A high-risk game of nuclear
chicken By F William Engdahl
In the past weeks, media reports have
speculated that Washington is "thinking the
unthinkable", namely, an aggressive, preemptive
nuclear bombardment of Iran, by either the United
States or Israel, to destroy or render useless the
deep underground Iranian nuclear facilities.
The possibility of war against Iran
presents a geostrategic and geopolitical problem
of far more complexity than the bombing and
occupation of Iraq. And Iraq has proved
complicated enough for the US. We try to identify
some of the main motives of the main
actors in the new drama and
the outlook for possible war.
The
dramatis personae include the Bush
administration, most especially the Dick
Cheney-led neo-conservative hawks in control now
of not only the Pentagon, but also the Central
Intelligence Agency, the UN ambassadorship and a
growing part of the State Department planning
bureaucracy under Condoleezza Rice.
It
includes Iran, under the new and outspoken
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. It includes
President Vladimir Putin's Russia, a nuclear-armed
veto member of the UN Security Council. It
includes a nuclear-armed Israel, whose acting
premier, Ehud Olmert, recently declared that
Israel could "under no circumstances" allow
Iranian development of nuclear weapons "that can
threaten our existence". It includes the European
Union, especially Security Council permanent
member, France, and the weakening President
Jacques Chirac. It includes China, whose
dependence on Iranian oil and potentially natural
gas is large.
Each of these actors has
differing agendas and different goals, making the
issue of Iran one of the most complex in recent
international politics. What's going on here? Is a
nuclear war, with all that implies for the global
financial and political stability, imminent? What
are the possible and even probable outcomes?
The basic facts First the basic
facts as can be verified. The latest act by
Ahmadinejad in announcing the resumption of
suspended work on completing a nuclear fuel
enrichment facility along with two other
facilities at Natanz, sounded louder alarm bells
outside Iran than his inflammatory anti-Israel
rhetoric earlier, understandably so.
Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace
Prize-winning head of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body, has said he is
not sure if that act implies a nuclear weapons
program, or whether Iran is merely determined not
to be dependent on outside powers for its own
civilian nuclear fuel cycle. But, he added, the
evidence for it is stronger than that against
Saddam Hussein, a rather strong statement by the
usually cautious ElBaradei.
The result of
the resumption of research at Natanz appears to
have jelled for the first time a coalition between
US and the EU, including Germany and France, with
China and even Russia now joining in urging Iran
to desist. Last August, President George W Bush
announced, in regard to Iran's announced plans to
resume enrichment regardless of international
opinion, that "all options are on the table". That
implied in context a nuclear strike on Iranian
nuclear sites.
That statement led to a
sharp acceleration of EU diplomatic efforts, led
by Britain, Germany and France, the so-called
EU-3, to avoid a war. The three told Washington
they were opposed to a military solution. Since
then we are told by German magazine Der Spiegel
and others the EU view has changed, to appear to
come closer to the position of the Bush
administration.
It's useful briefly to
review the technology of nuclear fuel enrichment.
To prepare uranium for use in a nuclear reactor,
it undergoes the steps of mining and milling,
conversion, enrichment and fuel fabrication. These
four steps make up the "front end" of the nuclear
fuel cycle.
After uranium has been used in
a reactor to produce electricity it is known as
"spent fuel", and may undergo further steps,
including temporary storage, reprocessing and
recycling before eventual disposal as waste.
Collectively these steps are known as the "back
end" of the fuel cycle.
The
Natanz facility is part of the "front end" or
fuel-preparation cycle. Ore is first milled into
uranium oxide (U3O8), or yellowcake, then converted
into uranium hexaflouride (UF6
) gas. The
uranium hexaflouride then is sent to an enrichment
facility, in this case Natanz, to produce a mix
containing 3-4% of fissile U-235, a
non-weapons-grade nuclear fuel. So far, so good,
more or less in terms of weapons danger.
Iran is especially positioned through
geological fortune to possess large quantities of
uranium from mines in Yazd province, permitting
Iran to be self-sufficient in fuel and not having
to rely on Russian fuel or any other foreign
imports for that matter. It also has a facility at
Arak which produces heavy water, which is used to
moderate a research reactor whose construction
began in 2004.
That reactor will use
uranium dioxide and could enable Iran to produce
weapons-grade plutonium, which some nuclear
scientists estimate could produce an amount to
build one to two nuclear devices per year. Iran
officially claims the plant is for peaceful
medical research. The peaceful argument here
begins to look thinner.
Nuclear
enrichment is no small item. You don't build such a
facility in the backyard or the garage. France's
large Tricastin enrichment facility provides fuel
for the nuclear electricity grid of Electricite
de France (EDF), as well as for the French
nuclear weapons program. It needs four large
nuclear reactors, just to provide more than 3,000MWe
(megawatts electrical) power for it. Early US
enrichment plants used gaseous diffusion.
Enrichment plants in the EU and Russia use a more
modern centrifuge process that uses far less
energy per unit of enrichment. The latter or
centrifuge process is also the Iranian type.
To make weapons-grade uranium requires
more than conventional civilian electric
power-grade uranium fuel. "Unmaking" weapons-grade
uranium today is also a geopolitically interesting
process, not irrelevant to the current dispute
over Iran. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
under agreements designed to ensure that the
Soviet nuclear arsenal would be converted to
peaceful uses, military weapons uranium came on to
the civilian market under a US-Russian agreement.
Today more than half of all the uranium
used for electricity in the US nuclear power
plants comes from Russian military stockpiles.
Currently, 20% of all electricity produced in the
US is nuclear-generated, meaning that Russian
uranium fuels some 10% of all US electricity.
In 1994, a US$12 billion contract was
signed between the US Enrichment Corporation (now
USEC Inc) and Russia's Techsnabexport (Tenex) as
agents for the US and Russian governments. USEC
agreed to buy a minimum of 500 tonnes of
weapons-grade uranium over 20 years, at a rate of
up to 30 tonnes/year beginning in 1999. The
uranium is blended down to 4.4% U-235 in Russia.
The USEC then sells it to its US power utility
customers as fuel. In September this program
reached its halfway point of 250 tonnes, or
elimination of 10,000 nuclear warheads.
Worldwide, one sixth of the global market
of commercial enriched uranium is supplied by
Russia from Russian and other weapons-grade
uranium stocks. Putin has many cards to play in
the showdown over Iran's nuclear program.
The issue of whether Iran was secretly
building a nuclear weapon capability first
surfaced from allegations by an Iranian exile
opposition group in 2002.
Natanz has been
under the IAEA's purview since suspicions about
Iran's activities surfaced. It was prompted by
reports from an Iranian opposition organization,
National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), and
led ElBaradei to tour Iran's nuclear facilities in
February 2002, including the incomplete plant in
Natanz about 500 kilometers south of Tehran.
The NCRI is the political arm of the
controversial People's Mujahideen of Iran, which
both the EU and US governments officially brand
terrorist but unofficially work with increasingly
against the Tehran theocracy.
Possible
Iranian strategy It's undeniably clear
that Ahmadinejad has a more confrontational policy
than his predecessor. The Iranian ambassador to
Vienna, speaking at a conference in Austria where
this author was present last September, shocked
his audience by stating essentially the same line
of confrontational rhetoric: "If it comes to war,
Iran is ready ..."
Let's assume that the
Western media are correctly reporting the strident
militant speeches of the president. We must also
assume that in that theocratic state, the ruling
mullahs, as the most powerful political
institution in Iran, are behind the election of
the more fundamentalist Ahmadinejad. It has been
speculated that the aim of the militancy and
defiance of the US and Israel is to revitalize the
role of Iran as the "vanguard" of an anti-Western
theocratic Shi'ite revolution at a time when the
mullahs' support internally, and in the Islamic
world, is fading.
Let's also assume
Ahmadinejad's actions are quite premeditated, with
the intent to needle and provoke the West for some
reason. If pushed against the wall by growing
Western pressures, Ahmadinejad's regime has
apparently calculated that Iran has little to lose
if it hit back.
He is also no rogue agent
in opposition to the Iranian clergy. According to
the Pakistani newspaper Dawn of January 24,
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, secretary of the Guardian
Council of the Constitution, stressed Iran's
determination to assert its "inalienable" rights:
"We appreciate President Ahmadinejad because he is
following a more aggressive foreign policy on
human rights and nuclear issues than the former
governments of [Mohammed] Khatami and [Hashemi]
Rafsanjani," the ayatollah reportedly said.
"President Ahmadinejad is asking, 'why only you
[Western powers] should send inspectors for human
rights or nuclear issues to Iran - we also want to
inspect you and report on your activities'."
The paper's Tehran correspondent added,
"The mood within the country's top leadership
remains upbeat and the general belief was that it
would be possible to ride out international
sanctions - if it comes to that."
In this
situation, some exile Iranians feel it would
bolster Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs to be
handed a new UN sanction punishment. It could be
used to whip up nationalism at home and tighten
their grip on power at a time of waning
revolutionary spirit in the country.
Ahmadinejad has been taking very
provocative, and presumably calculated measures
including breaking nuclear-facility seals, and
announcing a major conference that would question
evidence that the Nazis conducted a mass murder of
European Jews during World War II. Yet he also has
stressed several times publicly that in accord
with strict Islam law, Iran would never deploy a
nuclear device, a weapon of mass destruction, and
that it is only asserting its right as a sovereign
nation to an independent full-cycle civilian
nuclear program.
The history of Iran's
nuclear efforts should be noted. It began in 1957
when Reza Shah Pahlevi signed a civilian Atoms for
Peace agreement with Dwight D Eisenhower's
administration. Iran received a US research
reactor in 1967. Then in 1974 after the first oil
shock, the shah created the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, explicitly tasked to develop
civilian nuclear power to displace oil, freeing
more oil for export, and for developing a nuclear
weapon.
The Bushehr reactor complex of
civilian power reactors was begun by West Germany
in the 1970s under the shah, the same time Iran
began buying major shares of key German companies,
such as Daimler and Krupp. After his 1979 ascent
to power, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ordered all
work on the nuclear program halted, citing Islamic
beliefs that weapons of mass destruction were
immoral.
In 1995, the Russian Foreign
Ministry signed a contract with the Iranian
government to complete the stalled Bushehr plant,
and to supply it with Russian nuclear fuel,
provided Iran agreed to allow IAEA monitoring and
safeguards. According to an article in the March
2004 MERIA Journal, that 1995 Russia-Iran deal
included potentially dangerous transfers of
Russian technology, such as laser enrichment from
Yefremov Scientific Research Institute. Iran's
initial deal with Russia in 1995 included a
centrifuge plant that would have provided Iran
with fissile material. The plant deal was then
canceled at Washington's insistence.
The
monitoring of Bushehr continued until the reports
from the NCRI of secret nuclear weapons facilities
in 2002 led to increased pressure on Iran, above
all from Bush, who labeled Iran one of a
three-nation "axis of evil" in his January 2002
State of the Union speech. That was when the Bush
administration was deeply in preparation of regime
change in Iraq, however, and Iran took a back
seat, not least as Washington neo-conservatives
such as Ahmad Chalabi had convinced the Pentagon
his ties to Tehran could aid their Iraq agenda.
Since that time, relations between
Washington and Tehran have become less than
cordial. Iran has been preparing for what it sees
as an inevitable war with the US. Brigadier
General Mohammad-Ali Jaafari, commander of the
Revolutionary Guards, told the official IRNA news
agency on October 9: "As the likely enemy is far
more advanced technologically than we are, we have
been using what is called 'asymmetric warfare'
methods. We have gone through the necessary
exercises and our forces are now well prepared for
this." This presumably includes terrorist attacks
and the use of weapons of mass destruction and
their means of delivery, ballistic missiles.
On January 20, Iran announced it had
decided to withdraw investments from Europe. This
was the same week UBS Bank in Zurich announced it
was closing all Iranian accounts. According to US
Treasury reports, Iran has an estimated $103
billion in dollar-denominated assets alone. There
is potential to cause short-term financial
distress, though likely little more should Iran
sell all dollar assets abruptly.
What
seems clear is that Iran is defiantly going ahead
with completion of an independent nuclear
capability and insists it is abiding by all rules
of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and
the IAEA.
Iran also apparently feels well-prepared to
sit out any economic sanctions. The country
is the second-largest Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) oil producer (4.1 million
barrels per day in 2005) next to Saudi
Arabia (9.1 million.) Russia with 9.5 million
bpd production in 2005 takes claim to
being the world's largest oil-producing country.
Iran has also accumulated a strong cash
position from the recent high oil price, earning
some $45 billion in oil revenue in 2005, double
the average for 2001-03. This gives it a war
chest cushion against external sanctions and the
possibility to live for months with cutting its
oil exports, all or partly. That is clearly one of
the implicit weapons Iran knows it holds and would
clearly use in event the situation escalated into
UN Security Council economic sanctions.
In
today's ultra-tight oil supply market, with OPEC
producing at full capacity, there would be no
margin to replace 4 million Iranian barrels a day.
A price shock level of $130 to $150 is quite
likely in that event.
Iran now has
decisive influence within the Shi'ite-dominated
new Iraqi government. The most influential figure
in Iraq is Shi'ite spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani, the 75-year-old cleric born in Iran.
On January 16, after the new Iraqi government
offered Sistani Iraqi citizenship, he replied, "I
was born Iranian and I will die Iranian." That
also gives Tehran significant leverage over
political developments in Iraq.
The
Israeli options Israel has been thrown
into political crisis at just this time of Iran's
strident moves, with the removal of the old
warrior, Ariel Sharon, from the scene following
his illness. Israeli elections will be held on
March 28 for a new government. Contenders include
the current acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Israeli media report that Bush has decided to do
what he can to try and ensure that Olmert,
standing in for the incapacitated Sharon, is
elected to be full-time prime minister. Rice has
invited Olmert to visit Washington, probably some
time next month.
Other reports are that
the vice president, we might say the "spiritual
leader" of the US hawks, Cheney, has been covertly
aiding the Benjamin Netanyahu candidacy as new
head of the right-wing Likud. Netanyahu is also
directly tied to the indicted US Republican
money-launderer, Jack Abramoff, during the time
Netanyahu was Sharon's finance minister.
Washington journalists report that Cheney,
and his advisers David Addington and John Hannah,
are working behind the scenes to ensure that
former premier Netanyahu succeeds Olmert. Cheney
is working to defeat the more moderate Kadima
Party formed by Sharon and his more moderate
ex-Likud allies.
Bush has not come out
with direct vocal support for Olmert, but Olmert
has stressed that he will continue to work with
America to realize a Palestinian state. Israeli
media report the new middle-of-the-road (Israeli
middle) party of Olmert and Sharon-Kadima will
probably win a landslide - to the dismay of
Cheney's and Karl Rove's Christian Right and the
neo-conservative base.
According to the
Palestine newspaper, al-Manar, the Bush
administration is conducting secret contacts with
the Palestinian Authority and Arab countries in an
effort to have them help strengthen Olmert's
stature. The US reportedly informed them that it
was interested in having Olmert head Kadima and
"continue the process that Sharon began to solve
the Palestinian-Israel conflict".
The
paper further reports that Washington feels that
Olmert is a "smart leader who will be able, with
his advisors, to lead the peace process and rebuff
the political machinations against him".
The Bush White House even informed Olmert,
according to the paper, that it would like him to
keep Sharon's advisors on his team, especially Dov
Weisglass and Shimon Peres. Weisglass, Sharon's
personal lawyer and broker of ties to Washington,
recently said he was in almost daily contact with
Rice.
On January 22, Olmert addressed the
issue of Iran. According to Israeli State Radio,
he said Iran was trying to engage Israel in the
conflict surrounding Tehran's ongoing nuclear
enrichment efforts, and that he concurred with
Sharon's position that Israel would not lead the
battle against Iran. He said that "responsibility
falls first and foremost on the United States,
Germany, France and the Security Council. We do
not have to be the leaders".
By contrast,
his defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, stated Israel
would not tolerate Iran achieving nuclear
independence, a statement that analysts feel
signals a military action by Jerusalem is
possible, with or without official US sanction.
This all would indicate that there is a
definite split within Israel between a future
Olmert government not eager to launch a preemptive
military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities
versus the ever-hawkish, neo-conservative-tied
Netanyahu. Notably, prominent Washington
neo-conservative, Kenneth Timmerman, told Israeli
radio in mid-January that he expected an Israeli
preemptive strike on Iran "within the next 60
days", ie just after Israeli elections or just
before.
Timmerman is close to Richard Perle, the
indicted Cheney chief of staff, Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, Douglas Feith and Michael Ledeen.
The question is whether ordinary Israelis
are war weary, whether with Palestine or with
Iran, and seek a compromise solution. Polls seem
to indicate so. However, the very strong showing
of Hamas in the January 25 Palestine elections
could change the Israeli mood. The day after their
vote success, Hamas leader Mahmud al-Zahhar
claimed that his movement would not change its
covenant calling for the destruction of Israel,
reported the Israeli online news portal Ynet.
Last week, a new element appeared in the
chemistry of the long-standing Israeli Likud-US
Congress influence nexus. Larry A Franklin, a
former Pentagon Iran analyst and close friend of
leading Pentagon neo-conservatives, was sentenced
to 12 years and seven months in jail for sharing
classified Pentagon information with pro-Israel
lobbyists through an influential Washington-based
lobby organization, AIPAC, the American-Israel
Public Affairs Committee.
AIPAC has been
at the heart of ties between the Israeli
right-wing Likud and members of the US Congress
for years. It is regarded as so powerful that it
is able to decide which Congressmen are elected or
re-elected. Previously it had been considered
"untouchable". That is no longer true it seems.
Franklin pleaded guilty last October to
sharing the information with AIPAC lobbyists and
Israeli diplomat, Naor Gilon. Steve Rosen and
Keith Weissman, who were fired from AIPAC in 2004
in the affair, are facing charges of disclosing
confidential information to Israel, apparently
about Iran. The sentencing is causing major shock
waves throughout leading US Jewish organizations,
including the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
Brith. The conviction has hit a vital lobbying
tool of AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobby groups,
namely, expenses-paid trips for US Congressmen to
Israel. Hundreds of politicians are taken to
Israel every year by non-profit affiliates of
groups such as AIPAC and the American Jewish
Committee - trips Jewish leaders say are a vital
tool in pro-Israel lobbying.
The Bush
administration had tried to bury the Franklin
case, unsuccessfully. It could only delay the
trial until after the November 2004 US elections.
The Franklin scandal as well as the Abramoff
lobbying affair have both hit severe blows to the
suspicious money network between Likud and the
White House, potentially fatally weakening the
Israeli hawk faction of Netanyahu.
The
Russian factor in Iran The role of Putin's
Russia in the unfolding Iran showdown is central.
In geopolitical terms, one must not forget that
Russia is the ultimate "prize" or endgame in the
more than decade-long US strategy of controlling
Eurasia and preventing any possible rival from
emerging to challenge US hegemony.
Russian
engineers and technical advisers are in Iran
constructing the Bushehr nuclear plant, involving
at least 300 Russian technicians. Iran has been a
strategic cooperation partner of the Putin
government in terms of opposing US-United Kingdom
designs for control of Caspian oil. Iran has been
a major purchaser of Russian military hardware
since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in
addition to buying Russian nuclear technology and
expertise.
In March, Iran-Russia relations
took a qualitative shift closer when Moscow agreed
to the sale of a "defensive" missile system to
Tehran, worth up to $7 billion when taking future
defense contracts into account. In 2000, Putin had
announced Russia would no longer continue to abide
by a secret US-Russia agreement to ban Russian
weapons sales to Iran that the government of Boris
Yeltsin had concluded. Since then, Russian-Iranian
relations have become more entwined, to put it
mildly.
Moscow currently says it is in
talks with Iran to build five to seven additional
nuclear power reactors on the Bushehr site after
completion of the present reactor. Russia expects
to get up to $10 billion from the planned larger
Bushehr reactors deal and additional arms sales to
Iran.
It is currently building the reactor
on credit to be paid by Iran only after the
completion of the project. Sanctions and
admonitions will not change Russia's relationship
with one of the most demonized states in America's
"axis of evil". Iran has become a major
counterweight for Moscow in the geopolitical game
for Washington's total domination over Eurasia,
and Putin is shrewdly aware of that potential.
A look at the map will reveal how
geopolitically strategic Iran is for Russia, as
well as for Israel and the US. Iran controls the
strategic Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for
oil from the Persian Gulf to Japan and the rest of
the world. Iran borders the oil-rich Caspian Sea.
Significantly, on January 23, the Russian daily
Kommersant reported that Armenia, sandwiched
between Iran and Georgia, had agreed to sell a 45%
control of its Iran-Armenia gas pipeline to
Russia's Gazprom. The Russian daily added, "If
Russia takes over this [Iran-Armenia] pipeline,
Russia will be able to control transit of Iranian
gas to Georgia, Ukraine and Europe."
That
would be a major blow to the series of Washington
operations to insert US-friendly pro-North
Atlantic Treaty Organization governments in
Georgia as well as Ukraine. It would also bind
Iran and Russian energy relations. While the
Armenian government denies it has agreed,
negotiations continue, with Gazprom holding out
the prospect of demanding double the price or $110
per 1,000 cubic meters rather than the present $54
unless Armenia agree to sell the stake to Gazprom.
Russia is pursuing a complex strategy
regarding its cooperation with Iran. Minatom, the
Russian nuclear energy group, announced some time
back that Russia was in discussion with Tehran to
increase Iran's nuclear capacity by 6,000
megawatts by 2020. The Russian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs confirmed a year ago that Moscow would
supply Iran with fuel for the Bushehr reactor,
even if it did not sign the IAEA Additional
Protocols.
While Putin has assured the
world that Iran must demonstrate full NPT
compliance before the Russian nuclear transfers
occur, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated
previously that the IAEA's failure to condemn Iran
opened the door for Russia to help build future
reactors in that country.
Putin has
managed to put Russia square in the middle of the
present global showdown over Iran, a position
which clearly tells some in Moscow that Russia is
indeed again a global player. Undoubtedly more.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in
a January 18 discussion with the daily
Nezavisimaya Gazeta, stated: "It is not profitable
for Russia to impose sanctions on Iran, since we
just recently signed an agreement to sell them
nearly $1 billion worth of medium-range
anti-aircraft weapons. These modern weapons are
capable of hitting targets up to 25 kilometers
away and will probably be used to defend various
testing sites in Iran. Therefore, if some attempt
is made to strike at the country and the
deliveries from Russia are made quickly enough, we
can expect a strong response. In other words, Iran
will be able to defend itself."
Ivanov
added a significant caveat: "However, if ballistic
missiles are used, then nuclear sites can be
targeted effectively. We must not forget that
Russia has its experts working on some of these
sites, and is not interested in a military
scenario, if only to protect them."
Russia's current strategy is to renew
its earlier offer, rejected initially by Tehran,
to take the uranium fuel from Iran to Russia
for reprocessing - then returned to Iran for use
in the country's reactors - thus defusing the
crisis significantly. Last Wednesday, Iran's top nuclear
negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that Tehran viewed
Moscow's offer as a "positive development", but no
agreement has been reached between the countries.
Talks have continued over the specifics, including
Tehran's proposal to have China involved in the
Russian enrichment process.
After his
meeting with Russian Security Council chief, Igor
Ivanov, Larijani told the media, "Our view of this
offer is positive, and we are trying to bring the
positions of the sides closer." Further talks come
in February, after the planned emergency IAEA
meeting of this Thursday. Iran opposition groups
claim the Russian talks are merely a ploy to
divide the West and buy more time. Larijani and
Ivanov said in a joint statement that Tehran's
nuclear standoff must be resolved by diplomatic
efforts in the UN atomic watchdog agency.
The China factor in Iran China,
in its increasingly urgent search for secure
long-term energy supplies, especially oil and gas,
has developed major economic ties with Iran. It
began in 2000, when Beijing invited Iranian
president Mohammed Khatami for a literal red
carpet reception and discussion of areas of energy
and economic cooperation. Then in November 2004,
curiously at the occasion of the second Bush
election victory, the relation took a major shift
as China signed huge oil and gas deals with
Tehran.
The two countries signed a
preliminary agreement worth potentially $70
billion to $100 billion. Under the terms, China
will purchase Iranian oil and gas and help develop
the Yadavaran oil field, near the Iraqi border.
That same year, China agreed to buy $20 billion in
liquefied natural gas from Iran over a
quarter-century.
Iran's oil minister
stated at the time, "Japan is our number one
energy importer for historical reasons ... but we
would like to give preference to exports to
China." In return, China has become a major
exporter of manufactured goods to Iran, including
computer systems, household appliances and cars.
In addition, Beijing has been one of the largest
suppliers of military technology to Tehran since
the 1980s. The Chinese arms trade has involved
conventional, missile, nuclear and chemical
weapons. Outside Pakistan and North Korea, China's
arms trade with Iran has been more comprehensive
and sustained than that with any other country.
China has sold thousands of tanks, armored
personnel vehicles and artillery pieces, several
hundred surface-to-air, air-to-air, cruise and
ballistic missiles as well as thousands of
antitank missiles, more than 100 fighter aircraft
and dozens of small warships.
In addition,
it is widely believed that China has assisted Iran
in the development of its ballistic and cruise
missile production capability. In addition, China
has supplied Iran scientific expertise, technical
cooperation, technology transfers, production
technologies, blueprints and dual-use transfers.
In sum, Iran is more than a strategic
partner for China. In the wake of the US
unilateral decision to go to war against Iraq,
reports from Chinese media indicated that the
leadership in Beijing privately realized its own
long-term energy security was fundamentally at
risk under the aggressive new preemptive war
strategy of Washington. China began taking major
steps to outflank or negate total US domination of
the world's major oil and gas resources. Iran has
become a central part of that strategy.
This underscores the Chinese demand that
the Iran nuclear issue be settled in the halls of
the IAEA and not at the UN Security Council, as
Washington wishes. China would clearly threaten
its veto were Iran to be brought before the UN for
sanctions.
EU relations with
Iran The EU is Iran's main trading partner
concerning both imports and exports. Clearly, they
want to avoid a war with Iran and all that would
imply for the EU. The EU's balance of trade with
Iran is negative due to large imports of oil.
Germany's new government under Chancellor Angela
Merkel has made a clear point of trying to
reaffirm close ties with Washington following the
tense relations under former chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder, who openly opposed the Iraq war along
with France's Chirac in 2002 and 2003.
Chirac for his part is the subject of
major controversy since he gave a speech on
January 19 in which he overturned the traditional
French nuclear doctrine of "no first strike" to
say that were a terrorist nation to attack France,
he would consider even nuclear retaliation as
appropriate.
This declaration by a French
president triggered an international uproar.
Whether it was French psychological warfare
designed to pressure Iran, or the reflection of a
fundamental change in French nuclear doctrine to
one of preemptive strike or something similar, is
so far not clear. What is clear is that the Chirac
government will not stand in the way of a US
decision to impose UN sanctions on Iran. Whether
that also holds for a US-sanctioned nuclear strike
is not clear.
The EU-3, whose negotiations
diplomatically have so far produced no results,
are now moving toward some form of more effective
action against Iran's decision to proceed with
reprocessing. The only problem is that other than
nuclear saber-rattling, the EU has few cards to
play. It needs Iranian energy. It is also aware of
what it would mean to have a war in Iran in terms
of potential terror retaliations. The EU, to put
it mildly, is highly nervous and alarmed at the
potential of a US-Iran or Israel-US vs Iran
military showdown.
The Bush
administration role in Iran Unlike the
Iraq war buildup where it became clear to a
shocked world that the Bush administration was
going to war regardless, Washington with Iran has
so far been willing to let the EU states take a
diplomatic lead, only stepping up pressure
publicly on Iran in recent weeks.
On
January 19, the US repeated that neither it nor
its European partners wanted to return to the
negotiating table with Iran. "The international
community is united in mistrusting Tehran with
nuclear technology," said Rice. "The time has come
for a referral of Iran to the [UN] Security
Council." Rice's choice of the word "referral" was
deliberate. If Iran is only "reported" to the
Security Council, debate would lack legal weight.
A formal "referral" is necessary if the council is
to impose any penalty, such as economic sanctions.
The neo-conservatives, although slightly
lower profile in the second Bush administration,
are every bit as active, especially through
Cheney's office. They want a preemptive bombing
strike on Iran's nuclear sites. But whatever
Cheney's office may be doing, officially, the Bush
administration is pursuing a markedly different
approach than it did in 2003, when its diplomacy
was aimed at lining up allies for a war. This
time, US diplomats are seeking an international
consensus on how to proceed, or at least
cultivating the impression of that.
Iraq
and the deepening US disaster there has severely
constrained possible US options in Iran. In 2003,
in the wake of the Iraqi "victory", leading
Washington neo-conservative hawks were vocally
calling on Bush to move on to Tehran after Saddam
Hussein. Now, because of the "bloody quagmire" in
Iraq, the US is severely constrained from moving
unilaterally. With 140,000 troops tied down in
Iraq, the US military physically cannot support
another invasion and occupation in yet another
country, let alone Iran.
Because of Iran's
size, a ground invasion may require twice as many
troops as in Iraq, says Richard Russell, a Middle
East specialist at the National Defense University
in Washington. While an air campaign could take
out Iran's air defenses, it could also trigger
terrorism and oil disruptions. Washington is
internally split over the issue of a successful
nuclear strike against Iran,
The AIPAC
and Abramoff impact Washington Another
little-appreciated new element in the US political
chemistry around the Bush White House are two
devastating legal prosecutions that have hit the
heart of the black and grey money network between
Washington Republicans and the Israeli right-wing
Likud.
Abramoff, the financial patron of
several prominent Republicans, including ex-House
majority leader, Tom Delay, and Steve Rosen, the
key force behind AIPAC, were two of the most
influential Jewish lobbyists in Washington before
legal scandals effectively ended their careers and
sent them scrambling to stay out of prison.
Abramoff has pleaded guilty to fraud, tax
evasion and conspiracy arising out of his work
lobbying for Indian gambling casino interests.
That scandal could implicate far more Congressmen
and even some in the White House.
Rosen is
fighting allegations that as chief strategist at
AIPAC, he received and passed classified national
security information, received from Pentagon aide
Larry Franklin, to unauthorized parties. Perhaps
it is coincidence that two such high-profile
damaging cases to the lobbying power of right-wing
Israeli hawk elements surface at the same time, at
just this time when war drums are pounding on
Iran.
AIPAC's drama began on August 2004,
when on the eve of the Republican national
convention, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
raided the organization's offices, looking for
incriminating documents. A year later, the US
Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia
indicted Rosen, by then AIPAC's director of
foreign policy issues, and Keith Weissman, who had
been an AIPAC Iran analyst.
The government
disclosed it had had the men under surveillance
for more than four years and alleged that they had
received and passed along classified information.
The indictment named Franklin as their
co-conspirator. Franklin, who has agreed to
cooperate with prosecutors, pleaded guilty in
October to passing classified documents to
unauthorized persons and improperly storing such
documents in his home. He was sentenced to
12-and-a-half years in prison last week.
Bush, as de facto head of his party, faces
a potentially devastating November Congressional
election. With the quagmire of Iraq continuing and
more Americans asking what in fact they are dying
for in Iraq, if not oil, Bush's popularity has
continued to plunge. He has now only 46% of
popular support. More than 53% of people have
expressed an unfavorable opinion of Bush. The
Hurricane Kartina debacle of bungled responses by
the White House, the growing perception that Bush
has "lied" to the public, all are working to
seriously undermine Republican chances in
November.
The stench of insider deals, not
only with Cheney's Halliburton, is growing
stronger and getting major media coverage, which
is new. Conservative traditional Republicans are
outraged at the unprecedented federal spending
binge Bush Republicans have indulged in to protect
their own special interests.
In a recent
article Michael Reagan, conservative son of the
late president Ronald Reagan, wrote, "Republican
congressional leaders promised individual members
of Congress up to $14 million 'in free earmarks'
[special spending allocations] if they would
support, which they did, the massive $286.5
billion Bush transportation bill." According to
Reagan: "The bill came to a total of 6,300
earmarked projects costing the taxpayers $24
billion, a clear case of bribery. The people being
bribed were members of Congress. The people making
the bribes were members of Congress. Congressmen
bribing congressmen."
A recent Fox News
poll indicated that Americans saw the Republican
congressional majority as materially more corrupt
and more responsible for the current spate of
scandals than the Democrats by a wide margin.
Conplan 8022 In January 2003,
Bush signed a classified presidential directive,
Conplan 8022-02. This is a war plan different from
all prior in that it posits "no ground troops". It
was specifically drafted to deal with "imminent"
threats from states such as North Korea and Iran.
Unlike the warplan for Iraq, a
conventional one, which required coordinated
preparation of air, ground and sea forces before
it could be launched, a process of months, even
years, Conplan 8022 called for a highly
concentrated strike combining bombing with
electronic warfare and cyberattacks to cripple an
opponent's response-cutting electricity in the
country, jamming communications and hacking
computer networks.
Conplan 8022 explicitly
includes a nuclear option, specially configured
earth-penetrating "mini" nukes to hit underground
sites such as Iran's. Last summer, Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a top secret
"Interim Global Strike Alert Order" directing
around-the-clock military readiness to be directed
by the Omaha-based Strategic Command (Stratcom),
according to a report in the May 15 Washington
Post.
Previously, ominously enough,
Stratcom oversaw only the US nuclear forces. In
January 2003, Bush signed on to a definition of
"full spectrum global strike", which included
precision nuclear as well as conventional bombs,
and space warfare. This was a follow-up to the
president's September 2002 National Security
Strategy, which laid out as US strategic doctrine
a policy of "preemptive" wars.
The burning
question is whether, with plunging popularity
polls, a coming national election, scandals and
loss of influence, the Bush White House might
"think the unthinkable" and order a nuclear
preemptive global strike on Iran before the
November elections, perhaps early after the March
28 Israeli elections.
Some Pentagon
analysts have suggested that the entire US
strategy towards Iran, unlike with Iraq, is rather
a carefully orchestrated escalation of
psychological pressure and bluff to force Iran to
back down. It seems clear, especially in light of
the strategic threat Iran faces from US or Israeli
forces on its borders after 2003, that Iran is not
likely to back down from its clear plans to
develop full nuclear fuel cycle capacities, and
with it the option of developing an Iranian
nuclear capability.
The question then is,
what will Washington do? The fundamental change in
US defense doctrine since 2001, from a posture of
defense to offense, has significantly lowered the
threshold of nuclear war, perhaps even of a global
nuclear conflagration.
Geopolitical
risks of nuclear war The latest
Iranian agreement to reopen talks with Moscow on
Russian spent fuel reprocessing has taken some of the
edge off of the crisis for the moment. On Friday,
Bush announced publicly that he backed the Russian
compromise, along with China and ElBaradei of the
IAEA. Bush signaled a significant backdown, at
least for the moment, stating, "The Russians came
up with the idea and I support it ... I do believe
people ought to be allowed to have civilian
nuclear power."
At the same time, Rice's
State Department expressed concern the
Russian-Iran talks were a stalling ploy by Tehran.
Bush added. "However, I don't believe that
non-transparent [sic] regimes that threaten the
security of the world should be allowed to gain
the technologies necessary to make a weapon." The
same day at Davos, Rice told the World Economic
Forum that Iran's nuclear program posed
"significant danger" and that Iran must be brought
before the UN Security Council. In short,
Washington is trying to appear "diplomatic" while
keeping all options open.
Should Iran be
brought before the UN Security Council for
violations of the NPT and charges of developing
weapons of mass destruction, it seems quite
probable that Russia and China will veto imposing
sanctions, such as an economic embargo on Iran,
for the reasons stated above. The timetable for
that is likely some time about March-May, that is,
after a new Israeli government is in place.
At
that point there are several possible outcomes.
The IAEA refers Iran to the UN Security
Council, which proposes increased monitoring of
the reprocessing facilities for weapons producing
while avoiding sanctions. In essence, Iran would
be allowed to develop its full fuel cycle nuclear
program and its sovereignty is respected, so long
as it respects NPT and IAEA conditions. This is
unlikely for the reasons stated above.
Iran, like India and Pakistan, is permitted to
develop a small arsenal of nuclear weapons as a
deterrent to the growing military threat in its
area posed by the US from Afghanistan to Iraq to
the Emirates, as well as by Israel's nuclear
force.
The West extends new offers of
economic cooperation in the development of Iran's
oil and gas infrastructure and Iran is slowly
welcomed into the community of the World Trade
Organization and cooperation with the West. A new
government in Israel pursues a peace policy in
Palestine and with Syria, and a new regional
relaxation of tensions opens the way for huge new
economic development in the entire Middle East
region, Iran included. The mullahs in Iran slowly
loose influence. This scenario, desirable as it
is, is extremely unlikely in the present
circumstances.
Bush, on the urging of Cheney, Rumsfeld and
the neo-conservative hawks, decides to activate
Conplan 8022, an air attack bombing of Iran's
presumed nuclear sites, including, for the first
time since 1945, with deployment of nuclear
weapons. No ground troops are used and it is
proclaimed a swift surgical "success" by the
formidable Pentagon propaganda machine. Iran,
prepared for such a possibility, launches a
calculated counter-strike using techniques of
guerrilla war or "asymmetrical warfare" against US
and NATO targets around the world.
The
Iran response includes activating trained cells
within Lebanon's Hezbollah; it includes activating
considerable Iranian assets within Iraq,
potentially in de facto alliance with the Sunni
resistance there targeting the 135,000 remaining
US troops and civilian personnel. Iran's
asymmetrical response also includes stepping up
informal ties to the powerful Hamas within
Palestine to win them to a Holy War against the
US-Israel "Great Satan" Alliance.
Israel
faces unprecedented terror and sabotage attacks
from every side and from within its territory from
sleeper cells of Arab Israelis. Iran activates
trained sleeper terror cells in the Ras Tanura
center of Saudi oil refining and shipping. The
Eastern province of Saudi Arabia around Ras Tanura
contains a disenfranchised Shi'ite minority, which
has historically been denied the fruits of the
immense Saudi oil wealth. There are some 2 million
Shi'ite Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Shi'ites do most
of the manual work in the Saudi oilfields, making
up 40% of Aramco's workforce.
Iran
declares an immediate embargo of deliveries of its
4 million barrels of oil a day. It threatens to
sink a large oil super-tanker in the narrows of
the Strait of Hormuz, choking off 40% of all world
oil flows, if the world does not join it against
the US-Israeli action.
The strait has two 1-mile-wide channels for marine
traffic, separated by a 2-mile-wide buffer zone, and is the only sea
passage to the open ocean for much of OPEC oil. It
is Saudi Arabia's main export route.
Iran
is a vast, strategically central expanse of land,
more than double the land area of France and
Germany combined, with well over 70 million people
and one of the fastest population growth rates in
the world. It is well prepared for a new Holy War.
Its mountainous terrain makes any thought of a US
ground occupation inconceivable at a time the
Pentagon is having problems retaining its present
force to maintain the Iraq and Afghanistan
occupations. World War III begins in a series of
miscalculations and disruptions. The Pentagon's
awesome war machine, "total spectrum dominance" is
powerless against the growing "asymmetrical war"
assaults around the globe.
Clear from a
reading of their public statements and their
press, the Iranian government knows well what
cards its holds and what not in this global game
of thermonuclear chicken.
Were the
Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis to risk launching a
nuclear strike on Iran, given the geopolitical
context, it would mark a point of no return in
international relations. Even with sagging
popularity, the White House knows this. The danger
of the initial strategy of preemptive wars is
that, as now, when someone like Iran calls the US
bluff with a formidable response potential, the US
is left with little option but to launch the
unthinkable - nuclear strike.
There are
saner voices within the US political
establishment, such as former National Security
Council heads, Brent Scowcroft or even Zbigniew
Brzezinski, who clearly understand the deadly
logic of Bush's and the Pentagon hawks' preemptive
posture. The question is whether their faction
within the US power establishment today is
powerful enough to do to Bush and Cheney what was
done to Richard Nixon when his exercise of
presidential power got out of hand.
It is
useful to keep in mind that even were Iran to
possess nuclear missiles, the strike range would
not reach the territory of the US. Israel would be
the closest potential target. A US preemptive
nuclear strike to defend Israel would raise the
issue of what the military agreements between Tel
Aviv and Washington actually encompass, a subject
neither the Bush administration nor its
predecessors have seen fit to inform the American
public about.
F William Engdahl,
author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil
Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press,
can be contacted via his website,
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
