Receiving Israeli President Shimon Peres in Astana today, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev “gave an assurance”:http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246296535221&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull that “no nuclear material will reach Iran from our territory.” That’s good to know, since Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been “courting Kazakhstan”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2007/iran-and-kazakhstan-bff recently, visiting Astana in early April.
The President of K’stan also took a moment to reflect on the legacy of his own country’s “nuclear disarmament”:http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246296535221&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull:
bq. “After independence 18 years ago, Kazakhstan voluntarily gave up the fourth-largest nuclear stockpile in the world. We set an example for the world, but unfortunately that example wasn’t followed,” he said.
According to the “version of his remarks”:http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3739226,00.html in _Yediot Ahronot,_ he added that “The Non-Proliferation Treaty lacks teeth.”
_Kazakhstan Today_ quoted Nazarbayev describing his country as a “victim of nuclear weapons”:http://kt.kz/index.php?uin=1133435176&chapter=1153490828:
bq. “Kazakhstan itself suffered from the consequences of the nuclear tests – for 49 years. More than one million Kazakhstan citizens suffered from radiation due to the explosions on the Semipalatinsk range, therefore, the issue of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons – for us very important,” the President of Kazakhstan said.
Meanwhile, the _Jerusalem Post_ shared this “worthwhile anecdote”:http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246296535221&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull:
bq. “When (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad was here for a state visit, I told him that even if he had enough material for 10 nuclear bombs, it wouldn’t bring him security. We improved our security by giving up nukes.”
Here’s hoping that Iran’s President isn’t a “Spinal Tap”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbVKWCpNFhY fan.
Today, the Department of State sanctioned North Korea’s “Namchongang Trading Corporation”:http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/06a/125505.htm — an importer of aluminum tubes, it seems — while the Department of Treasury sanctioned a North Korean front company, “Hong Kong Electronics”:http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/tg191.htm. Reading not very deeply between the lines of the Treasury press release, HKE funnels cash for Iranian missile purchases back to North Korea:
bq. Since 2007, Hong Kong Electronics has transferred millions of dollars of proliferation-related funds on behalf of Tanchon and KOMID. Hong Kong Electronics has also facilitated the movement of money from Iran to North Korea on behalf of KOMID. Tanchon, a commercial bank based in Pyongyang, North Korea, is the financial arm for KOMID – North Korea’s premier arms dealer and main exporter of goods and equipment related to ballistic missiles and conventional weapons.
What’s interesting about HKE is where it’s located: Kish Island, Iran. What, “Dubai wasn’t available”:http://www.jafza.ae/en/?
Kish Island also happens to be where American private investigator “Bob Levinson”:http://helpboblevinson.spaces.live.com/ was disappeared in 2007.
After the last week’s extraordinary events, the following is irrelevant, but it might be worth stating regardless.
It’s been said here and there that Mir-Hossein Moussavi would have been no more enlightened in foreign relations — including the nuclear issue — than the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This “otherwise perceptive and enlightening article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/opinion/19shane.html?pagewanted=2 went so far as to say that Ahmadinejad would be _better_ able to repair relations with the West. (Better able, maybe. At all interested? He’s got a funny way of showing it.)
Common sense indicates that virtually anyone would be better than Ahmadinejad. The Obama Administration’s approach during Iran’s campaign season made sense: neither to “shake a fist”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2016/raised-middle-finger nor to extend an embrace. This approach avoided validating Ahmadinejad during the campaign. The failure of his “let-them-eat-yellowcake politics”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2255/fmp-comes-alive seems all too clear now.
p=. *Half a Loaf is Better Than None*
Setting aside the nuances of “the suspension issue”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1995/iran-talks-definition-of-terms and focusing just on outcomes, there are two issues at stake, broadly speaking:
* Will the nuclear fuel cycle continue to be operated in Iran?
* What sort of safeguards will be in place?
The safeguards issue includes monitoring against diversion at declared sites (notably the enrichment plant at Natanz) and detection of undeclared sites and activities (by such means as the adoption of the Additional Protocol). I’m simplifying a bit, that that’s the basic picture.
In my view, at least, the safeguards issue is of the essence. Consider what would be more reassuring: Shutting down Natanz while keeping the IAEA confined to a handful of declared sites? Or continuing to operate Natanz, while giving inspectors considerably expanded access? Again, that’s a simplification, but it gives the outlines of the picture.
Bearing that in mind, Ahmadinejad has shown no signs of relenting on either issue. (Here’s the latest on “Natanz”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2037/natanz.) Whereas Moussavi, who campaigned on improving Iran’s foreign relations, has “expressed willingness to negotiate on safeguards”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1997/moussavi-on-the-nuclear-issue:
bq.. How would you remove tensions then?
Progress in nuclear technology and its peaceful use is the right of all countries and nations. This is what we have painfully achieved with our own efforts. No one will retreat. But we have to see what solutions or in other words what guarantees can be found to verify the non-diversion of the programme into nuclear weapons.
What kind of solutions?
They can be reached in technical negotiations.
p. This is not a small difference. But it seems like a moot point now. The present crisis has gone well beyond who occupies the Iranian presidency.
This one is somewhat off topic, but may be of interest to anyone who has tried to anticipate what Country x or Country y will do in relation to matters of armament and disarmament, war and peace. Or whatever.
A question that plagues discussions of deterrence, proliferation, alliance formation, and assorted other security policy issues — or enlivens them — is systems of government: how they work, who runs them, how they will behave under various circumstances. It’s notoriously hard to reduce any of this to a neat formula. Not that this stops anyone from trying, but you know how it is: governments are made of people, and people are quirky.
It Ain’t Beanbag
The never-ending debate about revolutionary states and their leaders — rash or rational? — is merely one frame for this picture. Not that I’d recommend it. Anyone who has ever been part of any organization ought to be quick to recognize the inadequacy of either label. Not that this stops anyone from using them.
There are basically three problems. First, “nobody knows anything”:http://books.google.com/books?id=m9bviPR-UvIC. It’s not like all this stuff is written down somewhere.
Second, even when you do think you know something, it’s complicated. The biggest concerns can be parsed out — structure, traditions, ideologies, personalities — but they are all mutually entangled and overlapping. The best analysts will have a feel for how it all fits together, not a mathematical model.
Third, all this stuff keeps changing. Like small children or pets when someone is trying to take a family portrait, nothing sits still for too long.
Everything Ancien Is New Again
Even so, one of the more interesting recurring aspects of even some of the most unpredictable regimes is how much they seem to resemble their forerunners. Every “matryoshka”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matryoshka_doll that starts with Vladimir Putin seems to end with Tsar Nicholas.
Consider Mehdi Khalaji’s “op-ed in today’s Post”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401758.html, comparing this week’s “military coup” in Iran to the 1953 coup against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. In a few quick strokes and without explicitly saying anything about it, Khalaji has clarified the interminable argument over the roles and powers of Iran’s Supreme Leader and President. The former looks awfully like a Shah, the latter like a Prime Minister. So who really holds the power? Well, it depends on who and when, and you can’t really say except in hindsight. For comparison, is the American office of the Vice Presidency a powerful position? Very few people thought so in 2002.
Or take North Korea… please. In how many Communist states does authority devolve according to the “dynastic principle”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2029/il-piccolo-principe, based on a claim to “divine or semi-divine origins”:http://articles.latimes.com/1992-06-02/news/wr-623_1_kim-il-sung? According to one “school of thought”:http://dissidentvoice.org/Oct06/Leupp16.htm, these features of the regime were borrowed more or less directly from its predecessor, Great Imperial Japan.
There is nothing inevitable about any of this; that’s just how it came out. If Kim Il Sung had made other choices, it might have worked out somewhat differently. Egypt, for example, is still noted for its highly centralized form of government, even if it no longer has “divine pharaohs”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharaohs to speak of.
Or think about these United States we have over here. It’s a federal republic, not a constitutional monarchy. There is no established church. And we don’t have a parliamentary system. But somehow, it does happen that we have a powerful head of state, a bicameral legislature, and an independent judiciary. “Wherever could all this have come from”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_Kingdom?
Maybe revolutionary apples don’t fall so far from the tree. Something for the Supreme Leader to think about as he weighs his next move.
He could also “listen to this musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFipyKSC2U8.
Strains are starting to show in the “monitoring arrangements”:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gODK4WyI04gVjnabOevtEzeWBdKAD98OIRH00. A bad sign.
Right about now, it looks as if Iran’s “democratic wild card”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2034/irans-elections turned up again. Life is full of surprises! But this time, the government responded with a game of “52 pickup”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/52_Pickup.
That popular vote thing always was a little inconvenient. (“Ask Slobo”:http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_03/uk/droits.htm!)
The commanders of the Iranian internal security apparatus — the “silencing of dissent”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2016/raised-middle-finger specialists — seem to have judged, based on their experience with the protests and crackdowns of 1999, that they had more determination than the “young people who might come out onto the streets in protest”:http://iranian.com/main/2009/jun/reaction-against-re-election. So the leaders opted for a pretty brazen rule change. You can “read about it here”:http://tehranbureau.com/2009/06/13/the-election-in-a-nutshell/.
A great deal has been written about Iran’s political system, and I will not pretend to have read more than a fraction of it, even just what’s been written in English. Still, I’m partial to this now-more-prescient-than-ever “2005 publication by Kazem Alamdari”:http://www.iranian.com/Alamdari/2006/March/Iran/Images/MilitalizationIRI.pdf. Read it if the spirit moves you.
Two Paths
So what are the implications for the nuclear issue, you’d like to know? My guess is, there are two possibilities, and we’ll probably know which one it is pretty soon. Both are based on the assumption that the duumvirate of Khamenei and Ahmadinejad is going to be with us for awhile yet, but without a trace of legitimacy.
First, to further consolidate power by painting all opposition as treasonous, the regime could step up its confrontation with the West, rhetorically at a minimum. Under this scenario, serious talks won’t get underway. If lots of opposition and civil society figures are arrested in the next few days and weeks, this is probably the direction one should expect.
Second, to ease the pressure from below, the regime could instead reach out to Obama for a life-preserver of sorts, engaging in talks to demonstrate reasonableness and to signal to a disgruntled public that it should not harbor any hopes of rescue from the West.
Either way, the old strategy of indefinite “bobbing and weaving”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2016/raised-middle-finger doesn’t seem so likely anymore.
_Update._ The NYT’s Bill Keller (that’s a statement in itself) “reports from Tehran”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14memo.html:
bq.. One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks, purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members from around the country.
“They didn’t rig the vote,” claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. “They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.”
In the stacked deck of Iran’s theocratic constitution, there is a democratic wild card. If there’s a surprise coming up, it won’t be the first time. But now, it has implications for the nuclear issue.
What those implications might be, I won’t try to puzzle out at just this moment. But in case you missed it, Mir-Hossein Moussavi gave an interview to the _FT_ back in April. Here’s the “relevant bit”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1997/moussavi-on-the-nuclear-issue.
Have you ever written to the _New York Times_ to ask for a “correction”:http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html? They do run them. Here’s an “example”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/business/31corrections-001.html:
bq. An article last Sunday about residential golf resorts opened by a developer transposed his given and middle names. He is Edward Robert Ginn III.
Mr. Ginn is probably relieved to see that. But I’m left wondering why this request of May 23 has not been deemed worthy of a response:
bq.. To whom it may concern,
I would like to request correction of a passage in the May 20 story by David Sanger and Nazila Fathi, “Iran Test-Fires Missile With 1,200-Mile Range.”
The second half of the article includes a claim that “enriching uranium to weapons grade” is “now under way at the large nuclear complex at Natanz.” To the best of my knowledge, this is not accurate; it has been ruled out by every report of the International Atomic Energy Agency that has reached the public eye since enrichment operations commenced at Natanz in 2007.
The authors presumably meant to write that the nuclear complex at Natanz is _capable_ of enriching uranium to weapons grade. This is a very important distinction, as the actual decision to start enriching uranium to weapons grade would be similar in moment to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.
I hope you will clarify this matter for the readers.
Yours,
Josh Pollack
[contact info omitted]
(NYT subscriber since 1996)
p. I have no idea why that doesn’t merit so much as an acknowledgment.
For reference, here’s the link to the “Sanger-Fathi article”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html. Here’s “what I wrote about it earlier”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2018/art-of-the-blown-headline. Click and scroll down a bit.
Back in March, a headline in the _Washington Post_ conflated a North Korean missile test with a nuclear test. ACA’s Peter Crail “blogged it here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1946/_wp_-blows-nk-headline.
They’ve done it again, this time with “Iran”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/20/AR2009052000523.html:
bq. Correction to This Article
A headline and earlier versions of this article, including in the print edition of today’s Washington Post, incorrectly said that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had linked a medium-range missile test to his country’s nuclear program.
Not that a connection between Iran’s nuclear and missile programs is in any way implausible — quite the contrary! But it would have been pretty remarkable for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to come out and say it.
Keeping Up With The Post-It
The _New York Times_ had a different boner in “their coverage”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html of the same event today:
Though she avoided details, Mrs. Clinton was giving voice to a growing concern among administration officials, who have now had time to review the intelligence, that Iran seems to have made significant progress in at least two of the three technologies necessary to field an effective nuclear weapon.
The first is enriching uranium to weapons grade, now under way at the large nuclear complex at Natanz. The second is developing a missile capable of reaching Israel and parts of Western Europe, and now the country has several likely candidates. The third is designing a warhead that will fit on the missile.
_Bzzt._
Let’s put it this way. If Iran were actually enriching uranium to weapons grade at Natanz, this would have been the biggest buried lede in decades.
In his first week or two in office, President “Obama told al-Arabiya”:http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2009/01/27/65096.html TV, “And as I said during my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.”
As it turns out, he said something slightly different during the “inaugural speech”:http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/obama.politics/:
bq. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
Just in case you were wondering what BHO thinks of the IRI.
Now, more recently, the President said that “we’ll know within about half a year”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-President-Obama-and-Israeli-Prime-Minister-Netanyahu-in-press-availability/ whether Iran’s fist is unclenched:
bq. My expectation would be that if we can begin discussions soon, shortly after the Iranian elections, we should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction and whether the parties involved are making progress and that there’s a good faith effort to resolve differences. That doesn’t mean every issue would be resolved by that point, but it does mean that we’ll probably be able to gauge and do a reassessment by the end of the year of this approach.
Here’s a prediction. By the end of the year — or by October, the date that “leaked out”:http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1084405.html “earlier”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124225939853917439.html — President Obama won’t necessarily get either a clenched fist or an extended hand from Iran. He may catch sight of a more ambiguous digital posture, something that doesn’t foreclose options one way or another, but puts the onus on Washington to do so.
We’d all prefer an either/or deal, but that’s not the most likely thing, really.
