Yesterday in Tehran’s Azadi Square, hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out to listen to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech marking the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. Ahmadinejad did not disappoint the adoring crowd, defiantly announcing that Iran had become a “nuclear state,” adding: “The Iranian nation is brave enough that if one day we wanted to create an atomic bomb, we would announce it publicly and would create it.”
But the Iranian nation is not nearly as unified behind the current regime as yesterday’s production was meant to show. The supporters in Azadi Square had actually been bussed in by the regime from around the country. For weeks before the anniversary, the government had arrested students, photographers and journalists in an effort to disrupt the Green Movement which had successfully organized mass opposition demonstrations last year following Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent reelection. The government also slowed Internet service and shut down some social networking services to disrupt opposition communications. But even that wasn’t enough. When the Green Movement did manage to stage smaller counter-demonstrations, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia fired tear gas and beat them with clubs until the crowds dispersed.
And Ahmadinejad’s nuclear claims also might not be all they are cracked up to be. Former U.S. officials and independent nuclear experts tell The Washington Post that Iran’s main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz has experienced declining output levels due to possible technical problems and possibly sabotage. Ahmadinejad’s “nuclear state” shows that the regime is determined to push ahead with its nuclear program despite international opposition. And it is clear that Iran continues to increase its stockpile of enriched uranium, which it could use to build a nuclear weapon.
That is a nuclear weapon which, coupled with Iran’s growing ballistic missile capability, could annihilate Israel. And Ahmadinejad did not ignore Israel on Tehran’s 31st anniversary. In a call to Syrian leader Bashar Assad, he warned Israel against attacking Syria, Lebanon or elsewhere in the region. Ahmadinejad’s phone call is a pointed signal to Israel that if it launches a preventive strike at Iran’s nuclear program, then Tehran will order Hezbollah to launch terrorist and rocket attacks against Israel. As Heritage scholar James Phillips has detailed, an Israeli strike on Iran would have serious implications for U.S. national security.
It is far past time for the Obama administration to admit its “don’t rock the boat” approach to the Iranian regime has failed. The Obama administration’s efforts to seek sanctions through the United Nations are a nice thought, but considering guaranteed opposition from China and Russia, any realistic strategy must also look outside the United Nations. Washington therefore must think outside the U.N. box and press its allies and other countries to impose stronger sanctions outside the U.N. framework. Iran would be hard hit by bans on foreign investment, gasoline exports, trade with firms affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other measures undertaken by the European Union, Japan, India, the Gulf Cooperation Council or other countries.
The Obama administration should also take a lesson from Ronald Reagan and step-up its public diplomacy efforts to support the Green Movement. The U.S. government should announce that regime change is official U.S. policy, step-up support for Radio Free Iran, and continue to work with Iranians abroad setting up pro-democracy Web sites. The administration’s current course is heading to a dangerous place. The President cannot keep doing the bare minimum and hope the Iranian regime plays nice.
Quick Hits:
- According to the Wall Street Journal forecasting survey, about a quarter of the 8.4 million jobs eliminated since the recession began won’t be coming back.
- According to the Associated Press, there is one small problem with the “bipartisan” Obama’s Second Stimulus emerging from the Senate: It won’t create many jobs.
- Despite campaigning on a firm promise not to raise taxes on the middle class, President Obama is now “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000.
- According to the latest Rasmussen Reports poll, 61% of U.S. voters say Congress should scrap the health care plan that has been working its way through the House and Senate and start over.
- Admitting that the nation rejected his preference for a civilian trial in New York City, President Obama will now decide where to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and Attorney General Eric Holder even suggested a military commission was a possibility.
The tentative nuclear deal that the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) reportedly has reached with Iran has been widely hailed as a success for the Obama Administration’s engagement policy. For example, today a Washington Post article described the deal as “providing a major boost for the Obama administration as it seeks to engage the Islamic republic.” But a closer look at the negotiations gives strong reasons for concern.
First of all, the focus on helping Iran to refuel its research reactor in Tehran has distracted attention from the fact that Iran stubbornly insists that it will continue to enrich uranium in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions. This is the main issue of the P5+1 talks, but it has been obscured by Tehran’s tactical flexibility on the issue of moving about three quarters of its known supplies of low enriched uranium (LEU) out of the country to be further enriched in Russia and turned into fuel rods by France.
Second, the negotiations have boosted Iran’s case that it needs enriched uranium for “civilian” purposes but have not solved the problem of how to keep Tehran from diverting enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon. If Iran does in fact follow through on its promises to send the LEU to Russia, then the problem is only postponed, not resolved. Iran can replace the LEU in a year or less with the centrifuges still whirling away at Natanz. Meanwhile, Iran also could have other secret facilities dedicated to producing the highly enriched uranium needed to arm a nuclear weapon.
Third, by giving the appearance of progress while the real problem remains, Tehran has bought more time in which to continue to enrich uranium without paying a penalty in the form of tougher sanctions. Iran now will stretch out the negotiations to defuse momentum for further sanctions that was generated by the latest revelation of Iranian duplicity about the secret uranium enrichment plant at Qom. Before the latest round of talks, a senior Iranian official gloated that “Time is on our side” and that Iran would send junior officials who did not have the authority to make concessions to the October 19 talks, so that the talks can be dragged out further. President Obama said on October 1 that Iran must allow inspectors access within 2 weeks but Iran already has missed that deadline. The IAEA inspectors will go in on October 25th, if the agreement in principle is still valid then.
Fourth, the Obama Administration has an “agreement in principle” with a regime that has no principles, except to hold on to power and export its revolution. As Ambassador John Bolton has written, “Diplomacy’s three slipperiest words are ‘agreement in principle.’” Iran could renege on its commitment, as it has done many times in the past.
Iran already has altered the original agreement by claiming that France can not play a prominent part in the arrangements because of its past unreliability, which is a bad joke coming from Tehran. Apparently, now the Russians will subcontract the manufacturing of the fuel rods for the Tehran reactor to France so that Tehran’s tender sensibilities will be protected.
The bottom line is that contrary to popular belief, the negotiations with Iran have not produced a breakthrough that has resolved the long-simmering crisis over Tehran’s nuclear program. All they have yielded so far is an agreement in principle on a secondary issue that Iran can easily back away from in the future. Meanwhile, the push for further sanctions has been postponed despite the fact that Iran continues to enrich uranium.