How anyone who is literate could read Khamenei’s “recent speech”:http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1067 as a rebuff to Obama’s Norouz “message”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/Nowruz/, I could not say.
Via “Farideh Farhi.”:http://icga.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-khameneis-response-to-obama.html
Pretty much as “expected earlier”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1885/nuclear-applications-for-composite-materials, there’s no consensus candidate for the next IAEA D-G. Not yet, anyhow.
About a week ago, Borzou Daraghi of the _LA Times_ — yeah, I’m on a big _LA Times_ kick lately for some reason — “summed it up pretty nicely”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-vienna-nuclear18-2009mar18,0,3259640.story:
Minty, a charismatic diplomat known for his outspokenness, has emerged as the favorite of developing countries. Most are sympathetic to Iran’s nuclear aspirations and suspicious of the West’s attempts to deny them nuclear technology while keeping its own weapons stockpiles untouched.
Amano, a low-key technocrat, has emerged as the West’s favored candidate for his commitment to restrict the agency’s duties to narrow technical issues and forgo the type of opinionated diplomatic mediation practiced by ElBaradei and his predecessor, Hans Blix.
“A great director-general is one who artfully navigates the politics of the situation to permit the IAEA to fulfill its technical mission,” said Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control expert at the New America Foundation. “I think (ElBaradei) has lost that sense of balance. His speeches now cover topics far outside the mandate of the IAEA, from missile defense to the Middle East peace process.”
(Do you think that “Nobel Peace Prize”:http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2005/elbaradei-lecture-en.html might have gone to his head a little? Not that his head was ever really that small.)
So now we’re waiting for a compromise candidate to emerge, but this could take awhile. In the meantime, here’s a “tidbit that David Crawford relates”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123807757585348167.html in today’s _WSJ_:
bq. In 2003, Mr. Minty, a political scientist, helped to broker an agreement with Iran that allowed the IAEA improved access to nuclear installations in Iran. In an interview, the 69-year-old Mr. Minty said the accord followed long conversations in Tehran. “There are no magical words,” he said. “Trust is more important.”
More when the white smoke goes up.
The GAO released an interesting document today, calling for “MDA to play by the regular rules of defense acquisition”:http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09466t.pdf. The “challenges identified” previously include:
* _Incorporating Combatant Command Priorities_: While DOD established a process in 2005 to address the combatant commands’ needs for ballistic missile defense capabilities, GAO reported in 2008 that the process was evolving and had yet to overcome key limitations to its effectiveness, including the need for more effective methodologies to clearly identify and prioritize the combatant commands’ needs. Additionally, when developing ballistic missile defenses, MDA lacked a departmentwide perspective on which of the commands’ needs were most significant.
* _Establishing Adequate Baselines to Measure Progress_: MDA’s flexible acquisition approach has limited the ability for DOD and congressional decision makers to measure MDA’s progress on cost, schedule, and testing. Specifically, as GAO reported in March 2009, MDA’s baselines have been inadequate to measure progress and hold MDA accountable. However, GAO also reported that new MDA initiatives to improve baselines could help improve acquisition accountability.
* _Planning for Long-Term Operations and Support_: DOD has taken initial steps to plan for ballistic missile defense support, but efforts to date are incomplete as difficulties in transitioning responsibilities from MDA to the services have complicated long-term planning. Additionally, although operation and support costs are typically 70 percent of a weapon system’s life cycle costs, DOD has not required that full cost estimates for ballistic missile defense operations and support be developed and validated, and DOD’s 6-year spending plan does not fully reflect these costs.
If the nuances are eluding you, the message comes down to this: the administration should start treating MDA as a military program rather than a political program.
If you’re perplexed by the title of this post, “see here”:http://www.bartleby.com/63/53/7153.html.
“According to Anshel Pfeffer”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074204.html in _Ha’aretz_, the Israeli Defense Ministry has announced that the “Iron Dome”:http://www.rafael.co.il/marketing/SIP_STORAGE/FILES/6/946.pdf short-range missile defense system will soon be up and running:
bq. Defense officials predict that the system will be up and running by next year and will protect 95% of people in the area around Sderot and Ashkelon from rockets and mortars fired from the Gaza Strip.
Unfortunately, this statement doesn’t appear to be accurate. Iron Dome can’t stop mortars — the interceptors just don’t fly out quickly enough. Some rockets also have flight times too short to be intercepted. This is part of why “thousands of houses”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/954799.html “in Sderot”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/956859.html, close to Gaza, are being heavily reinforced, a decision made back in February 2008:
bq. The fortification proposal approved on Sunday was based on the effective range of the “Iron Dome” anti-rocket system, which is currently under development. Recent tests found the system effective against rockets fired from more than four kilometers away, but not against those fired from closer range.
Oddly, it was Amir Peretz, a longtime Sderot resident who was then the Defense Minister, who “selected the Iron Dome system”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/820967.html. Perhaps it was the least bad option. Back in November 2006, a rocket from Gaza landed “right on Peretz’s street while he was at home”:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3328341,00.html, killing a woman passing by and tearing the legs off one of the Defense Minister’s bodyguards.
Short-range missile defense has a troubled history in Israel. It’s clear that defensive systems go against the grain of the defense establishment, which is acutely conscious of the country’s lack of strategic depth, and believes strongly in hitting first. All this has been going on for years, but according to Pfeffer, development work has only recently kicked into high gear:
bq. The defense establishment recently acquired rabbinical approval for workers from Rafael, the Israel Arms Development Authority, to work on Saturdays and conducts the tests 24 hours, seven days a week.
The doctrine of carrying the battle to the enemy does much to explain why “Israeli responsibility for the alleged strike(s) in Sudan”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1940/best-of-intentions-ctd seems “so credible to many”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074315.html, but there’s still no short-range defense in place, despite a decade-long requirement.
It’s an oil platform with a giant golf ball on it. No, it’s an an oceangoing catamaran. No, wait, it’s the “Sea-Based X-Band Radar”:http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/pdf/sbx.pdf. Supposed to be “based in Adak, Alaska”:http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/sbx.html, it’s been hanging around sunny Hawaii for the longest time now.
“So said William Cole”:http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090222/COLUMNISTS32/902220354/-1 last month in the _Honolulu Advertiser_:
Since the “giant golfball” arrived here in 2006 from Corpus Christi, Texas, for a temporary stay, it has spent 307 cumulative days in Pearl Harbor, and 791 days out in the Pacific for testing or operations, according to the MDA.
Has it ever pulled into port in Adak?
“No,” the Missile Defense Agency said in an e-mailed response to questions from The Advertiser.
Did the SBX, as it is known, remain outside port in Adak?
“It loitered in the vicinity of Adak for two weeks in 2007,” MDA said.
Well, if you were a giant oceangoing catamaran, where would you prefer to be?
If North Korea’s launch “goes as planned”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2220/dprks-stay-clear-zones, SBX — as it is known — won’t have to roam far to get a good look. It can “take its time”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1938/weekend-project.
So do you recall the “U.S.-Israel MOU from back in January”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1837/psi-part-deux-red-sea-regatta?
bq. The United States will work with regional and NATO partners to address the problem of the supply of arms and related materiel and weapons transfers and shipments to Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza, including through the Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, Red Sea and eastern Africa, through improvements in existing arrangements or the launching of new initiatives to increase the effectiveness of those arrangements as they relate to the prevention of weapons smuggling to Gaza.
Based on “the publicized results so far”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1925/best-of-intentions, it didn’t amount to much. So if NATO isn’t going to stop Iranian-made rockets and other “locally strategic” weapons from reaching Gaza, who is?
Well, according to the Khartoum correspondent of _Al-Shuruq Al-Jadid_,* an Egyptian newspaper, _somebody_ started taking action back in January, destroying a convoy of arms-laden trucks on a mountain road near Port Sudan. That would be the United States:
bq. An official source has stated that the US fighter aircraft that carried out the raid were stationed in a number of regional countries. The sources believe it is highly likely that the fighter planes took off from Eritrea or Djibouti.
(The “Sudan Tribune”:http://sudantribune.com/spip.php?article30633 summarizes the story in English.)
But now comes CBS News, “crediting Israel”:http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/25/world/worldwatch/entry4892589.shtml?tag=main_home_webExclusive with the attack. The sourcing’s pretty sketchy, but the story’s not entirely implausible. And Israeli officials “didn’t deny it”:http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1074032.html.
As of today, _Al-Shuruq Al-Jadid_* has more on the story, but you have to wonder about some of it, really:
A fresh US raid on Eastern Sudan targeted trucks said to be loaded with weapons headed for Sinai in preparation for smuggling via tunnels into the Gaza Strip. According to informed Sudanese sources, the bombardment continued until yesterday morning.
Awad Mubarak, assistant secretary general of the Eastern Front, pointed out that bombardment of smuggling points started almost two months ago and that it continues until this time. He revealed that the raids have claimed the lives of 300 Sudanese people. According to Awad Mubarak, the sons of the Eastern parts engage in smuggling and trading in weapons to make money and address the problem of “lacking development.”
If fact, this latest report could be a sort of provocation, as _Al-Shuruq Al-Jadid_’s* Rafidah Yasin points out:
bq. Commenting on the reasons behind leaking such reports (on the US raids) after shrouding them in secrecy for a long time, an informed source in Khartoum pointed out that the Sudanese president is trying to mobilize Arab and Islamic public opinion and rally support against the ICC decision to arrest him on the charge of committing war crimes in Darfour, by giving the impression that the United States wishes to punish him for helping the HAMAS movement.
Would that the U.S. media were always equally frank about how they were being manipulated.
For whatever it’s worth, my money is on “CJTF-HOA”:http://www.hoa.africom.mil/. Call it an educated guess, nothing more.
[Update: U.S. Africa Command has “denied any involvement”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/26/AR2009032601859.html. ABC News has a “single anonymous U.S. source”:http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2009/03/exclusive-three.html saying there have been three strikes so far, and attributing them all to Israel. The NY Times has “two anonymous U.S. sources”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/africa/27sudan.html. Regardless, the “head of the Shin Bet”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD977PPUO0 says that nothing has really made much of a dent in arms smuggling into Gaza.]
*[Update 2: The newspaper in question is more familiarly known as Al-Shorouk Al-Gadid.]
[Update 3: Here come the London papers. The Sunday Times has a version now, and remember, just because “Uzi Mahnaimi”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5993093.ece reports it doesn’t mean it’s always completely false. Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat has a “version”:http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=16239, too. But back here in America, Time Magazine’s version is “probably the most trustworthy”:http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1888352,00.html. Looks like my guess was wrong. Sorry, CJTF-HOA.]
In case you missed it, the text of UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech on the 2010 NPT RevCon, Article VI obligations, nuclear energy, nonproliferation, and Iran is “here”:http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page18631. It covers much ground, so let me focus your attention on just a couple of highlights:
We will also host a Recognised Nuclear Weapon State Conference on nuclear disarmament issues and on confidence building measures, including the verification of disarmament.
For in the same way as we have tried to lead in challenging old orthodoxies by eliminating conventional weapons which caused harm to civilians, such as cluster munitions, I want to pledge that Britain will be at the forefront of the international campaign to prevent nuclear proliferation and to accelerate multilateral nuclear disarmament.
[snip]
If no single nuclear weapon state can be expected to disarm unilaterally, neither should it, but step by step we have to transform the discussion of nuclear disarmament from one of platitudes to one of hard commitment. We have also to help create a new international system to ensure non-nuclear states acquire the new sources of energy that they want to have.
[snip]
And let me be clear, we are not asking non-nuclear weapon states to refrain from proliferation while nuclear weapon states amass new weapons; we are asking them not to proliferate while nuclear weapon states take the steps to reduce their own arsenals in line with the Non-Proliferation Treaty’s requirements.
Now, you may be wondering, given the small scale of its own arsenal, what kind of steps short of complete nuclear disarmament could the UK take, if it is to be “at the forefront” of multilateral disarmament? Said Brown:
bq. Now Britain has cut the number of its nuclear warheads by 50% since 1997 and we are committed to retaining the minimum force necessary to maintain effective deterrence. For future submarines our latest assessment is that we can meet this requirement with 12 – not 16 – missile tubes as are on current submarines. In Britain our operationally available warheads now number fewer than 160 and the government keeps this number under constant review. If it is possible to reduce the number of UK warheads further, consistent with our national deterrence and with the progress of multilateral discussions, Britain will be ready to do so.
This struck “at least some observers”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/17/foreignpolicy-gordon-brown1 as underwhelming. Indeed, there’s something of “Achilles and the tortoise”:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/#AchTor about it. Given their overwhelmingly great share of warheads, the U.S. and Russia are the obvious candidates for further incremental arms reductions.
So might the UK (or for that matter, France) contemplate “reduction to zero”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/letters/article5525682.ece, perhaps in the context of Brown’s Recognized NWS Conference?
In that vein, now comes a “different, more exciting version”:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_sylvester/article5962787.ece, courtesy of Rachel Sylvester in the _Times_ of London. She even gets somebody on the record:
Although the official line remains that Britain will retain its nuclear capability, the language in Whitehall has changed. One minister says that Trident is more useful as a “tool for global disarmament than for UK defence”. This means that even if the Government did want to abandon it eventually, it would be wrong, tactically, to announce such a plan yet. “The when and how of playing the card matters,” the minister explains. “Just dumping it gets you nothing. You do it when it will spur maximum disarmament by others.”
According to Baroness Williams of Crosby, the Liberal Democrat peer who advises the Prime Minister on nuclear proliferation, and was praised by him last week, Britain could use its nuclear weapons as a bargaining tool in the runup to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review conference next spring. “Trident could be a crucial factor in reaching a serious international agreement,” she told me. “But to announce it now would be to chuck your queen away when you’ve only just started the chess game.”
Chuck your queen, indeed. It would be quite a statement if Britain were to disarm before, let’s say, “India”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj.
Over to you, “Siddharth Varadrajan”:http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/…
According to an unnamed “South Korean military source,” “it takes a little while to fuel”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iZHXAkmISaqZKPlU6RhkfT2hi0JQ the “Unha-2”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1877/kwangmyongsong-kwangmyongsong-kwangmyongsong.
SEOUL (AFP) — North Korea is expected to set up its highly contentious rocket on the launch pad this weekend ahead of its expected firing in early April, a report said Wednesday.
[snip]
“It is highly likely that the rocket will emerge between March 28-31,” a South Korean military source told Yonhap news agency, adding it would take about three days to inject sufficient fuel.
Assuming that’s right, North Korea’s sorta-ICBM just doesn’t seem that threatening, does it?
Sorry for the light pace of posting. Pressing matters have intervened. With Paul out of town, it’s just a case of bad timing. But I’ll take a break for a little shameless self-promotion.
Newspapers aren’t dead yet. Sunday’s _LA Times_ has a “good article by Greg Miller”:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-predator22-2009mar22,3,2931937,full.story that explains the stepped-up pace of UAV warfare in Pakistan since last August, and why “the U.S. Intelligence Community is pleased with the results”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1853/ic-on-north-korea-no-consensus-on-heu.
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Why bring this up in an arms-control blog? Simple. Every successful UAV strike in the deadly serious Game of Whac-A-Mole on Terrorism, or GWAMOT, places another question mark — preceded by the letters “WTF” — over the proposed “Conventional Trident Modification”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_09/LongRange. This would be a non-nuclear submarine-launched ballistic missile for employment against “fleeting targets” like high-value terrorists or suddenly detected WMD shipments. According to the “report”:http://www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/Fetter/2007-NAS-PGS.pdf of “a panel of the National Academies of Science”:http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=48754, the initial version of CTM would not be able to destroy or disable hardened military targets, so it’s more or less an SLBM with Osama’s name on it.
One of the advantages of using UAVs is that you can see what are you shooting at before you shoot. This won’t prevent all disasters and tragedies, but it helps. The advantage of CTM, by contrast, is that it can strike essentially anywhere in the world on no notice, even when the flying killer robots, with all their fancy sensors, aren’t in the neighborhood.
In other words, even if you lack much confidence about what the target is, CTM means you can annihilate it just the same. Among other things, this creates exceptional opportunities for any Central Asian hill chieftain with a satellite phone, a taste for “Uncle Sugar’s benjamins”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6898075.stm, and a grudge against the neighboring village. Or perhaps I should say _an exceptional opportunity_, because after the results hit the newspapers, it’s liable to have been a one-time offer only.
(Bonus! Shameless other-promotion: Ted Postol gave a presentation addressing these matters to the aforementioned panel, but I’m having a hard time finding it for some reason. Bill Roggio tracks the robot war in Pakistan “very”:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/03/us_launches_second_s.php “closely”:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/us_strikes_in_two_vi.php. [Update: “More from Roggio”:http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/03/us_airstike_kills_8.php.] )
Here comes the self-promotion part: I had an “article”:http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/0p2968683425r217/ in the Jan./Feb. _Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists_ exploring this and other aspects of the “conventional prompt global strike” proposal. The good news is, the misguided missile program doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast.
In case you’re wondering, the reference to seeing through walls is drawn from an earlier _LA Times_ story, “here”:http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/12/world/fg-pakistan12, concerning sensors carried by newer Predator UAVs.
Final note: I hope that no one takes offense from my jocular tone when discussing this really grim stuff. It’s a coping mechanism. Now, just to lighten things up a little more, here’s a “musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_v468ptuXw.
Here’s some “primary source action”:http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs//2009/sgsm12143.doc.htm, as Paul would say:
Secretary-General
SG/SM/12143
DC/3160
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Secretary-General welcomes entry into force of historic treaty
on nuclear-weapon-free zone in central asiaThe following statement was issued today by the Spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon:
The Secretary-General welcomes the entry into force of the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia. Opened for signature on 8 September 2006, it has now been ratified by all five Central Asian States and will enter into force on 21 March 2009.
The Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia, for which the Government of Kyrgyzstan is the depositary, has five States parties: the Republic of Kazakhstan; the Kyrgyz Republic; the Republic of Tajikistan; Turkmenistan; and the Republic of Uzbekistan. The Treaty is of particular significance. This will be the first nuclear-weapon-free zone to be established in the northern hemisphere and will also encompass an area where nuclear weapons previously existed. It will also be the first nuclear-weapon-free zone that requires its parties to conclude with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and bring into force an Additional Protocol to their Safeguards Agreements with IAEA within 18 months after the entry into force of the Treaty, and to comply fully with the provisions of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT).
In order to ensure the effective implementation of the Treaty, the Secretary-General would like to urge the States concerned to address any outstanding issues that may affect its operation.
As the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons approaches, the Secretary-General trusts that the entry into force of the Treaty on a Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone in Central Asia will reinforce efforts to strengthen the global nuclear non-proliferation regime, underline the strategic and moral value of nuclear-weapon-free zones, as well as the possibilities for greater progress on a range of issues in the pursuit of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Props to “Global Security Newswire”:http://gsn.nti.org/gsn/nw_20090323_8513.php.