Archive
Reuters blog archive
from The Great Debate:
Helping Iran safeguard its nuclear stockpile
Diplomats from six world powers are due back in Kazakhstan on Friday for talks with Iran about its controversial nuclear program. From the hawkish “bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran” crowd to the “jaw-jaw-not-war-war” folks, there is no shortage of ideas about how to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue.
Lost in the din is the prospect that the United Nations agency charged with monitoring Iran’s nuclear activities could settle the most pressing issue – by helping Iran convert its enriched uranium gas stockpile to safer metal form. If only the world powers will encourage it to do its job.
The U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) not only monitors member states’ nuclear programs to make sure they are in compliance with required safeguards obligations, but it also provides technical cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology.
The most serious Western concern about Iran’s nuclear program is the enrichment of fissile uranium to 20 percent in their gas centrifuges. Building up this stockpile is a big step toward having the fuel needed for a nuclear bomb, should Tehran ever decide to kick off a weaponization effort.
from Ian Bremmer:
China shouldn’t leave Kim Jong-un alone
Tensions are running high on the Korean Peninsula, and instability is coming if it’s not already there. North Korea is declaring that truces no longer apply, claiming that the UN is faking its report on North Korean human rights abuses and threatening “thermonuclear war” against its aggressors.
I was in China last week, where I met with senior Chinese foreign policy officials who told me they don’t have the influence over North Korea they once had. There’s a self-promotional reason to say the situation is increasingly out of their hands – it insulates them from pressure to play a leading role in punishing miscreant North Korean behavior. But I think we should start to believe them. Thus far, the normal Chinese channels have not worked. The officials told me that China has resorted to unofficial contacts – through business leaders, informal contacts, etc. – to try to pass on the word to Pyongyang. Mao Zedong famously once called China and North Korea’s relationship as “close as lips and teeth.” Today, when it comes to private bilateral communication, it seems Pyongyang’s lips are sealed, and China’s teeth are grinding.
from The Great Debate:
Can diplomacy prevail with Iran?
New talks with Iran ended Wednesday with a surprising forward spin. More meetings are planned in the now decade-long American-led effort to ensure the Islamic Republic does not get nuclear weapons.
Iran must now accept or reject a proposal that offers some sanctions relief in return for Tehran’s reducing its stockpile of uranium enriched close to weapon-grade. This hopeful note – Tehran’s reaction was positive – comes as a showdown looms, because Iran continues to inch ever closer to being able to make a nuclear weapon.
from The Great Debate:
How close is Iran to nuclear weapons?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed last week that new second-generation centrifuges, which Iran plans to start up at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, could cut by a third the time needed to create a nuclear bomb – underlining his deadline of this summer to take military action against Iran.
Netanyahu’s prediction, however, appears to be based on some unsubstantiated assumptions regarding Iranian intentions and capabilities. Yet it can provide ammunition to the hawks in Washington and Jerusalem, who could rush us into another needless and counterproductive war in the Middle East. Netanyahu’s assertions do not stand up to technical scrutiny.
from The Great Debate:
The U.S. needs a completely different approach to Iran
As Washington and its great power partners prepare for more nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Obama administration and policy elites across the political spectrum talk as if America is basically in control of the situation. Sanctions, we are told, are inflicting ever-rising hardship on Iran’s economy. Either Tehran will surrender to U.S. demands that it stop enriching uranium or, at some point, the American military will destroy Iranian nuclear installations.
This is a dangerous delusion, grounded in persistent American illusions about Middle Eastern reality. Because of failed wars-cum-occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan; a war on terror that has turned Muslim societies ever more firmly against U.S. policy; and de facto support for open-ended Israeli occupation of Arab populations, America’s position in the region is in free fall. Increasingly mobilized publics will not tolerate continuation of such policies. If, in this climate, the United States launches another war to disarm yet another Middle Eastern country of weapons of mass destruction it does not have, the blowback against American interests will be disastrous. Nonetheless, that is where our current strategy – negotiating on terms that could not possibly interest Iran while escalating covert operations, cyber-attacks, and economic warfare against it – leads.
from The Great Debate:
Will this be the year that Israel goes to war with Iran?
Israel did not bomb Iran last year. Why should it happen this year?
Because it did not happen last year. The Iranians are proceeding apace with their nuclear program. The Americans are determined to stop them. Sanctions are biting, but the diplomatic process produced nothing visible in 2012. Knowledgeable observers believe there is no "zone of possible agreement." Both the United States and Iran may believe that they have viable alternatives to a negotiated agreement.
While Israel has signaled that its "red line" (no nuclear weapons capability) won't be reached before mid-2013, it seems likely it will be reached before the end of the year. President Barack Obama has refused to specify his red line, but he has made it amply clear that he prefers intensified sanctions and eventual military action to a nuclear Iran that needs to be contained and provides incentives for other countries to go nuclear. If and when he takes the decision for war, there is little doubt about a bipartisan majority in Congress supporting the effort.
from The Great Debate:
Mideast’s WMD ‘red line’ gauntlet
“Red lines” are all the rage this year. Even as the swirl of Middle East headlines focus on Gaza and Egyptian politics, the region remains under two "red lines." If Iran and Syria, respectively, cross the nuclear and chemical weapons thresholds, it would generate a strong, if undefined, Israeli and American response.
Washington’s red line, however, lays bare another issue: Should the executive branch have carte blanche to commit the country to military action? Secretary of State Hilliary Clinton Monday appeared to suggest so. She declared, in public remarks in Prague, that the Syrian government’s use of its chemical arsenal would be a “red line” for Washington to act.* Or is it time for Congress to make its own evaluation before the country again turns to the gun?
from The Human Impact:
Smuggling of weapons-grade nuclear material unacceptable – former CIA officer
Rolf Mowatt-Larsson, currently a senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center, served more than three years as director of intelligence and counter-intelligence at the U.S. Department of Energy and for 23 years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer in various posts.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/9D02zhRiEgg[/youtube]
He delivered a presentation about preventing nuclear terrorism at the three-day "Reporting on International Security and Terrorism" seminar in Istanbul hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
from The Great Debate:
Syria as dress rehearsal: Securing WMD in midst of civil war
As Syria’s civil war spirals into mounting violence, the Assad regime’s chemical weapons stockpile is generating increased anxiety throughout the Middle East and beyond. Taking precautionary measures, the United States has reportedly placed 150 “planners and other specialists” in Jordan to work on contingencies -- including the chemical weapons threat.
As odd as it may seem, however, we are lucky that Syria’s chemical stockpile marks Damascus’s most serious weapons of mass destruction risk. Had Israel not bombed the country’s weapons reactor in 2007, the embattled nation -- and the rest of us – could have been staring at the globe's first civil war with a nuclear dimension.
from The Great Debate UK:
Iran is using oil to find gaps in international sanctions
By Kristen Silverberg and Dr August Hanning. The opinions expressed are their own.
The case of Standard Chartered Bank has demonstrated that there are still gaps in the international sanctions regime concerning Iran. In the financial sector, the existing regime can be improved. However, the European sanctions targeting the Iranian oil and gas sector also have significant weaknesses. It is necessary to identify these weaknesses and to close them as quickly as possible.
