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West raises stakes over Iran nuclear programme
President Obama and the leaders of France and Britain have deliberately raised the stakes in the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programme by dramatising the disclosure that it is building a second uranium enrichment plant. Their shoulder-to-shoulder statements of resolve, less than a week before Iran opens talks with six major powers in Geneva, raised more questions than they answer.
It turns out that the United States has known for a long time (how long?) that Iran had been building the still incomplete plant near Qom. Did it share that intelligence with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and if not, why not? Why did it wait until now, in the middle of a G20 summit in Pittsburgh, to make the announcement — after Iran had notified the International Atomic Energy Authority of the plant’s existence on Monday, after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had delivered a defiant speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday and after the Security Council had adopted a unanimous resolution calling for an end to the spread of nuclear weapons on Thursday?
Is this all part of Obama’s choreography to build international pressure on Iran by getting Russia, in return for the dropping of plans to put a U.S. missile shield in Poland the Czech Republic, to threaten more sanctions against Tehran? A U.S. official says Obama shared the intelligence with Russian President Dimitry Medvedev at the United Nations this week and China had only just been informed. Did Obama try and fail to get Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao — both in Pittsburgh — to join the three Western leaders on the podium? Or was his hand forced on timing by the fact that the New York Times had got wind of the Iranian nuclear plant and was set to publish the news on Friday?
The division of labour between Obama, Sarkozy and Brown was striking. The U.S. president sounded stern but his tone was measured. He stressed his commitment to dialogue and negotiation with Iran and to Tehran’s right to peaceful nuclear energy. He did not mention sanctions, let alone the possibility of military action. It fell to the Europeans to inject a tone of menace.
Sarkozy accused Iran of defying the international community and taking the world on a dangerous path, and said that unless Tehran changed course by December, there would be tougher sanctions. Brown charged the Islamic Republic with deception and said the international community had no choice but “to draw a line in the sand”, and that he did not rule out anything although sanctions were the preferred route.
Will the latest disclosure on what Iran insists is a peaceful nuclear programme persuade Russia to renounce the sale of advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran? Will it persuade China, which reaffirmed its scepticism about more sanctions this week and has begun supplying gasoline to Iran, to change its mind? The West sees Iran’s dependency on imported fuel as a key vulnerability.
Friday’s dramatic announcement was a clear effort to appeal to the world court of public opinion and maximise pressure on Tehran before the Oct. 1 talks, but there is no sign that the Islamic Republic’s leaders are even considering yielding on their nuclear ambitions. On the contrary, they seem convinced that the nuclear standoff will enable them to patch over deep internal divisions over the disputed June presidential election by playing the patriotic card.
Forget about bankers’ bonuses
Bank bonuses have been a red herring of the financial crisis, repeatedly deflecting attention from deeper problems. So it is disappointing that the leaders of the G20 nations propose to squander yet more time on the subject in Pittsburgh.
While the French may have recently watered down their proposed curbs on bonuses, their voter-pleasing plans still look likely to be at the heart of the meeting. Worse, they seem to be pushing aside the United States’ sensible proposals for tougher capital rules for banks.
Even so, there is a way of turning the tables on the French. Obama should make a powerful case for capital rules as a tool of social justice, which would moderate princely bank pay while shielding the taxpayer.
Curbs on bank bonuses are intended to serve two purposes. The first is to remove incentives for traders to take reckless risks in expectation of a lavish year-end payout. The second aim is social catharsis — to reduce overall compensation to more acceptable levels. The French plan would achieve neither.
If regulators give banks enough slack to take large risks, they will find a way of doing so. Even if bonuses were eliminated altogether, ambitious bankers could be encouraged by executives to bet the farm in expectation of a large bump up in basic pay.
It is also doubtful that rules on bonuses would really work: Financial institutions are masters at navigating their way around all kinds of regulations.
By contrast, America’s bank capital plan promises to get at the root cause. One of the chief reasons that bankers are overpaid is their bets are backed by an implicit government guarantee.
This is why the banks should have never been bailed out in the first place. If they give away billions in bonuses, the company must be making a lot of money, of course they were given billions. When the bank goes broke because they gave away all their profits, it is the bonus program that is set up by whom?, that will be a big part of that banks failure. The banks that were responsible will still be operating. Don’t reward bad behavior. I know there is a lot more to this but the government should keep their nose out of businesses, and try to run their own. The government is doing a much worse job, look at the trillions we are in debt.
Shelved missile shield tests NATO unity
After just six weeks as NATO secretary-general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen has his first crisis. The alliance may be slowly bleeding in an intractable war in Afghanistan, but the immediate cause is the U.S. administration’s decision to shelve a planned missile shield due to have been built in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The shield, energetically promoted by former President George W. Bush, was designed to intercept a small number of missiles fired by Iran or some other ”rogue state”. But Russia saw it as a threat to its own nuclear deterrent and NATO’s new east European members saw it as a useful deterrent against Russian bullying, by putting U.S. strategic assets on their soil.
President Barack Obama’s decision to drop plans to install it on Polish and Czech territory leaves those former Soviet satellites feeling betrayed — because they expended political capital to win parliamentary support — and more exposed to a resurgent Russia, especially after its use of force against Georgia last year.
Obama’s move is clearly part of a warming of U.S. relations with Moscow from which Washington hopes to gain help in return on supply routes to Afghanistan, pressure on Iran to rein in its nuclear programme, and an agreement on radical cuts in nuclear arsenals. But this “reset” of U.S.-Russian relations has only exacerbated the rift within NATO over Russia.
The three Baltic states and Poland were particularly critical of NATO’s low-key response to Moscow’s military action in Georgia. Some said the refusal of west European allies led by Germany and France to agree at a NATO summit last year to putting Georgia and Ukraine on a path to NATO membership emboldened the Kremlin to act. President Dimitry Medvedev’s harsh attack on Ukraine’s leader in an open letter last month fanned their fears of Russian bullying of its neighbours.
East European officials cite Moscow’s playing with the gas taps and trade disputes, and its apparent determination to keep its Black Sea fleet in the Crimean port of Odessa Sevastopol beyond a 2017 deadline agreed with Ukraine as part of a strategy of tension intended to reverse the “colour revolutions” in Kiev and Tbilisi, and bring other former Soviet republics to heel.
All that makes it a particularly awkward moment for Rasmussen to deliver his inaugural keynote speech on NATO-Russia relations on Friday in Brussels. The former Danish prime minister has put a few noses out of joint in his first weeks by making clear he intends to run NATO in a more results-oriented way, leaving less room and time for ambassadors in the North Atlantic Council to debate any idea to a standstill. He has set strict time-limits on council meetings, streamlined flabby agendas and outsourced the drafting of a new Strategic Concept to a group of 12 experts led by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on which not all allies are represented.
This is the most promising sign coming out of the US in recent years. This is truly the way forward with Russia and the best signs the new US administration is willing to back it’s words with actions and real change. Thank you Mr. President. You are following up on all of your campaign promises despite a very loud minority of misinformed American that continue to be misled by the constant bombardment of right wing propaganda coming out of some cable news channels.
Obama playing a weak hand with Iran
The announcement that the major powers, including the United States, are going to open talks with Iran on Oct. 1 ought to be a source of rejoicing. After all, isn’t this what much of the world has been urging for several years, while the European Union conducted a frustrating, low-key dialogue like the warm-up band at a rock concert?
So why is there so little excitement about the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany sitting down at the table for comprehensive talks with the Islamic Republic?
Well, it’s partly because the idea of talking to Tehran has been tarnished by the deaths, mass arrests and mass trials that followed Iran’s disputed presidential election in June. No one in the West is keen to confer legitimacy on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who sanctioned the crackdown on his opponents. As French President Nicolas Sarkozy put it last month, the Iranian leaders who told you the election was straight are the same ones telling you that Iran’s nuclear programme is purely peaceful.
Another reason is that the West has made all the concessions to get Iran to the table. It has dropped a long-standing demand that Tehran freeze the enrichment of nuclear fuel, which Western countries believe is intended to develop a weapons capability. That means Iran’s centrifuges will continue spinning at full speed while it spins out the talks in slow motion. And Iran has taunted Western governments by trumpeting that it is not prepared to negotiate at all on its inalienable right to nuclear technology.
Furthermore, by setting the meeting for Oct. 1, Iran has removed the risk of action at the annual United Nations General Assembly session this month to press ahead with tough sanctions against it. Instead, Ahmadinejad will be able to grandstand in New York, giving diplomatic “high fives” to other radical anti-Western leaders from around the developing world while Obama makes his first address as president to the world forum.
Obama is playing a weak hand because the United States is bogged down militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq, while Russia and China are holding back agreement for further sanctions. His main joker is a double-edged sword — the fear of an Israeli military strike on Iran’s nuclear programme. He needs to juggle Israel’s impatience and its suspicion of what it sees as Western weakness with the need to convince Iran it faces a credible military option.
Russian President Dimitry Medvedev made a contribution to putting pressure on Tehran on Tuesday by saying Moscow did not rule out further sanctions. But Iran must be feeling it can play the diplomatic process to bolster the government’s international – and thus domestic – standing while advancing towards the point when it has a so-called break-out option. That is the technical capability to make a crude nuclear device within a short period if it so chooses, without actually building or testing a bomb.
The US is neatly wedged between Iran and Pakistan, while getting rid of the poppy plants with daisy cutters. Santa in the mountains is up to something, hopefully the US does not get distracted and blindsided by its false friends again.
There he goes again…
Ho hum! Another G20 summit, another Sarkozy walkout threat.
The French president’s menaces to throw his toys out of his pram have become a regular feature of the run-up to each meeting of the world’s leading economic powers, making them a much debased coinage. Sarko’s strops are now as routine a precursor to G20 gatherings as the vacuuming of red carpet or the deployment of flower arrangements.
In April, he vowed to storm out of the London G20 summit and refuse to sign the final communique unless France and Germany got their way on binding regulation of all financial markets. He declared victory and dropped the threat before the meeting even began. This time, according to his chief-of-staff, the issue at stake is binding curbs on bankers’ bonuses. It is a strange cause for a conservative politician to be pushing, but with Sarkozy, the emphasis is on politics rather than ideology.
The ritual pre-summit drumroll is designed to demonstrate to gullible French voters that their leader is standing up to “les Anglo-Saxons” (the American hyperpower and the perfidious British) and will not hesitate to say “non” in the manner of General Charles de Gaulle. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, was also fond of these theatrics. But they pall with overuse.
British officials scrambled to assuage the French in April because a beleaguered Prime Minister Gordon Brown was anxious to make the London summit a showcase of his global economic leadership. It is hard to imagine U.S. President Barack Obama taking Gallic posturing so seriously.
Sarkozy would isolate himself and embarrass his closest ally, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, three days before a crucial German general election, if he made good on his threat next week in Pittsburgh. Perhaps it is time someone called his bluff and make him climb down from those platform shoes.
Step up, Barack Obama!
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The Wall
Iran should not arouse concern. Georgia is a flashpoint in Russia’s tense relations with the West. The Bible says: “At the appointed time [the king of the north = Russia] will return and come into the south, but it will not be as the former [1921] or as the latter [2008]. For shall come against him the dwellers of coastlands of Kittim [the West], and he will be humbled, and will return.” (Daniel 11:29,30a) What logical conclusions can be drawn from this forecast? Much suggests that the present economic crisis will deepen, making it possible for Russia to regain the influence, which it lost after the break-up of the Soviet Union. In relationship to this, unavoidable will be the split or even a complete break-up of the European Union and NATO. After that, Russia will come somewhere into the south. Many indicate that this might be Georgia. When this happens, the West will come against Russia. Then Iran will be humbled also. “But ships will come from the direction of Kittim, troubling Asshur [Russia] and troubling Eber [inhabiting on the other side the Euphrates].” (Numbers 24:24a, BBE)
At that time, peace will be taken from the earth and the “great sword” – nuclear sword – will be used. (Revelation 6:4) However, it will be neither the great tribulation nor “the end of the world” (Armageddon). As Jesus foretold, that will be “the beginning of birth pains”. (Mathew 24:7,8)