Post
by Corlyss_D » Wed Feb 14, 2007 5:41 am
Dealing with Iran
A countdown to confrontation
Feb 8th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Can anything deter Iran from its nuclear ambitions?*
THE streets of Iran are festooned this week with revolutionary bunting. Black and green banners commemorating the martyrdom of the third Shia imam, Hussein, still flutter from lamp-posts, even though the mournful Ashura rites of late January are over. They now hang beside flags looking forward to February 11th, when Iranians mark the anniversary of the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Such celebrations usually go unnoticed in America. But not this time. The two countries are moving slowly towards confrontation, both over Iraq—where Iran is meddling—and over Iran's nuclear programme. Its provocative president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (above right), has hinted that February's celebrations will include “good news” about the progress of nuclear work. Iran says it is fiddling with uranium and plutonium to produce more electricity. But America and many other countries suspect it is building a bomb.
Last month, when President George Bush announced the deployment of extra troops in Iraq, he also laid out a new strategy to confront Iran. A second carrier strike group, led by the USS John Stennis, is about to join the USS Dwight Eisenhower in the Gulf region. American aircraft will patrol more aggressively close to Iran's airspace. At about the same time as Mr Bush's speech, American forces raided an Iranian office in Arbil, in Iraq, and arrested five men. On January 26th Mr Bush appeared to confirm that he had authorised American forces to kill or capture Iranian agents in Iraq, where they are accused of providing training and sophisticated weapons to Iraqi insurgents. In the words of John Negroponte, America's outgoing director of national intelligence, Iran is beginning to cast a shadow over the whole Middle East.
The United States says it has no intention of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. Robert Gates, the new defence secretary, stresses that “We are not planning for a war with Iran.” But he will not take the military option off the table. One line of thought is that since Mr Bush is not up for re-election, and because his legacy will be defined mostly in terms of security, he might not be prepared to leave office with the Iranian question unresolved, especially if he looks likely to be succeeded by a Democrat. That points to the possibility, at least, of a military strike.
Those keen to avoid a conflict over Iran's nuclear ambitions now pin their hopes on diplomacy toughened by sanctions. Iran has repeatedly rejected an offer made more than a year ago by Britain, France, Germany, America, Russia and China to persuade it to stop its troubling activities. That offer included a proper dialogue with America, improved trade and political ties, co-operation in less proliferation-prone nuclear technologies that would have allowed Iran to produce electricity, but not weapons, and discussions on regional security. Now tougher measures are being tried.
After months of haggling, in late December the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1737, for the first time ordering, rather than asking, Iran to halt its suspect nuclear activities. Sanctions were imposed on ten organisations and 12 individuals involved in either Iran's nuclear or its missile programmes, or both. Further measures may follow unless, within 60 days, Iran suspends its uranium and plutonium-related work and resumes talks.
Time is almost up, and Iran remains defiant. Its president has called the UN resolution a “piece of torn paper”. That attitude seems self-defeating. Iran is not isolated, as North Korea is: it depends heavily on trade, and not just as a seller of oil. Two-thirds of its population is under the age of 30, and unemployment is high; it needs to attract as much outside investment for its oil and gas industry, and finance for building roads and other projects, as possible. Already, the investment pinch from sanctions is being felt across the country: the government now offers cash for some priority jobs, such as building oil refineries, but it struggles to attract reputable international contractors to build them. Sanctions have a better chance of working here than they did in North Korea. But will better be good enough?
For Iran's clerical regime, gaining advanced nuclear technology means irresistible regional clout. By declaring Iran a member of the “nuclear club”, Mr Ahmadinejad puts his country on a par with India and China—as well as Israel (see article). Meanwhile, at home, nuclear achievements are a way to rally popular support round Iran's “inalienable” right to whatever nuclear technologies it chooses. The regime calculates that it can ride out sanctions, and so far it has been proved right. Ordinary Iranians barely feel them: the shops of Tehran are still crammed with foreign goods, from televisions to cornflakes.
Iran has also been doing its damnedest to exploit what it perceives to be divisions within the Security Council, and especially among the six heavies that have taken the diplomatic lead against it. They are in many ways a disparate bunch. Russia, the country Iranian officials have been counting on to protect them from real pressure, deliberately dragged its feet at the UN. It knew America was impatient for results and wanted to flex its muscles. But Russia also wanted to protect its investment in the nuclear reactor it is building for Iran at Bushehr. Tortuous exemptions were written into Resolution 1737 to enable Russian companies to be paid for construction costs, the future supply of reactor fuel, and even for anti-aircraft missiles recently sold to Iran (see article) that could be used to protect its nuclear sites against attack. China, a big buyer of Iranian oil, is no keener on sanctions than Russia is.
Yet the six have nonetheless managed to keep in step. Over the past year America's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has persuaded Mr Bush to keep the diplomacy on track, both by accepting that Iran can have a nuclear programme (just not a weapons-building one) and by agreeing that, if Iran does decide to suspend its nuclear work, America will join in serious talks “any time, anywhere”. Those were big concessions from what Iran likes to call “the Great Satan”. Meanwhile Russia, for all its truculence, has repeatedly delayed supplying the nuclear fuel for Bushehr.
So the six all still see mileage in their diplomatic efforts. And already, in diplomatic terms, Iran is quite isolated. Although it claims the backing of the 114 members of the non-aligned movement for its right to enrich uranium, many are unhappy at its defiance of the Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear guardian.
The ponderous process of adopting a new sanctions resolution at the UN will probably get under way next month. But Iran is already feeling a much sharper pinch from financial sanctions that do not require further UN approval. Operating under the United States Patriot Act, as well as on the basis of a presidential directive adopted in 2005 to target the funds of proliferators, officials from America's Treasury Department have been criss-crossing the globe to persuade governments and banks to curb their business with Iran.
As a result, Iran is finding it increasingly expensive to borrow money. Foreign government-backed credits are getting harder to come by; Japan is among countries that have scaled back their plans to invest in Iran's oil and gas industries. Even legitimate businesses are suffering, as foreign banks find it hard to be certain that the transactions they handle are not being diverted, for nefarious purposes, through Iran's network of front companies. All dollar exchanges, including small transfers for private individuals, have become extremely complicated, and it is very hard to use a credit card to buy online from inside Iran. Already capital is fleeing the country, much of it reportedly ending up in Dubai.
Inside Iran a heated debate is now under way over how to respond to its growing isolation and the prospect of more sanctions to come. There are signs of rising popular discontent with Mr Ahmadinejad's firebrand rhetoric and his capricious management of the economy—as well as worries about sanctions, and how much the nuclear programme will cost Iran. More pragmatic politicians, such as Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, would prefer to re-open negotiations with the West to avoid open confrontation.
When Mr Ahmadinejad and his allies did badly in recent local elections, criticism came into the open. Last week, for the first time, a newspaper editorial even argued the case for suspending nuclear work, as the UN has demanded. Mr Ahmadinejad's wings have been clipped a little. But there is no sign yet that Iran's leaders will reconsider their nuclear ambitions.
The ticking atom bomb
Last summer Mr Negroponte reckoned that Iran could become a nuclear power sometime between 2010 and the middle of the next decade. A recent study by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London reckoned that it would take two to three years “at the earliest” for Iran to go nuclear.
AFP
AFP
Small but defiant
Once Iran has learned how to enrich uranium to make nuclear fuel, it will quickly be able to make highly enriched uranium for bombs. So far, it has assembled two experimental “cascades” of 164 interconnected high-speed centrifuges to produce small amounts of the low-enriched sort. It may soon announce the first cascades in the underground hall at Natanz, where it seeks to link up 3,000 centrifuges by June. Once up and running, these could produce enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb in less than a year—if left undisturbed.
Nuclear experts, however, are sceptical about Iran's real progress. Running high-speed centrifuges reliably for a long period of time is a difficult task which Iranian engineers appear not to have mastered. According to the IISS, setting up the 3,000-centrifuge plant would be a “political act”, designed to show defiance and improve Iran's bargaining position if negotiations are resumed.
Israel, which has tried for years to mobilise international action against Iran, suddenly appears more sanguine. Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, this week insisted “there is still time” to apply diplomatic pressure. Many people, including America's vice-president, Dick Cheney, have suggested that Israel could take matters into its own hands and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities as it did Saddam Hussein's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. But the task may defeat even Israel's air force. Iran has buried many of its nuclear facilities deep underground and has carefully dispersed them, so there is no single target. Senior Israeli security officials argue that, if there is to be military action, it should be carried out by the United States.
Arguably, the best opportunity for a surgical strike has already passed. The Isfahan conversion plant, which produces uranium hexafluoride (UF6, the uranium compound that is passed as a gas into the centrifuges to be enriched), is above ground and vulnerable to attack. It was the first part of the nuclear programme to be restarted by Iran in 2004, and has since produced about 250 tonnes of UF6—enough for 30-50 atomic bombs. But it is now thought to be stored in underground bunkers, much harder to hit.
Another choke-point is the Natanz enrichment facility; but this is buried some 15-18 metres under soil and concrete, and modern bunker-busting bombs might not be able to destroy it. The use of ground forces to secure the area long enough to do the job would be highly risky; the use of a low-yield nuclear weapon, as some suggest, might work physically but is hardly conscionable politically—or morally.
In any case, centrifuges can be rebuilt and hidden elsewhere in a large, mountainous country like Iran. A study last August by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think-tank in Washington, DC, said there were 18 known nuclear sites, many of them underground or close to populated areas, and perhaps as many as 70 unknown ones. One place alone, the Parchin military complex (where research on nuclear warheads may be being done), has hundreds of bunkers and several tunnels.
Many of the sites are protected, and any operation would have to suppress at least part of Iran's air defences, and all its missiles and naval power, to limit any retaliation. The CSIS study concluded that even a large-scale attack, taking several weeks to complete, could leave much of Iran's technological base intact, and allow the country eventually to reconstitute an underground nuclear programme. In short, it would be very difficult to stop a determined Iranian regime from going nuclear, either by military action or by sanctions, if it were willing to pay the cost.
The cost of striking
Military action could be painful not just for Iran, but for America as well. The Muslim world would see it as yet another instance of “attacking Islam”. Iran, moreover, has several means of retaliation. It could fire missiles at American bases or Israel, perhaps tipped with chemical or biological weapons. It could also attempt to close off the flow of oil from the Gulf.
AFP
AFP
How much will she suffer for what her government does?
A less overt response would be to stir up its allies to attack coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iran could do much worse than its current meddling in those places. (Indeed, though its political influence in Iraq is undisputed, the scale of its military involvement in the anti-American insurgency has still not been proved for sure.) It could also resort to terrorist tactics farther afield, perhaps even assisting al-Qaeda, some of whose leaders may be under house arrest in Iran.
According to Mr Negroponte, the ability to carry out terrorist attacks is “a key element” of Iran's security strategy. “It believes this capability helps safeguard the regime by deterring United States or Israeli attacks, distracting and weakening Israel, enhancing Iran's regional influence through intimidation, and helping to drive the United States from the region,” he said last month. For the moment, everything Iran does is drawing America in closer, and the risks of an Iranian miscalculation are growing by the day. But America is still uncertain which is worse: to let Iran go nuclear, or to try to stop it by force.
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*No, and even if we could/would do anything about it, the fact that many of Iran's facilities are located amongst civilian populations would prevent us from doing anything meaningful. What a sorry state of affairs the human rights crackpots like HRW, Amnesty International, and the ACLU have brought us to.
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
