Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - Tag Search

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 United Nations Security Council says it could vote on a new package of Iran sanctions this week.

Claude Heller, Mexico's ambassador to the UN (and the current Security Council president), said the vote could come as early as tomorrow. UN envoys are scheduled to meet on Tuesday morning to discuss the latest sanctions package, which bars Iran from "any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons," and prohibits Iran from buying several types of heavy weapons (these types of sanctions have been quite difficult to enforce).

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.

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 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.

Brazilian diplomats say Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's last-minute diplomacy paid off: They've told reporters that Iran agreed to a nuclear fuel swap, and that final details of the agreement will be announced on Monday morning.

The Turkish foreign ministry confirms those reports, too. Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan postponed a trip to Azerbaijan to fly to Iran to join in the fun.

Brazil's president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is in Tehran today (along with a 300-man Brazilian delegation) to meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Lula is trying to convince Ahmadinejad to accept a Brazilian plan for a nuclear fuel swap, a plan Ahmadinejad seemed to embrace (in theory) last week. The exact details of the plan haven't been released, but presumably it would involve Iran sending its low-enriched uranium to a third country -- perhaps to Brazil? -- for further enrichment.

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.

I missed this earlier in the week, but if Press TV is to be believed, it would seem Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad backed down from his subsidy reform battle with parliament.

"In a meeting with a group of Iranian MPs, the President has agreed to facilitate the implementation of the subsidy bill without introducing a complementary bill," said Mohammad Hossein Abu Torabi at the beginning of the parliament's Tuesday session.

The subsidy bill in question was approved last month by parliament; it calls for $20 billion in cuts to Iran's roughly-$100 billion subsidy program, instead of the $40 billion sought by Ahmadinejad.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waded into Iran's controversial subsidy reform debate this week -- but it's unclear exactly whose side he's taking.

A little backstory, first (regular readers can skip this paragraph). Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants to slash $40 billion -- mostly food and fuel subsidies -- from Iran's $100 billion subsidy program. Parliament initially agreed to the plan in January, but reversed that decision last month; lawmakers approved a 2011 budget which contains just $20 billion in cuts, instead of the $40 billion Ahmadinejad requested.

I was out of town and offline all weekend, so I'm just now catching up on the news (what little there was) from President Obama's quick hop to Afghanistan.

Needless to say, the trip itself won't accomplish much: A six-hour visit to Kabul, half of it spent at Bagram Air Base, won't cause Hamid Karzai to rethink his politics or policy. But it fits into a broader public diplomacy campaign aimed at putting pressure on Karzai. American and European diplomats are whispering (anonymously, of course) about the Afghan president "slipping away from the West," and Karzai's recent visit with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad apparently ruffled some feathers in Washington.

David Sanger and William Broad of the New York Times have a story detailing new intelligence, sourced anonymously from Western officials, about a purported effort by Iran to begin building two new uranium enrichment sites.

The story follows on an admission made to the Iranian Student News Agency by the country's top nuclear official, Ali Akbar Salehi, that work would soon begin on the new sites, which would be built "inside mountains."

President Obama issued his second Nowruz message this morning; it blamed the Iranian government for "choos[ing] to isolate itself," and failing to "choose a better future" for its people.

The message repeated Obama's offer of diplomatic engagement with Iran, a wish he also expressed last year during his first Nowruz video. Obama also said the U.S. will expand opportunities for Iranians to study in the United States, and pledged to give Iranians better access to Internet technology to enable them to "communicate... without fear of censorship."

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.

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.

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.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project has some new polling data out from a survey of the Muslim world -- except it's not really new: These are the previously-unreleased results of a survey conducted in May and June of last year.

Remember that nine-month lag as you read the poll. It's great to have public opinion data on Hizballah and Hassan Nasrallah, but the polling in Lebanon ended on June 3 -- before the Lebanese election! So it doesn't account for March 14's victory, the months-long cabinet-making process that followed, Hizballah's new manifesto, the Syrian-Saudi reconciliation, etc.

And some of the poll's findings are just downright unbelievable. So let's take a look, shall we?

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."