Iran’s Secret Uranium Enrichment Plant
Just one day after chairing the U.N Security Council (the first time a U.S. president has done so) and overseeing an historic, U.S. initiated resolution [copy here] aimed at increasing arms control and nuclear downsizing around the world, President Obama, along with President Sarkozy of France and Prime Minster Brown of Great Britain focused the big kleig lights on one of the major targets of the resolution — Iran.
In an early morning press conference the three revealed that Iran had concealed a second nuclear enrichment facility during several years of building it.
Iran’s decision to build a secret facility represented a “direct challenge to the basic compact” of the global non-proliferation regime, US President Barack Obama said, making a statement in Pittsburgh, where he is hosting a G20 summit.
Despite Iran’s assertions that the facility was for peaceful purposes, the new plant was “not consistent” with that goal, the US president said. …
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, informed of the plant’s existence by Mr Obama this week, said the second plant was against the requirements of UN Security Council resolutions.
Iran must co-operate fully with the UN watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr Medvedev said.
China also said Iran should work with the UN watchdog, a foreign ministry spokesman said in Pittsburgh.
President Amedinejad quickly responded that it was not secret at all as he had told the U.N. about it on Monday, long before any nuclear material will be placed in it which, he insisted, met the U.N. criteria for such declarations.
What’s most important of course is how these two events, and other related moves, advance or retard the fears and planning of bombing raids and war with Iran over the issue. Several commentators who consistently raised urgent warning flags about the Bush administrations bellicose posturing seem impressed.
Marc Lynch, whose commentary on his own blog Abu Aardvark we followed until he let it go, responds favorably if cautiously at Foreign Policy.
…it seems rather more likely that the administration chose to go public as part of a calculated effort to ratchet up the credibility of the threat of tough sanctions ahead of the October 1 meeting between Iran and the P5+1 in Geneva. The public disclosure puts Iran on the back foot ahead of those talks, and appears to have encouraged Russia to more seriously consider supporting such sanctions (that, plus the missile defense decision probably). This has to change Iranian calculations — indeed, the perception that the sanctions are now more likely is precisely what may lead the Iranians to make more concessions to avoid them.
It also demonstrates to the Iranians the quality of Western intelligence and the difficulty of deception and denial — especially in the atmosphere of (quite warranted) mistrust of their intentions. That may reduce their reasons to oppose the intrusive inspections and monitoring regime which Gary Sick argues is the most likely reasonable negotiated outcome. Such an outcome would be far more in the interests of the U.S., Iran, and Iran’s neighbors than any plausible outcome of a military strike, and has to be the target of the engagement process.
So despite what I expect to see swarming the media in the next few days — wanna bet that John Bolton or John Bolton-equivalent oped is already in production over at the Washington Times Washington Post (sorry, it’s hard to tell the difference on foreign policy issues sometimes) — I actually think that this public revelation makes war less rather than more likely.
Matthew Yglesias posts the news without comment, though there is plenty of doubting, cynicism and accusation in reader comments that follow.
Joe Cirincione, of the Ploughshares Fund and other D.C. thinktanks, is positively euphoric.
The key to understanding today’s announcement on Iran is this: President Obama knew about the secret Iranian facility nine months ago. Before he began his strategy of engagement, he knew Iran was lying about its program. When he extended his hand in friendship, he knew Iran had built a secret factory to enrich uranium. Before he offered direct talks, he knew Iran was hiding a nuclear weapons breakout capability.
Each move was denounced as “weak” and “naïve” by the right. That talk looks foolish today. These were the moves of chess master, carefully positioning pieces on the board, laying a trap, and springing it at the opportune moment.
We now know that Obama was not acting on impulse, or philosophy or general principles, but on deep strategy. He knew better than his critics that Ahmadinejad could not be trusted. He just had a better plan for how to deal with him.
Obama is now well positioned to unite world leaders in a long-term strategy to back Iran away from nuclear weapons.
Juan Cole has a lengthy look at Obama’s moves and possible effects in his column, starting out with the cancellation of the
useless and expensive so-called “missile shield” program in eastern Europe, which had needlessly antagonized Russia, has been rewarded with greater Russian cooperativeness on Iran. The US right wing accused Obama of a failure of nerve. But in fact his move was shrewd and gutsy, since he predisposed Russia to increased cooperation with the US in regard to Iran’s nuclear research program.
Cole doesn’t forget, as most others do, Israel’s non-declared possession of some 200 nuclear warheads and the censuring of them by the IAEA last week.
We certainly hope fruit comes forth on this tree. We’ve been walking on the nuclear precipice since I’ve been two years old [and that's a mighty long time.] If you’d like some of the scary details of near calamities you never heard of check out David Hoffman’s recently published The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.
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“The Dead Hand” is deadly serious, but this story can verge on pitch-black comedy — “Dr. Strangelove” as updated by the Coen Brothers. Mr. Hoffman has an eye for bleak, jagged details. When he writes about how the Soviet disposed of nuclear waste — even nuclear reactors — by dumping it at sea, he notes that workers shot holes in any waste barrels that surfaced.
He observes the curious Soviet idea that it could predict a nuclear attack by looking for a spike in prices for blood donations in Britain. “The K.G.B. failed to realize,” Mr. Hoffman writes, “that British blood donors are unpaid.”
He quotes Nixon on losing his interest in biological weapons. “We’ll never use the damn germs, so what good is biological warfare as a deterrent?” Nixon said. “If somebody uses germs on us, we’ll nuke ’em.”
The one thing that is always missing in nuclear nation reproofs of Iran’s determination to join the skin-stripping club [ White Light/Black Rain] is how exactly they intend to back down to zero. Yesterday’s U.N. resolution is noble but nobility demands the test of of action. How do you really behave in the scary fight? How do you give up your weapons?
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