with Iran, however much manufactured outrage or contrived mockery it provokes, in Tehran or in Washington.

[RedWine]

تعدادی از فرماندهان بلندپايه ارتش آمريکا در اقدامی بي*سابقه تهديد کرده*اند درصورتی که کاخ سفيد هرگونه دستوری برای آغاز حمله نظامی به ايران صادر کند از سمت خود استفعاء خواهند داد. به گزارش هفته*نامه بريتانيايی ,ساندي*تايمز, اين فرماندهان شامل پنج ژنرال بلندپايه در نيروی زمينی و دريايی آمريکا هستند. يک منبع اطلاعاتی ناشناس در پنتاگون به خبرنگار اين هفته*نامه گفته *است در ميان مقامات وزارت دفاع نيز هيچ علاقه*ای به انجام اين حمله مشاهده نمي*شود و ترديد بسيار زيادی نسبت به اثربخشی و يا حتی احتمال اين حمله وجود دارد.

به گفته خبرنگار ساندی تايمز اي