Iran:The Next War

[Rasputin]

is a former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times and is now senior fellow at the Nation Institute and author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America"

The release of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iran's nuclear status marks the latest in a series of assaults by the Pentagon and the intelligence community against the war posturing of the Bush administration.

President Bush, seven years after assuming power, may finally be halted in his tracks - not by a resurgent Democratic opposition, sagging opinion polls, or an organized antiwar movement, but by the entrenched power structure in Washington he set out to emasculate. The tug-of-war between those within the administration who advocate as many as 1,000 air strikes on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities and those who oppose an attack will be the most dramatic battle of the final Bush years.

Director of Central Intelligence Gen. Michael V. Hayden and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have turned out to be formidable foes to the Bush agenda of preemptive war in the Middle East. Gates, along with Adm. William Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. George Casey, the Army's new chief of staff, are openly opposed to a war with Iran. And they will not, unlike their predecessors, permit the Bush White House to use cooked and fabricated intelligence to whip the country into war frenzy.

The effort by the vice president's office to change or suppress the NIE report, which was ready during the summer and stated that Iran had halted its attempt to develop nuclear weapons four years ago, has consumed the internal mechanisms of government for the last few weeks. The existence of the report did nothing to prevent either Bush or Vice President Cheney from asserting before it was made public that Iran was working to develop a nuclear weapon and could trigger, in the president's words, "World War III."

Bush called on Iran on Tuesday to explain why it had a secretive nuclear-weapons program, and he warned that "for the sake of world peace," no such efforts should be allowed to flourish.

"Iran is dangerous," Bush said after an Oval Office meeting with Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. "We believe Iran had a secret military-weapons program, and Iran must explain to the world why they had such a program."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is also determined to prevent Iran from developing facilities that could produce a nuclear weapon. And Olmert insists Bush is on board, even if top U.S. generals and intelligence officials are not.

Repeatedly during Bush's presidency, the Israeli government, with strong backing from the White House, has turned to force rather than diplomacy to further Israeli interests in the Middle East. Israel unleashed a disastrous bombing campaign against Lebanon last year. This Sept. 6 it carried out air strikes against a Syrian facility that it said was meant to develop nuclear material. Israel has quarantined the 1.4 million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and imposed draconian cuts in electricity and fuel. During the Bush years, the effort to negotiate a solution to the Palestinian conflict has never gone beyond the photo opportunities that characterized the charade in Annapolis, Md. Israel, like Washington, prefers to speak to its adversaries in the language of violence. A strike on Iran fits neatly into this pattern.

"At the beginning of the month, as you know, the National Intelligence Council of the United States published its updated estimation of Iran's intentions and capabilities in the nuclear field," Olmert told the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies on Tuesday. "I attribute great importance to the declaration by the president of the United States, George Bush, that nothing has changed; Iran was and remains dangerous, and we must continue the international pressure with full force to dissuade Iran from its nuclear tendencies. I trust and am confident that the United States will continue to lead the international campaign to stop the development of a nuclear Iran."

White House lawyers conceivably could use the 2001 congressional authorization to use military force against Afghanistan and the 2002 authorization to use force against Iraq to justify an attack on Iran without going back to Congress for approval. The 2001 resolution gave the president the right to use force against the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and anyone who "harbored such organizations or persons." The 2002 resolution handed the president the power to defend the country against "the continuing threat posed by Iraq."

The allegations that Iran is involved in supporting and arming insurgents in Iraq, along with the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, could be twisted by White House lawyers to legitimize air strikes against Iran.

"This unexpected bump in the road has, in my opinion, stimulated the Bush administration to develop its own new rationale to justify what will in effect be a full-speed-ahead continuation of past and present policy toward Iran, almost as if the NIE issue had never intervened," said Ray Close, a retired Middle East specialist for the CIA.

The Bush White House has tried to use the report to assert that Iran remains intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and is a threat.

"Convinced that they have been viciously sabotaged by a partisan anti-Bush intelligence community, and desperate to justify the basic philosophy and doctrine that underlies their specific policies, these people are painfully wounded and thus in a dangerous frame of mind," Close said. "With hopes for a strengthened international sanctions regime fading, and no reasonable excuse available for launching an early preventive military attack, but with their pride deeply injured and their nerves sandpapered raw, I would not be surprised at all to see a heightened level of provocative and threatening rhetoric emanating from the White House in the months ahead."

The covert operations taking place in Iran, if they are stepped up, could provoke retaliatory acts by Iran against U.S. personnel or facilities in Iraq or the Gulf. Any action by Iran deemed by the Bush White House to be hostile to the United States or Israel could, Close argues, be instantly seized upon by the president to carry out air strikes against Iran. This could ignite a deadly chain reaction.

"I think the publication of this NIE, rather than cooling the atmosphere, as many analysts predict," Close warned, "is actually going to lead to a more dangerous and unstable situation in the region in the months and years ahead."

[Rasputin]

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. "

Plato, (428/427-348/347 B.C.), ancient Greek philosopher

"If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran— if that happens—for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget about American global leadership."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter



For many months, the Bush-Cheney administration and its Neocon allies in Congress and in the media have been inching toward a fresh new war against Iran, possibly using nuclear weapons, under the same flimsy pretext that it had used, in 2003, to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The military gear had been positioned, with three full armadas in or around the Gulf of Hormuz, and the propaganda machine was running full time to persuade the American people that a state of perpetual war was in their interests.

But something happened on the road to war. On December 3, Michael McConnell, Director of the National Intelligence Council, dropped a political bomb. His office—in close collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the fifteen other U.S. Intelligence agencies, regrouped under the umbrella of the United States Intelligence Community (IC)—issued a devastating report about the veracity of the claims made for months by the Administration that Iran was actively engaged in developing a nuclear arms program. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report said, "We judge that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program....We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007." The Director of the US National Council issued also a most unusual statement, saying that "the decision to release an unclassified version of the key judgments of this NIE [report] was made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation’s security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of Iran’s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available." In other words, even if the Intelligence Community felt that the disclosure would undermine a key Bush-Cheney policy, they were ready to go public with the damaging report for the sake of national interest.

The very claim of a nuclear Iran has been used by President George W. Bush to push to the limit, at the United Nations and in Congress, to obtain some cover for a bombing campaign against Iran. In fact, as recently as October 17, the American president had used the apocalyptic term of a possible "World War III," even raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust, to draw the darkest picture possible if Iran was not prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, thus ending Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Vice President Dick Cheney has also claimed that Iran had a "fairly robust new nuclear program," and that had to be stopped by all means. Indeed, for months, the person in the Bush administration who most wanted a hot conflict with Iran has been Vice President Dick Cheney.

Well, it turns out that both Bush and Cheney knew, at least since last August, that the Director of National Intelligence had concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear arms program as far back as 2003, four years earlier. The report had the effect of pulling the rug out from under any plan for a preemptive attack against Iran that the Bush-Cheney administration intended to implement in the near term. This was good economic news. Immediately, the price of oil receded from its lofty level around $100 a barrel, an indication that the market had factored in some probability of supply disruptions early in 2008.

Left naked, Bush is now uttering lies and absurdities. First, there was his claim that he had "only learned of the new intelligence assessment" the week before, when it is a fact that the President is briefed every morning by the Director of the United States Intelligence Community (IC). Quickly, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, contradicted him. Hadley said that "Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program." And Senator Rockefeller confirmed that "the president knew, even as he was saying 'World War III' and all that kind of stuff." And, second, Bush professed about not being deterred by mere facts: "The [National Intelligence Estimates that Iran has no nuclear weapons program] doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world—quite the contrary." I don't know which of these two statements undermine the most President Bush's credibility, if there is any left.

Where does all this leave the warmongering Neocon crowd? They are scurrying in all directions with op-eds in far right media to discredit the U.S. Intelligence Community, trying to rekindle the flames of war against Iran. This a crowd that revolves around the pro-Israel Lobby in the U.S., led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and by some Washington-based pro-Israel "think-tanks" such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). They have been pushing for an illegal attack against Iran, using nuclear arms, for years. They have all the reasons now to be displeased. They have used their enormous influence within the Bush-Cheney administration and within the leadership of both Congressional parties to attack Iran, and all these efforts seem to have been made for nil.

Indeed, the Israel Lobby, led in Congress by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Ind-Conn.), has been strongly influencing some prominent so-called Bush Democrats to join in the war frenzy against Iran. As its point-man in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman (Ind-Conn) has been calling for the U.S. bombing of Iran every other week, dutifully doing the round of Sunday morning public affairs TV shows. The Neocons have not been deterred by the fact that bombing another country without provocation is an international crime of high order. According to the Nuremberg Charter, it is even a crime punishable by death.

So far, all U.N. resolutions about sanctions against Iran have been specifically framed under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving the use of armed force." It is most doubtful that China and Russia, two Security Council members, will ever accept a resolution that would impose sanctions against Iran under U.N. Article 42, which allows the use of military force "to restore international peace and stability," now that official American intelligence assessments state that there is no Iran nuclear arms program. The United Nations is not going to serve as cover for military operations against Iran.

And the U.S. Congress, especially the non-neocon Democrats, will be increasingly reluctant to give the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check to launch a war against Iran. Last September, the U.S. Senate came very close to handing the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check for military strikes against Iran, when 75 Senators voted in favor of the so-called Kyle-Lieberman non-binding resolution. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), voted in favor of the resolution. This was counteracted last November 1, by 30 U.S. Senators, none of them Republican, led by Senator Jim Webb, from Virginia, who sent a letter to President George W. Bush stressing that the Administration did not have the legal authority to attack Iran without congressional approval.

In the past, Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has even accused Bush of playing down the threat of a nuclear Iran and has called for swift action at the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Iranian government. Similarly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ostensibly capitulated to Bush, after having attended AIPAC's annual meeting, stripping from a war finance bill the provision that would have forced Bush to go to Congress before launching an attack on Iran.

Now, with the NIE report officially out, it will be increasingly difficult for the Democratic leadership in Congress to pussycat with the Bush-Cheney administration regarding any future unprovoked aggression against Iran.

Last February, Admiral William Fallon, the head the Central Command (CENTCOM), expressed strong opposition to an administration plan to increase the number of carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three, and he vowed privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM. And last June, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei said that an attack on Iran over its refusal to freeze programs that could make nuclear weapons would be "an Act of Madness.''

For the time being, cooler-headed individuals have prevailed over the ideologues and the warmongers. As a result, the planned Bush-Cheney-Lieberman war against Iran has been sidetracked. With the subprime financial crisis scheduled to pick up steam in the first half of 2008, it is good news that a fabricated geopolitical crisis has so far been avoided. The main question now is to ask whether Bush and Cheney have the gall to ignore the official intelligence report and invent new lies to justify a war against Iran. Stay tuned for more on this incredible saga.

[Rasputin]

'Danger of war' exists with Iran: Sarkozy

PARIS (AFP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned of a risk of a war with Iran if Israel considered its security seriously threatened by Tehran's nuclear drive in a magazine interview to be published Thursday.

Sarkozy also said he was ready to travel to Tehran to discuss a civilian nuclear partnership if the country steps up its cooperation with the UN atomic watchdog.

"The problem for us is not so much the risk that the Americans launch a military intervention, but that the Israelis consider their security to be truly threatened," Sarkozy told Le Nouvel Observateur.

"Everyone agrees on the fact that what the Iranians are doing has no civilian explanation," Sarkozy said, referring to Tehran's uranium enrichment work. "The only debate is about whether they will develop a military capacity in one or five years."

Israel considers Iran its number one enemy following repeated calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.

"The danger of a war exists," said the French president, who insisted he had "never been in favour of war."

Sarkozy held out the prospect of a nuclear partnership with Tehran if it improved its cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), saying he had the "trust of the Israelis and the Americans" on the matter.

"If Iran allows the IAEA to carry out its checks, I would be ready to travel to Tehran to discuss a collaboration on civilian nuclear energy," he said.

The Vienna-based watchdog said last month that Iran had taken important steps in revealing the extent of its nuclear programme but was still defying UN demands that it suspend uranium enrichment.

An IAEA delegation arrived in Tehran Sunday to tackle outstanding questions over its nuclear programme.

The United States and other Western powers want Iran to suspend enrichment completely, suspecting it of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb -- a charge denied by Iran.

US President George W. Bush said Iran was "dangerous", despite the publication last week of a US intelligence report saying Iran had suspended a secret nuclear weapons programme in 2003.

The report said allegations about Iran's atomic goals had been overblown for at least two years, but it also said the Islamic republic could have the capability to make a nuclear weapon by 2015.

Widely considered the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel has vowed to keep up its diplomatic campaign against Iran's nuclear drive.

France has also toughened its line on Iran since Sarkozy's election in May, and is now much closer to that of the United States.

Sarkozy has said a new UN resolution boosting sanctions against Iran is still justified despite the US report.

But he also insisted in the interview that "the Americans are not, in this case, warmongers."

The United States, Britain, Germany, France, Russia and China had been working on a new UN Security Council sanctions resolution against Iran's enrichment programme when the US report was released.

[Rasputin]

A few weeks ago, Ron Kramer was driving with his wife when a bumper sticker on the car in front of them caught his attention.

``I'm already against the next war,'' it read, referring to the possibility of war with Iran.

So is Kramer, who argued passionately at a town hall meeting Wednesday at the Kalamazoo Public Library that going to war with the Middle Eastern country would not just be a mistake, it would be illegal.

``An attack on Iran would be illegal under both domestic and international law,'' said Kramer, a professor of sociology at WMU, at the meeting, sponsored by Kalamazoo Nonviolent Opponents of War. ``We need to already be against this war.''

The Bush administration's public discussion on Iran began when President George W. Bush included Iran -- along with Iraq and North Korea -- as the three countries that made up what he called the ``Axis of Evil'' in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

Kramer presented several arguments the Bush administration has used to try to persuade the American people -- and the world -- that Iran is a threat to the United States and to peace in the Middle East, including Bush's assertion that Iran's enrichment of uranium could lead to the development of a nuclear bomb which might lead to ``World War III.''

Kramer pointed to a recently released National Intelligence Estimate report that found Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

The report did, however, caution that Iran continues to enrich uranium and still could develop a bomb between 2010 and 2015 if it decided to do so. Iran has said its enrichment activities are for civilian purposes.

``War with Iran would be catastrophic,'' Kramer said. ``Thousands of innocent Iranians would be killed or injured, many more American military personnel would be lost, oil production may shut down across the region, the price of oil could soar to $200 a barrel, the global economy would be affected and a world depression would loom.''

Michael Khaghany, an Iranian-born cardiac surgeon who lives in Kalamazoo, also spoke at the event.

A majority of Iranians are opposed to the policies of their president, hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, he said, and war with the country would do much to undermine those in Iran who want to promote a more democratic country.

``We need to let the reformers in Iran do their job,'' Khaghany said. ``Iranians are a very nationalistic people. If America goes to war with Iran, they will find that the (Iranian) people will rally around the government and the hope for reform will be gone.''

Margaret Morris, one of about 100 people who attended the event, left resolute.

``We're determined to stop this next war,'' she said. ``We're still trying to stop this war.''

Wednesday's meeting was a follow-up to a meeting in August on the topic ``How do we get out of Iraq?'' that organizers said drew more than 100 people to the library.

[Rasputin]

What Will Israel Do?

Ehud Olmert, like George W. Bush, is trying hard to make it seem that nothing has changed, and that the international diplomatic coalition against Iran is still intact. "The state of Israel is not the main flag-bearer against the quirks of the regime in Tehran," the Israeli prime minister declared testily last week, after officials in his own government seemed to suggest that Israel had been left on its own by Washington. Olmert said that the recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran--which stunned leaders around the world by concluding, after years of bellicose rhetoric from Bush officials about Iran's nuclear ambitions, that Tehran had halted its weapons program in 2003--has "generated an exaggerated debate" in Israel. "Some of us even interpreted the report as an American retreat from its support of Israel," Olmert said. "This is groundless … I trust and am confident that the United States will continue to lead the international campaign to stop the development of a nuclear Iran."

But Olmert is not Moses; he can't hold back elemental forces all by himself. And a rising tide of opinion in Israel's intelligence and national-security circles believes that the NIE does signal American retreat--and, more profoundly, renewed Israeli isolation over what is deemed an existential threat out of Tehran. Gen. Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister who has warned for years that Israel would eventually have to confront Iran alone, told me that "today we are closer to this situation than we were three weeks ago ... we have to be prepared to forestall this threat on our own." Some prominent American experts think that the NIE all but assures Israeli military action at some point. "I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel would attack Iran," Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA official and senior adviser to three U.S. presidents--including Bush--on Middle East and South Asian issues, told me Thursday, citing conversations he had with Mossad and defense officials. "And that was before the NIE. This makes it even more likely. Israel is not going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened."

Riedel said the Bush administration compounded the problem by failing to signal to the Israelis that the NIE assessment was coming. "Something like this should have been presented to the Israelis through professional intelligence channels," he said. Yuval Steinitz, a member of the right-wing Likud Party, told me that he had led a delegation of Knesset members to Washington a few weeks before the NIE was made public Dec. 3. Steinitz said he met with Vice President Dick Cheney, national-security adviser Stephen Hadley and other administration officials, but not even they seemed aware that their 2005 estimate that Iran was definitely pursuing nuclear weapons was about to be repudiated. Even though Iran was discussed, he said, "no one seemed to have any sign this was forthcoming," he says.

Many Israeli experts are appalled by the tone of the report, which concludes with "high confidence" that Iran halted its "nuclear weapons program." The NIE arrived at this finding even though it also asserted that Washington now had concrete evidence of that program, and despite Tehran's brazen pursuit of uranium enrichment. Even formerly moderate European and Russian officials suggest that the report went too far, especially in concluding that the U.S. intel community still has "moderate confidence" that the suspension of the program continues. Uzi Arad, a former Mossad official and adviser to Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Likud prime minister, said that on a recent trip he made to Moscow, a Russian general poked fun at the naiveté of the NIE, commenting that if the Iranians had halted weapons development in 2003 it was partly because they were satisfied with progress there and wanted to devote investment to harder parts of the nuclear equation, like enrichment. In the end, these critics say, Iran is likely to be further emboldened by the report (Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad lost no time in boasting of America's "surrender"). "The irony is that the effect of this report may be self-negating--by itself it will accelerate Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons," Arad said.

Some experts question whether the Israelis have the capability to seriously damage Iran's nuclear program, which is secured in secret, hardened facilities around the country. But others point out that the new NIE gives evidence of far better intelligence on Iran--possibly including the whereabouts of its facilities. "It did state for first time that a military nuclear program was in motion until 2003," said Sneh. "That was a major revelation that should have been picked up, and it was very damaging incriminating evidence, justifying much harsher action against Iran."

A few experts, such as David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington, say the intel still seems scant on the location of Iran's secret centrifuge development and manufacturing complex. Still, Albright points out that the Israelis are likely encouraged by the nonreaction to their September airstrike on what is reported to have been a Syrian nuclear facility, which may have been a test run for Iran, or at least a warning directed at Tehran. "Israel has gotten away with it in a sense," says Albright. He suggests that any Israeli pre-emptive action might not be a "traditional strike" but could involve more "sabotage of equipment." The Israelis also know that the Arab states are terrified of an Iranian nuclear power, possibly to the point of looking the other way at another such strike.

Sneh, like others, isn't conceding failure yet on the official Israeli and U.S. approach, which involves isolating Iran diplomatically and economically. A third U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing economic sanctions against Iran is expected to pass next year, but it is likely to be fairly hollow because of Russian and Chinese opposition. One reason for Bush's abruptly announced nine-day visit to the region in mid-January is to deal with the fallout from the NIE, which includes not only the possibility that Israel will act unilaterally but also that Bush's prized Annapolis peace process will stall. The Bush trip is, in part, an implicit concession to U.S. hawks that the NIE went too far in absolving Iran. It is also a conscious effort to reassure both Israel and the Arab states that Washington will stand up to Iran's increasing intrusiveness and hegemonic tendencies. A dominant conspiracy theory in Arab capitals in the wake of the NIE is that Washington is seeking to cut a deal with Tehran--one that would effectively allow it to keep its nascent uranium-enrichment capability--in exchange for Iranian help in stabilizing Iraq.

Bush may also reassure the Israelis and Arab allies that the NIE overstated things in letting Iran off the hook. In yet another briefing to angry congressmen Wednesday, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell conceded that "we could have written parts of it more clearly," according to a senior congressman who was there. The ranking Republican member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, says he's calling for an independent commission to probe the report. "Most of the world looks at it and says it's an embarrassment to the United States because once again the U.S. intelligence community has dramatically changed its position," Hoekstra told NEWSWEEK. And it may well be that Washington must take back its words one more time to prevent the Israelis from acting on their own.

[Rasputin]

Iran receives second nuclear fuel shipment

Iran received the second shipment of nuclear fuel from Russia on Friday for a power plant being constructed in the southern Iranian town of Bushehr, the official news agency IRNA reported.
The delivery signaled continued momentum toward beginning operations at the long-delayed 1,000 megawatt light-water reactor, which the Russians are helping to construct and the Iranians say will come online in 2008.

Ahmad Fayazbakhsh, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said the fuel was delivered according to a schedule agreed with the Russians, which state television said would bring 82 tons of nuclear fuel in eight shipments.

"The amount of fuel delivered to Bushehr was equal to the previous shipment," Fayazbakhsh was quoted as saying by IRNA. "It was delivered within a specified timetable."

Tehran heralded the initial shipment as a victory, saying it proved its nuclear program was peaceful, not a cover for weapons development as claimed by the U.S. and some of its allies.

The U.S. downplayed the first delivery as expected, and both Washington and Moscow said the supply of nuclear fuel meant Iran had no need to continue its uranium enrichment program — a process that can provide fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a bomb.

Iran insisted it would continue enriching uranium because it needed to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it was building in the southwestern town of Darkhovin.

Iranian officials have said they plan to generate 20,000 megawatts of electricity through nuclear energy in the next two decades.

The U.S. initially opposed Russian participation in building the Bushehr reactor and supplying it with fuel but reversed its position about a year ago to obtain Moscow's support for the first set of U.N. sanctions against Iran.

Washington was also influenced by Iran's agreement to return spent nuclear fuel from the reactor back to Russia to ensure it doesn't extract plutonium to make atomic bombs.

Russia's decision to begin shipping nuclear fuel to Iran followed a U.S. intelligence report released earlier this month that concluded Tehran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and had not resumed it since. Iran says it never had a weapons program.

It also came after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had been truthful about its past uranium enrichment activities.

The U.S. has pushed through two sets of U.N. sanctions against Iran demanding it suspend uranium enrichment and has been urging Security Council members to pass a third set.

Iran has defied U.N. demands, and Washington's effort to impose harsher measures has been complicated by the recent intelligence report and resistance from Russia and China.

[Rasputin]

Is president Bush trying to strengthen his alliance against the Iranian regime during his visit to the Middle East? In Iran, with its current dog-eat-dog internal political affairs, president Ahmadinejad is too busy trying to keep his head above water while his political opponents try to drag him down. Too busy perhaps to notice how discontent the Iranian people have grown.

The system of the Islamic Republic is in a state of crisis. The fact that neither Khatami nor Ahmadinejad has been able to realize unity even within the ruling elite shows this. For over two decades, the main resistance to that system has come from within Iranian civil society. And it is Iranian civil society that will ultimately bring the Islamic regime down.

Knowing this, one could state that wanting to change this regime should start by supporting the Iranian people instead of opposing the current Iranian government. Perhaps our best weapons against autocracy and terrorism are not military or even diplomatic but ideological and cultural.

The struggle is not just for political rights but also for the right of individual citizens to live the way they choose. There will be no foreign government who will defend the existential rights on behalf of Iranians, since governments have no direct interest in such thing, so we must rely on other actors to push the cause of liberty.

The best group, except for the Iranians in Iran, to demand change are human rights groups, activists and journalists who have the capability to take up the cause of the Iranian people.

It will however help when governments all around the world would make a stand by the international community on Iranian human rights. An example of how it shouldn’t be however is the U.N. Human Rights Council’s recent decision to stop monitoring Iranian and Uzbek human rights violations, even though executions in Iran are currently rising.

President Bush would not make efforts to strengthen his alliance in the Middle East against Iran if he hadn’t had any serious military objectives. There seems to be something awkward about the timing of the bilateral frictions in the Persian Gulf during the past few weeks. Regardless of what the recent report of the intelligence services said about Iran not having a nuclear program, president Bush does not seem to want to lay back and loosen up the rope around Iran’s neck.

Under such circumstances, military action against Iran would however only strengthen the hard-line elements within the regime by justifying political repression. Governments planning an invasion in Iran the “Iraq-style” to introduce a model of enlightened democracy would not only cause internal damage and destabilization in the region, but it would also damage the credibility of Iranian liberals. We should remember that an open and democratic society can be reached only through open and democratic methods.

During an interview between several members of the Iranian political opposition and European politicians the opposition members were asked what the EU can do to improve democracy and liberty in Iran. One of the opposition members answered very simple but to the point: “defend and promote your values!”

Promoting values of freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of conscience will be much more effective than any missile to neutralize Iranian radicals. Values, not bombs will eventually save Iran. Let’s hope that the EU and other democracy and human rights respecting countries will promote these values effectively enough to reach through the dog-eat-dog crisis struck Iranian political core.

[Dokhtar Bandari]

You may or may not want to believe this...but they are not going in Iraq style..wait and see the surprise...sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon.

Tim for you neanderthals to get out of Iran and go back to the cave which you came from. Marg bar IRI....

Bodo bia Iranian Guards..bodo bia mano betarsoon....lol

[Rasputin]

Bush: Iran threatens world security

President Bush said Sunday that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger "before it's too late."

Bush said Iran funds terrorist extremists, undermines peace in Lebanon, sends arms to the Taliban, seeks to intimidate its neighbors with alarming rhetoric, defies the United Nations and destabilizes the entire region by refusing to be open about its nuclear program.

"Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terror," Bush said in a speech he delivered about mid-way through his eight-day Mideast trip that began with a renewed push for an Israeli-Palestinian peace pact -- an accord he said whose "time has come."

Chiding U.S. allies who have withheld civil liberties, Bush said governments will never build trust by harassing or imprisoning candidates and protesters. But his rebuke was general, and he did not single out any U.S. partner in the region for oppressive practices.

"You cannot expect people to believe in the promise of a better future when they are jailed for peacefully petitioning their government," Bush said. "And you cannot stand up a modern, confident nation when you do not allow people to voice their legitimate criticisms.

Bush gave the speech on democracy in one of the few countries in the region -- the Emirates -- where democracy has not been a vital issue, but virtually ignored. In other countries in the region, especially Egypt, the fight between democracy activists and autocratic governments has been much more pointed and controversial.

He called on the Palestinians to reject extremists, although he did not mention the Islamic radical group Hamas, which has gained control of Gaza. And he said the Iranian government in Tehran should make itself accountable to its people.

"Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere," Bush said. "So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late."

Bush spoke at the Emirates Palace, at an opulent, gold-trimmed hotel where a suite goes for $2,450 a night. Built at a cost of $3 billion, the hotel is a kilometer long from end to end and has a 1.3 kilometer white sand beach -- every grain of it imported from Algeria, according to Steven Pike, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy here. Half the audience was dressed in western attire and the other half in Arabic clothes -- white robes and headdresses for men and black abayas, many with jeweled edges, for women.

Bush said advancing democracy and freedom is the core of his administration's foreign policy and critical to U.S. security.

"The United States has no desire for territory. We seek our shared security in your liberty. We believe that stability can only come through a free and just Middle East where the extremists are marginalized," the president said.

He noted democratic reform in Iraq. "You have made your choice for democracy and have stood firm," Bush said, speaking to the Iraqi people. "The terrorists and extremists cannot prevail."

[IranianGuards]

You may or may not want to believe this...but they are not going in Iraq style..wait and see the surprise...sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon.

Tim for you neanderthals to get out of Iran and go back to the cave which you came from. Marg bar IRI....

Bodo bia Iranian Guards..bodo bia mano betarsoon....lol

you can do nothing but only bark lol
a barking dog doesnt bite

[Dokhtar Bandari]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOL...good one agha.
And ur absolutely correct regards the fact I don't bit...but I know that you do!!!!!!!! and u know what they say about biting dogs....they will be put to sleep forever.

you can do nothing but only bark lol
a barking dog doesnt bite

[IranianGuards]

they will be put to sleep forever.

nobody is stronger then Sepahe-Pasdaran

[Rasputin]

nobody is stronger then Sepahe-Pasdaran

yeah.. specially in dozdi and import/export iranian girls to dubai !

[IranianGuards]

yeah.. specially in dozdi and import/export iranian girls to dubai !

that is not true.
we love our beloved leaders khomeini and khamenei

[Rasputin]

that is not true.
we love our beloved leaders khomeini and khamenei

yeah... who loves them is that person which winnin' lots money