Iran... What will we do?

[BridgeTroll]

For what it's worth:

http://www.juancole.com/2012/03/netanyahu-1992-iran-will-have-the-bomb-by-1997.html

Netanyahu 1992: Iran will Have the Bomb by 1997
Posted on 03/06/2012 by Juan
Scott Peterson at the Christian Science Monitor did a useful timeline for dire Israeli and US predictions of an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon, beginning 20 years ago.

1992: Israeli member of parliament Binyamin Netanyahu predicts that Iran was “3 to 5 years” from having a nuclear weapon.

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres predicts an Iranian nuclear warhead by 1999 to French TV.

1995: The New York Times quotes US and Israeli officials saying that Iran would have the bomb by 2000.

1998: Donald Rumsfeld tells Congress that Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit the US by 2003.

There is no doubt Stuxnet and other measures have slowed the Iranians down...

[finehoe]

Obama, Iran and preventive war

President Obama yesterday joined virtually every U.S. political leader in both parties in making the obligatory, annual pilgrimage and oath-taking to AIPAC: a bizarre ritual if you think about it. During his speech, he repeatedly emphasized that he “has Israel’s back,” rightfully noting that his actions in office prove this (“At every crucial juncture â€" at every fork in the road â€" we have been there for Israel. Every single time”). One of his goals was commendable â€" to persuade the Israelis not to attack Iran right now â€" but in order to accomplish that, he definitively vowed, as McClatchy put it, that “he’d call for military action to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon.” In other words, he categorically committed the U.S. to an offensive military attack on Iran in order to prevent that country from acquiring a nuclear weapon; as AP put it: “President Barack Obama said Sunday the United States will not hesitate to attack Iran with military force to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Is that not the classic case of a “preventive” war (as opposed to a “preemptive” war), once unanimously scorned by progressives as “radical” and immoral when the Bush administration and its leading supporters formally adopted it as official national security doctrine in 2002? Back in 2010, Newsweek‘s Michael Hirsh documented the stark, fundamental similarities between the war theories formally adopted by both administrations in their national security strategies, but here we have the Bush administration’s most controversial war theory explicitly embraced: that the U.S. has the right not only to attack another country in order to preempt an imminent attack (pre-emptive war), but even to prevent some future, speculative threat (preventive war). Indeed, this was precisely the formulation George Bush invoked for years when asked about Iran. This theory of preventive war continues to be viewed around the world as patently illegal â€" Brazil’s Foreign Affairs Minister last week said of the “all-options-on-the-table” formulation for Iran: some of those options “are contrary to international law” â€" and before 2009, the notion of “preventive war” was universally scorned by progressives.

Again, one can find justifications, even rational ones, for President Obama’s inflexible commitment of a military attack on Iran: particularly, that this vow is necessary to stop the Israelis from attacking now (though it certainly seems that the U.S. would have ample leverage to prevent an Israeli attack if it really wanted to without commiting itself to a future attack on Iran). And I’ve noted many times that I believe that the Obama administration â€" whether for political and/or strategic reasons â€" does seem genuinely to want to avoid a war with Iran, at least for now.

But what this really shows, as was true for the run-up to the Iraq War, is how suffocatingly narrow the permissive debate has become. The so-called “gulf” between Israel and the U.S. â€" the two viable sides of the debate â€" consists of these views: (1) Iran should be attacked when it develops the capacity to develop nuclear weapons (Israel) or (2) Iran should be attacked only once it decides to actually develop a nuclear weapon (the U.S.). Those are the two permissible options, both grounded in the right and even duty to attack Iran even if they’re threatening to attack nobody â€" i.e., a preventive war. That it’s unjustified to attack Iran in the absence of an actual or imminent threat of attack by Iran, or that international law (as expressed by the U.N. Charter) bars the use of threats of military attack, or that Iran could be contained even if it acquired a nuclear weapon, has been removed from the realm of mainstream debate (meaning: the debate shaped by the two political parties). Obama yesterday:

    Iran’s leaders should understand that I do not have a policy of containment; I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. And as I have made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.

Just as was true in 2002 and early 2003, everyone agrees that a preventive war would be justifiable and may be necessary, and the only permitted debate is whether it should happen now or a bit later (where should the “red lines” be?).

Whatever else is true, by having President Obama issue these clear and inflexible threats against Iran to which the nation is now bound, the once-controversial notion of “preventive war” just became much more normalized and bipartisan. Witness the virtually complete lack of objections to President Obama’s threats from either party to see how true that is.

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/05/obama_iran_and_preventive_war/singleton/

[BridgeTroll]

You should really read the Spiegel article...

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,819312-5,00.html

It is a balancing act for Obama. On the one hand, he wants to intimidate Iran with the credible threat of a military strike. On the other, he wants to dissuade Netanyahu from going it alone.

To do that, however, he would have to provide the Israelis with an "iron-clad guarantee" that he himself will stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon -- as long as he is still in a position to do so, says Amos Jadlin, who was head of Israeli military intelligence until the end of 2010. This means that Obama would have to clearly define the point at which the United States would attack Iran. Will he do that?

Not even former Republican President George W. Bush agreed to support Netanyahu's predecessor when Israel attacked the Syrian reactor in 2007. In fact, he advised Israel against it.

The outcome? Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear facility a few weeks later.

[BridgeTroll]

Hopeful news?

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/03/201236134836102808.html

Six world powers have accepted an Iranian offer for talks on its disputed nuclear programme.

Catherine Ashton, foreign policy chief for the European Union, sent on Tuesday an offer to restart diplomatic talks between the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) plus Germany with Iran.

"On behalf of China, France, Germany, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, I have offered to resume talks with Iran on the nuclear issue," she said in a statement.

Tuesday's announcement by the EU's top diplomat came shortly after Russian calls for a resumption of face-to-face dialogue as soon as possible.

A letter on February 14 demonstrated that Iran was now ready for serious negotiations, according to Russia.

Ashton said her remarks were a response to the correspondence sent by Saeed Jalili, Iran's nuclear negotiator.

"Our overall goal remains a comprehensive negotiated, long-term solution which restores international confidence in
the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme, while respecting Iran's right to the peaceful use of nuclear
energy," Ashton said in her reply to Jalili.

A time and venue now need to be agreed, she said.

The last round of negotiations between the Western powers and Iran - in January 2011 - ended in failure.

William Hague, UK foreign secretary, said in a statement that the burden would "be on Iran to convince the international community that its nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful".

Access granted

In a separate development, Iran has agreed to grant access to the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the Parchin compound.

The long-sought access to what Iran calls a military base, not a nuclear facility, came a day after the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Yukiya Amano, said his organisation had "serious concerns" that Iran may be hiding secret atomic-weapons work.

He singled out the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran.

The semi-official ISNA news agency quoted the Iranian statement as saying: "Given that Parchin is a military site, access to this facility is a time-consuming process, and it can't be visited repeatedly."

It said that following repeated IAEA demands,"permission will be granted for access once more".

Israel, which says its existence could be threatened if Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons, is losing confidence in Western efforts to change the Islamic Republic's policy with sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, assured Barack Obama, the US president, on Monday that Israel has made no decision on attacking Iranian nuclear sites, sources close to talks in Washington said.

Netanyahu, however, gave no sign of backing away from the option of military attacks.

Speaking at the ongoing American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference in Washington on Tuesday, Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, said "military action is the last alternative when all else fails" in Iran.

"But make no mistake, we will act if we have to," he said.

[buckethead]

Lot's of focus on Barack'llbombya, but this is smoke and mirrors IMO.

[finehoe]

War With Iran Worse Than Nuclear Iran

The whole question of Iran’s nuclear program and its effect on relations with Israel and the U.S., and on the stability of the Middle East (and the global economy) is front-and-center today with Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to Washington and Barack Obama remarks yesterday at AIPAC. It’s a good time to take a fresh look at the subject, before it gets bogged down in the details of “red lines,” diplomatic manuevers, or mutual saber-rattling.

A fresh look is precisely what Georgetown University’s Paul Pillar (former chief analyst of the CIA’s Counter-terrorism Center) offers in an important new piece for the March/April issue of the Washington Monthly, “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran,” made available today (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/marchapril_2012/features/we_can_live_with_a_nuclear_ira035772.php?page=1). Pillar reviews the evidence and concludes that those urging confrontation with Iran are replaying the tapes of the runup to the Iraq War, articulating a worst-case scenario of the implications of a nuclear Iran along with a best-case scenario of what a military “solution” would actually entail:

Strip away the bellicosity and political rhetoric, and what one finds is not rigorous analysis but a mixture of fear, fanciful speculation, and crude stereotyping. There are indeed good reasons to oppose Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, and likewise many steps the United States and the international community can and should take to try to avoid that eventuality. But an Iran with a bomb would not be anywhere near as dangerous as most people assume, and a war to try to stop it from acquiring one would be less successful, and far more costly, than most people imagine.

Pillar dismisses one chief preemptive-war argument, made most notoriously by Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrichâ€"that a nuclear Iran is “undeterrable”â€"as contrary to everything we know about that country’s history of international behavior, and to the entire history of the nuclear era. He also examines and finds wanting the general accepted premise that Israelis regard a nuclear Iran as an “existential threat” that requires every sacrifice to prevent.

Given its status as the most important foreign policy issue in the 2012 elections, and the national security and economic risks involved in every course of action, every American should make an effort to become better informed about the facts behind the rhetoric. Paul Pillar’s essay is a very good place to start for anyone skeptical of another rush to war.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/paul_pillar_war_with_iran_wors035821.php#