Ahmadinejad tightens the sanctions noose

You have to hand it to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who as the only head of state at the nuclear nonproliferation treaty review conference that opened last Monday led off the debate.  He draws media attention, even if he cannot hold a crowd:  The audience in the United Nations' cavernous General Assembly hall dwindled to barely one-third capacity by the time he finished his 35-minute tirade against the alleged injustices of the nonproliferation regime.

Normally these review conferences, which the treaty requires every five years, are hard for the media to cover, so Ahmadinejad was a godsend for reporters who know the nuclear weapons issue is important but can't figure out a way to make it interesting to jaded editors and complacent publics.  But Ahmadinejad is a walking nuclear event, certain to detonate public interest just by showing up.

Unfortunately for Tehran, Ahmadinejad has lost his foil--an apparently belligerent Bush administration that reveled in double standards when it came to nuclear weapons.  The ground has shifted under his feet as much internationally as in domestic Iranian politics back home, and his high-voltage visit to New York this past week has, if anything, only further tightened the noose that the Security Council is preparing to draw around the neck of Iran's nuclear program.

The landscape has profoundly changed, and Iran's security-state regime finds itself more isolated than ever, thanks to adroit diplomacy by the Obama administration.  President Obama's two-track nuclear strategy is paying off.

Last year Obama offered an "extended hand" to Tehran that Iran's leaders couldn't see their way to grasping.  "The Obama administration has offered dialog on everything – on the bilateral relations, without preconditions," France's U.N. representative recently noted.  "We have tried everything. We have made proposals of cooperation in every field, we have never succeeded to really even open a negotiation with the Iranians."  That exasperation extends now even to the Russians and Chinese, whose efforts to coax Iran's hard-liners into a deal have come up short. 

At the same time, Obama has orchestrated over the past several weeks a "springtime for disarmament" that gave convincing content to his promise in Prague last spring to move toward nuclear abolition: a new arms reduction treaty with Moscow, a new nuclear posture review restricting the role of nuclear weapons, a reassessment of nuclear weapons in the NATO alliance, and the nuclear security summit he hosted in Washington.  Moreover, Obama had already given clearance for U.N. negotiations for a verifiable halt to production of fissile material and for talks on space weaponry, both blocked in the Bush years. 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking after Ahmadinejad on the conference's opening day, announced an unprecedented transparency regarding the U.S. nuclear arsenal (the United States has precisely 5,113 nuclear warheads, it turns out), and she vowed U.S. support for practical measures to “realize the goal of a weapons of mass destruction-free zone in the Middle East" that her husband's administration had formally endorsed fifteen years ago as a quid pro quo for making the nonproliferation treaty permanent.

In contrast, Ahmadinejad came to New York empty-handed.  He made no offer to accommodate the concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and indeed denounced the agency for worrying about Iranian development of missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads.  Ahmadinejad gave waverers on the Security Council, such as Turkey and Brazil, no cover for delay.  "So now," says the French ambassador on the Security Council, Gérard Araud, "we don’t have any other option than to go to sanctions." 

Of course, sanctions will not easily rein in Iran's nuclear program in the short term, though over time they may be expected to create incentives for the next Iranian government to resume full compliance with IAEA inspectors.   Still, it is worth noting that Ahmadinejad fervently denounced nuclear weapons as “a fire against humanity rather than a weapon for defense” and their possession as both "disgusting and shameful." A future decision to resume compliance need not seem like national surrender.  

"Iran could have been dealt with five years ago," Egyptian ambassador Maged Abdelaziz recently remarked.  "Now it’s becoming more difficult to deal with."  Five years ago, we should understand, a more truculent government in Washington purposefully torpedoed the nonproliferation conference, vetoing its intended declaration because it would endorse the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and reaffirm previously agreed steps toward nuclear disarmament--both anathema to then-reigning conservatives. 

China is a crucial American partner in maintaining international peace and security, and perhaps offers the most useful reminder of how far we've come in these five years. In 2005, the Chinese catalogued the most dangerous "negative developments, including sticking to the Cold War mentality, pursuing unilateralism, advocating pre-emptive strategy, listing other countries as targets of nuclear strike and lowering the threshold of using nuclear weapons, researching and developing new types of nuclear weapons for specific purposes, and new destabilizing factors to international security."

That was not Iran the Chinese were talking about.  No wonder America would find, with that kind of foreign policy thinking, that success was not an option.

There is success to be grasped at this year's nonproliferation treaty conference, which Obama's changes to U.S. policy make possible:  Agreed penalties on any state that tries to withdraw from the treaty; acceptance of more intrusive inspections by the IAEA; a road map toward a verifiable and enforceable nuclear-free zone in the Middle East; safeguarding expansion of nuclear power generation; and, in the Security Council, a tourniquet on nuclear programs outside international control, starting right now with Iran.     

That would be a fitting conclusion for a month opened so inauspiciously at the U.N. by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Comments

[Sally McMillan]

Where is the pressure on nuclear nations like India, Pakistan, and Israel to be part of the NPT? A nuclear-free Middle East would be important, but it's doubtful that Israel would agree to it. Would the U.S. pressure Israel? It seems a bit hypocritical for all the presure on Iran, which says it doesn't want nuclear weapons, and none on the countries that have them. The real threat seems to be coming from Israel to Iran, not vice versa.

[Jeffrey Laurenti]

The pressure on the 3 nuclear holdouts has pretty much come from non-nuclear states. The fact that Secretary Clinton's address to the NPT conference VOLUNTEERED that the U.S. intended to press for a nuclear-free Middle East--followed up by a joint statement of the Security Council's "P-5" reiterating that commitment--seems, however, a quite significant break from past "double standards" in that region. Perhaps the Obama administration sees steps in this direction as the sealant to a verifiable pact keeping Iran non-nuclear. In any event, it's getting attention in Israel, as a provocative May 7 article in Haaretz newspaper (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/an-end-to-nuclear-ambiguity-1.288853) by Reuven Pedatzur, and the paper's own editorial (http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-needs-a-new-nuclear-policy-1.288851) underscore.
BTW, Pedatzur makes lively contributions in a TCF-sponsored conference on these issues summarized here: http://vimeo.com/11365205 or (for transcript) http://www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/springpanel2.pdf.

[Esther Haman]

Below is some free education for those who want to know more about what is behind the sceens.

I’d like to remind a few things here:
1 – In 1978 the US signed a nuclear agreement with Iran the was paid by the Shah, which was America’s Nuclear poster boy
The Shah: America’s Nuclear Poster Boy
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/pourzal250506.html

2 – Algiers Accords of January 19, 1981, were brokered by the Algerian government between the United States and Iran to resolve the Iran hostage crisis.

* The US would not intervene politically or militarily in Iranian internal affairs
* The US would remove a freeze on Iranian assets and trade sanctions on Iran
* Both countries would end litigation between their respective governments and citizens referring them to international arbitration, namely the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal.
* The US would ensure that US court decisions regarding the transfer of any property of the former Shah would be independent from “sovereign immunity principles” and would be enforced
* Iranian debts to US institutions would be paid

The US chief negotiator was Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

3 – This is not about Iran’s nuclear program, this is about what Israel wants
- A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the “Clean Break” report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel
“”Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by: —striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan. —paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces”.

[Esther Haman]

The Zionists say “There is nothing new here, and no reason for a change of direction on our part,”. It seems to work for them to have an umbrella to committee all sorts of atrocities such as the one reported by the UN in the “Goldstone” report.

Then they have the audacity to say “”We don’t really like this matter[Nuclear free zone in the Middle East], but is there anything to fear, really? I don’t think so,” Israel Michaeli of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission said”. If there is nothing to fear then why the Zionists don’t sign the NPT or why even they have 200+ A-bombs in the first place?! It is very clear that they want the neighboring countries to fear them and not to fight the Zionists aggressions.

So, why are we punishing Iran? They don't even have an operational nuclear plant! Among other things, what happened to our "Human Rights"? The Iranians still are in need of medical isotopes for their hospitals and their cancer patience!

Pakistan has had over 120 nuclear tipped missiles for the last 15 years or more. They have Taliban and Al-Quida population who enjoy free hand in many things there. Why are not they considered a threat to the Zionists state?! GET REAL.

The Iran phobia has back fired on the Zionists. These scare tactics is not washing it any more.

The night is still young.

[gucci]

The Iran phobia has back fired on the Zionists. These scare tactics is not washing it any more.

The night is still young