Update
If the U.S. can't sabotage the ITB agreement, it will do its best to ignore it.
According to the Guardian.
A new set of United Nations sanctions are almost certain to be imposed on Iran next month, after Russia and China today agreed to support punitive action against Tehran's military and financial institutions, according to a security council source.
The Russian and Chinese move came as a surprise to the US and Britain, who had been braced for several more weeks of negotiation. Moscow and Beijing have over the last few months been either lukewarm or downright opposed to the idea of sanctions. The Obama administration has been working for months try to bring China and Russia round.
...
A draft security council resolution was agreed early today by the five permanent members of the security council – the US, Britain, China, Russia and France. The resolution is to be sent to the other 10 members of the council later today.
Hmmm.
I would speculate that the United States was very anxious to get this draft circulated in order to counteract the news of the ITB agreement. So maybe some hurried caving in to Chinese reservations provoked the "surprise".
China, for its part, has frequently expressed its support for the "two-track" process, so I suppose it would be awkward for Beijing to hold up the drafting process if the draft reflected most of its stated concerns.
However, China knows perfectly well that watering down the UN sanctions doesn't solve the problem.
The United States has gone out of its way to telegraph its position that harsher national and EU sanctions are a certainty once an enabling UN resolution is out of the way, as the Washington Post tells us:
Diplomats said that some of the proposed language in the current resolution was added with the full knowledge that it would be removed by the Russians and Chinese -- but then could be revived in the European resolution. The individual country sanctions would come after the European Union has acted and would be led by the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other like-minded nations, diplomats said.
So, the United States strategy could be rephrased as "meaningless sanctions through the UN to enable meaningful national sanctions (without any meaningful Chinese input) down the road."
By spurning the ITB deal, the United States has committed itself to the sanctions route.
Given America's enthusiasm for playing geopolitical chicken with China on this issue, I think Beijing will probably blink, keep its head down, and perhaps even vote for UN sanctions despite the consequences.
Beijing might be thinking that national sanctions would simply drive Iran further into the PRC camp. However, given the Pandora's box element of runaway national sanctions, I doubt China's leaders welcome the unpredictable risk and confrontation they involve (a caution that it might be wise for the Obama administration to emulate).
It is more likely that China will encourage diplomacy over the next few weeks, console Turkey and Brazil (who are undoubtedly insulted at the United States' dismissive treatment of their initiative), and try to sort out the geopolitical wreckage to its advantage if and when sanctions do come down.
Original post below:
They like it.
In addition to having the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman speak positively of the agreement at the regular press conference, the MOFA drew special attention to it by extracting remarks Foreign Minister Yang Jiezhi made at to Chinese and Tunisian reporters (the president of Tunisia is visiting Beijing) and posting it as a separate statement on its Chinese language page.
Yang stated China had noted reports concerning the agreement negotiated between Iran, Turkey, and Brazil and "welcomed and appreciated" the diplomatic efforts of the involved parties.
In Chinese, the phrase is, "欢迎和赞赏".
欢迎--the well-known "huanying" or "welcome"--is pretty much meaningless diplomatic puffery.
赞赏 on the other hand, is quite a positive term. It means "appreciate and admire" and is just one degree short of "endorse".
Since China wasn't a party to the agreement, they wouldn't have been likely to use the term "endorse" in any case.
There was no mention of the process-related reservations and suspicions that all the other permanent Security Council members including Russia chose to voice.
The dominant theme for Yang's statement was the success of diplomacy, which, in this context, is an implied criticism of excessive reliance on sanctions.
He concluded his statement with the remark
中方愿意与有关各方一道为推动伊核问题的外交解决发挥建设性作用。
"The Chinese side is willing to work together with the concerned parties to play a constructive role in the diplomatic resolution of the Iran issue."
All in all, a strong Chinese statement of support and a sign that China is calling for more attention to the diplomacy side of dual track as the US labors to shift the focus back to the sanctions track.
Showing posts with label Tehran Research Reactor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tehran Research Reactor. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Lost inTranslation
The United States Responds to the Turkey/Brazil/Iran Deal with Dismay, Denial, Deafness, Willful Misunderstanding, and the Occasional Malapropism
The deal for to provide fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, brokered by Turkey and Brazil, has been signed.
The deal threatens to derail the push for Iran sanctions, which is apparently the be-all and end-all of America's strategy.
No question what Turkey--a non-permanent member of the Security Council this year--thinks:
"This agreement should be regarded positively and there is no need for sanctions now that we [Turkey and Brazil] have made guarantees and the low-enriched uranium will remain in Turkey," [Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu] said.
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler tells us that the deal will provide excuses for more Chinese mushiness on sanctions:
More important, the deal gives China -- a veto-holding member of the Security Council long reluctant to support new sanctions -- an excuse to delay or water down any new resolution.
Now the United States has to find a way to kill the deal.
More from Glenn Kessler:
The best hope for U.S. officials is Iranian intransigence. The Iranians could haggle over the details and implementation of the agreement until it collapses, much in the way it first agreed to a swap deal with the United States and its allies before backing away.
Iran now must present a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna explaining the details of the transaction, which U.S. officials privately hope will begin the process of unraveling it.
Stay classy, fellas.
The first line of opposition has already been drawn: It's a trap! The crafty Iranians have continued to enrich uranium since the deal was originally floated. So sending 1200 kg of LEU overseas leaves too much inside Iran and does not eliminate the dreaded bomb breakout scenario.
Second line of opposition is that Iran is continuing to enrich LEU to 20%.
As CNN spun the agreement on its its homepage: Iran to resume uranium enrichment, linking through to a story entitled Iran to resume uranium enrichment despite Turkey deal.
This does not appear to be quality reporting.
The original version of the article, which grew wings and circulated all the way to China (it was apparently also the basis for a report in the Chinese language media), implied that Iran had bookended announcement of the Turkey deal with an intentionally defiant statement that it would be enriching more LEU.
However, when CNN updated the story (including a passel of disparaging comments on the deal from the UK, France, and Israel) it transpired that what the Iran foreign ministry spokesman had really said was this:
"We are not planning on stopping our legal right to enrich uranium," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told CNN by telephone.
That's different. Iran's centrifuges might well be spinning, but sticking a thumb in the West's eye doesn't seem to have been Mehmanparast's intention.
As stated in the text of the agreement, Iran wanted to make clear that, by acceding to the TRR swap, it was not surrendering its right to enrich uranium to under 20%--the basic premise of its engagement with the IAEA and NPT regime, and a right that even the United States is, in principle, willing to acknowledge.
So, even as Iran attempts to present its most accommodating demeanour, it looks like some problematic reporting and, to be fair, a less-than-stellar use of the English language by Mehmanparast, combine to make the regime look intransigent and, indeed, willfully provocative.
Funny 'bout that.
China, which I suspect is rather gleeful about the deal, hasn't weighed in with any official comment or endorsement as of this writing.
A glitch in Xinhua's editing gives an idea of China's current effort to stay above the fray and keep up with the latest spin:
TEHRAN, May 17 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday his country will continue enriching uranium to 20 percent itself, despite a swap deal signed just hours ago in which Iran has agreed to ship some most of its low enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for 20 percent uranium needed for its Tehran reactor. [emph. added]
To console Xinhua with the knowledge that the decline of copyediting and authorial standards is not just a Chinese problem, Glenn Kessler wrote:
Brazil and Turkey, which were represented by their presidents in the talks, invested significant diplomatic cache in the negotiations.
Ahem.
One invests diplomatic capital to obtain an agreement. One garners diplomatic cachet from concluding an agreement. Cache, a collection of resources securely stored against a rainy day but by definition not yielding an investment return, resides, for the purposes of this sentence, in that dread limbo where Francophone ignorance, mispronunciation, and misapprehension reign and Spellcheck cannot go.
This deal represents bad news for the Obama administration.
Insisting on sanctions as a precondition for further Iran-related movement provided welcome domestic political cover for the administration.
If the UNSC sanctions drive sputters, then the U.S. either have to abandon the signature multi-lateralism of the Obama administration to pursue destabilizing and probably futile unilateral sanctions, or risk the wrath of the pro-Israel/security hardline/knee-jerk Republican bloc with inconclusive, moderate noodling on the issue.
And I don't even need to trot out my personal hobby horse--the theory that Iran sanctions was a precondition for Israel's entry into the non-proliferation regime and the success of the Obama administration's NPT Revcon-centric global security strategy--to observe that moderation by the U.S. would embarrass it in front of its European allies.
China Matters' favorite arms control wonk, Jeffrey Lewis, also went on record with his dismay with the announced deal:
The downside of not insisting is that the deal — which does nothing to constrain Iran’s program — creates a false sense that the problem is Iran’s break-out capability. In the Reuters story, Western officials claimed “Iran was trying to give the impression that it was the fuel deal which was at the center of problems with the West, rather than its nuclear ambitions as a whole.” Yeah, no kidding. As regular readers know, I have long argued that the problem is not Iran’s enrichment at Natanz, not even to 20 percent. The problem is Iran’s history of clandestine enrichment. Iran wants to change the narrative to focus on the West’s objections to its arguably legitimate activities. Why we keep helping them do that is beyond me.
My personal feeling is that the precondition to stopping Iran's clandestine enrichment is a) engagement and b) dealing with the Israel problem c) building a genuine security consensus both inside and outside of Iran on the issue.
If the U.S. had treated the TRR swap as a trust-building transaction instead of an opportunity to demand the incapacitation of part of Iran's nuclear program, and if the Israel double standard didn't exist, Turkey probably wouldn't have been so eager to defy the United States and broker the deal.
But whatever.
With this convergence of enlightened expert opinion, political necessity, and geopolitical calculation, the Obama administration might be quite ruthless in trying to derail the deal.
In addition to griping about the additional LEU in Iran, the U.S. could insist on an enrichment freeze. Or France--whose job is to actually fabricate the plates--could state that it couldn't bring itself to cooperate unless all the LEU went to Turkey.
The West can certainly scupper the deal--at the cost of humiliating and angering Brazil and Turkey. But can it garner Chinese support for sanctions--and acquiescence to whatever skullduggery it comes up to rescue them?
The deal for to provide fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, brokered by Turkey and Brazil, has been signed.
The deal threatens to derail the push for Iran sanctions, which is apparently the be-all and end-all of America's strategy.
No question what Turkey--a non-permanent member of the Security Council this year--thinks:
"This agreement should be regarded positively and there is no need for sanctions now that we [Turkey and Brazil] have made guarantees and the low-enriched uranium will remain in Turkey," [Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu] said.
The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler tells us that the deal will provide excuses for more Chinese mushiness on sanctions:
More important, the deal gives China -- a veto-holding member of the Security Council long reluctant to support new sanctions -- an excuse to delay or water down any new resolution.
Now the United States has to find a way to kill the deal.
More from Glenn Kessler:
The best hope for U.S. officials is Iranian intransigence. The Iranians could haggle over the details and implementation of the agreement until it collapses, much in the way it first agreed to a swap deal with the United States and its allies before backing away.
Iran now must present a letter to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna explaining the details of the transaction, which U.S. officials privately hope will begin the process of unraveling it.
Stay classy, fellas.
The first line of opposition has already been drawn: It's a trap! The crafty Iranians have continued to enrich uranium since the deal was originally floated. So sending 1200 kg of LEU overseas leaves too much inside Iran and does not eliminate the dreaded bomb breakout scenario.
Second line of opposition is that Iran is continuing to enrich LEU to 20%.
As CNN spun the agreement on its its homepage: Iran to resume uranium enrichment, linking through to a story entitled Iran to resume uranium enrichment despite Turkey deal.
This does not appear to be quality reporting.
The original version of the article, which grew wings and circulated all the way to China (it was apparently also the basis for a report in the Chinese language media), implied that Iran had bookended announcement of the Turkey deal with an intentionally defiant statement that it would be enriching more LEU.
However, when CNN updated the story (including a passel of disparaging comments on the deal from the UK, France, and Israel) it transpired that what the Iran foreign ministry spokesman had really said was this:
"We are not planning on stopping our legal right to enrich uranium," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told CNN by telephone.
That's different. Iran's centrifuges might well be spinning, but sticking a thumb in the West's eye doesn't seem to have been Mehmanparast's intention.
As stated in the text of the agreement, Iran wanted to make clear that, by acceding to the TRR swap, it was not surrendering its right to enrich uranium to under 20%--the basic premise of its engagement with the IAEA and NPT regime, and a right that even the United States is, in principle, willing to acknowledge.
So, even as Iran attempts to present its most accommodating demeanour, it looks like some problematic reporting and, to be fair, a less-than-stellar use of the English language by Mehmanparast, combine to make the regime look intransigent and, indeed, willfully provocative.
Funny 'bout that.
China, which I suspect is rather gleeful about the deal, hasn't weighed in with any official comment or endorsement as of this writing.
A glitch in Xinhua's editing gives an idea of China's current effort to stay above the fray and keep up with the latest spin:
TEHRAN, May 17 (Xinhua) -- An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Monday his country will continue enriching uranium to 20 percent itself, despite a swap deal signed just hours ago in which Iran has agreed to ship some most of its low enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for 20 percent uranium needed for its Tehran reactor. [emph. added]
To console Xinhua with the knowledge that the decline of copyediting and authorial standards is not just a Chinese problem, Glenn Kessler wrote:
Brazil and Turkey, which were represented by their presidents in the talks, invested significant diplomatic cache in the negotiations.
Ahem.
One invests diplomatic capital to obtain an agreement. One garners diplomatic cachet from concluding an agreement. Cache, a collection of resources securely stored against a rainy day but by definition not yielding an investment return, resides, for the purposes of this sentence, in that dread limbo where Francophone ignorance, mispronunciation, and misapprehension reign and Spellcheck cannot go.
This deal represents bad news for the Obama administration.
Insisting on sanctions as a precondition for further Iran-related movement provided welcome domestic political cover for the administration.
If the UNSC sanctions drive sputters, then the U.S. either have to abandon the signature multi-lateralism of the Obama administration to pursue destabilizing and probably futile unilateral sanctions, or risk the wrath of the pro-Israel/security hardline/knee-jerk Republican bloc with inconclusive, moderate noodling on the issue.
And I don't even need to trot out my personal hobby horse--the theory that Iran sanctions was a precondition for Israel's entry into the non-proliferation regime and the success of the Obama administration's NPT Revcon-centric global security strategy--to observe that moderation by the U.S. would embarrass it in front of its European allies.
China Matters' favorite arms control wonk, Jeffrey Lewis, also went on record with his dismay with the announced deal:
The downside of not insisting is that the deal — which does nothing to constrain Iran’s program — creates a false sense that the problem is Iran’s break-out capability. In the Reuters story, Western officials claimed “Iran was trying to give the impression that it was the fuel deal which was at the center of problems with the West, rather than its nuclear ambitions as a whole.” Yeah, no kidding. As regular readers know, I have long argued that the problem is not Iran’s enrichment at Natanz, not even to 20 percent. The problem is Iran’s history of clandestine enrichment. Iran wants to change the narrative to focus on the West’s objections to its arguably legitimate activities. Why we keep helping them do that is beyond me.
My personal feeling is that the precondition to stopping Iran's clandestine enrichment is a) engagement and b) dealing with the Israel problem c) building a genuine security consensus both inside and outside of Iran on the issue.
If the U.S. had treated the TRR swap as a trust-building transaction instead of an opportunity to demand the incapacitation of part of Iran's nuclear program, and if the Israel double standard didn't exist, Turkey probably wouldn't have been so eager to defy the United States and broker the deal.
But whatever.
With this convergence of enlightened expert opinion, political necessity, and geopolitical calculation, the Obama administration might be quite ruthless in trying to derail the deal.
In addition to griping about the additional LEU in Iran, the U.S. could insist on an enrichment freeze. Or France--whose job is to actually fabricate the plates--could state that it couldn't bring itself to cooperate unless all the LEU went to Turkey.
The West can certainly scupper the deal--at the cost of humiliating and angering Brazil and Turkey. But can it garner Chinese support for sanctions--and acquiescence to whatever skullduggery it comes up to rescue them?
Friday, May 14, 2010
U.S. Shuts Down Turkey's Iran Initiative
The U.S. is apparently dead serious about shutting off Iran's avenues of negotiation.
Case in point: putting the kibosh on Turkey's initiative to midwife the LEU for fuel plates swap for the Tehran Research Reactor.
Courtesy of Hurriyet/AFP, the tick-tock is reproduced below.
I would think it would be difficult for the United States to justify discouraging Erdogan for going to Iran for more jaw-jaw.
What's the worst that could happen? A deal?
I'm interested in what nature of arguments and inducements were deployed to get Turkey's Prime Minister Erodgan to backtrack.
I expect that Secretary Clinton's position was that positive movement on the Turkish initiative would undercut the magnificent NPT Revcon now going on in New York.
The conference is supposed to reach its climax in a couple weeks with a nuclear-lions-lie-down-with-nuclear-lambs dogpile combined with a condemnation of Iran, hopefully with Israel doing more than just peeping at the keyhole.
Maybe Erdogan thought better of going up against President Obama's cherished global security strategy and promised to soft-pedal his initiative.
If this is the case, the U.S. will probably have to redouble its efforts for a successful NPT review.
After all, Turkey, in addition to being the author of the TRR swap idea and a neighbor of Iran, claims leadership of the Turkic Islamic bloc and a share in the business of ordering affairs in the Muslim world.
Also, it's a non-permanent member of the Security Council this year and a negative Turkish vote on sanctions--accompanied by some pointed questions on why Prime Minister Erdogan was urged to abandon a peace-making initiative that showed considerable promise--are embarrassments that the Obama administration might be keen to avoid.
May 13
May 14
May 14
Case in point: putting the kibosh on Turkey's initiative to midwife the LEU for fuel plates swap for the Tehran Research Reactor.
Courtesy of Hurriyet/AFP, the tick-tock is reproduced below.
I would think it would be difficult for the United States to justify discouraging Erdogan for going to Iran for more jaw-jaw.
What's the worst that could happen? A deal?
I'm interested in what nature of arguments and inducements were deployed to get Turkey's Prime Minister Erodgan to backtrack.
I expect that Secretary Clinton's position was that positive movement on the Turkish initiative would undercut the magnificent NPT Revcon now going on in New York.
The conference is supposed to reach its climax in a couple weeks with a nuclear-lions-lie-down-with-nuclear-lambs dogpile combined with a condemnation of Iran, hopefully with Israel doing more than just peeping at the keyhole.
Maybe Erdogan thought better of going up against President Obama's cherished global security strategy and promised to soft-pedal his initiative.
If this is the case, the U.S. will probably have to redouble its efforts for a successful NPT review.
After all, Turkey, in addition to being the author of the TRR swap idea and a neighbor of Iran, claims leadership of the Turkic Islamic bloc and a share in the business of ordering affairs in the Muslim world.
Also, it's a non-permanent member of the Security Council this year and a negative Turkish vote on sanctions--accompanied by some pointed questions on why Prime Minister Erdogan was urged to abandon a peace-making initiative that showed considerable promise--are embarrassments that the Obama administration might be keen to avoid.
May 13
Turkey is still considering whether its prime minister should go to Iran for joint talks with Brazil's president over Tehran's nuclear program, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said Thursday.
Ankara's decision will depend on the outcome of contacts with Iranian and Western officials, including a planned telephone conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Davutoğlu said on the Habertürk television channel.
"The matter is not to just hold a three-way meeting. We want to get results if such a meeting is to be held," he said.
May 14
Tehran is not cooperating with the rest of the world on its nuclear program and is merely seeking to delay international sanctions, the U.S. secretary of state told Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call is widely seen as an effort to fend off a Turkish-Brazilian call for more negotiations on Iran’s controversial energy program.
May 14
Turkey's prime minister said Friday he was unlikely to go to Iran for joint talks with Brazil's president because of Iran's failure to try to resolve the row over its nuclear program.
The United States, meanwhile, has warned Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's upcoming visit to Tehran may be Iran's last chance to engage the world over its nuclear program before new U.N. sanctions are imposed.
Turkey had expected Iran to confirm a commitment to a proposed deal to hand over its low-enriched uranium in return for processed fuel for research reactor, with Turkey as a possible venue for the swap, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told reporters.
"It seems that a trip to Iran on Monday is no longer possible for me as Iran has not taken that step on the issue," he said. "If necessary my foreign minister may go, or I may go later," he added. Erdoğan said Turkey had "asked for a statement of determination" from Iran. "Together with Brazil, we wanted to make a contribution to the process," he said.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
China Sends Iran Back to the IAEA
I have an article up at Asia Times entitled China fine-tunes its Iran strategy.
I read the Chinese tea leaves (People’s Daily and Global Times) to come to the conclusion that China wishes to avoid a UN Security Council vote on Iran sanctions. Beijing fears that any UN vote, with a Chinese yea vote or abstention, or even with a nay vote, will serve as the politically enabling factor for harsh national sanctions that the US and key EU countries are teeing up.
I’m afraid that after Copenhagen, his travails in the U.S. Congress and, most importantly because of his strategy of leaving China as the last sanctions domino to fall (instead of giving Beijing face and reassurance by engaging it first and foremost), President Obama is suffering a credibility and mojo deficit in the eyes of the Chinese, and they will be extremely skeptical of any assurances that he can provide Beijing the opportunity to exert a moderating influence on any post-UNSCR rush to national sanctions.
So I concluded that China would recommend to Iran to try to keep this matter bottled up in the IAEA, despite the replacement of the Iran-friendly ElBaradei with the West-tilting new DG, Yukiya Amano.
I supported this inference with Iranian and Chinese reporting of conciliatory Iranian moves toward the IAEA, and declarations of loyal fealty to the NPT.
Today, there was further evidence of an Iranian charm offensive, in the form of a formal letter to the IAEA re-opening the matter of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).
The TRR swap is apparently the great lost opportunity of US-Iran nuclear diplomacy.
To a certain extent, the conventional narrative concerning the TRR swap (Iran would ship its 3.5% U235 Low Enriched Uranium to Russia for further enrichment and receive fuel plates for the TRR in return) appears to be correct.
Iran, by not making an open and positive response to the offer when it was officially tendered in October, blew it.
However, I’m of the suspicion that Iran had plenty of help.
The swap was grew out of a request by Iran in June 2009 for help from the IAEA in obtaining new fuel plates for the TRR, an elderly reactor originally provided by the US to the Shah that still produces medical isotopes in Tehran. The Obama administration was brought into the deal, the response from Iran (presumably representing President Ahmadinejad’s views) was positive, and apparently a great deal of open-hand-not-closed-fist excitement ensued in the White House.
However, it would seem largely because of French and Israeli resistance (which, given France’s desire to assert itself in the Levant as a serious power at Iran’s expense, may be one and the same thing), the trust-building measure turned into an adversarial disablement proposal.
According to an authentic-looking internal French government document that was leaked and posted on the Arms Control Wonk website, the French insisted in September that the EU’s “freeze-for freeze” mechanism (a demand, detested by Tehran, that Iran suspend all enrichment work in return for a suspension of sanctions) be part of the deal; that no less than 1200 kg of LEU in a single shipment be involved; and the deal had to be accepted and the LEU had to come out by the end of 2009 before any plates went in.
And, according to the West, it would take about a year to grunt out the 264 pounds of fuel plates (which would be fabricated in France after the Russians enriched the LEU to 19.75%), an assertion that the Iranians found highly dubious.
The way the whole thing played out made Ahmadinejad look like a chump.
Instead of a friendly, historic exchange with the United States (apparently, rapprochement with the United States is not a matter of serious dispute in Iranian circles; the only question is, which political grouping will get to take the credit and reap the rewards), he was supposed to publicly knuckle under to the West in an adversarial process, give up most of his LEU immediately and without negotiation in exchange for nothing, and wait and hope his plates (and political windfall) showed up a year later.
Like I said, Ahmadinejad blew it, but it looks like he had lots of outside and inside help.
If you look at the situation and drew the conclusion that some parties were determined to make sure that Ahmadinejad was deprived of his “Nixon Goes to China” moment with the Great Satan, well, we’re on the same page.
The current Iranian approach to the IAEA on the TRR has been rejected by the United States and we may very well be looking at nothing more than diplomatic kabuki as both sides gird themselves for the struggle to decide whether the Iranian issue is addressed by a UNSC resolution.
That the Obama administration has given up on its noble aim to engage with Iran is indicated by the rather inexplicable decision to acquiesce to Israel’s assumption of a high profile role as sanctions cheerleader to the EU, Russia, and even China.
Israel is, of course, not a member of the NPTor IAEA , allegedly maintains an undeclared and highly destabilizing arsenal of 200+ nuclear warheads, and proliferated in a major way to the South African apartheid regime.
Not exactly the poster child for the NPT and IAEA.
Which may be another reason why the Chinese would tell the Iranians to push the IAEA angle.
The United States might have a compelling reason to dig a grave for the Teheran Research Reactor swap.
Opponents of the deal—call them cynics, cooler heads, Iran-haters, or, perhaps professional paranoiacs—could seize on the problem that the uranium in the fuel plates that Iran got back would be significantly enriched—from 3.5% up to 19.75%--and apparently in a form that could, without much ado, be used as feedstock for enrichment to weapons grade (80%).
According to Arms Control Wonk, the plates in the Tehran Research Reactor are simply sintered U3O8, and Iran already has the chemistry and processing know-how to needed to turn that kind of plate into feedstock for weapons-grade enrichment.
And, at 19.75% enrichment, the West would have already done most of Iran’s enrichment work for it.
Jeffrey Lewis of AWC, offered a useful analogy along these lines: imagine a box filled with 100 tennis balls, of which four are red (U235)and the rest white (U238). To upgrade the red balls to 20% of the total, you have to throw away 80 tennis balls for a ratio of 4 red to 16 white. To get to 80% red balls, you just have to throw away another 15 balls to get your final ratio of 4:1.
The West would be throwing away 80 of the tennis balls on Tehran’s behalf, and apparently it’s relatively trivial for Iran to take care of the remaining 15.
So the wonderful and thrilling humanitarian gesture of providing new fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor could be construed, and probably was construed, by Iran’s legion of informed critics, as a potential acceleration of Iran’s weaponization program.
Oops.
ACW’s Geoffrey Forden proposed that the plates be fabricated as a uranium-beryllium compound, based on the idea that separating out beryllium is a difficult and novel technical task and Iran would have to expend time, money, and conspicuous effort to develop new technology and processes in order to extract the uranium from the fuel plates for the dreaded weaponization breakout.
Unfortunately, just as careful cooks don’t lightly substitute margarine for butter in their recipes, responsible and careful operators of nuclear reactors apparently don’t toss in a brand new type of fuel plate without furrowed brows and lots of technical and safety hand-wringing.
It would be understandable if the Iranians wondered if the US was going to assist Iran with a crash-reengineering and retrofit of the Tehran reactor for the uranium beryllium fuel—and take responsibility if things didn’t go right—and looked at this kind of hocus-pocus with a jaundiced eye.
I suppose, when this chapter in the endless history of the US-Iran nuclear dispute is penned, we’ll find out if the issue of the potential proliferation risk of the new fuel plates was covered ahead of time during the excited White House confabs over Iran’s offer, or came up later as one of those classic “Ms. Titanic-meet-Mr. Iceberg” oh sh*t moments.
If the latter was the case 1) Ahmadinejad would have been suspected of setting a perfidious trap and 2) the White House would backpedaled away from the deal at light speed to avoid appearing to be Iran’s dupe and 3) thrown up a bunch of roadblocks in order to reduce the perceived proliferation and political danger.
In any case, with the help of the revelation of a secret Iranian enrichment facility near Qom (known by Western intelligence for over three years, but somehow not revealed until the eve of the formal conference between Iran and the West on the swap at the beginning of October 2009 and necessitating a critical report by the IAEA in the last month of ElBaradei’s term; bad luck, Mr. Ahmadinejad!), the Tehran Research Reactor deal became a theater for heightened suspicions of Iran’s proliferation intentions and not the confidence-building diplomatic exercise it was originally intended to be.
And the inevitable outcome of suspicion is, apparently, sanctions.
Funny ‘bout that.
I read the Chinese tea leaves (People’s Daily and Global Times) to come to the conclusion that China wishes to avoid a UN Security Council vote on Iran sanctions. Beijing fears that any UN vote, with a Chinese yea vote or abstention, or even with a nay vote, will serve as the politically enabling factor for harsh national sanctions that the US and key EU countries are teeing up.
I’m afraid that after Copenhagen, his travails in the U.S. Congress and, most importantly because of his strategy of leaving China as the last sanctions domino to fall (instead of giving Beijing face and reassurance by engaging it first and foremost), President Obama is suffering a credibility and mojo deficit in the eyes of the Chinese, and they will be extremely skeptical of any assurances that he can provide Beijing the opportunity to exert a moderating influence on any post-UNSCR rush to national sanctions.
So I concluded that China would recommend to Iran to try to keep this matter bottled up in the IAEA, despite the replacement of the Iran-friendly ElBaradei with the West-tilting new DG, Yukiya Amano.
I supported this inference with Iranian and Chinese reporting of conciliatory Iranian moves toward the IAEA, and declarations of loyal fealty to the NPT.
Today, there was further evidence of an Iranian charm offensive, in the form of a formal letter to the IAEA re-opening the matter of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR).
The TRR swap is apparently the great lost opportunity of US-Iran nuclear diplomacy.
To a certain extent, the conventional narrative concerning the TRR swap (Iran would ship its 3.5% U235 Low Enriched Uranium to Russia for further enrichment and receive fuel plates for the TRR in return) appears to be correct.
Iran, by not making an open and positive response to the offer when it was officially tendered in October, blew it.
However, I’m of the suspicion that Iran had plenty of help.
The swap was grew out of a request by Iran in June 2009 for help from the IAEA in obtaining new fuel plates for the TRR, an elderly reactor originally provided by the US to the Shah that still produces medical isotopes in Tehran. The Obama administration was brought into the deal, the response from Iran (presumably representing President Ahmadinejad’s views) was positive, and apparently a great deal of open-hand-not-closed-fist excitement ensued in the White House.
However, it would seem largely because of French and Israeli resistance (which, given France’s desire to assert itself in the Levant as a serious power at Iran’s expense, may be one and the same thing), the trust-building measure turned into an adversarial disablement proposal.
According to an authentic-looking internal French government document that was leaked and posted on the Arms Control Wonk website, the French insisted in September that the EU’s “freeze-for freeze” mechanism (a demand, detested by Tehran, that Iran suspend all enrichment work in return for a suspension of sanctions) be part of the deal; that no less than 1200 kg of LEU in a single shipment be involved; and the deal had to be accepted and the LEU had to come out by the end of 2009 before any plates went in.
And, according to the West, it would take about a year to grunt out the 264 pounds of fuel plates (which would be fabricated in France after the Russians enriched the LEU to 19.75%), an assertion that the Iranians found highly dubious.
The way the whole thing played out made Ahmadinejad look like a chump.
Instead of a friendly, historic exchange with the United States (apparently, rapprochement with the United States is not a matter of serious dispute in Iranian circles; the only question is, which political grouping will get to take the credit and reap the rewards), he was supposed to publicly knuckle under to the West in an adversarial process, give up most of his LEU immediately and without negotiation in exchange for nothing, and wait and hope his plates (and political windfall) showed up a year later.
Like I said, Ahmadinejad blew it, but it looks like he had lots of outside and inside help.
If you look at the situation and drew the conclusion that some parties were determined to make sure that Ahmadinejad was deprived of his “Nixon Goes to China” moment with the Great Satan, well, we’re on the same page.
The current Iranian approach to the IAEA on the TRR has been rejected by the United States and we may very well be looking at nothing more than diplomatic kabuki as both sides gird themselves for the struggle to decide whether the Iranian issue is addressed by a UNSC resolution.
That the Obama administration has given up on its noble aim to engage with Iran is indicated by the rather inexplicable decision to acquiesce to Israel’s assumption of a high profile role as sanctions cheerleader to the EU, Russia, and even China.
Israel is, of course, not a member of the NPT
Not exactly the poster child for the NPT and IAEA.
Which may be another reason why the Chinese would tell the Iranians to push the IAEA angle.
The United States might have a compelling reason to dig a grave for the Teheran Research Reactor swap.
Opponents of the deal—call them cynics, cooler heads, Iran-haters, or, perhaps professional paranoiacs—could seize on the problem that the uranium in the fuel plates that Iran got back would be significantly enriched—from 3.5% up to 19.75%--and apparently in a form that could, without much ado, be used as feedstock for enrichment to weapons grade (80%).
According to Arms Control Wonk, the plates in the Tehran Research Reactor are simply sintered U3O8, and Iran already has the chemistry and processing know-how to needed to turn that kind of plate into feedstock for weapons-grade enrichment.
And, at 19.75% enrichment, the West would have already done most of Iran’s enrichment work for it.
Jeffrey Lewis of AWC, offered a useful analogy along these lines: imagine a box filled with 100 tennis balls, of which four are red (U235)and the rest white (U238). To upgrade the red balls to 20% of the total, you have to throw away 80 tennis balls for a ratio of 4 red to 16 white. To get to 80% red balls, you just have to throw away another 15 balls to get your final ratio of 4:1.
The West would be throwing away 80 of the tennis balls on Tehran’s behalf, and apparently it’s relatively trivial for Iran to take care of the remaining 15.
So the wonderful and thrilling humanitarian gesture of providing new fuel plates for the Tehran Research Reactor could be construed, and probably was construed, by Iran’s legion of informed critics, as a potential acceleration of Iran’s weaponization program.
Oops.
ACW’s Geoffrey Forden proposed that the plates be fabricated as a uranium-beryllium compound, based on the idea that separating out beryllium is a difficult and novel technical task and Iran would have to expend time, money, and conspicuous effort to develop new technology and processes in order to extract the uranium from the fuel plates for the dreaded weaponization breakout.
Unfortunately, just as careful cooks don’t lightly substitute margarine for butter in their recipes, responsible and careful operators of nuclear reactors apparently don’t toss in a brand new type of fuel plate without furrowed brows and lots of technical and safety hand-wringing.
It would be understandable if the Iranians wondered if the US was going to assist Iran with a crash-reengineering and retrofit of the Tehran reactor for the uranium beryllium fuel—and take responsibility if things didn’t go right—and looked at this kind of hocus-pocus with a jaundiced eye.
I suppose, when this chapter in the endless history of the US-Iran nuclear dispute is penned, we’ll find out if the issue of the potential proliferation risk of the new fuel plates was covered ahead of time during the excited White House confabs over Iran’s offer, or came up later as one of those classic “Ms. Titanic-meet-Mr. Iceberg” oh sh*t moments.
If the latter was the case 1) Ahmadinejad would have been suspected of setting a perfidious trap and 2) the White House would backpedaled away from the deal at light speed to avoid appearing to be Iran’s dupe and 3) thrown up a bunch of roadblocks in order to reduce the perceived proliferation and political danger.
In any case, with the help of the revelation of a secret Iranian enrichment facility near Qom (known by Western intelligence for over three years, but somehow not revealed until the eve of the formal conference between Iran and the West on the swap at the beginning of October 2009 and necessitating a critical report by the IAEA in the last month of ElBaradei’s term; bad luck, Mr. Ahmadinejad!), the Tehran Research Reactor deal became a theater for heightened suspicions of Iran’s proliferation intentions and not the confidence-building diplomatic exercise it was originally intended to be.
And the inevitable outcome of suspicion is, apparently, sanctions.
Funny ‘bout that.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
China States Its Case on Iran
Iran may have hoped that China would step into the nuclear dispute on its side, perhaps by agreeing to serve as middleman for the fuel exchange. It looks like they'll be disappointed.
But today Beijing also sent the message that U.S.-Chinese relations would suffer another blow from an aggressive Western push on Iran coupled with a demand that China knuckle under and support sanctions.
The lead editorial in Global Times--the international affairs organ of People’s Daily and therefore an indication of the attitude of the Chinese leadership-- made the point that China resents being “taken hostage” by either side in the Iran crisis.
It sends some heat Iran’s way (though it will be clear from the remarks of China’s ex-ambassador to Iran quoted below, China believes that Iran is open to concessions), but the main object of criticism is the United States.
It is clear that China has decided to take the whole American “you gotta sanction Iran” approach as another episode (following the disastrous falling-out at Copenhagen) in which the United States is happy to employ wedge issues against China, not only to advance its immediate goals, but to isolate China and reduce its standing as a global power.
If the United States continues to take a hard line on China joining Iran sanctions, instead of backing off and continuing negotiations, China will take it as a conscious, hostile act against China.
The editorial’s first point is a reiteration of China’s position that the situation should be resolved through negotiations.
Then, the op-ed criticized the intractability of both parties, with considerable criticism for Iran, apparently in an effort to be even-handed:
When the survival of a nation’s political authority hangs in the balance, any government would possibly decide to stick out its chest and confront the danger. Only with patience, patience, and more patience can both sides obtain the necessary trust. It isn’t through firing off ballistic missiles, raising the level of uranium enrichment, or using the threat of strong sanctions, all at the slightest provocation, and causing the level of anger and suspicion to escalate.
Now, China complains about being caught in the middle (use of the loaded term “lowering its head” i.e. submitting, raising images of the humiliating "kow-tow", instead of the more neutral “support their side” is an indication that China wants the issue to be that China itself isn’t being properly respected):
Neverhtless, both the West and Iran are unheeding at this time. They both believe that only if they are unyielding, then the other side will back off at the end. This unenlightened attitude even extends to their attitude toward China. Both sides believe, all that’s needed is to put pressure on China, then China will, without considering its own interests…lower its head to them…This thinking is unrealistic.
Concerning China’s interests, it states that it has a right to protect its economic interests with Iran. On the U.S. side of the scale, the editorial makes the interesting statement that:
“China has always consistently supported the idea of the balance of interest of the great powers in regional issues.”
I’m not sure what this means. But it probably refers to China’s acknowledgment that the West, like China, has a right to meddle in the oil-rich Middle East, as long as one side doesn’t try to exclude or ignore the other. In other words, the West has a right to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue as long as they don't form a bloc excluding China.
In any case, here’s the warning:
Both sides should be clear: the party that tries to press China the hardest is the party most likely to be met with China’s refusal.
The coda:
Both Iran and the West should make concessions. The final punctuation point in the Iran issue is absolutely not which way China votes at the UN… Both sides should be clear that the dilemma for China is how to bring the two parties together.
Recently in Western public opinion, there has been a call to use the Iran issue to isolate China. This is extremely superficial…China is a big country and its interests must be respected. China’s dilemma must be sympathized with. China’s proposal opposing sanctions must be understood. The big powers must cooperate and negotiate on the Iran issue. The American negotiator, Barshevsky, once said: To achieve an agreement, all parties have to benefit. Otherwise, in agreement can’t be achieved through intimidation; and if somehow an agreement comes about, it can’t be implemented. The great power discussions on Iran should take her words into account.
The final shot across the bow:
China is a great country. If anyone seeks to compel her, to injure her, they will certainly pay the price.
Message to the Obama administration: don't try to force China to kow-tow on sanctions. Instead, continue with negotiations.
As to China’s take on Iran’s position (and culpability for the stand-off), People’s Daily visited China’s ex-ambassador to Iran, Hua Liming.
Here’s what the article said:
Ambassador Hua told the paper that the main purpose of Iran’s declaration of its intention to purify its uranium to near 20% was to put pressure on the West and particularly the United States.
Only a week before, Achminejad had…stated that Iran was prepared to accept the UN nuclear fuel exchange agreement…indicating that Iran still hoped to reach an agreement with the IAEA, but that the exchange terms had to be beneficial to Iran.
Previously, the IAEA proposal called for Iran to ship its fuel to Russia, where it would be refined to 20%. Afterwards, the fuel would be shipped to France and fabricated into fuel rods. This span of time would be 12 months. Iran clearly was worried about the 12-month limit and had expressed a hope that the time be reduced to four to five months. However, the Western countries refused. Under these circumstances, Iran adopted a relatively unyielding attitude in order to put pressure on the West, hoping to preserve Iran’s nuclear development plan and avoid Western sanctions.
Ambassador Hua stated, “Unyielding” only is one side of the coin…the other side, “Concessions”, still exists. Iran has already indicated its attitude that it will accept the IAEA plan. In general, Iran still hopes for nuclear negotiations and would not lightly close the door to negotiations.
The article concludes with the observation that the Western countries are awaiting the outcome of the February 11 demonstrations to determine how weakened the government will be.
But today Beijing also sent the message that U.S.-Chinese relations would suffer another blow from an aggressive Western push on Iran coupled with a demand that China knuckle under and support sanctions.
The lead editorial in Global Times--the international affairs organ of People’s Daily and therefore an indication of the attitude of the Chinese leadership-- made the point that China resents being “taken hostage” by either side in the Iran crisis.
It sends some heat Iran’s way (though it will be clear from the remarks of China’s ex-ambassador to Iran quoted below, China believes that Iran is open to concessions), but the main object of criticism is the United States.
It is clear that China has decided to take the whole American “you gotta sanction Iran” approach as another episode (following the disastrous falling-out at Copenhagen) in which the United States is happy to employ wedge issues against China, not only to advance its immediate goals, but to isolate China and reduce its standing as a global power.
If the United States continues to take a hard line on China joining Iran sanctions, instead of backing off and continuing negotiations, China will take it as a conscious, hostile act against China.
The editorial’s first point is a reiteration of China’s position that the situation should be resolved through negotiations.
Then, the op-ed criticized the intractability of both parties, with considerable criticism for Iran, apparently in an effort to be even-handed:
When the survival of a nation’s political authority hangs in the balance, any government would possibly decide to stick out its chest and confront the danger. Only with patience, patience, and more patience can both sides obtain the necessary trust. It isn’t through firing off ballistic missiles, raising the level of uranium enrichment, or using the threat of strong sanctions, all at the slightest provocation, and causing the level of anger and suspicion to escalate.
Now, China complains about being caught in the middle (use of the loaded term “lowering its head” i.e. submitting, raising images of the humiliating "kow-tow", instead of the more neutral “support their side” is an indication that China wants the issue to be that China itself isn’t being properly respected):
Neverhtless, both the West and Iran are unheeding at this time. They both believe that only if they are unyielding, then the other side will back off at the end. This unenlightened attitude even extends to their attitude toward China. Both sides believe, all that’s needed is to put pressure on China, then China will, without considering its own interests…lower its head to them…This thinking is unrealistic.
Concerning China’s interests, it states that it has a right to protect its economic interests with Iran. On the U.S. side of the scale, the editorial makes the interesting statement that:
“China has always consistently supported the idea of the balance of interest of the great powers in regional issues.”
I’m not sure what this means. But it probably refers to China’s acknowledgment that the West, like China, has a right to meddle in the oil-rich Middle East, as long as one side doesn’t try to exclude or ignore the other. In other words, the West has a right to pressure Iran on the nuclear issue as long as they don't form a bloc excluding China.
In any case, here’s the warning:
Both sides should be clear: the party that tries to press China the hardest is the party most likely to be met with China’s refusal.
The coda:
Both Iran and the West should make concessions. The final punctuation point in the Iran issue is absolutely not which way China votes at the UN… Both sides should be clear that the dilemma for China is how to bring the two parties together.
Recently in Western public opinion, there has been a call to use the Iran issue to isolate China. This is extremely superficial…China is a big country and its interests must be respected. China’s dilemma must be sympathized with. China’s proposal opposing sanctions must be understood. The big powers must cooperate and negotiate on the Iran issue. The American negotiator, Barshevsky, once said: To achieve an agreement, all parties have to benefit. Otherwise, in agreement can’t be achieved through intimidation; and if somehow an agreement comes about, it can’t be implemented. The great power discussions on Iran should take her words into account.
The final shot across the bow:
China is a great country. If anyone seeks to compel her, to injure her, they will certainly pay the price.
Message to the Obama administration: don't try to force China to kow-tow on sanctions. Instead, continue with negotiations.
As to China’s take on Iran’s position (and culpability for the stand-off), People’s Daily visited China’s ex-ambassador to Iran, Hua Liming.
Here’s what the article said:
Ambassador Hua told the paper that the main purpose of Iran’s declaration of its intention to purify its uranium to near 20% was to put pressure on the West and particularly the United States.
Only a week before, Achminejad had…stated that Iran was prepared to accept the UN nuclear fuel exchange agreement…indicating that Iran still hoped to reach an agreement with the IAEA, but that the exchange terms had to be beneficial to Iran.
Previously, the IAEA proposal called for Iran to ship its fuel to Russia, where it would be refined to 20%. Afterwards, the fuel would be shipped to France and fabricated into fuel rods. This span of time would be 12 months. Iran clearly was worried about the 12-month limit and had expressed a hope that the time be reduced to four to five months. However, the Western countries refused. Under these circumstances, Iran adopted a relatively unyielding attitude in order to put pressure on the West, hoping to preserve Iran’s nuclear development plan and avoid Western sanctions.
Ambassador Hua stated, “Unyielding” only is one side of the coin…the other side, “Concessions”, still exists. Iran has already indicated its attitude that it will accept the IAEA plan. In general, Iran still hopes for nuclear negotiations and would not lightly close the door to negotiations.
The article concludes with the observation that the Western countries are awaiting the outcome of the February 11 demonstrations to determine how weakened the government will be.
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