Post #413 - Tossing Br'er Rabbit in the Briar Patch

This piece by Jonathan Tirone ran on Bloomberg 2/15/13):

Iran’s Nuclear-Technology Gains Suggest Sanctions Are Backfiring

International sanctions designed to punish Iran for its nuclear program may be counter-productive, said scientists and security analysts tracking the decade-long dispute over the Persian Gulf nation’s atomic work. 

While trade and financial sanctions have choked off Iran’s access to materials such as aluminum and maraging steel used to make its first generation of nuclear equipment, they have spurred the Islamic Republic to find its own solutions for subsequent technological innovations. Now, Iran is positioned to both build better nuclear devices and export them. 

“The serious consequence of all of these sanctions are that you drive the indigenous production of these parts,” Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress, a physicist at the Monterrey, California- based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, wrote in response to questions. “This means the proliferator learns more about the technology and so now they don’t only know how to produce the parts, but they could also sell them to other states.” 

As embargoes strangle Iran’s ability to import high-quality metals and fibers needed to build nuclear components, the country’s own resources, including oil, sand and zinc, mean it can overcome technical hurdles. Last month, Iran notified United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors it would begin installing 3,000 domestically built centrifuges that can produce more enriched uranium in less time. 

Raw Materials 

“Most technologies in use are decades-old, well-proven, well-published concepts,” said Andreas Persbo, executive director of the London-based Verification Research, Training and Information Center, a non-governmental observer to the IAEA. “The key thing is to get access to the raw material. If you have the raw material, and a talent base to process them, you can construct whatever you need.” 

Iran, with the world’s fourth-biggest proven oil reserves, began in 2011 to make its own carbon fiber, the strong, light material used in wind turbines, airplanes and centrifuges. Like the uranium-enrichment market, which is led by a handful of companies such as Urenco Ltd., Areva SA and Rosatom Corp., carbon-fiber production is driven by a few multinational businesses including Hexcel Corp., BAE Systems Plc and Toray Industries Inc.

 

“While the sanctions regime certainly slowed down Iran’s technological progress initially, it has also made Iran self- sufficient in a number of key areas,” said Yousaf Butt, a physicist and nuclear non-proliferation analyst who advised the U.S. National Academy of Sciences on Iran’s nuclear work. “Iran is likely the most technologically advanced nation in the Middle East, aside from Israel.” 

Self-Sufficient 

The Islamic Republic has also achieved self-sufficiency in other vital technology areas touched by sanctions. The country manufacturers and sells Fomblin oil, a lubricant used inside centrifuges, on world markets. At a September IAEA meeting in Vienna, Iran displayed a copy of a domestically made nuclear- fuel panel destined for a research reactor in Tehran. 

“If in the past the country needed finished products and technologies for its program which squarely fell under sanctions, now the required level of imported inputs is continuously going down to more simple and basic items which Iran still needs but can upgrade on its own,” according to Igor Khripunov, the Soviet Union’s former arms-control envoy to the U.S. who is now at the Athens, Georgia-based Center for International Trade and Security. 

Kazakhstan Meeting 

Iran, which maintains its atomic program is peaceful, has ruled out suspending its activities as the UN Security Council demands. It’s willing to discuss its nuclear work when it meets world powers in Kazakhstan next week, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Feb. 4. Talks between Iran and IAEA officials that concluded Feb. 13 in Tehran failed to clinch a deal that would give investigators wider access to alleged nuclear sites. 

While Iran allowed wider access to sites, including centrifuge-manufacturing workshops, until 2005, it reversed course after accusations about its nuclear work escalated. The first UN sanctions were imposed in 2006. The country hasn't restricted IAEA access to sites it’s legally bound to let inspectors visit. 

Diplomats should focus on returning to greater transparency of Iran’s nuclear facilities rather than trying to enforce a ban on enrichment, said Paul Ingram, executive director of the London-based British American Security Information Council, a policy-advisory group. 

“Iran has a sophisticated economy relative to most states outside of North America, Europe and the Far East, so it should be no surprise that they can develop the technologies to substitute for sanctioned materials,” Ingram wrote in reply to questions. “The experience of sanctions proves this time and time again.” 

To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Tirone in Vienna at jtirone@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Hertling at jhertling@bloomberg.

 

Post #412 - What Brings Us Together

I could see this coming, as soon as the news broke about the International Olympic Committee's decision:

http://news.yahoo.com/us-iran-common-ground-olympic-wrestling-105819856--oly.html

Post #411 - Alternate Realities

The following was posted yesterday on a U.S. blog, Voices from Russia (not to be confused with Voices OF Russia, which comes from over there):

http://02varvara.wordpress.com/2013/02/18/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-iran-not-seeking-nuclear-weapons/

Post #410 - Who Goes First?

This was posted recently by NIAC:

Diplomats: "Suspension or Ending of Sanctions" Necessary for Successful Iran Talks Monday, February 11, 2013 

By: Sina Toossi 

Washington, DC - With fresh negotiations between Iran and six world powers set to take place in Kazakhstan on February 26, two former U.S. ambassadors told a Washington Institute for Near East Peace forum this week that successful talks will require flexibility on sanctions.

“First of all, it requires us to put serious things on the table that we haven’t done yet, that would be suspension or ending of sanctions, particularly the most effective ones, the oil ones," said Ambassador James F. Jeffrey. In return, he said that Iran would have to “step by step, eliminate the possibility of breakout with enriched uranium.”

Ambassador Thomas Pickering also said a “win-win” approach was necessary and warned that, with the ratcheting up of sanctions, there must be a greater effort to  negotiate. “Sanctions are like putting a guy in a pressure cooker and then tying down the valve. And the valve here is negotiations."

 

He noted that some in Washington were advocating for a “big-for-big” grand deal over Iran’s nuclear program, but said such an approach would take time and difficult to achieve given the lack of trust between the parties. Instead he urged for a preliminary "small package" to build trust that would involve Iran capping uranium enrichment to lower levels in exchange for sanctions relief.

However, Pickering said, while the U.S. could promise to halt any new sanctions under such a deal, easing existing sanctions would be logistically difficult. “Our sanctions process is difficult to reverse--they built the car without a reverse gear.” Instead, he said, “we have the Europeans who can perhaps take some sanctions off, some financial transactions, even some petroleum transactions.”

Post #409 - Fact and Obfuscation

A brief, but important piece from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):

http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/01/31/irans-nuclear-weapons-program-again/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=irans-nuclear-weapons-program-again

Post #408 - Lessening of Tensions

This appeared today on Reuter's:

Iran says it is converting uranium, easing bomb fears

 

By Yeganeh Torbati
DUBAI | Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:39am EST

(Reuters) - Iran acknowledged on Tuesday that it was converting some of its higher-grade enriched uranium into reactor fuel, a move that could help to prevent a dispute with the West over its nuclear program hitting a crisis in mid-2013.

Conversion is one way for Iran to slow the growth in its stockpile of material that could be used to make a bomb. That stockpile is currently projected to reach a level intolerable to Israel in mid-year, just as Iran's room for negotiation is being limited by a presidential election in June.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was asked at a weekly news conference about a Reuters report that Iran has converted small amounts of its 20-percent enriched uranium into reactor fuel.

"This work is being done and all its reports have been sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a complete manner," he was quoted as saying by the state news agency IRNA.
It was Iran's first acknowledgment that it had apparently resumed converting into fuel small amounts of uranium enriched to a concentration of 20 percent fissile material.

Iran's production of that higher-grade uranium worries the major powers because it is only a short technical step away from the 90-percent purity needed for a weapon.

On-off negotiations with the major powers and four rounds of U.N. Security Council sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its enrichment activities, and the IAEA has been refused full access to investigate other suspect elements of the nuclear program.

Iran denies that it is seeking a weapon and says its nuclear program serves only peaceful purposes such as electricity and the production of medical isotopes.

CRITICAL MASS

But Israel, widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East, has indicated that Iran's stockpile will reach a level in June at which it considers it must attack to stop Iran acquiring enough fissile material for a bomb. With a presidential election taking place that month, Tehran's room to make concessions to foreign powers is limited.

A U.S. official sought to reassure Israel this week on the determination of President Barack Obama, due to visit the region shortly, to curb Iran's nuclear program, according to an Israeli official who declined to be named.

Rose Gottemoeller, acting U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, "reiterated the Americans' commitment to preventing a nuclear Iran, and their worries about regional proliferation, were Iran to go nuclear", said the official, who met Gottemoeller.

Iran averted a potential crisis last year by converting some 100 kg of its 20-percent enriched uranium into fuel, suggesting to some that it was carefully keeping below the threshold set by Israel, while still advancing its nuclear technology.

It is not believed to have enriched uranium beyond 20 percent. A fuller picture is unlikely until a new IAEA report on Iran's nuclear activity, due by late February.

Separately, officials from the IAEA are due to hold talks in Tehran on Wednesday in the hope of restarting their long-stalled inquiry into Iran's nuclear program.

The U.N. agency, whose mission is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, has been trying for a year to negotiate a so-called structured approach with Iran that would give its inspectors access to sites, officials and documents.

The IAEA especially wants access to the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran where it believes explosives tests relevant for nuclear weapons development may have taken place and been subsequently concealed, allegations that Iran denies.

"READY FOR DEAL"

Mehmanparast said Iran was ready to come to a "comprehensive agreement" with the IAEA if Tehran's nuclear rights were recognized. Part of this agreement could include a visit to Parchin, he said.

But Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, head of the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, on Tuesday criticized the IAEA's handling of documents related to Iran, signaling the continued mistrust between the agency and Tehran.

"Unfortunately their system is not sufficiently secure," Abbasi-Davani said, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency (ISNA). "They need to be more careful in their interactions with Iran."

Last year Abbasi-Davani accused the U.N. agency of a "cynical approach" and mismanagement, and said "terrorists and saboteurs might have intruded" into the agency.

Iran and six world powers, known as the P5+1, are due to hold a new round of talks on the nuclear program in Kazakhstan on February 26.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that the powers were ready to respond if Iran came to the talks prepared to discuss "real substance".

Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, visiting Moscow, said Iran was "counting on there being positive and constructive steps made to resolve this problem at the upcoming meeting".

In Tehran, Salehi's spokesman Mehmanparast responded to news that North Korea had conducted its third nuclear test in defiance of existing United Nations resolutions by saying: "We need to come to a point where no country will have any nuclear weapons."

(Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Post #407 - The View from Moscow

This appeared (2/11/13) on Voice of Russia/Interfax, under the title "Russian warns against military strike on Iran":

A military attack on Iran will only strengthen the resolve and grass-root support of nuclear bomb proponents in the country, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin has warned.

 

“I share the opinion that a strike [against Iran] will only play into the hand of those vying for the creation of a nuclear bomb. It would be rather an irrational and dangerous step,” Mr. Churkin said in an interview.

Russia’s UN official said he hoped that common sense would prevent the US from attacking Iran. He stressed that none of the P5+1 group members believed Tehran had made its final decision to build a nuclear bomb.

“As long as the decision isn’t final, there remains a leeway for political dialogue. A military attack will torpedo Iran talks and nullify the possibility for the renewal of political negotiations,” Mr. Churkin said.

Claims that the US is providing Syrian insurgents with so-called “non-lethal” weapons don’t relieve Washington of any responsibility for murders carried out by armed anti-Assad fighters, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin has said.

The US is an extremely powerful state that enjoys enormous authority in such countries as Qatar, the chief arms supplier of the Syrian opposition, Mr. Churkin stressed.

If the US wants to remain consistent with its policy, it should restrain those countries from providing Syrian rebels with deadly weapons, he added.

The Russian diplomat voiced Moscow’s concern over rumors of a chemical threat in Syria. “We believe there’s been too much scaremongering… which makes you feel that someone is looking for a pretext to invade Syria. We are afraid the opposition may be tempted to use chemical weapons in their interests,” he added.