It's clear to me that Iran wants to develop the physical and intellectual capability to produce nuclear energy from 'scratch' (so to speak), including (if 'necessary') nuclear weapons.

What the major powers are doing is akin to offering an illiterate person who wants to learn how to read and write a 'literate' secretary. That's not going to cut it.

And Davis makes Marty McFlyyyyy (knock, knock knock) like a regular every day guy.

The Trouble With Sanctions

02 Jun 2008 06:11 pm

"We should privatize the sanctions against Iran by launching a worldwide divestment campaign," John McCain said in his AIPAC speech, "As more people, businesses, pension funds, and financial institutions across the world divest from companies doing business with Iran, the radical elite who run that country will become even more unpopular than they are already." And then down comes Sam Stein pointing out that McCain's top strategist Charlie Black has been lobbying on behalf of Iran-linked firms:

But, as demonstrated by the CNOOC anecdote, if choking off Tehran's economic lifeblood is McCain's goal, he could have personally started down that road years ago -- with his own advisers.

But beyond the narrow hypocrisy point, the real moral of the story here is just to remind us of the limited practicality of a sanctions and divestment approach to Iran. In a highly globalized economy, it's difficult to try to hermetically seal off Iran economically. You start divesting from firms that do business with Iran, but then you still have firms that do business with firms that do business with Iran. Divest all you like, but Iran still has oil that people want to buy, which gives Iranians money they want to use to buy things with. Which isn't to say that economic pressure is totally ineffective, but how effective it is has a lot to do with how wide the network of pressuring entities is. A really global sanctions and divestment campaign can deliver enormous blows, while unilateral measures are difficult to really enforce in a serious way.

This is one of several reasons why there needs to be a good-faith negotiations component to dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. On the one hand, we ought to recognize the limited utility of coercion alone in changing Iranian behavior. And on the other hand, as we seek coercive measures, or credible threats of coercion, we need to make the coercing coalition as broad as possible and to do that we need to be seen by world opinion as approaching this subject in a serious way. Ultimately, international consensus against the idea of an Iranian nuclear weapon is the only way to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and to preserve and strengthen that consensus we need to act reasonably. Ideally, reasonable U.S. behavior will be met by reasonable Iranian behavior. If it's not, then reasonable U.S. behavior will set the stage for international cooperation that, unlike the all-bluster approach favored by conservatives, might actually accomplish something.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/arc...h_sanctions.php

Pipes: Bush Will Attack Iran If A Democrat Wins The White House

Daniel Pipes, a far right-wing pseudo scholar who called the NIE report on the halting of Iran’s nuclear program a “shoddy, politicized, outrageous parody of a piece of propaganda,” said he believes that President Bush will attack Iran if a Democrat wins the White House in November. During an interview posted at the National Review Online, Pipes said that the U.S. and its allies should tell Tehran to “watch out” for “an American attack”:

What I suspect will be the case is, should the Democratic nominee win in November, President Bush will do something. And should it be Mr. McCain that wins, he’ll punt, and let McCain decide what to do.

Pipes also said that countries like Russia and China should aid the U.S. in pressuring Iran, if they want to prevent America attacking unilaterally:

Look, if you don’t want an American attack, then you have to join us in being very serious with the Iranians and making clear to them we will attack if they don’t stop.

Pipes, who has a history of what The Nation calls “signature distortions,” is just the latest in a rising chorus of voices advocating that Bush attack Iran before his term ends. The Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot reported that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert planned to encourage Bush to prepare an attack against Iran during his meeting with the President yesterday.

The White House denies any intent to strike Iran, but that hasn’t stopped Vice President Dick Cheney or former U.N. ambassador John Bolton from promoting the idea.

– Pat Garofalo

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/05/pipes-democrat-iran/

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/126416

Nice ploy.

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?


By John Walcott | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.

The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.

According to the Senate report, the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar."

The counterintelligence unit said, however, that Ledeen's association with Ghorbanifar "was widely known, and therefore it should be presumed other foreign intelligence services, including those of Iran, would know."

Stephen Cambone, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, shut down the counterintelligence investigation after only a month, the Senate report said.

The Senate report said that Pentagon officials never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a comprehensive analysis of whether Ghorbanifar or his associates tried "to directly or indirectly influence or access U.S. government officials."

The counterintelligence investigators recommended that U.S. officials attempt "to map Ghorbanifar's relationship within Iranian elite social networks and, if possible, his contacts with other governments and/or intelligence organizations," but that effort was never undertaken.

The Senate committee also found that Pentagon officials concealed the contacts with Ghorbanifar from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Pentagon officials also provided Senate investigators with an inaccurate account of events and, with support from two unnamed officials in Cheney's office, continued meeting with Ghorbanifar after contact with him was officially ordered to stop.

The first meetings with Ghorbanifar, which were disclosed in August 2003 by the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday, took place in Rome in December 2001. They were attended by two Pentagon Iran experts, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin; by an Italian military intelligence official, and by Ledeen.

On the Iranian side were Ghorbanifar, an unidentified Iranian exile from Morocco and an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps defector.

Among other things, the Iranians told the Americans about:

_ Iranian "hit teams" they said were targeting U.S. personnel and facilities in Afghanistan.

_ What they claimed was Shiite Muslim Iran's longstanding relationship with the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.

_ "Tunnel complexes in Iran for weapons storage or exfiltration of regime leaders," and about the alleged growth of anti-regime sentiment in Iran.

Franklin, who, in an unrelated matter, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison in 2006 for providing classified information on Iran policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, passed the information about the alleged Iranian hit squads to a U.S. Special Forces commander in Afghanistan. Although a DIA analyst told the Senate committee that he couldn't speculate on whether the information had been "truly useful," Ledeen and Pentagon officials claimed it saved American lives, the committee said.

During the Rome meetings, Ghorbanifar also laid out a scheme to overthrow the Iranian regime on a napkin during a late night meeting in a bar. "The plan," said the Senate committee, "involved the simultaneous disruption of traffic at key intersections leading to Tehran that would create anxiety, work stoppages and other disruptive measures" in a capital city famous for its traffic congestion.

Ghorbanifar asked for $5 million in seed money, Franklin told the committee, and indicated that if the traffic jam plan succeeded, he'd need additional money.

"The proposed funding for, and foreign involvement in, Mr. Ghorbanifar's plan for regime change were never fully understood," the Senate committee said.

Nevertheless, Ghorbanifar's proposals grew more ambitious — and expensive. A February 2002 memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman referred to an unnamed foreign government's support for a Ghorbanifar plan that would cost millions of dollars. A later summary referred to contracts "that would assure oil and gas sales in the event of regime change". The U.S. ambassador to Italy said that DOD officials "were talking about 25 million for some kind of Iran program."

After Franklin and Rhode returned from the Rome meetings, the Senate report said, two series of events began to unfold in Washington that were typical of the gamesmanship that plagued the Bush administration's national security team.

"First," the report said, "State Department and CIA officials attempted to determine what Mr. Ledeen and the DOD representatives had done in Rome, and second, DOD officials debated the next course of action."

When the CIA and the State Department discovered that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were involved, they opposed any further contact with the two. Ledeen's contacts, the Defense Human Intelligence Service concluded, were "nefarious and unreliable," the Senate committee reported.

According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran — Saddam Hussein's archenemy. This time, the report said, Ledeen solicited support from former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and from three then-GOP senators, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Rhode and Ghorbanifar met again in Paris in June 2003 with at least the tacit approval of an official in Cheney's office, the Senate report said.

He reported back to officials in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, but "there is no indication that the information collected during the Paris meeting was shared with the Intelligence Community for a determination of potential intelligence value," the report said.


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/40080.html

Pentagon blocked Cheney's attack on Iran
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF10Ak01.html

UN atom watchdog chief says to quit if Iran attacked
Associated Press
Published: Saturday June 21, 2008


DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief warned in comments aired Saturday that any military strike on Iran could turn the Mideast to a "ball of fire" and lead Iran to a more-aggressive stance on its controversial nuclear program.

The comments by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came in an interview with an Arab television station aired Saturday, a day after U.S. officials said they believed recent large Israeli military exercises may have been meant to show Israel's ability to hit Iran's nuclear sites.

"In my opinion, a military strike will be the worst... it will turn the Middle East to a ball of fire," ElBaradei said on Al-Arabiya television. It also could prompt Iran to press even harder to seek a nuclear program, and force him to resign, he said.

Iran on Saturday also criticized the Israeli exercises. The official IRNA news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that the exercises demonstrate Israel "jeopardizes global peace and security."

Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, U.S. military officials said Friday.

Israel's military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran, saying only that it regularly trains for various missions to counter threats to the country.

But the exercise the first week of June may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record on the matter.

More than 100 jets The New York Times quoted officials on Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of rescuing downed pilots.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said he prefers that Iran's nuclear ambitions be halted by diplomatic means, but has pointedly declined to rule out military action.

The United States also says it is seeking a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the threat the West sees from Iran's nuclear program, although U.S. officials also have refused to take the threat of military action off the table.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to comment on the Israeli maneuvers in an interview with National Public Radio aired Saturday but said: "We are committed to a diplomatic course."

Russia's foreign minister warned Friday against the use of force on Iran, saying there is no proof it is trying to build nuclear weapons with the a program, which Tehran says is for generating power.

Caution urged One Israeli lawmaker on Saturday urged caution, saying that the world should first do more to toughen and broaden the sanctions against Iran to persuade its leaders to halt the nuclear program.

Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in Israel's parliament, suggested steps including banning Iranian planes, ships and sports delegations from entering Western countries.

"There's a long way to go before diplomatic efforts are exhausted," Hanegbi said. "The sanctions aren't very strong, they are very shallow, there's a lot of room for enhancing them."

In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published Wednesday, Olmert said the current international sanctions against Iran would probably not succeed alone, saying there were "many things that can be done economically, politically, diplomatically and militarily."

Asked if Israel was capable of taking military action against Iran, Olmert said, "Israel always has to be in a position to defend itself against any adversary and against any threat of any kind."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/UN_atom_watc...ys_to_0621.html

Kristol: Bush Might Bomb Iran If He ‘Thinks Senator Obama’s Going To Win’

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said that President Bush is more likely to attack Iran if he believes Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is going to be elected.

However, “if the president thought John McCain was going to be the next president, he would think it more appropriate to let the next president make that decision than do it on his way out,” Kristol said, reinforcing the fact that McCain is offering a third Bush term on Iran.

“I do wonder with Senator Obama, if President Bush thinks Senator Obama’s going to win, does he somehow think — does he worry that Obama won’t follow through on that policy,” Kristol added. Host Chris Wallace then asked if Kristol was suggesting that Bush might “launch a military strike” before or after the election:

WALLACE: So, you’re suggesting that he might in fact, if Obama’s going to win the election, either before or after the election, launch a military strike?

KRISTOL: I don’t know. I mean, I think he would worry about it. On the other hand, you can’t — it’s hard to make foreign policy based on guesses of election results. I think Israel is worried though. I mean, what is, what signal goes to Ahmadinejad if Obama wins on a platform of unconditional negotiations and with an obvious reluctance to even talk about using military force.

Kristol also suggested that Obama’s election would tempt Saudi Arabia and Egypt to think, “maybe we can use nuclear weapons.” Watch it:

Kristol’s belief that Bush might attack Iran before leaving office is not new. In April, he told Bill Bennett that it wasn’t “out of the question” that Bush would consider such a strike because “people are overdoing how much of a lame duck the president is.”

The claim that Obama’s potential election could force Bush’s hand also isn’t new. Earlier this month, far-right pseudo scholar Daniel Pipes told National Review Online that “President Bush will do something” if the Democratic nominee won. “Should it be Mr. McCain that wins, he’ll punt,” said Pipes.

Both Kristol and Pipes apparently agree with President Bush’s claim in March that McCain’s “not going to change” his foreign policy.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/22/kristol-bush-iran/

Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’

This morning on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton continued his drumbeat for war against Iran. Adopting Bill Kristol’s argument, Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:

I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.

Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil, 2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.

Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:

I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

Watch it:

Bolton has said he is backing John McCain because he would handle the Iranian nuclear program in a “stronger” way than the Bush administration.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/22/bolton-arabs-delighted/

The trouble with the above is that it is not true. I did watch the clip provided, and Bolton makes no reference to who will be US president and Israel's decision.

You are correct. And I left them a thank you note.

Kewl.

they deserved what you said, and it's good you took the time to write.

Only an idiot would quote those people.

Thanks.

I don't expect them to take it well. They'll probably call me a troll or neocon.

Thinkprogress LIED? And all the while I trusted them so much.

Maybe they'll try and do better in the future.

Same thing as always, you just got caught by it so you noticed.

Danny Schechter was the only lib I ever wrote to about a major mistake in reporting, and to his credit he wrote back and admitted his mistake, though he didn't clear it up online to anyone else. It was about all the preferential press Gore got over Bush. Danny's own numbers proved it./

I think that was quite commendable Davis... and the ones who ridicule you in spite of it should do so good.

Nobody here has ridiculed him for it. Right or left blogs have to be taken for what they are.

Thanks CR. I try.

The final argument from their posters was they "interpreted" what Bolton said and that I should think for myself and not have ThinkProgress do it for me.


I said WTF? I OBVIOUSLY think for myself or I wouldn't have argued the point.




I'd bet $500 Bolton agreed with Kristol 100% but Space was right, ThinkProgress did misquote him. (thanks for the correction) My problem was I assumed Yosemite Bolton did say that. Sounds like him. We've all heard the echo chamber.

But he didn't. That was my only point.

That was dripping with sarcasm. Is that ridicule? You make the call.

BTW, it does make sense to me that if Israel is going to attack Iran, it will choose to do so between the election and the inauguration. They know Bush will give them the green light, and they can't be sure about either McCain or Obama. In addition, there would be no sense in saddling the new President (either one) with the blame for giving the green light.

Ridiculing THEM. Who knows, maybe they THOUGHT they heard something because it's what they always hear.

Could be.

It's raw meat for people that also hear what they want. They weren't expecting anyone to look closer. The nice thing about our little club here is a lot of the time somebody DOES look closer than the places where everyone is of the same political persuasion. Makes us different than a lot of places I've seen.

That's exactly what I like about this place. It's not the typical blog or community forum. If anyone stretches the truth, right or left, it is pointed out immediately. I try like hell to be accurate because I know there are very smart people reading it. Even nom has torn me a new one once or twice.

We have a nice variety of weirdos here.

It works out pretty well to get to the bottom of things sometimes.

Everyone is going to have their own opinions about what goes on, but at least someone is always around to blast a whole in obvious mistakes or lies. To the politicians and pundits it's just a game to see what they can get away with, so we might as well make it a game to see how much we can catch them. Russert was always good at that. Find their own positions and see how well they defend them or why they change them.

Space

Let me add a little different "spin" on that scenario.

I think it will go slightly differently. Should the raid go off between Election and Inauguration, the "blame for it" will be assigned thusly:

If Sen Obama wins, it will be simply a plot, in spitefulness, to saddle the new President with the aftermath of the situation resulting from the raid. Just one more reason to blame the "Evil Republicans and Bush."

If Sen McCain wins, it will be because the two Republican Presidents (the outgoing Bush and in the newly elected McCain) got together and colluded to give the green light.

No win either way for the current administration.

Or so it seems to me. Either way nobody wins - not Israel, not the US and not Iran (unless you think they really want to play an active victim instead of a supposed victim card).

Jus' bein' my cynical self.

That's pretty much the way I see it.

Ron Paul: I hear members of Congress saying "if we could only nuke Iran"
Congressman warns of imminent confrontation


Friday, July 4, 2008

Congressman Ron Paul has warned millions of radio listeners that the US is heading into a deadly confrontation with Iran, revealing his disbelief at members of Congress who have openly voiced support for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the country.

"If we do (attack) it is going to be a disaster," the Congressman told the Alex Jones show this Thursday.

"I was astounded to see on one of the networks the other day that the debate was not are we going to attack? but are we going to attack before or after the election?" Paul continued.

The Congressman recently voiced his concern over House Congressional Resolution 362 which he has dubbed a 'Virtual Iran War Resolution'.

"If that comes up it is demanding that the President put on an absolute blockade of the entire country of Iran, and punish any country or any business group around the world if they trade with Iran." Paul told listeners.



Experts have predicted gas will rise to $6 per gallon if the resolution passes, Paul believes that may happen anyway just by anticipation.

"The frightening thing is they say they are taking no options off the table, even nuclear first strike." The Congressman stated.

Paul believes from talking with his contacts in and around Congress that a strike on Iran has already been green lighted.

"That is my sense because the Democratic leadership in the House are proposing no resistance whatsoever, we saw this when a supplemental bill came up and the President asked for $107 billion for the war, the Democrat leadership gave them $162 billion.

It is still totally bewildering to me when I see men and women in the Congress that I know and like doing this just to get along. Most of them will say "I agree with you on all you say but the Iranians are bad people and they might attack us some day... I hear members of Congress saying 'if we could only nuke them'."

Ron Paul also spoke in detail about his new Campaign For Liberty Group and his views on the upcoming election.

http://infowars.net/articles/july2008/040708RonPaul2.htm

I see no value to the US nuking Natanz, say. The US has the ability to bomb and keep on bombing with conventional weapons if we choose to do so. Israel, OTOH will be limited in the number of strikes it can expect to pull off.


I can therefore imagine Israel nuking Natanz.

Israel's strategic objective must be to end Iran's drive for nuclear enrichment, not just slow it.

It wants to demonstrate to Iran that it risks its own nuclear destruction by continuing to seek enrichment capacity.


As I recall, Natanz has a couple hundred thousand people, but the facility itself is located out of town. That might limit population casualties to far fewer than the US war on Iraq has caused.

Israel needs a war ending strike, not a strike that starts an extended conventional exchange.

Depending on which way the wind blows. Hit the facility and the civilians will suffer. It looks like it's in the middle of the country but I doubt Iran's neighbors would appreciate the fallout either.

Nukes. <<<shudder>>>

A nuke on any Muslim country will not end the war, IMO. It will ignite an all-consuming firestorm of violence and retribution.

A quick lend-lease, a few stencils, some paint, teach some of our pilots some yiddish words, and they ready to go. Iran doesn't even change the markings on what they loan out.

Didn't the Soviets use to do that for the Koreans, and maybe the Vietnamese?

I wouldn't be surprised.

Maybe the Israelis should continue the land for peace process...absolute harmony in the Middle East until the land runs out.

Davis continues his fearmongering...............Boo!

From bull semen to bras, Iran still buys American
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080708/ap_on_...6WK_LTg5wADW7oF

WASHINGTON - Nuclear weapons? No way. But there are plenty of items on Iran's shopping list the United States is more than happy to supply: cigarettes, brassieres, bull semen and more.

U.S. exports to Iran grew more than tenfold during President Bush's years in office even as he accused it of nuclear ambitions and sponsoring terrorists.

And Israels response to YOUR statement would be, "WHAT'S NEW!?!" And they'd be RIGHT!

Documents linking Iran to nuclear weapons push may have been fabricated
Gareth Porter
Published: Monday November 10, 2008



The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has obtained evidence suggesting that documents which have been described as technical studies for a secret Iranian nuclear weapons-related research program may have been fabricated.

The documents in question were acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from a still unknown source -- most of them in the form of electronic files allegedly stolen from a laptop computer belonging to an Iranian researcher. The US has based much of its push for sanctions against Iran on these documents.

The new evidence of possible fraud has increased pressure within the IAEA secretariat to distance the agency from the laptop documents, according to a Vienna-based diplomatic source close to the IAEA, who spoke to RAW STORY on condition of anonymity.

The laptop documents include what the IAEA has described in a published report as technical drawings of efforts to redesign the nosecone of the Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missile “to accommodate a nuclear warhead.” The documents are also said to include studies on the use of a high explosive detonation system, drawings of a shaft apparently to be used for nuclear tests, and studies on a bench-scale uranium conversion facility.

These technical papers, along with some correspondence related to the alleged secret Iranian program -- referred to by the IAEA as “alleged studies” -- have been the primary basis during 2008 for the insistence by the US-led international coalition pushing for sanctions against Iran that the Iranian case must be kept going in the United Nations Security Council.
Handwritten Notes
At the center of the internal IAEA struggle is an Iranian firm named Kimia Maadan, which is portrayed in the documents as responsible for studies on a uranium conversion facility, called the “green salt” project, as part of the alleged nuclear weapons program under the Iranian Ministry of Defense.

According to a February 2006 Washington Post article, the United States and its allies believe that Kimia Maadan is a front for the Iranian military.

One of the communications included in the laptop documents – a letter allegedly sent to Kimia Maadan from an unnamed Iranian engineering firm in May 2003 – is at the center of the authenticity argument.

This letter is described in the May 26, 2008 IAEA report as “a one page annotated letter of May 2003 in Farsi.” According to a US source who has been briefed on the matter, the letter has handwritten notes on it which refer to studies on the redesign of a missile reentry vehicle.

Last January, however, Iran turned over to the IAEA a copy of the same May 2003 letter with no handwritten notes on it. This was confirmed by the director of the IAEA Safeguards Department, Olli Heinonen, during a February briefing for member states. Heinonen referred to “correspondence” related to Kimia Maadan that is “identical to that provided by Iran, with the addition of handwritten notes.”

Notes on the Heinonen briefing, compiled by unnamed diplomats who attended it, were posted on the website of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

The copy of the letter without the handwritten notes was part of a larger collection of documentation concerning Kimia Maadan provided to IAEA by Iran in response to a request for an explanation of that firm’s role in the management of the Iranian Gchine uranium mine.

After the IAEA received the copy of the letter without notes from Iran, some officials began pushing for an acknowledgment by the Agency that there were serious questions about the whether the laptop documents were fabricated, according to the Vienna-based source close to the IAEA.

“There was an effort to point out that the Agency isn’t in a position to authenticate the documents,” said the source.

Heinonen and other IAEA Safeguards Department officials have continued, however, to defend the credibility of the document in question.

According to an American source briefed on the dispute, the defenders of the authenticity of the version of the letter with the handwritten notes say that the appearance of the clean copy can be attributed to Kimia Maadan making multiple copies of the original which have been circulated to various staff members.
Only an Ore-processing Plant
Further evidence damaging to the credibility of the letter and the handwritten notes was provided to the atomic energy watchdog last January by the Iranian government. According to Iran, Kimia Maadan was not working for the Defense Ministry but for the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI).

The new Iranian documentation, described in the February 22, 2008 IAEA report, proved to IAEA’s satisfaction that the Kimia Maadan Company had been created in May 2000 solely to carry out a project to design, procure and install equipment for an ore processing plant.

The documents also showed that the core staff of Kimia Maadan was able to undertake the work on ore processing only because the nuclear agency had provided it with the technical drawings and reports as the basis for the contract.

“Information and explanations provided by Iran were supported by the documentation, the content of which is consistent with the information already available to the agency,” the IAEA concluded.

Marie Harff, a spokesperson for the CIA, declined to comment.
Additional Doubts About the Letter
Other questions surround the letter with the handwritten notes. The subject of the letter was Kimia Maadan's inquiry to the engineering firm about procurement of a programmable logic control (PLC) system, according to the IAEA's May 26 report.

A PLC system is one of many types of technology that the United States has long sought to deny to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. Iran had informed the IAEA even before 2006 that Kimia Maadan had assisted the AEOI in getting around that denial strategy by procuring various technologies for the planned uranium conversion facility at Esfahan.

Given that Kimia Maadan’s role in procurement for the conversion facility was both unrelated to its technical work for the AEOI and part of a covert effort to get around U.S. restrictions, it seems unlikely that they would have made multiple copies of the letter. Even if multiple copies were made, the firm would certainly have taken normal security precautions for a document of that type, marking each copy with a number or name.

A security procedure of that kind would have identified any missing copies. However, this was not the case with the 2003 letter. The United States, as its reason for refusing to provide a copy of the document to Iran, has argued that it would allow Iranian security personnel to identify the person who wrote the notes from their handwriting, according to the US source who has been briefed on the matter.

Another problem with the handwritten letter is the absence of any logical link between the subject of the letter and the alleged work on redesign of the missile. PLC systems, which are used for automation of industrial processes, such as control of machinery on factory assembly lines, would have been irrelevant to the technical studies on redesigning the Shahab-3 missile.
Other Documents Also Under Suspicion
Other documents from the laptop collection, allegedly showing that Kimia Maadan was working closely with the team trying to redesigning the Shahab-3 missile, have also come under suspicion of fraud.

The IAEA’s May 2008 report describes a flowsheet under Kimia Maadan’s name, showing a “process for bench scale conversion of uranium oxide” to UF4 (uranium tetraflouride), also known as “green salt.” The project number shown in the disputed documents for the “green salt” subproject is 5.13.

However, Heinonen stated that the number given to the Gchine subproject was 5.15. According to the documents obtained by the IAEA from Iran last January, this was the number of the uranium ore processing project that was assigned in 1999 by the civilian AEOI, not by the Iranian Defense Ministry. This would mean that the author of the document used the project number 5.13 for the “green salt” subproject based on their knowledge of the AEOI numbering system and not on a military designation.

In his February 25 briefing, Heinonen additionally referred to an alleged letter sent by Kimia Maadan – as manager of three subprojects – to the “missile re-entry vehicle” project, asking for a “technical opinion” on the plans for equipment for a proposed “green salt” conversion facility.

However, it is difficult to understand why the team working on redesigning the missile would be asked for a “technical opinion” on equipment for a uranium conversion facility.

A spokesperson for the State Department’s Office of Arms Control and International Security, which is responsible for IAEA affairs, said in an e-mail that specialists in the office “aren’t able to comment” on the subject of the intelligence documents now being considered by the IAEA.

The IAEA also declined to comment.
Toward a Showdown on the Contradictions
As the contradictions between the new Iranian evidence and the laptop documents relating to Kimia Maadan became apparent, some IAEA officials argued that the Agency should distance itself from what they now suspect are forgeries. Despite that argument, the May 2008 report contained no reference to the issue.

The next IAEA report, due out in mid-November, will include the first response by the Agency to a confidential 117-page Iranian critique of the laptop documents, according to the Vienna-based source.

In the past, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has shown an ability to face off with the United States when evidence has been called into doubt. The infamous “Niger forgeries” – documents that purported to show an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the purchase of uranium oxide – were used by the White House as part of its case for war against Iraq.

In response, ElBaradei sent a letter to the White House and the National Security Council in December 2002, over three months before the US launched the Iraq War, warning that he believed the documents were forgeries and should not be cited as evidence of Iraqi intention to obtain nuclear weapons.

When ElBaradei received no response from the Bush administration, he went public to debunk the Niger forgeries. In a speech at the United Nations in March 2003, he declared that the IAEA, after “thorough analysis,” had concluded that the documents alleging the purchase of uranium by Iraqi from Niger “are in fact not authentic.”

The anomalies that have been revealed by the Iranian documents obtained from Iran last January may not be as obvious as the ones that made it clear the Niger documents were fabrications. Nevertheless, they appear to be red flags for IAEA analysts concerned with the issue.

Suspicion has surrounded the “alleged studies” documents from the beginning, because the United States has refused to say who brought the collection to US intelligence four years ago.

Gareth Porter is an investigative journalist and historian who has authored numerous foreign policy analyses and is the author of the book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam. In a 2006 article in the American Prospect, he revealed Iran's spurned diplomatic outreach to the Bush Administration in 2003.


http://rawstory.com/news/2008/IAEA_suspect...e_for_1109.html

Andrew Sullivan has good coverage of the Iran election.

http://dailydish.typepad.com/

He's been on top of it.

Who is this man and what has he done with Pat?


Quote For The Day III

"When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way. That is a rule of politics Lyndon Johnson once put into the most pungent of terms. U.S. fulminations will change nothing in Tehran. But they would enable the regime to divert attention to U.S. meddling in Iran’s affairs and portray the candidate robbed in this election, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, as a poodle of the Americans...

The dilemma for America is that the theocracy defines itself and grounds its claim to leadership through its unyielding resistance to the Great Satan—the United States—and to Israel. Nevertheless, Obama, with his outstretched hand, his message to Iran on its national day, his admission that the United States had a hand in the 1953 coup in Tehran, his assurances that we recognize Iran’s right to nuclear power, succeeded. He stripped the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad of their clinching argument—that America is out to destroy Iran and they are indispensable to Iran’s defense," - Patrick Buchanan.

I agree for now. This is not about John McCain.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...-day-iii-4.html

Same as always. It's why MSNBC hired him.