Containing a Nuclear Iran

The Changing Face of Iran (Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin)

It is time to clarify the debate over Iran and its nuclear program. It's easy to criticize the current course adopted by the United States and its allies, to huff and puff about Iranian mendacity, to point out that Russia and China won't agree to tougher measures against Tehran, and to detail the leaks in the sanctions already in place. But what, then, should the United States do? The critics are eager to denounce the administration from the sidelines for being weak but rarely detail what they would do to be "tough." Would they attack Iran today? If not, then what should we do? It is time to put up or shut up on Iran.

There are three basic options that the United States and its allies have regarding Iran's nuclear program. We can bomb Iran, engage it diplomatically, or contain and deter the threat it poses. Let me outline what each would entail and then explain why I favor containment and deterrence.

Iran's nuclear ambitions are a problem. Nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is a danger, and the Iranian regime's foreign policy—which has involved support for militias and terrorist groups—make it a destabilizing force in the region. The country has a right to civilian nuclear energy, as do all nations. But Tehran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, submitting itself to the jurisdiction of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA says Iran has exhibited a pattern of deception and non-cooperation involving its nuclear program for 20 years—including lying about its activities and concealing sites. In that context, it makes sense to be suspicious of Iran's intentions and to ask that the IAEA routinely verify and inspect its facilities. Unless that can be achieved, Iran should pay the price for its actions. Washington's current strategy is to muster international support to impose greater costs, while at the same time negotiating with Iran to find a solution that gives the world greater assurance that the Iranian program is purely civilian in nature.

It is an unsatisfying, frustrating approach. The Russians and Chinese want to trade with Iran and will not impose crippling sanctions. (Nor would India or Brazil, nor most other major developing countries.) Even if there were some resolution, it would depend on inspections in Iran, and the Iranians could probably hide things from the inspectors and cheat. They do occasionally make concessions, including significant ones last week—to open the newly revealed Qum facility to inspectors and to send uranium to Russia for enrichment (which Tehran announced just as columnists were declaring that negotiations were sure to lead to nothing). But there will be setbacks as well. The cat-and-mouse game will continue.

One way to get instant gratification would be military force. The United States or Israel could attack Iran from the air. To be effective, such an attack would have to be large-scale and sustained, probably involving dozens and dozens of sorties over several days. The campaign would need to strike at all known Iranian facilities as well as suspected ones. Such an attack would probably not get at everything. Iran's sites are buried in mountains, and there are surely some facilities that we do not know about. But it would deal a massive blow to the Iranian nuclear program.

The first thing that would happen the day after such an offensive begins would be a massive outpouring of support for the Iranian regime. This happens routinely when a country is attacked by foreign forces, no matter how unpopular the government. Germany invaded Russia at the height of Stalin's worst repression—and the country rallied behind Stalin. The Iranian regime itself was in deep trouble in 1980, facing internal dissension and mass dissatisfaction, when Saddam Hussein attacked, throwing a lifeline to the mullahs. Recall that George W. Bush's approval rating on Sept. 10, 2001, was about 40 percent. After 9/11, it quickly climbed to 93 percent. The -Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoeini said to me, "If there were an attack, all of us would have to come out the next day and support the government. It would be the worst scenario for the opposition." Last week opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi warned that tightening sanctions would hurt ordinary people and turn them against the United States, not the regime. Link...

Eight U.S. Troops Killed In East Afghan Battle

KABUL (Reuters) - Insurgents stormed remote outposts in eastern Afghanistan killing eight Americans in the deadliest battle in more than a year, the U.S. military said on Sunday.

Afghan provincial authorities said they had lost contact with scores of Afghan policemen after the day-long attack on Saturday and did not know whether they were dead or alive. NATO said at least two Afghan soldiers were killed.

The fighting in the Kamdesh district of eastern Nuristan was in an area from which U.S. forces had already announced plans to withdraw as part of commander General Stanley McChrystal's strategy to focus his forces on population centres.

Militia from a local mosque and a nearby village launched the attacks on two joint NATO and Afghan outposts, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said. The NATO troops in the area are American.

"My heart goes out to the families of those we have lost and to their fellow soldiers who remained to finish the fight," Colonel Randy George, commander of the U.S. force in the eastern mountain area bordering Pakistan, said in the statement.

"This was a complex attack in a difficult area. Both the U.S. and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together. I am extremely proud of their professionalism and bravery."

A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said the movement was behind the attack. He claimed that dozens of Afghan soldiers and police were killed along with Western troops.

The province's deputy police chief Mohammad Farooq said the fate of an entire 90-strong police force in the Kamdesh district was unknown.

NATO said its troops had inflicted heavy casualties on the attackers, but did not say how many.

NEW STRATEGY

The NATO statement said "coalition forces' previously announced plans to depart the area as part of a broader realignment to protect larger populations remains unchanged."

The attack was the deadliest for U.S. forces since nine were killed in a July 2008 battle in nearby Kunar province, which the U.S. military is investigating as a debacle that will teach its forces how to understand the demands of combat in Afghanistan.

U.S. forces have suffered some of their worst casualties in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, where they have been trying to control remote passes used by Taliban fighters as infiltration routes from Pakistan.

Under McChrystal's new counter-insurgency strategy they are supposed to move into more heavily populated areas to protect the population and reduce the influence of insurgents, while abandoning efforts to defend remote locations.

The war in Afghanistan has reached its most violent phase this year, eight years after the Taliban were ousted, with attacks by fighters spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east to once-peaceful western and northern regions.

McChrystal, who now commands more than 100,000 troops, two thirds of them American, has requested tens of thousands more to implement his new strategy, warning that without them, the eight-year-old war will probably be lost.

U.S. President Barack Obama, who already ordered 21,000 extra troops to Afghanistan this year, is re-evaluating his overall strategy for the region before considering whether to send more troops.

Some in his administration are advocating the opposite strategy -- reducing force levels and switching to a counter-terrorism strategy limited to strikes on bases of al Qaeda fighters blamed for attacks on the West. Link...

The Czechs who stand between the EU and the Lisbon Treaty

As one of the last voices now remaining against the Lisbon Treaty, Jaroslav Kubera makes his case against a European superstate from beneath a thick and defiant pall of cigarette smoke.

Czech mayor Jaroslav Kubera Photo: CTK

The chain-smoking Czech mayor, who describes himself as not so much a 20-a-day man as a "20-an-hour man", has a sign taped to his parlour door declaring it the sole "smoking room" in a otherwise cigarette-free town hall.

Yet the considerable fug over his desk makes his point clearly: at the moment, it is Czech politicians like him who decide when and where people can light up in public; in a post-Lisbon Treaty future, it may be some unknown Eurocrat.

Hence his decision last week, as part of a group of 17 Eurosceptic Czech politicians, to launch what may prove - in the light of Friday's Irish "Yes" vote - to be one of the treaty's final hurdles. The group, mainly from the right-wing Civic Democratic Party, have filed a challenge in the Czech constitutional court, complaining that the document violates national sovereignty by handing over too much power to Brussels.

Nobody, not even Mr Kubera, thinks their complaint stands much chance of being upheld, especially given that a previous, similar suit failed. But they hope it might at least delay the final Czech go-ahead for the treaty - which only awaits president's signature - in the Czech Republic until next summer, by which time their friends in Britain's Tory Party may have won power, ushering in a David Cameron prime ministership.

Mr Cameron has said that if the treaty is not yet fully ratified elsewhere - the Czech Republic is now the last country where it remains in question - he will order a referendum in Britain, a commitment he reiterated in a recent letter to the Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who himself opposes the treaty.

"We have launched this action because we really believe that the Lisbon Treaty is just a cosmetically reworked version of the rejected European constitution," said Mr Kubera, sticking the stub of a Davidoff cigarette into an overflowing glass ashtray and lighting up yet another.

"It is not that I am against the European Union itself - far from it. It is just that it you look at the historical experiences of big empires, they always end up collapsing, and the more you try to integrate Europe, the more likely it is to collapse."

Like many Czechs, big empires are something of which Mr Kubera, 62, had bad memories. As a young man, he fell foul of the authorities for his role in Prague's anti-Soviet protests in 1968. While he does not seek to compare post-Lisbon Europe with Warsaw Pact Europe, he says the treaty's centralising tendencies remind him of life in the Russian empire.

"According to the text of the Lisbon Treaty, qualified majority voting can be used for various 'aims of the European Union', which is a very wide-ranging, non-specific term," said Mr Kubera, who is mayor of Teplice, a smart spa town just outside Prague, and is also a senator in the Czech upper house.

"Unlike many other European countries, we Czechs lived through totalitarianism, and with the European Union currently dominated by socialist parties, I fear that the socialism that we kicked out the door back then will return to us in another way."

Such views are widely expressed among the Czech Republic's 10 million people, for whom support for the Lisbon Treaty has been more controversial than elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Many fear that as well as halving their voting clout, it will affect their freedom to be economically competitive, and lead to loss of control over immigration, an issue that until now has not been much of a problem.

Distrust of Brussels is also a personal bugbear of President Klaus, the country's leading Eurosceptic, who refused to fly the EU flag over his office in the elegant 9th century Prague Castle during his recent tenure of the rotating EU presidency.

In May of this year, however, the Czech parliament voted in the treaty's favour, with then prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, another Eurosceptic, saying it was the price of belonging in the European club. But President Klaus has since refused to deliver the final required signature, saying that he wanted to wait until the outcome of Friday's re-run Irish vote, which he saw as simply an attempt to overturn the previous 'no' verdict.

His stubborn stance has incensed Europhile politicians continent-wide, but has been backed by his own supporters, who feel he has done a good job of standing up to outside pressure from France and Germany.

With Ireland now having returned a 'yes' vote, though, the outside pressure on Mr Klaus to sign will intensify once more. This will increase yet further if the constitutional court throws out the challenge from Mr Kubera and his fellow senators within weeks rather than months, as many predict it will. Last week, the German ambassador to the Prague held a private meeting with the court's senior judge, which angry Eurosceptics claim was an attempt by Berlin to hurry the process along.

Assuming it is thrown out, it will then be President Klaus alone who is holding up the ratification - something that may be politically difficult to sustain right through until such time as Mr Cameron might take office. It will also be easy for supporters of the treaty to portray him as thwarting the popular will - precisely the kind of swipe Euro-sceptics regularly aim at Brussels.

That is a criticism that Mr Kubera accepts, although he does point out that unlike most Czechs, and indeed many MPs who voted for the treaty, he has actually taken the time to read all 277 pages of it.

"The basic answer why people have supported it is because they haven't read it," he said.

"That is the problem with the whole European Union - people are too busy with their own lives, and they don't read these things because they don't think it will directly affect them." Link...