THE ROVING EYE
Brazil-Turkey 1, sanctions 0
By Pepe Escobar
As D-Day approached in Tehran, it was as if the whole world was watching a numbers game. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on his way to Iran, said the chances of convincing the Islamic Republic to accept a nuclear fuel swap deal were close to 99%. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, after meeting with Lula in Moscow last Friday, said the chance was more like 33%. And the United States State Department, via Secretary Hillary Clinton, was all out pre-emptive, betting in fact on 0%.
Lula won the bet. If this was a football match - next month's World Cup will be followed by billions around the globe - the final result would be Brazil-Turkey 1, United States 0, with the golden goal struck in the final minute of extra time.
Welcome to the new axis of deals: Tehran-Brasilia-Ankara. This Monday in Tehran, Brazil, Turkey and Iran, via their foreign ministers, signed a groundbreaking nuclear fuel swap agreement according to which Iran will ship 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium at 3.5% to Turkey in exchange, after a maximum of one year, for 120 kg of 20%-enriched uranium to power the Tehran Research Reactor - everything supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran.
Lula described it as "a victory for diplomacy" - all the sweeter after American and Brazilian conservative media relentlessly trashed him for meddling into this high-stakes chess game. United Nations Security Council non-permanent members Brazil and Turkey - playing diplomacy - won against the United States (and its three European allies, France, Britain and Germany) playing confrontation. It was most of all a victory for the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) - the de facto, emerging, global counter-power to US hegemony.
Predictably, the Obama administration and Clinton in particular are bound to rehash the same old spin of Iran "failing" to keep its "commitments"; but that will not convince the real, developing world-heavy "international community" and will only (partially) appease Washington's powerful pro-infinite-war lobby.
Fully non-sanctioned
How do you close a deal like this? Lula was very careful to stress that Brazil, acting as a mediator, always insisted on building "trust" in its evolving dialogue with Iran. Moreover, before arriving in Tehran this past weekend, Lula had spoken at length with all major players - the US, Russia, China and France.
In Tehran, Lula and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who flew in at the last minute - finally were able to "sell" the Brazil-Turkey joint proposal for a nuclear fuel swap to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Supreme National Security Council secretary Saeed Jalili only after 18 hours of talks held behind closed doors on the sidelines of the Group of 15 summit. The key negotiators were Brazilian Foreign Minister Amorim, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Amorim said the deal "must be enough" to prevent a fourth Security Council round of sanctions against Iran, a Washington/Tel Aviv obsession; he stressed, "that is what other countries have always said, that it was necessary to have this agreement, the swap agreement, in order to continue the conversation".
For Amorim, the agreement is a "passport" for even more sizeable negotiations, making sure that Iran is able to exercise its "legitimate right" to pursue a civilian nuclear energy program. Turkey's Davutoglu said the ball was now in the IAEA's court; "Iran will write a letter to the IAEA, and we hope that the IAEA in Vienna will react quickly and positively, so that there will be a result in a very short period of time." He added, "There is no need for sanctions now that we [Turkey and Brazil] have made guarantees and the low-enriched uranium will remain in Turkey." Medvedev, although more guarded in his reaction, lauded the Brazil-Turkey effort and extensively discussed details of the deal with Lula over the phone.
Enrich me, baby
The agreement is only relatively similar to the proposal by the "Iran Six" group (the five Security Council permanent members plus Germany) in October 2009 in Geneva. At the time, Russia and France would come up with the enrichment. Tehran, not satisfied with the guarantees, advanced other possibilities. There was no mutual trust. Negotiations broke down. Now the novelty is the Turkish engagement - a result of the common Brazil-Turkey mediation strategy.
The naysayers' choir is already louder than Metallica. Predictably, the announcement by Tehran that regardless of the deal it would continue to enrich uranium at 20% in its own territory anyway is leading the US and Israel to discredit the whole operation. Brazilian diplomacy considers their critique to be extremely flawed - stressing instead this was the first time Iran had actually agreed to send its own nuclear fuel abroad for enrichment.
The French and the Germans - echoing Washington - already insist the Brazil-Turkey mediation success will not prevent Iran from reaching an overall agreement with the IAEA. The Western axis is actually obsessed with preventing Iran from developing any uranium enrichment in its own territory - something that goes against the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) itself.
There's no evidence, certified once again by the IAEA this spring, that Iranian nuclear material at the Natanz plant has been diverted to a weapons program. There's no evidence Iran is attempting to enrich uranium at 95%, as part of a nuclear weapons program. None of this will prevent Washington from deviating from its rush towards a fourth round of Security Council sanctions. It doesn't matter that the votes are not there - and will never be there.
The 10-point, detailed declaration on the nuclear swap deal, read by Mottaki at a press conference in Tehran, is not getting and will not get much play in Western corporate media; but it reaffirms Iran's commitment to the NPT, recognized by both Brazil and Turkey; and characterizes the agreement as "a starting point to begin cooperation".
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not immune to playing to the global South galleries, remarked after meeting Lula that the US was so keen on trying to pre-empt the Brazilian effort because it could not bear the sight of "two independent countries", Brazil and Turkey, acting like top diplomatic powers.
What may have happened is that the BRICs, plus Turkey, in a concerted effort these past few weeks, have made it very clear to the Iranian leadership that without any sort of agreement the US would keep on pushing for more and more crippling sanctions - and everyone knows what happened to Iraq in 2003.
So both Khamenei and Ahmadinejad seem to have got the message. But the key was still to find a deal that preserved Iranian dignity. Lula is right; the operative concept is "trust". Will Washington and its allies bow to the evidence? Or will they insist on playing a loser's game?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Israel, Iran talking war to ward off war?
By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM - Suddenly, the Middle East is awash with talk of war this summer. Or, is the talk of war merely meant to keep real war at bay?
Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's strategic affairs minister and a former chief of staff, declared that Israel was essentially in confrontation with Iran already.
War talk or soothing antidote, Ya'alon added his personal warning that Israel has the capability to strike at the Islamic Republic. Speaking at the Air and Space Strategic Studies Institute, north of Tel Aviv, Ya'alon said bluntly: "As far as I'm concerned, offence remains the best form of defense."
Israel rarely uses the term "war" in official statements on how to deal with Iran's "nuclear threat". However Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while accusing Iran of trying to provoke a war between Syria and Israel, said, "Israel has no intention of going to war, no intention to attack its neighbors, despite false rumors."
Pointedly though, Netanyahu was speaking on a visit to a military training base in the north of the country. The abundant war talk of recent weeks has been most focused on the possibility of a flare-up there, involving not only Hezbollah and Israel, but also Syria.
According to Israel, the Syrians have stepped up a transfer of major rocket arsenals to Hezbollah.
The jitters are not only in Israel.
Visiting Damascus, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev voiced fears about a looming "catastrophe" in the region. Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed support for Hezbollah's right to have Scud missiles in its arsenal, and the speaker of the Iranian parliament threatened a "final and decisive war" against Israel.
All this stepped-up talk of war, or of the need to avoid war, comes amid the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference at the United Nations.
There, charging a "double standard policy" with regard to Iran and Israel, Egypt is again leading an initiative to equate the persistent international pressure on Iran to shelve its nuclear program with the lack of pressure on Israel to come clean on its nuclear program.
Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not.
Taking a cue from the NPT proceedings, the danger of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was the focus of an international conference held last week at the Notre-Dame Center on the border between Israeli west Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem.
Organized by the Palestine-Israel Journal, a joint media organization devoted to the advancement of a comprehensive Middle East peace, the conference was entitled, "A Nuclear Free Zone in the Middle East: Realistic or Idealistic?"
It advocated the outlawing of all nuclear weapons in the region as the only win-win approach to avoid a military showdown with Iran.
However, Emily Landau, senior research associate at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and director of its Arms Control and Security Project, reflecting Israel's long-held official "doctrine of ambiguity" that "Israel won't be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the region", said there were "worrying trends" in US policy directions.
"The official US position has not changed. But President [Barack] Obama has embraced a new disarmament agenda, and the NPT nuclear norms. He'll thus be in a weaker position to contest the Egyptian argument that Israel should join the NPT," Landau said.
"We'll see a serious US attempt to reach a compromise with Egypt," she predicted. "That's not good for Israel."
A nuclear-free zone must be incorporated into a wider weapons of mass destruction (WMD) free zone (including biological and chemical weapons), Landau insisted. A Middle East free of WMD could be achieved, she maintained, only after a prolonged dialogue which will bring about a sea change in relations between Israel and all its neighbors, including Iran.
Other Israeli experts did not share this "long corridor" view.
Fresh from the NPT deliberations, Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb, a reference book for new Israeli thinking on the issue, called for "unmasking the Israeli position".
"Under present circumstances, true, no Israeli government will give up its ultimate choice policy until the whole Middle East conflict has been resolved," Cohen reckoned. "But," he argued, "Israel's real interest is that no other state in the region acquires nuclear capability.
"On the other hand, Israel's own nuclear capability is a major factor in its acceptance in the region. It should be secure enough to move away from nuclear ambiguity," he advocated.
"Unless Israel dismantles its ambiguity doctrine, there's no way to move towards a nuclear-free Middle East. That's what aggravates current tension, and prompts talk of war," he warned.
A military option aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear quest would produce a reverse effect, Cohen concluded: "All it guarantees is that Iran will choose the same option."
Jamil Rabah, a former Palestinian delegate to regional talks in the 1990s on arms control, declared, "We'll accept Israel's nuclear capability provided it starts moving on the Palestinian question."
"If you want to move towards disarmament, don't start with the NPT," Rabah urged, "Start with genuine moves to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
"There is indeed an inherent connection between the possibility of making the region nuclear-weapon free, and progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace," concluded Hillel Schenker, the Israeli co-organizer of the event.
(Inter Press Service)
By Pepe Escobar
As D-Day approached in Tehran, it was as if the whole world was watching a numbers game. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, on his way to Iran, said the chances of convincing the Islamic Republic to accept a nuclear fuel swap deal were close to 99%. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, after meeting with Lula in Moscow last Friday, said the chance was more like 33%. And the United States State Department, via Secretary Hillary Clinton, was all out pre-emptive, betting in fact on 0%.
Lula won the bet. If this was a football match - next month's World Cup will be followed by billions around the globe - the final result would be Brazil-Turkey 1, United States 0, with the golden goal struck in the final minute of extra time.
Welcome to the new axis of deals: Tehran-Brasilia-Ankara. This Monday in Tehran, Brazil, Turkey and Iran, via their foreign ministers, signed a groundbreaking nuclear fuel swap agreement according to which Iran will ship 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium at 3.5% to Turkey in exchange, after a maximum of one year, for 120 kg of 20%-enriched uranium to power the Tehran Research Reactor - everything supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Iran.
Lula described it as "a victory for diplomacy" - all the sweeter after American and Brazilian conservative media relentlessly trashed him for meddling into this high-stakes chess game. United Nations Security Council non-permanent members Brazil and Turkey - playing diplomacy - won against the United States (and its three European allies, France, Britain and Germany) playing confrontation. It was most of all a victory for the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) - the de facto, emerging, global counter-power to US hegemony.
Predictably, the Obama administration and Clinton in particular are bound to rehash the same old spin of Iran "failing" to keep its "commitments"; but that will not convince the real, developing world-heavy "international community" and will only (partially) appease Washington's powerful pro-infinite-war lobby.
Fully non-sanctioned
How do you close a deal like this? Lula was very careful to stress that Brazil, acting as a mediator, always insisted on building "trust" in its evolving dialogue with Iran. Moreover, before arriving in Tehran this past weekend, Lula had spoken at length with all major players - the US, Russia, China and France.
In Tehran, Lula and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan - who flew in at the last minute - finally were able to "sell" the Brazil-Turkey joint proposal for a nuclear fuel swap to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Supreme National Security Council secretary Saeed Jalili only after 18 hours of talks held behind closed doors on the sidelines of the Group of 15 summit. The key negotiators were Brazilian Foreign Minister Amorim, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.
Amorim said the deal "must be enough" to prevent a fourth Security Council round of sanctions against Iran, a Washington/Tel Aviv obsession; he stressed, "that is what other countries have always said, that it was necessary to have this agreement, the swap agreement, in order to continue the conversation".
For Amorim, the agreement is a "passport" for even more sizeable negotiations, making sure that Iran is able to exercise its "legitimate right" to pursue a civilian nuclear energy program. Turkey's Davutoglu said the ball was now in the IAEA's court; "Iran will write a letter to the IAEA, and we hope that the IAEA in Vienna will react quickly and positively, so that there will be a result in a very short period of time." He added, "There is no need for sanctions now that we [Turkey and Brazil] have made guarantees and the low-enriched uranium will remain in Turkey." Medvedev, although more guarded in his reaction, lauded the Brazil-Turkey effort and extensively discussed details of the deal with Lula over the phone.
Enrich me, baby
The agreement is only relatively similar to the proposal by the "Iran Six" group (the five Security Council permanent members plus Germany) in October 2009 in Geneva. At the time, Russia and France would come up with the enrichment. Tehran, not satisfied with the guarantees, advanced other possibilities. There was no mutual trust. Negotiations broke down. Now the novelty is the Turkish engagement - a result of the common Brazil-Turkey mediation strategy.
The naysayers' choir is already louder than Metallica. Predictably, the announcement by Tehran that regardless of the deal it would continue to enrich uranium at 20% in its own territory anyway is leading the US and Israel to discredit the whole operation. Brazilian diplomacy considers their critique to be extremely flawed - stressing instead this was the first time Iran had actually agreed to send its own nuclear fuel abroad for enrichment.
The French and the Germans - echoing Washington - already insist the Brazil-Turkey mediation success will not prevent Iran from reaching an overall agreement with the IAEA. The Western axis is actually obsessed with preventing Iran from developing any uranium enrichment in its own territory - something that goes against the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) itself.
There's no evidence, certified once again by the IAEA this spring, that Iranian nuclear material at the Natanz plant has been diverted to a weapons program. There's no evidence Iran is attempting to enrich uranium at 95%, as part of a nuclear weapons program. None of this will prevent Washington from deviating from its rush towards a fourth round of Security Council sanctions. It doesn't matter that the votes are not there - and will never be there.
The 10-point, detailed declaration on the nuclear swap deal, read by Mottaki at a press conference in Tehran, is not getting and will not get much play in Western corporate media; but it reaffirms Iran's commitment to the NPT, recognized by both Brazil and Turkey; and characterizes the agreement as "a starting point to begin cooperation".
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, not immune to playing to the global South galleries, remarked after meeting Lula that the US was so keen on trying to pre-empt the Brazilian effort because it could not bear the sight of "two independent countries", Brazil and Turkey, acting like top diplomatic powers.
What may have happened is that the BRICs, plus Turkey, in a concerted effort these past few weeks, have made it very clear to the Iranian leadership that without any sort of agreement the US would keep on pushing for more and more crippling sanctions - and everyone knows what happened to Iraq in 2003.
So both Khamenei and Ahmadinejad seem to have got the message. But the key was still to find a deal that preserved Iranian dignity. Lula is right; the operative concept is "trust". Will Washington and its allies bow to the evidence? Or will they insist on playing a loser's game?
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
Israel, Iran talking war to ward off war?
By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM - Suddenly, the Middle East is awash with talk of war this summer. Or, is the talk of war merely meant to keep real war at bay?
Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's strategic affairs minister and a former chief of staff, declared that Israel was essentially in confrontation with Iran already.
War talk or soothing antidote, Ya'alon added his personal warning that Israel has the capability to strike at the Islamic Republic. Speaking at the Air and Space Strategic Studies Institute, north of Tel Aviv, Ya'alon said bluntly: "As far as I'm concerned, offence remains the best form of defense."
Israel rarely uses the term "war" in official statements on how to deal with Iran's "nuclear threat". However Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while accusing Iran of trying to provoke a war between Syria and Israel, said, "Israel has no intention of going to war, no intention to attack its neighbors, despite false rumors."
Pointedly though, Netanyahu was speaking on a visit to a military training base in the north of the country. The abundant war talk of recent weeks has been most focused on the possibility of a flare-up there, involving not only Hezbollah and Israel, but also Syria.
According to Israel, the Syrians have stepped up a transfer of major rocket arsenals to Hezbollah.
The jitters are not only in Israel.
Visiting Damascus, Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev voiced fears about a looming "catastrophe" in the region. Lebanon's Prime Minister Saad Hariri expressed support for Hezbollah's right to have Scud missiles in its arsenal, and the speaker of the Iranian parliament threatened a "final and decisive war" against Israel.
All this stepped-up talk of war, or of the need to avoid war, comes amid the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference at the United Nations.
There, charging a "double standard policy" with regard to Iran and Israel, Egypt is again leading an initiative to equate the persistent international pressure on Iran to shelve its nuclear program with the lack of pressure on Israel to come clean on its nuclear program.
Iran is a signatory to the NPT. Israel is not.
Taking a cue from the NPT proceedings, the danger of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was the focus of an international conference held last week at the Notre-Dame Center on the border between Israeli west Jerusalem and Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem.
Organized by the Palestine-Israel Journal, a joint media organization devoted to the advancement of a comprehensive Middle East peace, the conference was entitled, "A Nuclear Free Zone in the Middle East: Realistic or Idealistic?"
It advocated the outlawing of all nuclear weapons in the region as the only win-win approach to avoid a military showdown with Iran.
However, Emily Landau, senior research associate at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies and director of its Arms Control and Security Project, reflecting Israel's long-held official "doctrine of ambiguity" that "Israel won't be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the region", said there were "worrying trends" in US policy directions.
"The official US position has not changed. But President [Barack] Obama has embraced a new disarmament agenda, and the NPT nuclear norms. He'll thus be in a weaker position to contest the Egyptian argument that Israel should join the NPT," Landau said.
"We'll see a serious US attempt to reach a compromise with Egypt," she predicted. "That's not good for Israel."
A nuclear-free zone must be incorporated into a wider weapons of mass destruction (WMD) free zone (including biological and chemical weapons), Landau insisted. A Middle East free of WMD could be achieved, she maintained, only after a prolonged dialogue which will bring about a sea change in relations between Israel and all its neighbors, including Iran.
Other Israeli experts did not share this "long corridor" view.
Fresh from the NPT deliberations, Avner Cohen, author of Israel and the Bomb, a reference book for new Israeli thinking on the issue, called for "unmasking the Israeli position".
"Under present circumstances, true, no Israeli government will give up its ultimate choice policy until the whole Middle East conflict has been resolved," Cohen reckoned. "But," he argued, "Israel's real interest is that no other state in the region acquires nuclear capability.
"On the other hand, Israel's own nuclear capability is a major factor in its acceptance in the region. It should be secure enough to move away from nuclear ambiguity," he advocated.
"Unless Israel dismantles its ambiguity doctrine, there's no way to move towards a nuclear-free Middle East. That's what aggravates current tension, and prompts talk of war," he warned.
A military option aimed at curbing Iran's nuclear quest would produce a reverse effect, Cohen concluded: "All it guarantees is that Iran will choose the same option."
Jamil Rabah, a former Palestinian delegate to regional talks in the 1990s on arms control, declared, "We'll accept Israel's nuclear capability provided it starts moving on the Palestinian question."
"If you want to move towards disarmament, don't start with the NPT," Rabah urged, "Start with genuine moves to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
"There is indeed an inherent connection between the possibility of making the region nuclear-weapon free, and progress towards Israeli-Palestinian peace," concluded Hillel Schenker, the Israeli co-organizer of the event.
(Inter Press Service)
No comments:
Post a Comment