Time's up for Iran on UN's nuclear
clock By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The long-running saga of
Iran's nuclear program was due to reach another
key marker on Thursday, with the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expected to tell the
United Nations Security Council that Tehran had
failed to halt uranium enrichment or to cooperate
with international inspectors, paving the way for
the possible imposition of sanctions.
The
Security Council had demanded that Iran stop its
uranium enrichment by Thursday, but as late as
Thursday morning Iranian
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad,
speaking on television, reiterated his country's
right to master the nuclear fuel cycle and said
his country "would not be bullied".
The
United States, in addition to accusing Iran of
trying to build nuclear weapons in violation of
the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, says Iran
supplies Lebanon's Hezbollah with mid- and
long-range missiles and equips and trains Shi'ite
militias in Iraq that are hostile to the US
occupation there.
US and European
officials, according to reports, are already
planning on how to deal with the sanctions issue.
Of the permanent five members of the Security
Council - the United States, France, the United
Kingdom, China and Russia - the last two are known
to be reluctant, at least initially, to approve
stringent measures.
The US has announced
that it will draft a resolution for the Security
Council calling for sanctions immediately after
the deadline expires. Washington is composing a
response to the response by Iran on August 22 to
the incentive package offered by the US and Europe
in exchange for stopping nuclear-enrichment
activities.
Nicholas Burns, US under
secretary of state for political affairs, is to
travel to Berlin next week to discuss a sanctions
package with the Permanent Five and Germany, which
is also involved in Tehran's case. The indications
are that the package will begin with symbolic
measures, such as a travel ban and asset freeze on
Iranian officials. Subsequently, measures could be
increased to include tougher bans on Iran's access
to international credit and other financial
assistance.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesman has shrugged off the possibility of
sanctions, telling state-run television that Iran
"will find a way to avoid pressure eventually".
One immediate concern on global markets is
the possibility that Iran's oil exports would stop
if the UN imposed sanctions. Iran is the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries'
second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia,
pumping 4 million barrels of crude oil and
exporting 2.4 million barrels per day. Oil has
edged over US$70 a barrel over the past two days
on these concerns.
If China and Russia
drag their feet in the Security Council,
Washington has the option of it and its allies
following a course outside the council and
imposing penalties of their own against Iran.
Or, of course, they could simply attack
the country.
Neo-conservatives in the US
who see in Iran's nuclear program and its
theocratic regime an existential threat to Israel,
as well as an increasingly powerful rival to US
power in the Middle East/Gulf region, have been at
the forefront - both within the administration
(particularly in the offices of Vice President
Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld)
and outside it - of efforts to rally the public
behind a policy of confrontation and "regime
change" in Tehran.
While they have
insisted that such a policy is best pursued
through political and other forms of support for
non-violent opposition forces in Iran, they have
also called on the administration to prepare to
carry out a preemptive attack against Tehran's
nuclear facilities before President George W Bush
leaves office, if not sooner.
They have
also strongly opposed Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's efforts to work with the
so-called EU-3 - Britain, France and Germany - to
engage Tehran in negotiations designed to impose
safeguards on Iran's nuclear program and denounced
as "appeasement" the State Department's offer
earlier this year to talk directly with the regime
for the first time since 1979 if it froze its
uranium-enrichment program.
Thus, in their
view, the decision to grant former Iranian
president Mohammad Khatami a visa to travel to the
US is the latest in a series of State Department
actions designed to reduce tensions between the
two countries and encourage engagement. These are
moves that they strongly denounce as
"appeasement".
It "is not an isolated
event", wrote Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at
the neo-conservative Hudson Institute and editor
of EyeontheUN.org. "As the pattern of all talk and
no action takes hold, this move too will undercut
any [US] demand to the international community for
immediate, serious sanctions on Iran. If we aren't
prepared to isolate Iran, why should anyone else?"
According to a consensus among nearly a
dozen participants in a "Symposium" on Wednesday
on the website of the right-wing National Review
Online, Khatami's presence in the United States
could make it more difficult to rally US public
opinion against the Islamic Republic and
discourage democratic forces back in Tehran.
"Giving Khatami prestigious platforms all
over America is a dumb move, and it will
enormously discourage the Iranian people," said
Michael Ledeen, an influential neo-conservative
based at the American Enterprise Institute.
What's more, he said, "For those who
believe Bush is serious about regime change [in
Iran], this is a numbing blow ... Alas, this
confirms my worst fears about this administration.
Talk, talk, talk, but when it is time to act, they
are still talking."
Identified with the
reformist wing of Iran's clerical establishment,
Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to
2005, reportedly plans to spend as much as two
weeks in the US under the sponsorship of the US
Episcopal Church and the Atlanta-based Carter
Center, whose founder, former president Jimmy
Carter, has expressed interest in meeting with
him.
Khatami's trip, which kicks off on
Tuesday at a UN conference on the dialogue of
civilizations in New York, will also include
appearances at the National Cathedral in
Washington and speeches to an Islamic group in
Chicago and to university audiences in Virginia
and elsewhere.
Neo-con anger Ledeen, who has long argued that all al-Qaeda
and other Islamist terrorist groups are actually
controlled by the "terror-masters" in Tehran,
called the visa approval "blatant appeasement",
while James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the
right-wing Heritage Foundation, called it "a major
error ... at a time when Iran is defiantly
thumbing its nose at the US and the UN Security
Council regarding its nuclear-weapons program".
Neo-conservatives expressed particular
concern that Khatami, who first proposed a
"dialogue of civilizations" in 2000, would give
Iran a major public-relations boost as the
"friendly face" of the Islamic Republic in
contrast to his successor, Ahmadinejad, whose
public threats against Israel and questioning of
the Nazi Holocaust have fed their efforts to
depict the regime as "fascist".
"By
granting a visa to [Khatami], the Bush
administration handed the Islamic Republic a
propaganda coup," stressed Michael Rubin, one of
Ledeen's AEI colleagues. "Journalists will fawn
and diplomats celebrate Khatami's talk of
tolerance. They will be complicit in projecting a
false image of the regime Khatami still
represents," he wrote.
That concern was
shared by Senator Rick Santorum, who called the
visa issuance "at best foolish and at worst
misguided. Mohammed Khatami is one of the chief
propagandists for the Islamic fascist regime. I am
opposed to granting a visa to such a man so that
he can travel around the United States and mislead
the American people."
For its part, the
State Department insisted that as a private
citizen invited by the United Nations and private
US groups, Khatami was eligible for a visa that
permitted him to travel to specific cities.
"I would encourage those organizations and
the individuals attending those events to ask him
some hard questions, ask him some pointed
questions, ask him the kind of questions that if
asked in Iran would get the questioner thrown in
jail," said department spokesman Sean McCormack,
who denied that administration officials would
meet with Khatami during his visit.
Still,
for some observers who favor US engagement with
Tehran, the fact that Khatami was given permission
to travel around the country indicated that, in
the words of one, "Somewhere in the administration
a light is on," especially considering other
recent efforts by Iran, including Ahmadinejad's
letter to Bush in the spring and his challenge to
a televised debate this week, to engage directly -
however unconventionally - the US president.
Of particular interest was the likelihood
that Carter, who originally cut relations with
Iran after radical students seized the US Embassy
and diplomats in Tehran in November 1979, will
meet with Khatami.
"The concept of the
'emotional breakthrough' is revered in both
Persian as well as American informal dispute
resolution as being required to move from problem
to dialogue to solution," said Donald Weadon, a
Washington-based international lawyer with much
experience on Iran.
"Clearly, with the two
elders' stature and mutual respect, both can at
the right moment express personal regret for
events of the past, and share their vision for
prospects for the future," he noted. "That the two
can later share this with other trusted
individuals in each other's camp can affect the
foundation of trust which will support politically
sustainable opening steps to dialogue ..."
The fact that Bush is not known to have
called on Carter for diplomatic advice, however,
should come as some comfort to those opposed to
any thought of dialogue with Iran.
