Iran-U.S.A

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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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Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

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"

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Pace Demurs on Accusation of Iran

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."

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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.”

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Skepticism Over Iraq Haunts U.S. Iran Policy

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.

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U.S., developing nations accept Iran aid cut plan

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.

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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.

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The Iran Options

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]

Second US aircraft carrier arrives near Iran

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.

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[Rasputin]

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.

[Rasputin]

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.