Proliferation

My personal take on the new package of Iran sanctions approved this week is that they won't accomplish anything -- anything good, at least.

The Iranian regime has already warned that the sanctions will preclude further negotiations over its nuclear program. Officials have also warned that the sanctions might scrap last month's so-called "Tehran declaration," the tripartite deal negotiated by Turkey and Brazil. (That might be a bluff -- it would sour relations with both countries, and Iran does need at least a few allies.)

The predicted Security Council vote on new sanctions against Iran came Tuesday, with predictable results: Slight additions to previous sanctions, opposition from Brazil and Turkey and an abstention from Lebanon, and an outburst from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Some commentators, including the Leveretts, lack faith that this fourth round of sanctions will have any serious effect on Iran's behavior, but the White House, armed with a list of 14 "new" measures imposed by Tuesday's resolution, argues otherwise.

The headline is sarcastic, of course. But Amitai Etzioni, an Israeli-American professor at George Washington University, is quite serious: He wants the U.S. to threaten a massive bombing campaign (pdf) against Iran in order to derail its nuclear weapons program.

Etzioni's article was published in the U.S. Army journal Military Review (and it's already getting favorable reviews in the Israeli press). To call it a superficial and deeply flawed piece of analysis would be charitable.

The Obama administration agreed to a compromise yesterday to salvage a month-long round of talks aimed at updating the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty -- and then promptly announced that it may not accept one of the conditions of the deal.

All 189 NPT signatories accepted the 28-page review document in a vote last night. It directs the United Nations secretary-general to convene a conference in 2012, aimed at creating a "WMD-free zone" in the Middle East. The final document also urges Israel to join the treaty (along with India and Pakistan, the other two countries to never sign the NPT).

Tuesday's big announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- that the United States had reached agreement with the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to table a new Iran sanctions resolution -- was clearly meant to upstage what had already begun to be perceived as the previous day's diplomatic coup by Iran: a nuclear fuel swap deal brokered by Brazil and Turkey.

Washington's immediate pushback has left international diplomats and American pundits confused and angry. Brazilian and Turkish officials are reportedly "outraged"; Gary Sick called the U.S. announcement a "gratuitous insult"; and Marc Lynch tweeted that "trashing the Turkish deal was a mistake."

But let's take a clear-eyed look at what's really happening.

Update 5/18/10 4:07 p.m.: In opening remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States, Russia and China had agreed on a draft United Nations Security Council resolution that would impose sanctions on Iran. Clinton said that the United States and the rest of the P5+1 would "rally the international community on behalf of a strong sanctions resolution that will, in our view, send an unmistakable message about what is expected from Iran."

Original post: In the wake of Monday's announcement that Turkey and Brazil have convinced Iran to ship around half or more of its low-enriched uranium out of the country, the media has been quick to proclaim winners and losers.

The White House just e-mailed reporters a statement on the Iranian-Brazilian-Turkish nuclear fuel swap agreement announced earlier today. We've posted a full copy of the statement after the jump. It calls the agreement a positive step, but highlights a number of concerns, including the question of whether Iran will continue to enrich its uranium up to 20 percent.

The leaders of Iran, Turkey and Brazil announced an agreement this morning for a nuclear fuel swap, reviving a long-stalled plan from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The agreement now heads to the Vienna Group -- the U.S., Russia, France, and the IAEA -- for approval. If those parties sign off, Iran will be obligated to ship 1,200kg of low-enriched uranium (at 3.5 percent enrichment) to Turkey within one month. In return, Iran will receive 120kg of enriched uranium (at 20 percent enrichment) -- to be delivered within one year -- for use in the Tehran Research Reactor.

The Iranian government, no doubt aware of the growing push for economic sanctions in Washington and New York, has embarked on something of a diplomatic charm offensive over the last few days.

Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, held a dinner in New York last night for the members of the United Nations Security Council. Most countries sent their highest-ranking ambassadors, though the United States, United Kingdom, France and Russia all sent lower-level officials.

As the NPT conference opens today in New York City, a number of states and international actors arrive at the table with competing interests. The United States, United Nations and European Union would like to avoid a repeat of the last conference, five years ago, which collapsed over disagreements on disarmament and squabbles regarding Iran and North Korea. The Obama Administration, by signing a mutual arms reduction agreement with Russia last month, hopes it has laid the groundwork for some good will.

Iran, meanwhile, will push back against an apparently growing consensus among the P5+1 to sanction the country for its lack of transparency and alleged violations of the NPT. China and Russia, which tend to give Iran a long leash in Security Council affairs, have -- at least in according to White House spin -- come closer in recent weeks to accepting such sanctions.

Rounding out the agenda are the traditional issues: the meat and potatoes of disarmament, nonproliferation and access to peaceful nuclear energy. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and Yukiya Amano, the new chief of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency, would both like more countries to sign up for additional inspections, while the Egyptian-led bloc of non-aligned nations will push again for its 15-year-old plan for a nuke-free Middle East.

David Ignatius has a column in today's Washington Post about the Obama administration's slowly-escalating economic sanctions against Iran, particularly against the banking and shipping sectors. It's pretty complimentary of the administration's efforts -- this is Ignatius, after all -- and so he buries the lede in the third-to-last-paragraph:

Yet for all this aggressive pressure, Iran continues to conduct both banking and shipping -- which illustrates the difficulty of using sanctions to force a change in policy. The track record is spotty, from Cuba to Iraq.

I was traveling this weekend so I didn't have a chance to write about the "Gates memo," the alleged warning from defense secretary Robert Gates that the U.S. doesn't have a long-term plan for dealing with Iran's nuclear program.

Sorry for the slow blogging over the last few days; both of us were traveling (Evan still is, in fact) and not online much.

I'm back in Washington now, parts of which are locked down because of President Obama's nuclear security summit. A few storylines have emerged from the summit, but the one of interest to this blog's readers is China's apparent pledge to work with the rest of the P5+1 countries on an economic sanctions package against Iran.

Representatives of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany are meeting today in New York City to hammer out a potential resolution regarding a fourth round of sanctions against Iran.

This is the first time that China has joined in such discussions, and while a sanctions resolution likely faces opposition from other countries on the Council, most of the intrigue now concerns how China will act.

We try to keep things civil around here, but I feel pretty comfortable saying that Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is either an idiot or a morally bankrupt asshole. Or both. He seems to think a Cuban-style embargo is the best policy against Iran.

"I think that from now on Israel should perhaps change its Iran policy a little, and we should ask the United States to adopt the Cuban model ... Here the United States alone can do everything in order to stop this (Iranian) programme."

The obvious rejoinder is to point out that the U.S. embargo on Cuba, which was imposed in the early 1960s to topple the Castro regime, still hasn't toppled the Castro regime. El jefe ceded power to el hermano, and the Castro family is still living a pretty good life, by all accounts -- which is more than we can say for the Cuban people, who are caught in between Havana's bad economic policies and Washington's brutal embargo.

A leaked report prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran may have continued testing detonators and missile re-entry systems associated with atomic weapons beyond 2004 and has already enriched a small amount of its uranium to a nearly 20 percent level suitable for a crude nuclear bomb, according to multiple news reports on Thursday.

The IAEA paper, scheduled to be presented to the organization's 35-country board on March 1, is the first to be issued under the leadership of newly minted chief Yukiya Amano, who took over from Mohamed ElBaradei in December.

In an anonymous background briefing to reporters, a senior Obama administration official sounded a stern line. He said that Iran's "pattern of behavior is one that is very disturbing" and noted that "this is the first time that [the IAEA has] now raised a question that there may be ongoing activities related to weaponization."

Over at Informed Comment, Juan Cole wants everyone to breathe deeply and think about whether Iran's latest nuclear announcement is really that threatening. Cole called "bizarre" remarks made on Sunday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who equated Iran and North Korea as both being "nuclear-armed" and "a real or a potential threat":

The US intelligence establishment continues to doubt that Iran has or wants a nuclear weapons program. Tehran does have a nuclear enrichment program, which is permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran allows United Nations inspections of it nuclear facilities. Although Iran is not as transparent as the UN International Atomic Energy Agency would like, there is no dispositive evidence of a weapons program. For the Secretary of State to frame Iran as she did is just muddled or dishonest.

I'm a big believer that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will have ripple effects throughout the region. It will increase the chances of peace between Israel and its other neighbors (Lebanon and Syria); it will take away a major terrorist recruiting tool, and a distraction that oppressive regimes use to avoid discussing their own problems.

But when I hear things like this, from Jordan's King Abdullah, I cringe.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking Sunday at a conference to showcase advancements in laser technology, ordered the head of his country's Atomic Energy Agency to find a way to enrich uranium to a more easily weaponized level.

The speech has made waves in the Western media, though the news is fairly light: Ahmadinejad told Ali Akbar Salehi, the atomic energy chief, to begin drawing up plans to produce more highly enriched uranium, not to actually do it. But as with all things Iran-related (e.g. last week's news about accelerating U.S. deployments in the Gulf) the slightest bit of change becomes magnified.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the annual Munich Security Conference that a deal on shipping Iranian uranium out of the country to be enriched could be reached in the "not too distant future," according to the BBC.

"Under the present conditions that we have reached, I think that we are approaching a final agreement that can be accepted by all parties," he said.

American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton brushed aside Mottaki's remarks, which were welcomed by China, saying: "The fact is we haven't really seen much in the way of response ... Sometimes we see a response from a part of the government that is then retracted from another part of the government."

Western diplomats are apparently pushing ahead with new sanctions on Iran, despite Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's offer to ship low-enriched uranium out of the country for several months.

US and European diplomats are pushing for an expanded travel ban on officials connected with Iran's nuclear program, and tougher restrictions on Iranian banks.