Britain and America

"WWIII on hold?" (...and can we credit the Iraq war?)

"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons. We judge with high confidence that the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program and sign an Additional Protocol to its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Safeguards Agreement, was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work." - Key section of National Intelligence Assessment: Iran - Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities

"WWIII on hold?" was Matt Drudge's headline reaction to yesterday's US intelligence report on Iran's nuclear programme.

Here some other reactions from the www:

Max Boot: "While Iran’s nuclear-weapons program may have been suspended (the NIE expresses only “moderate confidence that Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007”), the “civilian” nuclear program is going forward. What the NIE doesn’t spell out is that it’s fairly easy to convert a civilian nuclear program into a military nuclear weapons program. All you need is the appropriate “scientific, technical, and industrial capacity”—which the NIE says “with high confidence that Iran has”—and some highly-enriched fissile material, which Iran is trying to produce."

Little Green Footballs: "I’m probably not the only one at this point with less than total confidence in American intelligence services; but note that although the report says Iran has “shelved” their program, it still estimates that they would be technically capable of producing enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon within two years. Don’t you feel reassured now?"

Con Coughlin, Telegraph: "The problem for the peaceniks is that, the more Washington vacillates over what to do with Iran, the more progress the Iranians make with their uranium enrichment programme."

Justin Webb, BBC: "I talked to a former senior advisor to the White House who feels sick at the way in which all of this stuff has to be discussed openly, and fears that the Bush team has been fatally undermined on Iran by its own intelligence agencies. Revenge, perhaps, for the flak they took over Iraq?"

...and George W Bush's reaction: "Bush said Tuesday that he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week. But he portrayed it as valuable ammunition against Tehran, not as a reason to lessen diplomatic pressure. "To me, the NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) provides an opportunity for us to rally the international community—to continue to rally the community—to pressure the Iranian regime to suspend its program," the president said. "What's to say they couldn't start another covert nuclear weapons program.""

But, for me (echoing my thoughts of one year ago) Victor Davis Hanson may have got closest to the truth by noting the estimated time at which Tehran may have frozen its nuclear weapons ambitions:

"Iran, like Libya, likely came to a conjecture (around say early spring 2003?) that it was not wise for regimes to conceal WMD programs, given the unpredictable, but lethal American military reaction.  After all, what critic would wish now to grant that one result of the 2003 war — aside from the real chance that Iraq can stabilize and function under the only consensual government in the region — might have been the elimination, for some time, of two growing and potentially nuclear threats to American security, quite apart from Saddam Hussein?"

Danny Finkelstein agrees: "If Iran has indeed halted the programme, it did so under huge US pressure and in the same year as the attack on Saddam. The lesson is that this pressure works.  Huge numbers of articles have been written since 2003 about how the US was powerless and how the Iraq war had strengthened the war. The new assessments suggests that these articles were wrong.  The debate should be transformed - with those urging a tough line feeling greatly strengthened."

Which Bush era foreign policy will work best in the long-run?

I have written for today's (London) Times about three different Bush foreign policies...

• 'Neoconservatism' in Iraq;
• Multilateralism in Iran; and
• Realpolitik in Pakistan

I suggest that it's no longer impossible to believe that policy towards Iraq may produce the least troublesome nation of the three in a decade or two's time.  Space was limited but I could also have included Saudi Arabia in my list of Bush foreign policies - where outright appeasement has been pursued.

Democrat presidential candidates discuss Iran

Tony Blair's first major speech since leaving Downing Street focuses on Iran

Earlier today we learnt that the Iranian charged with negotiated with the West about Tehran's nuclear programme has resigned.  The BBC is portraying this as a victory for the hardline position of President Ahmadinejad.

The resignation comes one day after Tony Blair had spotlighted Iran in his first major speech since resigning as Britain's Prime Minister.

Speaking to a New York gathering - without fee - that included Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg, Mr Blair also focused on the wider war on terror.  Three key extracts of his speech (I've been unable to locate the full text) are republished below:

Iran is a terrorist-sponsoring state: "Analogies with the past are never properly accurate and analogies especially with the rising fascism can be easily misleading, but in pure chronology I sometimes wonder if we're not in the 1920s or 1930s again...  This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace."

We did not start this war and our enemies believe that we are too decadent to bear the sacrifices necessary to prevail: “There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone.  I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone.  They have made their choice and leave us with only one to make - to be forced into retreat or to exhibit even greater determination and belief in standing up for our values than they do in standing up for their’s.”

This is not about Islam versus the west but moderates of all faiths versus extremists: “Either the argument will be as our enemies want it framed as Islam versus the west. Or it will be as we want it framed as moderates of whatever faith, colour or race against extremism however it manifests itself.”

Columbia University’s 14 Minutes of Fame

Joe Loconte reflects on Columbia University's decision to host a speech by the Iranian President.

THE DECISION TO INVITE THE PRESIDENT OF IRAN to speak at New York’s Columbia University has been defended as a shining example of the school’s climate of “open exchange.” University officials insisted ad nauseum that they were upholding the principles of “dialogue,” the “free exchange of ideas,” and the importance of “intellectual debate.” Columbia president Lee Bollinger, who strenuously defended the invitation as “the right thing to do,” lauded the university’s “deep commitment to free speech and debate.”

Mr. Bollinger no doubt hopes that his 14-minute introduction deploring the rhetoric and behavior of his honored guest, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will soften the criticism of Columbia as the latest safe haven for Islamic terrorists. Mr. Bollinger’s remarks were certainly deserved, and he has achieved his 14 minutes of fame for delivering them. But the consequences of that achievement could prove toxic—in Iran, the Middle East and beyond.

One obvious problem with the university’s stage play is that, by its own standards of acceptable speech, it has hurled itself into a tar pit of hypocrisy. This is the same university, after all, that has banned the presence of the U.S. military’s recruiting program, the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, or ROTC. Their argument is that the university forbids discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion and sexual orientation. It therefore finds the military’s posture toward gays—don’t ask, don’t tell—to be a clear-cut violation of its principles.

Well, now. It is widely known, and widely confirmed by human rights groups, that the Iranian regime treats homosexuality with violent contempt. Under its Shari’a law, individuals suspected of being gay are subject to arrest, imprisonment and execution. At yesterday’s event, Mr. Ahmadinejad was asked why his country executed homosexuals. Here was his answer:

“In Iran we don’t have homosexuals…In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.”

John Bolton: Use force to prevent a nuclear Iran

In an interview for this morning's Daily Telegraph, John Bolton, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, has called for the use of force to stop Iran becoming a nuclear power if other tough measures fail.  Here is the key quote:

"It's been conclusively proven Iran is not going to be talked out of its nuclear programme. So to stop them from doing it, we have to massively increase the pressure.  If we can't get enough other countries to come along with us to do that, then we've got to go with regime change by bolstering opposition groups and the like, because that's the circumstance most likely for an Iranian government to decide that it's safer not to pursue nuclear weapons than to continue to do so. And if all else fails, if the choice is between a nuclear-capable Iran and the use of force, then I think we need to look at the use of force."

The Labour Party Is In Full Retreat in the War on Terror

Written by Joe Loconte.

In a halting, contradictory, and ultimately languid speech to the House of Commons yesterday, British Defense Secretary Des Browne seemed to incarnate the nation’s image of prevarication and weakness following the Iranian seizure and release of 15 of its Royal Navy seamen.

Mr. Browne defended the Navy’s order that their boarding party, operating in Iraqi waters, surrender to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in order to avoid a fight “we could not have won.” He regretted his own decision allowing the freed crew members to sell their stories to the media, but then seemed to rationalize it. “The circumstances were exceptional, and the pressure on the families was intense.” Mr. Browne’s wing man throughout this fiasco, Home Secretary John Reid, claimed it was “courageous to say we got this wrong.”

Opposition leaders aren’t buying the Labour Party’s updated version of Profiles in Courage (John Kennedy’s Pulitzer prize-winning book). Shadow Defense Secretary Liam Fox excoriated the government’s actions as a “humiliating fiasco” that has weakened Britain’s reputation abroad and sown division among the Armed Forces. “Does no one feel responsible for the shame this episode has brought upon Britain at the hands of the pariah state of Iran?” He all but demanded that Mr. Browne resign.

Since the release of the British hostages earlier this month, attention has fixated on the uproar over the soldiers who sold their stories to the tabloid media, and the political fallout of that feckless decision. Most media coverage has zealously avoided the troublesome security issues about Iran and its designs in Iraq. For starters, why didn’t Britain learn the lessons from its encounter with Iranian hostage-taking in the Shatt al-Arab waterway in 2004? Mr. Browne finally announced the formation of an official inquiry into the matter. Yet he also admitted that the Navy has suspended its boarding operations of Iranian vessels. “But this should fool no one,” he claimed. “Serious observers do not believe that Iran has emerged from this in a stronger position.”

‘I would rather lose a campaign than a war’

Yesterday John McCain delivered a speech outlining his views on the Iraq war. The speech which was well received by the audience and sections of the press called on the American people to support General Petraeus’s plan to secure the country. His defence of the Iraq war which was described by the Wall Street Journal as ‘McCain’s finest hour’ challenged all those who voted for the war to stay the course. He argued that the most of them blame America’s failed strategy for Iraq’s problems and whilst he shared their view, a workable plan had been implemented by General Petraeus which they should support. He urged the Democrats to stop playing politics with the war and said that on his part he would rather lose the presidential elections than lose the war in Iraq. Democrat attacks on his support for George Bush’s Iraq strategy have seen him lose his front runner status in the race for the Republican nomination.

The Guardian and Russia gang up on the USA

by Michael Ehioze-Ediae.

The Guardian newspaper has reported that the Russians are unhappy about the USA’s missile defence  plans. According to senior sources in the Kremlin the move is likely to spark another arms race. Whilst the US has assured the Russians that the aim of the shield is to protect it from rogue states like Iran and North Korea, the Russians are convinced that the real targets of the shield are Russian and Chinese nuclear missiles.

Bolton: Iran probed the west and found weakness

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote for yesterday's Financial Times about Iran's kidnapping of UK sailors.  He found the whole episode depressing:

"[Iran] probed and found weakness. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, the president, can undertake equal or greater provocations, confident he need not fear a strong response. Iran held all the high cards and played them at a time and in a manner of its choosing. At the end, British diplomacy was irrelevant. Mr Ahmadi-Nejad was the puppet-master throughout, taunting and admonishing Mr Blair not to prosecute the hostages for illegally entering Iranian waters, as they had confessed. That is chutzpah! Amazingly to US ears, some in Britain criticised Mr Blair for being too tough."

Interviewed for this morning's Today programme he argued that regime change was the only answer.  Europe, he said, had been negotiating with Tehran for three-and-a-half years but to no avail.  Yesterday Iran announced that it has the capability of producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.  Every day it gets closer to its ambition of becoming a nuclear power and the world does nothing to prevent that from happening - as it has done nothing about Iran's support for terrorism against Israel and in Iraq.  Mr Bolton accused the US State Department of being part of the problem.  It had fallen victim to bureaucratic inertia, he said, and he called for a dramatic increase of political and economic pressure on the Iranian regime before it becomes too late.