Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Axis of Evil
leandrotr
sponsorship of terrorism coupled with the pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction. The CIA has identified Iran as "one of the most active
countries" pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and cites apparent
technical assistance from Russia and North Korea. Yet Iran steadfastly
denies the existence of any nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons
programs. Is the threat real? And if so, what should the U.S. do? Here
are the views of former CIA Director James Woolsey; Iran's ambassador
to Canada, Mohammad Ali Mousavi; nonproliferation expert George
Perkovich; former undersecretary of state for political affairs Thomas
Pickering; and Jessica Mathews, president of the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace.
He was director of the CIA from 1993 to 1995.
What is the case against Iran on the issue of weapons of mass
destruction? How real is that case?
Well, there is no underlying [reason] for one of the greatest oil
producers in the world to need to get into the nuclear [energy]
business. And if they do for some reason want a nuclear reactor for
power purposes at Bushehr, there's absolutely no reason for them to be
getting into the rest of the fuel cycle, reprocessing and so forth,
unless what they want to do is train people and produce an
infrastructure that can have highly enriched uranium or plutonium,
fissionable material, for nuclear weapons.
They are working essentially in a joint venture with the North Koreans
... on a medium-range ballistic missile to carry weapons of mass
destruction. I think there's really no particular argument about this,
at least in this country, among anybody who's ever followed Iran.
Certainly they're working on nuclear weapons, and certainly they're
working on ballistic missiles. ...
How do you answer the Iranian who says, "We are surrounded by people
with weapons of mass destruction. We need our own"?
Well, the most dangerous person who has weapons of mass destruction,
who is right next door and has used them against Iran, is Saddam
Hussein. And he's working on nuclear. He has chemical and
bacteriological. My answer would be, "Yes, he is a real threat. He's a
threat to you. He's a threat to everybody else in the region." Through
terrorism, he's a threat to us, and the best thing we could do for
Iranian security is get rid of the Baathist regime in Iraq and have a
decent regime there. ...
But doesn't America run the risk of adding fuel to the nationalist
fires of Iran by saying, "You can't have these weapons?"
Well, Iran has certain international obligations through the
[nonproliferation] treaty and the like. And if they are fulfilling
those obligations, it seems to me that our arguments with them are
policy disputes, and nations have policy disputes all the time. What
we are concerned about, since we see them with all their oil and we
see them getting heavily into the nuclear business -- including the
reprocessing steps which are relevant to producing fissionable
material -- is we think it's very likely that they are violating and
planning to violate further their obligations and build nuclear
weapons. But as I said, I can understand Iranian concerns about their
neighbor, Baathist Iraq.
What about their Pakistani neighbor, who also has nuclear weapons?
Pakistan does have nuclear weapons, but Pakistan has recently taken a
rather substantial step toward liberalization and democracy.
Parliamentary elections are called for next fall. President Musharraf,
with his last speech, is about two-thirds of the way toward being a
Kemal Ataturk. And if Pakistan is not in the throes of Islamism and
religious terror, such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda provided in
Afghanistan, if Pakistan is a nation more like Turkey in the years to
come, Iran won't have anything to fear from them. Pakistan has no
designs on Iran that I know of. ...
How real is the risk that the mullahs, given the power they have, will
share weapons of mass destruction with subsidiary terrorist
operations?
It's possible. Iran is probably the leading terrorist-sponsoring state
in the world right now, and their intelligence services are very
active doing this both financially and with all kinds of assistance.
And one would hope they would have more sense than to share any type
of weapons of mass destruction with terrorists. But I don't think one
can count on the common sense of the mullahs. ... So I think we need
to do everything we can to help the reformers in Iran.
He is Iran's ambassador to Canada, and one of only two Iranian
diplomats in North America.
If you ask some, particularly conservative, Americans, what was behind
[the "axis of evil" statement], they'll talk about a number of things.
... For example, there is no reason in the world for Iran, one of the
great oil producers on earth, to have a nuclear power station unless
it's for the production of bombs. Iran is developing delivery systems
for the delivery of warheads and weapons of mass destruction. What is
the answer to that?
The United States is one of the main producers of oil, has a great
deal of reservoir of oil, but United States itself has nuclear power.
...
It is very much so a politically motivated allegation. And you see the
unfairness of such charges while Israel has nuclear power, is
progressing in its nuclear warhead. Then the point of allegation comes
to Iran. This is a world should run by international body's rule, not
by a country's rule. In such cases, the existing mechanism of control
and investigation has been set up. It's IAEA [International Atomic
Energy Agency]. They deny such charges. ...
Two clarifications. One, Iran's foreign policy doctrine doesn't
include acquiring nuclear power as non-peaceful means. Second, what
now Iran try to achieve in nuclear power in Bushehr has been in the
past 30 years. It has been a part of policy of pre-revolution. There
had been investment there, and it was continued.
Then, Iran's policy is to use nuclear power as a peaceful means of
energy, and we continue to do so. That was the reason that we always
been open to inspections, and it has been so repeatedly and regularly
by International Atomic Energy Agency. It is the main international
body to supervise any such acquirement by countries. And not even once
they have complained that, or they have criticized Iran that there is
a misconduct. There hasn't been. ...
We recognize that you are surrounded by Pakistan, Israel, India, Iraq.
You are surrounded by weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear
weapons. Doesn't it make a certain amount of sense that you would also
be developing nuclear weapons capability?
No. We have concern, such as you mentioned. Such countries having
nuclear power increases concerns, not only in Iran -- in the region.
And that's the reason Iran has been an initiator of having Middle East
a free zone of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear power.
It is not in our doctrine to acquire nuclear power.
The Americans point out that Iran has engaged with North Korea in
development of an intercontinental ballistic missile, which would be
capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.
But these are two different issues. Acquiring nuclear power, nuclear
warhead, is something, as I mentioned, it is not in our -- it is not
happening at all, and there is not one single evidence to show that.
Second is the missile issue. Iran moves based on the international
conventions on the missile. We have taken it as a defensive power, a
defensive strategy, and it is our right, based on the international
conventions, to acquire such defensive power for Iran -- as you
mentioned, surrounded by countries of a major threat not only to Iran,
but also to international peace and security.
Then our missile policy is a defensive one. And actually Iran has been
an initiator of missile pact in United Nations to regulate missile
policy by all countries, including Iran. Then what is our plan? It is
very transparent, very clear under international body supervision and
regulatory inspection. There is no secret about this.
He is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace and an expert on arms control and nuclear nonproliferation
issues.
How real is the danger of the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction?
Well, it's very real especially if you include not just nuclear
weapons but biological weapons, which are in many ways easier to
produce. It's a very real threat that has to be addressed more fully
than it has been. ...
How strong is the case against Iran? There's a pretty strong case
against Iraq and North Korea, but what is the case against Iran?
... Based on public information and the statements of government
officials, it's a fairly strong case that there is procurement that
Iran has made, or has attempted to make, that only makes sense if the
technology they're trying to get were to be used for acquiring
nuclear-weapon material. The technology they're trying to get, uranium
enrichment, doesn't have other purposes really.
So how should, in a sane and logical world, this problem be addressed?
... First and foremost, you have to look at Iran's situation and say,
"All right, are there security considerations that Iran has that have
to be addressed?" Otherwise, it rather naturally is going to be
seeking large strategic weapons. ... And to date, the U.S. hasn't even
really tried to put itself in Iran's shoes and say, "OK, if we were
Iran, or we were an ally of Iran, here's how we think Iran could
protect itself against Iraq." We don't have an answer to that
question, and that makes it very hard to figure out how you persuade
these guys in Iran not to have any interest in weapons of mass
destruction.
And it isn't just Iraq. On the other side you have Pakistan.
Yeah, I mean the painful irony really is that if you took U.S.
decision-makers and you put them in Iran's shoes, in Iran's
environment, with an enemy that has WMD programs and a nuclear
neighbour in Pakistan, and you asked the U.S., "Do you need nuclear
weapons?," every U.S. official would say, "Absolutely, we couldn't
live in this environment without nuclear weapons." And the Russians
would say the same thing, and the Chinese would say the same thing. So
now we're coming to Iran and we're saying, "No, you should be
different than we've been, and you should understand that you should
not acquire these weapons." Now, I happen to think there's a good case
for Iran not to acquire nuclear weapons. But I don't think that the
U.S. and other governments have really made that case yet. ...
The argument I would make to Iran is kind of a cynical one, but it is
to say, "Look, you're too late. You want nuclear weapons now, but if
you get real close, Israel takes you very seriously and you're going
to paint a very big target on yourself, either for the United States
or Israel to hit you. So whatever nuclear capability you can get in
Iran is not going to be sufficient really to deter Israel or the U.S.
from fighting you. And yet that nuclear capability is going to make
them decide to hit much harder than they would otherwise because
they've got to wipe out whatever capability you have. So you can't
really catch up in a way that enables you to use this in any
meaningful way. And yet possessing nuclear weapons would make you a
much bigger target than you would otherwise be. ...
We now have a conversation around the world based on this phrase "axis
of evil." What is the answer?
I think the near-term approach that makes sense when relations are
really bad is twofold. One is: do not make nuclear weapons into a
nationalist issue in Iran. The more the U.S. loudly says, "We think
they're acquiring the bomb, they're cheating, this is evil," the more
people in Iran will actually get attached to the idea of getting
nuclear weapons precisely to resist this kind of dictat. And it
becomes a nationalist issue. ...
On the other hand, covertly, I think you should do everything possible
physically to keep them from getting nuclear assets. So if you know
that something is being shipped from point A to point B, and you can
intercept it or destroy it, fine. If you can persuade other countries
not to sell things to Iran, whatever it takes to persuade them to do
that, you should do that. Buy time by keeping the technology away and
buy time politically by not letting this become a nationalist issue
within Iran. ...
It becomes a matter of pride -- "We're a great civilization, we're
Persia, and these Americans are telling us how to live our life, and
they have bombs, but they're telling us we can't have them." It does
become a matter of pride, it becomes a matter of nationalism, and it
becomes hard to turn around a policy once it becomes a nationalist
policy.
He served as U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs from
1997 to 2001.
How does the United States approach this large and largely opaque
issue of weapons of mass destruction?
I think it's a tremendously important question, and you can chart the
course over the last three or four decades. The general practice on
the part of the United States and its friends and allies, and most of
the states that have the capability to support proliferation, has been
to carefully control trade, to use all kinds of political persuasion,
at times to resort to sanctions when that has seemed necessary. India,
Pakistan have been examples of that. And then to do everything they
can through diplomatic channels to talk to countries about not
continuing. That was quite successful in South Africa and I think in
places like Brazil and Argentina, and maybe in Taiwan and Korea and
other places. But it hasn't been successful everywhere, and so there's
uncertainties about it.
Now you hear a lot of talk about Iraq, Saddam Hussein, possession of
weapons of mass destruction. And, in fact, as you know, the Security
Council, for a different purpose, authorized 11 years ago the use of
force against Iraq. The use-of-force resolution has never been
withdrawn, so I presume it remains in effect. Whether, in fact, states
like the United States or others would move to the use of force to
prevent proliferation is a more open question. But it's being widely
talked about now.
That's implicit in a lot of the political rhetoric that we've heard
from the United States recently, is it not?
I think it is, and I think that when states see a clear and present
danger, that might be needed. As you know, the U.N. charter allows for
self-defense in the face of an armed attack, obviously, and that
condition hasn't been met, although the United States has felt that
Sept. 11 certainly constituted that, and the Security Council agreed.
So whether, in fact, there is a legal framework for this, there is
certainly a growing political interest in it as a way of proceeding
ahead -- obviously recognizing that there are critical times when
states have to act to prevent greater dangers to themselves.
You seem to be saying that it's appropriate, it's implicit in the
recent statements, and it's appropriate to draw the line in the sand
and to take a firm position.
I think that states obviously have to consider long and carefully
before using military force. But I think that, under some sets of
circumstances where they feel there is a justifiable danger -- a
linkage between terror and weapons of mass destruction is one of those
-- then I think that that's something for careful consideration. I
don't think that one can draw a chart and say, "Always go to war here;
never go to war there." States have to make up their own minds. But I
think, within the international framework, it would be a mistake for a
country to rule out that possibility if it felt seriously threatened.
She is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a
nonpartisan, nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C., that
publishes the journal Foreign Policy.
... Time is on our side in Iran, with one huge exception. And that's
what makes it so difficult. And that exception is their pursuit of
weapons of mass destruction. If it were not for that, I think it would
be pretty obvious that the right way to go with Iran is to let this
government destroy itself by doing such a poor job of managing the
economy and losing the trust and confidence of the people until it
undermines itself terminally. We can't just do that, because of the
weapons of mass destruction. ...
Iran is perceived as a serious threat in that?
Iran is unequivocally engaged in that pursuit, has been for a very,
very long time, back before the revolution, under the shah. Iran has
always seen Iraq as a tremendous threat, and of course there was
Israel's nuclear weapons, too. And they insist that they're clean with
respect to biological and chemical weapons. But my understanding is
that nobody with access to classified information who follows this
closely believes that. So their pursuit is active. The program, the
nuclear program, at least, is not so terrific technically. In fact, a
lot of people say it's a real mess. So it's not a tomorrow concern,
but it's a very serious and very real one, in fact what I believe
should be our focus of attention.
Is the rhetoric [of "axis of evil"] legitimized by the real
possibility of weapons of mass destruction?
No. I think the rhetoric is not legitimized, only because it doesn't
help. There is no way that it is constructive to our interest, which
is to find a way to undermine and control that program.
So the proper way to go ...?
I think, first of all, that what we do in Iraq has an enormous effect
on Iran. I think step one is that you focus not on Saddam Hussein and
not on regime change in Iraq, but on the pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction. And you rebuild and then build even further an
international consensus that this, that the pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction by regimes that have proven themselves prepared to use
them, is an unacceptable threat. And you rebuild the consensus from
the early 1990s around an inspection regime -- this time an even
tougher inspection regime, with armed capability behind it. That, in
itself, will have an enormous effect on Iran.
Then you have to deal with the Russians more effectively than we have,
because that's their principal supplier. And that's a question of
increasing the incentives. We have offered them, I think, inadequate
incentives to give up what is for them a very substantial sum of
money. ... So we have to do what we can to shut down the Russian
supply.
At the same time, we have to stop making this so much an American
crusade. There are 180 countries in the nonproliferation treaty
regime. All of them have a stake in that regime. We have to broaden
the base of leadership in saying pursuit of weapons of mass
destruction, even if technically legal -- as Iran still is -- by a
country that is a member of the NPT is unacceptable. We let North
Korea get away with it. We're not going to let another country get
away with it under our noses. ...
I also think we will have to use some of our intelligence, make public
some of what we know about what's going on in both Iraq and Iran --
even though it will cost us in terms of sources and methods -- the way
we did in the Cuban missile crisis, when Stevenson went to the U.N.
and put up the pictures of what the Russians had in Cuba. And nobody
could any longer say, "Well, maybe. It's us against them. Who's
lying?" We have to strip away this veil of hypocrisy behind which the
French and the Russians hide their commercial interests and make it
impossible to do that.
If we do all that, then I think we really do stand a chance of
slowing, of crippling both programs to the point where they are an
acceptable threat. This is not what you would do if you had your
druthers 100 percent. But that's not the real world.
- http://www.farc.ezdir.com.br
THE IRAN GAME
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How will Tehran's nuclear ambitions affect our budding partnership?
The Islamic Republic of Iran, depicted by the State Department as one
of the world's most active sponsors of state terrorism, has also
emerged as one of America's newest—and most
surprising—allies in the war against Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda. Another new ally has been Russia. And one of our oldest allies
doesn't like it.
On October 24th, more than two weeks after the American air war began,
Israel sent a government delegation to Washington for official talks.
The delegation included Gideon Frank, the director-general of the
Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, and Major General Uzi Dayan, the
head of Israel's National Security Council, and its purpose was to
warn the Americans, not for the first time, about new evidence of
Iran's efforts to become, with Russia's help, the world's next nuclear
power.
The Israeli message, as a participant summarized it, was
characteristically blunt: the Iranian atomic-bomb program was making
rapid progress, and something had to be done about it. As far as the
Israelis were concerned, this meant that the Bush Administration
should put Russia's support for Iran at the top of its foreign-policy
agenda.
The warning poses a dilemma for the Bush Administration. Iran, which
is predominantly Shiite, and has long-standing religious and political
ties to Afghanistan (the Afghan population is about one-sixth Shiite),
has offered to let American search-and-rescue helicopters stage
operations from bases on its soil and has relayed sensitive
intelligence from Afghanistan to the United States. According to one
former American intelligence official, Ismail Khan, the Northern
Alliance leader whose troops reclaimed the western city of Herat, is
known to have been a covert asset of Iran's two intelligence services,
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence
and Security. Both organizations have been avowedly anti-American
since the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran, in 1979, and
their collaboration with the American war effort is seen as striking
evidence of a larger shift toward moderation.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, President Mohammad
Khatami of Iran, a reformer who is seeking to improve relations with
Washington, has repeatedly criticized bin Laden's interpretation of
Islam and said that if the Palestinian people chose to recognize
Israel's right to exist Iran would respect their wishes. The American
intelligence community, however, is unsure of the extent of Khatami's
independence from Iran's conservative religious leaders. The mullahs
remain in control of the country's intelligence services, which
finance and work closely with Hezbollah and other terrorist
organizations that operate inside Israel.
Iran's secret push for the bomb and the support it has received from
Russia are being closely monitored by American intelligence agencies,
and American and Israeli officials have been meeting in secret since
the mid-nineteen-nineties to share information on the nuclear program.
(Israel has had a nuclear arsenal for decades, although it has never
publicly acknowledged this.)
Iran has always denied that it is trying to build a bomb. ("I hate
this weapon," President Hashemi Rafsanjani, Khatami's predecessor,
told "60 Minutes" in 1997.) Nonetheless, many American and Israeli
intelligence officials estimate that Iran is only three to five years
away from having launchable warheads. The immediate question is
whether the country has passed the point of no return—the point
where its domestic capability can no longer be derailed by export
controls or interdiction of potential suppliers. "They're closer to
that point than we should be comfortable about—and the fact that
we can't pin it down also makes me uncomfortable," one American
intelligence officer told me. For now, intelligence officials believe,
Iran's biggest hurdle is the laborious process of producing
weapons-grade material. However, if Iran somehow managed to acquire
fissile material on the Russian black market, all the careful American
and Israeli intelligence estimates would be irrelevant.
Following the pattern set by Pakistan—another American ally in
the war against the Taliban—Iran established a maze of covert
companies to conceal its nuclear program. In the last two years,
according to a former senior Pentagon official, intelligence services
have observed "extensive digging" in Iran as nuclear engineers rushed
to construct hidden production facilities. "We know that they're going
deep and clandestine," the former official said. An Israeli official
confirmed that the hidden sites "are spread all around the country."
The Iranians apparently hope to minimize the potential damage from
what another American intelligence official called "the Israeli
version of counterproliferation"—a preėmptive air strike. (In
1981, the Israeli Air Force attacked and destroyed a new Iraqi reactor
a few months before it was scheduled to come on line.)
A European diplomat who has undertaken sensitive United Nations
assignments in Iran for the past two decades called Iran's push for
the bomb "contradictory behavior." He said, "This is the time to call
their bluff. This is a time for the U.S. to really make or break it
with Iran."
Iran began its pursuit of nuclear weapons in the
mid-nineteen-seventies, when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, flush with
oil money, ambition, and American support, set up the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran and announced that his kingdom would construct
twenty-three nuclear power reactors. The Shah invested an estimated
six billion dollars in nuclear projects, and Siemens, the West German
conglomerate, completed more than half the construction needed for the
installation of two reactors at Bushehr, near the Persian Gulf.
Thousands of Iranians were abroad, studying physics and related
subjects. American intelligence reports indicated that the Shah also
planned to build a nuclear bomb; a nuclear-weapons design team had
been set up, and covert efforts were made to acquire the materials and
know-how necessary to produce weapons.
This effort came to an abrupt end in 1979, when the Shah was
overthrown. The government was, eventually, taken over by the
Provisional Revolutionary Government, headed by Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini. In "Going Nuclear," a 1987 study of the spread of nuclear
weapons, the proliferation expert Leonard S. Spector noted presciently
that if American policymakers had understood more about the power of
Muslim fundamentalism and anti-American sentiment in Iran they might
have acted more aggressively to keep the Shah's nuclear assets out of
the new government's hands. Nonetheless, throughout the
nineteen-eighties there seemed to be little reason for official
concern, as Iran and Iraq fought a devastating war that weakened both.
Iran's nuclear programs were essentially shut down, and the
half-completed buildings at Bushehr were badly damaged in an Iraqi
bombing raid.
The war ended in 1988, with Iran's defeat. The ruling mullahs turned
once again to West Germany and Siemens, but the German government,
under pressure from Washington—"Death to America" was still the
Iranian rallying cry—decided to end its nuclear involvement in
Iran. At the time, Iran and the Soviet Union's mutual antagonism to
the United States did not translate into a close relationship with
each other.During the Iran-Iraq war, the Soviet Union—which
shared a twelve-hundred-mile border with Iran—had been Iraq's
main supporter and its most important arms supplier. After Ayatollah
Khomeini's death, in 1989, however, the Iranian religious leadership
turned for help to China and also, in a major geopolitical shift, the
Soviet Union, and signed a comprehensive arms and trade agreement with
the Soviets that included coöperation on the "peaceful uses of atomic
energy." The new alliance fit Moscow's needs well, coming when the
Soviet Union was in the final stages of imperial and economic
collapse.
The Yeltsin government agreed to rebuild Iran's bombed-out facilities
at Bushehr, and, in 1995, the two countries signed an
eight-hundred-million-dollar contract under which the Russians would
help install a powerful reactor there, to be run by a Russian-Iranian
team. Since then, a vast complex of buildings has been constructed at
the site. Russia also began a training program for Iranian physicists
and technicians, and set up clinics on how to operate a nuclear power
plant.
Intelligence officials told me, however, that Iran's most important
nuclear production facilities are not at Bushehr, which is open to
international inspection by the Vienna-based International Atomic
Energy Agency, but scattered throughout the country, at clandestine
sites, under military control. The clandestine facilities have not
been "declared"—that is, they are not subject to I.A.E.A.
inspection. One important hidden site is believed to be at the Sharif
University of Technology, in Tehran, which allegedly serves as a
procurement front and research center for the bomb program. An
American officer who has worked closely with Israeli intelligence told
me that at one point in the early nineties the Israelis traced a flow
of illicit high-tech materials from German manufacturers to Iran, and
determined that Sharif was—as he put it—"the secret
place."
More troubling intelligence came in the late nineties, when it was
learned from sensitive sources that Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who
directed the Pakistani nuclear program from the nineteen-seventies
until his retirement, earlier this year, made at least one secret
visit to an Iranian nuclear facility. (He often travelled in disguise
on such trips.) Khan is known to many in Pakistan as the father of the
Pakistani bomb—a tribute to his ingenuity when, after secretly
procuring plans for sophisticated gas centrifuges from Europe in the
nineteen-seventies, he had his laboratories producing weapons-grade
uranium by the mid-eighties. Khan was under American surveillance
because he had made clandestine visits to North Korea. American
officials believe that he brought no actual materials with him to
Iran—just his years of hands-on experience in bomb-making. "This
guy moves around," one American intelligence official said of Khan.
"He's in bad places at bad times."
The initial focus of American and Israeli intelligence was less on
Iran's progress in building the bomb than on what Iran might be able
to buy ready-made from Russia. After the breakup of the Soviet Union,
in 1991, Russian military officers, whose forces were starved for
cash, sometimes proved willing to sell off weapons, including
missiles, to almost anyone. Economic despair also struck Russia's
Ministry of Atomic Energy, known as Minatom, the huge enterprise that
ran the ten closed nuclear cities where, during the Cold War, nuclear
warheads were fabricated and weapons-grade uranium and
plutonium—more than a thousand tons—were produced. Minatom
was responsible for maintaining and, later, dismantling Russia's huge
arsenal of nuclear weapons. But by 1998 the Russian government was
funding only about twenty per cent of Minatom's operating expenses,
and thousands of scientists and technicians in the closed cities were
going unpaid for months at a time. Russian mobsters, taking advantage
of the poverty and disarray of post-Soviet Russia, got into the
business of buying military equipment and selling it to third parties.
For many in Russia's military-industrial complex, these off-the-books
deals are windfalls. "They make money—a lot of money," a former
American intelligence officer explained. The military leadership, he
said, is filled with generals carrying old resentments—"a bunch
of unreconstructed assholes who don't understand that the Cold War is
over." He went on, "If you're an unreconstructed Russian general who
thinks all evil begins and ends with the United States, you help out a
regional friend. The military was a state within a state under
Yeltsin. The biggest problem facing the new guy"—Vladimir Putin,
who replaced Yeltsin at the end of 1999—"is how to get control
of the military."
Iran is believed to have made a serious effort in the early
nineteen-nineties to buy specialized materials for nuclear weapons
from a factory in newly independent Kazakhstan. According to William
Courtney, who was the first American Ambassador to Kazakhstan, a team
of American weapons experts from the United States Embassy and the Oak
Ridge National Laboratory inadvertently stumbled onto the planned deal
in 1994, when they were called to the factory to inspect a cache of
highly enriched uranium that Kazakhstan had offered for sale to the
United States. The uranium, Courtney recalled, was to be made into
fuel rods for the reactors in Soviet nuclear submarines but had been
"left behind" when the Soviet Union collapsed. "The Soviets just
forgot about it," Courtney said. Along with the uranium, the experts
found piles of packaged materials marked for shipment to Iran.
Courtney explained that the Kazakhstanis later acknowledged that the
Iranians had approached them about buying the goods, but claimed that
they had decided against making the deal. Whatever the truth, the
discovery heightened American eagerness to get all the materials out
of Kazakhstan, and, in a clandestine operation, the uranium was turned
over to the United States for a larger share of foreign aid.
Another American intelligence official offered a cynical view of the
Russians. "They have real disdain for the indigenous capability of the
Iranians," the official said, adding that by the early nineties the
Russians were reasoning that the Iranian program, which was then
headed by a bureaucrat, was poorly run, and that any sale of high-tech
equipment was unlikely to lead anywhere. "Four lab assistants were
running the program, and they were all dropouts from Florida State," a
C.I.A. operative joked. In 1997, however, after Khatami was elected
President, the Iranian operation was put under the aegis of Gholamreza
Aghazadeh, a former oil minister who also served as Khatami's
Vice-President. "It's better now—more focussed and moving
ahead," the intelligence official told me.
In June of 1995, Vice-President Al Gore visited Moscow and negotiated
an agreement with Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, the Russian Prime Minister.
The pact protected Russia from economic sanctions in return for a
pledge that Moscow would cease all deliveries of conventional arms to
Iran by the end of 1999. There was also a personal pledge, an aide who
was involved told me, from President Yeltsin to President Clinton
assuring him that the Russians would not provide sensitive nuclear
technology to Iran. The Russian promise proved to be meaningless:
Russia's support for Iran, both overt and covert, continued.
Soon afterward, the United States and Israel began holding meetings to
discuss the Iranian nuclear threat and other security issues. The
American team was headed by Leon Fuerth, the national-security adviser
to Vice-President Gore. The Israeli delegation was usually led by a
policy adviser from the Prime Minister's office, and always included
one or two military-intelligence officers.
The Israelis continued to produce what they insisted was solid
evidence of Russian complicity in the Iranian missile and nuclear
program. In one case, Israeli and American intelligence agencies
tracked the activities of a Russian military team as it took control
of a mothballed production facility that made SS-4 missiles, which are
capable of carrying nuclear warheads twelve hundred and fifty miles,
and shipped it, "piece by piece," as one former American intelligence
officer put it, to Iran. Chernomyrdin subsequently denied that Moscow
had authorized the shipment. (According to a 1999 report in Jane's
Defence Weekly, an upgraded version of the SS-4 missile, known as the
Shehab 4, was being developed as part of the Iranian arsenal.)
The American meetings with the Israelis were often tense. The Israeli
delegation was unsparing in its criticism of the Russians and in its
insistence that the United States put more pressure on Moscow to cut
off the supply route to Iran. The Clinton Administration, according to
the Israelis, persisted in viewing Russia's ties to Iran as a mere
by-product of corruption, greed, and lack of state control in a
collapsing economy; the Israelis argued instead that the nuclear sales
were part of a larger Russian strategy to begin regaining superpower
status and to enlist Iran's assistance in dealing with the export of
Islamic fundamentalism.
"From the start, the Israelis took the view that Russia must want Iran
to have a long-range-missile capability," a former State Department
official told me. "Otherwise, why not stop it?" He went on to say,
however, that "over time the Israelis began to see just how screwed up
the Russians' controls were." Nonetheless, "the Israelis were almost
shrill. The implication was 'You Americans have other fish to fry with
the Russians, and are not giving enough attention to our security
requirements.' "
Throughout its second term, the Clinton Administration continued to
emphasize publicly the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime in
Iraq—an emphasis that tended to take the pressure off Iran. "It
was always a question of priority," a former Pentagon official
recalled. "NATO expansion was a more important issue, and there was
Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya."
In Leon Fuerth's White House office, meanwhile, there were some small
successes in the struggle to contain Russian greed and prevent Iran
from getting the atomic bomb. With help from the Mossad, the Israeli
intelligence agency, U.S. officials isolated a group of private
companies in Germany, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic that were
willing to sell nuclear technology to questionable customers, and
persuaded them to discontinue their Iranian contacts. Other potential
trading partners were discouraged from doing business with Iran
through diplomatic initiatives, economic sanctions or aid, and
political arm-twisting. Putin responded to American pressure and
changed the leadership of the still troubled Minatom. But by the end
of the decade the average pay for skilled scientists in Minatom had
diminished to subsistence levels—hardly a deterrent to the sale
of fissile material that could end up on the international black
market.
George W. Bush's election, last year, led to a suspension of the
meetings regarding Iran between the United States and Israeli
officials. One former official explained that both sides had been
reluctant to continue them. "When Bush took over, it dropped off the
White House radar screen," the former official said. "And the Israelis
really didn't push it with the new guys. Part of it may have been that
the new guys needed time. And part of it may have been the
intifada"—the renewed guerrilla war between Israel and the
Palestinians. Another official said that the Israelis simply "pulled
their punches" in the early days of the Bush Presidency. (As it
happens, the Bush Administration's 2002 budget proposal called for
dramatically reducing the outgoing Clinton Administration's allocation
for programs aimed at safeguarding the Russian nuclear stockpile.)
One factor was the Bush Administration's determination to persuade
Putin to drop the 1972 anti-ballistic-missile treaty and join
Washington in constructing a worldwide missile-defense system.
Furthermore, a former Pentagon official noted, many in Russia believed
that "Iran was going to get there anyway"—develop a
bomb—"with North Korean or Chinese help. Why, then, invest a
huge effort when it would secure Russian interests to be friendly with
Iran? It wasn't clear that changing Russian behavior would change the
Iranian program."
In the past year, according to American officials, Israel assembled
evidence showing that at least two Russian export companies have
continued illicit shipments to Iran of highly specialized aluminum and
steel products that are essential for the assembly and operation of
centrifuges. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, apparently
decided on a two-pronged approach: the formal talks with Washington
would be renewed and reėnergized, if possible, and Sharon himself
would fly to Moscow and confront Putin with new evidence of Russian
complicity.
According to Israeli officials, Sharon met with Putin in early
September, a few days before the terrorist attacks in New York and
Washington, and turned over explicit information on the private
Russian sale of nuclear-related materials to Iran. Initially, the
Russian government insisted that the materials were for ordinary
industrial use, but it promised to investigate the matter. One Israeli
official told me, "The Russians, after checking, got back to us and
you"—Israel and the United States—"and said, 'This was
stopped.' We knew it wasn't stopped, and that the materials reached
Tehran. We also know that Putin was lied to." The Israelis remain
hopeful about future relations with Putin, who has spoken warmly about
the one million Russian Jews living in Israel. An Israeli official
told me, "Sharon, in his meetings with Putin, made it clear that
this"—the Iranian bomb—"was an existential issue for
Israel. Putin understands it, but he doesn't think the Iranians are up
to it." Meanwhile, he added, hundreds of Iranians are continuing to
get advanced training in missile- and nuclear-production technology at
Russian institutions.
The Israelis returned to Washington in October with a delegation that
included Dan Meridor, Minister Without Portfolio, along with Gideon
Frank and Major General Dayan. Their contact was no longer Fuerth but
John Bolton, the Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security. The Israelis found Washington preoccupied with
Iraq, with the coming war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, and
with its newfound allies in the war against terrorism. Nearly a dozen
Iranian diplomats were assassinated in Mazar-e-Sharif by the Taliban
in 1998, two years after they seized power there, and Iran was eager
to protect its political interests—and its borders. Pakistan,
widely believed to have provided Iran with essential data on bomb
design, was suddenly America's most important ally in South Asia, and
the best rewarded financially. And Putin joined British Prime Minister
Tony Blair in providing repeated public endorsements of the
Administration's tactics and repeated public praise for President
Bush.
One former U.S. intelligence official said that the Israelis had come
to Washington to renew their warnings about the Iranian bomb, in part,
because they "think it's the only way they're going to get anybody's
attention in the Bush Administration." The Administration's
intelligence relationship with Iran was reminiscent, he added, of
America's decision to side with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. "We
gave the Iraqis intelligence support, and look at the monster we
created there. Today, we're being led down the same path in Iran."
Even Israel's most skeptical critics in the American intelligence
community—and there are many—now acknowledge that there is
a serious problem.
In formal evaluations, the American intelligence community lists Iran
as posing a more immediate nuclear-proliferation threat than Iraq.
"Everyone knows that Iran is the next one to proliferate—to
possess a nuclear weapon," an American nuclear-intelligence analyst
told me. "Iran has been the No. 1 concern about who's next for the
last couple of years at the highest level of the government." He
pointed out that, after the Gulf War, the much criticized United
Nations inspection program had "shut down Iraq's nuclear program to a
large extent." The Iraqis, he went on, "have the knowledge—they
could very quickly get back up to speed, but the international
community isn't letting them do that. They're not as far along as
Iran." Iran's drive for the bomb, he said, "is not going to be
resolved by export controls and diplomacy."
The Bush Administration continues to concentrate on the threat posed
by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. "It's more important to deal with Iraq than
with Iran, because there's nothing going on in Iraq that's going to
get better," a senior Administration strategist told me. "In Iran, the
people are openly defying the government. There's some hope that Iran
will get better. But there's nothing in Iraq that gives you any hope,
because Saddam rules so ruthlessly. What will we do if he provides
anthrax to four guys in Al Qaeda?" He said, "If Iraq is out of the
picture, we will concentrate on Iran in an entirely different way."
Iran's help in the war in Afghanistan, and many of its internal
developments—from growing discontent with religious strictures
to the increasing participation of women in political life—are
encouraging to U.S. officials. But, one American official told me, it
is also understood in Washington that Iran will continue to pursue the
bomb, and that Russia will continue to help. "Even if Thomas Jefferson
became President, Iran is going to go nuclear," he said.
Some Israeli officials privately acknowledge that the extent of the
Bush Administration's resolve in derailing the Iranian effort to build
a bomb will be tied to the progress and outcome of the war on
terrorism. "It's going to depend on how much success you have with
Osama bin Laden," one Israeli official said. "If the terror continues,
there is no alternative for the U.S. but to go to Iran for help." An
American four-star general depicted the issue of priorities in more
graphic terms. "We'll tell the Pakistanis and the Russians to back off
their help for Iran's bomb," he said, "but that's Chapter 2, after we
put our boy"—bin Laden—"in a body bag."
Pipilenca Guanaco
> President Bush based his "axis of evil" designation on two factors:
> sponsorship of terrorism coupled with the pursuit of weapons of mass
> destruction.
Sería bueno que hiciera pública las pruebas, para que las palabras
anteriores no se queden a nivel de malas intenciones gratuitas.
> The CIA has identified Iran as "one of the most active
> countries" pursuing weapons of mass destruction, and cites apparent
> technical assistance from Russia and North Korea.
Porqué entonces, es contra Irak la guerra? Será que USA no puede vivir sin
guerra, porque eso implicaría tener que resolver sus propios problemas
internos?
En estos momentos, los responsables de todo, son los extranjeros.
ECONOMÍA OBSOLETA
Hablar geopolíticamente
es hablar del reparto del mundo
sin mencionar la palabra reparto
para no herir susceptibilidades.
SITUACIONES EMBARAZOSAS
La independencia económica
de los países con movimientos de liberación triunfantes,
son un parto desangrado
de las economías de guerra
y el sacrificio de los pueblos.
Por eso hay quienes
tratan de evitar el embarazo
o son partidarios de ciertos abortos.
Atte.
Pipilenca
http://geocities.com/pipilenca/polo.html#INDICE?