Iran Affairs

Former Canadian ambassador to Iran: Canadian FM stands in the way of real solutions with Iran

John Mundy, the last Canadian ambassador to Iran, writes that the Canadian Foreign Minister Baird's hawkish position on Iran has prevented real solutions from being considered, and notes that Iran had already accepted many of the demands placed on its nuclear program:

Imagine if Iran’s current rulers agreed to suspend further fuel enrichment, implemented an Additional Protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency and began negotiating a trade and cooperation agreement with the West that included enhanced people-to-people contacts and a dialogue on human rights. If you listened to Foreign Minister Baird last week you would dismiss this as a pipe dream.

In fact the Iranian government, led by its current leader Ayatollah Khamenei, actually did this. In 2003, after years of patient negotiation between Iran and the European Union, Iran agreed to all of this and also made a direct overture to the United States. The agreement lasted until 2005 when Ayatollah Khamenei became convinced that Europe was negotiating in bad faith and only acting for the United States, who remained unambiguously hostile.

This of course is a reference to the period in which Iran voluntarily suspended enrichment as a good faith gesture, conditional on the EU-3's recognition of Iran's nuclear rights under the NPT pursuant to the Paris Agreement deal...which the EU-3 ended up violating. And we know why the US remained "unambiguously hostile" to resolving the nuclear dispute with Iran thanks to Peter Osborne who writes about the Paris Agreement deal:

The answer is that a different agenda is at work, which we believe has little or nothing to do with Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons. The US and its European clients are driven by a different compulsion: the humiliation and eventual destruction of Iran’s Islamic regime.

 

Israel: zobies exist

This boy does not exist

"On Ambassador Sherman’s Testimony on Iran"

Peter Jenkins, former UK representative to IAEA, has a very interesting post on Lobelog reviewing Wendy Sherman's Congressional testimony on Iran, and he concludes

Most Europeans yearn for the objectivity and ethical agnosticism that underlay the US opening to China, détente with the Soviet Union, and the final flurry of US/USSR agreements heralding the end of the Cold War. That sort of objectivity should come naturally, one might think, when the adversary is Iran, a state so very much weaker than the US. Alas, the opposite seems to be the case!

 

Ahmadinejad's continued popularity amongst Iranians

The Orange County Register newspaper has an interesting article about Ahmadinejad's continued popularity entitled "The People's President?" written by the Associated Press' Ali Akbar Daraeni and Brian Murphy, who visited the small town of Birjand in eastern Iran (hometown of my maternal grandmother.)

The point out that Ahmadenjad came into office as a champion of the poor, and the poor are likely to continue to support him or any candidates that are pro-Ahmadinejad. The conclusion of the article quotes a reformist:

“A pro-Ahmadinejad candidate will have a good number of votes,” said Abolfazl Zahei, a pro-reform activist. “There are 2,000 villages in South Khorasan province, and most people in those villages have benefited from Ahmadinejad’s government. People care about making their ends meet and welfare, not politics.”

 

The Guardian's Dehghan promotes nonsense on Iran's election

Saeed Kamali Dehghan, writing for the Guardian, attempts to explain Iran's presidential elections by promoting some standard nonsense propaganda, for example by claiming that the so called Green Movement was "pro-democracy" movement when in fact they were attempting to violently undo an election whose results have since been vindicated as truly representative of Iranian public opinion by multiple independent polls.

Furthermore, on the topic of Iran's nuclear program, he simply and matter-of-factly asserts that the sanctions are "over suspicions that the programme has military ambitions" and that Iran has "failed to abide by its international obligations" when in fact by now anyone who has followed the nuclear dispute is unquestionably aware that the sanctions have nothing to do with the nuclear program and instead, that the  dispute over the nuclear program is merely a pretext pushed by the US as a cover for a policy of imposing regime-change in Iran. Furthermore, Iran has not violated any such non-existent "international obligation" (as Dehghan claims matter-of-factly) to give up her sovereign right to enrich uranium -- if anything it is the US and EU who violated their international obligations under the NPT with respect to not just Iran by forcibly attempting to deprive countries of their rights as recognized by the NPT (and also not disarming their own nuclear weapons as the NPT requires them to do, neverming murdering civilian scientists and making illegal threats of attacking Iran on a daily basis etc etc.)

So here we go again with the Western media and complicit journalists promoting bullshit under the guise of analysis. just watch how this Dehghan character has repeated some of the standard talking points of the US about iran's nuclear program without even a hint of objectivity. You can of course expect more of this. Note that there is no option to post comments regarding this piece by dehghan on the Guardin site; you're just supposed to accept it.

What's up in Syria...

Another US cock-up in the Mideast that will cause generations of problems, due primarily to short sightdness and a lack of accountability, just like supporting Saddam.  That's what's actually going on in Syria

 

Firstly, the FSA [Free Syrian Army] - that you have been hearing so much about - does not exist.

A better title would be MWG, or men with guns, because having guns and firing them in the same direction is the only thing that unites them.

The word "army" suggests a cohesive force with a command structure. Almost two years after the FSA was created, that remains illusive.

The situation has been further complicated by the introduction into the arena of al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and armed criminal gangs.

"It is clear that nobody knows how to end this crisis”

Secondly, the Syrian opposition's political leadership - which wanders around international capitals attending conferences and making grand speeches - is not leading anyone. It barely has control of the delegates in the room with it, let alone the fighters in the field.

These two things can help explain why this crisis has so far shown no sign of being resolved politically.

America is not acting because it does not know what to do or whom to do it with.

Neither do the European countries.

Having spent the last few days in Beirut and Damascus, talking to the international community, Western diplomats, FSA activists and Syrian regime supporters, it is clear that nobody knows how to end this crisis.

That's just about the only thing all sides agree on.

Saudi and Qatari 'meddling'

The vacuum created by Western inaction has been filled by two of the Gulf states - Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

These are both sorely undemocratic states, they are not champions of democracy either at home or abroad.

So, why in Syria did we have a "free world" standing by and watching the democratic uprising being brutally crushed, when suddenly from over the horizon came the cavalry from the very un-free Gulf world to arm and support the aspirations of the people?

This bit is simple - they did not.

Saudi Arabia and Qatar are meddling in Syria for thoroughly selfish reasons. Freedom, democracy and human rights have absolutely nothing to do with why they are arming the rebels.

President Assad's Alawite community is a splinter from the Shia faith - its closest allies are in Shia Iran.

Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia hates Shia Iran, so it is using the war in Syria to try and weaken it.

 

Oh the irony of criticizing Stephen Hawking's Israel boycott!

Does anyone else not see the extreme irony in the fact that the same week in which Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott an academic conference in Israel is decried as being contrary to "peace and progress," corresponds to the imposition of new sanctions on the publication of Iranian research articles in international scientific journals? 

Frederick Dahl's own-goal on Parchin speculation and Iran

Frederick Dahl writes for Reuters that IAEA inspectors can find incredibly minute traces of nuclear material at Parchin, if Iran had conducted secret nuclear experiments there as alleged. What Frederick Dahl leaves out is that the IAEA already visited Parchin, twice in fact in 2005, and at time such environmental samples were taken. Nothing was found.

Kinda a key fact to be left out, huh? Dahl is speculating about what could be in Parchin and could be discovered if it is inspected by the IAEA, but not mentioning that it was already inspected.

The funny thing is that I remember just about a year ago, there was almost the same sort article published about "what cound be found" at Parchin.

Apparently to "journalists," Parchin has become a sort of unopened Christmas present box, which has a unique charm: You can shake it up and weigh it and toss it around, all the time speculating and imagining all sorts of wonderful and amazing things that may be in there. A pony! A race car! A nuclear bomb! Anything is possible! The limits are only your imagination.

But not content with adding to the bullshit "suspicions" about Parchin, Dahl ends the piece  with a speculative quote from Robert Kelley about how, in effect, even if no such radioactive particles are found there, even then the suspicions about Parchin should continue since the Iranians could have used a non-radioactive substitute for uranium: Tungsten! There' could be Tungsten in the Christmas box!

First of all, I just want to point out the greater rhetorical framework of this debate. I have written about the uses and abuses of logic and rhetoric in the Iranian nuclear debate before and this is a subject of endless fascination for me. Plainly said, some people are willing to go to any extremes of irrationality rather than to admit that these claims about Parchin are just bullshit. Similarly, they found ways to dismiss the warnings about the lack of evidence of "WMDs in Iraq" a few years ago.

See, in magical media land, everything is open to further speculation -- and it sells ads too, conveniently enough. The fact that no evidence of a nuclear weapons program has been found in Iran after years of intensive investigation, is of no importance. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, they say, meaning in effect that just because we can't find something doesn't mean it's not there. But three-legged goblins? The love child of Elvis and Bigfoot? Rabid sharks with lasers on their heads? Yes, they all "could" exist too even though we don't have any evidence of their existence. How far do you take this? As far as is politically convenient. After all, how can the non-existence of something ever be proven? It can't, so you can keep up the speculation indefinitely.(*) 

And this is where we see the true rhetorical benefit of such reasoning and how it can be used as tool of subtle persuasion: it has the effect of shifting the burden of proof. We come up with the speculation, and then require the other side to prove that our speculation is not true. No matter how much they object that there's no evidence of what we speculate must exist, we dismiss their concerns: the fact that there's no evidence that three-legged goblins exist, is not proof that they don't exist. Similarly, we imagine the scary, nasty nuclear things that may exist in Iran, and then we require Iran prove that our imaginary nuclear things don't exist. The IAEA can say everyday that they don't have proof of any nuclear weapons program in Iran -- it nevertheless could exist. So, the other side is then caught in a jam: they can refuse to try to prove the negative, in which case they seem guilty, or they can try fruitlessly to prove a negative, in which case they also end up looking guilty.

This was precisely the same position that the US put Saddam into: prove that you got rid of your WMDs. Saddam filed a detailed 12,000 page declaration showing how the WMD program had been eliminated, but the US just turned around and accused him of attempting to cheating by filing such a voluminous document. Saddam could not win. 

What a great rhetorical scam. 

Anyway, another irony in this piece is that it quotes former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley speculating about this mythical use of a uranium substitute by Iran at Parchin, but Dahl failed to mention that Robert Kelley is also a vocal critic of the idea that secret nuclear experiments had been carried out there. Specifically, Kelley pointed out that any use of nuclear material in the so-called "secret nuclear test chamber" as alleged to have existed at Parchin would have contaminated the area, far and wide, and would have been picked up by environmental sampling done by the inspectors. In fact this point was also made by the Iranians themselves when they laughed out loud at the allegations prevalent back then that Iran was busy "sanitizing" the site in question, because it had been a secret nuclear site -- allegations that were complete with satellite photos of running water as proof of this sanitization. 

Yes, the Iranians themselves already acknowledged that they're fully aware that nuclear sites could not be sanitized, and in fact they pointed out that that fact by itself was a reason why the allegations about Iran having conducted secret nuclear experiments there should be doubted in the first place. After all had Iran conducted those experiments as alleged, aside from the fact that previous environmental samples turned up nothing, there would be no point in trying to sanitize the site.

I guess Fred Dahl didn't think that was worthy of mentioning, even though in effect he has just vindicated the Iranians' reasoning with this article of his.

 

* The very nature of inductive reasoning, after all, is incapable of proving things to be true. Inductive reasoning can only suggest that some conclusions are more probable based on the assumptions in their premisses.

Update on Vaez-Sajadpur Carnegie report situation

This morning, I read what was I guess a response by Mr Vaez regarding my criticisms of the Carnegie Endowment report that he wrote along with Mr Sadjadpur. I wasn't able to make out the full response because it had been highly edited prior to being posted to the Gulf2000 Listserve (I can only access this on the G2K website, I don't receive the emails so perhaps a less edited version that made more sense exists but I haven't seen it.)

Of course due to the rules of G2K I can't reproduce the response by Mr Vaez either, but if anyone is actually interested, below is my reply anyway -- I think you can make out the gist of his points from my reply.

I should say that I won't be following up on this anymore, unless something dramatic happens since the CEIP report is a non-event which no one actually bothered to read as far as I can tell.

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In response to Mr Vaez, to the extent that I could make out the post

On the first point of self-sufficiency: many countries with zero uranium reserves have highly developed nuclear programs -- and no one is telling them that they should give up their sovereign rights or face bombings -- so that's pretty much irrelevant. The "omni-present narrative of self-sufficiency" is not necessarily indicative of self-sufficiency in raw materials but in technological capability. To rely on the statements of some politicians when convenient, and yet to ignore the statements such as that provided by Mr Salehi which I cited, in no way can be deemed to be an "assessment on its merits" of the issue as Mr Vaez claims, and is precisely an example of the one-sided and agenda-driven nature of the CEIP report.

On the so-called concealment issue, I would be very grateful to Mr Vaez if he could explain how an op-ed written by Mr Nafisi in 2006, about a correspondence between Ay. Khomeini and Commander Rezai in 1988, in which the idea of a prospective desirability nuclear armaments is raised as an example of an unrealistic set of conditions to win the war, and which was dismissed by Ay Khomeini, amounts to any sort indication of the "domestic context" or  proof for the idea that Iran had a military motive in mind when it supposedly "restarted" the nuclear program 4 years prior to that correspondence. Next, I would be grateful if he could explain why the CEIP report totally ignored the multiple other events I cited, including reports on Iranian national radio, which show that the nuclear program was hardly a secret, and that the uranium exploration and enrichment development program continued from 1979, and was unrelated to and predated the much-cited appearance of AQ Khan by many years.

Germany and the UAE are most certainly cited in the report as models of emulation for Iran, without regard to the actual merits of those models.

On the subject of 'transparency': In paragraph 52 of its November 2003 report on the Implementation of NPT Safeguards in Iran, theIAEA stated that " there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities ... were related to a nuclear weapons program." A year later, the IAEA again stated that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities."And since then, all of these previously undeclared activities were deemed resolved by the IAEA pursuant to the Iran-IAEA Modalities Agreement. All of this is entirely missing from the CEIP report. Indeed to accuse Iran of a lack of transparency, when Iran not only implemented the Additional Protocol volunarily but also regularly exceeded the requiremens of even that treaty to which it was not a party, nevermind suspending enrichment entirely for around three years, is simply ridiculous.

The claim that the report does not "equate Bushehr with Chernobyl" simply beggars belief.  Chernobyl is repeatedly raised as an example of  inherently unsafe Russian nuclear engineering skills and is used to cast doubt on the safety of Bushehr, and there's not a single instance in which the very fundamental differences in the design of the two reactors is acknowledged.  I would not argue that there is sufficient safety in nuclear materials anywhere (in fact the greatest danger is in unregulated nuclear medical waste, which can actually kill people as an unfortunate event in Brazil a few years ago showed) however to accuse Iran of having an unsafe nuclear program and yet ignore the existing political context and sanctions is simply inexcusable especially when Iran has been cut off from receiving the technical assistance it has requested from the IAEA on several projects, including those related to improving nuclear safety, due to US pressure on that agency (and in violation of the NPT.)

It is most certainly true that people are entitled to their own opinions but not their own facts -- and the CEIP report engages in quite a bit of cherry-picking of those facts when it isn't resorting to opinions, arguments by innuendo and false parallels. Incidentally, I am not a proponent of the nuclear program in Iran, as I have nothing to gain or lose from it. I am a proponent of objectivity and facts. Indeed the CEIP report could have been a contribution to an informed and civil debate, but that's not what happened.

Peter Oborne: How the US messed up a chance for peace with Iran...again.

Peter Osborne writes in the Telegraph about how the EU3 violated the Paris Agreement with Iran under US pressure in 2005, and thus missed a chance to make peace with Tehran:

One witness puts the problem like this: “There was not the faintest chance that President George W Bush’s Republican advisers and Israeli allies would allow him to look benignly on such a deal. On the contrary, if the Europeans were to defy American wishes, they would be letting themselves in for a transatlantic row to end all rows...

So the peace proposal from the Iranian negotiators was killed stone dead even though the European negotiating team realised that it was both very well judged and in full conformity with international law.

Of course when Iran then ended the 3 year voluntary suspension of enrichment that accompanied this talks, the EU3 accused Iran of "violating the Paris Agreement."

Oh and incidentally, earlier in 2003 an Iranian peace offer made to the US was similarly spurned.

So what does Peter Osborn think was really going on?

The answer is that a different agenda is at work, which we believe has little or nothing to do with Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons. The US and its European clients are driven by a different compulsion: the humiliation and eventual destruction of Iran’s Islamic regime.

And this also corresponds to former IAEA head ElBaradei's conclusions:

They weren’t interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change – by any means necessary.

Allow me to take this opportunity to say, I told you so. 

So remember that the next time the corporate media matter-of-factly declares "The goal of these sanctions is to support diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve the disagreements with Iran without having to resort to violent means." Because that's a lie.

Iran’s Nuclear Odyssy by Vaezi and Sadjadpour .

(Yes I know I misspelled Odyssey. There are lots of typos here, because I didn't bother dedicating the time to spell check this and just typed it out as I went along .. and as I get older, I care less and less about stuff like that. I'm not getting paid to do any of this, you know, and I seriously doubt anyone else has read the full document anyway.)

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My critique of "Iran’s Nuclear Odyssy", by Vaezi and Sadjadpour published by the Carnegie Endowment: -- this was posted but in a highly edited form on the Gulf200 Listserve so I thought people should have a chance to read the full version.

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While I applaud the conclusion that the US has to take a more realistic stance with respect to Iran’s enrichment program, the material on the nuclear program itself in this report is, frankly, egregiously inaccurate and amounts to a series of bile-spitting non-sequiturs and outright falsehoods that should not have been published with the  imprimatur of the CEIP. I won’t bore anyone with a page-by-page criticism, though there is in fact something worthy of criticism on every page, but all-in-all their arguments are the same gripes that have been tossed around in exile circles for a while now and are often contradicted within the same report. The contradictions are not highlighted but are instead artfully evaded, and we are also presented with footnotes to sources that either do not support the assertions they’re cited for, or even contradict them.

 

 I’ll just limit myself to 5 issues and will save the funniest bit for the last:

 

1- The authors repeatedly emphasize that the size of Iran’s uranium deposits and the capacity of the facilities at Natanz are insufficient to support a totally independent domestic nuclear fuel program -- leaving out that the Iranians have repeatedly stated that they did not plan to rely exclusively on domestic fuel to power their nuclear program, but had developed the program as bargaining chip and a hedge against price increases and foreign cut-offs. In fact, Mr Salehi specifically made this point in an interview published in the Financial Times in 2004:

“Nantaz, with all its vastness, can supply only one reactor for a year. We are to construct seven reactors, we are starting the bid for the twin reactor in Bushehr in a year’s time, so for that one we need to buy our uranium from outside. ..We say that for other plants we are going to buy our fuel from outside, but we are not going to become hostage to their wishes. Once they know we can develop our own enrichment, then they will enter into bargaining with us – like any other country.” (SOURCE: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/52c8d7b8-027c-11d9-a968-00000e2511c8.html#axzz2QjGRroFt)

 

 

2- The most egregious section is entitled Concealment(1984-2002) on page 8, in which the authors go to great lengths to characterize Iran’s nuclear program as being secret and having military aims. They claim matter-of-factly that the motivation for the decision to restart the nuclear program was for it to serve as a “deterrence option” in the face of Saddam, and then they go to great lengths making a connection between AQ Khan and the program as proof of the military nature of the program.

Strangely, the evidence they provide for this matter-of-fact statement about a military motivation is footnote 38, an opinion piece written by Rasool Nafisi in the Iranian.com in 2006, which in no way supports their assertions of fact (In his article, Mr Nafisi in turn refers to correspondence between Commander Rezai and Ayatullah Khomeini in 1988, which was made public by Rafsanjani, in which Rezai stated that Iran could not hope to win the war with Iraq unless there was a massive -- and totally unrealistic -- increase in Iran’s armaments including nuclear weapons. Khomeini did not take this seriously, and as Mr Nafisi himself writes in the article, some have latched onto this correspondence and spin it as the long-sought evidence of Iran’s nuclear weapons aims.)

Sajadpour and Vaez also claim that “Iran’s uranium enrichment program was thus born in secret” and assert that the facility in Natanz was “clandestine”, and that China had provided nuclear material to Iran in secret, etc. etc.  Reality begs to differ with all of this. First of all, Iran was not legally required to formally declare the facility at Natanz when the ISIS/MEK “exposure” of the site occurred, and the same applies to the heavy water project. And while the timeline as presented by the authors show a large gap in Iran’s enrichment program between 1979 when “work was suspended” and 1986 when the AQ Khan “Doctor No” character is introduced, there was in fact a lot more going on -- events which, when not deliberately ignored, paint an entirely different image than the impression the authors’ try to convey.

 For example, In April 1979 Fereydun Sahabi, then Deputy Minister of Energy and Supervisor of the Atomic Energy Organization, specifically stated in an interview that while the nuclear program would be cut back, the Iranian “Atomic Energy Organization's activities regarding prospecting and extraction of uranium would continue.” In fact, far from reinvigorating a “secret” nuclear program in the late 1980 as a deterrent to Saddam, Iranian national radio reported the discovery of Uranium in Dec 1981, March 1982, and again in Jan 1985.

The 1982 national radio broadcast specifically quoted the director of Isfahan nuclear technology center,  Mr Saidi, as stating quite explicitly that Iran was going to import the necessary technology to develop the enrichment program too.

Furthermore, Mark Hibbs, one of the consultants in this report, wrote in Nuclear Fuel magazine in 2003 that the Iranians and the IAEA had intended to launch a joint program to develop enrichment facilities in Iran but that the US stopped the IAEA from doing so in 1983. The motivations for the Iranians going to AQ Khan was thus not due to secret military aims as this report seeks to imply, but because the US had systematically obstructed Iran’s efforts to obtain the civilian nuclear technology that it was entitled to have under the NPT. (While the authors mention the US interference in multiple Iranian nuclear contracts with foreign nations, they pretend not to notice that this  contradicts their own thesis of a “secret” nuclear program in Iran.)

Further information missing from this report is the fact that IAEA officials had visited Iran’s uranium mines at the invitation of the Iranians in 1992. And while the authors mention that US pressure ended Iran-Sino nuclear cooperation, they fail to mention that Iran told the IAEA in 1996 that they would complete the uranium conversion facility by themselves, and that the Iranians formally declared the facility to the IAEA in 2000 -- almost three years prior to the dramatic MEK/ISIS “exposure” of Iran’s supposedly “secret” nuclear program.

I won’t continue debunking the finer points in this section, but all of this information is a matter of public record (the Iranian radio broadcasts were translated by the BBC World Service and can be obtained on Lexis.) Therefore, I consider the authors’ presentation of such a one-sided and contra-factual narrative of events as evidence of bad faith and an agenda which taints the rest of the report too.

 

 

3- The authors go on quite a bit about the supposed lack of attention paid to alternative energy sources in Iran, for example by repeatedly emphasizing the potential for natural gas. They fail to mention that Iran has massively increased its consumption of natural gas in recent years, and in fact today more than 75% of Iran’s electricity comes from natural gas. Furthermore they leave out hydroelectric power, which currently accounts for about 3% of Iran’s electricity production, and that Iran has invested heavily in constructing some of the largest hydroelectric dams in the world. Thus to characterize Iran as mono-maniacally pursuing nuclear power is simply inaccurate and false.

In fact, if anything the sanctions have harmed Iran’s development of alternative energy sources. For example, in addition to investing in wind power, Iran is a manufacturer  exporter of wind energy turbines, but has had a hard time obtaining the material used for the rotors due the sanctions. Indeed much of the “costs” that the authors attribute to Iran’s nuclear program are actually costs of the sanctions and not the nuclear program itself, but while they insist that Iran should abandon its nuclear program, lifting sanctions is apparently beyond the pale.

Here, I am not interested in debating the economics of nuclear power, as I am sure you can ask 10 economists and get 13 answers. Ultimately, as an investigation by a Foreign Affairs Select Committee of the British Parliament concluded, “arguments as to whether Iran has a genuine requirement for domestically-produced nuclear electricity are not all, or even predominantly, on one side” and neither the US or any other country has a right to tell Iran how to run its own economy, especially at the point of a gun barrel.

 

 

4- In criticizing Bushehr, the authors repeatedly use “Chernobyl “ as a scare word, nevermind that the reactor at Chernobyl was fundamentally of an entirely different design that the sort of lightwater reactor used at Bushehr which has an excellent safety record and is used worldwide. They also repeatedly refer to the UAE and Gemany as a model for Iran, but leave out quite a few facts.

Let us put aside the fact that Germany and the UAE are very fundamentally different countries and cannot be compared to Iran, whether in terms of economic development, strategic considerations or energy demand. The media often report that Germany has phased out nuclear power and has instead substituted renewable sources (specifically, solar power) but in fact Germany has already started to experience energy shortfalls, which have been compensated for by non-renewable sources such as natural gas imports, a significant increase in coal power (making up for 80% of the shortfall, according to Wikipedia) and nuclear-generated electricity from the Czech Republic. 

And, while the US “123 Agreement” with UAE  does indeed require the UAE to “renounce” (as the authors put it) enrichment or reprocessing of nuclear material (thus earning the agreement the “Gold Standard” label in non-proliferation circles) in fact the agreement is only limited to US-origin nuclear material, and furthermore the agreement specifically allows the UAE to renegotiate the deal in the future. Countries more comparable to Iran have not agreed to give up enrichment as part of a bilateral 123 Agreement with the US, and recently S Korea stopped negotiations over their renewal of their 123 Agreement with the US over this issue. In short, the UAE deal is not only not a model for Iran, it isn’t even a model for other countries. As one arms control wonk pointed out recently,  far from serving as a Gold Model, the UAE agreement is little more than  “a sui generis case unlikely to be replicated that creates a misleading impression about U.S. leverage over certain partners.” (SOURCE: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/01/it_s_not_as_easy_as_1_2_3)

 

 

5- And finally, we come to a bit of comedy. According to the authors, the fact that the US and Israel released the Stuxnet virus on Iran and assassinated nuclear scientists there is proof that Iran can’t be relied upon to run a nuclear program which safeguards nuclear material from non-state actors who are presumably out to steal Iran's enriched uranium. Here, the authors site an AP article as proof of an impending disaster at Bushehr due to Stuxnet (footnote 195.) However, if you actually read the AP report cited, you’d see that that it has been misrepresented. According to the AP article cited, the report in question was issued by “a nation closely monitoring  Iran’s nuclear program” -- Russians, Israelis, Chinese?  -- and the report itself actually stated that “such conclusions were premature and based on the ‘casual assessment’ of Russian and Iranian scientists at Bushehr.” The AP article then goes on to quote a cybersecurity experts and Russian nuclear experts stating that Stuxnet could not in fact have damage Bushehr.

 

But aside from that, the argument itself is weirdly illogical on several counts. First of all, the US and Israel, which everyone assumes were behind Stuxnet and the assassinations, are not "non-state actors."  Furthermore, nuclear scientists in any country tend to die when bombs are attached to their cars, and Stuxnet went on to wreak havoc well beyond Iran’s borders (in fact by some accounts Iran wasn’t even the primary victim of the virus.) But what I am really curious to know is what the authors think these mythical non-state actors can do with stolen Iranian enriched uranium because, aside from tossing it at someone’s head, the stuff isn’t actually particularly dangerous. It has low-level radioactivity, but certainly cannot be used for a bomb. In gaseous form, it is highly corrosive -- but so is Fluorine, an industrial gas which can be purchased commercially far more easily. Of course once irradiated, fuel rods made from enriched uranium are highly radioactive, but in the case of any attempted theft of the stuff the first victim would be the fool who tried to steal it.

 

As I said, I am not going to bore anyone with debunking what is a series of half-baked claims that are hardly new or interesting, especially since it doesn’t seem that too many people have actually read the entire report. The more interesting question for me is what role the Carnegie Endowment had in vetting this report before it was published under their name. After the Iraq war, the Washington Post and NY Times submitted a weak mea culpa for misleading their readers about “WMDs in Iraq” (even though particularly in the case of the NY Times, the lessons learned and promises made were quickly forgotten as the human dictaphone Michael Gordon once again pushed out scaremongering articles consisting of a long series of anonymous govt official quotes, etc.) but there has been no real accounting for the role of the think tanks in pushing that nonsense. I am not aware of any academic study of the role of think tanks in that fiasco, and don’t expect to see it now but if such an academic study is undertaken, this report by Mr Vaez and Sajadpour should serve as Exhibit A of one-sided and inaccurate, agenda-driven reports published under the guise of scholarship. Where is the peer review? Where is the balance? Where is the accountability?

 

Happy Iranian New Year folks!

I wish all my readers -- whether or not you agree with my blog -- a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

Obama won't decide on Iran's nuclear program

The Leveretts have an article at HuffPo entitled "Obama's Choice: Real Diplomacy With Iran -- or War" wherein they say,

Tehran's conditions for a long-term deal remain fundamentally what they have been for years -- above all, U.S. acceptance of Iran's revolution and its independence, including its right to enrich under international safeguards. Just as importantly, the Obama administration is no more prepared than prior administrations to accept the Islamic Republic and put forward a proposal that might actually interest Tehran. And Obama's ability to modify sanctions in the course of negotiations -- or lift them as part of a deal -- is tightly circumscribed by laws that he himself signed, belying the argument that sanctions are somehow a constructive diplomatic tool.

Frankly, I don't see the point. By now it is obvious that Obama does not have the balls to take on AIPAC, and yet the US is in no position to start another war either ... So Obama will most likely make all the right noises to keep the Israelis satisfied and yet will kick the ball down the road.

Like I keep saying, if you're expecting these talks to ever pan out, you're betting on the wrong horse. The Israeli influence over US foreign policy has not disappeared by magic -- it is still there, and any US-Iran rapprochement is anathema for them. With Syria wobbling, the US and Israel are not interested in making any deals because their hand could be stronger later if Assad falls. But this assumes that the US is actually interested in making a deal in the first place, rather than dragging out this standoff until there is an opportunity  to impose regime-change in Iran (which is and will always be the "best scenario" goal of the US and Israel.) The history of this standoff has shown that's the case: the US has repeatedly batted away opportunities to resolve this standoff peacefully whilst also addressing any actual proliferation threats, and instead has repeatedly deliberately imposed conditions on the talks that were intended to kill any chance for compromise. And in addition, we all know that Obama is simply not capable of making any sort of deal with Iran even if he wanted to anyway, since the removal of sanctions would be the minimum quid-pro-quo demand by Iran, and US sanctions are mostly imposed by the pro-Israeli Congress not the US President. (That fact could not have been made more apparently by the treatment meted out to Hagel in his disgusting nomination process as Obama's Sec of Def.)

In any case I was reminded of an Dec 2006 interview with Iranian Ambassador Javad Zarif published in the National Interest Online site, when he predicted that the sanctions won't have any effect except to act as an obstacle to reaching one of the many compromise solutions offered by Iran and others which would have addressed any real weapons proliferation threats, but certainly they won't prevent Iran from continuing her perfectly legal nuclear program. Amb Zarif pointed out even back then that in fact the sanctions policy seems more intended to prevent any sort of resolution rather than solving the standoff:

The Security Council sanctions will not be able to stop the Iranian program [and] the sanctions that are requested will not satisfy proliferation concerns. Proliferation concerns—if there are any real, sincere proliferation concerns—can be addressed through mechanisms that would bring about transparency, international monitoring and other possibilities that would provide the assurance that Iran’s program will always remain peaceful. The Security Council can impose sanctions but that does not provide that assurance.

Because Iran has been denied technology over the last 27 years and this resolution only officiates what has been the policy and practice, Iran has had to be discrete in its acquisitions of peaceful nuclear technology to the point that today Iran’s nuclear program has been localized. Every element of that program is produced locally and our own scientists have developed the scientific know-how in order to be able to sustain the program without any external support.

That was not always the case. Our desire was to have international cooperation in order to have access to technology. But the option that was provided to Iran throughout the past 27 years—and now more officially in this resolution—is to either accept being deprived of this technology—which is assuming greater and greater significance—or to try to develop it based on our own. Between these two options, we certainly choose the latter.

If the option were to be provided to Iran to develop this technology through cooperation, that is what we have suggested: an international consortium. Other countries, including Western countries, could own jointly with Iran the facilities, and also jointly operate them. That would give the greatest assurance that these programs are not diverted into any illicit activities.

Walt: So what if Iran gets the bomb.

Prof. Walt has an blog entry at Foreign Policy in which he essentiaaly makes th point that even if Iran had a nuclea weapon, it would be pretty useless, and the US would not attack Iran over it.

He starts out positing so many "suppose that" in order to put a hypothetical nuke in Iran's hands, arguendo, that I got lost. I don't have an argument with his article as such. My real criticism however is that by even hypothetically accepting such a premise, articles like this legitimate the the idea that Iran's nuclear program is really the cause of the current standoff b beteen the US and Iran, when it clearly isn't. The article implicitly buys into the framing that "the problem" is the nuclear program in Iran and not AIPAC-dictated policy of imposing regime change. The nuclear issue is and always has been a pretext, and we should not forget that fact, even for the sake of argument.

But aside from that, I was reminded by Walt's article about a "scandal" in Fance a few ears ago when Jacques Chric decided to ad lib a little instead of mouthing the same tired lines (which have become evev more shabbily worn since) about this alleged "Iranian nuclear threat" What did Chriac say that caused the scandal?

During a presidential press briefing at the
Elysée palace devoted to the Paris conference on
climate change, a New York Times journalist changed
the subject to ask the French President about the
Iranian nuclear threat. Chirac began with the standard
official "International Community" line, namely that
Tehran's refusal to give up its uranium enrichment
program was "very dangerous". But then, Chirac
(thinking, he explained later, that he was speaking
off the record) gave in to the temptation to speak
honestly. For Iran to have a nuclear weapon was not
really so dangerous, he said. To make his point, he
asked rhetorically what good it would do Iran to have
a nuclear bomb, or even two. "Where would it fire that
bomb? At Israel? It wouldn't have traveled 200 meters
through the atmosphere before Tehran would be razed."

Chirac even went so far as to suggest that Iran had a
motive for its nuclear research, including its fear of
being "challenged or threatened by the international
community. And the international community, who is
that? It's the United States."

Of course the media went crazy about this. How dare Chirac say Iran's nuclear program isn't the threat that Israel and the US say it is, even though the Israelis themselves quietly say they don't really feel threatened by it either!

March 16: Halabja anniversary

Just listened to a BBC News segment on the March 16, 1988 poison gas attack on the Kurdish village of Halabja by Saddam's forces during the Anfal campaign,which killed 5000 people. Of course, there was no mention of the US/German and othe European backing of Saddam, or the facts that the US tried to shift blame for the attack off of Saddam and onto Iran (even though it was the Iranians who first tried to bring Saddam's gas attacks to public attention through the UN, though the US had instructed its representative at the UN to try to stifle debate over the issue, while at the same time the US was arming Saddam.) Specifically, the first photographs (warning: images of death)of the aftermath of the attack were taken by an Iranian photojournalist Kaveh Golestan who was later killed covering the US invasion of Iraq. Ironically, he was working for the BBC when he was killed.

Ironically, and despite US complicity in the atrocity at Halabja, Bush cited the event as a pretext for invadng Iraq: “On this very day 15 years ago, Saddam Hussein launched a chemical weapons attack on the Iraqi village of Halabja,” George W. Bush proclaimed at the Azores summit on March 16, 2003.  “If military force is required, we’ll quickly seek new Security Council resolutions to encourage broad participation in the process of helping the Iraqi people to build a free Iraq.”  Failing to get another Security Council resolution to authorize the use of military force, he went ahead anyway, and killed even more Iraqis.

Iran had been trying to bring Saddam's use of WMDs to the world's attention ever since the Nov 13 1983 chemical attack on Panjavin, an Iraq village a few miles from Halabja, causing 30,000 Kurdish/Iranian casualties (earlier yet use of chemical weapons at Haij Umran had resulted in 100 casualtis.) In 1984, Iran introduced a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council condemning Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons on the battlefield. In response, the United States instructed its delegate at the UN to lobby friendly representatives in support of a motion to take "no decision" on the use of chemical munitions by Iraq. If backing to obstruct the resolution could be won, then the U.S. delegation was to proceed and vote in favour of taking zero action; if support were not forthcoming, the U.S. delegate were to refrain from voting altogether.

From then on, Iranians and Iraqis suffered thousands of casualties from Saddam's chemical weapons, while at the same time, Iraq was removed from the US State Dept list of terrorist nations so as to ease the process of sending weapons to Saddam, a process that National Security Council adviser Howard Teicher explained in a court affidavit (which was later sealed) was intended to ensure Saddam's grip on power in the face of Iranian battlefield victories.  There were also two trips to Baghdad in 1983 and 1984 by Donald Rumsfeld, then serving as a special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in which Rumsfeld was famously shown shaking hands with Saddam.

Lets remember now, the United States had a key role in the development of the Iraqi chemical weapons program, which included arranging forthe sale of cluster munitions, sharing intelligence, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological weapons components. Leaked portions of Iraq's "Full, Final and Complete" dislosure of the sources for its weapons programs lists many American companies which provided the chemical precursors to Iraq's weapons program, even though the US tried to suppress the disclosure. These reportedly include thiodiglycol, a substance needed to manufacture deadly mustard gas, which made its way to Iraq via Alcolac International, Inc., a Maryland company, since dissolved and reformed as Alcolac Inc., and Phillips, once a subsidiary of Phillips Petroleum and now part of ConocoPhillips, an American oil and energy company. The US was fully aware of the use of these chemicals - in fact, the Reagan administration had to first remove Iraq from the State Department list of terrorist nations in order to ease the transfer of the technology and material to Iraq.

NY Times agrees: Iran nuclear negotations doomed by Israeli-owned US Congress

Imagine my surprise when I see an editorial in the NY Times that I can actually agree with! The NY Times editors typically have the most misleading and inaccurate claims about Iran, even repeatedly referring to a non-existent "Iranian nuclear weapons program" but today they have an editorial entitled "Congress gets in the way on Iran" in which they complain that fresh Congressional sanctions on Iran harm the nuclear negotiations. More significantly, it indirectly cites AIPAC, Israel and Netanyahu as the motivation behind the measures.

Way back in Jan 2012, I asked a simple question: even assuming for the mere sake of argument that the Obama administration is serious about wanting a deal with Iran and isn't just playing "rope-a-dope" wth Iran in the hopes of eventually achieving regime-change there (which I think it is totally the case, a policy continued and adopted by Obama from the Bush admin, which is why Dennis Ross was initially brough aboard from the Bush administration), since any sort of viable nuclear deal with Iran is going to require the lifting of sanctions, and since most of the US sanctions on Iran are imposed by Congress and not the President, then is the Obama administration actually capable of delivering on any such deal with Iran?

The answer, of course, is a big fat "No." The US Congress is bought-and-paid for by Israel. Obama can barely get his Def Sec nominee Hagel past Congress, and the fellow had to literally debase himself and practically swear never-ending fealty to Israel before he sqeaked by the nomination committee. (Apparently Israel was mentioned during the Hagel hearings more often than Afghanistan, where US troops are still fighting an actual war.)

So, like I said before and before then too these talks will in all liklihood die too. Sorry. That's how the world is.

Why? The Israelis and AIPAC haven't suddenly disappeared, folks. They're still running the show in DC, and will be doing so for the forseeable future, as long as US election laws allow money to talk louder than votes and as long as most American voters can barely find their own country (let alone Iran) on a map. Like I said before, the US-Iran standoff is a sympton of a much greater pathology: the dysfunctional relation between Israel and the US, in which the "tail wags the dog."

At some point, maybe, the burden of this albatross around the US's neck may become so great that people will wake up and throw it off. There are even encouraging signs. After all not so long ago AIPAC lobbyists boasted of their ability to operate in the dark, comparing themselves to night-blooming flowers, but today the excess and malign influence of Israel on US foreign policy (especially over Iran) is part of the mainstream discussion. No longer is mentioning the phrase "pro-Israel lobby" cause to have the utterer classified with various lunatics and genuine or accused anti-Semites as in the past. And like I said before, the more Israel pushes Iran into the spotlight, the more it exposes itself too. 

But they still own Congress, so don't hold your breath about any real deal coming out of these nuclear negotiations yet. Won't happen. Rest assured.

 

Will the US seek IAEA "Special Inspections" on Iran?

There's a rather interesting Associated Press piece published in the Washington Post today that has several interesting points. The article is about the comments of Joseph Macmanus, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, accusing Iran of various things, but that's not the main interest to me.

First, the article is uncharacteristically fair, albeit based on my standards which have been worn down quite low due to the otherwise lamentable and pathetic standards of journalism (and ethics) displayed by most of the media when it comes to their Iran coverage.

For example, the author (whose name I was not able to find in the piece as published right now) writes:

"Macmanus concentrated on expressing the U.S. view of Iran’s alleged failure to meet its international obligations and diminish concerns that it wants nuclear weapons."

Yes, he actually said that the Iranian violations are merely "alleged." Based on my very, very, very lowered expectations of the media, that's a victory. He or she also writes that the main source of the allegations about Iran's alleged past nuclear activities are from the US and Israel, which is nice to see acknowledged.

Of course, the article is not accurate when it claims that Iran "hid its enrichment program for years" as I've demonstrated before. And why not mention that Iran had allowed the IAEA to visit "Parcin" (sic) twice already, and furthermore that legally Iran isn't required to allow any inspections of "Parcin" (sic) at all? Or why not mention what Iran's actual objections to another visit to Parchin which are actually quite reasonable?

And I am pretty sure the article is downright wrong at the end, when it characterizes the previous offer made to Iran thusly:

"Diplomats say the proposal made to Iran late last month... would obligate Iran to decommission its centrifuge plant at Fordo...and ship out the approximately 165 kilograms... as well as allowing increased U.N. oversight....In return, the six are offering to help supply and run Iran’s research reactor which is fueled by plates made from higher enriched uranium, coupled with what Iran wants most — relief from sanctions meant to penalize Iran for refusing to heed U.N. Security Council demands"

No, sorry, this is contrary to other reports of what was actually offered to Iran. Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor wrote about what was offered Iran back then thus:

"On the P5+1 side, the "offer" put on the table earlier this year – which US and European diplomats say privately they would never accept for themselves, if they were in Iran's position – was widely deemed to have been a necessity of the White House before the Nov. 6, presidential election, so that Obama would not be open to accusations that he was "soft" on Iran by offering concessions"

And Barbara Slavin wrote in Al-Monitor:

"The “refreshed” proposal includes spare parts for Iran’s aging Western jetliners — a perennial carrot — and assistance with Iran’s civilian nuclear infrastructure but no specific promise of sanctions relief, Al-Monitor has learned...Iran will be expected to agree to concessions before knowing exactly what it would get in return."

This is altogether a very different version of what was offered Iran than what the unnamed diplomats told the reporter.

There are other issues of fairness and accuracy too but I won't go into all of them now. (For example, when citing Iran's representative who said that Amano had politicized the issue, why not mention the Wikileaks exposure of Amano swearing loyalty to the US on the Iran issue?)

Second, the article mentions the issue of "special inspections" at Parchin. This is the first time that I've seen the media mention Special Inspections. Basically, if there's enough evidence that a country has not declared all of the nuclear material/work it should have declared to the IAEA so the sites can be inspected, the IAEA Board can require "special inspections" of the sites in that country. These inspections are conducted on an ad hoc basis, and are separate from the "normal" and routine IAEA inspections. "Special Inspections" are supposed to be conducted only on "rare occasions", and there's supposed to be a very high evidentiary bar imposed on requests for Special Inspections.

The IAEA Board has approved of requests for Special Inspections twice before: Once for North Korea (but the NKoreans withdrew from the NonProliferation Treaty before the inspections could be carried out, and reached a separate agreement with the US) and in Romania, after the fall of the Soviet Union  (the inspections were requested by the Romanians themselves because they wanted to see what the Soviets had been up to, nuclear-wise, in their newly-independent state.)

But this bit is rather ominous-sounding:

"Asked about possible requests for a special inspection or an IAEA board resolution in the future, [Joseph Macmanus, US representative to the IAEA] later told reporters that “some adjustment might have to be made” in ways to address concerns about Iran, adding that will be taken up by the board “over the next several months.”

Hmm...what sorts of "adjustments" have to be made, I wonder? I think it is obvious that they're going to try to get special inspections without having to come up with the necessary evidence, and IAEA boardmember votes. Lets remember that thus far, the US has failed to actually release the full "Laptop of Death" documentation of the "Alleged Studies" and "Possible Military Dimensions" claims asserted against Iran. Of the documentation that was provided, the US has prevented the IAEA from sharing them with Iran (requiring Iran to disprove allegations that it is not allowed to see) and in some instances the US has refused to even share the documentation with the IAEA itself. Other leaked documents that supposedly incriminated Iran turned out to be laughably obvious fakes -- such as the infamous "AP graph" or the "neutron initiator" document promoted by Oliver Kamm in Rupert Murdoch's London Times. So how will the US provide the necessary evidence to get Special Inspections on Iran to the IAEA Board -- or will it instead just politicize the issue to get what it wants out of the IAEA as before?

As for what Joseph Macmanus actually had to say in this article: who cares? He accused Iran of engaging in deceit etc etc. The usual blah blah blah. But this, as the article points out, is contrary to the noises we've been hearing thus far about the last Iran/P5+1 meeting which supposedly ended in a hopeful note. Add to that, the recent assertions by Kerry,   Biden and General Mattis and other sabre-rattling which followed the end of the last round of negotiations a few days ago. 

I attribute this inconsistency to several factors:

First, there was an exaggeration of the "success" of the last Iran/P5+1 meeting. I personally don't think the US side is willing to compromise over the issue so naturally they're now pouring cold water on the happy reporting about the meeting.

Second, since Obama is scheduled to visit Israel and AIPAC is holding its conference in DC, the politicians are keen to burnish their pro-Israeli credentials. Oh and Kerry is visiting Saudi Arabia, and the Saudis are just as keen as the Israelis to prevent a US-Iran rapprochement of any sort.

However a third possibility -- however unlikely it seems to me -- exists and that is the US is taking a tough stance in public because it is actually interested in making compromises with Iran in the talks. So this is just posturing and a cover. I seriously discount this explanation and think it is actually more wishful thinking than analysis based on facts.

Laura Secor's nonsense review of the Leverett's "Going to Tehran" book

Laura Secor has written a NY Times book review of the Leverett's book, "Going to Tehran," which amounts to a lot of bullshit.

She writes:

The Leveretts argue that the Islamic Republic faces no significant democratic opposition. They scoff at the notion that Iran’s 2009 presidential election suffered from gross irregularities. In their view, it was President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s challenger, Mir Hussein Moussavi, who tried to steal the election by inciting protests that they claim turned violent and that the country’s security forces rightly put down. They assert (without evidence) that virtually all the Iranians who took to the streets in 2009 came from one rich, irrelevant area of Tehran.

What rubbish.

First of all, the burden of providing evidence is on the party making the assertion that the elections were fraudulent in the first place. And the Leveretts pointed out that NO ONE -- not Mousavi, and certainly not Laura Secor -- has been able to provide such evidence. And the fact that the so-called "Green Movement" was based largely on the rich areas of Iran is observable from the election turnout statistics, amongst other things.

 For example, in Shemiranat – the affluent and westernized Northern section of the greater Tehran area, abounding with shopping malls and luxury cars (and where the Green movement is strongest) – Mousavi beat Ahmadinejad by almost a 2 to 1 margin, winning 200,931 votes to
Ahmadinjead’s 102,433.

And while we're on the subject of election turnout statistics, lets take a look at the figures:

For Presidential elections, the turnout in Iran has been*:

1989 56%

1993 51%

1997 80%

2001 67%

2005 63% (Runoff 60%)

2009 84%

For the majlis, the figures are:

1988 59%

1992 59%

1996 71%

2000 69%

2004 51%

2008 60%

 

 

Obviously elections are not viewed as being illegitimate by the Iranians themselves. "Voting is regular and turnout often substantial, with participation rates responsive to rules of the arena, the scale of vetting, and corresponding perceptions of choice."*

Laura insists that the polls cited by the Leveretts are not reliable because of the "repression" however the MULTIPLE, INDEPENDENT polls that the Leveretts cite do not show a scared, repressed pool of respondents. In fact in one poll only 38% of the respondents expressed support for the Ministry of Interior, for example. Hardly the voice of a scared people unwilling to speak out. And as the Leveretts pointed out, all of these poll results generally matched the election outcome too.

 So, sorry Laura, you can't just dismiss these and multiple other polls about Iran.

 Oh and as regrettable as the post-election violence was, if there was no election fraud, that puts a whole different meaning to what happened as well as to the legitimacy of the so-called "Green Movement."

 UPDATE: It seems to me an interesting question of just how much proof is required in the discussion of international affairs to consider a point to have been established. The proponents of regime change and "Green Movements" in Iran have no problem making excess and unsourced claims about the popularity of their movement -- providing NO objective evidence at all and relying entirely on emotional appeals and "blood shirt waving" (literally) -- a and yet they pooh pooh multiple, independent polls of Iranian public opinion conducted by reputable and experienced organizations and demand a degree of certainty about the evidence that is far far beyond what they've provided themselves or what is generally the standard in international affairs. We're supposed to take it for granted that there was election fraud, with no evidence of any quality deemed necessary, but if anyone challenges that presumption, they have to meet a standard of evidence far beyond what is generally accepted in interntional debates, beyond even a scientific standard of proof.

I don't know much about the science of polling beyond my undergraduate statistics course, but I do know that while there are many reasons that a poll can be legitimately criticized, the fact that you simply don't like the outcome is not one of these reasons. Polls in general amount to scientific evidence of a fact, which is a standard of proof far higher than what is even generally accepted in international affairs debates.

In citing these polls, as the Leveretts or I do, we are not saying that they represent Iranian public opinion with absolute certainty, we only point out that the polls amount to very high quality and objective evidence of Iranian opinion. And this objective evidence says the people do generally support the regime. That by itself is more than enough to shift the burden of proof onto the Laura's of the world, who are now obligated to counter that view with their own objective evidence, something which the proponents of the "stolen election" myth have thus far absolutely failed to do.

So in short, are the polls perfect? No. Are they the best evidence we have? Yes. Have the critics of the polls provided any evidence of their own? No. (But don't worry, I'm sure they're cooking up a few polls of their own.)

 

*SOURCE:

Electoral Politics in Iran: Rules of the Arena, Popular Participation, and the Limits of Elastic in the Islamic Republic

By Nigel Parsons

The Middle East Institute Policy Brief No. 30 November 2010

 

Iraq war: who was right and who was wrong.

From the NeoCon Weekly Standard, March 17, 2003:

"We are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N., and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction"

Oops!

(Credit to Peter Kiernan)

Penn State symposium on Iran, with Dan Joyner and the Leveretts

Pennsylvania State University's School of International Affairs and Law School are holding a seminar on Feb 18th (this coming Monday) on the subject of US-Iran relations (with Continuing Legal Ed credits, for you lawyers who need to get some CLE credits. Attendance is free everyone else.)

There will be a live webcast. (link below)

I wish I could attend but too short notice for me. However you can imagine how happy I am that we're hearing something other than the usual false conventional wisdom becoming mainstream. It has been a long time coming.

Symposium to consider potential outcomes of U.S.-Iran relationship

Thought leaders Flynt Leverett, professor at Penn State Law and School of International Affairs, and Hillary Mann Leverett, authors of the new book Going to Tehran: Why the United States Must Come to Terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran, will headline a symposium, “The U.S.-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order.” The event will assess how the course of U.S.-Iranian relations will affect the rules-based regimes and legal frameworks that shape international order in the 21st century. The Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (JLIA) will sponsor the event, to be held in the Greg Sutliff Auditorium of the Lewis Katz Building in University Park, PA, with simulcast to Lewis Katz Hall in Carlisle, PA, on February 15, 2013, beginning at 9 a.m. A live webcast will also be available. 

 “Hillary and I wrote Going to Tehran out of a conviction that how Washington deals with Iran over the next few years will largely determine America’s standing as a great power, in the Middle East and globally, for at least the next quarter century," Leverett said. "We also recognized that the course of U.S.-Iranian relations will have enormous implications for the future of international order," he said. 

Program highlights include: 

• Professor Flynt Leverett on the intersection of the Iranian nuclear issue, the end of the American century and the future of international order.
• Professor Daniel Joyner and Ambassador Richard Butler AC (Ret.) on Iran and the future of nuclear nonproliferation. Ambassador Butler is a renowned expert on nuclear arms control and disarmament.
• A session on Iran and use of force doctrine as a constraint on state behavior will focus on US-Iranian relations during the second Obama administration. It includes former National Security Council Iranian specialist Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, the former head of the Navy JAG corps Vice Admiral James Houck (Ret.), and will be moderated by David Andelman the Editor of World Policy Journal, a former New York Times and CBS News correspondent.
• Hillary Mann Leverett on U.S.-Iranian relations and the transition from American primacy 

 

The proceedings and related essays will be published in JLIA’s symposium issue slated for release in Fall 2013. Information on registering for the symposium can be found online.

 Professor Leverett describes Going to Tehran as challenging much of the prevailing orthodoxy in Washington about Iran and how the United States should deal with it, offering a provocative but uniquely informed depiction of the Islamic Republic as a rational and fundamentally defensive political order that retains the support of most Iranians. The book also argues that the United States needs to come to terms with the Islamic Republic to avert strategic catastrophe in the Middle East. Before its publication, Going to Tehran was excerpted in Harper's, highlighted as a “New and Noteworthy” book by Politico, and featured in Foreign Policy’s “What to Read in 2013” list. Since then, the authors have given presentations at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, the East-West Institute (to be rebroadcast on C-Span), and Politics & Prose and have discussed Going to Tehran on CNN’s Newsroom, Andrew Sullivan’s “Ask Anything” video series, and HuffPost Live.     

 

The Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs is a digital, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal, jointly published by Penn State's School of Law and School of International Affairs. The journal promotes academic and public discourse at the intersection of law and international affairs, featuring contributions in the areas of public and private international law, international relations, comparative law and politics, geography, economics, history, and policy issues in the various sciences.