Iran Affairs

Burr: A brief history of U.S.-Iranian nuclear negotiations

William Burr of the National Security Archives at George Washington University has an article coming out in the January 2009 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist entitled "A Brief History of the US-Iranian nuclear negotiations" which concentrates almost excusively on the pre-1979 nuclear negotiations between the US and Iran.

It shows that even before the revolution, the Iranian government was primarily concerned with securing assured nuclear fuel supplies, and rejected any effort to treat Iran as a defacto "second class" member of the NPT.

He concludes in this article:

The apprehension about nuclear proliferation in South Asia and the Middle East that may have encouraged the Shah to think about a nuclear option did not vanish with his overthrow, however. Significantly, the same nationalism that informed Iran’s stance toward nuclear technologies under the monarchy and emphasized Iran’s “full right” to reprocess and concerns about “second-class” status foreshadowed Iran’s present-day claims about nuclear “rights” under the NPT. And ironically, U.S. enmity toward Iran after the 1979 Islamic Revolution has critically impacted the regime’s security calculations, increasing its interest in nuclear deterrence.

The similarity of the IRanian position before and after the revolution is striking to me, which is probably why the same Akbar Etemad, the Shah's nuclear negotiator cited in this article, has recently told TIME magazine:

With the Shah, we also came to the conclusion that Iran was in great need of nuclear energy because our population was steadily growing and our gas and oil will run out. That's why even though I was in the old regime, I should be fair to the new regime because they are following the same line.

Anyway it is a good article however I have a number of criticisms:

First, William Burr uncritically promotes the notion that nuclear weapons proliferation and the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapons "option" was really the motivating force behind US "concerns" over Iran's nuclear program. There is no reason to automatically accept this as being the true motivation behind US policy and this assumption should be questioned before being posited as a fact. Note how he's willing to question the Shah's motivations, but not the US's. It can easily be argued that the US "concern" about nuclear weapons proliferation was as always just a pretext meant to allow the US to dominate the nuclear fuel industry, thereby gaining immense political/economic power that comes from monopolizing the future's sole source of power. The assumption that Burr makes that the US is solely interested in preventing nuclear weapons proliferation is therefore not adequately examined.

Second, his conclusion that Iran's emphasis on nuclear "rights" (note Burr's use of quotation marks as if Iran's rights are somehow a joke) is really about Iran's alleged interest in nuclear "deterrence" is not adequately supported. Quite the contrary, if Iran were seeking a nuclear deterrent (=nuclear weapons) then why would the Iranians offer recently to operate their nuclear enrichment program as joint ventures with foreign governments, and why would the also offer to place additional restrictions on the program beyond the requirements of the NPT -- for example, to enforce strict limits on the level of enrichment and to turn all of their uranium into fuel rods so none could be even theoretically used to make bombs? So again, the assumption Burr makes that Iran is seeking a nuclear deterrent is not supported either.

The third issue is how Burr overlooks the role of Israel in this process.

Leverett-Mann Redacting NY Times Op-ed

On Dec 22 2006, just days after Rumsfeld was forced to step down, the NYT published a heavily redacted op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann. Though none of the info was classified, all of which had previously “been extensively reported in the news media,” much of their article was blacked out because the “White House intervened” before it went to print. In response, Leverett and Mann followed up with an accompanying piece “What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran“ where they provided citations to previously reported sources for all of the redacted info. Raw Story compiled those sources in their “The redacted Iran op-ed revealed” and, surprise, many of the articles refer directly to the MEK terrorist group, but there had been nary a mention in the portions the White House allowed.

Bloomberg pushes anti-Iran propaganda

So Daniel William of Bloomberg is bare-facedly claiming that US forces in Iraq area fighting "Iranian surrogates" and he uncritically parrots the official claim that "units of Iraqis trained and equipped by Iran continue trying to penetrate the wall to attack U.S. troops"

And the funny thing is, of course, that there has yet to be an iota of evidence to support that claim, though you wouldn't know it from Daniel William's report.

Come to think of it, the LA Times recently reported that the US quitely released an Iranian they had captured with so much fanfare as an Iranian 'arms smuggler':

Release of Iranian raises questions in Iraq
The U.S. said Nader Qorbani, who was detained last week, was
an arms smuggler. Iran says he did restoration work at
religious sites. Now he has been freed, and answers are hard
to come by.

Well, apparently for Daniel Williams of Bloomberg, there are no such questions raised at all. He just parrots whatever he's told like a good boy. 

HODER IS NO SPY

I've been away from Iranaffairs.com for a while, I am currently in Thailand, and I didn't think there was any point talking about all the endless speculation about what Obama's foreign policy would look like until he was actually in office, so there was no point in updating this blog. Until I heard that Hoder has been arrested in Iran for "spying" for Israel. This charge is silly. Look, spies don't go around openly blogging about their activities. Let him go. (I suspect he'll be harassed for a few days and then released anyway.) As for the rest of the news, the Jerusalem Post reports that Israel is considering a solo attack on Iran, and the other editorial pages are full of reports that "time is short" to "deal" with Iran, so apparently some people think that Clinton's appointment as Sec of State is an indication of more of the usual. We'll see how things play out, but I think this approach has been worn to threads already and no one is really buying it. Yet I don't put it past the AIPAC folks to try to turn Iran into a major foreign policy challenge in Obama's first term. As for my opinion of Clinton, well, the fact is that she voted for the war. And that after she received a severe scolding for hugging Arafat's wife, she quickly fell in line with AIPAC and swore her everlasting fealty to Israel as usual with American politicians. So, color me sceptical about any real changes happening to US foreign policy under Obama.