At least some Iranian officials appear somewhat skeptical of the “Bush administration’s limited incentives”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=475 for Tehran to comply with the EU3’s negotiating demands.

Senior Iranian negotiator Sirus Naseri told Iranian state television 15 March:

bq. As far as America is concerned, we said: Ms Rice, are you prepared to shut down two of your power plants if we supply you with pistachios? We said that we would supply them with a three year stock of pistachios. However, we will supply their pistachios lorry by lorry because they said things would have to be taken step by step and when we see any progress, we will reward them with more pistachios. This is how ridiculous the situation is.

Mmmmmmmm….pistachios. I bet they next offer a fruit basket…

*Jeffrey’s 2 cents:* ACW reader AM sends word that Iranian pistacho merchants have been reluctant to include their product in a barter deal for Bushehr:

A high-powered delegation of Russian nuclear industry officials is traveling to Tehran this week to negotiate details of how Iran will pay for nuclear reactor construction contracts worth a total of $1 billion. … [Russian officials] are proposing to be paid by a combination of cash and Iranian barter goods. Sources in Tehran say about $700 million is to be paid to Moscow in cash, and $300 million in Iranian barter goods.

[snip]

At the same time, the Iranians have come up with a high-powered product of their own. Presented for the first time at the WorldFood-97 exhibition in Moscow last week, the Iranian wonder product reportedly does one thing nuclear energy cannot – it revives flagging male sexual potency. It’s the pistachio nut prepared with saffron.

“Iranians don’t suffer from impotence,” said Mohammed Karimiapour, director of Arian Milan, one of Iran’s leading exporters of pistachios. “But for centuries, Iran’s shahs have used saffron with their pistachios to cure this ill. In the northern countries of Europe, the saffron pistachio is now being advertised for this purpose. I’ve seen the case studies and letters that have poured in.”

[snip]

In the much larger barter deal now in planning, Iranian merchants are competing hard for inclusion of their products. But Mr. Karimiapour says the pistachio traders are holding back. Because of this year’s supply shortage and rising prices, most of the Iranians believe they can do better selling directly for hard currency, rather than accept the barter terms and currency controls that will be overseen by the Iranian Central Bank.

But Mr. Karimiapour is confident about the future of Iran’s pistachio trade in Russia. He’s also taken a long, hard look at the American competition. “They are rounder, with less taste than our nuts. Also, they can’t offer what we can for the Russian man.”

“They are rounder, with less taste than our nuts.” AWESOME.

In case you don’t believe me: John Helmer, “Iranian Nuclear Trade With Russia Goes Nuts; Pistachios Marketed For Sexual Potency,” _Journal of Commerce_ (June 11, 1997) 7B.

Will someone in the press please, for the love of God, notice that Bush’s description of Washington’s Iran diplomacy does not constitute anything anyone could reasonably call “success”?

Bush told an audience on Friday that:

bq. we [the US and the Europeans] worked together on the issue of Iran, to make sure that we speak with one voice to the Iranian regime, that they should abandon any ambitions for nuclear weapons for the sake of peace in the world. I am pleased that we are speaking with one voice with our European friends.

Persuading other countries to take the courageous “Iranian nukes bad” stance does not a diplomatic triumph make. And who, exactly, was on the “Bombs for Tehran” bandwagon that W so successfully derailed?

Good thing the adults are in charge…

Note to SecState Rice:

“Making token gestures”:http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2005&m=March&x=20050311173446xlrenneF1.122683e-02&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html to support the EU3-Iran negotiations is only a really, really, weak beginning of a coherent Iran policy.

Look, Iran is being asked to do something that’s not legally required (i.e. give up its fuel cycle), so we have to provide serious incentives. I don’t think the WTO and aircraft parts incentives are going to cut it. Iranian officials, as well as “experts who have recently spoken”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27108-2005Mar11?language=printer with said officials, seem to agree.

Let’s be clear: Washington needs to make it clear that a satisfactory EU-Iran agreement on the fuel cycle issue would be sufficient to keep the US from overthrowing the government in Tehran. The US still hasn’t done that.

For example, Rice would not say during her confirmation hearings that a verifiable fuel cycle agreement would get the US to do, well, anything. Instead, she listed other concerns (terrorism, human rights, etc.) that the administration also wants resolved. During her subsequent trip to Europe, Rice refused on several occasions to answer direct questions about whether the US has a policy of regime change.

Contrast that with Powell’s 10 December statement that “U.S. policy is not to advocate regime change in Iran.”

Now, maybe something is happening behind the scenes. I certainly hope so. But I fear that the charaterization of the US strategy “in the NYT”:http://nytimes.com/2005/03/11/politics/11iran.html?pagewanted=all is accurate.

Some officials in the Bush administration… see the president’s decision to dangle what amount to modest American economic incentives as part of an effort to speed along the negotiating process so that Iran’s intentions become clear.

At that point, in the view of hawks on the issue inside the White House and the Pentagon, the Europeans will be bound to take the issue to the Security Council. These officials would only speak anonymously because such delicate negotiations hang in the balance.

Notice that this US schtick _really_ looks like the same bad-faith diplomacy from the Iraq debacle. Even if the US gets its UNSC referral, it is far from certain that anything will happen if others think we aren’t serious about the process this time around.

Of course, then the US could well say “the UN sucks, we’ll do our own thing.” Then we could likely be facing a choice between another war or welcoming the next major nuclear-armed non-NATO ally.

Strong work.

Before North Korea, on 4 March, said it was no longer bound to its 1999 missile launch moratorium, _Time Magazine_ “published a 20 February article”:http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1029824,00.html making an old charge: “Administration officials think it may be cheating [on the moratorium] by using Iran as its proxy.”

Reports that North Korea has been circumventing the testing moratorium through outsourcing to other countries have been circulating for a while now. A “Bush administration official” made the claim to a _Los Angeles Times_ reporter on 5 August, six days before Iran “tested its Shahab-3 missile.”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_09/Arrow.asp

So why did _Time_ say that Iran and N Korea “may be cooperating more closely than previously known”?

If the author could go ahead and tell us, that would be great. But the article only says:

bq. After Iran test-fired the Shahab-3 last summer, there have been indications, a top U.S. official says, that Tehran is giving North Korea telemetry and other data from its missile tests and that North Korea is using the data to make improvements in its own missile systems. In exchange, the official says, Pyongyang may be supplying Iran with engineering suggestions for further testing.

Strictly speaking, I suppose it could be true that there are “indications” of post-August-test cooperation. But that doesn’t mean these “indications” are different from previous “indications.” What is new here ?

_Time_ certainly implies that there is new evidence, but it’s hard to know because the article doesn’t say a damn thing about previous data-sharing reports. Methinks someone likely got spun.

I don’t know any authoritative sources discussing exactly how much flight test data-sharing could substitute for actual flight-testing. Moreover, a State Department official commented on the available evidence for such cooperation “18 August”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_09/NK_Missile.asp

bq. Asked about press leaks from U.S. officials that Iran is conducting flight tests for North Korea, the State Department official said that it is “always a possibility” but added that the United States does not have solid information that such cooperation is happening. It is not clear that North Korea “would depend on Iran for anything,” the official added.

The _Time_ article also contains this misleading section:

bq. [Under Secretary of State John Bolton] warned, Iran could soon have missiles capable of delivering payloads to Western Europe and the U.S. And if that isn’t scary enough, CIA director Porter Goss said in congressional testimony last week that North Korea’s new, untested Taepo Dong-2 missile “is capable of reaching the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload.”
The implications of a North Korea-Iran deal to share and test these missiles are grim. Equally ominous, Goss said, intelligence shows that North Korea is seeking to raise hard currency by peddling its missile technology to new clients beyond Iran.

To me, this implies that Goss testified that Iran and North Korea are sharing flight testing data. But he didn’t mention it in either his prepared statement or the hearing Q&A.

It is, at the very least, poorly written.

Yeeeaahhhh, great.