Swiss Good Offices on Nuclear Energy Matters, Parliamentary Motion (06.3103: D, F, I, E)
UNSC resolution 255 on nuclear threats ¦ US-Israel/Iran nuclear conflict out of control?
Swiss yellow card: UNSCR 255 & NPT incompatible with threats against non-nuclear weapon states, Motion 08.3402
Bankers at risk: US Treasury designates Iranian bank as WMD proliferator

External links

The Coming Showdown In Iran, www.judicial-inc.biz
07    Osirak Redux? Assessing Israeli Capabilities to Destroy Iranian Nuclear Facilities, MIT, Whitney Raas
07    Target Iran - Air Strikes - 2007 Developments, www.globalsecurity.org
8 Oct 07   Shifting Targets - The Administration’s plan for Iran, The New Yorker, Seymour M. Hersh
18 Jun 07   Pace Fired To Clear Way For Iran Nuclear Strike?, Intelligene Daily, Paul Craig Roberts
15 June 07   The Day After We Strike Iran: What Will We Do Then?, counterpunch.org, GARY LEUPP
14 Jun 07   Attack on Iran over its nuclear program 'madness', Deutsche Welle, Mohamed ElBaradei
9 Jun 07   Tugging the Lion's Tail: Little Boy, Fat Man and Iran, counterpunch.org, STEPHEN FLEISCHMAN
7 Jun 07   Losing Iraq, Nuking Iran: Cheney's End Game?, counterpunch.org, PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
7 Jun 07   Republican Presidential Candidates For Nuclear Bombing of Iran, Smirkingchimp, Brent Budowsky
6 Jun 07   Countdown to War on Iran: US Foments Unrest & Spurns Overtures, counterpunch.org, Alain Gresh
6 Jun 07   Poddy's Crazy Prayer: Bomb Iran - For Israel and America!, counterpunch.org, GARY LEUPP
26 May 07   At AIPAC's request, Congress won't stop Bush on Iran, counterpunch.org, BADRUDDIN KHAN
26 May 07   Frustrated with Bush, the Veep Urges Israel to Attack Iran, counterpunch.org, GARY LEUPP
25 May 07   Bush-Cheney White House Intrigue on US-Iran Policy, thewashingtonnote.com, Joe Klein
24 May 07   Cheney aide clearing path to bomb Iran, rawstory.com
20 May 07   Iran Nuclear Attack Simulation Suggests U.S. Plan Weak, blog.getm.org
14 May 07   Striking Iran: Cakewalk or Slam-Dunk?, contentions, Gabriel Schoenfeld
28 Apr 07   Iranian Threat: Magazine retracts PM quotes on Iran, Jerusalem Post, MARK WEISS
24 Apr 07   A CALCULUS: WILL ISRAEL STRIKE IRAN?, www.judicial-inc.biz, Micah Halpern
17 avr 07   Iran Must Get Ready to Repel a Nuclear Attack, Franc-Parler, Leonid Ivashov
6 avr 07   Arab Times (Kowait) : Les USA vont attaquer l’Iran fin avril, contreinfo.info
5 Apr 07   Kuwaiti media: U.S. to attack Iran by end of April, news.xinhuanet.com
2 Apr 07   Iran Nuclear Bomb Could Be Possible by 2009, ABC News, Brian Ross and Christopher Isham
29 Mar 07   Attack on Iran, New 9/11… or Worse, informationclearinghouse, Heather Wokusch
Mar 07   IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM: U.S. OPTIONS, Maxwell AFB, Stephen B.T. Chun, bibliography
Mar 07   Bush Planning Massive Nuclear Attack on Iran, Vanity Fair, Craig Unger
28 Feb 07   The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War, CommonDreams.org, George Lakoff
27 Feb 07   Attack on Iran before Bush leaves office?, AlJazeera
25 Feb 07   Israel seeks all clear for Iran air strike, Telegraph, Con Coughlin
10 Feb 07   Pentagon plans for attack on Iranian sites are well advanced, The Guardian, Ewen MacAskill
5 fev 07   À Herzliya, Israël dévoile sa stratégie contre l’Iran, Mondialisation, Thierry Meyssan
5 Feb 07   Report spells out dangers of attack on Iran, Financial Times, Gareth Smyth
1 Feb 07   Think tank: Israel could attack Iran's nuclear program alone, Haaretz, Amos Harel
28 Jan 07   US to Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites from Bulgarian & Romanian bases, Sunday Herald, Gabriel Ronay
14 Jan 07   The Dangers of a nuclear attack on Iran, Global Research, Helen Caldicott, video
8 Jan 07   Israeli nuclear attack on Iran - the making of a canard, Zionism & Israel Center, Ami Isseroff
7 Jan 07   Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran, The Sunday Times, Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter
27 Dec 06   Don't Attack Iran (Petition to President Bush & Vice President Cheney, signed 13.6.07: 103548)
9 Oct 06   Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse, truthdig.com, Chris Hedges
6 Oct 06   Is Desperate Cheney Scheming Nuclear Sneak Attack on Iran?, EIR, Jeffrey Steinberg
1 Oct 06   HOW AN ATTACK ON IRAN WOULD UNFOLD, San Francisco Chronicle, Matthew B. Stannard
26 Sep 06   Why Bush Will Nuke Iran, www.lewrockwell.com, Paul Craig Roberts
29 Jun 06   The Nuclear Bunker Buster, Union of Concerned Scientists, animation
13 Jun 06   Allies Share U.S. Concerns Over Iran, Pew Global Attitudes Project
12 May 06   Gates does not rule out nuclear attack on Israel, Yedioth, Yitzhak Benhorin
8 May 06   Nuclear Attack on Iran Might Be Reality One Day, Fox News, John Gibson
28 Apr 06   'American Hiroshima' linked with Iran attack, al-Qaida nukes, WorldNetDaily, JOSEPH FARAH
17 Apr 06   Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?, New Yorker, S.M.Hersh
13 Apr 06   Military Strike on Iran is ‘Not a Viable, Feasible, Responsible Option’, Thinkprogress, Chuck Hagel
10 Apr 06   The idea of US nuclear attack on Iran is just nuts, says Straw, The Times, Tom Baldwin
2 Mar 06   US/Israel plan nuclear attack on Iran to control oil and defend the dollar, www.indymedia.org
1 Mar 07   The Iran Nuclear Standoff: Legal Issues, Jurist, Daniel Joyner
14 Feb 06   US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites, Telegraph, Philip Sherwell
15 Jan 06   1 500 physicists against nuclear attack on Iran, voltairenet.org
3 Jan 06   The Prospects of a Nuclear-Armed Iran, Global Politician, Abolghasem Bayyenat
16 Dec 05   Nuclear Deployment for an Attack on Iran and the hitmen behind it, www.antiwar.com, Jorge Hirsch
28 Jul 05   Israel, Mossad, Iran and a Nuclear False Flag Attack, physics911.net, R. Leland Lehrman
17 Jul 05   US Plans Nuclear Attack on Iran, www.itszone.co.uk, Stephen Sniegoski
15 May 05   Not Just A Last Resort? A Global Nuclear Strike Plan, WP, William Arkin
13 Mar 05   Revealed: Israel plans strike on Iranian nuclear plant, The Sunday Times, Uzi Mahnaimi
12 Aug 04   A Preemptive Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities: Possible Consequences, CNS, S. Salama et al.

I appreciate your careful reporting on the on-going saga of Iran's alleged NPT violations (Mark Landler, Nuclear Agency Votes to Report Iran to U.N. Security Council for Treaty Violations, NYT, September 25, 2005). Yet, in light of my own understanding of the facts surrounding the NPT's genesis at and around the UN's Eighteen-Nation Committee on Disarmament, I am surprised at the now recurring but persistently ill-focused and ill-informed NPT debate (cf: Swiss Representative's statement at Non-Nuclear Weapon States Conference of August 1968: www.solami.com/NPT.htm#Garanties). I can't help wondering what the fuss is really all about. And to those genuinely concerned with the very real security and political issues involved, I wish them the time, intellectual honesty and clear-sightedness to raise the debate beyond the currently dominating flat-earth visions!

I note the IAEA Board's Resolution GOV/2005/77 of September 24, 2005 (www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2005/gov2005-77.pdf) recalled (§e) "that, as deplored by the Board in its resolution GOV/2003/81, Iran's policy of concealment has resulted in many breaches of its obligation to comply with its Safeguards Agreement". This interpretation of the facts was essentially based on the publicly released list of alleged reporting failures, as contained in the Director General's Reports GOV/2003/40 (www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-40.pdf) and GOV/2003/75 (www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2003/gov2003-75.pdf):
"47. Based on all information currently available to the Agency, it is clear that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material and its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material has been processed and stored."

However, as a fin connaisseur of the NPT genesis, you may remember and it may be helpful to recall now the then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk's famous and disarmingly assuring NPT definition, as published in "Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons", Senate Executive Report No 91-1, Washington 3/6/69, p.3:
"The treaty deals only with what is prohibited, not with what is permitted".
An equally instructive authentic interpretation can be found in the Memorandum furnished by the then-U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (now: Energy Department) to the Committee "Relationship of Non-Proliferation Treaty to Atomic Energy Act Provision regarding Military Cooperation with Allies", as reproduced in: Military Implications of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services, U.S. Senate, Washington, 2/27/69, p.141:
"The NPT prohibits ... transferring complete nuclear weapons and other nuclear explosive devices to any recipient ..."

On this background, it seems important to note that the key NPT articles II and III entail IAEA safeguards obligations only if the nuclear material, technology or equipment is intended and declared to be for peaceful purposes.  Clearly, none of these obligations apply at all for non-peaceful, i.e. military purposes!  And under the Heading "NON-APPLICATION OF SAFEGUARDS TO NUCLEAR MATERIAL TO BE USED IN NON-PEACEFUL ACTIVITIES", Iran's IAEA Safeguards Agreement (Infcirc 214: www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/Others/infcirc214.pdf) thus quite naturally - and explicitly at that - provides for the termination of IAEA safeguards if correspondingly safeguarded material or equipment is to be used for non-explosive military purposes:
"Article 14
If the Government of Iran intends to exercise its discretion to use nuclear material which is required to be safeguarded under this Agreement in a nuclear activity which does not require the application of safeguards under this Agreement, the following procedures shall apply:
(a) The Government of Iran shall inform the Agency of the activity, making it clear:
(i) That the use of the nuclear material in a non-proscribed military activity will not be in conflict with an undertaking the Government of Iran may have given and in respect of which Agency safeguards apply, that the material will be used only in a peaceful nuclear activity; and
(ii) That during the period of non-application of safeguards the nuclear material will not be used for the production of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;
(b) The Government of Iran and the Agency shall make an arrangement so that, only while the nuclear material is in such an activity, the safeguards provided for in this Agreement will not be applied. The arrangement shall identify, to the extent possible, the period or circumstances during which safeguards will not be applied. In any event, the safeguards provided for in this Agreement shall apply again as soon as the nuclear material is reintroduced into a peaceful nuclear activity. The Agency shall be kept informed of the total quantity and composition of such unsafeguarded material in Iran and of any export of such material; and
(c) Each arrangement shall be made in agreement with the Agency. Such agreement shall be given as promptly as possible and shall relate only to such matters as, inter alia, temporal and procedural provisions and reporting arrangements, but shall not involve any approval or classified knowledge of the military activity or relate to the use of the nuclear material therein"

Indeed, in his article "Towards a Safer World", (The Economist, 16 October 2003), the IAEA Director General, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, thus unequivocally stated:
"Under the current [NPT] regime, therefore, there is nothing illicit in a non-nuclear-weapon state having enrichment or reprocessing technology, or possessing weapon-grade nuclear material."

Thus, I have difficulty pin-pointing which of Iran's commitments under the NPT have indeed not been complied with - by whom and on a level comparable to less-reported or purposely overlooked and under- or non-reported so-called violations of "obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty" by either other NPT member states or even the Agency itself. For I have no publicly available information ruling out a - totally legitimate and legal - non-reported military-purpose nuclear fuel program (e.g. for a nuclear submarine) for which reason Iran, in fact and in law, might have proceeded strictly in line with its NPT obligations and in accordance with the above-quoted art.14 of its NPT Safeguards Agreement, i.e. in total agreement with all related NPT commitments as originally intended, written down, signed and sealed.

Or do you have such information, which might justify all the exitement, finger-pointing and lack of calm and serenity which has been observed in Vienna and elsewhere? In the event, I'd appreciate your handing me a candle to illuminate the matter! Thanks in advance.

Iconoclast    -    swissbit@solami.com

PS:  you may be interested in some old - and forgotten, and by now apparently politically incorrect - arguments which dominated the NPT debate at the time of its genesis (www.solami.com/NPT.htm)

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — President Bush and the Chinese government both declared their full support on Thursday for a Russian proposal to allow Iran to operate civilian nuclear facilities as long as Russia and international nuclear inspectors are in full control of the fuel.

Mr. Bush's explicit public endorsement puts all of the major powers on record supporting the proposal, even as most acknowledge that it is a significant concession to Iran and runs the risk that the country will drag out the negotiations while continuing to produce nuclear material. Yet officials say they believe it is the best face-saving strategy to pursue a negotiated settlement with Iran.

European and American officials familiar with the details of the offer that Russia made to Iran say that Iran would continue to be allowed to operate its nuclear plant at Isfahan, which converts raw uranium into a form that is ready to be enriched. That is a step that both Europe and the United States said last year that they could not allow — and that was explicitly barred under the agreement between Iran and Europe in late 2004, because Iran could divert the uranium to secret enrichment facilities. Iran began operating the Isfahan plant again in August.

Mr. Bush did not discuss the details of the Russian offer. But American, European and Russian officials, who like others discussing the issue spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen as interfering in the negotiations, said the offer would allow Iran to continue operations at the plant that turns yellowcake, a concentrated form of uranium ore, into uranium hexafluoride, a toxic material that centrifuges spin into fuel for reactors or bombs.

Critics of that concession say that it could send a signal to Iran that it no longer has to comply with all provisions of its November 2004 agreement with Europe.

"A red line was crossed" when Iran began producing the uranium last fall, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan research group that follows developments in Iran. "The Iranians got away with reopening the conversion facility, and now people have accepted it's never going to be shut again and have taken it off the table."

Mr. Bush made his statement embracing the Russian idea at a news conference on Thursday. He said, "The Iranians have said, 'We want a weapon.' "

In fact, Iran has denied that it is pursuing a weapon, and in the afternoon, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, acknowledged that Mr. Bush had misspoken. "He was referring to their behavior," Mr. McClellan said by telephone later. "Our concern is their intention is to develop a nuclear weapon under the guise of a civilian program."

Nonetheless, Mr. Bush's slip may cement the perception among some members of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency that he has decided, at least in his own mind, that Iran is intent on building a weapon as fast as it can, a situation he has said repeatedly that he will not tolerate. Mr. Bush gave no hint on Thursday that he was thinking of military action, instead saying that "we are working hard to continue the diplomacy necessary to send a focused message to the Iranian government, and that is: 'Your desires for a weapon are unacceptable.' "

Mr. Bush's statement came at a moment of heightened concern in Vienna, home of the agency, that if its board votes next week to send Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council, Iran might make good on its threat to limit cooperation with inspectors and begin full scale enrichment of uranium. North Korea threw out inspectors three years ago, and one senior American official said recently that "the Iranians have looked closely at that model."

The Russian proposal lays out a complicated plan in which Iran would supply the uranium hexafluoride from Isfahan, shipping it to Russia for enrichment. Once enriched, the uranium would be shipped back to Iran's nuclear plant in Bushehr, which is being built by the Russians.

But huge questions remain, including the scale of the program, the degree of involvement of Iranian engineers and program's commercial viability. Moreover, just working out a deal this complex would take months or longer, experts say, at a time the administration fears the Iranians could surge ahead. In interviews, Russian and European officials said they believed the arrangements, while face-saving, made no economic or technological sense for Iran. Iran would have to pay for the enrichment, but its own scientists would not be allowed to work on the site.

Moreover, there are technical problems. Russian officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were in the middle of negotiations, said that the uranium gas produced at Isfahan was of inferior quality to what was produced in Russia. As a result, the Russians have no interest, they say, in buying any of its for their own use.

In an interview in Vienna on Wednesday, Gregory L. Schulte, the American ambassador to the atomic agency, said, "There are those who would argue that conversion is not proliferation-significant because it does not produce weapons grade material, but from our perspective, conversion is another step forward to acquire enrichment capability. It has no economic purpose."

While China favored the Russian proposal, it also firmly opposed the use of sanctions. That comes as a disappointment to Washington, which this week sent a top official to persuade China's leaders that they should do far more. During a visit to Beijing by Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Kong Quan, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, praised Moscow's offer to enrich Iran's uranium in Russia and made clear that China will not support sanctions. "We think the Russian proposal is a good attempt to break this stalemate," Mr. Kong said, adding, "We oppose impulsively using sanctions or threats of sanctions to solve problems."

The Bush administration has not allowed its stated opposition to Iran's uranium conversion at Isfahan to block the Russian offer. "This is dangerous, but it is minimally acceptable as long as they are not enriching," said Mark Fitzpatrick, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "The Russian proposal is the last best chance of resolving this without an escalation."

U.S. Comments on India Clarified
India responded testily yesterday to American suggestions of a quid pro quo in its blossoming relations with the United States, with the Indian foreign secretary calling in the United States ambassador over his reported remarks about how India should vote next week on whether to refer the case of Iran's nuclear ambitions to the United Nations Security Council.

David C. Mulford, the American ambassador to India, had been quoted by the Press Trust of India news agency as saying that if India did not vote to refer Iran to the Security Council, it would be "devastating" to its chances of securing the nuclear deal with the United States.

The American Embassy later said that the comments had been taken "out of context" and released a full transcript. In it, Mr. Mulford first said that India would be expected to vote "based on India's judgment of its own national interest." He went on to say, "that if they decide that they don't want to vote for this, our view is that the effect on members of Congress with regard to this civil nuclear initiative will be devastating."

Die anstehenden Erneuerungswahlen für den amerikanischen Kongress und das Weisse Haus werfen lange Schatten voraus. Und zwar nicht nur bezüglich der offenkundig gewordenen technischen Abstimmungsmängel - und der damit verbundenen Gefährdungen der demokratischen Grundregeln und Ansprüche (www.solami.com/voteheist.htm). Sondern auch - und zusehends bedrohlicher - i.S. internationale politische Grosswetterlage, bezüglich Nicht-Respektierung gültiger Staatsverträge, internationaler Verpflichtungen und fremder Souveränitätsrechte, sowie bezüglich daraus entstehender regionaler Konflikte. Akutes Beispiel: in Frage gestellte friedliche Nutzung der Kernenergie gemäss Atomsperrvertrag (.../NPT.htm ¦ .../214.htm).

Neben dem erneut aufflackernden Konflikt im Balkan, und den ausser Kontrolle geratenden Machtkämpfen im Irak, gilt unsere besondere Aufmerksamkeit dem von den USA in den Vordergrund gedrängten Konflikt i.S. Urananreicherung im Iran. Eine zusehends geschwächte und in die Ecke getriebene Bush-Administration tendiert von sich aus eher in Richtung rücksichtsloser Kraftmeierei als zugunsten tiefgängiger, weitsichtiger und auf dem Verhandlungsweg möglicher Vernunftlösungen. Dennoch, die Deutlichmachung ernsthafter Lösungsansätze seitens wahrer Freunde ist dabei nicht nur möglich, sondern auch tunlich. Für eine auf ihr Erbe und ihre Zukunft bedachte Schweiz ergibt sich daraus echter Handlungsbedarf. Denn erstens vertritt die Schweiz im Iran seit 1979 zurückhaltend aber einflussreich die Interessen der USA. Zweitens anerbietet sich der 1955er Vertrag Schweiz/USA i.S. Saphir-Forschungsreaktor als konkretes Modell zur diplomatischen Lösung des derzeitigen Streits um die iranischen Atomanlagen (.../NPT.htm#AEC). Drittens hat die Schweiz i.S. Atomsperrvertrag von anfang an eine weltweit geschätzte führende und besonders anspruchs- und verantwortungsvolle Rolle eingenommen (erinnert sei z.B. an Prof.Bindschedler’s Kritiken & Verbesserungsvorschläge: .../NPT.htm#Bindschedler ¦ .../NPT68.htm ¦.../NPT75.htm). Viertens scheint die Zeit für eine Inventaraufnahme und Nachfolge-Veranstaltung zur 1968er Genfer Konferenz der Nicht-Nuklearwaffen-Staaten gekommen zu sein. Und fünftens stellt sich ohnehin die Frage des obligatorischen Referendums zu diesem unkontrolliert zerfallenden Vertrag für kollektive Sicherheit (.../nptref.htm).

Auf diesem Hintergrund erlaube ich mir, die Frage Ihrer allfälligen Mitunterstützung eines entsprechenden parlamentarischen Vorstosses Ihrer wohlwollenden Prüfung anzuempfehlen, wobei ich auf den im letzten Sommer unterbreiteten Entwurf sowie auf die dortige Begründung verweisen darf (.../nptmotion.htm).

dear Ivory Tower co-tenant,

First outlined in a letter to UN (www.solami.com/iranmail.htm), Iranian nuclear installations declared to be for peaceful purposes, including enrichment facilities situated in Iran, might be placed and operated under Russian sovereignty in full compliance with the NPT (and the Iran/IAEA Safeguards Agreement INFCIRC/214) in analoguous application of the U.S./Swiss Agreement for co-operation concerning civil uses of atomic energy, of 18 July 1955, UN Treaty Series 1956, no.3388 (.../NPT.htm#3388 ¦ .../Saphir.tif). And though this appears to go against the grain of the politically correct public discussions among kite flyers and flat earth policymakers, CFR, CNS, CEIP, SIPRI and other students of the genesis and operation of the NPT may easily recognise this pathway not to be far off, and in fact to come close to what, realistically and in light of the Indian situation, they consider to be achievable and indicated under the circumstances, like the International Crisis Group's “delayed limited enrichment” plan.

If that's what it takes to decisively strengthen Iran's pro-pre-Islam leaders (.../slm.htm) - and thus also to bring them into a facilitator role regarding the Palestinians under Hamas (.../holygrail.htm ¦ .../babylon2.htm) -, who'd be against motherhood?

Good Offices Group of European Lawmakers

    24 Swiss lawmakers from the governing coalition have called on the Swiss government to explore convening "a follow-up to the 1968 Non-Nuclear-Weapon States Conference". They point at the constitutional requirement for a referendum on Switzerland's continued membership in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). And on the background of Switzerland's long-standing representation of U.S. interests in Iran, they draw inspiration from the 1955 Swiss-American Treaty on Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation for a diplomatic resolution of the current U.S.-Iranian nuclear stalemate (www.solami.com/nptmotion.htm).

    First outlined in a letter to the UN (.../iranmail.htm), Iranian nuclear installations declared to be for peaceful purposes, including enrichment facilities situated in Iran, might be placed and operated under Russian sovereignty in full compliance with the NPT (and the Iran/IAEA Safeguards Agreement INFCIRC/214) in analogous application of the U.S./Swiss Agreement for co-operation concerning civil uses of atomic energy, of 18 July 1955 (UN Treaty Series 1956, no.3388: .../NPT.htm#3388 ¦ .../Saphir.tif ¦ .../iranmail2.htm).

    Of course, this appears to go against the grain of the politically correct public discussions (.../nptlandler.htm). But respected long-time students of the genesis and operation of the NPT may easily recognise this pathway not to be far off to what, realistically, they consider to be achievable and indicated under the circumstances. The International Crisis Group's “delayed limited enrichment” plan is a case in point. Similar ideas have been offered by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and by others.

AS the world watches the political maneuvering over restarting nuclear talks with Iran — this time with American participation — few are paying attention to a broader strategic competition that has started between the United States, Russia and China. Ultimately, this competition will decide not only the direction of Iran's nuclear activities but also its economic, political and military role in the Middle East and beyond. The outcome hinges on which countries will assume dominance in developing Iran's enormous oil and natural gas reserves.

Unfortunately, by refusing to consider a "grand bargain" with Iran — that is, resolution of Washington's concerns about Tehran's weapons of mass destruction and support for terrorism in return for American security guarantees, an end to sanctions and normalization of diplomatic relations — the Bush administration is courting failure in its nuclear diplomacy and paving the way for Russia and China to win the larger strategic contest.

Iran has the world's second-largest proven reserves of conventional crude oil, after Saudi Arabia, and the second-largest reserves of natural gas, after Russia. Its relatively low production levels make it one of the few states with the potential to greatly increase its exports of both oil and gas over the next two decades.

As the world economy during this period will rely increasingly on the Middle East and the former Soviet Union for its energy needs, Iran's putative status as a hydrocarbon superpower will take on ever greater strategic importance. Add in its location, its population of nearly 70 million (the largest in the Middle East) and its ambitions to regional leadership, and the significance of Iran's future international role is undeniable.

However, to expand its energy exports, Iran needs a great deal of capital and advanced technology from outside — at least $160 billion over the next quarter century according to the International Energy Agency. Washington of course does all it can to block exactly such investment — barring American energy companies from seeking business in Iran and threatening European and Japanese companies with fines and cutoffs of American components.

These measures — along with repressive Iranian policies that scare off foreign investors — have had an impact: since the Islamic Republic opened its oil and gas sectors to foreign energy companies in the early 1990's, it has attracted only $15 billion to $20 billion in European and Japanese investment. And as the nuclear issue has heated up, prospects for substantial increases in Western investment have virtually evaporated.

A senior Iranian diplomat told me this month that Iran can no longer "wait for the West," and Tehran is now looking for alternative investors. In recent years, China has emerged as a potential large-scale partner. But while China can provide capital, its state-owned energy companies are not much more technically capable right now than Iran's. It will be a decade at least before China can fill all Iran's technical gaps.

This is where Russia comes in. Although Russian energy companies could not offer quite the same level of expertise as Western firms in the complexities of managing Iran's older oil reservoirs, they could in the next several years help the Islamic Republic develop its newer oil finds and, more significantly, realize its huge potential as a gas exporter. In fact, the two countries have already held talks on possible "coordination" of Iranian gas exports with Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas and oil behemoth. Iranian officials have told me that their government does not think Gazprom would be the ideal partner, compared with Western companies, but it deems such a deal preferable to continued stagnation.

From a Russian perspective, such a deal would have many benefits. Many industry experts feel that within just a few years, the amounts of gas that Gazprom is contracted to provide may exceed what the company on its own can bring to market. It has been trying to close the gap by purchasing additional gas from Central Asian states that rely on Russian pipelines to export their oil and gas. But at the same time, the United States is trying to help those ex-Soviet states build oil and gas pipelines that are outside of Moscow's control — an effort the Kremlin interprets as a deliberate attempt to isolate and weaken Russia.

Russian officials and commentators have complained to me in recent weeks about a new "double standard" in American policy — one that criticizes the centralization of power in Russia but overlooks authoritarian abuses in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. The involvement of Russian energy companies in Iran would not only support Moscow's external energy strategy but would push back against perceived American efforts to undermine Russia's influence in Central Asia.

Together, Russia and Iran control almost half of the world's proven reserves of natural gas. If they coordinated their production and marketing decisions, these two countries could be twice as dominant in international gas markets as Saudi Arabia is in the global oil market.

And as China looks to deepen its own involvement in Iran, there would be opportunities for Chinese-Russian cooperation in developing Iranian resources, and collaborating against what both Beijing and Moscow see as excessive United States unilateralism in world affairs. By working together, Russia and China would further establish themselves as rising players in the Persian Gulf, where America has grown used to something like hegemonic status.

Against this backdrop, the Bush administration's approach to nuclear diplomacy with Iran is strategically shallow. The decision to encourage direct talks with Tehran generated many headlines but was really only a limited tactical adjustment to forestall an embarrassing collapse in coordination with America's key international partners.

By continuing to reject a grand bargain with Tehran, the Bush administration has done nothing to increase the chances that Iran will accept meaningful long-term restraints on its nuclear activities. It has also done nothing to ensure that the United States wins the longer-term struggle for Iran. Such a grand bargain is precisely what is required, not only to forestall Iran's effective nuclearization in the next three to five years, but also to position the United States for continued leadership in the Middle East for the next decade and beyond.

Flynt Leverett, a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, is director of the Project on the Geopolitics and Geoeconomics of Energy Security at the New America Foundation.

TEHRAN -- Iranian officials often assert the peaceful intent of their nuclear program by insisting that the religious law that governs their country expressly prohibits weapons of mass destruction.

A Turkish diplomat, describing a visit in May by the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that Larijani made the religious roots of the proscription clear. "I was in the meeting," said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He said there is even a fatwa , a religious ruling, since the time of Khomeini, that Iran will not produce any nuclear weapons."

Yet interviews with a range of clerics and other students of Islamic teachings indicate that while Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini indeed barred Iranian forces from unconventional weapons during the 1980-88 war with Iraq, the religious underpinning for such a ban is regarded as less than absolute, with ample justification available in scriptures for almost any course except first use.

"This question is ambiguous," said Grand Ayatollah Jalalodine Taheri, who was a leading figure in the Iranian government before becoming a sharp critic. Taheri, 80, said during an interview at his bedside in the central Iranian city of Isfahan that "taking weapons of mass destruction as a whole, I'm against it." But he added that religious texts might offer avenues that would allow stockpiling such weapons in the name of deterrence or self-defense. "It's not clear," Taheri said.

Those arguing for the loopholes include clerics closely identified with the country's most hard-line conservatives, the most ardent defenders of Iran's theocratic system. "Producing and using WMD is forbidden, just as producing deadly poison or harmful drugs," said Mohsen Gharavian, who teaches Islamic philosophy in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran. "I think there is no ambiguity here. . . . I have not seen any other type of interpretation" among religious scholars. "But," he continued, "I have got to add something to this: If any other nation has produced this WMD and has used it against a second nation, the second nation in the name of defending itself has the right to have it and to use WMD."

Gharavian serves as spokesman for Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, an archconservative who strongly supports President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and is suspected of providing religious justification for killings allegedly carried out by Iranian intelligence agents in the late 1990s. Gharavian spoke in an hour-long interview at the Imam Khomeini Institute, which has produced tens of thousands of clerics under Mesbah-Yazdi's tutelage. A number are expected to seek election this fall to the Assembly of Experts, the one body in Iran's theocratic system with the power to remove the supreme leader, the cleric who has ultimate authority.

"About nuclear weapons, there is this principle of all or none," Gharavian said. "If a nation arms itself with such weapons, it is quite logical for other nations to think of defending themselves against these kinds of weapons. "I believe this is the logic of Islamic morals," Gharavian said, professing himself "100 percent sure" that Khomeini and Iran's current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "based on Islamic principles, have the same logic: Islam does not allow anyone to initiate harming a human being."

The same bedrock view and the same caveat about self-defense were offered by an influential cleric aligned with Iran's reformers, members of the relatively liberal movement recently sidelined by hard-line conservatives. "In the time of the prophet, we didn't have nuclear bombs, so there's not a verse about it in the Koran," said Mohsen Kadivar, who like Gharavian is a middle-ranking cleric. "But we have some verses which say we can't kill anyone who hasn't committed a crime. It's very, very clear."

The faith does accept the concept of retaliation, however, so long as it stops short of injuring innocents. Kadivar said that proviso appears to proscribe actual use of weapons of mass destruction, as would scriptures warning against damaging the environment.

But none of that necessarily bars a government from stockpiling such weapons, the clerics say. "From all I can see, it's not forbidden, but it's hard to say it's allowed. In jurisprudence these terms are different," Kadivar said. "If your enemies have these bombs, it's not forbidden to have them. "Don't forget that Israel has these bombs," he added, raising a finger. "It's outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty."

Iranian scholars who argue against nuclear weapons point out that these questions are hardly abstract in Iran. The newly minted government faced severe, real-life tests after Saddam Hussein's troops invaded Iran in 1980. The Iraqi forces used chemical weapons on the battlefield; two decades later, badly wounded survivors still populate hospital wards in Iran.

When Iraq also launched rocket attacks on Tehran and other metropolitan areas, pressure for Tehran to retaliate was intense. "In the eight-year war with Iraq, this was a very hot debate among all the Islamic teachers, because Iranian cities were being bombarded," said Kazem Mosavi Bojnoordi, who sat on the defense committee of Iran's parliament during part of the war. "The conclusion was that it's not allowed. Never during those eight years do we have one example of Iran bombarding cities."

Bojnoordi, now chief editor of Iran's Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia, recalled that after the first salvos from Iraq, a senior Iranian commander declared, "Now we will flatten Baghdad." The comment brought an immediate rebuke from Khomeini, whose fatwa closed the matter for the balance of the war. "According to Islamic teachings, there's the principle that the goals never justify the means," said Bojnoordi, whose father was a grand ayatollah. "It has not been supported in Islam that you can do whatever you want to defend yourself. You are not allowed to gather weapons that are not allowed by Islam, even against your enemies.''

Senior Iranian officials insist their goal is only electrical power, saving their substantial petroleum deposits to export. Leaders also emphasize the role of pride and technological achievement, which inside Iran conveys the impression of economic development that has largely eluded a population that has grown poorer since the 1979 revolution. "I believe that by getting high tech we will be getting development," Bojnoordi said. "If we improve the standard of living, that will unite the people, and that will bring security."

Said Kadivar: "I hope that science in my country is so progressive! I hope it's true. Every Iranian wants to have this energy. Every party. The difficulty is we don't have a democratic regime. So we should try to democratize."

If Iran is indeed working to produce nuclear weapons, experts say the program would surely be entrusted to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Formed in 1979 by clerics who did not trust Iran's existing army, the Revolutionary Guards have grown into a major force in Iran's economy and political offices. Their insignia, one analyst noted, includes a passage from the Koran that reads, "Prepare any strength you can muster against them, and any cavalry with which you can overawe God's enemy and your own enemy as well, plus others besides them whom you do not know."

On May 31st, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced what appeared to be a major change in U.S. foreign policy. The Bush Administration, she said, would be willing to join Russia, China, and its European allies in direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. There was a condition, however: the negotiations would not begin until, as the President put it in a June 19th speech at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, “the Iranian regime fully and verifiably suspends its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities.” Iran, which has insisted on its right to enrich uranium, was being asked to concede the main point of the negotiations before they started. The question was whether the Administration expected the Iranians to agree, or was laying the diplomatic groundwork for future military action. In his speech, Bush also talked about “freedom for the Iranian people,” and he added, “Iran’s leaders have a clear choice.” There was an unspoken threat: the U.S. Strategic Command, supported by the Air Force, has been drawing up plans, at the President’s direction, for a major bombing campaign in Iran.

Inside the Pentagon, senior commanders have increasingly challenged the President’s plans, according to active-duty and retired officers and officials. The generals and admirals have told the Administration that the bombing campaign will probably not succeed in destroying Iran’s nuclear program. They have also warned that an attack could lead to serious economic, political, and military consequences for the United States.

A crucial issue in the military’s dissent, the officers said, is the fact that American and European intelligence agencies have not found specific evidence of clandestine activities or hidden facilities; the war planners are not sure what to hit. “The target array in Iran is huge, but it’s amorphous,” a high-ranking general told me. “The question we face is, When does innocent infrastructure evolve into something nefarious?” The high-ranking general added that the military’s experience in Iraq, where intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was deeply flawed, has affected its approach to Iran. “We built this big monster with Iraq, and there was nothing there. This is son of Iraq,” he said.

“There is a war about the war going on inside the building,” a Pentagon consultant said. “If we go, we have to find something.”

In President Bush’s June speech, he accused Iran of pursuing a secret weapons program along with its civilian nuclear-research program (which it is allowed, with limits, under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). The senior officers in the Pentagon do not dispute the President’s contention that Iran intends to eventually build a bomb, but they are frustrated by the intelligence gaps. A former senior intelligence official told me that people in the Pentagon were asking, “What’s the evidence? We’ve got a million tentacles out there, overt and covert, and these guys”—the Iranians—“have been working on this for eighteen years, and we have nothing? We’re coming up with jack shit.”

A senior military official told me, “Even if we knew where the Iranian enriched uranium was—and we don’t—we don’t know where world opinion would stand. The issue is whether it’s a clear and present danger. If you’re a military planner, you try to weigh options. What is the capability of the Iranian response, and the likelihood of a punitive response—like cutting off oil shipments? What would that cost us?” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior aides “really think they can do this on the cheap, and they underestimate the capability of the adversary,” he said.

In 1986, Congress authorized the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to act as the “principal military adviser” to the President. In this case, I was told, the current chairman, Marine General Peter Pace, has gone further in his advice to the White House by addressing the consequences of an attack on Iran. “Here’s the military telling the President what he can’t do politically”—raising concerns about rising oil prices, for example—the former senior intelligence official said. “The J.C.S. chairman going to the President with an economic argument—what’s going on here?” (General Pace and the White House declined to comment. The Defense Department responded to a detailed request for comment by saying that the Administration was “working diligently” on a diplomatic solution and that it could not comment on classified matters.)

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

The military leadership is also raising tactical arguments against the proposal for bombing Iran, many of which are related to the consequences for Iraq. According to retired Army Major General William Nash, who was commanding general of the First Armored Division, served in Iraq and Bosnia, and worked for the United Nations in Kosovo, attacking Iran would heighten the risks to American and coalition forces inside Iraq. “What if one hundred thousand Iranian volunteers came across the border?” Nash asked. “If we bomb Iran, they cannot retaliate militarily by air—only on the ground or by sea, and only in Iraq or the Gulf. A military planner cannot discount that possibility, and he cannot make an ideological assumption that the Iranians wouldn’t do it. We’re not talking about victory or defeat—only about what damage Iran could do to our interests.” Nash, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “Their first possible response would be to send forces into Iraq. And, since the Iraqi Army has limited capacity, it means that the coalition forces would have to engage them.”

The Americans serving as advisers to the Iraqi police and military may be at special risk, Nash added, since an American bombing “would be seen not only as an attack on Shiites but as an attack on all Muslims. Throughout the Middle East, it would likely be seen as another example of American imperialism. It would probably cause the war to spread.”

In contrast, some conservatives are arguing that America’s position in Iraq would improve if Iran chose to retaliate there, according to a government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon’s civilian leaders, because Iranian interference would divide the Shiites into pro- and anti-Iranian camps, and unify the Kurds and the Sunnis. The Iran hawks in the White House and the State Department, including Elliott Abrams and Michael Doran, both of whom are National Security Council advisers on the Middle East, also have an answer for those who believe that the bombing of Iran would put American soldiers in Iraq at risk, the consultant said. He described the counterargument this way: “Yes, there will be Americans under attack, but they are under attack now.”

Iran’s geography would also complicate an air war. The senior military official said that, when it came to air strikes, “this is not Iraq,” which is fairly flat, except in the northeast. “Much of Iran is akin to Afghanistan in terms of topography and flight mapping—a pretty tough target,” the military official said. Over rugged terrain, planes have to come in closer, and “Iran has a lot of mature air-defense systems and networks,” he said. “Global operations are always risky, and if we go down that road we have to be prepared to follow up with ground troops.”

The U.S. Navy has a separate set of concerns. Iran has more than seven hundred undeclared dock and port facilities along its Persian Gulf coast. The small ports, known as “invisible piers,” were constructed two decades ago by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to accommodate small private boats used for smuggling. (The Guards relied on smuggling to finance their activities and enrich themselves.) The ports, an Iran expert who advises the U.S. government told me, provide “the infrastructure to enable the Guards to go after American aircraft carriers with suicide water bombers”—small vessels loaded with high explosives. He said that the Iranians have conducted exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea and then on to the Indian Ocean. The strait is regularly traversed by oil tankers, in which a thousand small Iranian boats simulated attacks on American ships. “That would be the hardest problem we’d face in the water: a thousand small targets weaving in and out among our ships.”

America’s allies in the Gulf also believe that an attack on Iran would endanger them, and many American military planners agree. “Iran can do a lot of things—all asymmetrical,” a Pentagon adviser on counter-insurgency told me. “They have agents all over the Gulf, and the ability to strike at will.” In May, according to a well-informed oil-industry expert, the Emir of Qatar made a private visit to Tehran to discuss security in the Gulf after the Iraq war. He sought some words of non-aggression from the Iranian leadership. Instead, the Iranians suggested that Qatar, which is the site of the regional headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, would be its first target in the event of an American attack. Qatar is a leading exporter of gas and currently operates several major offshore oil platforms, all of which would be extremely vulnerable. (Nasser bin Hamad M. al-Khalifa, Qatar’s ambassador to Washington, denied that any threats were issued during the Emir’s meetings in Tehran. He told me that it was “a very nice visit.”)

A retired American diplomat, who has experience in the Gulf, confirmed that the Qatari government is “very scared of what America will do” in Iran, and “scared to death” about what Iran would do in response. Iran’s message to the oil-producing Gulf states, the retired diplomat said, has been that it will respond, and “you are on the wrong side of history.”

In late April, the military leadership, headed by General Pace, achieved a major victory when the White House dropped its insistence that the plan for a bombing campaign include the possible use of a nuclear device to destroy Iran’s uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, nearly two hundred miles south of Tehran. The huge complex includes large underground facilities built into seventy-five-foot-deep holes in the ground and designed to hold as many as fifty thousand centrifuges. “Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “And Pace stood up to them. Then the world came back: ‘O.K., the nuclear option is politically unacceptable.’ ” At the time, a number of retired officers, including two Army major generals who served in Iraq, Paul Eaton and Charles Swannack, Jr., had begun speaking out against the Administration’s handling of the Iraq war. This period is known to many in the Pentagon as “the April Revolution.”

“An event like this doesn’t get papered over very quickly,” the former official added. “The bad feelings over the nuclear option are still felt. The civilian hierarchy feels extraordinarily betrayed by the brass, and the brass feel they were tricked into it”—the nuclear planning—“by being asked to provide all options in the planning papers.”

Sam Gardiner, a military analyst who taught at the National War College before retiring from the Air Force as a colonel, said that Rumsfeld’s second-guessing and micromanagement were a fundamental problem. “Plans are more and more being directed and run by civilians from the Office of the Secretary of Defense,” Gardiner said. “It causes a lot of tensions. I’m hearing that the military is increasingly upset about not being taken seriously by Rumsfeld and his staff.”

Gardiner went on, “The consequence is that, for Iran and other missions, Rumsfeld will be pushed more and more in the direction of special operations, where he has direct authority and does not have to put up with the objections of the Chiefs.” Since taking office in 2001, Rumsfeld has been engaged in a running dispute with many senior commanders over his plans to transform the military, and his belief that future wars will be fought, and won, with airpower and Special Forces. That combination worked, at first, in Afghanistan, but the growing stalemate there, and in Iraq, has created a rift, especially inside the Army. The senior military official said, “The policymakers are in love with Special Ops—the guys on camels.”

The discord over Iran can, in part, be ascribed to Rumsfeld’s testy relationship with the generals. They see him as high-handed and unwilling to accept responsibility for what has gone wrong in Iraq. A former Bush Administration official described a recent meeting between Rumsfeld and four-star generals and admirals at a military commanders’ conference, on a base outside Washington, that, he was told, went badly. The commanders later told General Pace that “they didn’t come here to be lectured by the Defense Secretary. They wanted to tell Rumsfeld what their concerns were.” A few of the officers attended a subsequent meeting between Pace and Rumsfeld, and were unhappy, the former official said, when “Pace did not repeat any of their complaints. There was disappointment about Pace.” The retired four-star general also described the commanders’ conference as “very fractious.” He added, “We’ve got twenty-five hundred dead, people running all over the world doing stupid things, and officers outside the Beltway asking, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ”

Pace’s supporters say that he is in a difficult position, given Rumsfeld’s penchant for viewing generals who disagree with him as disloyal. “It’s a very narrow line between being responsive and effective and being outspoken and ineffective,” the former senior intelligence official said.

But Rumsfeld is not alone in the Administration where Iran is concerned; he is closely allied with Dick Cheney, and, the Pentagon consultant said, “the President generally defers to the Vice-President on all these issues,” such as dealing with the specifics of a bombing campaign if diplomacy fails. “He feels that Cheney has an informational advantage. Cheney is not a renegade. He represents the conventional wisdom in all of this. He appeals to the strategic-bombing lobby in the Air Force—who think that carpet bombing is the solution to all problems.”

Bombing may not work against Natanz, let alone against the rest of Iran’s nuclear program. The possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons gained support in the Administration because of the belief that it was the only way to insure the destruction of Natanz’s buried laboratories. When that option proved to be politically untenable (a nuclear warhead would, among other things, vent fatal radiation for miles), the Air Force came up with a new bombing plan, using advanced guidance systems to deliver a series of large bunker-busters—conventional bombs filled with high explosives—on the same target, in swift succession. The Air Force argued that the impact would generate sufficient concussive force to accomplish what a tactical nuclear warhead would achieve, but without provoking an outcry over what would be the first use of a nuclear weapon in a conflict since Nagasaki.

The new bombing concept has provoked controversy among Pentagon planners and outside experts. Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who has taught at the Air Force’s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, told me, “We always have a few new toys, new gimmicks, and rarely do these new tricks lead to a phenomenal breakthrough. The dilemma is that Natanz is a very large underground area, and even if the roof came down we won’t be able to get a good estimate of the bomb damage without people on the ground. We don’t even know where it goes underground, and we won’t have much confidence in assessing what we’ve actually done. Absent capturing an Iranian nuclear scientist and documents, it’s impossible to set back the program for sure.”

One complicating aspect of the multiple-hit tactic, the Pentagon consultant told me, is “the liquefaction problem”—the fact that the soil would lose its consistency owing to the enormous heat generated by the impact of the first bomb. “It will be like bombing water, with its currents and eddies. The bombs would likely be diverted.” Intelligence has also shown that for the past two years the Iranians have been shifting their most sensitive nuclear-related materials and production facilities, moving some into urban areas, in anticipation of a bombing raid.

“The Air Force is hawking it to the other services,” the former senior intelligence official said. “They’re all excited by it, but they’re being terribly criticized for it.” The main problem, he said, is that the other services do not believe the tactic will work. “The Navy says, ‘It’s not our plan.’ The Marines are against it—they know they’re going to be the guys on the ground if things go south.”

“It’s the bomber mentality,” the Pentagon consultant said. “The Air Force is saying, ‘We’ve got it covered, we can hit all the distributed targets.’ ” The Air Force arsenal includes a cluster bomb that can deploy scores of small bomblets with individual guidance systems to home in on specific targets. The weapons were deployed in Kosovo and during the early stages of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Air Force is claiming that the same techniques can be used with larger bombs, allowing them to be targeted from twenty-five thousand feet against a multitude of widely dispersed targets. “The Chiefs all know that ‘shock and awe’ is dead on arrival,” the Pentagon consultant said. “All except the Air Force.”

“Rumsfeld and Cheney are the pushers on this—they don’t want to repeat the mistake of doing too little,” the government consultant with ties to Pentagon civilians told me. “The lesson they took from Iraq is that there should have been more troops on the ground”—an impossibility in Iran, because of the overextension of American forces in Iraq—“so the air war in Iran will be one of overwhelming force.”

Many of the Bush Administration’s supporters view the abrupt change in negotiating policy as a deft move that won public plaudits and obscured the fact that Washington had no other good options. “The United States has done what its international partners have asked it to do,” said Patrick Clawson, who is an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a conservative think tank. “The ball is now in their court—for both the Iranians and the Europeans.” Bush’s goal, Clawson said, was to assuage his allies, as well as Russia and China, whose votes, or abstentions, in the United Nations would be needed if the talks broke down and the U.S. decided to seek Security Council sanctions or a U.N. resolution that allowed for the use of force against Iran.

“If Iran refuses to re-start negotiations, it will also be difficult for Russia and China to reject a U.N. call for International Atomic Energy Agency inspections,” Clawson said. “And the longer we go without accelerated I.A.E.A. access, the more important the issue of Iran’s hidden facilities will become.” The drawback to the new American position, Clawson added, was that “the Iranians might take Bush’s agreeing to join the talks as a sign that their hard line has worked.”

Clawson acknowledged that intelligence on Iran’s nuclear-weapons progress was limited. “There was a time when we had reasonable confidence in what we knew,” he said. “We could say, ‘There’s less time than we think,’ or, ‘It’s going more slowly.’ Take your choice. Lack of information is a problem, but we know they’ve made rapid progress with their centrifuges.” (The most recent American intelligence estimate is that Iran could build a warhead sometime between 2010 and 2015.)

Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council aide for the Bush Administration, told me, “The only reason Bush and Cheney relented about talking to Iran was because they were within weeks of a diplomatic meltdown in the United Nations. Russia and China were going to stiff us”—that is, prevent the passage of a U.N. resolution. Leverett, a project director at the New America Foundation, added that the White House’s proposal, despite offering trade and economic incentives for Iran, has not “resolved any of the fundamental contradictions of U.S. policy.” The precondition for the talks, he said—an open-ended halt to all Iranian enrichment activity—“amounts to the President wanting a guarantee that they’ll surrender before he talks to them. Iran cannot accept long-term constraints on its fuel-cycle activity as part of a settlement without a security guarantee”—for example, some form of mutual non-aggression pact with the United States.

Leverett told me that, without a change in U.S. policy, the balance of power in the negotiations will shift to Russia. “Russia sees Iran as a beachhead against American interests in the Middle East, and they’re playing a very sophisticated game,” he said. “Russia is quite comfortable with Iran having nuclear fuel cycles that would be monitored, and they’ll support the Iranian position”—in part, because it gives them the opportunity to sell billions of dollars’ worth of nuclear fuel and materials to Tehran. “They believe they can manage their long- and short-term interests with Iran, and still manage the security interests,” Leverett said. China, which, like Russia, has veto power on the Security Council, was motivated in part by its growing need for oil, he said. “They don’t want punitive measures, such as sanctions, on energy producers, and they don’t want to see the U.S. take a unilateral stance on a state that matters to them.” But, he said, “they’re happy to let Russia take the lead in this.” (China, a major purchaser of Iranian oil, is negotiating a multibillion-dollar deal with Iran for the purchase of liquefied natural gas over a period of twenty-five years.) As for the Bush Administration, he added, “unless there’s a shift, it’s only a question of when its policy falls apart.”

It’s not clear whether the Administration will be able to keep the Europeans in accord with American policy if the talks break down. Morton Abramowitz, a former head of State Department intelligence, who was one of the founders of the International Crisis Group, said, “The world is different than it was three years ago, and while the Europeans want good relations with us, they will not go to war with Iran unless they know that an exhaustive negotiating effort was made by Bush. There’s just too much involved, like the price of oil. There will be great pressure put on the Europeans, but I don’t think they’ll roll over and support a war.”

The Europeans, like the generals at the Pentagon, are concerned about the quality of intelligence. A senior European intelligence official said that while “there was every reason to assume” that the Iranians were working on a bomb, there wasn’t enough evidence to exclude the possibility that they were bluffing, and hadn’t moved beyond a civilian research program. The intelligence official was not optimistic about the current negotiations. “It’s a mess, and I don’t see any possibility, at the moment, of solving the problem,” he said. “The only thing to do is contain it. The question is, What is the redline? Is it when you master the nuclear fuel cycle? Or is it just about building a bomb?” Every country had a different criterion, he said. One worry he had was that, in addition to its security concerns, the Bush Administration was driven by its interest in “democratizing” the region. “The United States is on a mission,” he said.

A European diplomat told me that his government would be willing to discuss Iran’s security concerns—a dialogue he said Iran offered Washington three years ago. The diplomat added that “no one wants to be faced with the alternative if the negotiations don’t succeed: either accept the bomb or bomb them. That’s why our goal is to keep the pressure on, and see what Iran’s answer will be.”

A second European diplomat, speaking of the Iranians, said, “Their tactic is going to be to stall and appear reasonable—to say, ‘Yes, but . . .’ We know what’s going on, and the timeline we’re under. The Iranians have repeatedly been in violation of I.A.E.A. safeguards and have given us years of coverup and deception. The international community does not want them to have a bomb, and if we let them continue to enrich that’s throwing in the towel—giving up before we talk.” The diplomat went on, “It would be a mistake to predict an inevitable failure of our strategy. Iran is a regime that is primarily concerned with its own survival, and if its existence is threatened it would do whatever it needed to do—including backing down.”

The Iranian regime’s calculations about its survival also depend on internal political factors. The nuclear program is popular with the Iranian people, including those—the young and the secular—who are most hostile to the religious leadership. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, has effectively used the program to rally the nation behind him, and against Washington. Ahmadinejad and the ruling clerics have said that they believe Bush’s goal is not to prevent them from building a bomb but to drive them out of office.

Several current and former officials I spoke to expressed doubt that President Bush would settle for a negotiated resolution of the nuclear crisis. A former high-level Pentagon civilian official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the government, said that Bush remains confident in his military decisions. The President and others in the Administration often invoke Winston Churchill, both privately and in public, as an example of a politician who, in his own time, was punished in the polls but was rewarded by history for rejecting appeasement. In one speech, Bush said, Churchill “seemed like a Texan to me. He wasn’t afraid of public-opinion polls. . . . He charged ahead, and the world is better for it.”

The Israelis have insisted for years that Iran has a clandestine program to build a bomb, and will do so as soon as it can. Israeli officials have emphasized that their “redline” is the moment Iran masters the nuclear fuel cycle, acquiring the technical ability to produce weapons-grade uranium. “Iran managed to surprise everyone in terms of the enrichment capability,” one diplomat familiar with the Israeli position told me, referring to Iran’s announcement, this spring, that it had successfully enriched uranium to the 3.6-per-cent level needed to fuel a nuclear-power reactor. The Israelis believe that Iran must be stopped as soon as possible, because, once it is able to enrich uranium for fuel, the next step—enriching it to the ninety-per-cent level needed for a nuclear bomb—is merely a mechanical process.

Israeli intelligence, however, has also failed to provide specific evidence about secret sites in Iran, according to current and former military and intelligence officials. In May, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Washington and, addressing a joint session of Congress, said that Iran “stands on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons” that would pose “an existential threat” to Israel. Olmert noted that Ahmadinejad had questioned the reality of the Holocaust, and he added, “It is not Israel’s threat alone. It is a threat to all those committed to stability in the Middle East and to the well-being of the world at large.” But at a secret intelligence exchange that took place at the Pentagon during the visit, the Pentagon consultant said, “what the Israelis provided fell way short” of what would be needed to publicly justify preventive action.

The issue of what to do, and when, seems far from resolved inside the Israeli government. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, who is now the director of the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, told me, “Israel would like to see diplomacy succeed, but they’re worried that in the meantime Iran will cross a threshold of nuclear know-how—and they’re worried about an American military attack not working. They assume they’ll be struck first in retaliation by Iran.” Indyk added, “At the end of the day, the United States can live with Iranian, Pakistani, and Indian nuclear bombs—but for Israel there’s no Mutual Assured Destruction. If they have to live with an Iranian bomb, there will be a great deal of anxiety in Israel, and a lot of tension between Israel and Iran, and between Israel and the U.S.”

Iran has not, so far, officially answered President Bush’s proposal. But its initial response has been dismissive. In a June 22nd interview with the Guardian, Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, rejected Washington’s demand that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment before talks could begin. “If they want to put this prerequisite, why are we negotiating at all?” Larijani said. “We should put aside the sanctions and give up all this talk about regime change.” He characterized the American offer as a “sermon,” and insisted that Iran was not building a bomb. “We don’t want the bomb,” he said. Ahmadinejad has said that Iran would make a formal counterproposal by August 22nd, but last week Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader, declared, on state radio, “Negotiation with the United States has no benefits for us.”

Despite the tough rhetoric, Iran would be reluctant to reject a dialogue with the United States, according to Giandomenico Picco, who, as a representative of the United Nations, helped to negotiate the ceasefire that ended the Iran-Iraq War, in 1988. “If you engage a superpower, you feel you are a superpower,” Picco told me. “And now the haggling in the Persian bazaar begins. We are negotiating over a carpet”—the suspected weapons program—“that we’re not sure exists, and that we don’t want to exist. And if at the end there never was a carpet it’ll be the negotiation of the century.”

If the talks do break down, and the Administration decides on military action, the generals will, of course, follow their orders; the American military remains loyal to the concept of civilian control. But some officers have been pushing for what they call the “middle way,” which the Pentagon consultant described as “a mix of options that require a number of Special Forces teams and air cover to protect them to send into Iran to grab the evidence so the world will know what Iran is doing.” He added that, unlike Rumsfeld, he and others who support this approach were under no illusion that it could bring about regime change. The goal, he said, was to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the I.A.E.A., said in a speech this spring that his agency believed there was still time for diplomacy to achieve that goal. “We should have learned some lessons from Iraq,” ElBaradei, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, said. “We should have learned that we should be very careful about assessing our intelligence. . . . We should have learned that we should try to exhaust every possible diplomatic means to solve the problem before thinking of any other enforcement measures.”

He went on, “When you push a country into a corner, you are always giving the driver’s seat to the hard-liners. . . . If Iran were to move out of the nonproliferation regime altogether, if Iran were to develop a nuclear weapon program, we clearly will have a much, much more serious problem.”

The Iran nuclear issue was discussed in March at a United Nations Conference on Disarmament meeting in Geneva (Keystone)

Switzerland, which represents the United States' interests in Iran, may be about to take on an increased role in the ongoing Iran nuclear crisis. Iran has asked Bern to organise an international conference to resolve the standoff with the West over Tehran's nuclear programme, it has been reported. The Swiss foreign ministry and Tehran have so far declined to comment on the report which appeared in the Swiss newspaper, the NZZ am Sonntag. There has, however, been a scurry of diplomatic activity between the two countries in recent months.

The letter from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to George Bush proposing "new solutions" to their differences in early May went via the Swiss embassy in Tehran. Switzerland has represented the US in Iran since 1981. The US and Iran broke off diplomatic relations in 1980 after US embassy staff were taken hostage in Tehran, not long after the Islamic revolution.

This "good office" role is much appreciated. During a visit to Switzerland earlier this month, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said Switzerland had always held a "correct and balanced position" on international and regional matters.

Positive image
"Switzerland enjoys an extremely positive image in Iran," Mohammad-Reza Djalili, professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, told swissinfo. This image comes in part, but not exclusively, from the country's "good office" policy. "In the past before the revolution, many of Iran's elite, including [the former leader] the Shah, studied in Switzerland," said Djalili, who added that he wasn't surprised by Tehran's request to Switzerland. "Besides, informal meetings in Geneva between Iranian and Western representatives have favourably prepared the ground," he said.

According to the NZZ am Sonntag article, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made the request. Switzerland had previously offered its assistance to find a negotiated outcome to the Iranian nuclear crisis. The offer was repeated at the meeting with Larijani in early July.

The West accuses Iran of seeking to develop atomic weapons and is demanding that it suspend a uranium enrichment programme that Tehran says is only to produce electricity.

Pressure
Pressure on Iran over the issue has been mounting. The United Nations Security Council on Monday demanded Iran suspend its nuclear activities by the end of August or face the threat of sanctions. The five permanent members of the Security Council (the US, Britain, China, France and Russia) and Germany have also offered it incentives to give up the programme. Tehran has to give its answer by mid-August.

"The Iranian government is trying to see if the dossier can now be taken out of the framework of the Security Council, especially now, in my opinion, as in the past weeks the Russian and Chinese positions have become closer to the western countries," explained Djalili. In other words, it would seem that Tehran is becoming increasingly isolated and is looking for support, which could explain the idea for the international conference, he said.

It has been reported that Iran wants invitations to be extended beyond the permanent five and to include other countries such as Pakistan, India and Brazil. "I believe, however, that Tehran is deluding itself. When the UN General Assembly decided to send the nuclear dossier to the Security Council, only three countries voted against it [Syria, Cuba and Venezuela]," said Djalili.

He says the five permanent members probably do not want other countries involved in a long negotiating process. "The political conditions have not come together," Djalili told swissinfo. "I don't believe that such a conference will, at least for now, be on the agenda."
 

CONTEXT
    Apart from representing the United States in Iran, Switzerland also hold three similar good offices: since 1979 it has represented Iran in Egypt, since 1961 the US in Cuba, and since 1991, Cuba in the US.
Switzerland's first role in this diplomatic area was in 1870, when it represented Bavaria and Baden in France in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1.
    During the Second World War, Switzerland represented the interests of 35 states and after 1945, the number rose to around 70.
 

KEY FACTS
Iran opened an embassy in Bern in 1917.
In 1919 Switzerland opened a consulate general in Tehran.
In 2005 there were 187 Swiss citizens living in Iran.
At the end of 2004, 3,801 Iranians were living in Switzerland.

RELATED SITES
Swiss security and peace policy (http://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/e/home/foreign/secpe.html)
Good offices in the Swiss Historical Dictionary (German, French, Italian) (http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D26461.php)
Swiss embassy in Tehran (http://www.eda.admin.ch/tehran_emb/e/home.html)

URL of this story: http://194.6.181.127/eng/swissinfo.html?siteSect=105&sid=6936360

The world's attention is focused on the fighting in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, but the context leads inevitably back to Iran. Unfortunately, the diplomacy dealing with that issue is constantly outstripped by events. While explosives are raining on Lebanese and Israeli towns and Israel reclaims portions of Gaza, the proposal to Iran in May by the so-called Six (the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China) for negotiations on its nuclear weapons program still awaits an answer. It's possible that Tehran reads the almost pleading tone of some communications addressed to it as a sign of weakness and irresolution. Or perhaps the violence in Lebanon has produced second thoughts among the mullahs about the risks of courting and triggering crisis.

However the tea leaves are read, the current Near Eastern upheaval could become a turning point. Iran may come to appreciate the law of unintended consequences. For their part, the Six can no longer avoid dealing with the twin challenges that Iran poses. On the one hand, the quest for nuclear weapons represents Iran's reach for modernity via the power symbol of the modern state; at the same time, this claim is put forward by a fervent kind of religious extremism that has kept the Muslim Middle East unmodernized for centuries. This conundrum can be solved without conflict only if Iran adopts a modernism consistent with international order and a view of Islam compatible with peaceful coexistence.

Heretofore the Six have been vague about their response to an Iranian refusal to negotiate, except for unspecific threats of sanctions through the United Nations Security Council. But if a deadlock between strained forbearance by the Six and taunting invective from the Iranian president leads to de facto acquiescence in the Iranian nuclear program, prospects for multilateral international order will dim everywhere. If the permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany are unable jointly to achieve goals to which they have publicly committed themselves, every country, especially those composing the Six, will face growing threats, be they increased domestic pressure from radical Islamic groups, terrorist acts or the nearly inevitable conflagrations sparked by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The analogy of such a disaster is not Munich, when the democracies yielded the German-speaking part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, but the response when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia. At Munich, the democracies thought that Hitler's demands were essentially justified by the principle of self-determination; they were repelled mostly by his methods. In the Abyssinian crisis, the nature of the challenge was uncontested. By a vast majority, the League of Nations voted to treat the Italian adventure as aggression and to impose sanctions. But they recoiled before the consequences of their insight and rejected an oil embargo, which Italy would have been unable to overcome. The league never recovered from that debacle. If the six-nation forums dealing with Iran and North Korea suffer comparable failures, the consequence will be a world of unchecked proliferation, not controlled by either governing principles or functioning institutions.

A modern, strong, peaceful Iran could become a pillar of stability and progress in the region. This cannot happen unless Iran's leaders decide whether they are representing a cause or a nation -- whether their basic motivation is crusading or international cooperation. The goal of the diplomacy of the Six should be to oblige Iran to confront this choice.

Diplomacy never operates in a vacuum. It persuades not by the eloquence of its practitioners but by assembling a balance of incentives and risks. Clausewitz's famous dictum that war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means defines both the challenge and the limits of diplomacy. War can impose submission; diplomacy needs to evoke consensus. Military success enables the victor in war to prescribe, at least for an interim period. Diplomatic success occurs when the principal parties are substantially satisfied; it creates -- or should strive to create -- common purposes, at least regarding the subject matter of the negotiation; otherwise no agreement lasts very long. The risk of war lies in exceeding objective limits; the bane of diplomacy is to substitute process for purpose. Diplomacy should not be confused with glibness. It is not an oratorical but a conceptual exercise. When it postures for domestic audiences, radical challenges are encouraged rather than overcome.

It is often asserted that what is needed in relation to Iran is a diplomacy comparable to that which, in the 1970s, moved China from hostility to cooperation with the United States. But China was not persuad