Constructive analysis: Iran

MEC Analytical Group
3 January 2012
(Received by email; no web posting yet available.)

MEC Analytical Group is an informal association of retired Middle East specialists of various nationalities and professional backgrounds (diplomats, intelligence officers and businessmen) based in London.

We are grateful to former British ambassador Alan Munro and former head of non-proliferation at the White House Jack Caravelli for their comments, and to independent UK-based oil consultant Mehdi Varzi for the paper circulated below (not yet published elsewhere) which makes the case to give diplomacy another chance through direct negotiations between the United States and Iran.

Alan writes:

Rising tension (and crude price) over an Iranian threat to interdict the passage of tankers through the Hormuz Straits reminds me that we have all been here before. The construction by Iran from early 1987 during the latter stages of the Iran-Iraq War of a series of bases along her southern Gulf coast for newly acquired Chinese Silkworm surface-to-surface missiles was seen by Gulf oil producers and their western allies as a major threat to oil traffic. The response took the form of western reflagging of Kuwaiti and other Gulf-flagged tankers, and a shipping convoy system shepherded mainly by US and British (Armilla Patrol) warships. Mid-1987 saw a stern American warning to Iran that their use of the missiles against shipping would involve a forceful reaction. The Iranian leadership appeared to take the point and no Silkworms were fired from their lower Gulf bases. (They were however used briefly from occupied territory in Iraq against Kuwaiti oil facilities to the north. The establishment of the Silkworm bases also led Saudi Arabia to let it be known that she was discussing the acquisition of a similar missile programme with the Chinese.)

For their attacks on oil shipping during 1987 and early 1988 the Iranians had recourse instead, and with initial success, to wide-ranging mining operations and to surface attacks on convoys and escorts with fast patrol boats. These aggressive activities were gradually overcome through superior naval force, including a detachment of Royal Navy minehunters.

There was some firing of Silkworm missiles by the Iraqis against western naval units in the northern Gulf during the active phase of the 1991 Gulf War. On one occasion a Silkworm aimed at the USS Missouri was successfully intercepted by a Sea Dart missile from her escort, HMS Gloucester.

Jack writes:

What we are seeing in recent weeks regarding Iran is little more than Tehran’s version of carrots and sticks. The carrots are a renewed offer for talks—how often in the past have we seen that card played—while the sticks are the threat regarding the putative closing of the Strait of Hormuz. I know few, if any, in Washington who view the current threat to close the Strait seriously for three reasons. The first is that the Iranians have backed off their belligerent language quickly as shown by statements made in the past few days. The second is that Iran almost certainly does not seek confrontation with the US Navy. That would not turn out well for Iran. Finally, sellers need buyers as much as buyers need sellers. Iran remains highly dependent on oil revenue and cutting off the flow of oil—assuming it was even able to do so—would harm its economy considerably. A more focused approach to Iran would be to insist that Iran abide by the string of UN Security Council resolutions and carry out its commitment made years ago—but never implemented—to embrace the Additional Protocol to the nuclear inspection regime. If Iran truly seeks dialogue with the West it would do well to show some measure of commitment to resolution of the problem created by its missile and nuclear programs through its actions. It is not the US or the West under UN sanctions.

Iran and its nuclear programme

Mehdi Varzi, Director, Varzi Energy Ltd

Since its release on 8 November, IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear programme has already attracted a great deal of comment, much of it from those who are much more expert on these issues than I am. However, much of the comment has been politically slanted, in many cases to reflect the Western or Israeli point of view. For instance, in a Financial Times analysis on 9th November, three comments were included – one from the American Enterprise Institute (a right-wing think tank with a heavy pro-Israeli bias), another from a “senior American official” and a third from a “senior Western diplomat”. I have always praised the FT for its objectivity. In this case, however, it fell short of its high standards.

The report is based on more than 1,000 pages of information shared with the agency by US intelligence in 2005, one year after they were apparently spirited out of Iran on a laptop computer. But deep scepticism about the credibility of the documents remains – Iran has long insisted they are forgeries by hostile intelligence agencies – despite a concerted attempt by the IAEA to verify the data and dispel such doubt. In fact, when compared with the hype surrounding the report prior to its release, the volume of new evidence or information appears relatively thin.

Just to put things into perspective, the report was supposed to provide substantial hard evidence for hardliners in and outside Israel of Iran’s progress towards being able to build a nuclear weapon. Such supposed proof would then strengthen the reasoning for a military strike against Iran.

Now, of course, Iran’s “imminent” or near-term access to nuclear weapons has been forecast for nearly the past 30 years.

In 1984: Jane's Defence Weekly quoted West German intelligence sources as saying that Iran's production of a bomb "is entering its final stages."

In 1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu told his colleagues that Iran was 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be "uprooted by an international front headed by the US."

In the same year, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres told French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999.

Also in the same year, a task force of the United States House Republican Research Committee claimed that there was a "98 per cent certainty that Iran already had all (or virtually all) of the components required for two or three operational nuclear weapons." The then-CIA chief Robert Gates stated that Iran's nuclear program could be a "serious problem" in five years or less.

Curiously, and again in the same year, a leaked copy of the Pentagon's "Defence Strategy for the 1990s" made little reference to Iran, despite laying out seven scenarios for potential future conflict from Iraq to North Korea.

In 1995: The New York Times quoted senior US and Israeli officials as saying that "Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought" – again, about five years away – and that Iran’s nuclear bomb is “at the top of the list” of dangers in the coming decade. The report speaks of an "acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program," claims that Iran "began an intensive campaign to develop and acquire nuclear weapons" in 1987, and says Iran was "believed" to have recruited scientists from the former Soviet Union and Pakistan to advise them.

1997: The Christian Science Monitor reported that US pressure on Iran's nuclear suppliers had "forced Iran to adjust its suspected timetable for a bomb. Experts now say Iran is unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons for eight or 10 years."

1998: The New York Times said that Israel was less safe as a result of test missile launches in Iran even though Israel alone in the Middle East possessed both nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to drop them anywhere. An unidentified expert said: "This test shows Iran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, because no one builds an 800-mile missile to deliver conventional warheads."

1998: The same week, former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reports to Congress that Iran could build an intercontinental ballistic missile – one that could hit the US – within five years. The CIA gave a timeframe of 12 years.

2002: CIA warns that the danger from nuclear-tipped missiles, especially from Iran and North Korea, is higher than during the Cold War.

2006: Tensions rise after the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh quotes US sources saying that a strike on Iran is all but inevitable, and that there are plans to use tactical nuclear weapons against buried Iranian facilities.

2007: President Bush warns that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to "World War III." Vice President Dick Cheney had previously warned of "serious consequences" if Iran did not give up its nuclear program.

June 2008: The hard-line US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicts that Israel will attack Iran before January 2009, taking advantage of a window before the next US president came to office.

August 2010: An article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic's September issue is published online, outlining a scenario in which Israel would chose to launch a unilateral strike against Iran by July 2011 with 100 aircraft, "because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people."

2010: US officials note that Iran's nuclear program has been slowed by four sets of UN Security Council sanctions and a host of US and EU measures. The Stuxnet computer virus also played havoc through 2011 with Iran's thousands of spinning centrifuges that enrich uranium.

January 2011: When Meir Dagan steps down as director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, he says that Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015. "Israel should not hasten to attack Iran, doing so only when the sword is upon its neck," Mr. Dagan warned. Later he said that attacking Iran would be "a stupid idea.... The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible."

January 2011: A report by the Federation of American Scientists on Iran's uranium enrichment says there is "no question” that Tehran already has the technical capability to produce a "crude" nuclear device.

February 2011: National intelligence director James Clapper affirms in testimony before Congress that “Iran is keeping the option open to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities and better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so," Mr. Clapper said. "We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

November 2011: The IAEA claims for the first time that Iran has worked on weapons-related activities for years, publishing detailed information based on more than 1,000 pages of design information that is corroborated, it says, by data from 10 member states and its own investigation and interviews.

So let’s try to adopt a more dispassionate tone and analyse where things are and, possibly what can be done.
1. There is some evidence that Iran is looking at the potential military application of nuclear technology. However, the latest IAEA report hardly throws any new light on the subject.

2. Iran's research on various military applications of nuclear technology contradicts its obligation not to pursue nuclear weapons technology under the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) to which it is a signatory.

3. The report suggests that Iran is working to shorten the timeframe to building the bomb once and if it makes that decision. However, and let me stress this point, nowhere is there a forgone conclusion in the report that Iran has decided irrevocably to build nuclear weapons. Therefore, in my personal view, a nuclear-armed Iran is still neither imminent nor inevitable.

So what is to be done? For a start, the latest IAEA report hardly provides the smoking gun dearly sought after by those who want to attack Iran militarily. As the days go by and the report comes under serious scrutiny, less and less information can be defined as new. Going by past experience (Iraq), the IAEA appears to have swallowed reports it has purportedly received from outside intelligence agencies, probably largely from the US and Israel, lock stock and barrel. It has forgotten the lesson it should have learnt from its Iraq experience to treat all reports coming from outside sources seriously but with some scepticism.

Moreover, it may be worth posing the question, is the report part of an Israeli-American disinformation campaign? Let’s look at recent developments and at least ask this question.

A succession of rather odd events has taken place in recent weeks that cannot automatically be dismissed as just pure coincidence. While it is often hard in the world of espionage and covert action to provide clear evidence, Israel and the US could well be the orchestrators of some of these events.

In early October, the U.S. government announced an alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States. As many observers have commentated, there are numerous doubts about the plot’s veracity, particularly about whether the Islamic regime was involved. In any case, if Iran wanted to assassinate a Saudi ambassador, why not pick a location such as Kabul where it would be easier to hide the assassin’s tracks?

A few weeks later, leaks started coming out on a new IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) report purportedly providing fresh evidence of an Iranian a nuclear weapons program which Mr Netanyahu used to say “I told you so”.

Then, on Nov. 12, two massive explosions occurred at a missile base near Tehran, killing 17 people including a very senior IRGC commander who was apparently in charge of the country’s missile development programme. Although Iran continues to insist that the explosions were accidental, there has been growing speculation, which has certainly been met with indirect hints among certain Israeli sources, that Israeli intelligence was somehow involved.

Then on the same day as the explosion, the Bahraini government announced the discovery of an alleged plot involving at least five Bahrainis traveling via Syria and Qatar on a mission to attack sensitive targets in Bahrain. Iran strongly denied any involvement as indeed it also previously denied any part in the alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States. In any case, if we are to believe senior Bahraini and Saudi officials who insist that the riots in Bahrain have been perpetrated by Iran via its alleged Fifth Column inside Bahraini territory, then why not use its agents there rather than embark on a massive round trip via Syria and Qatar wit all its logistical difficulties?

Then on the very next day, the Iranian press reported that Ahmad Rezai, the son of Mohsen Rezai, Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, a former IRGC commander and presidential contender, was found dead at a hotel in Dubai, allegedly as a result of electric shocks.

We should also bear in mind that Iran has also been the victim of a series of assassination, kidnapping and defection cases involving Iranian nuclear scientists. Moreover, there have been a whole series of mysterious explosions in the Kurdish areas to the north, the oil-producing areas in the south-west and in Iranian Baluchistan over the past few years. Now there are fresh reports of another computer virus, this time called Duqu, which is apparently aimed at gathering information from sensitive computer systems in Iran. So there is strong circumstantial evidence that Iran’s enemies, if we can call them by that name, have been carrying out a de-stabilisation campaign for some time.

Of course, I am not by any means trying to paint Iran as an innocent party, given its activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. However, if you were sitting in Mr. Khamenei’s place in Tehran, what would you do? Surely, on the nuclear front, the first thing you would do would be to disperse your nuclear research programme as widely and in as many places as possible throughout the country. The second thing would be not to divulge every aspect of that programme. Look at what happened to Saddam. Whatever he said was seen as fabrication and distortion even though he delivered thousands of documents to the UN and kept on insisting that he did not have a nuclear weapons programme after the Kuwaiti invasion. So, even if Iran were to reveal all, who would believe the regime? Would it lead to Israel once and for all renouncing its military threat against the country? Would the hardliners in the US allow Mr. Obama to conduct serious talks with Iran to resolve outstanding differences? Would the IAEA ever give Iran a clean bill of health?

What is interesting is that Tehran, while engaging in obfuscation and delays, has always expressed its readiness to engage in diplomacy on the issue. This was the case well before the recent IAEA revelations. However, in some cases it has been the West that has rejected negotiations, sometimes completely out of hand. For example, we all remember the joint Brazilian-Turkish initiative which was rejected out of hand by the US in 2010. More recently at the Annual UN General Assembly Session this past September, the Iranian President reiterated Iran’s readiness to talk. I believe this was a serious offer since it was not rejected by the Supreme Leader despite his bitter struggle with the President.

So, we have two sides that have each adopted some pretty strong positions against one another although at the time of writing the US appears far more inflexible than does Iran.

We can all recall Obama’s announced willingness to engage in direct negotiations with Tehran without preconditions when he first came to power. In fact, in a historic broadcast to Iran he publicly acknowledged Iran's right to enrich uranium and in October 2009 he held direct talks with Iranian officials in Geneva.

In fact it was as a result of these discussions that Iran stated its readiness to exchange most of its current stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) for fuel rods from Russia and France. This "fuel-for-fuel" swap was largely accepted by President Ahmadinejad. However, his proposal that the IAEA should assume control of the LEU in Iran until the fuel rods were delivered was rejected by the US.

Similarly, as referred to previously, the joint Brazil-Turkey proposal in 2010 to take the LEU to a neutral country was met with new American sanctions. Then in mid-November 2011, to make matters even worse, in a move backed by the very powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the US, the so-called "Iran Threat Reduction Act" would actually make it illegal for any U.S. official to speak to Iranian officials unless the President issues a special waiver and provides Congress with 15-days’ notice. In addition the bill weakens the President's authority to waive sanctions. In fact, under the bill, the President cannot even waive sanctions for humanitarian purposes, such as providing spare parts for Iran’s ageing fleet of civilian airliners that have been crashing with increasing frequency over the past few years. It is almost as if the aim of the bill is to impose sanctions on the American President before imposing sanctions on Iran.

Fortunately, the Obama administration has tried to reduce talk of impending conflict by insisting that the recently issued IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program does not imply that Iran is significantly further along in its efforts to manufacture or obtain a nuclear explosive than it was previously. If one can say something positive, it is that at least the Obama administration has continued to argue against the use of military force by insisting that harsher and harsher sanctions will be enough to prevent Iran’s nuclear activities from becoming a real threat to Israel and the pro-American states in the region.

My personal view is that Iran’s offer made in the Iranian President’s speech at the UN in September to suspend production of some uranium-enrichment activities in exchange for fuel supplies from the United States is worth exploring at the very least. To me, it is irrelevant whether the offer was a genuine change of mind or just an act of necessity. If the aim is to avoid military conflagration in the area, then every diplomatic opportunity must be exploited, especially one with the tacit approval of the Supreme Leader.

One important aspect which is often forgotten is that Iran ultimately wants direct negotiations with the United States. In Iran’s view, and with due respect to those who represent the EU, the EU has no mind of its own and cannot deliver. It can only act as a kind of messenger for the US where the major decisions are made. So, where do we go from here? Agreement between the IAEA and Iran is unlikely under current conditions.

In my view there are the makings of a compromise between the two main protagonists, Iran and the US. Unless the US reverses its position, its existing policy, which is indeed the policy of the so-called 5+1 group of countries, is that Iran may resume enrichment sometime in the future after it re-establishes confidence among the international community that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons. This was reiterated as recently as March last year. Quoting the Secretary of State, it is the U.S. Government's position that "under very strict conditions" and "having responded to the international community's concerns," Iran would have a "right" to enrich uranium under IAEA inspections.

Maybe, one avenue worth considering is the Russian proposal of a step-by-step approach – namely ease sanctions gradually and only after the IAEA obtains proof of greater co-operation and transparency from Iran, especially on its nuclear military research. Maybe, the IAEA could be asked to give Iran several weeks’ notice to meet some of its concerns. If Iran refused, this would make it rather difficult for Russia and China to continue preventing a further referral to the UN Security Council. In order to ease the process, Iran would need to be reassured that the UN Security Council officially accepts Iran’s right under the Non-proliferation Treaty to enrich uranium. Ultimately the aim of diplomacy should be for Iran to feel that it has more to gain via negotiation rather than non-co-operation.

We should bear in mind that the Supreme Leader has consistently voiced his opposition to the construction of nuclear weapons, calling it “un-Islamic”. Moreover, while Iran has certainly hidden aspects of its nuclear activities from the outside world, there is as yet no proof that the Islamic regime has decided irrevocably to build nuclear weapons. We should also bear in mind that the Iranian nuclear card has its domestic aspects as well. It provides a reason for the regime’s existence (i.e. to trumpet again and again the foreign threat to the nation) and it diverts Iranians (admittedly not as much as in the past) away from focusing on the country’s internal economic and social problems.

So far as I can see, the only way ultimately way out of the current impasse is for both sides (the US and Iran) to agree to comprehensive talks without any pre-conditions. Part of the problem has been that past talks between Iran and the international community have focused almost exclusively on the nuclear issue without addressing Iran’s real fears of encirclement and its firm view that the US is aiming to overthrow the Islamic regime.

I believe one key statement on the part of the US would be taken very positively by Iran – namely that the US respects Iran’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and will do nothing to undermine the Islamic regime so long as Iran behaves in a similar fashion by laying all its cards on the table, including its unremitting campaign against Israel, its alleged support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and its anti-American policies in Iraq. I feel confident that such an American declaration accompanied by a willingness to undertake bilateral discussions would have a huge impact in Iran.

Now, of course, there are those who believe that such a “total” approach will never work. However, given the growing threat of conflict, negotiations must be given another chance. The two main protagonists, the United States and Iran, should sit down face-to-face with one another and be prepared to place all their cards on the table.

As the saying goes, war is the failure of diplomacy. If war results, there will be no winners – everyone will be a loser both in the region and the world at large. Diplomacy must be given every chance to succeed. It is now up to real statesmen to get the ball rolling.