Four U.S. non-proliferation specialists are urging the Obama
administration to impose tougher economic sanctions against Iran and
issue more explicit threats to destroy its nuclear programme by military
means.
In a 155-page report, the specialists, who were joined by the head of a right-wing pro-Israel lobby group, the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD),
said Washington should declare its intent to institute a “de facto
international embargo on all investments in, and trade with” Iran,
excepting food and medicine, if it does not freeze its nuclear-related
work.
The calls come amidst speculation over a critical meeting between
Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security
Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – plus
Germany (P5+1), which have met over the last two months in an apparent
effort to unify their positions before meeting with Iran. That meeting
has not yet been scheduled, but most observers believe it will take
place at the end of the month.
The report, “U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the Changing Middle
East,” also said Washington should “increase Iranian isolation,
including through regime change in Syria” and “undertake…overt
preparations for the use of warplanes and/or missiles to destroy Iran’s
nuclear capabilities with high explosives”.
Only if Tehran provided “meaningful concessions”, among them
suspending all uranium enrichment and heavy water-related projects,
closing the underground enrichment facility at Fordow, and accepting a
highly intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections
regime – should sanctions relief be considered, said the report, which
was co-authored by FDD’s president, Mark Dubowitz, and David Albright, a
physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International
Security (ISIS).
In that respect, the recommendations appeared to reflect more the
position held by Israel than that of the Obama administration, which has
suggested that it will not necessarily insist on a total suspension of
uranium enrichment – a demand that Iran has consistently rejected and
which many Iran specialists believe is a deal-killer – as a condition
for possible sanctions relief.
“The report does not offer a realistic formula for negotiating a
satisfactory agreement on limiting Iran’s nuclear programme,” said Greg
Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association (ACA)
and a former top State Department analyst on proliferation issues. “It
would require Iran to capitulate on virtually all fronts.”
“Some of the measures it suggests would be likely to disrupt P5+1
unity….and the maximalist requirements it cites for an agreement could
convince Tehran that the U.S. objective is regime change, rather than
full compliance with its obligations to the IAEA,” he noted.
In at least one respect, however, the report departed from Israel’s
views. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly
threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, warned in September that
Tehran could reach what the report called the “critical capability” to
quickly build a bomb without detection as early as this spring. The
reported concluded that mid-2014 was more likely, although it noted an
earlier date was also possible.
“The focal point wasn’t to say, ‘Saddle up, we’re going to war in six months,’” said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies and
a co-chair of one of the five task forces that contributed to the
report. “This was a more careful assessment of how much time we had, and
it allows the sort of (sanctions) pressure, which has been mounting, to
have more impact.”
Iranian officials have suggested over the last several months that
they are willing to make major concessions, including halting their
enrichment of uranium up to 20 percent, transferring a substantial
portion of their 20-percent enriched stockpile out of the country, and
accepting enhanced IAEA inspections, provided they receive major
sanctions relief in exchange. But they have also insisted that their
right to enrichment of up to five percent is nonnegotiable.
The P5+1 appear divided over how much sanctions relief to offer and
in what sequence. Recent reports indicate that Washington and Paris are
pressing to require Iran to implement all of these measures, as well as
closing Fordow and clearing up all questions raised by the IAEA
regarding alleged military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme,
before any major easing of sanctions can happen.
The new report, which came out of a series of “roundtables” that
included presentations by senior administration officials, clearly
favours an even tougher stance.
It explicitly endorsed a letter – reportedly drafted by the American
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – to Obama signed by 73 U.S.
senators last month that warned, “There should be absolutely no
diminution of pressure on the Iranians until the totality of their
nuclear problem has been addressed.” The report called for intensified
sanctions and more explicit military threats by the administration.
It also called for stepping up covert action against Tehran’s nuclear
and missile programmes and exerting greater pressure on China, Hong
Kong, Turkey, and the Gulf kingdoms to halt all commerce with Iran.
While the report covered other non-proliferation issues in the Middle
East and North Africa, it skipped lightly over Israel, the region’s
only nuclear power, noting merely that the Jewish state will consider
disarmament initiatives only after all its neighbours make peace with
it.
The dearth of attention to Israel, which, unlike Iran, is not a
signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), was described by
Thielmann as “conspicuous” given the intended scope of the report.
The report also said Washington should threaten the Islamist-led
government in Cairo with tough sanctions if it takes steps to gain
nuclear capability.
That the report’s recommendations coincided closely with Israel’s
positions may have been due in part to the heavy involvement in the
project by staff members from both FDD, which has been a leading
proponent of “economic warfare” against Iran, and the Dershowitz Group, a
media relations firm with FDD shares office space and reportedly
cooperates closely.
Several Dershowitz account executives included in the report’s
acknowledgments have previously been associated with Hasbara
Fellowships, a group set up by the right-wing, Israel-based Aish HaTorah
International, to counter alleged anti-Israel sentiment at U.S.
universities. IPS inquiries into the project’s sources of funding went
unanswered.
The endorsement by Albright, who is frequently cited by mainstream
U.S. media as an expert on the technical aspects of Iran’s nuclear
programme, of the report’s policy-oriented recommendations, such as
making a military attack on Iran more credible, came as a surprise to
some proliferation experts, including two who participated in the
roundtables but asked to remain anonymous because of the off-the-record
nature of the proceedings.
“His expertise is a technical one, but this is mostly a political
paper,” noted one expert. “This covers areas that go far beyond his
expertise.”
http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2013/01/16/new-push-in-us-for-tougher-sanctions-war-threats-against-iran/
Thursday 17 January 2013
New Push in US for Tougher Sanctions, War Threats Against Iran
Posted @ 16:03
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