Sabtu, 14 April 2012

Ahead of the this weekend's nuclear talks between Iran and the 5+1 Group , two articles to consider...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ND14Ak05.html

IRAN: THE TIME HAS COME TO TALK Blockades and the danger of disaster By Juan Cole

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt: Negotiators for Iran, the United States, Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany - the P5+1 or "Iran Six" - meet in Istanbul, Turkey this weekend, face to face, for the first time in more than a year. There are small signs of possible future compromise on both sides when it comes to Iran's nuclear program (and a semi-public demand from Washington that could be an instant deal-breaker). Looking at the big picture, though, there's a remarkable amount we simply don't know about Washington's highly militarized policy toward Iran. Juan Cole does a remarkable job of offering us a full-scale picture of the complex economic underpinnings of the present Iran-US-Israeli crisis and the unnerving dangers involved. 

It's a policy fierce enough to cause great suffering among Iranians - and possibly in the long run among Americans, too. It might, in the end, even deeply harm the global economy and yet, historytells us, it will fail on its own. Economic war led by Washington (and encouraged by Israel) will not take down the Iranian government or bring it to the bargaining table on its knees ready to surrender its nuclear program. It might, however, lead to actual armed conflict with incalculable consequences. 


The United States is already effectively embroiled in an economic war against Iran. The Barack Obama administration has subjected the Islamic Republic to the most crippling economic sanctions applied to any country since Iraq was reduced to fourth-world status in the 1990s. And worse is on the horizon. A financial blockade is being imposed that seeks to prevent Tehran from selling petroleum, its most valuable commodity, as a way of dissuading the regime from pursuing its nuclear enrichment program.

Historical memory has never been an American strong point and few today remember that a global embargo on Iranian petroleum is hardly a new tactic in Western geopolitics; nor do many recall that the last time it was applied with such stringency, in the 1950s, it led to the overthrow of the government with disastrous long-term blowback on the United States. The tactic is just as dangerous today.

Iran's supreme theocrat, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly condemned the atom bomb and nuclear weapons of all sorts as tools of the devil, weaponry that cannot be used without killing massive numbers of civilian noncombatants. In the most emphatic terms, he has, in fact, pronounced them forbidden according to Islamic law.

Based on the latest US intelligence, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has affirmed that Iran has not made a decision to pursue a nuclear warhead. In contrast, hawks in Israel and the United States insist that Tehran's civilian nuclear enrichment program is aimed ultimately at making a bomb, that the Iranians are pursuing such a path in a determined fashion, and that they must be stopped now - by military means if necessary. Putting the squeeze on Iran
At the moment, the Obama administration and the US Congress seem intent on making it impossible for Iran to sell its petroleum at all on the world market. As 2011 ended, congress passed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that mandates sanctions on firms and countries that deal with Iran's Central Bank or buy Iranian petroleum (though hardship cases can apply to the Treasury Department for exemptions).

This escalation from sanctions to something like a full-scale financial blockade holds extreme dangers of spiraling into military confrontation. The Islamic Republic tried to make this point, indicating that it would not allow itself to be strangled without response, by conducting naval exercises at the mouth of the Persian Gulf this winter. The threat involved was clear enough: about one-fifth of the world's petroleum flows through the Gulf, and even a temporary and partial cut-off might prove catastrophic for the world economy.

In part, Obama is clearly attempting by his sanctions-cum-blockade policy to dissuade the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. He argues that severe economic measures will be enough to bring Iran to the negotiating table ready to bargain, or even simply give in.

In part, Obama is attempting to please America's other Middle East ally, Saudi Arabia, which also wants Iran's nuclear program mothballed. In the process, the US Department of the Treasury has even had Iran's banks kicked off international exchange networks, making it difficult for that country's major energy customers like South Korea and India to pay for the Iranian petroleum they import. And don't forget the administration's most powerful weapon: most governments and corporations do not want to be cut off from the US economy with a gross domestic product of more than US$15 trillion - still the largest and most dynamic in the world. Typically, the European Union, fearing congressional sanctions, has agreed to cease taking new contracts on Iranian oil by July 1, a decision that has placed special burdens on struggling countries in its southern tier like Greece and Italy. With European buyers boycotting, Iran will depend for customers on Asian countries, which jointly purchase some 64% of its petroleum, and those of the global South.

Of these, China and India have declined to join the boycott. South Korea, which buys $14 billion worth of Iranian petroleum a year, accounting for some 10% of its oil imports, has pleaded with Washington for an exemption, as has Japan, which got 8.8% of its petroleum imports from Iran last year, more than 300,000 barrels a day - and more in absolute terms than South Korea. Japan, which is planning to cut its Iranian imports by 12% this year, has already won an exemption.

Faced with the economic damage a sudden interruption of oil imports from Iran would inflict on East Asian economies, the Obama administration has instead attempted to extract pledges of future 10%-20% reductions in return for those Treasury Department exemptions. Since it's easier to make promises than institute a boycott, allies are lining up with pledges. (Even Turkey has gone this route.)

Such vows are almost certain to prove relatively empty. After all, there are few options for such countries other than continuing to buy Iranian oil unless they can find new sources - unlikely at present, despite Saudi promises to ramp up production - or drastically cut back on energy use, ensuring economic contraction and domestic wrath.

What this means in reality is that the US and Israeli quest to cut off Iran's exports will probably be a quixotic one. For the plan to work, oil demand would have to remain steady and other exporters would have to replace Iran's roughly 2.5 million barrels a day on the global market. For instance, Saudi Arabia has increased the amount of petroleum it pumps, and is promising a further rise in output this summer in an attempt to flood the market and allow countries to replace Iranian purchases with Saudi ones. But experts doubt the Saudi ability to do this long term and - most important of all - global demand is not steady. It's crucially on the rise in both China and India. For Washington's energy blockade to work, Saudi Arabia and other suppliers would have to reliably replace Iran's oil production and cover increased demand, as well as expected smaller shortfalls caused by crises in places like Syria and South Sudan and by declining production in older fields elsewhere.

Otherwise, a successful boycott of Iranian petroleum will only put drastic upward pressure on oil prices, as Japan has politely but firmly pointed out to the Obama administration. The most likely outcome: America's closest allies and those eager to do more business with the US will indeed reduce imports from Iran, leaving countries like China, India, and others in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to dip into the pool of Iranian crude (possibly at lower prices than the Iranians would normally charge).

Iran's transaction costs are certainly increasing, its people are beginning to suffer economically, and it may have to reduce its exports somewhat, but the tensions in the Gulf have also caused the price of petroleum futures to rise in a way that has probably offset the new costs the regime has borne. (Experts also estimate that the Iran crisis has already added 25 cents to every gallon of gas an American consumer buys at the pump.)

Like China, India has declined to bow to pressure from Washington. The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which depends on India's substantial Muslim vote, is not eager to be seen as acquiescent to US strong-arm tactics. Moreover, lacking substantial hydrocarbon resources, and given Manmohan's ambitious plans for an annual growth rate of 9% - focused on expanding India's underdeveloped transportation sector (70% of all petroleum used in the world is dedicated to fueling vehicles), Iran is crucial to the country's future.

To sidestep Washington, India has worked out an agreement to pay for half of its allotment of Iranian oil in rupees, a soft currency. Iran would then have to use those rupees on food and goods from India, a windfall for its exporters. Defying the American president yet again, the Indians are even offering a tax break to Indian firms that trade with Iran. That country is, in turn, offering to pay for some Indian goods with gold. Since India runs a trade deficit with the US, Washington would only hurt itself if it aggressively sanctioned India. A history lesson ignored
As yet, Iran has shown no signs of yielding to the pressure. For its leaders, future nuclear power stations promise independence and signify national glory, just as they do for France, which gets nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear reactors. The fear in Tehran is that, without nuclear power, a developing Iran could consume all its petroleum domestically, as has happened in Indonesia, leaving the government with no surplus income with which to maintain its freedom from international pressures.

Iran is particularly jealous of its independence because in modern history it has so often been dominated by a great power or powers. In 1941, with World War II underway, Russia and Britain, which already controlled Iranian oil, launched an invasion to ensure that the country remained an asset of the Allies against the Axis.

They put the young and inexperienced Mohammed Reza Pahlevi on the throne, and sent his father, Reza Shah, into exile. The Iranian corridor - what British prime minister Winston Churchill called "the bridge of victory" - then allowed the allies to effectively channel crucial supplies to the Soviet Union in the war against Nazi Germany. The occupation years were, however, devastating for Iranians, who experienced soaring inflation and famine.

Discontent broke out after the war - and the Allied occupation - ended. It was focused on a 1933 agreement Iran had signed with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) regarding the exploitation of its petroleum. By the early 1950s, the AIOC (which later became British Petroleum and is now BP) was paying more in taxes to the British government than in royalties to Iran for its oil. In 1950, when it became known that the American ARAMCO oil consortium had offered the king of Saudi Arabia a 50-50 split of oil profits, the Iranians demanded the same terms.

The AIOC was initially adamant that it would not renegotiate the agreement. By the time it softened its position somewhat and began being less supercilious, Iran's parliamentarians were so angry that they did not want anything more to do with the British firm or the government that supported it. On March 15, 1951, a democratically elected Iranian parliament summarily nationalized the country's oil fields and kicked the AIOC out of the country. Facing a wave of public anger, Mohammed Reza Shah acquiesced, appointing Mohammed Mosaddegh, an oil-nationalization hawk, as prime minister. A conservative nationalist from an old aristocratic family, Mosaddegh soon visited the United States seeking aid, but because his nationalist coalition included the Tudeh Party (the Communist Party of Iran), he was increasingly smeared in the US press as a Soviet sympathizer.

The British government, outraged by the oil nationalization and fearful that the Iranian example might impel other producers to follow suit, froze that country's assets and attempted to institute a global embargo of its petroleum. London placed harsh restrictions on Tehran's ability to trade, and made it difficult for Iran to convert the pounds sterling it held in British banks. Initially, president Harry Truman's administration in Washington was supportive of Iran. After Republican Dwight Eisenhower was swept into the Oval Office, however, the US enthusiastically joined the oil embargo and campaign against Iran.

Iran became ever more desperate to sell its oil, and countries like Italy and Japan were tempted by "wildcat" sales at lower than market prices. As historian Nikki Keddie has showed, however, Big Oil and the US State Department deployed strong-arm tactics to stop such countries from doing so.

In May 1953, for example, sometime Standard Oil of California executive and "petroleum adviser" to the State Department Max Thornburg wrote to the US ambassador to Italy, Claire Booth Luce, about an Italian request to buy Iranian oil: "For Italy to clear this oil and take additional cargoes would definitely indicate that it had taken the side of the oil 'nationalizers', despite the hazard this represents to American foreign investments and vital oil supply sources. This of course is Italy's right. It is only the prudence of the course that is in question." He then threatened Rome with an end to oil company purchases of Italian supplies worth millions of dollars. In the end, the Anglo-American blockade devastated Iran's economy and provoked social unrest. Mosaddegh, initially popular, soon found himself facing a rising wave of labor strikes and protest rallies. Shopkeepers and small businessmen, among his most important constituents, pressured the prime minister to restore order. When he finally did crack down on the protests (some of them staged by the Central Intelligence Agency), the far left Tudeh Party began withdrawing its support. Right-wing generals, dismayed by the flight of the shah to Italy, the breakdown of Iran's relations with the West, and the deterioration of the economy, were open to the blandishments of the CIA, which, with the help of British intelligence, decided to organize a coup to install its own man in power.

A danger of blowback
The story of the 1953 Central Intelligence Agency coup in Iran is well known, but that its success depended on the preceding two years of fierce sanctions on Iran's oil is seldom considered. A global economic blockade of a major oil country is difficult to sustain.

Were it to have broken down, the US and Britain would have suffered a huge loss of prestige. Other Third World countries might have taken heart and begun to claim their own natural resources. The blockade, then, arguably made the coup necessary. That coup, in turn, led to the rise to power of Ayatollah Khomeini a quarter-century later and, in the end, the present US/Israeli/Iranian face-off. It seems the sort of sobering history lesson that every politician in Washington should consider (and none, of course, does).

As then, so now, an oil blockade in its own right is unlikely to achieve Washington's goals. At present, the American desire to force Iran to abolish its nuclear enrichment program seems as far from success as ever. In this context, there's another historical lesson worth considering: the failure of the crippling sanctions imposed on Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the 1990s to bring down that dictator and his regime. What that demonstrated was simple enough: ruling cliques with ownership of a valuable industry like petroleum can cushion themselves from the worst effects of an international boycott, even if they pass the costs on to a helpless public. In fact, crippling the economy tends to send the middle class into a spiral of downward mobility, leaving its members with ever fewer resources to resist an authoritarian government. The decline of Iran's once-vigorous Green protest movement of 2009 is probably connected to this, as is a growing sense that Iran is now under foreign siege, and Iranians should rally around in support of the nation.

Strikingly, there was a strong voter turnout for the recent parliamentary elections where candidates close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dominated the results. Iran's politics, never very free, have nevertheless sometimes produced surprises and feisty movements, but these days are moving in a decidedly conservative and nationalistic direction. Only a few years ago, a majority of Iranians disapproved of the idea of having an atomic bomb. Now, according to a recent Gallup poll, more support the militarization of the nuclear program than oppose it.

The great oil blockade of 2012 may still be largely financially focused, but it carries with it the same dangers of escalation and intervention - as well as future bitterness and blowback - as did the campaign of the early 1950s. US and European financial sanctions are already beginning to interfere with the import of staples like wheat, since Iran can no longer use the international banking system to pay for them.

If children suffer or even experience increased mortality because of the sanctions, that development could provoke future attacks on the US or American troops in the Greater Middle East. (Don't forget that the Iraqi sanctions, considered responsible for the deaths of some 500,000 children, were cited by al-Qaeda in its "declaration of war" on the US). The attempt to flood the market and use financial sanctions to enforce an embargo on Iranian petroleum holds many dangers. If it fails, soaring oil prices could set back fragile economies in the West still recovering from the mortgage and banking scandals of 2008. If it overshoots, there could be turmoil in the oil-producing states from a sudden fall in revenues.

Even if the embargo is a relative success in keeping Iranian oil in the ground, the long-term damage to that country's fields and pipelines (which might be ruined if they lie fallow long enough) could harm the world economy in the future. The likelihood that an oil embargo can change Iranian government policy or induce regime change is low, given our experience with economic sanctions in Iraq, Cuba, and elsewhere. Moreover, there is no reason to think that the Islamic Republic will take its downward mobility lying down.

As the sanctions morph into a virtual blockade, they raise the specter that all blockades do - of provoking a violent response. Just as dangerous is the specter that the sanctions will drag on without producing tangible results, impelling covert or overt American action against Tehran to save face. And that, friends, is where we came in. 

and.....

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ND14Ak01.html

US-Israel deal threatens progressBy Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration has adopted a demand in the negotiations with Iran beginning on Saturday in Istanbul that its Fordow enrichment facility must be shut down and eventually dismantled based on an understanding with Israel that risks the collapse of the negotiations.

It is unclear, however, whether the administration intends to press that demand regardless of Iran's rejection or will withdraw it laterin the talks. Washington is believed to be interested in obtaining at least an agreement that would keep the talks going through the electoral campaign and beyond. 

The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has been extremely anxious about the possibility of an agreement that would allow the Iranian enrichment programme to continue. So it hopes the demand for closure and dismantling of Fordow will be a "poison pill" whose introduction could cause the breakdown of the talks with Iran.

In an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS), Reza Marashi, who worked in the State Department's Office of Iranian Affairs from 2006 to 2010, said, "If the demand for Fordow's closure is non-negotiable, the talks will likely fail."

Iran has already rejected the demand. Responding to the reported demands for halting of 20 percent enrichment and the closure of the Fordow facility, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said, "We see no justification for such a request from the P5+1." The P5+1, also known as the "Iran Six" refers to the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council - the US, Great Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany - which are involved in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

The Obama administration apparently accepted Israel's demand for inclusion of the closure of Fordow in the US-European position in return for Israel going along with a focus in the first stage of the talks only on Iran's 20% enrichment.

It is widely believed that a limited agreement could be reached to end Iran's 20% enrichment and to replace existing Iranian stocks of 20% enriched uranium with foreign-fabricated fuel rods for the Tehran Research Reactor if Iran believed it would get some additional substantive benefit from the deal.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak revealed on April 4 that he had held talks with US and European officials in late March with the aim of getting them to accept Israeli demands for the closure of Fordow, transfer of all 20% enrichment out of Iran, and transfer of most of the low enrichment uranium out of country as well. Barak did not reveal the results of those talks, but three days later, the New York Times reported US and European officials as saying they would demand the "immediate closure and ultimate dismantling" of the Fordow facility as an "urgent priority", along with the shipment out of the country of its stockpile of uranium enriched to 20%.

Reuters reported on April 8 that a "senior US official" said the suspension of 20% enrichment and closing the Fordow facility were "near term priorities" for the US and its allies.

Reuters also reported that same day that Israel had agreed in March to a "staged approach" in the nuclear talks that would focus in the first stage on halting Iran's uranium enrichment to 20%.

Nothing has been said by either Israel or Western states about shipping low enrichment uranium out of the country, suggesting that the issue remains unresolved.

The high-level talks and obvious linkage between the positions leaked to the media by US, European and Israeli officials leaves little doubt that such an understanding had been reached.

Responding to an IPS query, Erin Pelton, assistant press secretary at the National Security Council, said she was not aware of any explicit US agreement with the Israelis on the US position in the nuclear talks. But she added, "We have very close consultations with them on Iran policy. We don't have to have an explicit agreement."

Israel's main leverage over US and European policy was the continuing threat of an attack on Iran. Only the day before Barak revealed his consultation with US and European officials on negotiating strategy, the Jerusalem Post reported that "senior defense officials" had said the possible attack on Iran "may be postponed until 2013", because the "defense establishment" was waiting for the outcome of the nuclear talks. Barak has long pointed to Iran's ability to move centrifuges into Fordow, which was constructed in a tunnel facility deep in the side of a mountain, as denying Israel's ability to destroy most of the country's enrichment capabilities in an airstrike. That has been the sole justification offered in recent months for threatening an Israeli military strike.

In a blog post in The National Interest, Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote that the "Western message to Tehran" seems to be, "[W]e might be willing to tolerate some sort of Iranian nuclear program, but only one consisting of facilities that would suffer significant damage if we or the Israelis later decide to bomb it."

Greg Thielmann, senior fellow at the Arms Control Association," said in an interview with IPS, "There are Americans who believe it is important to keep all Iranian facilities at risk in case Tehran decided to build a nuclear weapon."

But Thielmann, former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said the reported demand for the closure and dismantling of the Fordow site "is more an interest of the Israelis than of the United States".

Reza Marashi, the former State Department specialist on Iran and now research director at the National Iranian-American Council, said US officials have been concerned about Fordow, but that it is the Israelis who have "turned their inability to destroy Fordow into a major issue".

Thielmann said he hopes the administration is "doing this for the Israelis and that it wouldn't push it once it is rejected."

While the demand on Fordow clearly responds to a US need to accommodate Israel, it is also in line with Obama administration efforts to intimidate Iran by emphasizing that it has only a limited time "window" in which to solve the issue diplomatically. The administration has implied in recent weeks that Israel would strike Iran's nuclear facilities in the absence of progress toward an agreement guaranteeing Iran would not go nuclear. That emphasis on threat corresponds to the approach championed by hardliners since the beginning of the Obama administration. Former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who is still believed to maintain personal contact with Obama, was quoted in the New York Times on March 29 as saying, "For diplomacy to work there has to be a coercive side. If the Iranians think this is a bluff, you can't be as effective."

In a recent article, Ross makes clear that what he calls "coercive diplomacy" would not involve the promise of lifting sanctions, because the US would continue to demand change in Iran's "behavior toward terrorism, its neighbors and its own citizens".

If such a "coercive diplomacy" underlies the administration's negotiating strategy, it would explain the absence of any leaks to the press about what it plans to offer the Iranians in return for the concessions being demanded. Reza Marashi noted that administration officials have been "holding their cards very close to their chest" in regard to what they intend to offer Iran.

The absence of any groundwork for significant incentives leads Marashi to believe the administration plans to rely on threats rather than incentives to get Iran to agree to its demands.

The Obama administration appears to be counting heavily on the one incentive it is prepared to offer in the talks: the recognition of Iran's right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil. The US and Europeans will certainly demand strict limits on the number of centrifuges and the level of enriched uranium Iran could maintain.

Iranian agreement to such limits would require major changes in US policy toward Iran, including dismantling sanctions and accepting a major Iranian political-diplomatic role in the region as legitimate. 

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