Jump to content
IGNORED

Iran: novi front


Marvin (Paranoid Android)

Recommended Posts

  • 2 months later...
Iran Is Still Botching the BombIt is Time for Israel and the United States To Stop OverreactingBy Jacques E. C. HymansFebruary 18, 2013At the end of January, Israeli intelligence officials quietly indicated that they have downgraded their assessments of Iran's ability to build a nuclear bomb. This is surprising because less than six months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned from the tribune of the United Nations that the Iranian nuclear D-Day might come as early as 2013. Now, Israel believes that Iran will not have its first nuclear device before 2015 or 2016.The news comes as a great relief. But it also raises questions. This was a serious intelligence failure, one that has led some of Israel's own officials to wonder aloud, "Did we cry wolf too early?" Indeed, Israel has consistently overestimated Iran's nuclear program for decades. In 1992, then Foreign Minister Shimon Peres announced that Iran was on pace to have the bomb by 1999. Israel's many subsequent estimates have become increasingly frenzied but have been consistently wrong. U.S. intelligence agencies have been only slightly less alarmist, and they, too, have had to extend their timelines repeatedly.Overestimating Iran's nuclear potential might not seem like a big problem. However, similar, unfounded fears were the basis for President George W. Bush's preemptive attack against Iraq and its nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. Israel and the United States need to make sure that this kind of human and foreign policy disaster does not happen again.What explains Israel's most recent intelligence failure? Israeli officials have suggested that Iran decided to downshift its nuclear program in response to international sanctions and Israel's hawkish posture. But that theory falls apart when judged against Tehran's own recent aggressiveness. In the past few months, Iran has blocked the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from gaining access to suspect facilities, stalled on diplomatic meetings, and announced a "successful" space shot and the intention to build higher-quality centrifuges. These are not the actions of a state that is purposely slowing down its nuclear program. Even more to the point, if Tehran were really intent on curbing its nuclear work, an explicit announcement of the new policy could be highly beneficial for the country: many states would praise it, sanctions might be lifted, and an Israeli or U.S. military attack would become much less likely. But Iran has not advertised the downshift, and its only modest concession of late has been to convert some of its 20 percent enriched uranium to reactor fuel. It is doubtful that the Iranians would decide to slow down their nuclear program without asking for anything in return.A second hypothesis is that Israeli intelligence estimates have been manipulated for political purposes. This possibility is hard to verify, but it cannot be dismissed out of hand. Preventing the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran is Netanyahu's signature foreign policy stance, and he had an acute interest in keeping the anti-Iran pot boiling in the run-up to last month's parliamentary elections, which he nearly lost. Now, with the elections over, perhaps Israeli intelligence officials feel freer to convey a more honest assessment of Iran's status. This theory of pre-election spin is not very satisfying, however, because it fails to explain why Israeli governments of all political orientations have been making exaggerated claims about Iran for 20 years -- to say nothing of the United States' own overly dire predictions.The most plausible reason for the consistent pattern of overstatement is that Israeli and U.S. models of Iranian proliferation are flawed. Sure enough, Israeli officials have acknowledged that they did not anticipate the high number of technical problems Iranian scientists have run into recently. Some of those mishaps may have been the product of Israeli or U.S. efforts at sabotage. For instance, the 2010 Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran's nuclear facilities reportedly went well. But the long-term impact of such operations is usually small -- or nonexistent: the IAEA and other reputable sources have dismissed the highly publicized claims of a major recent explosion at Iran's Fordow uranium-enrichment plant, for instance. Rather than being hampered by James Bond exploits, Iran's nuclear program has probably suffered much more from Keystone Kops-like blunders: mistaken technical choices and poor implementation by the Iranian nuclear establishment. There is ample reason to believe that such slipups have been the main cause of Iran's extremely slow pace of nuclear progress all along. The country is rife with other botched projects, especially in the chaotic public sector. It is unlikely that the Iranian nuclear program is immune to these problems. This is not a knock against the quality of Iranian scientists and engineers, but rather against the organizational structures in which they are trapped. In such an environment, where top-down mismanagement and political agendas are abundant, even easy technical steps often lead to dead ends and pitfalls.Iran is not the only state with a dysfunctional nuclear weapons program. As I argued in a 2012 Foreign Affairs article, since the 1970s, most states seeking entry into the nuclear weapons club have run their weapons programs poorly, leading to a marked slowdown in global proliferation. The cause of this mismanagement is the poor quality of the would-be proliferator's state institutions. Libya and North Korea are two classic examples. Libya essentially made no progress, even after 30 years of trying. North Korea has gotten somewhere -- but only after 50 years, and with many high-profile embarrassments along the way. Iran, whose nuclear weapons drive began in the mid-1980s, seems to be following a similar trajectory. Considering Iran in the broader context of the proliferation slowdown, it becomes clear that the technical problems it has encountered are more than unpredictable accidents -- they are structurally determined. Since U.S. and Israeli intelligence services have failed to appreciate the weakness of Iran's nuclear weapons program, they have not adjusted their analytical models accordingly. Thus, there is reason to be skeptical about Israel's updated estimate of an Iranian bomb in the next two or three years. The new date is probably just the product of another ad hoc readjustment, but what is needed is a fundamental rethinking.As the little shepherd boy learned, crying wolf too early and too often destroys one's credibility and leaves one vulnerable and alone. In order to rebuild public trust in their analysis, Jerusalem and Washington need to explain the assumptions on which their scary estimates are based, provide alternative estimates that are also consistent with the data they have gathered, and give a clear indication of the chance that their estimates are wrong and will have to be revised again. The Iranian nuclear effort is highly provocative. The potential for war is real. That is why Israel and the United States need to avoid peddling unrealistic, worse-than-worst-case scenarios.
Link to comment
  • 5 months later...
Nonproliferation MisinterpretationYousaf ButtJuly 26, 2013salem_nuke_cc_72513.jpgIn a recent piece for Foreign Policy, former Obama Iran hand Robert Einhorn argues that Iran should not be allowed to enrich uranium because he feels Iran is not in compliance with its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, saying:

[W]hat is not debatable is that Iran has forfeited—at least temporarily—any right to enrichment (and reprocessing) until it can demonstrate convincingly that it is in compliance with its NPT obligations.

While this is something Einhorn may wish to be true, it is not correct on several levels. And if it's indicative of the viewpoint of American policymakers, this misunderstanding may be at the root of deadlock over Iran's nuclear program—a program that, according to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, is not currently aimed towards weaponization. The Iran nuclear issue will not be resolved unless we come to grips with what the NPT is—and isn't.Contrary to common belief, there is no agency or international body tasked with checking compliance with the NPT. And, even if there were, there is no automatic nuclear fuel-cycle “forfeiture” provision in the NPT, or any other legal instrument in existence. On both these counts Einhorn's argument is without legal basis.Just like with the Outer Space Treaty, there is no enforcement arm of the NPT. There is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but it is not tasked with—nor does it have the ability to—verify compliance with the NPT. The IAEA's monitoring role is very specifically restricted to a different set of bilateral treaties: the narrowly focused “Comprehensive Safeguards Agreements” (CSAs). There are more than 140 such bilateral CSA “treaties” whereby the IAEA monitors and accounts for the fissile material in various countries.Simply put, it is not the remit of the IAEA to enforce the multilateral NPT. In fact, the Agency doesn't have the budget nor the manpower to do so, even if it wanted to.In fact, it is possible for a state to be in noncompliance with its bilateral CSA and still be in compliance with the NPT. The CSAs and the NPT are completely independent legal instruments, although they both deal with nuclear nonproliferation.Further, such lack of verification measures was quite common with older treaties, such as the 1968 NPT. More modern treaties do often have verification mechanisms and associated international organizations to operate them to try to guarantee compliance. The best example is perhaps the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the associated Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) that monitors compliance with the CWC.If there were a specific question about a state's compliance with the NPT then the proper body to adjudicate that would be the International Court of Justice. For example, in 1996 the court interpreted the NPT’s nuclear disarmament clause as a legally binding obligation on the five nuclear-weapon states (the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia)—although, admittedly, it did not impose any time frame to accomplish this goal. Similarly, to officially find any country in noncompliance with the NPT would require the intervention of the International Court of Justice.While there may be no formal international agency that polices NPT compliance, experts can certainly weigh in. One of the foremost experts in this regard is Dr. Hans Blix, former head of the IAEA, who recently stated: “So far, Iran has not violated the NPT,” adding, “and there is no evidence right now that suggests that Iran is producing nuclear weapons.” And Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who spent more than a decade as the director of the IAEA, said that he had not "seen a shred of evidence" that Iran was pursuing the bomb. “All I see is the hype about the threat posed by Iran,” he concluded.If U.S. policy makers are interested in making headway towards a negotiated solution with Iran they must clarify their understanding of the NPT.Sadly, it appears that some in the administration may be more interested in maintaining sanctions rather than finding a equitable solution based upon the law. In a recent Brookings discussion former WMD czar Gary Samore outlines why the administration torpedoed a nuclear deal brokered by Turkey and Brazil:

...And at the very last moment, as most of you will remember, Brazil and Turkey and Iran announced an agreement which was viewed in the White House really as a pretty transparent effort to try to delay the sanctions. So we went ahead with those sanctions.

It appears, then, that the goal all along was to keep sanctions on, and conditions are created that make sure that goal is maintained. In some ways, we are back to early 1950s in dealing with Iran. Ray Takeyh in reviewing Ervand Abrahamian’s new book, The Coup: 1953, the CIA and the Roots of Modern U.S.–Iranian Relations, for the journal Survival, mentions that Abrahamian’s historical research reveals that

the British Empire was hardly prone to concede to an Iranian government reclaiming its oil fields, and was all along plotting the overthrow of the impudent premier. Whitehall viewed Mossadegh’s nationalisation as not just an infringement of its prerogatives in Iran but as an act that could potentially endanger all of its considerable overseas assets. Mossadegh had to go, and diplomacy was a mere ruse to achieve that end. In this narrative, London never really sought an accommodation with Tehran, but was merely going through the ritual of diplomacy to ensure a broadbased coalition against an embattled Mossadegh.

It appears that—like London in the early 1950s—Washington is now “merely going through the ritual of diplomacy to ensure a broad-based coalition against an embattled” Iranian regime. If so, it is treading on dangerous ground that may lead to the unraveling of the NPT itself.If the United States wants to place unilateral sanctions on Iran because it is an enemy nation, that is certainly Washington's prerogative, but misinterpreting the NPT and pressuring the IAEA as a pretext for such sanctions could bring grievous harm to the nonproliferation regime.Misunderstanding the NPT is not limited to government officials. Several U.S. think tanks also conflate opinion with analysis. For example, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) often writes commentary on Iran's nuclear program. Two recent pieces from ISIS confuse what ISIS would like (ISIS' opinion) with what is required of Iran (i.e. a legal analysis): the first deals with the perceived threat from Iran's Arak reactor and the second with Iran's centrifuges. While there may be legitimate concerns about both these issues, the important legal point is that both these technologies are dual-use and permitted under the NPT. If one does not like how permissive the current NPT is, one can propose a more restrictive “NPT 2.0”.As the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov recently put it regarding the centrifuge issue: Iran, “is doing everything in line with their commitments under the Safeguards Agreement.” Similarly, the Arak reactor could be misused in the future for weapons-related activity. But if one does not have an appetite for such risk, then one needs to propose a new NPT that disallows such reactors. The current treaty allows dual-use nuclear technology and reflects the compromises made to gain its wide adherence.If Iran legitimately feels it is getting nothing positive out of the NPT—and in addition, the United States is actually misusing the NPT against it—this may increase calls among Iranian polity for NPT withdrawal. Although it is unlikely that Iran would actually leave the NPT just yet, if it does it may not go alone, taking many sympathetic nations with it. The 120 nations of the Nonaligned Movement—the real “world community”—actually agree with Iran in its dispute with the IAEA and the United States.Before getting bogged down in negotiations with Iran it makes sense for all parties involved to agree on a common legally sound interpretation of the NPT, otherwise continued deadlock is all but guaranteed.Yousaf Butt, a nuclear physicist, is a Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Federation of American Scientists. www.fas.org.

Link to comment

Linkovi ti vode na članke koji su nejasni, novinarski dramatizovani i stvaraju pogrešan utisak.Ako bismo želeli da sumiramo dešavanja na ovu temu - činjenice su sledeče:1. Ugovor o neširenju oružja (ili NPT) uopšte ne zabranjuje državama potpisnicama da unapređuju sve delove nuklearnog gorivnog ciklusa u cilju mirnodopskog korišćenja nuklearne energije.2. Isti ugovor obavezuje države potpisnice da sa IAEA sklope tzv. "Safeguards Agreements", na osnovu kojih IAEA inspektori imaju pravo da odu na, pazi sad - deklarisane lokacije i provere deklarisane nuklearne materijale.Iran je potpisnik NPT i ima "Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement" koji se primenjuje.3. Ovo pod 1 i pod 2 nikako ne pokriva SVE indikatore da se nešto sumnjivo u državi radi, niti daje moć IAEA inspektorima da provere ma šta izvan onog gde ih Iranci odvedu (i verovatno odvode godinama, u rutinskim inspektorskim posetama).4. Zbog 3 svet 1997. usvaja dodatni međunarodni pravni instrument, koji se zove Additional Protocol, a čega Iran nije potpisnik (odnosno nema ratifikovan protokol).Zato u člancima koje BB gore navodi IAEA uporno govori kako nema mogućnost da dokaže:- the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran- 'that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activitiesono na osnovu čega IAEA za sada ima pravo da proverava je čisto ali nedovoljno. ko da npr. imaš pravo da uđeš u 2 sobe a leš je na tavanu.Iran, dakle, poštuje sve što je potpisao (ili bar nema dokaza otherwise), ali to što je potpisao nije dovoljno da se dokaže da poštuje. if you catch my drift.Druga je tema (i to sam napisala u postu na temi nakon razgovora sa US vođom pregovaračkog tima sa Iranom) maglovit i pravno neutemeljen, kako ga ameri zovu "globalni dogovor" po kome smo se mi eto dogovorili da niko neće više da proizvodi nukl gorivo, sem onih koji to već ne čine, a ovi koji već čine su poznate super sile koje će to posle, po fer uslovima, da prodaju ostalima.I to je procep u koji pokušavaju da uhvate Iran. NPT to ne spominje, naprotiv.

Link to comment

Da, ni meni nije jasno sta buffalo misli kad postuje ove carsafe. PT, vanredno si to sumirala, koliko se ja razumem (sto, istina, nije mnogo).

Edited by Indy
Link to comment
  • 3 months later...
&... there goes the neighborhood.
Earlier this year, a senior Nato decision maker told me that he had seen intelligence reporting that nuclear weapons made in Pakistan on behalf of Saudi Arabia are now sitting ready for delivery. Last month Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, told a conference in Sweden that if Iran got the bomb, "the Saudis will not wait one month. They already paid for the bomb, they will go to Pakistan and bring what they need to bring."
Ka-boom?
Link to comment

Lepo, bas sam hteo negde da uvalim pricu.

zasto ka-boom? resili da kupe, da im se nadje za ne daj Boze. kao i svi drugi do sada.
Prica se da je razvoj pakistanke bombe finansirala KSA. Naravno, kada bude bilo potrebe da im se deo prebaci u pustinju a do tada testovi neka se izvode u Pakistanu. :lolol: Inace, sva ta prica oko rivalstva KSA i Irana ima u pozadini, kao i uvek, novac, tacnije, novac od nafte i gasa.
Cracks Widen in U.S.-Saudi AllianceWASHINGTON, Nov 7 2013 (IPS) – While Monday’s meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah may have helped calm the waters, the latest anxieties and anger expressed by Riyadh toward the United States has reignited debate here about the value of the two countries’ long-standing alliance.In fact, a parting of the ways is already underway, according to Chas Freeman, a highly decorated former Foreign Service officer who served as U.S. ambassador in Riyadh during the first Gulf war.“The Saudis were not convinced by Kerry,” Freeman, who retains high-level ties in Riyadh, told IPS. “Of course, both sides have their own good reasons for wishing to downplay that [fact] because the prestige of each in the region depends in part on the appearance of a cooperative relationship with the other.“But in the past, we’ve been able to rely on them at a minimum not to oppose U.S. policy, and most often to support it. Now we no longer have that assurance, and in some cases, they’re moving to oppose it,” he said.Built during World War II as a strategic bargain that would ensure the plentiful flow of Saudi oil to the U.S. and its allies in exchange for Washington’s military protection, the relationship has come increasingly under question both here and in Riyadh.Here it was crystallised most dramatically by an op-ed by Fareed Zakaria, a prominent fixture of the foreign-policy establishment, published by Time magazine entitled “The Saudis Are Mad? Tough!”“If there were a prize for Most Irresponsible Foreign Policy it would surely be awarded to Saudi Arabia,” noted Zakaria, a former editor of the influential Foreign Affairs journal who hosts a weekly foreign policy programme on CNN.“It is the nation most responsible for the rise of Islamic radicalism and militancy around the world,” he noted, concluding that “Yes, Saudi Arabia is angry with the U.S. But are we sure that’s a sign Washington is doing something wrong?”Zakaria’s assault, while the most spectacular, has not been the only one. Several influential commentators have suggested in the New York Times and elsewhere in recent weeks that the Riyadh-backed counter-revolution against the Arab Spring — which achieved its greatest advance with the military coup last summer Egypt’s first democratically elected president – will ultimately prove counter-productive and destabilising to the region and possibly even to the kingdom itself, most of whose top leadership is very old or in poor health.For some of the same reasons, they have also criticised the strongly sectarian, Sunni-vs-Shia narrative that Riyadh, or at least its Wahhabi religious establishment, has propagated in its regional rivalry with Iran, particularly at a time when the West and Washington – and, most recently, Sunni-led Turkey — are seeking détente with Tehran, a prospect of considerable concern to the kingdom.Serious strains between the two countries are not new. Riyadh participated in the 1973 Arab oil embargo to punish Washington for backing Israel during that October War. More recently, the 9/11 attacks, the perpetrators of which were almost all Saudi, spurred a major round of Riyadh-bashing, notably by pro-Israel neo-conservative forces that were then riding high in the George W. Bush administration.The kingdom has harboured its own grievances, beginning with Washington’s refusal to seriously pressure Israel to accept a series of Saudi-initiated peace plans, most recently the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.And, in its competition with Iran, the effective handover by the George W. Bush administration of control of the Iraqi government to the Shiite majority after the 2003 U.S. invasion constituted for Riyadh perhaps its biggest strategic setback of the past several decades – and one to which the kingdom is still not reconciled, as evidenced by its refusal, despite Washington’s repeated entreaties, to send an ambassador to Baghdad.Under Obama, however, ties have become even more strained, as Saudi doubts about Washington’s commitment to protect Riyadh’s interests have grown steadily.Not only did Obama fail to follow through on demands that Israel cease settlement activity during his early showdown with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but his insistence, after some initial hesitation, that long-ruling Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resign shook Riyadh’s faith that Washington would stand by its long-loyal, if autocratic, regional clients.Washington’s disapproval — however mildly stated — of the tough, Saudi-backed crackdown by Bahrain’s royal family against its majority Shia population in early 2011 compounded Riyadh’s impression that Washington not only failed to understand the vital interests of the kingdom itself, what with its own restive Shia community concentrated in its Eastern Province just across the causeway.It also appeared to Riyadh that Obama was willing to risk sacrificing key strategic assets – in this case, the Bahrain headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet — as part of a broader retreat from the region. That perception only increased last summer as Obama reacted with similar ambivalence – some cuts in military and security assistance — to the coup in Egypt which was strongly supported by the kingdom.The brutal civil war in Syria and Obama’s clear reluctance to intervene on behalf of the Sunni-led opposition — most dramatically expressed by his failure to attack key military targets after concluding that the Iranian-backed Assad regime had indeed crossed his “red line” by killing hundreds of people with chemical weapons – clearly compounded these concerns.Heralded already by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal’s decision not to address this year’s U.N. General Assembly, Riyadh’s unhappiness hit the headlines with last month’s announcement that it would not take its seat on the U.N. Security Council that it had spent two years of intensive lobbying trying to obtain.Three days later, the kingdom’s intelligence chief and former ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan al-Saud was reported by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal as telling European diplomats that Riyadh was considering a “major shift” in ties with Washington, particularly regarding its efforts to bolster the armed Syrian opposition. The decision to forgo the Security Council seat, he was reported as saying, “was a message for the U.S., not the U.N.”This, in turn, was followed by a series of appearances and interviews here by Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, also a former ambassador here, in which he repeatedly complained about Washington’s failure to bomb Syria after the chemical attack and provide substantially more military aid to the Syrian rebels, and expressed alarm over Tehran’s nuclear programme.In this unprecedented diplomatic campaign, Riyadh clearly has powerful supporters here, including the Pentagon, which has steadfastly resisted suggestions from human rights groups and others to move the Fifth Fleet out of Bahrain and to cut all security assistance to Egypt as is required by law after a military coup against an elected government.With a long history of partnership with the kingdom, the oil industry also remains a not-insignificant supporter of maintaining the closest possible ties with Riyadh, as do major arms contractors who depend heavily on sales to Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.Finally, the Israel lobby appears to be discreetly rallying behind Riyadh due primarily to its status as Iran’s main regional rival, even as Saudi denunciations have also been praised by neo-conservatives.While all of these forces are calling on the administration to take Saudi complaints seriously lest there be a “major shift”, as Bandar described it, the general reaction here, as Henderson put it, has been “an almost audible yawn,” although Kerry’s trip clearly signals a recognition of a need for greater consultation at the least.
Evo, sta ja mislim da je razlog otopljavanja odnosa Irana i SAD. KSA pumpa naftu na 10 mb/d, to su vrlo velike cifre. Oni kazu da mogu oko 12mb/d, mozda i mogu ali ce im to brzo unistiti polja. Drugim recima, KSA nema veliki kapacitet za povecanje proizvodnje nafte kao sredinom '80ih, kada su povecali proizvodnju za 100% i srusili cenu nafte. Sto je izazvalo pad SSSR i rast kreditne ekspanzije na zapadu, i "prosperitet" '90ih, tj. kraj Hladnog rata.Sa druge strane je Iran, koji ima ogroman prostor za povecanje proizvodnje. SAD razmisljaju da ce im Iran trebati negde od 2018-2020 pa nadalje, kada proizvodnja u SAD opet pocne da pada. Na taj nacin ce amortizovati cenu da ne ode visoko. Sa druge strane, Rusija bi bas to zelela. Iako se ona postavlja kao saveznik Irana. Zato je sve ovo zanimljivo za gledati.
Link to comment
  • James Marshall locked this topic
  • Redoran unlocked this topic
×
×
  • Create New...