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Time's up for Iran on UN's nuclear clock
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The long-running saga of Iran's nuclear program was due to reach another key marker on Thursday, with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expected to tell the United Nations Security Council that Tehran had failed to halt uranium enrichment or to cooperate with international inspectors, paving the way for the possible imposition of sanctions.
The Security Council had demanded that Iran stop its uranium enrichment by Thursday, but as late as Thursday morning Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, speaking on television, reiterated his country's right to master the nuclear fuel cycle and said his country "would not be bullied".
The United States, in addition to accusing Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, says Iran supplies Lebanon's Hezbollah with mid- and long-range missiles and equips and trains Shi'ite militias in Iraq that are hostile to the US occupation there.
US and European officials, according to reports, are already planning on how to deal with the sanctions issue. Of the permanent five members of the Security Council - the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China and Russia - the last two are known to be reluctant, at least initially, to approve stringent measures.
The US has announced that it will draft a resolution for the Security Council calling for sanctions immediately after the deadline expires. Washington is composing a response to the response by Iran on August 22 to the incentive package offered by the US and Europe in exchange for stopping nuclear-enrichment activities.
Nicholas Burns, US under secretary of state for political affairs, is to travel to Berlin next week to discuss a sanctions package with the Permanent Five and Germany, which is also involved in Tehran's case. The indications are that the package will begin with symbolic measures, such as a travel ban and asset freeze on Iranian officials. Subsequently, measures could be increased to include tougher bans on Iran's access to international credit and other financial assistance.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has shrugged off the possibility of sanctions, telling state-run television that Iran "will find a way to avoid pressure eventually".
One immediate concern on global markets is the possibility that Iran's oil exports would stop if the UN imposed sanctions. Iran is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries' second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, pumping 4 million barrels of crude oil and exporting 2.4 million barrels per day. Oil has edged over US$70 a barrel over the past two days on these concerns.
If China and Russia drag their feet in the Security Council, Washington has the option of it and its allies following a course outside the council and imposing penalties of their own against Iran.
Or, of course, they could simply attack the country.
Neo-conservatives in the US who see in Iran's nuclear program and its theocratic regime an existential threat to Israel, as well as an increasingly powerful rival to US power in the Middle East/Gulf region, have been at the forefront - both within the administration (particularly in the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld) and outside it - of efforts to rally the public behind a policy of confrontation and "regime change" in Tehran.
While they have insisted that such a policy is best pursued through political and other forms of support for non-violent opposition forces in Iran, they have also called on the administration to prepare to carry out a preemptive attack against Tehran's nuclear facilities before President George W Bush leaves office, if not sooner.
They have also strongly opposed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's efforts to work with the so-called EU-3 - Britain, France and Germany - to engage Tehran in negotiations designed to impose safeguards on Iran's nuclear program and denounced as "appeasement" the State Department's offer earlier this year to talk directly with the regime for the first time since 1979 if it froze its uranium-enrichment program.
Thus, in their view, the decision to grant former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami a visa to travel to the US is the latest in a series of State Department actions designed to reduce tensions between the two countries and encourage engagement. These are moves that they strongly denounce as "appeasement".
It "is not an isolated event", wrote Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the neo-conservative Hudson Institute and editor of EyeontheUN.org. "As the pattern of all talk and no action takes hold, this move too will undercut any [US] demand to the international community for immediate, serious sanctions on Iran. If we aren't prepared to isolate Iran, why should anyone else?"
According to a consensus among nearly a dozen participants in a "Symposium" on Wednesday on the website of the right-wing National Review Online, Khatami's presence in the United States could make it more difficult to rally US public opinion against the Islamic Republic and discourage democratic forces back in Tehran.
"Giving Khatami prestigious platforms all over America is a dumb move, and it will enormously discourage the Iranian people," said Michael Ledeen, an influential neo-conservative based at the American Enterprise Institute.
What's more, he said, "For those who believe Bush is serious about regime change [in Iran], this is a numbing blow ... Alas, this confirms my worst fears about this administration. Talk, talk, talk, but when it is time to act, they are still talking."
Identified with the reformist wing of Iran's clerical establishment, Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to 2005, reportedly plans to spend as much as two weeks in the US under the sponsorship of the US Episcopal Church and the Atlanta-based Carter Center, whose founder, former president Jimmy Carter, has expressed interest in meeting with him.
Khatami's trip, which kicks off on Tuesday at a UN conference on the dialogue of civilizations in New York, will also include appearances at the National Cathedral in Washington and speeches to an Islamic group in Chicago and to university audiences in Virginia and elsewhere.
Neo-con anger
Ledeen, who has long argued that all al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorist groups are actually controlled by the "terror-masters" in Tehran, called the visa approval "blatant appeasement", while James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, called it "a major error ... at a time when Iran is defiantly thumbing its nose at the US and the UN Security Council regarding its nuclear-weapons program".
Neo-conservatives expressed particular concern that Khatami, who first proposed a "dialogue of civilizations" in 2000, would give Iran a major public-relations boost as the "friendly face" of the Islamic Republic in contrast to his successor, Ahmadinejad, whose public threats against Israel and questioning of the Nazi Holocaust have fed their efforts to depict the regime as "fascist".
"By granting a visa to [Khatami], the Bush administration handed the Islamic Republic a propaganda coup," stressed Michael Rubin, one of Ledeen's AEI colleagues. "Journalists will fawn and diplomats celebrate Khatami's talk of tolerance. They will be complicit in projecting a false image of the regime Khatami still represents," he wrote.
That concern was shared by Senator Rick Santorum, who called the visa issuance "at best foolish and at worst misguided. Mohammed Khatami is one of the chief propagandists for the Islamic fascist regime. I am opposed to granting a visa to such a man so that he can travel around the United States and mislead the American people."
For its part, the State Department insisted that as a private citizen invited by the United Nations and private US groups, Khatami was eligible for a visa that permitted him to travel to specific cities.
"I would encourage those organizations and the individuals attending those events to ask him some hard questions, ask him some pointed questions, ask him the kind of questions that if asked in Iran would get the questioner thrown in jail," said department spokesman Sean McCormack, who denied that administration officials would meet with Khatami during his visit.
Still, for some observers who favor US engagement with Tehran, the fact that Khatami was given permission to travel around the country indicated that, in the words of one, "Somewhere in the administration a light is on," especially considering other recent efforts by Iran, including Ahmadinejad's letter to Bush in the spring and his challenge to a televised debate this week, to engage directly - however unconventionally - the US president.
Of particular interest was the likelihood that Carter, who originally cut relations with Iran after radical students seized the US Embassy and diplomats in Tehran in November 1979, will meet with Khatami.
"The concept of the 'emotional breakthrough' is revered in both Persian as well as American informal dispute resolution as being required to move from problem to dialogue to solution," said Donald Weadon, a Washington-based international lawyer with much experience on Iran.
"Clearly, with the two elders' stature and mutual respect, both can at the right moment express personal regret for events of the past, and share their vision for prospects for the future," he noted. "That the two can later share this with other trusted individuals in each other's camp can affect the foundation of trust which will support politically sustainable opening steps to dialogue ..."
The fact that Bush is not known to have called on Carter for diplomatic advice, however, should come as some comfort to those opposed to any thought of dialogue with Iran.
(Inter Press Service)
(Additional reporting by Asia Times Online)