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Israeli UN Envoy: China is a “Mystery” on Iran Sanctions
China’s position on toughened nuclear sanctions against Iran remains a “mystery,” Israel’s UN envoy said Tuesday, and doubted the Security Council would agree new punishments for Tehran this month.
Ambassador Gabriela Shalev also said that should efforts fail to frame a unified range of United Nations sanctions, it would be up to individual world powers to team up outside the Council to punish Iran economically.
And, following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Moscow, Shalev said that it was clear Russia had dropped its earlier reluctance to impose more sanctions on Iran to punish its nuclear drive. “I know that the Russians have turned their position,” Shalev told a small group of reporters.
“I know that the Russians now agree that there must be some kind of limit on the engagement,” she said, referring to Iran’s refusal to agree to a UN-backed deal to end the standoff over its nuclear program. “China is a mystery.”
Shalev said she had hoped that new sanctions would be agreed against Iran by the end of this month, when France hands over the presidency of the Security Council to Gabon, but that now looked unlikely.
“My feeling is that we will not be able to achieve this resolution regarding sanctions within the month of February,” Shalev said, adding that the position of Gabon on the issue was not clear.
President Barack Obama’s national security advisor James Jones told Fox News Sunday that Washington was pushing for very tough new sanctions against Iran “this month.”
Earlier Tuesday, the United States, Russia and France said that Iran’s recent escalation of its uranium enrichment further undermines international trust in its nuclear drive.
The three powers sent a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressing new concern about Iran’s actions and signaling further pressure on the Islamic state.
Iran: US acting as Military Dictatorship in Middle East
We recommend Clinton and other US statesmen to open their eyes to realities in the region even one time
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki says the US is acting as a military dictatorship in the Middle East by killing countless number of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Iran’s top diplomat made the comments in response to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who said Iran is “moving toward a military dictatorship.
Mottaki described Clinton’s remarks as “modern deceit,” and added that
“We are regretful that the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton … tries to conceal facts about the stance of the US administration trough fake words.
This (Clinton’s remark) is aimed “at diverting the attention of the public in the region (away from their problems) to unreal and incorrect topics,” he added.
The Iranian minister raised questions about the US military dictatorship in the region and said that Washington has killed large numbers of Iraqi and Afghan civilians while Iran has accepted and helped millions of refugees from the two countries.
He accused Clinton of trying to advance Washington’s policy in the Middle East through lies, saying that regional countries are well aware of the true nature of such methods.
Mottaki criticized “unsuccessful strategies” of the US government in Lebanon, Gaza and Afghanistan and said Washington seeks to create crisis for democratic and independent states by waging a soft war.
“The US targets scientific and technological achievements of countries and their independence by interfering [in their internal affairs] and spending vast sums,” he said.
He underlined that the US has adopted “wrong” approach in the Middle East and said that Washington pays no attention to realities in the region and forges military dictatorship by stoking tension and instability.
“We recommend Clinton and other US statesmen to open their eyes to realities in the region even one time… They should respect rights of regional states to development, welfare and modern technologies without enmity,” Mottaki said.
He noted that regional countries would never be deceived by the US policies.
New twist in Iran’s nuclear brinkmanship
By Kaveh Afrasiabi – Asia Times
As Iran celebrates the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, there are rays of hope that the dark clouds of a more intensified nuclear crisis may be disappearing
It is possible that by giving the go-ahead for the production of 20% enriched uranium, Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad has sufficiently jolted the other side to rethink its approach on the nuclear fuel-swap deal.
On the surface, Iran’s decision has raised alarm bells in the West and has provoked a strong response from United States President Barack Obama, who has warned that his administration is “developing a significant regime of sanctions” to impose on Iran.
Even Moscow has expressed its displeasure, in the form of a statement by a Foreign Ministry official, which said, “We are disappointed with the Iranian step, which did not allow diplomats to agree on mutually acceptable ways for the fulfillment of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] proposal of higher-enriched uranium fuel production for the Tehran research reactor outside Iran.”
Under a proposal put forward by the IAEA last year, Iran would hand over its low-enriched uranium (LEU) to be further processed in another country before being returned for use at the Tehran reactor. On February 2, after much flip-flopping, Iran said it was now ready to send its LEU abroad. Then, on February 7, Iran announced it would itself begin enriching uranium to 20%, while saying it was still open to discussing the original proposal.
This has heightened concerns that Iran aims to build nuclear weapons, something it has consistently denied.
However, not all hope is lost for the IAEA-proposed deal, and there are emerging signs of growing activity on both sides to come to some sort of mutually satisfactory agreement.
On Iran’s part, various officials from the Atomic Energy Organization (AEO) to the Foreign Ministry have repeatedly stated that Iran is still open to the swap deal. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of the AEO, told the Tehran daily Iran that the government was willing to suspend production of 20% uranium if there were an exchange “without preconditions” of Iran’s 3.5% LEU in return for nuclear fuel rods. According to Salehi, Iran’s LEU could be “sealed and put under the custody” of the IAEA until it received the fuel it needed for the medical research reactor.
The news from Washington on the other hand indicates that the US is now working on a new proposal aimed at salvaging the nuclear deal that was unveiled last October in Geneva. This focuses on procuring medical isotopes for Iran from the international market. An administration official told the Washington Post, “Rather than operate a reactor, this would be a more cost-effective and efficient approach.”
Not everyone agrees with that assessment, however, and some US nuclear experts have openly admitted that Iran’s home production of key ingredients (eg technetium 99) would be less costly and more efficient. (See Dangerous steps in Iran’s nuclear dance Asia Times Online, February 9, 2010).
That aside, the problem with the US’s new approach is that it apparently seeks to make the reactor redundant by the promise of delivering the reactor’s net products. That will not wash with the Iranians, who have had an earful of unfulfilled promises over the past 30 years.
Instead, what may work to everyone’s advantage is a “mixed approach”, whereby the fuel swap under set timelines and delivery of medical isotopes to Iran would be the central elements of an agreement according to which Iran would refrain from engaging in enrichment activities deemed “highly dangerous” by the West.
“It’s Iran’s version of nuclear brinksmanship,” said a Tehran foreign policy expert. “The message from Tehran is clear: take our counter-proposal seriously or face the consequence of Iran taking a giant step closer to the ‘nuclear-capable’ threshold … There is cause for a pause on the part of Washington and London in their unreasonable rejection of Iran’s proposal.”
If a deal is worked out and a modified version of the IAEA proposal accepted, it would represent a unique victory for Iran’s nuclear diplomacy, combining “soft” and “hard” power to elicit a favorable response from the “Iran Six” nations, ie the US, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany. These countries have engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran over the past several years.
Also, if there were a breakthrough, it would frustrate some of the hardline voices in Iran that argue in favor of Iran “deepening its nuclear capability”. To silence such voices and to agree to limit Iran’s enrichment activities to low levels (below 5%), Iran’s top decision-makers would have to show that they had struck the right bargain without selling themselves short.
As Iran celebrates the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on Thursday, with people expected to take to the streets in their thousands across the country – although some will be protesting against the current government – there are rays of hope that the dark clouds of a more intensified nuclear crisis may be disappearing.
Time for George Mitchell to resign
By Stephen M. Walt – Foreign Policy
The administration's early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade
If Mideast special envoy George Mitchell wants to end his career with his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign. He had a distinguished tenure in the U.S. Senate — including a stint as majority leader — and his post-Senate career has been equally accomplished. He was an effective mediator of the conflict in Northern Ireland, helped shepherd the Disney Corporation through a turbulent period, and led an effective investigation of the steroids scandal afflicting major league baseball. Nobody can expect to be universally admired in the United States, but Mitchell may have come as close as any politician in recent memory.
Why should Mitchell step down now? Because he is wasting his time. The administration’s early commitment to an Israeli-Palestinian peace was either a naïve bit of bravado or a cynical charade, and if Mitchell continues to pile up frequent-flyer miles in a fruitless effort, he will be remembered as one of a long series of U.S. “mediators” who ended up complicit in Israel’s self-destructive land grab on the West Bank. Mitchell will turn 77 in August, he has already undergone treatment for prostate cancer, and he’s gotten exactly nowhere (or worse) since his mission began. However noble the goal of Israeli-Palestinian peace might be, surely he’s got better things to do.
In an interview earlier this week with Time’s Joe Klein, President Obama acknowledged that his early commitment to achieving “two states for two peoples” had failed. In his words, “this is as intractable a problem as you get … Both sides-the Israelis and the Palestinians-have found that the political environments, the nature of their coalitions or the divisions within their societies, were such that it was very hard for them to start engaging in a meaningful conversation. And I think we overestimated our ability to persuade them to do so when their politics ran contrary to that” (my emphasis).
This admission raises an obvious question: who was responsible for this gross miscalculation? It’s not as if the dysfunctional condition of Israeli and Palestinian internal politics was a dark mystery when Obama took office, or when Netanyahu formed the most hard-line government in Israeli history. Which advisors told Obama and Mitchell to proceed as they did, raising expectations sky-high in the Cairo speech, publicly insisting on a settlement freeze, and then engaging in a humiliating retreat? Did they ever ask themselves what they would do if Netanyahu dug in his heels, as anyone with a triple-digit IQ should have expected? And if Obama now realizes how badly they screwed up, why do the people who recommended this approach still have their jobs?
As for Mitchell himself, he should resign because it should be clear to him that he was hired under false pretenses. He undoubtedly believed Obama when the president said he was genuinely committed to achieving Israel-Palestinian peace in his first term. Obama probably promised to back him up, and his actions up to the Cairo speech made it look like he meant it. But his performance ever since has exposed him as another U.S. president who is unwilling to do what everyone knows it will take to achieve a just peace. Mitchell has been reduced to the same hapless role that Condoleezza Rice played in the latter stages of the Bush administration — engaged in endless “talks” and inconclusive haggling over trivialities-and he ought to be furious at having been hung out to dry in this fashion.
The point is not that Obama’s initial peace effort in the Middle East has failed; the real lesson is that he didn’t really try. The objective was admirably clear from the start — “two states for two peoples” — what was missing was a clear strategy for getting there and the political will to push it through. And notwithstanding the various difficulties on the Palestinian side, the main obstacle has been the Netanyahu government’s all-too obvious rejection of anything that might look like a viable Palestinian state, combined with its relentless effort to gobble up more land. Unless the U.S. president is willing and able to push Israel as hard as it is pushing the Palestinians (and probably harder), peace will simply not happen. Pressure on Israel is also the best way to defang Hamas, because genuine progress towards a Palestinian state in the one thing that could strengthen Abbas and other Palestinian moderates and force Hamas to move beyond its talk about a long-term hudna (truce) and accept the idea of permanent peace.
It’s not as if Obama and Co. don’t realize that this is important. National Security Advisor James Jones has made it clear that he sees the Israel-Palestinian issue as absolutely central; it’s not our only problem in the Middle East, but it tends to affect most of the others and resolving it would be an enormous boon. And there’s every sign that the president is aware of the need to do more than just talk.
Yet U.S. diplomacy in this area remains all talk and no action. When a great power identifies a key interest and is strongly committed to achieving it, it uses all the tools at its disposal to try to bring that outcome about. Needless to say, the use of U.S. leverage has been conspicuously absent over the past year, which means that Mitchell has been operating with both hands tied firmly behind his back. Thus far, the only instrument of influence that Obama has used has been presidential rhetoric, and even that weapon has been used rather sparingly.
And please don’t blame this on Congress. Yes, Congress will pander to the lobby, oppose a tougher U.S. stance, and continue to supply Israel with generous economic and military handouts, but a determined president still has many ways of bringing pressure to bear on recalcitrant clients. The problem is that Obama refused to use any of them.
When Netanyahu dug in his heels and refused a complete settlement freeze — itself a rather innocuous demand if Israel preferred peace to land — did Obama describe the settlements as “illegal” and contrary to international law? Of course not. Did he fire a warning shot by instructing the Department of Justice to crack down on tax-deductible contributions to settler organizations? Nope. Did he tell Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to signal his irritation by curtailing U.S. purchases of Israeli arms, downgrading various forms of “strategic cooperation,” or canceling a military exchange or two? Not a chance. When Israel continued to evict Palestinians from their homes and announced new settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in August, did Obama remind Netanyahu of his dependence on U.S. support by telling U.S. officials to say a few positive things about the Goldstone Report and to use its release as an opportunity to underscore the need for a genuine peace? Hardly; instead, the administration rewarded Netanyau’s intransigence by condemning Goldstone and praising Netanyahu for “unprecedented” concessions. (The “concessions,” by the way, was an announcement that Israel would freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank “temporarily” while continuing it in East Jerusalem. In other words, they’ll just take the land a bit more slowly).
Like the Clinton and Bush administrations, in short, the idea that the United States ought to use its leverage and exert genuine pressure on Israel remains anathema to Obama, to Mitchell and his advisors, and to all those pundits who are trapped in the Washington consensus on this issue. The main organizations in the Israel lobby are of course dead-set against it — and that goes for J Street as well — even though there is no reason to expect Israel to change course in the absence of countervailing pressure.
Obama blinked — leaving Mitchell with nothing to do-because he needed to keep sixty senators on board with his health care initiative (that worked out well, didn’t it?), because he didn’t want to jeopardize the campaign coffers of the Democratic Party, and because he knew he’d be excoriated by Israel’s false friends in the U.S. media if he did the right thing. I suppose I ought to be grateful to have my thesis vindicated in such striking fashion, but there’s too much human misery involved on both sides to take any consolation in that.
So what will happen now? Israel has made it clear that it is going to keep building settlements — including the large blocs (like Ma’ale Adumim) that were consciously designed to carve up the West Bank and make creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority, and other moderate forces will be increasingly discredited as collaborators or dupes. As Israel increasingly becomes an apartheid state, its international legitimacy will face a growing challenge. Iran’s ability to exploit the Palestinian cause will be strengthened, and pro-American regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere will be further weakened by their impotence and by their intimate association with the United States. It might even help give al Qaeda a new lease on life, at least in some places. Jews in other countries will continue to distance themselves from an Israel that they see as a poor embodiment of their own values, and one that can no longer portray itself convincingly as “a light unto the nations.” And the real tragedy is that all this might have been avoided, had the leaders of the world’s most powerful country been willing to use their influence on both sides more directly.
Looking ahead, one can see two radically different possibilities. The first option is that Israel retains control of the West Bank and Gaza and continues to deny the Palestinians full political rights or economic opportunities. (Netanyahu likes to talk about a long-term “economic peace,” but his vision of Palestinian bantustans under complete Israeli control is both a denial of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations and a severe obstacle to their ability to fully develop their own society. Over time, there may be another intifada, which the IDF will crush as ruthlessly as it did the last one. Perhaps the millions of remaining Palestinians will gradually leave — as hardline Israelis hope and as former House speaker Dick Armey once proposed. If so, then a country founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust — one of history’s greatest crimes-will have completed a dispossession begun in 1948 — a great crime of its own.
Alternatively, the Palestinians may remain where they are, and begin to demand equal rights in the state under whose authority they have been forced to dwell. If Israel denies them these rights, its claim to being the “only democracy in the Middle East” will be exposed as hollow. If it grants them, it will eventually cease to be a Jewish-majority state (though its culture would undoubtedly retain a heavily Jewish/Israeli character). As a long-time supporter of Israel’s existence, I would take no joy in that outcome. Moreover, transforming Israel into a post-Zionist and multinational society would be a wrenching and quite possibly violent experience for all concerned. For both reasons, I’ve continued to favor “two states for two peoples” instead.
But with the two-state solution looking less and less likely, these other possibilities begin to loom large. Through fear and fecklessness, the United States has been an active enabler of an emerging tragedy. Israelis have no one to blame but themselves for the occupation, but Americans — who like to think of themselves as a country whose foreign policy reflects deep moral commitments-will be judged harshly for our own role in this endeavor.
The United States will suffer certain consequences as a result-decreased international influence, a somewhat greater risk of anti-American terrorism, tarnished moral reputation, etc.-but it will survive. But Israel may be in the process of drafting its own suicide pact, and its false friends here in the United States have been supplying the paper and ink. By offering his resignation-and insisting that Obama accept it-George Mitchell can escape the onus of complicity in this latest sad chapter of an all-too-familiar story. Small comfort, perhaps, but better than nothing.
China warns US over Taiwan arms sales
China has warned that Washington’s announcement of arms sales to Taiwan would badly hurt ties between the two global powers, widening rifts in their far-reaching relationship.
The swift and sharp protest came from Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei, who said his government was “strongly indignant” about the proposed US sale of weapons to Taiwan, which China considers an illegitimate breakaway province.
The Obama administration told the US Congress yesterday of the proposed sales to Taiwan, a potential $6.4 billion (£4bn) package including Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot “Advanced Capability-3″ anti-missile missiles, and two refurbished Osprey-class mine-hunting ships.
Beijing responded with He’s warning delivered to the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, that the arms deal could jeopardise bonds with Washington, which has looked to China for help in surmounting the financial crisis, dealing with Iran and North Korea, and fighting climate change.
The US arms sales to Taiwan have joined trade imbalances, currency disputes, human rights, the Internet, and Tibet among rifts dividing the world’s biggest and third-biggest economies.
Washington and Beijing have also recently traded angry words about Internet policy after the search engine giant Google Inc earlier this month threatened to shut its Chinese google.cn portal and pull out of China, citing censorship problems and hacking attacks.
In coming months Obama may meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader China calls a dangerous separatist, adding to Beijing’s ire with Washington.
Vice Minister He did not spell out what reprisals Beijing may mete out against Washington over the weapons sales. But he hinted the anger would be felt in a number of areas.
“The United States’ announcement of the planned weapons sales to Taiwan will have a seriously negative impact on many important areas of exchanges and cooperation between the two countries,” said He in the remarks, published on the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s website.
He said the arms sales were “crude interference in China’s domestic affairs and seriously harm China’s national security”, words notably tougher than Beijing’s recent statements on the issue.
“This will lead to repercussions that neither side wishes to see,” said He. He urged the US to halt the planned sales.
