US
Iran hawks in congress in some
disarray By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - Hopes by Iran hawks here to
get the United States Congress to wield the threat
of a US military attack on Iran on the eve of next
week's critical negotiations on Tehran's nuclear
program appear to have fallen unexpectedly short.
While the House of Representatives voted
overwhelmingly on Thursday to reject "any US
policy that would rely on efforts to contain a
nuclear weapons-capable Iran", a key co-sponsor of
the resolution emphatically denied that the
measure was intended to authorize the use of
military force and asserted that Tehran would have
to test a warhead before it could be considered
"nuclear weapons capable".
At the same
time, the House leadership was poised to accept an
amendment to the
otherwise hawkish 2013 National Defense
Authorization Act (NDAA) that declares explicitly
"that nothing in this Act shall be construed as
authorizing the use of force against Iran". The
NDAA, as amended, was expected to clear the House
on Friday.
Meanwhile, on the other side of
Capitol Hill, a tough new sanctions bill that was
supposed to sail through the senate on Thursday
was blocked by some Republicans who said it was
insufficiently hawkish.
Senator Lindsay
Graham, one of several influential Republicans who
have long urged Washington to prepare for war with
Iran, angrily denounced the absence of any
reference to possible US military action if the
Islamic Republic failed to abandon its nuclear
program.
"These sanctions are great. I
hope they will change Iranian behavior. They
haven't yet, and I don't think they ever will," he
declared. "I want more on the table."
The
congressional debate comes less than a week before
Iran is scheduled to meet in Baghdad with the US
and the other members of the so-called P5+1
countries - Britain, France, China, Russia and
Germany - for a second round of talks on the
future of its nuclear program.
Both sides
were upbeat coming out of the first round of talks
in Istanbul last month. And subsequent contacts,
notably between the deputy Iranian negotiator, Ali
Bagheri, and his counterpart from the European
Union, Helga Schmid, have reportedly encouraged
all parties that some important
confidence-building measures could be agreed, at
least in principle, in Baghdad.
Moreover,
the defeat of former French president Nicolas
Sarkozy, whose government reportedly was the most
antagonistic toward Iran of the P5+1, in this
month's elections and his replacement with
Francois Hollande, who immediately sent former
prime minister Michel Rochard to Tehran, has
bolstered hopes that progress can be made when
negotiations resume on May 23.
Specifically, US diplomats hope that Iran
will agree to some portion of a "menu" of steps it
can take to build confidence, the most ambitious
of which would be to freeze its enrichment of
uranium to 20% and ship out its existing stockpile
of 20% enriched uranium in return for fuel rods
that can be used for its Tehran Research Reactor.
Washington also hopes Tehran would agree
to suspend operations or close its Fordow
enrichment facility, which is buried under a
mountain near Qom, and ratify the Additional
Protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
That would permit much more intrusive monitoring
by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) of Iran's nuclear facilities or
other facilities, such as the Parchim military
base, where some Western intelligence agencies
suspect nuclear-related work may be taking place.
Among the range of carrots that may be
offered are formal recognition that Iran has the
right to continue uranium enrichment up to 5%; a
cap or delay on any further sanctions - some of
which the European Union is scheduled to impose
next month - on its increasingly distressed
economy; and the easing or eventual lifting of
some sanctions.
The government of Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has
repeatedly threatened to unilaterally attack
Iran's nuclear facilities, has long expressed
strong reservations about any negotiations with
Tehran that would permit it to continue any
enrichment.
In an interview with CNN on
Thursday, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who is
meeting with top officials here this week, said
any deal must require Tehran to "stop enriching
uranium, to 20%, or even 3 to 5%, and to take all
the enriched uranium out of the country."
Virtually all Iran experts here, however, believe
that Tehran will never agree to stop all
enrichment.
Nonetheless, Israel enjoys
considerable influence in Washington through
powerful lobby groups, most importantly the
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
that appears to have pushed hard for congress to
take up the pending legislation this week in
advance of the Baghdad talks.
Over the
past six years, AIPAC has played a central role in
pushing lawmakers to increase military aid to
Israel, impose ever-tougher sanctions against
Iran, and, most recently, wield the threat of US
military action.
The latter was precisely
the original intent of the House resolution
approved by a margin of 401-11 on Thursday. Not
only did the resolution reject any future
containment policy toward a "nuclear
weapons-capable Iran; but it also declared it a
"vital national interest" - code for justifying
military action - "to prevent the government of
Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability".
Such a stance is distinctly more hawkish
than that of the Barack Obama administration,
which has made a distinction between nuclear
weapons capability - a status which many experts
believe Iran has already attained - and actual
possession of a nuclear weapon.
Unlike the
Israeli government, the Obama administration has
indicated that it will consider military action
only if Iran actually develops a bomb, a much
higher threshold than a "capability".
In
any event, the resolution approved on Thursday
failed to define "capability", leaving it to its
chief Democratic co-sponsor and the ranking
Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
Howard Berman, to fill the gap, which, to the
surprise of many close observers, he did in a way
that actually raised the threshold for military
action higher than the administration's.
"Nuclear weapons capability? [It takes]
three elements defined by the Director of National
Intelligence: fissile material production, one;
design weaponization and testing of a warhead,
two; and a delivery vehicle," he said, speaking
from prepared notes during debate on the measure
on Tuesday. "To be nuclear capable, you have to
master all three elements."
"While Iran
has a delivery system, they have not yet mastered
- but they are making progress on - steps one and
two. And if one day, when they master all the
elements, and they kick out the inspectors, and
they shut off the [IAEA's] cameras, I consider
them nuclear capable," he said after repeatedly
denying that the measure was meant to authorize
military action.
Calls and e-mails
regarding AIPAC's reaction to Berman's remarks
were not returned, although the organization
"applaud[ed]" the resolution's approval in a
release.
Meanwhile, Iran hawks suffered a
second setback when the managers of the National
Defense Authorization Act bill accepted a
bipartisan amendment stating explicitly that
nothing in the bill "shall be construed as
authorizing the use of force against Iran".
The entire bill, which, among other
things, includes provisions calling for stepped-up
military operations and planning in the Gulf area,
will be up for a final vote on Friday after a
number of amendments, including one calling for
the appointment of a special envoy for Iran, are
considered.
At the same time, another
major sanctions bill that would punish foreign
companies that provide Iran with communications or
riot-control technology that could be used to
suppress dissent and that urged new sanctions
against foreign insurance companies active in
Iran, extend existing sanctions to all Iranian
banks, among other measures, was at least
temporarily derailed by Graham and other
Republicans who wanted to include language
alluding to the possible use of military force to
prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons.
The Democratic majority leader, Senator
Harry Reid, had agreed to incorporate a provision
asserting that the bill could not be construed as
a basis for military action at the insistence of
Republican Senator Rand Paul who had
single-handedly stalled passage of the sanctions
bill in March by insisting on the inclusion of
such a provision.
Jim Lobe's
blog on US foreign policy can be read at
http://www.lobelog.com.
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