Arab News Blog

MEPGS: Excerpts:

As US officials appear to be backing away from a confrontation with Israel in the wake of Vice President Biden's controversial visit, there are more than a few bruised feelings on both sides. More important, it seems likely that the Israeli- US relationship is in for even tougher times in the weeks and months ahead.  To begin with, it is clear that orders came from the top, no less than President Obama, that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was to be confronted over the embarrassing decision......... The scolding delivered Secretary of State Clinton, over the phone to the Israeli Prime Minister and in person to Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the US, was exceptional both in its tone and the scope of its demands.      According to published reports, Clinton not only insisted that the Israelis find a way to insure that such an embarrassment never be allowed to take place again but added three new demands.  First, the US wants assurances, the now delayed "proximity talks" transition to direct talks on all topics [Previously this was an Administration assumption].  Second, they said they wanted Israel to make a gesture to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who was already ambivalent about the value of these talks.  Finally, and most controversial, Israel was to find a way to halt construction of the new housing units.        According to informed sources, a short deadline was set for Israel to respond -- a deadline that has not been met.  Moreover, the tone employed by Clinton outraged Israeli officials.  Said one well-placed source, "They don't talk to [Venezuelan President Hugo] Chavez that way."  As this drama was unfolding, a number of senior level Administration officials, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel were trying to calm the waters.  Others, like CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus, were, in effect, adding fuel to the fire, when in Congressional testimony, he alluded to the lack of progress on Arab-Israeli talks causing additional problems for US military planners , already engaged in combat in the muslim world.  Moreover, according to well-placed sources, withholding US military and intelligence cooperation is "one of the sticks" the Administration wielded in its conversations with Netanyahu and Oren.

      Even if, as many observers believe, this imbroglio in contained, a number of key officials say it is only a matter of time before Israel and the US are once again at loggerheads, if not over the peace process then over a strategy for dealing with Iran.  Part of the reason for Biden's visit to Israel and that of a number of other top civilian and military leaders there in recent weeks, is to make certain, in the words of one top US official "...that Israel is `on board'" with the American approach to handling Iran's headlong rush towards nuclear development.      US officials candidly share political strategy with the Israelis regarding their approach to implementing new sanctions against Teheran at the UN and elsewhere [US officials have even gone so far as to try to enlist Israeli cooperation in fending off Congressional attempts to pass legislation penalizing foreign companies doing business with Iran.  As one top US official puts it, "We know the Hill's intentions are good.  Just the way they are going about it will upset our plans to work with other countries who will see their efforts as an attempt to impose `extraterritoriality' on them"].      The first goal is to get a new resolution from the Security Council.  At latest count, eleven of the fifteen members have informally signed on.  Brazil and Turkey continue to be a problem.  Lebanon, with its dominant Iranian-backed militia, Hezbollah, is considered a lost cause.  But the big prize remains China and its veto.  So, far US officials have not given up hope on gaining China's acquiescence to a mild resolution but may well have to settle for an abstention.  The importance of the UN vote lies in its acting as a catalyst for other nations, notably the European Union [EU] to impose a series of much stronger, if not exactly "crippling" sanctions on Iran.  And the target will be the Revolutionary Guards, which according to some top US officials, now control more than one-third of the Iranian economy [The prospect of imposing sanctions on oil imports, upon which Iran, ironically is dependent because of its limited refining capacity, has been pretty much taken off of the table -- partly, say top US officials because of the difficulty of enforcing such a regime and according to others, because in could impose "undue" hardship on the average Iranian].      ........But with thousands of American troops destined to remain in next door Iraq

for the foreseeable future and thousands more going into battle

daily in Afghanistan, another Iranian neighbor, the last thing the US military, including Defense Secretary Gates, wants is a military confrontation with Iran.      But if, as some experts argue, sanctions are doomed to failure, what are the other options?  One US expert, close to Gates as well and National Security Advisor Jones, argues that it is time to jettison this "sanctions fantasy" and prepare to deal with a nuclear armed Iran.  According to well-placed officials, this would mean a continued tightening of sanctions and eventual isolation of Iran from most of the world's commerce.  However, opponents of this approach argue that should Israel get wind of "post nuclear planning" for Iran, Jerusalem would be sure to act unilaterally..      Already frustrated by a timetable that has slipped from last December to April for UN sanctions action [considered a good time with Japan as Security Council Chair for the month and preceding Lebanon's assumption of the role], it is clear that the Israelis are running out of patience.  Moreover, intelligence sources believe that while the Israeli security establishment still is unsure of its ability to mount a highly effective attack on Iran proper, it has become increasingly confident of its ability to withstand and defeat any Iranian retaliation, notably a missile attack launched by Hezbollah on Israel's north.

    


A number of well-placed sources say that for Israel, 2010 is the year of decision.  If by the end of the year, Iran has not started to retreat in the face of international pressure, then Israel will begin to seriously prepare for military action.  As one top US official puts it, "Israel hasn't made the decision to act.  But it has crossed the psychological barrier to act." If true, then today's tensions with Washington will seem quite modest. "

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All illustrations on this post are actual Iranian postage stamps.On some level, the debate over sanctioning Iran appears to boil down to what China’s position will be — another sign of what one might call the slow but steady multi-polarization of Middle Eastern geopolitics. 

From Ben Simpfendorder’s New Silk Road blog:

China’s foreign policy is at an inflexion point. The country is emerging as a major power, but that will require tough choices.

The toughest choices are usually found in the Middle East. The region doesn’t like major powers sitting on the fence, and it’s only time before China will be forced to climb down.

It is Iran that will likely force a decision. China has so far maintained its policy of non-intervention?as one Beijing-based policy advisor said to me, “if we intervene in Iran, it would set a bad precedent for our relations with other countries”.

Fair enough. But so would a failure to intervene. It would suggest that China isn’t concerned about its other regional partners, especially Saudi Arabia. Let’s not forget. Iran might supply 13% of China’s oil supply, but Saudi Arabia supplies an even larger 20%.

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AFP/ here

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The Leveretts in the RFI/ here

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Ignatius in the WaPo/ here

The cynical (and usually correct) critique of economic sanctions was summed up this way by a retired U.S. diplomat named Douglas Paal: “Sanctions always accomplish their principal objective, which is to make those who impose them feel good.” The Obama administration is struggling to craft a new round of U.N. sanctions against Iran that achieves more than this feel-good impact. The ambitious goal is “to cut off the revenues that fund Iran’s nuclear and missile programs,” says a senior administration official.

“We are going to put as tight a squeeze on Iran as we possibly can,” adds a diplomat from one of the members of the U.S.-led coalition that is beginning to discuss a new sanctions resolution at the U.N Security Council. The resolution will target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its vast network of companies, which the United States estimates may include up to one-third of Iran’s total economy…..

China is vulnerable to Iranian oil pressure because it imports about 540,000 barrels per day from Iran. So the Saudis and Emiratis have been assuring Beijing that they would be prepared to offset any shortfall in Iranian crude shipments…..

Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, traveled to China late last week to enlist its support against Iran. The Saudi message to Beijing, according to one U.S. official, is: “If you don’t help us against Iran, you will see a less stable and dependable Middle East.”…..

The campaign against Iran was the central topic during a recent visit to Washington by the UAE’s foreign minister, Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan. He urged administration officials to include Iran’s vulnerable neighbors in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and others — in their planning for dealing with Iran. “We will find ways to do more with them,” said the senior administration official.

The trick for the Obama administration is to craft a sanctions plan that hurts the Iranian government without causing too much pain for the Iranian people. That’s one reason the administration is wary of a congressional proposal for sanctions against Iran’s imports of refined petroleum products — a step that would probably harm the public more than the regime.

Officials talk about “targeted” sanctions that focus on the Revolutionary Guard Corps and its military-industrial complex of companies. But this effort is the diplomatic equivalent of “precision bombing” — in practice, some collateral damage is inevitable, which could help President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rally support for his hard-line government.

What’s certain is that the Iranian nuclear issue is heading into a more intense phase of confrontation — starting with the push for tougher U.N. sanctions. The Gulf countries have been asking what the administration plans to do if the sanctions don’t work: That’s the big foreign policy question of 2010, and Washington is beginning now to think about the answer.

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Tehran, March 7 (IANS) Iran and China have signed a $143 million-deal which will allow a Chinese firm to drill oil and natural gas fields in the Persian Gulf.
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Via Laura Rosen, in DCbureau/ here

Scores are still being settled from the Iran Iraq War in the 1980s….After transferring to another, smaller helicopter, used to find targets for Iraqi artillery, I got a closer view of how poison gas and every other lethal tool available to Saddam Hussein – all with American approval – were being employed. Hussein’s U.S.-provided arms supplier, Sarkis Soghanalian, had done his job well. As I landed in an abandoned schoolyard at the front a few miles from al-Qurna, where the Garden of Eden supposedly once existed, and crossed by flatboat in the canals Saddam’s army had dug to flood the marshes, I witnessed the endless line of corpses of very old men and adolescents, some children, in tattered Iranian uniforms. The Iranian Mullahs’ defense of the 1979 Revolution and Saddam’s invasion ended festering in Iraqi mud. A million people died in the Iran Iraq War. Almost no one in the United States paid any attention.

More than two decades and two Gulf Wars later, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel face the same Hobson’s choice – this time with an insular and defensive Iran. By removing Saddam Hussein, we created a more powerful and ambitious Iran…..

While the Obama administration prepares for a military conflict with Iran, it is important for us to understand some of the secret history between Iran and the United States that complicates the planning and unnecessarily puts our soldiers and sailors in harm’s way. What follows is one story about how that happened.

Iran has been preparing for an attack since 1988, after a U.S. Navy ship, the USS Vincennes, illegally operating inside Iran’s territorial waters, accidentally shot down Iran Air Flight 655. After the shoot down, the Iranian leadership began a weapons buying spree to counter the threat posed by the powerful American fleet in the Persian Gulf that threatened them and could attack at will.

Sometimes reporters end up in the middle of a story. That is what happened to me. I was in France in June 1997 to attend the Paris Air Show. One of my sources, arms dealer Sarkis Soghanalian, had shifted his operations to Paris after being sent to jail by the George H.W. Bush administration for doing the United States’ bidding in Iraq and serving as the Reagan administration’s arms dealer of choice to Saddam Hussein. He was released after helping the Clinton administration combat Hezbollah’s counterfeiting operations in Lebanon.

…….Soghanalian introduced me to M. Ping, the CPMEIC representative, who was, in fact, a Chinese intelligence official. …… Ping ignored his host’s awkward lie and, instead, talked business with Soghanalian……..

Ping enthusiastically described the new missiles he wanted Soghanalian to peddle. The missiles were cheap ($60,000) and so were the launch and support equipment. The missiles were as good as any in the U.S. arsenal and could be equipped with nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional warheads. Ping told Soghanalian that components for hundreds of the missiles had been shipped to Iran and, within weeks, would be operational against all shipping in the Gulf. The Chinese wanted Soghanalian to sell the systems throughout the world. (This meeting took place after China had promised the Clinton administration that it would cease construction of these systems.)……

I followed Soghanalian and Ping out, raced to my hotel the Mermoz, and called a U.S. weapons expert who was a longtime source. I asked him, “How many C-802s does the U.S. think Iran has?” The source called back a few minutes later with the answer: “Less than a dozen.” I told him that the Chinese had told Soghanalian, in my presence, that China had shipped key parts for just under 200 missiles. There was silence at the other end of the phone. My source asked: “Can you leave Paris for Washington?” I said that I had another few days of work.

Late that night I received a call from the front desk with a message to meet Veronique at a café around the corner from the Israeli Embassy in Paris. Over a drink, she handed me Ping’s file and said: “The French are involved in this missile deal. You need to be very careful. They are China’s hidden partner.”

…….. I asked one CIA official what the United States knew about the C-802. The answer was not reassuring: “The U.S. doesn’t have one. We don’t know how to defend [against] it.”

I returned to Paris, armed with details of everything the government then knew about the C-802, which was not much. Over the next five days, I would learn that in the early 1980s Sarkis had arranged for Iraq to use the U.S. Army’s supercomputers at Aberdeen, Maryland to redesign its Scud missiles. …….Information from that project, along with other sensitive material, was now in the hands of the Chinese and had gone into the improved C-802…….

“This missile you expressed concern about is worse than you know,” Sarkis said. “The Chinese have put a greater range on it than they have claimed. They are getting over-horizon capability for the weapon. . . . I am in a bad position here. I have to do what I am doing. There are things I can’t tell you, but tell the Navy that I can still get them an 802 through Jordan. All I need is the cost. $60,000. They can take it apart, study it, and then I will deliver it to the king.”

Independently, I obtained documents from sources in and out of the United States that indicated that the DOD and CIA had little knowledge of the C-802’s design. With this information I began to put together a picture of what had happened.

Not long after the Vincennes incident in 1988, the Iranian Revolutionary Council turned to terrorism through Libya and Hezbollah for retaliation. Simultaneously, they began to explore ways to increase Iranian defenses against U.S. ships. The first efforts included increased purchases of advanced Chinese Silkworm missiles.

China proposed to Iran that they enter into a contract for a new defense, an anti-ship cruise missile. I was not surprised that China and Iran, both embargoed countries, would work together on such a project. But two components for the missile involved technologies beyond China’s capability. A more technologically advanced nation had to be recruited to obtain these crucial elements. That nation was France. Message traffic intercepted by the United States and Britain through the ECHELON eavesdropping system proved that China began working with France in the late 1980s to supply parts for Chinese weapons systems. Subsequently, French companies agreed to supply precision parts that China could not produce on its own. China also enjoyed a relationship with Israel that gave both countries great advantages in weapons development. After Beijing crushed the pro-democracy movement in 1989, the United States and Europe embargoed arms shipments and technology to China. France ignored the embargo. So did Israel.

Israel and Iraq had two things in common. Both had a close relationship with China and both had exclusive access to the U.S. Army Laboratory at Aderdeen, home to our main weapons supercomputers at the time. Because China was working closely with the Iraqis (and Gerald Bull who had close connections to the laboratory), technology from the lab got into the hands of the Chinese.

By 2001 the Chinese had stopped shipping C-802s to Iran, but Iran had, by then, reversed engineered the missile and was successfully building a much more advanced version than China had in its own arsenal. ….. that kind of maneuverability that makes the C-802 so difficult to defend against, according to Navy weapons experts.

I learned that the Iranians felt cheated by the Chinese on the C-802 deal and had hired a notorious Syrian arms dealer to represent them against the Chinese. I obtained the official CIA biography of the arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar, who had been brought into the deal before Soghanalian. French intelligence, distrustful of al-Kassar, instructed Soghanalian to work with the Chinese after their falling out with Iran…..

A few days later Soghanalian called me back and said the Yemeni authorities said “the explosives used were a warhead from a C-802 missile.” The C-802 can be launched from patrol boats, trucks or helicopters. Soghanalian insisted the explosives the terrorists detonated against the hull of the USS Cole were not, as widely believed, some bundled plastic explosives but a C-802 warhead.

It seemed unlikely to me that Iran would sell such a valuable asset so easily traced back to them to Al Qaeda. Sarkis insisted the “Iranians are not that stupid and neither are the Chinese.” I asked him who had access to a C-802 warhead with ties to Al Qaeda. “The Israelis and French think it is Monzer.” Soghanalian said al-Kassar “has a history of selling to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups, especially in Latin America.” I called al-Kassar in Marbella, Spain, and asked him for an interview about his work on the C-802. He refused to talk to me and said, “I do not discuss customer business.” One of his best customers had close relations with Iran and Hezbollah…”

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Laura Rosen/ here

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China calls for talks on Iran’s nuclear programme, as US diplomats arrive seeking support for new sanctions on Tehran.
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