Iran

One recurring theme in commentary about the Biden/Bibi kerfuffle is this idea that U.S.-Israel infighting distracts both countries from the urgent need to Do Something About Iran™.

Another sign the Iranian government doesn't really expect Russia to ever finalize the S-300 surface-to-air missile sale: The Iranian government has ordered all Russian pilots working in Iran to leave the country within two months.

Iran says it's a safety measure, because several Russian-made planes -- with Russian pilots -- have crashed in the country in recent years. That's not untrue: A Taban Air Tupolev 154 crashed in January, killing more than 45 people; a Caspian Airlines Tupolev 154 crashed in July, killing 168 people; and at least two other Tu-154 planes have crashed in the last decade.

According to the New York Times, the U.S. government has awarded more than $107 billion in contracts over the last decade to companies with significant business interests in Iran.

The article's basic thesis -- sanctions aren't foolproof! -- should be neither surprising nor controversial. They're difficult to enforce in a world of multinational corporations: The Clinton administration decided in 1998 not to punish European companies that did business in Iran, and they went on to sign billions of dollars in contracts.

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.

Can the U.S. stop Israel from attacking its neighbors? Sen. John Kerry thinks the Israeli government wouldn't bomb Iran without American approval.

Kerry's actual remarks are a little more caveated than the Ha'aretz headline suggests, but my interpretation is that he doesn't think Israel will attack Iran unless Obama admits diplomacy has failed and gives Netanyahu the green light.

In the least surprising news of the weekend, Jundallah sources say their leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, was tortured by Iranian authorities until he "confessed" to links between his group and the United States.

The sources who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat by phone from eastern Iran, refusing to disclose their whereabouts for security reasons, said that the content broadcast by Iran regarding Rigi was an attempt to tarnish the image of the Jundallah organization which, in the past, denied having any ties to any regional or international intelligence apparatus.

As Bill Roggio notes, there are also some inconsistencies in Rigi's "confession": He said the U.S. only agreed to support Jundallah last year, while his brother Abdul Hamid Rigi -- captured last year -- claimed U.S. support dates back to 2005. (Iranian state television claimed today that Rigi was captured en route to Kyrgyzstan, where he planned to meet Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy.)

Evan mentioned on Wednesday that there's slowly-mounting opposition in Washington to President Obama's decision to name Robert Stephen Ford as the new U.S. ambassador to Syria.

Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reports this morning (عربي) that the Israeli government is also lobbying against Ford's nomination (or against Obama naming any ambassador to Syria; this isn't about Ford personally). Defense minister Ehud Barak made that request during a visit to Washington this week; so did an unnamed envoy from prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Iranian government, which has long accused the U.S. of backing the Jundallah terror group, has a new piece of "evidence" -- more on the scare quotes later -- to support that claim.

Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi was arrested earlier this week and transported to Iran, where he's now being interrogated (and, we can assume, tortured). Iranian officials won't say where Rigi was arrested, but Mohammad Abbasi, Pakistan's ambassador to Iran, said Islamabad was involved.

Tehran is still threatening Moscow with vague, unspecified consequences if the Russians don't deliver the S-300 missile system -- but Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, just unofficially said dosvedanya to his Persian purchasers:

"There are fundamental principles linked to the sale that we never, in accordance with our legislation, and according to our international obligations, take any actions that will lead to the destabilization of certain regions," Reuters quoted Lavrov as saying on Wednesday.

Lavrov didn't explicitly spike the deal; indeed, he went on to say the contract is still in place, though there are "a few things which need to be sorted out" before Russia will honor it. But one of those "things" is a fear that selling surface-to-air missiles to Iran would destabilize the region (and anger Israel). That's not going to get "sorted out" anytime soon.

Two op-eds about Iran's nuclear program in the Washington Post this morning. Richard Cohen's cri de coeur for more irrational saber-rattling -- which worked so well when the Bush administration tried it -- does not merit a serious response.

Anne Applebaum's piece deserves a little time, though. She doesn't think President Obama will approve a U.S. airstrike on Iran, mostly because it's a stupid idea. But then she writes that Obama should prepare for the aftermath of an attack -- because Israel might decide to bomb Iran unilaterally.

I'd like to propose a new rule for the commentariat: If you're going to write an op-ed accusing President Obama of ignoring Iraq, then you must present specific policy prescriptions for the administration. What should he be doing that he's not doing? Pablum like Obama should pay more attention does not count.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu thinks the world should immediately slap oil sanctions on Iran -- even if the United Nations doesn't approve.

Netanyahu told foreign Jewish leaders that if the world "is serious about stopping Iran, then what it needs to do is not watered-down sanctions, moderate sanctions ... but effective, biting sanctions that curtail the import and export of oil into Iran."

"This is what is required now. It may not do the job, but nothing else will, and at least we will have known that it was tried. And if this cannot pass in the Security Council, then it should be done outside the Security Council, but immediately.

Netanyahu didn't really elaborate, but for unilateral sanctions to really be effective, they would require a naval blockade -- an act of war. The U.S. has already gone about as far as it can with unilateral sanctions: Washington bans American individuals and companies from doing business with Iran, but it's unlikely that foreign firms -- Royal Dutch Shell, Russia's Lukoil, Chinese companies -- will sacrifice their Iranian contracts because President Obama asks them to.

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."

My favorite surface-to-air missile system is back in the news: Alexander Fomin, a Russian arms export official, says the S-300 sale to Iran has been delayed for technical reasons. But it's still going forward! Really!

Quick recap of the story so far: Three years ago, Russia and Iran signed an $800 million deal for the air defense missiles; Russia has yet to deliver them; Iran has yet to pay for them; Israel is trying to block the sale. (Our full coverage is here.)

"Ahmed Chalabi and Ali Faysal al-Lami... clearly are influenced by Iran," Gen. Ray Odierno said last night. "We have direct intelligence that tells us that."

Surprisingly blunt language from Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, who was speaking last night at a forum sponsored by the Institute for the Study of War. Odierno said the U.S. has evidence of several meetings in Tehran between Chalabi, Lami, and Iranian officials, including at least one person on the U.S. terror watch list.

This is a guest post from Tom Evans, a journalist at the BBC in London.

The election of Barack Obama was accompanied by great hope that the damages wrought by the Bush administration's foreign policy could be mended over. Obama's campaign team emphasized the fresh approach that would follow an Obama victory. Much has been made of the apparent failure of his efforts so far: Coming face to face with the difficult realities of American foreign policy, the Obama administration has faltered.

The Arab-Israeli peace process remains deadlocked. After the early promise of the Cairo speech, in which the president indicated that pressure would be put on the Israeli government to halt settlement construction, his administration has fallen back on the easy answer that the Arabs must do more to ease Israeli worries. Thousands of miles away, one can hear Netanyahu's relieved sigh.

Despite a new strategy in Afghanistan, there has been little progress. Yesterday, the coalition's highly-anticipated Operation Moshtarak, intended to signal U.S. General Stanley McChrystal's emphasis on hearts and minds, was almost immediately clouded by the accidental killing of 12 Afghan civilians. And Guantanamo Bay, that persistent guilty conscience of American policy, remains open, despite promises to the contrary.

The escalating war of words over Iran's nuclear program, and possible sanctions against Iran, is pretty predictable. U.S. officials say Iran has left the world no choice but to impose new sanctions; Gen. James Jones, the U.S. national security adviser, said on Sunday that current proposals are "not mild sanctions. These are very tough sanctions."

Tehran responded with a warning of sorts: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the West it will regret sanctioning Iran, and threatened a "response" against anyone "seek[ing] to create problems for Iran."

Update, 8:16 a.m. (from Gregg): Opposition Web sites are reporting (فارسی) a massive security presence in the streets: rows of riot police, some seven or eight deep, lining the streets along the route of the pro-government rally. Opposition groups are trying to organize rallies, but it sounds like (so far) they haven't been able to gather en masse. 

RAHANA, an Iranian activist site, is reporting dozens of arrests in Sadeghieh Square and other locations throughout Tehran. Sadeghieh Square is about one kilometer from Azadi Square, where the pro-government demonstrators assembled.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced a round of "targeted sanctions" today directed at the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. They specifically target one person and four companies:

• Gen. Rostam Qasemi, an official in the Revolutionary Guards, and the head of the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, an organization the Treasury Department calls "the engineering arm of the IRGC." The company is involved in a lot of infrastructure work in Iran, and those projects generate income for the Guards.

• Four companies that are subsidiaries or affiliates of Khatam al-Anbiya, including the Fater Engineering Institute, the Imensazen Consultant Engineers Institute, the Makin Institute, and the Rahab Institute.

Today's announcement expands previous sanctions against the Guards and the Quds Force. Those penalties targeted Khatam al-Anbiya itself, and more than a dozen people and companies affiliated with the IRGC.

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.