Le Figaro
Monday 22 October 2007
One is forced to observe that on the issue of Iranian nuclear technology only one trend is apparent, the one that leads to confrontation. Everything is happening as though two runaway trains were launched against one another on a single rail line, without anyone succeeding in stopping them or switching them onto another track. The conductor's name for the America train is Dick Cheney (the neo-conservative vice president who orchestrated the disastrous 2003 attack against Iraq); and for the Iran train, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (the very nationalistic and religious president of the Islamic Republic). The Anglo-Saxons have a name for this: collision course.
Why does Train America continue to whiz straight towards catastrophe (a bombardment of Iran which would immediately entail a conflagration of the entire Persian Gulf, as one Pasdaran general has just declared)? Three factors in Washington may explain it. The first is that George W. Bush, convinced by Cheney, does not want to go down in history as the American president who allowed Iran to become a military nuclear power. The second is that the policy of firmness with respect to Iran enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress. The third is that the two foreign lobbies most influential with Bush (the Israeli and Saudi lobbies) are in agreement on the principle of American strikes against Iranian nuclear installations. The Israelis because they don't believe the logic of deterrence will work with a leader as "crazy" as Ahmadinejad. The Saudis because they can't stand the idea of Iranian hegemony over the Gulf.
Train Iran is also heading irretrievably in the direction of a collision. The resignation, announced Saturday morning, of Ali Larijani from his position as Secretary General of the Iranian Security Council signals a radicalization of the regime and the concentration of power into Ahmadinejad's hands. Iran's main nuclear negotiator up until now, Larijani, a shrewd, cultivated and thoughtful man, was an advocate for finding a compromise solution with Westerners. Neither the Americans, nor his own country's radicals gave him the time to devise or put one in place. By maintaining a precondition to the opening of direct negotiations (Iran's suspension of its uranium enrichment program), the Americans have buried the negotiation. The Iranians deem, in fact, that were they to suspend their enrichment activities (declared to have a solely civilian purpose), they wouldn't have anything else to negotiate.
In the fall of 2001, Iran made three gestures towards America. Tehran immediately condemned the September 11 attacks, and with the greatest possible firmness. Then, Iran assisted the Northern Alliance in chasing the Taliban out of Kabul at the beginning of November. Finally, in December of that year, Iran supported all the American initiatives at the Bonn Conference devoted to the political and economic reconstruction of Afghanistan. Consequently, the Iranians were extremely surprised to figure on the "Axis of Evil" (alongside Iraq and North Korea) in President Bush's speech to Congress in January 2002. With respect to Iran, the Bush administration has constantly wagged the stick, without ever offering any carrot. It has never been able to devise a policy of consideration; it has never wanted to reestablish diplomatic relations.
During his recent speech at the United Nations grandstand, Ahmadinejad declared the nuclear issue "closed," signifying the lack of significance he accorded Larijani's efforts to find a compromise that reassures Westerners with respect to the non-military aims of the Iranian enrichment program. Mistakenly, Ahmadinejad does not believe in the possibility of American strikes. He thinks that American military power is paralyzed by the quagmire in Iraq, although the failure of pacification there has in no way undermined the abilities of the US Air Force and Navy. The Iranian president is blinded by the popularity his posture of rebel against "Western dictates" gives him in the Islamic world. He misinterprets the political support Putin's Russia, more and more exasperated by American unilateralism, seems to bring him. In fact, Moscow will have everything to gain from a bombardment of Iran, which would send the prices of oil and gas skyrocketing.
Conveyed by the Internet, western culture is the reference for the Iranian middle class, which understands the extent to which the Islamic Revolution has made the country regress. That population risks finding itself in a war against America without having ever wanted such a thing at all. War, daughter of misunderstanding. War, daughter of one-upmanship between ignorant and autistic leaders.
Mohamed ElBaradei Thinks That "Iran Will Not Be a Threat Tomorrow."
Natalie Nougayrède Interviews Mohamed ElBaradei
Le Monde
Monday 22 October 2007
Where do matters stand with respect to Iran's cooperation with the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) about which you must report in November? At the UN, Russia has blocked all new sanctions against Iran until that time. Could your report be postponed?
Iran said it was ready, already several months ago, to discuss the questions that remain unresolved (with respect to its nuclear program) with us. That corresponds to a demand made by the UN Security Council several years ago and it's at the heart of our mandate: to clarify the unresolved questions, which means to be in a position to say whether Iran's past and present activities are "clean."
That will require a certain amount of time, since it involves having access to people, documents, and installations. We're not naive. We don't think that we're giving Iran an opportunity to drag things out. Before the end of the month of November, I must render judgment about Iran's earnestness, on the fact of whether or not it is acting in good faith. That's a decisive test for Iran. If they muff that opportunity - and I have told them this - then the international community will say: we're right not to trust Iran.
This is a crucial phase. Will I be able to complete this process in November? I would like to. But it could last until December. Taking two, three, or four weeks longer for a process that has been going on for years is not the problem.
Your approach has been criticized by certain Western officials who see it as an easing of the pressures on Iran while it is pursuing nuclear activities. Couldn't the risk of a military scenario be paradoxically increased by this process?
One does not talk about using force until all diplomatic means have been exhausted. Now, we still have plenty of time to use all the tools of diplomacy, including sanctions, dialogue, all the "carrots" and all the "sticks" we have available. I cannot judge intentions, but supposing Iran were to intend to acquire the nuclear bomb: it would still take between three and eight years for it to do so. All intelligence services are in agreement about that.
I want to wean people away from the idea that Iran will be a threat tomorrow and that we find ourselves now before the question of determining whether we should bomb Iran or allow it to acquire the bomb. We're not in that situation at all. Iraq is a screaming example of the fact that in many cases the use of force exacerbates the problem instead of resolving it.
What can you say about the air raids Israel conducted against Syria on September 6? According to the American press, those strikes targeted sites where a nuclear reactor was being built from components supplied by North Korea. Does that intelligence have any foundation?
At the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA), we have received no, and I underline "no" intelligence that supports that interpretation. We have contacted the Syrians, as well as foreign intelligence agencies. We have said: if one of you has the slightest information showing that there were nuclear-related components, obviously, we would be happy to investigate that. I dare to hope, frankly, that before people go bombing and using force, that they'll come to us to report their concerns. Then we would go on location to verify. But we have no indication showing that there was anything nuclear. As long as we do not receive any information along those lines, we will not be able to do much.
In the monitoring that you've done up until now of North Korea's nuclear activities have you found the slightest indication of a connection with or transfers to Syria?
We have no information to that effect. Concerning North Korea, we were the first to go to the UN Security Council in 1992 to say there was something problematic about that country. We do not hide the facts. But to act with authority, we must have information.
How does this Israeli military action weigh, do you think, in the Iranian nuclear case?
I truly must know - soon, I hope - exactly what happened in Syria. Some tend to speak rather quickly about the use of force, by brandishing the idea of a "just" or "preventative" war. The UN Charter clearly decrees the specific cases in which force may be authorized: in a case of self-defense if faced with imminent attack or when a collective decision is taken by the UN Security Council if it deems that international peace and security are threatened.
That's why, when it's a question of using force with no explanation, I become very worried. I hope to obtain an explanation (about the raid in Syria) indicating - notably - in what way it was a case of self-defense. I don't know. Is there some nuclear connection? Is there some connection with Iran? These are the important questions. I add one thing. When the Israelis destroyed Saddam Hussein's nuclear research reactor in 1981 (Osirak), the consequence was that Saddam Hussein swung his program undercover. He began to establish a massive military nuclear program "underground." The use of force may delay development, but it does not treat the roots of the problem.
Advice to Americans: Don't Give Up on Tehran
By Jacques Andréani and Marc Ullmann
Le Monde
Monday 22 October 2007
Nicolas Sarkozy did well to draw attention to the seriousness of the Iranian nuclear question. However, it's not enough to present the "catastrophic" choice between an Iranian bomb and the bombardment of Iran. We must look for ways to escape that alternative. The President of the Republic proposes intensified sanctions. That's undoubtedly necessary to show determination, but the impacts are problematic and may even prove to be perverse.
For the moment, the negotiations have broken down. The knot is the precondition. Iran says: "How dare you present as a precondition to negotiation that which seems, in reality, to be your objective: the cessation uranium enrichment?" The diplomats are there to find ways to put that prerequisite between parentheses, to sidestep the incontrovertible and to save face. Many formulas have been suggested that could lead to compromise. But then the United States would have to stop considering the negotiation as a means to isolate and destabilize Iran and Iran would have to stop seeing its nuclear program as an opportunity to humiliate the "Great Satan" and to bolster its dominant position in the Middle East.
One of the ways to emerge from the logjam would be to negotiate. America would engage with Iran in a discussion where everything would be put on the table, Washington's "imperialist" conduct as Iran sees it, as well as Iran's interference in the whole Middle East that America and its allies denounce. Perhaps something would come out of this unpacking. It would necessitate, to begin, moderation of each side's language. It is doubtful that either one or the other would agree to lend themselves to that.
George W. Bush's temptation to strike Iran runs the risk of being reinforced by these impasses. The American president does not believe that the Mullahs' regime can lend itself sincerely to controls on the non-passage of civilian nuclear technology to military nuclear technology. Above all, he'd like to avoid that Iran becomes strong enough to take advantage of the Iraqi quagmire. A global strike is under study. Nuclear sites will not be the only targets.
We were convinced as of 2006 that the probability of an American attack was markedly higher than most French people believe. The consequences of such an action would be tragic on an economic level and even more so to the great geo-political balances. The stability of the Gulf States would be compromised. Pakistan would be shaken-up. Muslims from around the globe, divided today, would share a common hatred of the United States, and, more generally, of the West. China and Russia would benefit from it.
A Certain Kind of Modernity
Let us hope that American public opinion takes notice of the seriousness of these dangers. Let us also hope that it also realizes that Iranian society is moving towards a certain kind of modernity. Diplomats and journalists who go there observe that every day. A study by the sociologist Guillaume Demuth (in its complete version on the site www.clubdesvigilants.com) confirms that. The Iranians, with their particular characteristics, have been plunged into the same societal transformations as one sees elsewhere in the world; one sees a rise in mental and physical mobility among them, a progression in behaviors that deconstruct authority, a growing capacity to integrate external developments...
It is clear that recourse to military force will stop these developments cold and even provoke a recoil that would undoubtedly allow the regime to harden instead of adapt. If the Americans could be made sensitive to these considerations, they would conclude that it is desirable not to abandon the search for a negotiated solution prematurely.
That's what we must push them towards, without showing any indulgence towards the procrastinations and provocations of the Iranian president.
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