Further to my post from yesterday casting more than a little doubt on the veracity of the report about an imminent attack on Iran (J.E. Dyer backed me up  here with some hard facts), I’ve done a little more digging about the three sources quoted in the Scottish Herald article. Of Dr. Daniel Plesch of the University of London and his recurrent predictions of an imminent American attack on Iran, I have already written extensively here. The other two sources also deserve some scrutiny. Ian Davis heads a think tank called NATO WATCH. He also has his own “consultancy,” which seems to amount to a webpage with his own writings. His think tank does not seem to be too crowded with experts — Ian Davis appears to be the only guy, though there is a long list of associates and a history of cooperation with outfits that curiously stand for nuclear disarmament.

NATO WATCH’s address is also more than a little odd — Strath 17, by the Gairloch Loch, in the Scottish Highlands. Pretty place it must be, but you’d think that a think tank dedicated to being the watchdog of NATO might be closer to the alliance’s headquarters, no? Then again, the website says that NATO WATCH is a virtual think tank, so who am I to find it a bit more than suspicious that, to produce an unsubstantiated accusation that America is about to go to war against Iran, a Scottish paper turns to NATO WATCH for reasons other than it happens to be in the neighborhood. Funny also is the fact that two of the quoted experts/sources are also in Scotland (aside from Ian Davis, there is the CND local guy, Ales MacKinnon). And all three of them happen to have campaigned for or written in favor of nuclear disarmament, are on the record as hostile to American policies in the Middle East, and in the past expressed some degree of support for Iran’s claims.

All this, of course, is speculation. But I hereby propose a theory. A Scottish paper with an anti-nuclear editorial line (and all the baggage that comes with it) chooses to spin a news item to accuse America of warmongering — again. To back it up, the paper calls three ideological fellow travelers who supply the backup for the story – not the facts, but the backup, by which I mean the spin and the gravitas that goes with their titles. The paper publishes the story. And the global media, going into a frenzy, reprints it without basic fact-checking. You can examples of this rush to judgment, devoid any effort to question the veracity of the story, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here just to start.

Even Rick Moran, at the American Thinker’s blog, having read the story in reputable media sources, took it for granted that the information was plausible. Having quoted the Times of India’s verbatim reproduction of the Herald story, Moran goes on to say that “along with other signs of increased activity, one analyst who has been tracking US preparations believes that at the very least, President Obama will have the option of striking Iran” — and then quotes Dan Plesch. Moran then goes on to offer his take.

What’s my point? Aside from thinking that this is some high jinks by three pranksters and a complicit journalist backed by a complacent editor, my point is that the global media did not do its homework. Nobody fact-checked a story that had not been fact-checked to begin with, because they did not want to hold off reprinting disseminating it — either due to time pressures (the Internet is SO fast!) or other constraints.

Curiously enough, one news outlet seems to have gotten it at least half right — or to have let the truth slip out, at any rate. It’s — believe it or not — Russia Today, which titles their piece “Disarmament activist warns of new war.” It then proceeds to quote extensively Alex MacKinnon from CND Scotland (yep, same guy as above) and to interview Paul Ingram, from BASIC — NATO WATCH’s partner! It seems all pretty well coordinated to me.

And so it goes – this is how Internet myths are born.

Mistrust the press — that is one important lesson from Max Boot’s post about Mark Perry’s sensationalist (and sensationally inaccurate) attribution of the U.S.-Israel fallout to General Petraeus.

Elsewhere in the news, be prepared for more instances of the mass media’s inability to distinguish between fact and fiction. Take the report that the U.S. is seemingly getting ready to bomb Iran. The Herald, the Scottish daily, notes that a shipment has left California with military supplies for Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. This shipment includes huge quantities of bunker busters. Now all this may be true — but their news story is that these supplies are in preparation of a U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The source of this analysis?

Professor Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

According to the Herald, Plesch said:

They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran … US bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours … The preparations were being made by the US military, but it would be up to President Obama to make the final decision. He may decide that it would be better for the US to act instead of Israel … The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely …

How many times has Professor Plesch claimed this before?

OpenDemocracy, March, 21, 2005, “Iran, the coming war“:

So when might the attack on Iran occur? The Bush administration has, from its perspective, allowed the Europeans and the non-proliferation diplomats enough time to fail. They will certainly use the UN conference on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament from 2-27 May 2005 as an opportunity to grandstand.

For US domestic political purposes a “crisis” in spring 2006 when the EU and the UN can once more be confronted with their alleged failures, and challenged to support US leadership, would be timely for mid-term elections in which the ultra-conservative coalition will wish to consolidate its gains and eliminate any nascent moderate or realistic Republican candidate in good time for the 2008 presidential election.

The Guardian, “Are we going to war with Iran?” October, 21, 2005:

A new war may not be as politically disastrous in Washington as many believe … For an embattled President Bush, combating the mullahs of Tehran may be a useful means of diverting attention from Iraq and reestablishing control of the Republican party prior to next year’s congressional elections. From this perspective, even an escalating conflict would rally the nation behind a war president. As for the succession to President Bush, Bob Woodward has named Mr Cheney as a likely candidate, a step that would be easier in a wartime atmosphere. Mr Cheney would doubtless point out that US military spending, while huge compared to other nations, is at a far lower percentage of gross domestic product than during the Reagan years. With regard to Mr Blair’s position, it would be helpful to know whether he has committed Britain to preventing an Iranian bomb “come what may” as he did with Iraq.

New Statesman, February, 19, 2007, “Iran — ready to attack”:

American military operations for a major conventional war with Iran could be implemented any day. They extend far beyond targeting suspect WMD facilities and will enable President Bush to destroy Iran’s military, political and economic infrastructure overnight using conventional weapons.

Four predictions in five years — and no war so far.

Professor Plesch does not seem to have his fact-checking machine and his sources up to date, tuned in, and reliably informed. It may not matter to some media outlets, which will probably continue to publish on ideological rather than factual grounds.

Still, journalists should remember that a good news story cannot rely just on the sensation of the message but must also ensure the credibility of the messenger. With Professor Plesch, it seems, this is just not the case.

Lady Catherine Ashton is no Barack Obama, and she should be forgiven if her utterances may not generate the kind of wild adoration (adulation?!) that the U.S. president became accustomed to earning at each speech. But speeches are about the message and not only the charisma with which they are delivered, and Lady Ashton’s speech, yesterday, in Cairo, has so much substance that it deserves some comment.

There are three elements to her speech. First message: the nature and importance of the relation between Europe and the Arab world. Second message: the danger of Iran’s nuclear program. Third message: the importance and urgency of the peace process. Let’s dissect them by first quoting her words.

On relations between the EU and the Arab world, Ashton says:

I am especially pleased to be here at the headquarters of the Arab League. For Europe and the Arab world share a common history and, I believe, a common destiny. Our relations go back a long way. The footprints of your culture are scattered throughout Europe: literature and science, words and music, and of course our food.

No mention of human rights’ violations there — only a reference to orange water in Naples’ Pastiera cake and the sprinkle of Arabic in Sicilian dialect (but, presumably, not to the croissant, which was thus shaped to celebrate the Arab defeat at the Gates of Vienna). And yes, the footprint is truly scattered all over Europe: the watchtowers on the entire Mediterranean coast to warn of Arab marauders coming to kill, loot, plunder and enslave; the glorious-sounding names of battlefields like Poitiers and of naval battles like Lepanto; the early French literature of the Chanson de Roland — and many others. It all attests to conflict, war, clashes, and attempts to conquer, efface, subdue.

A common history, perhaps — but only to a certain extent. And hardly a common destiny. Like President Obama, then, Lady Ashton’s speech is an exercise in historical revisionism — papering over the inconvenient truth of the past as a way to appease our interlocutors, reminding them of a mythical time of idyllic friendship that never existed in order not to remind them of their present shortcomings: authoritarianism, social and economic injustice, human rights’ abuses, oppression of religious and ethnic minorities, gender apartheid, fomenting of hatred, condoning of terrorism, among other things. By ignoring the present and subverting the past, Lady Ashton has confirmed what the EU priorities are in the region — work with the powers that be, condone their errors as well as their horrors, ignore the broader regional context, and focus on one thing and one thing only: Israel.

This she does well, but not before she lists the perfunctory policy guidelines on Iran:

Our double track approach remains valid and we stand ready for dialogue. But the EU also fully supports the UN Security Council process on additional measures if, as is the case today, Iran continues to refuse to meet its international obligations. Our position is based on the firm belief that an Iran with nuclear weapons risks triggering a proliferation cascade throughout the Middle East. This is the last thing that this region needs.

Now that must have been exceptionally hard to pronounce. It almost sounds like a threat! How ominous, to have an EU high official (the highest one, in fact, when it comes to foreign policy) evoke the threat of a “proliferation cascade” throughout the Middle East.

So to ensure that no one became upset that the EU foreign-policy tsar was thundering, for a moment, against a Muslim nation without apologizing first, Lady Ashton threw in this closing line: “A nuclear weapons free Middle East remains a European goal.” That little reference to Israel gets everyone off the hook!

It seemed the perfectly seamless way to transition from the things she had to say pro forma and what she really wished to say:

The primary purpose of my visit is to show the continued importance that the European Union attaches to the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. This is a vital European interest and is central to the solution of other problems in the region.

Truly central: if you are a political prisoner languishing in an Egyptian prison and electric wires are about to be attached to your genitals for a bit of rough interrogation (surely not the one EU officials denounce on their trips to Cairo), what are the chances that you’ll feel better knowing the Palestinians will get a state? And what are the chances the police will forego this act of kindness as a result of Palestinian statehood?

Lady Ashton may not have the charisma of Barack Obama — but she can’t be so naïve as to believe that what is currently happening in Yemen is a byproduct of Palestinian-Israeli disputes; that piracy off the coast of Somalia would be called off at the announcement of a historic compromise; that al-Qaeda would lay down its weapons and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood would stop calling President Mubarak “Pharaoh” as soon as the Palestinian flag flies over the Noble Sanctuary. She must know. And so she says what she says — “central to the solution of other problems in the region” — because she is pandering to an audience of Arab autocrats.

From this we move on to the next step — one where Israeli wrongs are listed in excruciating detail and Israel’s government is slapped on the wrist repeatedly — its intentions are called into questions and its actions are blamed for lack of progress. But what of the Palestinians?

Much in the way of “the footprint of your culture” and other such rhetorical niceties, the share of responsibility the Palestinians get in the list of Lady Ashton’s no-no’s comes down to a gentle reminder to be more fraternal to one another. Just compare and contrast.

Premise of her comments on peacemaking:

Everyone has to make their contribution and take their responsibility. As the European Union we have a firm commitment to the security of Israel; and we stand up for a deal that delivers justice, freedom and dignity to the Palestinians.

The overall goal:

The parameters of a negotiated settlement are well known. A two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side by side in peace and security.

So far, nothing too shocking. But then Ashton offers details to her vision of a negotiated settlement:

Our aim is a viable State of Palestine in the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip, on the basis of the 1967 lines. If there is to be a genuine peace a way must be found to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of Israel and Palestine. And we need a just solution of the refugee issue.

The EU is here reiterating its bias in favor of the Palestinian position. But there is more:

Recent Israeli decisions to build new housing units in East Jerusalem have endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks. …

Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible. …

The decision to list cultural and religious sites based in the occupied Palestinian territory as Israeli is counter-productive. …

The blockade of Gaza is unacceptable. It has created enormous human suffering and greatly harms the potential to move forward.

So many details of Israeli mischief! But, again, what about the Palestinians?

The Palestinians too of course have responsibilities. First however I want to commend President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad for showing us that they can build the institutions of a future Palestinian State. But the Palestinians must get their house in order. Continued Palestinian divisions do not serve their interests. The political and physical separation between Gaza and the West Bank is dangerous. Palestinian reconciliation is more crucial than ever. The PLO must take its responsibilities in this regard, and face the challenge of renewal and reform.

Yes, that’s what is wrong with the Palestinian side of the equation. They are not fraternal enough to one another and the political and physical separation of Gaza and the West Bank is dangerous — though Ashton blamed Israel for it before!

For a brief period in the long history of EU-Israel relations, it looked like the EU had finally understood that to influence Israel it had to be friendlier to Israel — not just in words but also in deeds. That included being more understanding of Israeli concerns and more nuanced about the complexities and intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict, its history, and its challenges.

Lady Ashton has just made it abundantly clear that Europe has reverted to its old habits of appeasing Arab authoritarianism while chastising Israeli democracy.

In a different time, we would have dismissed it all as yet another example of European irrelevance and a guarantee that only the U.S. would really have a role in being the midwife of regional peace. But now, given the United States’s substantive and rhetorical posture vis-à-vis Israel, Lady Ashton’s speech should have Jerusalem worried. There aren’t any friends left around to shield Israel from this kind of European worldview — and so it might just stick.

Jennifer, I may be wrong, but in the mounting fury of the Obama administration against Israel, the AIPAC factor will not loom that large after all. We all remember former Secretary of State’s James Baker famous quip: “F— the Jews, they didn’t vote for us.”

It looks to me that the current administration’s Israel policy is based on a variant of that quip—namely, “F— the Jews, they’ll vote for us anyway.”

At a weekend retreat in Finland, the foreign ministers of the EU met alongside the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. Among the topics discussed was Iran. And among the conclusions emerging from the gathering, there is the admission by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, that there is little chance that new sanctions will be passed by the UN Security Council before June. Citing objections from China and Russia, Kouchner said: “We are … talking and talking, trying to get an agreement by negotiation and at the same time working on sanctions. I believe that yes, before June it will be possible, but I’m not so sure.”

Nor is there certainty about the alternative – which, according to the news report, would be unilateral sanctions by the EU and the U.S.

Clearly, there are obstacles on the road to unilateral sanctions – philosophically, many EU countries oppose unilateralism and wish to proceed only after the UN has given the green light. Then, there is the skepticism about sanctions that are not binding on some of Iran’s main trading partners because such measures would fail to bite.

In short, sanctions, even limited ones, are a long way away, and it does not offer any succor to know that EU ministers are “talking about it.”

The fact of the matter is, the last time sanctions were approved was in March 2008, when UN Security Council Resolution 1803 was approved. That was two years ago. Then there was a U.S. presidential election. Then there was a U.S. policy review. Then there were Iranian presidential elections that nobody wished to interfere with. Then there was a summer holiday that nobody wished to spoil. Then there was a U.S. effort to engage the Iranian regime that nobody wished to undermine. Then there was a failed nuclear deal that everyone thought was a win-win situation. Then there was an end-of-the-year deadline that came and went without any Plan B ready to roll out on Jan. 1. Then there was the talking to convince China and Russia (to say nothing of Turkey, which meanwhile became a member of the Security Council), and now there is more talking for Plan C in case Plan B fails. What will the next reason for delay be?

The bottom line is that these are excuses, pretexts, and little else.

There is abundant evidence of Iranian mischief. There is nothing new by now about Iran’s policy of stalling talks. Russian and Chinese interests remain unchanged. The available options for sanctions have been dissected, debated, weighed, assessed, and are known.

It therefore comes down to the following: do the U.S. and the EU wish to stop Iran’s nuclear quest? If so, are they prepared to pay the political price required to make, at least, an honest and worthy effort? Are they willing to face up to the reality that there is simply no international backing for the kind of policies needed to stop Iran now and to avoid conflict in the Persian Gulf later?

If the answer to these questions is yes, there is no need to wait for June. Otherwise, we know what a June deadline means – it means more stalling, more temporizing, more talking, and more procrastinating.

Could it be true? According to the Los Angeles Times, the U.S. administration may have changed its mind on the virtues of engaging Iran’s regime while giving the cold shoulder to its street opposition. As Paul Richter reports,

After keeping a careful distance for the last year, the Obama administration has concluded that the Iranian opposition movement has staying power and has embraced it as a central element in the U.S.-led campaign to pressure the country’s clerical government.

Clearly, the administration is not about to embrace the rhetoric of regime change. Nor is it going to send an expeditionary force to oust the tyrants in Tehran. But perhaps there is a growing realization that something unprecedented has happened in Iran since June 12, 2009, and that the best hope American interests have rests on a change of regime carried out from the inside.

To finish reading this COMMENTARY Web Exclusive, click here.

Last Friday, the New York Times ran an interesting piece by David Sanger about a puzzling element that emerged in the latest IAEA report on Iran — namely Iran’s decision to bring most of its LEU stockpile to the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant for further enrichment to 19.75 percent levels. The move was puzzling for the simple reason that Iran did not need to feed its entire stockpile for further enrichment in order to address its shortage of 19.75 percent uranium needed at the Tehran Research Reactor for medical isotopes. But the transfer of so much uranium to the surface gave rise to wild theories: why would Iran put its entire stockpile at risk? Would Israel not be tempted to attack and destroy the likely source of Iran’s future nuclear weapons, thus delaying Iran’s nuclear quest? And why would the regime expose itself to such a risk? Perhaps it was a clever ploy by the Revolutionary Guards, who may have wished to get the country attacked so as to rally the restive population around a regime with a dwindling popular support?

Iran has put the matter to rest by removing much of the stockpile from the surface site and sending it back to underground storage, but the episode has urged some fresh thinking about Iran’s capabilities as well as its intentions. In a freshly released report by ISIS, David Albright and Christina Walrond discuss the puzzling transfer decision in relation to the overall centrifuge performance at the Natanz site, where IAEA reports have indicated a steady decrease of active centrifuges alongside an increase in monthly output of LEU from the dwindling number of functioning centrifuges. Nobody knows why Iran has fewer and fewer centrifuges working — are they malfunctioning, is it maintenance? — and Iran is not about to tell. But the move of its LEU (3.5 percent) to produce higher enrichment grade uranium (19.75) while few centrifuges work at all may have troubling implications for its military program. In particular, Albright and Walrond note that,

Iran’s recent decision to start producing 19.75 percent low enriched uranium (LEU) in the pilot plant from 3.5 percent LEU, ostensibly for civil purposes, is particularly troubling.  If Iran succeeds in producing a large stock of 19.75 percent LEU, in a worst-case scenario, the FEP is large enough to turn this LEU into sufficient weapon-grade uranium for a weapon within a month.  Its production could even occur between visits by IAEA inspectors, a time period that Iran could easily lengthen by positing some emergency or accident that requires a delay in permitting the inspectors inside the plant.

The important caveat for this scenario to play out, from a technical point of view, is that Iran has enough 19.75 percent uranium stockpiled to go to higher enrichment levels. This is not the case yet, at least not as far as declared stockpiles are concerned. But that could change.

Albright and Walrond note other possibilities. First of all, weapon-grade uranium could be produced in parallel, clandestine sites — the Fordow site exposed in September might have been designed precisely for that purpose. Though it was discovered, there is no guarantee that Iran has no other such facility around the country. According to Albright and Walrond, “the discovery of Fordow eliminates its usefulness in producing weapon-grade uranium in a parallel secret program starting with uranium hexafluoride made outside of safeguards. Its potential role in a breakout strategy using 3.5 percent LEU is also diminished, since Iran is likely to want a secret site if it pursues nuclear weapons.” But their assessment is that a facility like Fordow could serve that purpose — and if Fordow had twins buried elsewhere around the country, then Iran could be close to breakout capacity in more than one way. As Albright and Walrond add,

A major unknown is how much dedicated enrichment capacity Iran has established in secret outside Natanz and Fordow.  Available, albeit limited, evidence about clandestine activities, the discovery of the incomplete Fordow site, and the struggles Iran is encountering with cascades at Natanz would suggest that Iran has not completed a centrifuge facility operating with a nuclear-weapons significant number of P1 centrifuges.  However, it may well be building one now.

This possibility might explain the lull in the centrifuge-spinning frenzy at Natanz that characterized the early phases of the site, when every few months Iran would announce many more cascades being installed, in defiance of UN resolutions.

It now looks ominous to see all the installed centrifuges sitting idle — some are new, and never once were fed uranium hexafluoride; a significant number have been disconnected from their module; and a number of new cascades were either removed from their module or are in the process of being removed. Where will they be transferred?

But fear not. The UN is about to spring into action — and thanks to China’s constructive role, the Security Council seems set to produce at best another spineless resolution adding a name or two to the already short list of sanctioned Iranian entities and individuals, and at best a presidential statement that will do little to stop Iran’s march to the ultimate weapon.

Congratulations to the Iranians then: their diplomacy, alongside their subterfuge and acts of nuclear brinkmanship playing with the IAEA and its safeguards, may be gaining them a few more weeks, if not months, in a year that, by everyone’s judgment, may be the critical one for their nuclear ambitions.

Hamas is now saying that Egypt and Jordan are behind the assassination in Dubai of their slain commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Clearly, given Hamas’s propensity to tell the truth, this information must be taken with a grain of salt. But then again, the version offered by Dubai’s police is not that much better — 27 suspects later, they are making it more laughable for themselves by the hour.

The question now is, will the governments of Australia, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland issue an apology to their Israeli ambassadors, who were summoned for some rough protest when Israel was accused? And will they now reserve the same rough treatment for the Egyptian and Jordanian ambassadors?

Another day, and another Western government chastises Israel for the use of non-Israeli passports in the assassination of Hamas terrorist mastermind Mahmoud al-Mabhou. This time it’s Australia’s turn. Australia’s PM, Kevin Rudd, was quoted as saying that

Any state that has been complicit in use or abuse of the Australian passport system, let alone for the conduct of an assassination, is treating Australia with contempt and there will therefore be action by the Australian government in response.

Clearly, one needs to believe Dubai’s police on the revelations about the forged passports. There is no smoking gun yet about Israel’s responsibility. And hopefully, Israel will keep quiet about this. As Yossi Melman indicates in today’s Haaretz, the investigation is rising to comical levels, even as the evidence against Israel is thin.

Look, anyone familiar with James Bond, Jason Bourne, and the Mission Impossible franchise knows that secret agents travel on forged passports. And even assuming Israel is responsible, what did anyone expect — a bunch of Israelis to show up at Dubai airport waving their Israeli passports? Just imagine the conversation.

UAE immigration officer: Nationality?

Agent: Israeli.

Immigration officer: Occupation?

Agent: Mossad agent.

Immigration officer: Purpose of your visit?

Agent: Targeted killing of a top Hamas terrorist.

Immigration officer: Welcome to our country, sir, and have a nice day.

Sure, it would have been preferable that those involved were not caught on camera and belatedly identified — although every new release of suspects by Dubai’s police makes their involvement look less credible. How many people does it takes to kill one Hamas terrorist, even in Dubai?

There would not have been so much grief in London, Paris, or Canberra. Countries are more likely to turn a blind eye when friendly secret services do not get caught abusing or violating their laws. The problem with the outrage is not the deed itself, then, but the embarrassment resulting from the exposure.

Finally, the international outrage has forgotten to take into account the obvious: Mahmoud al-Mabhou deserved to die. He was a terrorist. He was involved in something sinister and potentially very big — which had to do with arms-smuggling from Iran to Gaza. He had personally killed Israeli hostages. There should be little sorrow expressed about sending him to delight with heavenly virgins long before he had planned.

The IAEA’s latest report was leaked yesterday and is available here. It makes, as usual, some pretty technical reading, but it has some important insights to offer that deserve notice.

First, the tone of the report is less circumspect about slapping Iran around for its noncompliance. The report explicitly and unambiguously states and explains why Iran is in noncompliance of many of its obligations — something obvious perhaps to readers of this blog but that was lacking from previous reports. The report makes it clear that Iran is continuing to defy the international community.

Second, the report highlights a number of troubling developments. Iran has succeeded in increasing enrichment levels to 19.8 percent. It has transferred most of its stockpile of Low Enriched Uranium to the feed station of the fuel-enrichment plant in Natanz, where it intends to enrich uranium for its Tehran Research Reactor as fuel to produce medical isotopes. As David Albright, Jacqueline Shire, and Paul Brannan note in their report analysis, “Iran may plan eventually to convert most of its accumulated stock of LEU hexafluoride to 20 percent LEU, a quantity far in excess of the TRR’s needs (this quantity of LEU hexafluoride would yield just under 200 kg of 19.75 percent LEU).”

Given that Iran does not need to convert all its stockpile immediately, one must question the motives for such a move — especially since, in parallel, Iran is preparing the Esfahan site to start producing uranium metal, and the fuel-enrichment plant in Natanz has seen a considerable number of centrifuges sitting idly by, with some more being dismantled. And since Iran’s Fordow site (designed to host 3,000 centrifuges) may well suit a military program but ill suits a civil one, and since uranium metal is needed for weapons production and 200 kilograms of 19.75 percent LEU far exceed Iran’s medical needs, one must suspect the combining of these activities.

The IAEA has just given a sterling performance. And why is this report so much blunter than anything seen previously?

Mohamed ElBaradei is no longer the director general.

Among the treasure trove to be found in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports on Iran and Syria, there are two slightly underreported elements. Inspectors stumbled upon 600 “50-litre drums” of heavy water at the Isfahan conversion facility. As for Syria, the Syrians explained traces of anthropogenic natural uranium as deriving from “domestically produced yellowcake” and “imported, but previously undeclared, commercial uranyl nitrate.”

To recap: Iran has undeclared heavy water, and Syria has undeclared commercial uranyl nitrate.

Heavy water is needed to bypass uranium enrichment if one wants to build nuclear weapons. It is not produced widely — there are only a few countries in the world that produce and sell heavy water. Uranyl Nitrate is a substance needed in the process to convert natural uranium to green salt, a precursor of UF6. In short, it is a necessary component in the enrichment process and one that NPT signatories are meant to declare to the IAEA.

Taken together, the two reports make an astounding revelation: both Iran and Syria have been procuring material for nuclear-related activities without reporting it to the IAEA. Not a shocker for readers of this blog — but certainly one more piece of incriminating evidence about the two programs both countries have worked so hard to pursue and to conceal from the rest of the world.

J.E. Dyer highlighted Iran’s new boldness all across the Middle East — and if I may weigh in, the Yemen situation looks like classic Iran: play the arsonist, then volunteer to be the fireman — for a small reward, naturally!

The spookiest bit of this latest twist of affairs is Washington’s response, as Jennifer notes. And when an official statement reads like this: “It’s our view that there can be no long-term military solution to the conflict between the Yemeni government and the Houthi rebels,” it almost looks like it came out of the EU.  Never shall there be a military solution to a conflict! A bit like saying, “There shall be no medical solution to a disease” — let the microbes and the antibodies negotiate their way to a compromise through the good offices of the United Nations. Let them receive an envoy from the EU! But no conflict. Nope.

I can picture the fear running through the spines of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as they hear Washington’s tone quickly aligning itself with the discourse of those pugnacious Eurocrats.

Hard to believe that this is not from the Onion: it is actually a “serious” interview … courtesy of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation:

In the nuclear standoff with Iran, over the years both Europe and the U.S. have consistently pursued a multilateral strategy. Despite considerable delays and watered-down accomplishments, in early 2006 the strategy yielded a first result: the IAEA Board of Governors referred Iran to the UN Security Council for its noncompliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Soon after, to Iran’s great dismay, the council passed resolution 1696. In December 2006 and soon after in March 2007, Resolutions 1737 and 1747 were unanimously approved, introducing sanctions against Iran. But then it took an additional year to get more sanctions — and the new resolution 1803 only added a few names to the already less-than-satisfactory list of entities and individuals targeted by the sanctions. Since then, nothing more than a reaffirmation of these sanctions has made it through the Security Council.

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Jennifer flagged the Washington Post report about the Iranian leaders’ indecision on the nuclear deal. One would only wish there were a fight inside the regime, with sensible people wanting the deal and radicals opposing it. In fact, this is the customary passion play of the Islamic Republic of Iran. One emissary appears reasonable, another gives a fiery speech, a third tries to mediate, a fourth criticizes the others, a fifth calls on the Supreme Leader to intervene, a sixth asks for time, and a seven ends up blaming the West for discord.

The result is what matters, and the result is as follows: First, the U.S. set a deadline for Iran to answer to the deal. Iran ignored the deadline. The U.S. said the deadline was not so stringent (as Abe noted yesterday). Second, the three powers involved in the negotiations agreed to the proposal. Now Iran knows it got that much and wants to negotiate more.

Iran’s game has always been to buy time. This latest dance is no different. And it looks as though Iran’s interlocutors will not behave significantly better this time either — instead of making good on their threats and ultimatums, they’ll come back with more offers, more incentives, more compromise, and more time for Iran to gain through talks.

Iran’s leadership is not divided on the end-game — getting nuclear weapons — and the fact that contradictory messages appear to come out of Tehran does not mean that there are divisions. Seeing any infighting serves the purpose of those who argue that there is a sensible, reasonable, pragmatic, down-to-earth element in the regime we can do business with.

Not so — but I would not hold my breath about anyone in Washington acknowledging that yet.

Predictably, the Vienna talks on Iran’s Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) stockpile have already stalled. Iran is using all the rules in the book and any trick on the margins to delay and gain more out of the talks. First, they dispatched a low-level delegation to the talks — something guaranteed to delay a decision even if a deal is struck in Vienna. Second, they torpedoed a critical element of the deal. According to what was supposedly agreed on already, the LEU would be enriched in Russia to higher levels (20 percent, well below weapons’ grade) but further processed into fuel rods by France before it could be delivered to Iran for use in its Tehran Research Reactor. Now Iran is saying that France cannot be relied on and cannot be part of this deal. So the Iranians are threatening to go ahead and enrich on their own up to 20 percent if no deal is reached; they are also suggesting that they want a supply of fuel while they keep their stockpile. …

To read the rest of this fascinating analusys, click here.

So is the Supreme Leader dead or not?

Ali Alfoneh weighs in as we wait to learn whether this is fact or fantasy, and reminds us that things could be even worse now:

The passing of Khamenei would represent a seismic shift in the Islamic Republic’s power equations. With no successor-designate, Khamenei’s death would unleash a huge power struggle.

Alfoneh discusses several possibilities and, you’ll be shocked, none preludes to a gentler, kinder Iran.

The death of a leader does occasionally ensure that history changes course — but dictatorships crumble in such circumstances only because their entire power structure is predicated on the charisma of the leader and the loyalty of his lieutenants. Modern authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, by contrast, even in their weirdest manifestations (such as North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), have more staying power than the leaders themselves.

Khamenei’s death still needs to be ascertained — though in the long term, it’s in the pocket! It’s much less likely, though, that it alone could be a game changer for the better.

If President Obama gets the Nobel Peace Prize less than one year into his presidency, what can he aspire to by the time he leaves office?

If fate allows it, the seat of St Peter will be vacant — and if not, we are sure the pope will graciously resign. Short of that, one can always count on the UN secretary-general’s post to be on offer.

History repeats itself. The first time as tragedy — Jimmy Carter? — the second time as a farce.

Congratulations, Mr. President! Never was something so prestigious bestowed on someone who did so little to deserve it.

Michael Totten has rightly flagged Fareed Zakaria’s argument that Iran can be contained for its flaws. One should add two points to Michael’s argument.

First, regarding the likelihood of a massive upsurge of popular support for the regime if Iran were attacked: whether it is likely or not, it is largely irrelevant, in my view. If a military strike is successful in degrading the nuclear program, one can afford a nationalist backlash.

Second, and more important, Zakaria’s statement that “a massive outpouring of support for the Iranian regime” is likely because this is what “happens routinely when a country is attacked by foreign forces, no matter how unpopular the government” is simply inaccurate.

While Iranians are unlikely to clap while they die under foreign bombardment, there are many precedents of nationalist backlash being short-lived and eventually turning against the regime. One needs only look at Serbia in 1999 and Argentina in 1982. In both instances, an authoritarian government dragged the nation into a war propped up by nationalist revanchism — Kosovo in 1999, the Falklands in 1982. I doubt Serbs loved the 78 days of NATO aerial bombing — they are still bitter today! Similarly, Argentineans by and large still consider the Falklands to be their own. But the military defeat of their authoritarian regimes, far from enhancing those regimes’ popularity, led to their downfall. Both countries have experienced a long season of democracy since then. While differences still exist between London and Buenos Aires, and between Belgrade and NATO, the odious regimes that triggered those wars are gone. And good riddance for their citizens!

To the list of examples, one could add Iraq in 1991. As soon as the guns fell silent, Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south rose up against the hated dictator and his regime. Their failure — thanks to the American decision to stand by and let them be crushed — cemented their distrust for America 12 years later. Regardless, the point is clear: the oppressed subjects of vanquished dictators may not love the foreign victor, but neither will they forgive their oppressors. And a military defeat exposes a despotic regime to its own weakness and vulnerability like nothing else does.

If Iran’s nuclear program were to be successfully targeted by military force, Iranians may not be expected to wrap themselves up in American or Israeli flags, no doubt. But it is questionable whether they will renew their pledge to the Islamic Republic and its murderous ideology.

Back at the Guardian, Simon Tisdall attributes the brusque U-turn in Russian foreign policy on Iran to two master strokes of President Obama’s foreign policy. One is obviously the recent revelation of the Qom clandestine enrichment facility; the other is scrapping missile defense. Thus writes Tisdall:

Russia’s new-found readiness to consider the “far tougher” sanctions demanded by Gordon Brown at the UN this week is doubtless linked to this confirmation of Iranian bad faith. But it also has an evident bilateral dimension in terms of Moscow’s relations with the US.

All those who were writing off Barack Obama last week as a foreign policy lightweight may now reflect at leisure on how he has achieved two major objectives in almost as many days: Russia is back on side, for now at least, thanks to his decision to re-model European missile defence. And China is now isolated in the security council in opposing new sanctions on Iran–a position it always tries to avoid on any major issue, and which it may now find untenable.

One should never think the Russians are in the pockets when it comes to Iran—but there is no doubt that the latest revelations are a headache for those in Kremlin arguing that stopping Iran’s nuclear ambitions is not the highest (or even a high) Russian strategic priority. Still, we fail to see why missile defense is suddenly a stroke of brilliance. If the goal here was to sway Russia, exposing Qom’s clandestine facility should have been more than enough. There was no need to sacrifice Poland and the Czech Republic. Had the President exposed Qom prior to scrapping missile defense, one could argue that the Russians would have done the same. They would have expressed concern and used the same blunt words voiced by President Medvedev.

The details of the newly exposed plant are such that a Russian attempt to demur and pretend business is usual would have been met with scorn and derision by the world. The fact of the matter is, President Obama did not need to sacrifice missile defense to Russia if it wished to get Russia more determined to help on the Iran dossier. All he had to do was expose Qom.

There is no doubt that many on the Left will continue to link missile defense to some supposed grand bargain with Russia on Iran. The evidence is scant. And given what we’ve learned of Iran’s nuclear program in the last few days, it would be a shame if the U.S. President felt that he needed to sacrifice an American promise to trusted NATO allies to get the Russians on board.

Russia just announced that it will not shelve its plans to deploy tactical missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave. Obama’s reset policy is beginning to work … for Russia!

Iran’s negotiating proposal is now public. Just like its previous incarnation, it is revealing. Anyone familiar with the rhetoric of the Islamic Republic will recognize in these pages the recurrence of Iran’s central grievance—namely, the need for a new world order where Iran, as a leading member of the Non-Aligned Movement, has its proper place in the sun.

Whether Western leaders take this rhetoric seriously is now an important question. In the discussion surrounding Iran’s nuclear program, all the talk about whether Iran is or is not rational misses the point of what Iran’s regime is about and wants to achieve. Iran may not be wedded to the kind of apocalyptic politics that the rhetoric of some of its leaders frequently suggests; but it remains, at heart, a revolutionary power driven by an ideology that successfully weds Persian nationalism, Shia revivalism, Third World-ism, and revolutionary Marxist-Leninist theories. Its devastating potential always derived from this explosive combination of the subversive with the divine. Its quest for nuclear weapons is driven, at the very least, by the desire to push this agenda more aggressively and more successfully.

Its offer, with no mention of its nuclear program or its obligations under the NPT or UN Security Council Resolutions, reflects this desire to export Iran’s revolution and its underlying worldview and to shape a new world order in its image. The international community is entitled to seek a diplomatic solution to the standoff, of course. But it should not equivocate about, discount, or downplay Iran’s real intentions—for Iran, negotiations are not about Iranian concessions but about Western peaceful surrender through polite parley before a nuclear Iran can exact similar terms in much blunter ways.

Only weeks after refusing to criticize the mass-circulation tabloid Aftonbladet for its libelous “organ harvest” piece against Israel’s army, Sweden’s government has asked Stockholm’s Museum of Modern Art to remove controversial and potentially offensive art currently on display at an exhibition. The backdrop of this decision is the EU foreign ministers’ meeting in Stockholm this coming weekend.

Surely the Swedish government thinks it can get away with explaining its request on grounds of sensitivity to its guests and denying that any censorship was exercised. Still, could Sweden not voice and then explain away criticism of Aftonbladet’s story on the same grounds? After all, when a fresh row exploded, later, between Israel and the Spanish paper El Mundo on El Mundo’s editorial choice to interview Holocaust denier David Irving, Spain’s foreign minister, Miguel Moratinos, was able to criticize the choice while upholding freedom of the press.

One can do both after all—and nobody asked either Sweden’s or Spain’s government to take any action against the aforementioned papers that might jeopardize freedom of the press.

Sweden, on the other hand, has decided to be callous to Israel and oversensitive to its European colleagues. What, then, is Swedish for consistency?

According to the U.S. envoy to the IAEA, Iran is dangerously close to a nuclear bomb: “This ongoing enrichment activity . . . moves Iran closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity,” he reportedly told the IAEA board.

So how close are we to an Iranian mushroom cloud?

Analysts and government officials routinely offer different time lines for an Iranian bomb—but they tend to put Iran’s breakout capacity a few years away. Iran is experiencing significant technological difficulties. And the political decision to go for the bomb might not have been made yet. It does not mean that Iran does not intend to build a nuclear arsenal over time—to the contrary. But testing a nuclear device comes with a price: Iran is a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Crossing the nuclear threshold for a rudimentary nuclear device that Iran may not yet be able to replicate or deliver will be costly and fall short of achieving the strategic goals Iran is pursuing through its nuclear program—namely, the survival of the Islamic Revolution and its rise as the regional hegemon.

Tactically, Iran may therefore prefer to wait until it has accumulated enough weapons-grade fissile material to build not one but dozens of bombs; until it can build a nuclear device that is small enough to fit into a missile warhead; and until it has perfected its ballistic-missile technology to the point where a long-range missile can accurately hit a distant target. That time line is still quite long—years, not months.

However, it is not the time line that matters for policymakers. For long before Iran has accumulated enough fissile material to build an arsenal and enough technological know-how to make it into deliverable warheads, Iran will have mastered the technology and cracked the scientific secrets needed to reach that goal. It is the difference between knowing how to ride a bicycle and owning one. The regime is closer to the former than the latter—the U.S. envoy’s statement is further evidence of that. But once the knowledge is there, it will be harder to halt the march to the real thing. Thus, this shorter time line matters more than the actual moment when Iran will break away from the NPT, build several warheads, mount them on missiles, and threaten its neighbors.

But even this time line is not the one that policymakers must rely on for their planning. Long before Iran has built its arsenal or acquired the necessary knowledge, it will have shielded dozens of clandestine installations from a possible military strike. Iran knows that military planners in Israel and the U.S. constantly update their contingency plans for a strike based on fresh intelligence. The more Iran spreads its program, the more it hides it behind an impenetrable shield of defenses and fortifications, the harder the job for those in the West tasked with devising a realistic plan of attack.

At some point, they will tell the U.S. president and the Israeli prime minister that a military strike to retard or destroy Iran’s nuclear program is no longer an option. From then onward, Iran’s run to nuclear capability is unhindered. The removal of a credible military threat from the arsenal of diplomatic tools available to the international community will considerably reduce its leverage on Iran’s regime. Whereas the nuclear clock may be still ticking slow enough to give us time, Iran’s efforts to make its program untouchable are less burdened by scientific challenges—that clock is ticking much faster. Tehran will get there long before it can threaten anyone with a deliverable nuclear weapon. Once that happens— in months, not years—the game is up.

Only weeks after Sweden’s Aftonbladet published its libelous story on Israeli soldiers and organ-harvesting, Spain’s El Mundo had its little spat with Israel today.

El Mundo is going to publish an interview with Holocaust denier David Irving this Saturday, as part of a string of articles commissioned to mark the 70th anniversary of the beginning of World War II.

The paper received a protest letter from the Israeli ambassador, and it responded in kind, mentioning freedom of speech and implying that Irving’s views (while not those of the paper) may be of public interest as long as they do not incite. The Israeli ambassador, who questioned the choice, among other things, as a blatant example of moral relativism was accused of having a Manichaean view of the world.

Surely the editor will have missed the irony of rebuking Israel’s ambassador’s lamentations that El Mundo can’t tell right from wrong and truth from lie by calling his view “Manichaean,” because it kind of proves the ambassador’s point.

Just as surely, people will surmise callousness, if not outright anti-Semitism, in the choice of giving Irving equal dignity of standing and space alongside real historians who have long exposed him for what he really is.

But it seems to me that the point is that freedom of the press is not the same as the obligation to give a platform to every crank on the planet. Editors make thousands of editorial choices on what to publish, what to downplay, what to headline, and what to leave aside many times a week. In point of fact, El Mundo’s editor, while waving the press’s freedom flag, censored the ambassador’s letter’s last, and most damning, paragraph because, presumably, it suggested that his editorial choice to publish Irving was dictated by sensationalism.

El Mundo and Aftonbladet have each in its own way crossed a line—making the outrageous legitimate, and the extreme mainstream. Each has referred to a principle it does not necessarily apply when receiving submissions from pro-Israel voices.

It remains to be seen what Irving says, of course. But that’s beside the point. An interview in a leading publication is a place in the sun. Spain’s El Mundo just gave him one.

One more line has been crossed in Europe. Don’t be surprised if the trickle soon becomes an avalanche.