Another look at the medical reactor deal

The Washington Post has run a long article, written by Thomas Erdbrink, William Branigin and Kay Armin Serjoie, looking more closely at the medical side of the deal in discussion in which Iran would export its uranium in exchange for nuclear fuel to arrive later.

"We could enrich the fuel ourselves," the British-educated scientist said in an interview. "But there would be technical problems. Also, we'd never make it on time to help our patients."

U.S. nuclear experts say Iran's main difficulty is that it cannot fabricate fuel assemblies for the research reactor. They regard Iran's fuel problems as largely self-inflicted.

Under a proposed deal brokered by the IAEA, Iran would hand over 1,200 kilos of the low-enriched uranium it has stockpiled, ostensibly for use as fuel for nuclear power plants. In return, Russia would enrich the uranium to 19.75 percent, and France would turn it into fuel assemblies for the Tehran reactor. The United States would help ensure the safe operation of the aging reactor. World powers fear that unless Iran hands over the stockpile, it could convert it someday into highly enriched uranium, which can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons.

After initially accepting the proposal in principle Oct. 1, Iran has demanded more guarantees that the reactor fuel would be delivered. Iran also complains that the process would take more than a year -- too long, in its view.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki proposed swapping small amounts of the uranium in batches rather than all at once. Iran has suggested that the trade take place on Kish Island, an Iranian tourist destination in the Persian Gulf. The Obama administration considers that proposal inconsistent with the U.N. plan.

"If Iran wants to produce those medical isotopes itself, then the best way to do that is to accept the IAEA proposal" and receive the reactor fuel, a senior administration official said. As part of the deal, he noted, the parties pledged to deliver the initial assemblies in time to keep the reactor running.

I've written before that the deal as expressed in public is worse than a bad deal for Iran, it is an insult to the intelligence of the Iranians. Basically the reason is that Iran is being asked to export one year's production of uranium. If Iran takes the US up on its offer, and the US acts as promised, it will find itself in January 2011 with a little more than a ton of uranium and medical fuel. If Iran alters the deal so that it receives fuel before it exports, it will find itself in January 2011 with the same amount of uranium as the other way. Yet the US is willing to at least threaten sanctions rather than alter the deal.

The fact that the US is willing to threaten sanctions proves that the US sees a tangible difference between the two scenarios. But if the deal goes as promised, then by January 2011 the two scenarios are identical. Clearly the US intends to take advantage of the period during which Iran is below one ton of domestically stockpiled uranium to meet some goal before January 2011.

One possibility is that the US intends to apply as much pressure as possible to force Iran to suspend enrichment in 2011 before it has rebuilt its stockpile. One lever of pressure in this scenario is the undelivered medical fuel. If the US plans to pressure Iran as hard as possible to suspend enrichment, why would it deliver the fuel before Iran suspends? This speculation is unnecessary if we take France on its word that it does not want to enrich uranium on Iran's behalf unless Iran stops enriching.

Another possibility, the one I suspect is more likely, is that the US intends, and has already begun private back-channel discussions, to offer that Iran suspend enrichment for a short time before restarting its program in the form of an international consortium that keeps a small stockpile on Iranian territory and exports much of its production overseas.

One problem with the second scenario is that if the US does not commit to it, it can go back to the first scenario, and leave Iran without its LEU and without its fuel. Iran cannot be sure, until something is said in public, how authoritative the private back channels are. Another problem is that details such as how long a suspension would last and how much Iran would keep in its domestic stock may not have been agreed upon and would have to reach agreement before Iran commits by exporting.

Iran has paid a high cost for the uranium program it has now. The article indicates that the cost Iran pays is about to go up drastically. When Iranian patients die because the US refuses to send medical reactor fuel, that will change the tenor of the dispute, it will make the dispute much more tangible in Iran, and more important.

There are now two ways Iran's nuclear program can plausibly play out. A military attack is not plausible and an Iranian coerced suspension is not plausible. One way is that Iran and the West agree to parameters for Iran's program. This would, as my best guess, look like a modified version of this proposal presented by a Swiss nuclear organization. In the Swiss proposal, Iran keeps about 300kg of stock at any time and exports the production of a domestic international consortium in constant batches of 100kg. My guess is that Iran is now pressing for more than 300kg as its base stock.

The other plausible outcome is that the temperature around the program rises. Sanctions may be applied - I'm still not sure if Obama is bluffing on this point or not. Iran will reduce cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan but will not go into open conflict. Most importantly Iran will accelerate its enrichment program, and build a stockpile of 20% uranium, which is much closer to 90% enriched weapons grade uranium than it sounds because very low levels of enrichment take much more effort to increase than higher levels.

After Iran has enough 20% LEU to, in theory, make one or two weapons and also maybe four or five tons of 3.5% LEU, which may be shortly after Ahmadinejad's term in office expires, Iran will as a gesture unilaterally suspend enrichment and see which countries are willing to trade with it without any further concessions. Iran expects that when it can say "we're not enriching, at least acknowledge our gesture", countries whose interests are consistent with trade with Iran will feel substantial pressure to do so, with Iran far more effectively nuclear weapons capable than it would be under the cooperative outcome. By that time Iran will have paid for its program with the health of some of its citizens, and will not consider going back.

The scenario US planners sound like they are hoping for is one in which sanctions are applied, Iranian patients die unable to get treatment, and Iran decides that it is better off submitting to US demands. One thing about this scenario: unless the US says so publicly, Iran has to assume the US demand is really a full suspension that gives the US a veto over resumption of enrichment. In practical terms, this means permanent cessation - which is Israel's preference, though not plausible.

I cannot believe in December 2009, there is anyone in the US government who thinks Iran is going to buckle and agree to a suspension until the US gives it permission to resume. If so, this is a drastic misread of the Iranian position that will push us into to the maximum enrichment scenario. If not, the US is really going to have to commit publicly to allowing Iran to keep a domestic enrichment capability.

I'm somewhat surprised John Kerry's statement that Bush's insistence on zero enrichment was counterproductive has not been followed up upon. My explanation is the Barack Obama is not constitutionally or temperamentally equipped to challenge the pro-Israel factions of US politics in the way this would require. That's a shame because the maximum enrichment scenario is worse for Israel than the agreed parameters scenario.

Financial Times: Can I ask you about Iran? In both your Brookings and your Aipac speeches, you talked about how the Bush administration had set a series of red lines to see them ignored, to see that the policy had failed. The last red line that the US, that the Bush administration set and saw ignored was the call for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. You’ve called for an effort to decide a red line and to defend it. What should that red line be?

John Kerry: Well, I want to be very careful there, because I know the administration. I wrote a memo to the president regarding this, in which I outlined my thoughts about the nature of that line.

Suffice it to say it needs to be a line that realistically protects the region and Israel, I emphasise the region, from a perception of completed proliferation. And there are several different ways to define that, I think we should leave that to that definition….

Certainly [the line should be for Iran] not to be a quote nuclear weapon state. Now some people can argue about when you are a nuclear weapons state. Capability versus, different definitions of that, just leave that there for a minute.

The key here is that, first of all the Bush administration [argument of] no enrichment was ridiculous, on its face, because Iran is a signatory to the [nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty and whether they are inside or outside their obligations, to ask them to give up something that was within their rights within the treaty assuming they were up to their obligations is a non-starter. It was bombastic diplomacy. It was wasted energy. It sort of hardened the lines, if you will (inaudible).

Because it seemed so unreasonable to people. They have a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in that purpose. But they don’t have a right, obviously, to be outside of the other restraints of the IAEA and of the non-proliferation agreement. And so the key here was to really open a different kind of dialogue with them about where you draw the line.

It’s also complicated slightly by Israel. Does Israel make a decision that it has to play its interests differently, i.e. that its security is only protected by guaranteeing its definition of a line and therefore do they decide to do something simply to delay Iran’s programme even though they know that’s all they get? And that has very real dangers.

And that’s why it is important for the President to work out ahead of time what the understandings are with Israel and what the modalities [are] here and how we proceed. I thought he went relatively far publicly in making the statement he made about by the end of the year and so forth. I thought that was a pretty big public gift, bigger than might have been necessary.

I think both the US and Iran's interests are best served by the cooperative scenario. For that to happen, the US cannot get around making a commitment that Iran will have domestic enrichment in a US approved outcome. Once that happens, the remaining question is only how large Iran's domestic stockpile will remain. I'm not sure what Iran would agree to today, but next year at this time, Iran's demands are certainly going to be for a bigger stockpile.

Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri dies

Every death is sad. Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri was an important part of the story in which the Iranian people overthrew their Western-imposed puppet colonial ruler.

After his death, in recognition of his work, I think every human being owes him a moment of thoughts of gratitude. While I'm sad that he's gone, I'm very happy he was here for the time he was and was able to make the contributions he made.

Los Angeles Times publishes piece supporting one state

A well written piece by Jonathan Kuttab that I don't have much to add to.

For a while, it seemed that a two-state solution might actually be achievable and that a sovereign Palestinian state would be created in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Jews and Palestinians at last to go their separate ways. But these days, that looks less and less likely.

With Israel in total control of the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and unwilling to relinquish a significant part of the land, it's time to consider the possibility that the current situation -- one state, in effect -- will continue. And although Jewish Israelis may control it now, birthrates suggest that, sooner or later, Jews will again be a minority in the territory.

What happens at that point is unclear, but unless continued military occupation and all-out apartheid is the desired path, now may be the time for Israelis to start putting in place the kinds of legal and constitutional safeguards that will protect all minorities, now and in the future, in a single democratic state of Israel-Palestine. This is both the right thing and the smart thing to do.

As one commenter to the article notes, one state in Palestine is no more difficult or less beneficial to its residents and region beyond than one state in South Africa was after the 1976 Soweto riots.

One state is not a majority view by any means in the United States. It is a minority view that seems to slowly be gaining increasing appeal. For most people in the US, support for Israel is kind of a default view. Not an acceptance of Zionism or any reasoning that there must be a Jewish state, but a going-along that comes from never being presented with an alternative.

Ian Lustick: Sanctions will not change Iran's behaviour, an attack would cause the failure of Zionism

A conference was organized by opponents of sanctions against Iran that featured Muhammad Sahimi, professor of chemical engineering at the University of California; Ian Lustick, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, and Keith Weissman, former deputy director of AIPAC, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee.

[Sahimi] said an attack on Iran “will only play into the hands of the hardliners,” which is probably true.

Weissman argued that sanctions “hurt American business more than they hurt Iran. And they don’t stop what you intend to stop. They might make you feel good if you’re in Congress.”

Lustick said sanctions “are a placeholder,” an alternative to war that can “constrain American power.” He said he didn’t expect them to “work” in the sense their supporters claimed—implying, I think, that even their supporters, the intelligent ones, were smart enough to see that.

Lustick said he didn’t think Israel would attack Iran. If they did, he said, “it’s going to put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Israel will ever be accepted in the region. And that means Zionism will fail.”

I agree that an attack on Iran, especially if conducted by Israel, but even if conducted by the United States, has a high chance of resulting in the defeat of Zionism in the medium term of ten to fifteen years.

Lustick's observation struck me in that I have not seen that connection made often in reports about Iran's nuclear program.

Some words from Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal

The New York Times published an article about an interview a Times reporter did with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister Saud al-Faisal. I think the Times is worse with this than any other press source but just printing the entire interview would have been much more interesting and informative. The Times, especially when reporting the Middle East, has a strong insistence on giving a high ratio of its reporters thoughts to the interview subject's words.

Here is what got through, much of it is paraphrased so that the reporter Michael Slackman stands between the reader and Faisal. One interesting example is where Iran's nuclear program is "suspicious". Suspicious is in quotes, but the rest of the idea is paraphrased. Why not quote his entire statement on Iran? Certainly because Slackman's paraphrase with one word quoted to lend the statement authenticity fits Slackman's view on Iran's nuclear program more closely than Faisal's original words. But we'll never know what Faisal's original words were.

The Saudis are disappointing, even to the point of being repulsive, but I guess they are understandable. It is an example of colonial-era indirect rule that began long before oil was discovered. But this type of rule was thrown off in almost all of the rest of the world. Indians removed from power the subordinate "kings" of the British Raj, Egypt threw off its king, though the US has successfully emplaced a replacement. The colonial kings of Iraq, Libya and many Muslim countries have been removed. China's pro colonialist monarchy was removed. Saudi Arabia allowed indirect colonial rule of their country to pass from Great Britain to the United States, along with Jordan and many of the Gulf dictatorships.

It is a disgrace, the people of Saudi Arabia pay for this failing, in large and small ways they do so along with the people of Palestine and nearly every non-Jewish person in the region. But people do not reject the material benefits patrons such as Britain and the US are able to offer their subjects without a strong ideological reason. People under colonial rule do not organize and sacrifice to repulse such rule without believing in a greater historical project.

Islam, by itself, at least as understood in Saudi Arabia and the gulf states is not contradictory to colonialism. That is to be expected as when the British indirectly colonized Arabia, they had to take Islam into account. But indirect colonialism, I mean the arrangement reached between the British and their dependent puppet Egyptian King, and other similar examples throughout the world before WWII. Saudi Islam and indirect colonialism have over the last century grown together and today are mutually reinforcing.

Communism, for all of its failings and with the disclaimer that I am not a communist, developed as an ideology in the presence of and to some degree in opposition to colonialism. A community that has a large amount of ideological influence from communism is far more willing and able to organize effective responses to colonial rule than one that has less post-colonial ideological influence.

There is also post-colonial political Islam. It is not just political Islam because the Saudis are doing politics - they are making women wear veils and not allowing them to drive and they are banning alcohol so visitors who want to drink have to concoct homemade fermentation projects. The Saudis have a pre-colonialist or a co-colonialist form of political Islam. Al Qaeda, Iran, Hezbollah and others in the region espouse different and sometimes rival post-colonialist ideologies of political Islam. Like communism, these post- or anti-colonialist ideologies inherently contradict direct or indirect foreign rule in opposition to the priorities of the local ruled population.

Here are Slackman's paraphrases and quotations of Al-Faisal's words. It seems like he gave an interview Iran's Shah or another puppet ruler could have given fifty or a hundred years ago. He seems too ideologically naive to even realize how subordinate he sounds.

And yet, he said that after all those years, his legacy might be defined more by profound disappointment than by success. His generation of Arab leaders failed, he said, to produce a Palestinian state.

“We have not yet seen moments of joy in all that time,” the prince said in a recent interview in his office here in the Saudi capital. “We have seen only moments of crisis; we have seen only moments of conflict, and how can you have any pleasure in anything that happens when you have people like the Palestinians living as they are?”

“Peace until now has been like holding water or sand in your hand,” the prince said. “You see the amount of water, you think you can hold something in your hand, but it falls away. Sand is the same thing. So unless there is something to hold in your hand and to point to as a success and as an achievement, then you have done nothing.”

He said that Lebanon could never be truly sovereign as long as the Shiite militia Hezbollah “owns more arms than the military force of the country.”

He said that Iran should never be allowed to have nuclear weapons, and that he was “suspicious” of Iranian claims to be pursuing a peaceful nuclear program. He said Israel also should be pressed to give up its nuclear arsenal.

“The danger of this is that there has never ever been a weapon that has been brought in this region but that has not been used,” he said.

The burning crisis, he said, has ruined Palestinian lives and left the region staggering from crisis to crisis.

“The absolute backing of the United States to Israel has had the effect that rather than making Israel safe for making peace, it has made Israel see the option of living in the area without the acceptance of the people of the area,” he said, “and this has led to many years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.”

It is possible to be sad for Faisal. His worldview leaves him unable to even contemplate Saudi Arabia being an independent player able to impact the situation in Palestine except through expressing profound disappointment to a US newspaper.

A grand bargain between the US and Iran is unlikely

Some Western analysts, especially those who advocate talks between the US and Iran suggest that once the parties come to the negotiating table, it may be possible to reach a grand bargain that not only addresses the nuclear issue but also the issue of Iranian support for Hamas and anti-Israel organizations.

If we think of the US and West-inspired sanctions in place before 2003 as aimed at punishing Iran's support for anti-Israel organizations and we think of those put in place after 2003 as aimed at punishing Iran's nuclear program, it should be clear that neither set of sanctions threatens Iran's regime enough that Iran is willing to change the targeted behavior.

It is not commonly appreciated in the West that in both cases, the nuclear issue and the support for adversaries of Zionism, Iran believes it is doing the right thing, and doing so with broad support from the leadership and the population of the country. The weak, dependent and unpopular dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and others may confuse Western observers leading them to conclude that Iran could change from an abnormal foreign policy to a more normal one like that of Egypt.

If the framers of Egypt's foreign policy were subject to contested elections, Egypt's foreign policy would be nearly identical to that of Iran. In 2006, 92% of Egyptians considered Israel an enemy nation. Iran does not need a strategic reason to support opponents of Israel. Countries in the region that do not support opponents of Israel are the ones with abnormal foreign policies.

Iran is willing to bear the antagonism of the US in order to do the right thing with respect to the Palestinians. Most countries in the region, if they followed the directions of their populations, would be willing to do the same. Iran is also willing to bear the amount of sanctions we've seen in order to keep its nuclear program, and to gain the benefits it identifies from having nuclear technology, including that necessary, in an emergency, to make a weapon.

If the US is willing to accept Iran's support for anti-Israel organizations, a deal can be reached in which Iran continues its support with US acceptance. If Iran was willing to decrease its support for anti-Israel organizations in exchange for lifting an amount of sanctions that the US would agree to, then a deal could be reached independent of the nuclear issue.

The same for the nuclear issue, if there was a point of sanctions and behavior that was acceptable to both sides, a deal could be reached with or without an agreement on anti-Israel organizations. A grand bargain can only be reached if there are independently agreeable points on both issues. There is no reason to believe there is a point of sanctions and behavior that is acceptable to both the Iranians and Americans on either issue, much less both.

Right now the US and Israel are in the process of coming to terms with the idea that Iran cannot over the long term be prevented from acquiring a virtual nuclear weapon, or the ability to make a weapon in an emergency. Once that acceptance process is complete, the US likely will be able to find a level of Iranian nuclear activity that it accepts in exchange for decreasing the post-2003 sanctions. If not, Iran will enrich enough uranium that it feels comfortable suspending unilaterally. If Iran gets there before an agreement is made, it is possible Iran will never sign the Additional Protocols and will have a nuclear capability while only observing the bare minimum NPT requirements. Iran has a right to do that, but it is a sub-optimal outcome for the West.

Once the US is ready to reach an agreement over Iran's nuclear program, that will not create any common ground between the US and Iran on the issue of Israel's legitimacy.

Saudi foreign minister Faisal says US causes Israel to consider existing without support of its region

There are reports that Saudi Arabia's foreign minister has given an interview with the International Herald Tribune in which he claims US unconditional support for Israel prevents Israel from making concessions to the Palestinians. Hopefully the entire interview will be made public.

Unconditional US backing has led Israel to consider existing in the Middle East "without the acceptance of the people in the area," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said in an interview with the International Herald Tribune published Wednesday.

He's right, but Saudi Arabia's support for Israel is also indispensable. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel, and the Saudi delegation notoriously did not shake hands with members of the Israeli delegation at the Annapolis conference. These gestures toward the Palestinians mask the fact that Israeli strategists consider Saudi Arabia an ally, and if they did not, Saudi Arabia would be a more potent and more immediate "existential threat" to Israel than Iran is.

Some supporters of Saudi Arabia have a naive theory that Saudi Arabia is actually part of the resistance camp. Before showing that this is wrong, I want to point out that Israel's own analysis of threats to its continuation deserves a good deal of deference. Israel's leaders, citizens and defenders are adamant that Iran and groups allied with Iran are a threat. Nearly every discussion involving an Israeli concerning Israel's strategic situation mentions Iran, I've never seen Saudi Arabia mentioned in that context. It is completely clear that those who obsess most over the future of Israel's Jewish majority status are comfortable that Saudi Arabia does not threaten that future.

I want to point again to the threat US strategists believe Iran poses to Israel:

Israel fears that Iran’s nuclear ambitions could undermine its qualitative superiority of arms and its consistent ability to inflict disproportionate casualties on adversaries -- the cornerstones of Israel’s defense strategy. Although some idealists dream of reconciliation in the Middle East based on a genuine and mutual recognition of all parties’ legitimate rights, most Israelis believe the key to enduring peace in the Middle East is convincing Israel’s adversaries that ejecting Israel through force is an impossible task not worth pursuing.

Essential to inducing that sense of despair is Israel’s ability to continuously trounce its enemies on the battlefield and suffer far fewer losses than it inflicts. The Iranian nuclear program threatens Israel’s ability to do this in two ways. First, an Iranian nuclear capability would likely force Israel to restrain itself due to fears that Iran’s nuclear weapons could provide an implied security guarantee to other anti-Zionist forces -- the sort of guarantee that would prevent Israel from causing the massive losses it has in the past, while giving anti-Israel forces the confidence to keep up the fight.

If Saudi Arabia was a member of the resistance camp, its greater wealth and smaller distance to Israel would enable it to develop a credible threat to destroy Tel Aviv and Jerusalem years more quickly than Iran could. Once that threat is established, without being used, it would make the continuation of Israel's Jewish-majority status non-viable against the wishes of the Palestinians and the Saudis. In short everything Iran could threaten to do to Israel, Saudi Arabia could threaten, even with conventional weapons, more quickly and easily if so inclined.

There is no strategic or ideological reason Saudi Arabia does not develop into the threat to Israel's Jewish-majority status that Iran has. Saudi Arabia, due only to its own lack of indenpendence, is a member of the accommodationist camp. The United States has developed an inordinate amount of leverage over the Saudi dictatorship and directs Saudi policy in directions that are not inconsistent with US priorities and sensibilities, even if they are in conflict with the priorities and sensibilities of the people of Saudi Arabia.

The trade is that a very backwards form of government that otherwise would not be sustainable is propped up using US resources in exchange for the Saudi's being US agents in their region. A government where a half-dozen or more 70 and 80 year old brothers each in turn gets a chance to be king could not survive even internal pressures without outside help, which is only available to Saudi Arabia in exchange for the Saudis refraining from playing a role like that Iran plays. The Saudi dictatorship is sustained by a mutual betrayal of US as well as Arabian values.

The Saudi government represented by Faisal is really a disgrace and an embarrassment to the people it rules, to the Muslim religion, and to the Arab people as a whole. He only highlights the how pathetic the situation is by complaining to a US newspaper about how US policy enables Israel while ignoring that his own country does the same.

Israel's military intelligence chief says Iran is aiming for nuclear capability

It has always been fairly clear that Iran doesn't want or need an actual nuclear weapon. It has also been clear that while the West and Israel have claimed their aim was to prevent Iran from building a weapon, US, Israeli and Western policy has aimed to prevent Iran from getting what Juan Cole describes as a latent military capability.

But saying "Iran is trying to make a bomb" is more emotionally evocative than saying the more accurate "Iran reserves the right to acquire technology that could give it the option to make a bomb if it chooses". Israelis speaking in public have, as far as I've seen, always said the first, never the second.

Israeli Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin broke that pattern recently.

Yadlin said he did not think Iran actually wanted to make a bomb right now. Rather, what it wants is to become a "threshold state" - one with the capability of producing a bomb quickly when it deems the time right.

"The moment Iran succeeds in definitely establishing its status and image as a threshold state," he added, this "will enable its allies to do things they currently dare not do."

Eventually, Western speakers are going to have to back away from the position that a latent capability is the same thing as a weapon, because Iran has a latent capability. Possibly that is what is happening now. Israel is beginning to pivot into acceptance of Iran's nuclear capability. Possibly it was just a slip, a statement that was not calculated to get a wide audience.

Another concept of Yadlin's that deserves a closer look is his thought that Syria is secular and therefore not a natural member of the resistance camp with Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

"Syria is a secular country and, unlike Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, it does not rule out the chance of reaching a peace agreement with Israel," he said in an address to the annual conference of the Institute for National Security Studies.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, he said, "is not naturally entrenched in the radical axis."

Secularists such as Nasser are just as naturally members of the resistance camp as religious figures such as Khomeinei. The most religious and most Islamist society in the world is not Iran, it is either Saudi Arabia or another of the gulf puppet dictatorships. There are religious accommodaters of Zionism like the Saudi king Abdullah and there are secular accommodaters such as Mahmoud Abbas.

I guess Israel's acceptance can be step by step. First it can accept that Iran is nuclear capable. The indication of this is that Israeli leaders will stop describing Iranian enrichment as an existential threat. Then Israel will accept that the reason its legitimacy is universally disbelieved in its region is because the state was formed on territory where non-Jewish people formed a majority and the state was formed against the will of the inhabitants. Israel's non-acceptance is for exactly the same reason White South Africa was never, and most likely would never have been, accepted in its region. Yadlin's idea that Syria "naturally" will accept Israel I guess will have to be corrected later.

Khamenei says dispute over Zionism is a main reason for Iran's enmity with the West

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei claims that if Iran ended its support for the Palestinians, Western hostility toward his country would dissipate. Of course he's right, and I've argued this point often, however this can serve as confirmation that Iran's leadership perceives US policy toward their country as being motivated largely by a desire to further Israel's regional interests.

"One of the main reasons behind the enmity of the global hegemony toward the Islamic Republic is the Palestinian issue," said the Leader on Tuesday.

"If Iran had backtracked about the Palestinian issue, much of such hostilities would have ceased to exist; however, regarding this matter we stand fast," Ayatollah Khamenei added.

Westerners are uncomfortable considering exactly how many resources the US and other Western countries exert propping up Israel as a Jewish majority state. US leadership in the drive to ensure Iran does not becomes weapons capable while at the same time sabotaging its economic development generally is hugely expensive for the US, both in terms of resources allocated and in terms of profits foregone by the US boycott of Iran's economy.

Of course a far greater cost is borne by the non-Jewish people of the region, including the Lebanese whose farms are littered with Israeli cluster-bombs and citizens of Saudi Arabia who can't vote out their embarrassing laws such as that women cannot drive because the US supports their autocratic dictatorship. (There are many examples of the price of Israel's Jewish majority in every country in the region. Maybe one day I'll try to list them all, but for now I'll stop at two.)

The fact that Khamenei has said it in public now makes it unarguable that at least the Iranians believe that is a primary motivating factor behind the US opposition to their development.

George Perkovich's interview with the Council for Foreign Relations

I stumbled on this interview looking through the website of the Council for Foreign Relations. In it, George Perkovich describes what looks like the Western consensus of Iran's nuclear issue, particularly in relation to the deal to the failed late September deal for Iran to export its uranium in exchange for medical reactor fuel. This interview was from before the escalation of tensions that occurred with and after the IAEA Governor's Board resolution and Iran's subsequent announcement that it plans to open ten enrichment facilities.

Here are Bernard Gwertzman's questions and my impressions of Perkovich's answers.

The Security Council's permanent members plus Germany have met and issued another statement asking Iran to reconsider its apparent rejections and respond positively to the tentative agreement that was reached in Vienna a month ago, calling on Iran to transfer most of its low-enriched uranium to Russia and France. But since then, the Iranians have seemingly walked away from this tentative agreement. What do you think has happened in Iran?

Perkovich repeatedly asserts that it had been a good deal for Iran, but never explains why. When I see that behavior I wonder if the person I'm observing is trying to convince himself as much as his audience. This is similar to the insistence almost always without any further evidence that the elections in June were fraudulent.

The deal as made public was a bad deal. Beyond just bad, it was an insult to the intelligence of the Iranians. Let me explain why. Once Iran exports its LEU it has the West's collective word that it will receive fuel in return. Iran has had Russia's most insistent promise that Bushehr would start within the next year for the last five years. It is by now well and openly understood that Bushehr will not open until it is authorized by the Americans who, as of now, will not permit that until Iran suspends enrichment. Once Iran exports its LEU, if the pattern set by Bushehr is followed, it will not get fuel until it suspends enrichment. Iran does not plan to suspend enrichment. So Iran under the public terms of the deal would export its LEU and receive nothing.

The Americans have given their word that this time would be different. The Americans are less dependable for the Iranians than the Russians who've made the same statement many times. In addition, France has said that it does not want to enrich uranium on Iran's behalf while Iran enriches its own uranium. This is not situation of uncertainty. If Iran exports its LEU under these circumstances, it is certainly not getting anything back without suspending, and a suspension at this point is unacceptable for Iran.

"We demanded to take a large quantity of (LEU) because we do not want them, while we are enriching uranium on their behalf, to continue themselves enriching uranium which could one day be used for military purposes," he told Yedioth Ahronoth daily.

Iran apparently said that in principle it could accept this deal. Perkovich interprets that as Iran saying it accepts this deal. "In principle" is a very clear reservation. Iran accepts this deal if the obvious and insulting hole is filled. When Iran learned that the hole would not be filled, it does not accept the deal.

What is in public is a bad deal. Is it that Perkovich knows this and for some reason wants to fool Gwertzman and his readers or is it that Perkovich is completely unable to see the deal from Iran's point of view? I'm puzzled by this.

I think there was more to the deal in private, that the entire deal was reasonable for Iran, in that it would allow Iran to continue enrichment, and that Iran did shift in October. Part of the shift was because of the attack on Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Balochistan and part was because the West could not give adequate assurances that once the LEU was out it would not revert to the bad public deal. I take an unpopular position in that belief.

Perkovich believes that Iran was initially willing to take the deal in part because the revelation of the Fordo plant put Iran on the defensive. First "in principle" does not mean Iran was initially willing to take the deal. What "in principle" means is that Iran was willing to see if the outline of the deal could be negotiated to something acceptable. But the Fordo plant was not illegal by Iran's interpretation of its obligations. As excited as the Western non-proliferation community became, Iran never had a reason to feel defensive.

If Western negotiators changed in tone after the Fordo revelations based on the idea that Iran was or should have been on the defensive, that would have been enough to torpedo the deal.

And then what happened?

Here is where Perkovich claims the deal that Ahmadinejad really wanted was rejected against Ahmadinejad's wishes and judgment by everyone else in Iran. It was a bad deal. Ahmadinejad did not want the public deal to pass, ever. Nobody in Iran ever would have accepted the deal as its presented in public. If there was more to the deal, the attacks from Ahmadinejad's right could have been the cue for Obama to publicly soften his rejection of Iran's right to enrich, which could have been a signal that other terms that make the deal favorable to Iran are actually being offered and which would begin the process of easing hardline Westerners into accepting Iranian enrichment. That didn't happen. I don't know if Ahmadinejad expected it to, but that is the type of thing I thought would have been in a private deal.

We did notice at the time that Mousavi, who people in the West had been lauding for his opposition to Ahmadinejad's staged reelection, was in the forefront of the opposition. This shocked people who thought, incorrectly, that everyone opposed to Ahmadinejad would seek an accommodation with the West.

Mousavi is about as important in Iranian politics today as the Shah's heir. He can say whatever he wants, but the charge that the election was fraudulent that was not supported with real evidence has left him and his faction in Iranian politics discredited and fairly powerless. He made the obvious observation that the public deal was bad and may have hoped to keep himself in the public eye and relevant in that way.

Westerners greatly overestimate the impulse to seek accommodation with the West, especially on the West's terms, in Iran. Polls show that only a tiny minority of Iranians would make the changes the West wants - limit to support for Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups, recognition or tacit acceptance of Israel, limits to Iran's nuclear program - in exchange for better relations with the West.

The Shah accommodated the West. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt accommodate the West. Very few people in Iran think following the path of the Shah, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Egypt would be a beneficial change in direction for Iran. Nearly all Iranians consider Iran's current policies to be superior to those of the examples of countries that accommodate the West.

Anyone shocked that Mousavi did not favor submitting to Western demands horribly misreads Iran. Even if Mousavi had won his policies would have been far closer to Ahamdinejad's than to Barack Obama's friend Hosni Mubarak's.

I haven't seen much from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on this, have you?

This was not that big an issue, the West made a bad deal, didn't agree to change the terms and Iran rejected the deal. Khamenei joined in the denunciations but he was by that point just stating the obvious.

I noticed Obama, in his comments in South Korea at the end of his Asian trip, said the United States and its partners would give Iran until the end of the year, and then they would have to think about tougher sanctions. That's pretty much been his position lately, and wouldn't this undercut Obama's big effort to get a real dialogue going with Iran?

By this point, either the US has to accept that Iran is nuclear capable or not. The issue is not dialogue. If the US comes to the table hoping to prevent Iran from being nuclear capable, discussions will go nowhere and during negotiations Iran will continue building its nuclear stock. If the US comes to the table hoping to find a way to leave Iran with a nuclear capability under the type of IAEA supervision that other nuclear capable countries have, even an especially stringent regime of supervision, then dialogue can be fruitful. In an emergency, Iran will be able to produce a nuclear weapon, maybe not in six months, but soon enough that the US can't impose an emergency on Iran without taking into account a nuclear retaliation. That is the case today and will be the case for the foreseeable future. The question of Iran's nuclear capability has been answered. The issue for US policy is by what means and over how much time will the US come to accept this reality.

Sanctions, even if they are very tough, will not change this reality in the direction the US would like.

And you've been fairly convinced for some time that Iran really wants the capability to have nuclear weapons, right?

Perkovich is right. He could have added that the capability is not an unusual thing and that a lot of countries have it without issue.

What do you make of this formerly secret facility near Qom? They claim it's a fallback for its big processing facility in Natanz. But it's so small, they couldn't really do much nuclear processing there, could they?

We have to understand Iran's expansion of its enrichment program in the light of leaving Iran with options if it is attacked. Maybe the US would totally destroy Fordo, maybe the US would only damage it lightly. Iran does not know beforehand what the aftermath of a US attack would look like, so Iran needs flexibility. If the US gets Fordo, it'll miss another facility. Whatever facility remains after any attack is where Iran's nuclear resources will be diverted and what Iran would use, in this scenario that is very unlikely to ever happen, to make its own nuclear weapon.

When Iran announced that it would build ten underground enrichment facilities, the number ten was an expression of defiance, but the idea of multiple unknown facilities expressed that Iran intends that its infrastructure will have some capacity even after an attack. This information is meant and hopefully does have a deterrent effect.

Do you agree that Iran doesn't really have enough uranium to have a nuclear power plant capability without importing uranium?

Well, after the West accepts Iran's right to enrich uranium, Iran will be able to import raw uranium under much better terms than its current situation of dependence on an oligopoly of Russian and Western nuclear fuel suppliers. Iran may also help break that oligopoly, selling fuel on better terms than are currently available for developing nations.

But there are sanctions against them being able to import it, right?

Perkovich says the current sanctions do not over natural uranium. I've read otherwise, but US pressure on a case-by-case basis is now being expended to keep Iran from building its stock of unprocessed uranium. One way or another, the sanctions and policies of today will not always be relevant. Iran likely will find itself importing uranium in the future.

Let's play out a little scenario. We've got five weeks left before the end of the year. If you're in the inner circles with Obama, what do you advise?

Mr. Obama, do you accept Iranian enrichment or not? If yes, the deal you can get today is better than the deal you'll be able to get in six months, much less years from now. If not, I guess we're just going to watch time pass and Iran's LEU stock increase until you change your mind.

Perkovich suggests that some point short of a nuclear weapon should be defined by the UN Security Council as being a nuclear weapon and if Iran crosses that point, I guess the US should be authorized to attack Iran. I'm not sure what Perkovich thinks should happen if Iran crosses the line he suggests the Security Council draw. I find that idea unworkable, but it has the benefit of accepting Iranian enrichment. But if he accepts Iranian enrichment, the US is better off making a deal that puts Iran's nuclear program under supervision.

Is it time for the lawyers to go home?

Remember how Barack Obama reserves the right to ignore international standards in defending his nation?

To begin with, I believe that all nations - strong and weak alike - must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I - like any head of state - reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates - and weakens - those who don't.

"Standards" such as the UN Charter, a binding treaty that the US ratified and whose negotiation the United States played the leading role in directing, that prohibits unauthorized attacks on other nations. Here is Article 2, part 4:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

What is legal and what is not legal is often a very interesting question. So interesting that it is possible to ignore more important questions in favor of this one that sometimes is not the most important consideration.

The important questions regarding Iran's nuclear program are how many centrifuges is the West willing to accept, and how large a stock of LEU is the West willing to accept on Iranian soil. The conflict can be resolved if Iran and the West come to an agreement on these two questions, possibly combined with incentives such as reducing sanctions already in place and will not be resolved before these two questions are answered.

We've reached the point where even if Iran's nuclear program is the most illegal activity ever carried out by a nation in human history, the benefits to the nation of the program vastly outweigh, vastly, any consequence the US can arrange for Iran to be forced to pay for it. As Iran's nuclear capability stabilizes, Iran becomes immune to threats of foreign attack or invasion. Because of how virtual weapons work, Iran will never have to build a weapon. Knowing Iran could build a weapon will prevent the US from acting in a way that could invite the crisis it would take to cause Iran to exercise its weapon option. This deterrence will remain even after Iran loses its huge current deterrence when the US sheds its vulnerabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Legal arguments can be made back and forth. Even before Barack Obama's proud announcement, during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, that probably the single most important international law of the last century is a "standard" to be ignored at his discretion in the name of protecting his country from hypothetical threats that only he evaluates, these arguments have seemed to ignore important realities. What if Iran's program is illegal, but sanctions and military attacks just would not work to prevent the program from reaching its goal? When legality or illegality does not make a practical difference, we're done with the lawyers. They can go home now.

One interesting idea to keep in mind is that a team of Western negotiators from 2009 would very easily come to an agreement with a team of Iranian negotiators from 2006. The 2006 Iranian negotiators would have been very happy with caps of fewer than five hundred centrifuges and less than 300 kg of LEU for maybe the next ten years, at which point it would be possible for the deal to be renewed.

The ground has been steadily shifting in Iran's favor ever since then. And importantly the sanctions and other measures taken against Iran have created a sense on the Iranian side that it has earned, and paid for, its advances to this point. I can fairly safely project that a team of 2013 Western negotiators would jump at holding Iran's LEU stock under one ton, and limit Iran's enrichment to fewer than four thousand centrifuges all at one facility.

But instead of facing a 2009 Iranian negotiating team, which probably would accept that offer, the 2013 Western negotiators will face 2013 Iranian negotiators who will feel that the delays in Bushehr and in the S-300s and the trade, energy and investment deals the US interfered with were an investment Iran was forced to make for a more capable nuclear program, that Iran by then will not be willing to relinquish.

So instead, Western negotiators are going to try to engage Iran in a debate about whether or not it is legal to plan tests on technology in nuclear weapons. Then they'll engage Iran in a debate about unsourced documents, and how they impact the legal obligations of IAEA members. Meanwhile they'll stumble forward until they find themselves in 2013 when they'll feel very generous offering that Iran revert to its 2009 nuclear program, which Iran will reject.

The question of what is legal or not is no longer an interesting question, but if Western analysts want to keep asking it, I guess that's in the long term better for Iran.

A secret document has emerged of alarming tests Iran has planned

The West and its secret documents.

Let's say the document is genuine, and for all I know it is. No evidence has been presented that it is genuine, there is not even a back-story whose plausibility we can assess. Some Asian intelligence service discovered it somehow. If a document like this had been important, then the fact that undated and visibly edited documents are extremely easy to forge and there are several independent bodies with both the means and motivation to forge something like this would mean I'd assign the document, until corroboration arrives, no evidential value.

But the document is not important.

Iran is no longer implementing the Additional Protocols of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran's legal obligation under the original NPT and the safeguards agreement it ratified are that it not produce a weapon and not divert fissile material to a weapons program. That's it. The legal requirements of the NPT are not very stringent. The treaty itself explicitly allows a member nation to, with relatively short notice, free itself from all requirements and go ahead and actually build a weapon.

Article II

Each non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the Treaty undertakes not to receive the transfer from any transferor whatsoever of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or of control over such weapons or explosive devices directly, or indirectly; not to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices; and not to seek or receive any assistance in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.

By the NPT, Iran is allowed to develop weapons designs, it is allowed to test components for a weapon, it is allowed to plan tests. Iran is not allowed to manufacture a weapon and it is not allowed to divert its uranium or any thorium or plutonium from civilian to military use while it is in the treaty. The document does not say Iran has done anything prohibited by the documents that Iran considers to be legally in force.

The biggest problem the document causes is that it gets the Western non-proliferation community very excited. Western analysts have a really naive and self-centered perception that the more strongly they feel their concerns are justified, the more pressure Iran feels to cooperate with them. The Fordo plant had not been illegal when it surfaced, but similarly it made the Western proliferation community feel indignant, and they were sure this sense of indignance would in some way cause Iran to feel pressure to submit to their demands.

So here we go. In the world of Western non-proliferation analysts, the only possible response for Iran to this document is to ship most of its uranium to Russia, to ease their concerns. It is perfectly legal for the US to have concerns about Iran's nuclear program, or to consider it bad, or to lack trust in it, or to doubt it has purely peaceful purposes, or to suspect Iran's intentions might include gaining a nuclear capability. It is amazing how important this document seems in London and Washington compared to how unimportant it must seem in Tehran.

About Article 2, I've read a British analyst claim that the document from the Khan network describing fashioning metal hemispheres from uranium constitutes assistance in building a weapon. I would call that a stretch of an interpretation and still to be rectified within the framework of the NPT, which does not mandate under any circumstances the suspension of civil nuclear activities. I guess it's arguable, like the idea that the UN Security Council can overturn any sovereign right it chooses and has legally revoked Iran's right to enrich uranium.

As far as the document goes, Baradei is gone so this will show us the inclination of his successor, Yukiya Amano of Japan. The worst case for Iran is that Amano decides the document is genuine and demands to speak to people referred to in the document. This demand is outside of Iran's legal requirements even if the document is genuine, and Iran will not comply with the demand. The IAEA will add that demand to the list of demands whose legality Iran disputes, including that Iran ratify a new treaty, that are already in the UNSC resolutions and Iran will continue building its LEU stockpile. In practical terms, in the worst case scenario for Iran, nothing changes about the situation.

This document, forged or genuine, is completely irrelevant to the issue of negotiating how much enrichment will Iran's program have going forward. How many centrifuges, how large a domestic stock. Maybe no agreement can be reached, but any statement or argument that does not address either the question of number of centrifuges or kilograms of stock LEU is really a waste of time.

Stratfor says the jihadists are losing

George Friedman of Statfor argues that while the US is in an uncomfortable position in the Middle East, its adversaries, that he describes as Jihadists (I'll follow his convention just for convenience here) are in a much more uncomfortable position. I think he misreads the Jihadist's goals to arrive at this conclusion.

The basic argument is that attacks against targets in countries whose regimes are supportive of the US increase the repression against anti-regime groups in those countries. By this argument, the attacks that the Jihadists have been able to launch have made their movement weaker. Friedman misses that the Jihadist war really is a huge asymmetric war of attrition - waged between people who live in the region and people far away.

First, Friedman misreads the goals of the Jihadists. The idea that the Jihadists have as a tangible goal the creation of a Caliphate is commonly held but just simply and bizarrely wrong. I've never heard anything remotely resembling that from any of the mainstream spokespeople of the resistance camp. The Jihadists are fighting against the US and Western direct and indirect interference in the leadership of their region. There were anti-Apartheid fighters who dreamed of a communist state - others dreamed of a united Africa. But what they were fighting was White rule in South Africa. What would come after was infinitely less important.

The 9/11 attack, and before that the decision to attack US targets, was not aimed, directly, at overthrowing pro-US regimes. There were moral and strategic components to the attacks. Morally, strategy aside, there was the emotional idea that the US should be directly punished for the harm it does to Muslims in the Middle East. Strategically, the idea was that by increasing the cost of the US position in the region, it is possible to make continuing to influence the region prohibitively expensive, thereby causing the US to leave.

The moral goal was achieved. Americans have lost family members the way Egyptians have lost family members to the authoritarian Mubarak regime that Barack Obama is so fond of. The US is not secured from the repercussions of its policies by its distance. The US has been able to, at manageable but non-negligible expense, intercept and prevent further attacks so far, but there are also elements of luck and unpredictability to that. Possibly another attack will succeed next year. If not, the US is spending money preventing the next attack that it is not spending on other US priorities.

The strategic goal has not been achieved. What is the limit that the US is willing to spend to ensure that there will always be a Jewish majority state in the Middle East? Whatever the limit, we are closer to it today than we were in August 2001. So progress has been made towards that goal, even though the goal has not been attained.

To understand role Israel as a Jewish state plays in the Middle East, it is helpful compare it to the very similar case of White South Africa. White South Africa was not accepted by its neighbors and because of that it and its supporters had to expend resources in many ways for White South Africa to remain politically and militarily dominant over those neighbors. White South Africa's peculiar strategic requirements made civil war in neighboring countries valuable in themselves because energy and attention consumed in those wars would not be directed at challenging White South Africa. Legitimate leadership, any leadership that followed, for any reason, the sensibilities of the people ruled were a threat to White South Africa anywhere in the region. Supporters of White South Africa made resources available to opposition movements and anti-legitimate rulerships throughout the region to prevent legitimate regimes from taking power.

This is not to say the only US interest in the region was the protection of the White state. This is not to say that without the White State, a Utopian nirvana would immediately be reached. Neither of these has to be true for White South Africa to be the most important driver for regional discord while it existed. White South Africa very clearly was the single most important driver for discord in its region. Post democracy majority Black South Africa has no need for a nuclear monopoly, for civil wars or for illegitimate regimes ruling the other countries of the region. There was a lot of misery spread throughout White South Africa's region in the interest of ensuring that a White State could remain secure.

There are over 200 million people in states that figure in Israel's nearby strategic calculations. Many of these people live under US-supported authoritarian dictatorships. Those who do not nearly all suffer from US-organized attempts to at least sabotage their economies. This is a cost that simply would not have to be borne but for the protection of majority status for about 5 million Jewish people in Israel. What these Jewish people are being protected from at the expense of everyone else in the region is the fate of White people in South Africa - meaning a negotiated settlement that leaves them with their property and rights intact but without a political majority.

The Jihadists have raised the cost for the United States of protecting Israel's Jewish majority. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are part of that cost. The fact that the US' options are limited in preventing Iran from attaining a nuclear weapons capability is part of that cost.

As an aside, while Iranians are Shiites ,Al Qaeda is Sunni, and much is made of the conflict between Sunnis and Shiites, the religious Sunni man who killed Sadat is a national hero in Iran. The most important dispute in the Middle East is not between Sunni and Shiite, but between the accommodationist parties and the resistance parties in the Middle East. I've seen Iraq's government described as Shiite accommodationists, though I don't make that charge yet myself because it is not clear how much leverage the US will be able to maintain in Iraq for how long. There are many Sunni groups in the resistance camp, including the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Hamas in Palestine. The important dispute, the single most behaviorally predictive dispute in the region, is a direct result of differing reactions to the universally unpopular proposition in the region that there should be a Jewish majority state in Palestine.

So the question remains, have Jihadist attacks brought the world closer to a realization by the US that it can no longer afford to fight over 200 million non-Jews in the region to prevent a one-state solution? The US has not reached that realization yet, but it is difficult to think of a reasonable argument that the US is not closer to that realization today than it was in early 2001.

Another question - have the Jihadist attacks been the best strategy to reach that end? I believe non-violent protests, up to and including civil disobedience in the US and other countries of the West would work much better, especially at this point because the goals of the Jihadists are not widely understood in the West - that is a problem much more efficiently solved non-violently than violently.

But Friedman's contention that the Jihadists are losing misreads and overstates the case. They haven't won yet, but they are fighting a different battle than the one Friedman thinks they are fighting and they've made progress over the last decade.

A long view of the trajectory of Iran's nuclear program in view of Gary Sick's description of the recent simulation

Last week, Harvard University conducted a simulation of possible approaches to the issue of Iran's nuclear program. The results and the feelings about the exercise of some of the participants were reported along with a small review by Gary Sick, a former US government Iran policy-maker. Mr. Sick played the part of Iran's decision-makers in the Harvard simulation.

"We started out thinking we were playing a weak hand, but by the end, everyone was negotiating for us," said the leader of the Iranian team, Columbia University professor Gary Sick.

Gary Sick was an early and enthusiastic proponent of the theory that Ahmadinejad's electoral victory was the result of fraud. His most recent position is that we will never know if there was fraud or not. His current theory about Iran's government is that the Revolutionary Guards have mounted a coup of some sort and silently taken control of Iran's government without actually deposing anyone.

Mr. Sick seems to have some animus against the Iranian government, which is overwhelmingly common among western analysts. My immediate impression was that if an actual Iranian official cannot be convinced to play Iran in this simulation, it would be better to use an analyst less hostile to the Iranian regime - possibly Flynn and/or Hillary Leverett or Kaveh Afrasiabi. But when I read that the result of the game was that Iran ended up in a stronger position at the end of the year my thought was that if they couldn't get Gary Sick to stop enriching, of course they won't get Iran's actual leadership to stop.

Now Mr. Sick presents a much more in depth view of how the game played out. Unlike last week's article where he was quoted saying he thought Iran started from a weak position but was surprised that the other players made deals, he corrects or clarifies that position by saying that playing Iran he knew from the beginning that the West would not be able to stop the enrichment program or apply enough pressure through sanctions to threaten the survival of the regime.

Those of us on the Iran team scarcely paid any attention to all this massive US policy exertion. Admittedly, we felt lonely at times. But we never believed that our core objectives (freedom to proceed with our nuclear plans and our growing appetite for domestic political repression) were at risk – nor was the survival of our rather peculiar regime, which was of course our most immediate concern.

The single sentence I found most interesting was: "It was probably realistic that no one challenged Iran’s right to enrich. That has reluctantly been accepted as a fait accompli." It is so clear by now that there is no plausible way to stop Iran from enriching uranium that it does not make sense that the US government and the international negotiators would still have suspension as a practical objective.

If US negotiators realize that Iranian enrichment is already a fact on the ground, that makes it more plausible that over the last year they've privately presented an arrangement that would maintain Iranian enrichment. I think it is likely that the Obama administration has not gotten behind such an arrangement publicly to avoid pressure from supporters of Israel.

I recently stumbled upon a presentation by Dr. Bruno Pellard of an organization called the Swiss Nuclear Forum that proposed in March 2008 that Iran continue to enrich uranium, but export its production so that it remains at a target domestic stock of LEU of around 300 kg. If Iran was to agree to this, after the initial export, Iran would make further shipments of LEU to an international fuel bank, which is an idea Ahmadinejad mentioned in November.

In early October, all parties' behavior struck me as consistent with an agreement along these lines. The most efficient way to reach this would be to commit to it before-hand, but I suspected and suspect that political considerations on the US side dictated that details be released piece by piece if it was to be agreed at all.

The fundamental structural problem with such an arrangement is that if Israel's supporters are powerful enough with the Obama administration that the administration is afraid to say the obvious, that it will have to accept Iranian enrichment, in public, then Israel's supporters are powerful enough that they'll be able to prevent the US from committing to any deal later.

As of now, I doubt Iran would go for this. I still believe the Iranian position hardened after the Balochistan bombing. Iran is approaching the next important point in its nuclear program. Iran may have already passed, or certainly is nearly passing the "point of no return", at which an Iranian decision to make a weapon could not reliably be thwarted even militarily. The next point is what I call the "the point of magnanimous suspension". When Iran has a certain stock of uranium, maybe three or four times what it has now, it could comply with the UNSC resolutions without compromising its weapons capability.

With a stock of four tons of uranium, Iran can then agree to suspend enrichment and implement the additional protocols but still retain the acknowledged ability to restart the program and build a weapon if there is ever a crisis. How virtual nuclear weapons work is that Iran's ability to build a weapon in a crisis will prevent any crisis from being reached in the first place. That means Iran will get to keep its pledge and follow its ideals that nuclear weapons are inhumane and unnecessary.

What the US has not gotten and likely aims to get is first an IAEA request and then a UNSC resolution demanding that Iran export all of the uranium it has enriched so far. A resolution like that would allow sanctions to continue even if Iran decides it has enriched all it needs, which point is very likely to arrive before the end of Obama's second term. Such a resolution would be bizarrely arbitrary but no more illegal than those we've already seen. The US must have presented such a resolution to Russia and China by now and been denied. Iran would ignore such a resolution, just as it ignores present resolutions but an important point to watch is that the bigger Iran's stockpile, the more room Iran has to make gestures towards the negotiators while maintaining nuclear weapons capability.

Gary Sick thinks the US should try to reach a deal with Iran and should have been more flexible on the issue of Iran exporting its uranium immediately. I disagree. I do not think the important issue is the pretext for exporting uranium that Iran and the West use to get Iran's domestic stock to the target level. The important issue is a public commitment by both sides to an overall arrangement.

To break out of the impasse that Iran and the US have reached, the US has to get enough independent flexibility to publicly offer an agreement in which Iran retains domestic enrichment - despite vehement opposition to acceptance of Iranian enrichment by Israel. If the US had been able to do that in September an arrangement like the Swiss proposal could well have been implemented during 2010. If the US becomes able to do it today, it likely could get a cap on Iran's domestic stock of LEU of about a ton, maybe a little less.

If not, it looks like Iran is just going to enrich all of the uranium it has or enough that there is no benefit to a larger stock, then Iran will suspend unilaterally which will take the wind out of any sanctions that are actually in place and Iran will resume trade with whatever countries are willing to trade. At this point, that seems like the most likely outcome. Whoever is president after Ahmadinejad will find himself permitted by Iran's Supreme Leader (who will certainly still be in place and in power) to make a grand confidence building gesture for peace while Iran sits on several tons of 3.5% enriched uranium and possibly even one weapon worth of 20% enriched uranium.

I guess it was the Nobel Prize speech we'd expect

It was an interesting speech. Barack Obama has never presented himself as a pacifist. He's a nationalist and to a degree I did not expect two years ago, he has bought in essentially fully to the US/Zionist conception of the Middle East. So he gives a speech that peace depends on US victory in all of its conflicts. George W. Bush, Stalin, Ahmadinejad, Hitler, Bin Laden all could have given that speech with changes in details.

The icons of pacifism, Dr. Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandi were naive and didn't realize, as Barack does, that violence is actually necessary. How much violence? No amount that could be determined a-priori. The amount of violence you observe the US applying under President Obama is the right amount of violence.

Giving him the award was a mistake and the speech confirmed that it was a mistake, but as mistakes go, nobody directly died because of the award. It is difficult to be overly angry. The nomination was made during the height of Obama-mania immediately after his inauguration. It was understandable, I imagine, and I do not think it in any crushing way discredits the committee or the award itself.

I do want to take a look at the portions that show Obama's view of the Middle East.

But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars. One of these wars is winding down. The other is a conflict that America did not seek; one in which we are joined by forty three other countries - including Norway - in an effort to defend ourselves and all nations from further attacks.

The idea that a war can be discounted because it is "winding down" just strikes me as immature. The idea that the US did not seek its conflict with Afghanistan is typically American and wrong on more than one level. First there is no obligation to invade a country from which a terrorist attack is planned. Second, and more important, keeping the Middle East safe for Israel exacts a huge toll among the other people of the Middle East.

The United States targeted Iraq's water treatment infrastructure which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths of Iraq children. Egypt is kept under a dictatorship that Obama will not call authoritarian because its leader does not speak against Israel. The US now claims it is working to apply sanctions on the Iranian population to ensure Israel keeps its regional monopoly on nuclear weapons-capability. It was only a natural progression that the people of the Middle East would attack the US directly in retaliation for the misery the US applies to the people of the Middle East so that about 5 million Jewish people do not have to tolerate Arab majority rule.

The misery now inflicted upon Afghanistan and Pakistan to prevent the resources from these countries from being used to retaliate for US attacks on the Muslim world are now being added to the list of offenses committed - directly and indirectly in opposition to a one-state solution to the conflict over Zionism - that Muslim people will understandably seek to punish the US for. By today I would not expect Obama to understand that Dr. King is exactly right in that the violence he believes is morally acceptable and necessary is only begetting more violence.

For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I believe that Obama believes this, but it is a silly idea and completely false. The United States harms the Muslim world in specific ways - almost always ultimately in support of Israel. The US supports the authoritarian dictatorships in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf relative to more anti-Zionist and more democratic leaderships in the region. Maybe these pro-Zionist regimes could continue without US support, but if they did Al Qaeda would have no conflict with the US. Bin Laden, speaking for Al Qaeda has said this explicitly.

Even though it is true that a change in US policy would convince Al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms, this is a concept Barack Obama simply will not allow himself to believe. In his world, it is impossible for the US allow even the peaceful defeat of Zionism in favor of a one state solution - and with that false but accepted premise, it is impossible for the US to peacefully resolve its conflict with Al Qaeda and the Muslim world.

Obama probably really believes he has shown a limit to Al Qaeda's reasoning, rather than his own. He's free to hold whatever views he wants, but a person whose thinking does not go further than rationalizations of his own nationalism should not be given a Nobel Peace Prize. Oh well, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

To begin with, I believe that all nations - strong and weak alike - must adhere to standards that govern the use of force. I - like any head of state - reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend my nation. Nevertheless, I am convinced that adhering to standards strengthens those who do, and isolates - and weakens - those who don't.

The Barack Obama doctrine is pretty explicit here that, for all states, national interest renders all international law advisory rather than mandatory. If a country is willing to accept any international costs, it has a right and obligation to ignore "standards" that it judges hamper national defense. Just pointing that out.

That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions.

Obama has a bad habit of doing this in his speeches. He says things that are very transparently half-truths, and that only decrease his credibility. Prohibited torture? It is widely reported that torture continues under the Obama administration at least in the Bagram base in Afghanistan. Of course, Guantanamo has not closed, and the Geneva Conventions require steps, such as allowing investigation of Bagram and conducting investigations of previous Americans accused or ordering or failing to prevent torture that Obama does not abide by. Obama abiding by parts of the Geneva Conventions is no departure from George W. Bush who also abided by its interpretations of parts of the Geneva Conventions.

First, in dealing with those nations that break rules and laws, I believe that we must develop alternatives to violence that are tough enough to change behavior - for if we want a lasting peace, then the words of the international community must mean something. Those regimes that break the rules must be held accountable. Sanctions must exact a real price. Intransigence must be met with increased pressure - and such pressure exists only when the world stands together as one.

Sanctions for countries that "break the rules". This is a really common American tactic for directing the terms of discussion. "Break the rules" has no formal definition so it means what Barack says it means at this moment. Is invading other countries without UN authorization breaking the rules? It is clearly violating a ratified international treaty - while Iran's enrichment program clearly did not violate any treaty at least until the US pressured the UN Security Council to make a special exception for that country.

Barack avoids clearer constructions such as "fail to observe treaties" for less clear constructions such as "break the rules" or "refuse to live up to obligations" because clearer constructions are easier to refute to before a less informed audience. It is a tactic that only works in speeches. If an informed adversary gets to speak, this tactic only ends up further reducing his credibility. But I guess tactics like this are necessary when defending policy that is strongly pulled towards hypocrisy by the logical and moral contortions the US must conduct to justify its support for Israel.

So even as we respect the unique culture and traditions of different countries, America will always be a voice for those aspirations that are universal. We will bear witness to the quiet dignity of reformers like Aung Sang Suu Kyi; to the bravery of Zimbabweans who cast their ballots in the face of beatings; to the hundreds of thousands who have marched silently through the streets of Iran. It is telling that the leaders of these governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation. And it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear to these movements that hope and history are on their side

There are reports that in the delivered speech, Obama said the US, as well as hope and history are on the side of protesters in Iran. After elections that have not shown there to be a national consensus against Ahmadinejad or in support of Mousavi, and polls that do not show a national consensus against Iran's supreme leader or form of government, I hold that Westerners, including Obama, probably overestimate the importance of the protest movement. Maybe Iran's supporters over-estimate the importance of anti-Obama protesters in the United States. We'll have new presidential elections in four years, at that point we'll see if Iranian politics will change direction. Before that, I'm pretty dismissive of the prospect of change in Iran's governance. Obama speaking in favor of the protesters does not have much impact in either direction. Everyone already knew the US opposes Iran's government. Everyone in the region also knows that the US would support Iran's government if it canceled elections and took positions more favorable to Israel. But we will not see that happen.

And yet, given the dizzying pace of globalization, and the cultural leveling of modernity, it should come as no surprise that people fear the loss of what they cherish about their particular identities - their race, their tribe, and perhaps most powerfully their religion. In some places, this fear has led to conflict. At times, it even feels like we are moving backwards. We see it in Middle East, as the conflict between Arabs and Jews seems to harden. We see it in nations that are torn asunder by tribal lines.

This is really a fundamental part of the US view of the region. There is a mysterious conflict that seems to harden. There is a mental block that prevents Obama from understanding the conflict. As it is repeated enough, and as the costs of the US sustaining one side of the conflict increases, that block will be broken, if not in Obama, than in one of his successors who is younger today. Restoring the rights of the Palestinians will require a single state just as restoring the rights of Black people in South Africa required a single state. Just as all of South Africa's neighbors were on the side of the Blacks, all of Israel's neighbors are on the side of the Palestinians. Keeping Israel's Jewish majority status secure against the will of all of its neighbors requires huge expenditures of resources by the US and causes justified hatred against the US by people who identify with the Palestinians. Obama cannot understand that, and because of this failure he will make foreign policy decisions that harm US interests unnecessarily.

Most dangerously, we see it in the way that religion is used to justify the murder of innocents by those who have distorted and defiled the great religion of Islam, and who attacked my country from Afghanistan. These extremists are not the first to kill in the name of God; the cruelties of the Crusades are amply recorded. But they remind us that no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint - no need to spare the pregnant mother, or the medic, or even a person of one's own faith. Such a warped view of religion is not just incompatible with the concept of peace, but the purpose of faith - for the one rule that lies at the heart of every major religion is that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.

More of Obama's weird inability to see US policy and its consequences objectively. US pressure prevents the lifting of the embargo against Gaza today, under Obama. Children are starving today, with Obama's support, at a far greater rate than anything ever done by Al Qaeda. A one state solution would not entail Jewish children starving. Obama, Stalin, and Bin Laden all think or thought they were fighting the good fight, more moral than their adversaries, only stooping to immorality when left with absolutely no choice.

The US ambassador in Cairo could, today, tell Egypt that the US would accept food entering Rafah in large quantities, and Egypt would stop opposing the will of its people in exchange for US support, open Rafah and save thousands of lives, right now. Doing so would also assist the process of leading Israel's Jews to realize, as South Africa's whites realized, that a peaceful resolution to the dispute is in their interests, even if it does not retain a state set aside with them in the majority.

Obama is just displaying a weird and cloudy conception of the dispute in claiming religion drives its brutality. The US kills hundreds of children in Afghanistan and Pakistan every month.

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Overall, the speech was what you get when a person who is not a pacifist accepts a peace prize. Obama is not an unusually bad US politician as far as foreign policy, he certainly is not an unusually good one either.