By William Matthews
Defense News, 29 October 2007
The 2008 war-funding supplemental, which now tops $196 billion, bulges with spending not directly related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The spending request includes more than $3.8 billion for research and development for new weapons, $7.8 billion for buying new planes and upgrading existing Navy and Air Force aircraft, and billions for upgrading Army and Marine Corps weapons.
On Oct. 22, U.S. President George W. Bush added $45.9 billion to his original $150.5 billion request to keep fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism.
Some Democrats in the House and Senate are balking at the new request, which is the largest since Bush began sending war-funding bills to Congress in 2001.
“Every line item will be scrutinized,” vowed Sen. Robert Byrd, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Hearings will be held to determine the need for this spending request. Tough questions will be asked of this administration. There will be no blank checks.”
The request is in addition to $507 billion the president wants for non-war military spending in 2008.
The size of the president’s war-funding bills have jumped since October 2006, when Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England told the military services they could start counting many more expenses as “war costs,” a Congressional Research Service (CRS) official told the House Budget Committee Oct. 24.
Since then, the services have added billions of dollars to the supplementals to buy new, more modern equipment and add new technology to existing equipment, officials from the CRS and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told the committee.
Supplementals are a tempting source of money for services seeking to augment their annual procurement accounts because they are not subject to the same federal caps that apply to the regular defense budget.
So instead of simply repairing damaged tanks, the Army uses war funds to have them upgraded, pushing the cost to about $5 million per tank — substantially more than the cost of just repairing them, CBO Director Peter Orszag said.
More than 40 percent of the Army’s most recent requests for “reset” funding — about $14 billion — has not been for repairing or replacing war-damaged gear, but for adding new capabilities to equipment, for buying equipment to relieve shortfalls unrelated to the wars and for buying equipment “whose requirements have not been fully vetted,” the CBO reported.
The Army used 2007 war funds to replace 40 helicopters that were destroyed in operations and accidents unrelated to the wars, the agency reported.
The Air Force, meanwhile, has tried to use war funding to replace F-16s with Joint Strike Fighters and to buy V-22 tiltrotor aircraft. Those items were dropped from the 2007 supplemental after members of Congress objected.
But the 2008 war-funding request includes almost $4 billion for buying and upgrading Air Force aircraft.
In 2007 and again for 2008, the Navy has sought to use war funding to buy EA-18G electronic warfare planes even though the planes are still under development.
After England told the services that supplemental requests could include items deemed necessary for “the long war on terror,” war-funding supplementals have more than doubled in size, CRS defense budget specialist Amy Belasco told the House Budget Committee. They jumped from $72 billion in 2004 to $165 billion in 2007, and to $196 billion requested for 2008.
“A large share of the increase in the supplemental is in procurement,” money budgeted for buying new equipment, Orszag told the committee. That raises questions about how much of the war supplementals is really for the wars, he said.
In a message that accompanied his $45.9 billion add-on Oct. 22, Bush said the money he wants would “provide additional resources for ongoing military and intelligence operations in support of” the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan “and selected other international activities.”
R&D Funds Requested
The request includes at least $3 billion to be spent on research and development of equipment that may not be available to troops for years.
The Navy, for example, is seeking $131 million to develop a next-generation jammer for its EA-18G. The electronic warfare plane itself is still in the testing phases and won’t be ready for at least two years.
The Air Force wants $202 million to spend upgrading engines on A-10 attack planes and to develop a “massive ordnance penetrator” — an earth-penetrating “bunker-buster” bomb — to be dropped from B-2 bombers.
The bunker-buster request worries some members of Congress, including Rep. James Moran, D-Va., who said he sees little need for such a bomb for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that the president is making the request in order to equip the Air Force to strike targets in Iran.
The Defense Department is also asking for $630 million to develop “wide area service architecture networks” to improve communications for the National Security Agency.
“Always, one of the questions we raise whenever war supplementals come through is: How directly connected to the war is this funding?” said Christopher Hellman, a defense budget analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
“You can argue that some R&D money does belong” in the supplemental, Hellman said. Developing better ways to detect and disable improvised explosive devices [IEDs], for example, is directly applicable to the Iraq war.
The 2008 war-funding request includes $416 million “to expedite completion” of a replacement hospital for Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
“That just doesn’t belong in an emergency war-funding bill,” Hellman said — it’s a base-closing expense that belongs in the regular annual military construction bill.
The war-spending bill also includes $950 billion for upgrading Navy P-3 aircraft. The Navy wants to modify the planes, which were built to be submarine hunters, by adding radars that are able to spot ground targets.
Other items in the war-funding bill:
- Five Navy EA-18G aircraft for $375 million.
- A Navy F/A-18E/F Hornet fighter for $54.5 million.
- Three Navy MH-60S helicopters for $102.3 million.
- $22 million for shipboard information warfare and C4I equipment.
- $609 million for Air Force UAVs and modifications to A-10, F-15, F-16 and E-8C aircraft.
The bill also seeks $11 billion for 7,274 Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and $3.1 billion to buy armor and other protection against IEDs.
Another $8.8 billion would go toward replacing equipment worn and damaged in the wars and replenishing depleted prepositioned war supplies, and $1.4 billion would be spent building airfields, roads and other facilities. å
Citation: William Matthews. "Bush's Supplemental Request Has Non-War Spending," Defense News, 29 October 2007.
Original URL: http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=3134494&C=america
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29 October 2007
26 October 2007
Iraqi militants feed on corruption
U.S. commanders say Mafia-style rackets in industries from auto sales to real estate are funding rebels.
By Alexandra Zavis
Los Angeles Times, 26 October 2007
TIKRIT, Iraq — Iraqi insurgents and sectarian militias are funding their deadly activities by muscling in on Mafia-style rackets involving everything from real estate and oil to cement and soft drinks, U.S. commanders say.
U.S. diplomats and senior Iraqi officials have repeatedly singled out corruption as one of the greatest obstacles to stability in Iraq. But until recently, commanders acknowledge, they knew little about the criminal dealings they say sustain militant groups across the country.
"If you think that the majority of money is coming from outside the country to fund the insurgency, you'd be wrong," said Army Lt. Col. Eric Welsh, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, in the northern city of Mosul.
"I think a majority is being done right here . . . under the disguise of legitimate storefront operations."
Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, who is wrapping up 15 months as commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said shutting down the networks that finance the insurgency will be a growing priority as U.S. forces seek to consolidate recent gains against Sunni Arab extremists in Mosul, Baqubah and other cities.
An internal U.S. Embassy assessment leaked to the media in August said endemic corruption was crippling the government and providing a major source of funding to insurgent groups and sectarian militias.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has described the fight against corruption as Iraq's "second war."
"We can't win this thing with a bullet. We can't win it by killing everybody," Mixon said. "We have got to attack the insurgency from what source it comes from. Part of that is the financing."
The U.S. has long focused on kidnapping rings in Iraq. But commanders say insurgents have many other ways of strong-arming the money they need to buy weapons, build bombs, support fighters and pay their families.
Recent U.S. and Iraqi raids targeting financiers of insurgents in the northern city of Mosul have uncovered a criminal network involving kickbacks, overbilling and illegal sales, officials say, that has pumped millions into Sunni insurgent groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
In Mosul alone, illegal real estate deals, in which government property is sold to unsuspecting buyers, have generated $40 million to $60 million for the insurgency in the last couple of years, a source told U.S. forces. Black-market sales of gasoline and propane in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, are believed to generate an additional $1 million a month.
Such rackets are a mainstay of armed factions across Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
Sunni and Shiite Muslim militias have infiltrated every node in the production, processing, transfer, sale and export of oil, the major source of government revenue, said Judge Radhi Radhi, who recently resigned as head of Iraq's government corruption watchdog agency and sought asylum in the United States. He cited repeated threats to his life while he worked for the Commission on Public Integrity, which has seen at least 31 employees assassinated.
"This has resulted in the Ministry of Oil effectively financing terrorism through these militias," Radhi told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at an Oct. 4 hearing on Iraqi corruption.
Sunni extremists, who last year declared their own Islamic caliphate headquartered in Baqubah, extort drivers and take a portion of the harvests and goods transported through the areas they control as "taxes," U.S. commanders say.
In Baghdad, Sunni and Shiite militias have chased thousands of people of the opposite sect from their homes, which they then rent out to displaced families of their own sect. They also take kickbacks from the men and boys who line up in front of gasoline stations with jerrycans of fuel to sell to those who don't want to wait for hours in line to buy their gasoline legally.
U.S. commanders even suspect that militants may have tapped into American reconstruction efforts, by extorting money from contractors and recipients of business grants from the Army. Before they left Iraq in September, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, gave out grants of less than $2,500 to revitalize business in the Sunni-dominated district of Dora in Baghdad.
"No sooner do we get word out that we have money for [grants] . . . then we get word back that Al Qaeda is going to be putting people forward to get those to fund their business," said Maj. Scott Green, the battalion's executive officer.
Iraq developed a flourishing black-market economy to counter the United Nations embargo after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and it did not take insurgents long to realize this was a quick and untraceable way to generate and transfer funds. White-collar criminals in Mosul are forced to pay a cut to insurgents, whose causes they may or may not support, Welsh said.
Anti-corruption agencies have proven ill-equipped to tackle the problem, because of the level of obstruction and violence.
In addition to the 31 employees who have been assassinated since the Commission on Public Integrity was created in 2004, family members have been targeted, including the father of Radhi's security chief, whose body was found hanging from a meat hook.
Radhi estimated that his panel had uncovered corruption involving as much as $18 billion. But he said only 241 of the 3,000 cases brought to court had resulted in convictions, with sentences ranging from six months to 120 years in jail.
Now he too faces corruption charges, which he says are politically motivated.
With Iraqi investigators stymied, U.S. forces have been forced to step in. But uncovering such transactions has presented challenges to a force schooled in more traditional aspects of soldiering.
"Imagine going into a Pepsi plant with a bunch of soldiers in 116-degree heat," Welsh said. "In the accounting office, you have a bunch of people working ledgers, and you have astronomical amounts in stacks of Iraqi dinars sitting literally in boxes and piled in safes.
"Now where do you begin when you don't speak the language?"
It took the soldiers three visits to zero in on the manager, who they said was overcharging stores for Pepsi products and using his position as a cover to drive up and down Iraq's roads with large quantities of cash for insurgent cells.
The U.S. soldiers rely heavily on Iraqi security forces and interpreters who are familiar with correct business procedures and have provided key leads. But the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, is itself beset by corruption and militia influences.
Welsh's soldiers got one of their first big breaks in January. While searching a propane factory for weapons, they dug up a number of coffee cans stuffed with Iraqi notes totaling more than $40,000.
The owner of the factory told them he was hiding the money from his wife. At first, the explanation seemed plausible, because many Iraqis do not like to put their money in banks, Welsh said. But as the soldiers continued to search, they uncovered piles of photographs and identification documents, along with enough weapons and munitions to outfit an entire company of fighters.
"That's when it all became clear," Welsh said.
Using a legitimate business as a cover, he said, the owner was overcharging his customers for fuel, and requiring that they leave their IDs as insurance until they returned the empty containers. He would then sell copies of their documents to people seeking fake IDs. The money generated from these schemes went into building a stockpile of military-grade munitions, bombs, grenades, mortar tubes, sniper rifles and other weapons, Welsh said.
Efforts to disrupt the cells that make car bombs, a major U.S. focus in recent months, led soldiers to scrutinize the sales at used-car dealerships.
Once they had the bills of sale, they could go to the customers and ask how much they had paid for their car, Welsh said. In many cases, it was substantially more than had been recorded by the dealer. Typically, the dealer was pocketing part of the difference and paying the rest to insurgents, according to information supplied by detainees and other sources, including some racketeers, who Welsh said were frustrated at being forced to share their illegal gains.
In many cases, businessmen with ties to insurgents insert themselves as middlemen in legitimate businesses, he said.
This month, soldiers detained a man who was arranging contracts for government-owned cement factories at a substantial profit, which he allegedly shared with insurgents. Customers dealt with him because he could guarantee that they received their full order of cement, and that nobody else would come bother them while they were doing their construction, Welsh said.
Real estate is another lucrative business for the insurgency. Mosul has many government-owned properties and other sites, which have been confiscated from members of Saddam Hussein's regime who fled the country or are now in jail. Corrupt workers in government real estate offices alter the deeds and sell these properties to private buyers, Welsh said.
U.S. forces have averaged two or three arrests a month, including three people they identify as "high-level financiers."
But they say they are still piecing together the details of how insurgents fund their operations.
"This," Welsh said, "is the tip of the iceberg."
Citation: Alexandra Zavis. "Iraqi militants feed on corruption," Los Angeles Times, 26 October 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-funding26oct26,1,1016689.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=3&cset=true
By Alexandra Zavis
Los Angeles Times, 26 October 2007
TIKRIT, Iraq — Iraqi insurgents and sectarian militias are funding their deadly activities by muscling in on Mafia-style rackets involving everything from real estate and oil to cement and soft drinks, U.S. commanders say.
U.S. diplomats and senior Iraqi officials have repeatedly singled out corruption as one of the greatest obstacles to stability in Iraq. But until recently, commanders acknowledge, they knew little about the criminal dealings they say sustain militant groups across the country.
"If you think that the majority of money is coming from outside the country to fund the insurgency, you'd be wrong," said Army Lt. Col. Eric Welsh, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, in the northern city of Mosul.
"I think a majority is being done right here . . . under the disguise of legitimate storefront operations."
Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, who is wrapping up 15 months as commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, said shutting down the networks that finance the insurgency will be a growing priority as U.S. forces seek to consolidate recent gains against Sunni Arab extremists in Mosul, Baqubah and other cities.
An internal U.S. Embassy assessment leaked to the media in August said endemic corruption was crippling the government and providing a major source of funding to insurgent groups and sectarian militias.
Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has described the fight against corruption as Iraq's "second war."
"We can't win this thing with a bullet. We can't win it by killing everybody," Mixon said. "We have got to attack the insurgency from what source it comes from. Part of that is the financing."
The U.S. has long focused on kidnapping rings in Iraq. But commanders say insurgents have many other ways of strong-arming the money they need to buy weapons, build bombs, support fighters and pay their families.
Recent U.S. and Iraqi raids targeting financiers of insurgents in the northern city of Mosul have uncovered a criminal network involving kickbacks, overbilling and illegal sales, officials say, that has pumped millions into Sunni insurgent groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq.
In Mosul alone, illegal real estate deals, in which government property is sold to unsuspecting buyers, have generated $40 million to $60 million for the insurgency in the last couple of years, a source told U.S. forces. Black-market sales of gasoline and propane in Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, are believed to generate an additional $1 million a month.
Such rackets are a mainstay of armed factions across Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
Sunni and Shiite Muslim militias have infiltrated every node in the production, processing, transfer, sale and export of oil, the major source of government revenue, said Judge Radhi Radhi, who recently resigned as head of Iraq's government corruption watchdog agency and sought asylum in the United States. He cited repeated threats to his life while he worked for the Commission on Public Integrity, which has seen at least 31 employees assassinated.
"This has resulted in the Ministry of Oil effectively financing terrorism through these militias," Radhi told the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform at an Oct. 4 hearing on Iraqi corruption.
Sunni extremists, who last year declared their own Islamic caliphate headquartered in Baqubah, extort drivers and take a portion of the harvests and goods transported through the areas they control as "taxes," U.S. commanders say.
In Baghdad, Sunni and Shiite militias have chased thousands of people of the opposite sect from their homes, which they then rent out to displaced families of their own sect. They also take kickbacks from the men and boys who line up in front of gasoline stations with jerrycans of fuel to sell to those who don't want to wait for hours in line to buy their gasoline legally.
U.S. commanders even suspect that militants may have tapped into American reconstruction efforts, by extorting money from contractors and recipients of business grants from the Army. Before they left Iraq in September, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, gave out grants of less than $2,500 to revitalize business in the Sunni-dominated district of Dora in Baghdad.
"No sooner do we get word out that we have money for [grants] . . . then we get word back that Al Qaeda is going to be putting people forward to get those to fund their business," said Maj. Scott Green, the battalion's executive officer.
Iraq developed a flourishing black-market economy to counter the United Nations embargo after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and it did not take insurgents long to realize this was a quick and untraceable way to generate and transfer funds. White-collar criminals in Mosul are forced to pay a cut to insurgents, whose causes they may or may not support, Welsh said.
Anti-corruption agencies have proven ill-equipped to tackle the problem, because of the level of obstruction and violence.
In addition to the 31 employees who have been assassinated since the Commission on Public Integrity was created in 2004, family members have been targeted, including the father of Radhi's security chief, whose body was found hanging from a meat hook.
Radhi estimated that his panel had uncovered corruption involving as much as $18 billion. But he said only 241 of the 3,000 cases brought to court had resulted in convictions, with sentences ranging from six months to 120 years in jail.
Now he too faces corruption charges, which he says are politically motivated.
With Iraqi investigators stymied, U.S. forces have been forced to step in. But uncovering such transactions has presented challenges to a force schooled in more traditional aspects of soldiering.
"Imagine going into a Pepsi plant with a bunch of soldiers in 116-degree heat," Welsh said. "In the accounting office, you have a bunch of people working ledgers, and you have astronomical amounts in stacks of Iraqi dinars sitting literally in boxes and piled in safes.
"Now where do you begin when you don't speak the language?"
It took the soldiers three visits to zero in on the manager, who they said was overcharging stores for Pepsi products and using his position as a cover to drive up and down Iraq's roads with large quantities of cash for insurgent cells.
The U.S. soldiers rely heavily on Iraqi security forces and interpreters who are familiar with correct business procedures and have provided key leads. But the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, is itself beset by corruption and militia influences.
Welsh's soldiers got one of their first big breaks in January. While searching a propane factory for weapons, they dug up a number of coffee cans stuffed with Iraqi notes totaling more than $40,000.
The owner of the factory told them he was hiding the money from his wife. At first, the explanation seemed plausible, because many Iraqis do not like to put their money in banks, Welsh said. But as the soldiers continued to search, they uncovered piles of photographs and identification documents, along with enough weapons and munitions to outfit an entire company of fighters.
"That's when it all became clear," Welsh said.
Using a legitimate business as a cover, he said, the owner was overcharging his customers for fuel, and requiring that they leave their IDs as insurance until they returned the empty containers. He would then sell copies of their documents to people seeking fake IDs. The money generated from these schemes went into building a stockpile of military-grade munitions, bombs, grenades, mortar tubes, sniper rifles and other weapons, Welsh said.
Efforts to disrupt the cells that make car bombs, a major U.S. focus in recent months, led soldiers to scrutinize the sales at used-car dealerships.
Once they had the bills of sale, they could go to the customers and ask how much they had paid for their car, Welsh said. In many cases, it was substantially more than had been recorded by the dealer. Typically, the dealer was pocketing part of the difference and paying the rest to insurgents, according to information supplied by detainees and other sources, including some racketeers, who Welsh said were frustrated at being forced to share their illegal gains.
In many cases, businessmen with ties to insurgents insert themselves as middlemen in legitimate businesses, he said.
This month, soldiers detained a man who was arranging contracts for government-owned cement factories at a substantial profit, which he allegedly shared with insurgents. Customers dealt with him because he could guarantee that they received their full order of cement, and that nobody else would come bother them while they were doing their construction, Welsh said.
Real estate is another lucrative business for the insurgency. Mosul has many government-owned properties and other sites, which have been confiscated from members of Saddam Hussein's regime who fled the country or are now in jail. Corrupt workers in government real estate offices alter the deeds and sell these properties to private buyers, Welsh said.
U.S. forces have averaged two or three arrests a month, including three people they identify as "high-level financiers."
But they say they are still piecing together the details of how insurgents fund their operations.
"This," Welsh said, "is the tip of the iceberg."
Citation: Alexandra Zavis. "Iraqi militants feed on corruption," Los Angeles Times, 26 October 2007.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-funding26oct26,1,1016689.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=3&cset=true
Iraq’s Networked Insurgents
By Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo
Foreign Policy, November/December 2007
When U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus briefed Congress on the status of the troop increase in Iraq, he commented on an often overlooked front in the struggle against Iraqi insurgents: the Internet. Petraeus told Congress that the United States needs to “contest the enemy’s growing use of that important medium to spread extremism.” The general’s admission that “this war is not only being fought on the ground in Iraq but also in cyberspace” drew a quick response from the Islamic State of Iraq, the latest incarnation of al Qaeda in Iraq. A September 13 statement posted to a jihadist Web site by the group boasted that the United States is trying to shut down insurgent Web sites because “media is an effective weapon that can crush thrones and destroy armies.”
Iraqi insurgents have been marshaling the media to “destroy armies” since they began their armed campaign in 2003. Their media campaign uses the Internet to target educated, influential segments of the Arab population, and they can reach an audience of millions when the mainstream media pick up their diatribes or news bulletins. Unencumbered by a centralized bureaucracy or a brick-and-mortar infrastructure, the Sunni insurgent media network is lean, mean, and fast-moving. In recent months, al Qaeda-affiliated organizations, each with its own “media brigade,” have appeared in Algeria, Morocco, and Lebanon. The insurgency’s initial message of uncompromising opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq has mutated over the years, with anti-Shiite sectarian hate speech now abundant, and a very public rift between nationalist and jihadist groups roiling the sites. But Sunni insurgents remain united in using the messages they create not to inform but to spin, shape, and shift opinion—in short, to wage a war of images and ideas.
Indeed, there is nothing impartial about Iraqi insurgent media; their primary goals are to recruit foreign fighters, raise money, incite violence, and foment religious hatred. Insurgent Web sites—both nationalist and jihadist—publish daily press releases and operational statements recording alleged attacks against coalition and Iraqi government forces. They also distribute books, magazines, and biographies of jihadist martyrs. Their video content is particularly potent. Visitors can download short clips of suicide bombings, as well as longer, feature-length Arabic-language films full of Islamist rhetoric, many of them subtitled in English, German, Kurdish, Turkish, and Urdu. One recent clip posted to the Islamic Fluga (Fallujah) Forums showed the destruction of a $3.2-million U.S. armored vehicle with a bomb that supposedly cost only $32, implying that insurgents can get a $100,000 return in damage for each dollar they invest in destruction in a matter of seconds.
The breadth of insurgent media is startling, with thousands of statements appearing on dozens of forums and other Web sites. Our research on two forums used by insurgent groups operating in Iraq—the World News Network and Mohajroon—showed that in March 2007 alone, insurgents issued roughly 1,000 press releases documenting operations and commenting on politics. Many of these are cut-and-paste claims from other sites about unverifiable assaults on “crusaders” and “apostates,” but the total adds up to more than 30 unique statements a day.
The content of insurgent media doesn’t rest solely on simplified rhetoric of martyrdom and accounts of victories over the “Great Satan” within Iraq’s borders. Iraqi insurgent media also demonstrate an acute awareness of policy discussions and political battles in the United States and Europe. Since the “surge” began in February, insurgents have regularly quoted and commented on battles between the White House and the U.S. Congress over Iraq policy, often in real time. Forums also allow supporters to weigh in and give their assessments of the ongoing insurgent campaign against the United States and its allies.
One example of how closely insurgent media follow U.S. politics came in a July statement from the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), a prominent nationalist group that has tangled publicly with al Qaeda in Iraq. As usual, the statement appeared both on the group’s Web site and on a host of sympathetic forums. It made a bold prediction about the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections simply by using the feminine form of the Arabic word—ra’isah instead of ra’is—for “president.” Noting that the “U.S. Congress holds marathon meetings in which partisan interests take precedence over the American national interest, which is an exit from the Iraq quagmire,” the IAI concluded, “What all of this means is that the Americans, and especially the neoconservatives, will pass the crisis on to the next [female] president and the Democratic majority [in Congress], which is timidly crawling toward a solution....”
Bread-and-butter issues lie closer to home, however, and insurgents’ real interest in U.S. politics is what it means for Iraq. Their commentary on the Petraeus report claimed that it supported the insurgent view that the Iraqi government is near collapse, coalition forces are on the verge of withdrawing, and victory for the insurgency is near. And although the al Qaeda jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq acknowledged in their September 13 statement recent U.S. attempts to shut down insurgent Web sites and arrest operators of jihadist forums, they also praised contributors to insurgent sites and forums, telling them they were a tool to aggravate the enemies of God and support Islam. They advised these contributors to be patient, fearless, and steadfast in their work, saying: “Your media is an instigation for the monotheists and an announcement to join the fight.”
For the United States, addressing insurgent media is vitally important. But it’s not an easy task. For every site that is pulled down, another pops up, often carrying archived content from the preceding site. Moreover, insurgents are adept at finding new and provocative ways to spread their message, from free upload-download sites to compressed film files for mobile phones. For groups that firmly believe that “media is half the battle,” as one insurgent statement put it, the Internet is a lifeline to hearts and minds. They will surely continue to fight for their foothold in the virtual world, just as surely as they fight with bombs and bullets in the real one.
Citation: Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo. "Iraq’s Networked Insurgents," Foreign Policy, November/December 2007.
Original URL: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3999
Foreign Policy, November/December 2007
When U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus briefed Congress on the status of the troop increase in Iraq, he commented on an often overlooked front in the struggle against Iraqi insurgents: the Internet. Petraeus told Congress that the United States needs to “contest the enemy’s growing use of that important medium to spread extremism.” The general’s admission that “this war is not only being fought on the ground in Iraq but also in cyberspace” drew a quick response from the Islamic State of Iraq, the latest incarnation of al Qaeda in Iraq. A September 13 statement posted to a jihadist Web site by the group boasted that the United States is trying to shut down insurgent Web sites because “media is an effective weapon that can crush thrones and destroy armies.”
Iraqi insurgents have been marshaling the media to “destroy armies” since they began their armed campaign in 2003. Their media campaign uses the Internet to target educated, influential segments of the Arab population, and they can reach an audience of millions when the mainstream media pick up their diatribes or news bulletins. Unencumbered by a centralized bureaucracy or a brick-and-mortar infrastructure, the Sunni insurgent media network is lean, mean, and fast-moving. In recent months, al Qaeda-affiliated organizations, each with its own “media brigade,” have appeared in Algeria, Morocco, and Lebanon. The insurgency’s initial message of uncompromising opposition to the U.S. presence in Iraq has mutated over the years, with anti-Shiite sectarian hate speech now abundant, and a very public rift between nationalist and jihadist groups roiling the sites. But Sunni insurgents remain united in using the messages they create not to inform but to spin, shape, and shift opinion—in short, to wage a war of images and ideas.
Indeed, there is nothing impartial about Iraqi insurgent media; their primary goals are to recruit foreign fighters, raise money, incite violence, and foment religious hatred. Insurgent Web sites—both nationalist and jihadist—publish daily press releases and operational statements recording alleged attacks against coalition and Iraqi government forces. They also distribute books, magazines, and biographies of jihadist martyrs. Their video content is particularly potent. Visitors can download short clips of suicide bombings, as well as longer, feature-length Arabic-language films full of Islamist rhetoric, many of them subtitled in English, German, Kurdish, Turkish, and Urdu. One recent clip posted to the Islamic Fluga (Fallujah) Forums showed the destruction of a $3.2-million U.S. armored vehicle with a bomb that supposedly cost only $32, implying that insurgents can get a $100,000 return in damage for each dollar they invest in destruction in a matter of seconds.
The breadth of insurgent media is startling, with thousands of statements appearing on dozens of forums and other Web sites. Our research on two forums used by insurgent groups operating in Iraq—the World News Network and Mohajroon—showed that in March 2007 alone, insurgents issued roughly 1,000 press releases documenting operations and commenting on politics. Many of these are cut-and-paste claims from other sites about unverifiable assaults on “crusaders” and “apostates,” but the total adds up to more than 30 unique statements a day.
The content of insurgent media doesn’t rest solely on simplified rhetoric of martyrdom and accounts of victories over the “Great Satan” within Iraq’s borders. Iraqi insurgent media also demonstrate an acute awareness of policy discussions and political battles in the United States and Europe. Since the “surge” began in February, insurgents have regularly quoted and commented on battles between the White House and the U.S. Congress over Iraq policy, often in real time. Forums also allow supporters to weigh in and give their assessments of the ongoing insurgent campaign against the United States and its allies.
One example of how closely insurgent media follow U.S. politics came in a July statement from the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), a prominent nationalist group that has tangled publicly with al Qaeda in Iraq. As usual, the statement appeared both on the group’s Web site and on a host of sympathetic forums. It made a bold prediction about the outcome of the 2008 U.S. presidential elections simply by using the feminine form of the Arabic word—ra’isah instead of ra’is—for “president.” Noting that the “U.S. Congress holds marathon meetings in which partisan interests take precedence over the American national interest, which is an exit from the Iraq quagmire,” the IAI concluded, “What all of this means is that the Americans, and especially the neoconservatives, will pass the crisis on to the next [female] president and the Democratic majority [in Congress], which is timidly crawling toward a solution....”
Bread-and-butter issues lie closer to home, however, and insurgents’ real interest in U.S. politics is what it means for Iraq. Their commentary on the Petraeus report claimed that it supported the insurgent view that the Iraqi government is near collapse, coalition forces are on the verge of withdrawing, and victory for the insurgency is near. And although the al Qaeda jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq acknowledged in their September 13 statement recent U.S. attempts to shut down insurgent Web sites and arrest operators of jihadist forums, they also praised contributors to insurgent sites and forums, telling them they were a tool to aggravate the enemies of God and support Islam. They advised these contributors to be patient, fearless, and steadfast in their work, saying: “Your media is an instigation for the monotheists and an announcement to join the fight.”
For the United States, addressing insurgent media is vitally important. But it’s not an easy task. For every site that is pulled down, another pops up, often carrying archived content from the preceding site. Moreover, insurgents are adept at finding new and provocative ways to spread their message, from free upload-download sites to compressed film files for mobile phones. For groups that firmly believe that “media is half the battle,” as one insurgent statement put it, the Internet is a lifeline to hearts and minds. They will surely continue to fight for their foothold in the virtual world, just as surely as they fight with bombs and bullets in the real one.
Citation: Daniel Kimmage and Kathleen Ridolfo. "Iraq’s Networked Insurgents," Foreign Policy, November/December 2007.
Original URL: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3999
24 October 2007
Iraq revokes security contractors' immunity
by Ammar Karim
Agence France-Presse, 24 October 2007
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi government announced on Wednesday that it has decided to formally revoke the immunity from prosecution granted to private security companies operating in the war-ravaged country.
"The cabinet held a meeting yesterday and decided to scrap the article pertaining to security companies operating in Iraq that was issued by the CPA (Coalition Provision Authority) in 2004," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.
"It has decided to present a new law regarding this issue which will be taken in the next cabinet meeting."
Article 1 of Section 2 of CPA order 17 issued by then US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, stipulates that the "multinational force, foreign liaison missions, their personnel, property, funds and assets and all international consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process."
The immunity granted to private contractors has become controversial since a series of shootings involving foreign security guards, the most infamous of them a September 16 shooting in which employees of the Blackwater firm killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.
The Blackwater guards opened fire when they were escorting a US State Department convoy through a Baghdad neighbourhood.
On October 9 guards of Australian security company Unity Resources Group fired upon a car in central Baghdad killing two women, and on October 18 guards of a British security company fired on a car wounding three people.
On Tuesday, the US government also moved to clamp down on Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officials said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was adopting "immediately" the recommendations of a review panel that exposed a worrying legal impunity for security guards working in the two countries.
The panel was led by Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's director of management policy, who said "the issue is to do the job in such a way that you minimize the risk to protectees and to any innocent Iraqis who happen to be in the area that a convoy is moving through."
In an implicit admonishment, the Kennedy panel stressed that private contractors should open fire only with "due regard for the safety of innocent bystanders."
The Blackwater shooting laid bare a lack of accountability for firms working for the US State Department rather than the Pentagon, whose private contractors are covered by US military law.
Washington has been increasingly dependent on contractors to protect its civilian staff in Iraq as the military has been fully occupied tackling Sunni insurgents and sectarian militias.
Citation: Ammar Karim. "Iraq revokes security contractors' immunity," Agence France-Presse, 24 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071024/wl_afp/iraqunrestblackwater_071024123757
Agence France-Presse, 24 October 2007
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Iraqi government announced on Wednesday that it has decided to formally revoke the immunity from prosecution granted to private security companies operating in the war-ravaged country.
"The cabinet held a meeting yesterday and decided to scrap the article pertaining to security companies operating in Iraq that was issued by the CPA (Coalition Provision Authority) in 2004," government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a statement.
"It has decided to present a new law regarding this issue which will be taken in the next cabinet meeting."
Article 1 of Section 2 of CPA order 17 issued by then US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, stipulates that the "multinational force, foreign liaison missions, their personnel, property, funds and assets and all international consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process."
The immunity granted to private contractors has become controversial since a series of shootings involving foreign security guards, the most infamous of them a September 16 shooting in which employees of the Blackwater firm killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.
The Blackwater guards opened fire when they were escorting a US State Department convoy through a Baghdad neighbourhood.
On October 9 guards of Australian security company Unity Resources Group fired upon a car in central Baghdad killing two women, and on October 18 guards of a British security company fired on a car wounding three people.
On Tuesday, the US government also moved to clamp down on Blackwater and other private security firms in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Officials said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was adopting "immediately" the recommendations of a review panel that exposed a worrying legal impunity for security guards working in the two countries.
The panel was led by Patrick Kennedy, the State Department's director of management policy, who said "the issue is to do the job in such a way that you minimize the risk to protectees and to any innocent Iraqis who happen to be in the area that a convoy is moving through."
In an implicit admonishment, the Kennedy panel stressed that private contractors should open fire only with "due regard for the safety of innocent bystanders."
The Blackwater shooting laid bare a lack of accountability for firms working for the US State Department rather than the Pentagon, whose private contractors are covered by US military law.
Washington has been increasingly dependent on contractors to protect its civilian staff in Iraq as the military has been fully occupied tackling Sunni insurgents and sectarian militias.
Citation: Ammar Karim. "Iraq revokes security contractors' immunity," Agence France-Presse, 24 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071024/wl_afp/iraqunrestblackwater_071024123757
Trillion-dollar war: Afghanistan and Iraq set to cost more than Vietnam and Korea
By Leonard Doyle
The Independent, 24 October 2007
President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
There are also disturbing signs that Mr Bush is preparing an attack on Iran during his remaining months in office. He has demanded $46bn (£22.5bn) emergency funds from Congress by Christmas and included with it a single sentence requesting money to upgrade the B-2 "stealth" bomber.
By wrapping his request in the flag of patriotism, the President has made it very difficult even for an anti-war Congress to refuse the money. He was accompanied by the family of a dead US marine when he made the request for funds on Monday.
The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has attacked the President's priorities saying: "For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year."
"The President is happy to put the military spending on the national credit card," said Steve Kosiak, a vice-president of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent, military policy research institute, who said that the $1trn figure will soon be passed.
The full amount requested for this fiscal year is now $196.4bn. The US is on course to spend a total of $806bn fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than on any war it has fought since the Second World War. With interest payments this tops $1trn.
Despite their expense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are less of an economic burden (at 4.2 per cent of GDP) than earlier wars. The 1990-91 Gulf War cost $88bn, the Korean War cost $456bn (12.2 per cent of GDP) and the Vietnam War, $518bn (9.4 per cent of GDP). By comparison the Second World War cost more than 40 per cent of GDP.
Mr Kosiak also points out that the military is using the cover of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to get funding for all sorts of projects. The upgrade of the stealth bomber is one of those projects.
The Pentagon wants to upgrade its fleet of stealth bombers so that they can deliver 30-tonne, satellite-guided bombs. The planes would be based on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia where hangars are being specially upgraded. These "bunker-buster" bombs are six times bigger than anything used by the air force and designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction facilities underground. Diego Garcia is also much closer to Iran than Missouri, where the bombers are based.
This weekend Vice-President Dick Cheney stepped up the rhetoric, warning of "serious consequences" if Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium and said the US would not permit it to get nuclear weapons. Iran denies that the enrichment is linked to a nuclear weapons programme and says it is entirely peaceful.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who was in Washington for talks with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday would not be drawn on Mr Cheney's remarks.
Mr Bush's request for an extra $46bn in funds by Christmas has angered Congress, but it is expected to be approved.
This year's request for extra military spending is already the largest since 11 September 2001 and rising fast.
The lion's share of the money Mr Bush has asked for is for the Pentagon. Some has also been earmarked for UN peacekeeping in Darfur, emergency food aid in Africa and sending oil to North Korea as part of a deal to end its nuclear weapons programme.
* The US State Department has been harshly criticised for failing to oversee the private security companies it relies on in Iraq.
An internal review found poor supervision and accountability for companies such as Blackwater USA as well as DynCorp.
An audit of DynCorp says its record keeping is so poor that the State Department cannot account for $1.2bn (£590m) it paid the company since 2004 to train Iraqi police officers.
Citation: Leonard Doyle. "Trillion-dollar war: Afghanistan and Iraq set to cost more than Vietnam and Korea," The Independent, 24 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3090340.ece
The Independent, 24 October 2007
President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
There are also disturbing signs that Mr Bush is preparing an attack on Iran during his remaining months in office. He has demanded $46bn (£22.5bn) emergency funds from Congress by Christmas and included with it a single sentence requesting money to upgrade the B-2 "stealth" bomber.
By wrapping his request in the flag of patriotism, the President has made it very difficult even for an anti-war Congress to refuse the money. He was accompanied by the family of a dead US marine when he made the request for funds on Monday.
The House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has attacked the President's priorities saying: "For the cost of less than 40 days in Iraq, we could provide health care coverage to 10 million children for an entire year."
"The President is happy to put the military spending on the national credit card," said Steve Kosiak, a vice-president of the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent, military policy research institute, who said that the $1trn figure will soon be passed.
The full amount requested for this fiscal year is now $196.4bn. The US is on course to spend a total of $806bn fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, more than on any war it has fought since the Second World War. With interest payments this tops $1trn.
Despite their expense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are less of an economic burden (at 4.2 per cent of GDP) than earlier wars. The 1990-91 Gulf War cost $88bn, the Korean War cost $456bn (12.2 per cent of GDP) and the Vietnam War, $518bn (9.4 per cent of GDP). By comparison the Second World War cost more than 40 per cent of GDP.
Mr Kosiak also points out that the military is using the cover of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to get funding for all sorts of projects. The upgrade of the stealth bomber is one of those projects.
The Pentagon wants to upgrade its fleet of stealth bombers so that they can deliver 30-tonne, satellite-guided bombs. The planes would be based on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia where hangars are being specially upgraded. These "bunker-buster" bombs are six times bigger than anything used by the air force and designed to destroy weapons of mass destruction facilities underground. Diego Garcia is also much closer to Iran than Missouri, where the bombers are based.
This weekend Vice-President Dick Cheney stepped up the rhetoric, warning of "serious consequences" if Iran refuses to stop enriching uranium and said the US would not permit it to get nuclear weapons. Iran denies that the enrichment is linked to a nuclear weapons programme and says it is entirely peaceful.
David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who was in Washington for talks with the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday would not be drawn on Mr Cheney's remarks.
Mr Bush's request for an extra $46bn in funds by Christmas has angered Congress, but it is expected to be approved.
This year's request for extra military spending is already the largest since 11 September 2001 and rising fast.
The lion's share of the money Mr Bush has asked for is for the Pentagon. Some has also been earmarked for UN peacekeeping in Darfur, emergency food aid in Africa and sending oil to North Korea as part of a deal to end its nuclear weapons programme.
* The US State Department has been harshly criticised for failing to oversee the private security companies it relies on in Iraq.
An internal review found poor supervision and accountability for companies such as Blackwater USA as well as DynCorp.
An audit of DynCorp says its record keeping is so poor that the State Department cannot account for $1.2bn (£590m) it paid the company since 2004 to train Iraqi police officers.
Citation: Leonard Doyle. "Trillion-dollar war: Afghanistan and Iraq set to cost more than Vietnam and Korea," The Independent, 24 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3090340.ece
Violence impedes US auditors in Iraq
By Pauline Jelinek
The Associated Press, 23 October 2007
WASHINGTON - Violence, language barriers and other problems have frustrated U.S. rebuilding in Iraq for years. Last month, auditors couldn't assess two of four projects because of insurgent activity and other problems.
The projects represented only a small portion of the money that has been spent in Iraq — some $3.5 million compared to well over $20 billion since 2003. Auditors think the projects were handled pretty well but just couldn't prove it.
A series of four reports were issued Tuesday, the third day in less than a week on which assessments were issued by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen Jr. The reports said:
_Insurgent activity kept auditors from visiting a $1.7 million project to rehabilitate and upgrade a drinking water treatment plant for residents of Mosul.
_Insurgent activity in the Mosul area over two weeks that the auditors were there forced them to first delay and then cut short a visit to the $237,000 repair of a water pumping station in Bartilla.
There was no electricity and so the pump was not operating while the team was there. Because the team couldn't communicate with the two Iraqis at the station, it couldn't determine why it wasn't working, nor whether they were following good practices in keeping the station maintained since it was handed over to Iraqi control.
_Review of a $147,000 project to build six new municipal road segments in the town of Bartilla in Ninewa found "fully functioning roads" replaced dirt roads and that the project was adequately designed and the U.S. government adequately managed it.
_A $1.4 million project to build a new 6.84-mile asphalt road in Ninewa replaced an impassable road and now "contributes to economic activity," safe pedestrian travel and better response by emergency service.
All four projects hired local companies and all were paid for through the so-called Commander's Emergency Response Program funds, which local commanders can hand out quickly for local projects they deem important.
A report Monday found that the State Department so badly managed a $1.2 billion contract for Iraqi police training that it can't tell what it got for the money spent.
In a report last week, Bowen partly blamed security for limited progress by provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) — groups sent to mentor Iraqis in towns and provinces to help them learn how to govern and provide citizens with services.
"In many locations, the PRT program in Iraq is making incremental progress in developing the nation's provincial and local government capacity ... despite" continuing violence and strife, the report said. "However, Iraq's complex and overlapping sectarian, political and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation continue to hinder progress in promoting economic development, the rule of law and political reconciliation," it said.
Citation: Pauline Jelinek. "Violence impedes US auditors in Iraq," The Associated Press, 23 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_reconstruction_2
The Associated Press, 23 October 2007
WASHINGTON - Violence, language barriers and other problems have frustrated U.S. rebuilding in Iraq for years. Last month, auditors couldn't assess two of four projects because of insurgent activity and other problems.
The projects represented only a small portion of the money that has been spent in Iraq — some $3.5 million compared to well over $20 billion since 2003. Auditors think the projects were handled pretty well but just couldn't prove it.
A series of four reports were issued Tuesday, the third day in less than a week on which assessments were issued by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen Jr. The reports said:
_Insurgent activity kept auditors from visiting a $1.7 million project to rehabilitate and upgrade a drinking water treatment plant for residents of Mosul.
_Insurgent activity in the Mosul area over two weeks that the auditors were there forced them to first delay and then cut short a visit to the $237,000 repair of a water pumping station in Bartilla.
There was no electricity and so the pump was not operating while the team was there. Because the team couldn't communicate with the two Iraqis at the station, it couldn't determine why it wasn't working, nor whether they were following good practices in keeping the station maintained since it was handed over to Iraqi control.
_Review of a $147,000 project to build six new municipal road segments in the town of Bartilla in Ninewa found "fully functioning roads" replaced dirt roads and that the project was adequately designed and the U.S. government adequately managed it.
_A $1.4 million project to build a new 6.84-mile asphalt road in Ninewa replaced an impassable road and now "contributes to economic activity," safe pedestrian travel and better response by emergency service.
All four projects hired local companies and all were paid for through the so-called Commander's Emergency Response Program funds, which local commanders can hand out quickly for local projects they deem important.
A report Monday found that the State Department so badly managed a $1.2 billion contract for Iraqi police training that it can't tell what it got for the money spent.
In a report last week, Bowen partly blamed security for limited progress by provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) — groups sent to mentor Iraqis in towns and provinces to help them learn how to govern and provide citizens with services.
"In many locations, the PRT program in Iraq is making incremental progress in developing the nation's provincial and local government capacity ... despite" continuing violence and strife, the report said. "However, Iraq's complex and overlapping sectarian, political and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation continue to hinder progress in promoting economic development, the rule of law and political reconciliation," it said.
Citation: Pauline Jelinek. "Violence impedes US auditors in Iraq," The Associated Press, 23 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_reconstruction_2
22 October 2007
The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know
Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again.
By John H. Richardson
Esquire, November 2007
In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.
"The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State Department," says Leverett. "They're basically saying, 'You've been trying to engage Iran for more than a year now and what do you have to show for it? They keep building more centrifuges, they're sending this IED stuff over into Iraq that's killing American soldiers, the human-rights internal political situation has gotten more repressive -- what the hell do you have to show for this engagement strategy?' "
But the engagement strategy was never serious and was designed to fail, they say. Over the last year, Rice has begun saying she would talk to "anybody, anywhere, anytime," but not to the Iranians unless they stopped enriching uranium first. That's not a serious approach to diplomacy, Mann says. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies. That's how wars are averted. You work up to the big things. And when U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had his much-publicized meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this spring, he didn't even have permission from the White House to schedule a second meeting.
The most ominous new development is the Bush administration's push to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.
"The U.S. has designated any number of states over the years as state sponsors of terrorism," says Leverett. "But here for the first time the U.S. is saying that part of a government is itself a terrorist organization."
This is what Leverett and Mann fear will happen: The diplomatic effort in the United Nations will fail when it becomes clear that Russia's and China's geopolitical ambitions will not accommodate the inconvenience of energy sanctions against Iran. Without any meaningful incentive from the U.S. to be friendly, Iran will keep meddling in Iraq and installing nuclear centrifuges. This will trigger a response from the hard-liners in the White House, who feel that it is their moral duty to deal with Iran before the Democrats take over American foreign policy. "If you get all those elements coming together, say in the first half of '08," says Leverett, "what is this president going to do? I think there is a serious risk he would decide to order an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and probably a wider target zone."
This would result in a dramatic increase in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, attacks by proxy forces like Hezbollah, and an unknown reaction from the wobbly states of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where millions admire Iran's resistance to the Great Satan. "As disastrous as Iraq has been," says Mann, "an attack on Iran could engulf America in a war with the entire Muslim world."
Mann and Leverett believe that none of this had to be.
Flynt Lawrence Leverett grew up in Fort Worth and went to Texas Christian University. He spent the first nine years of his government career as a CIA analyst specializing in the Middle East. He voted for George Bush in 2000. On the day the assassins of Al Qaeda flew two hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center, Colin Powell summoned him to help plan the response. Five months later, Leverett landed a plum post on the National Security Council. When Condoleezza Rice discussed the Middle East with President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Leverett was the man standing behind her taking notes and whispering in her ear.
Today, he sits on the back deck of a house tucked into the curve of a leafy suburban street in McLean, Virginia, a forty-nine-year-old white American man wearing khakis and a white dress shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. Mann sits next to him, also wearing khakis. She's thirty-nine but looks much younger, with straight brown hair and a tomboy's open face. The polish on her toenails is pink. If you saw her around McLean, you wouldn't hesitate:
Soccer mom. Classic soccer mom.
But with degrees from Brandeis and Harvard Law and stints at Tel Aviv University and the powerful Israeli lobby known as AIPAC, she has even better right-wing credentials than her husband.
As they talk, eating grapes out of a bowl, lawn mowers hum and birds chirp. The floor is littered with toy trucks and rubber animals left behind by the youngest of their four children. But the tranquillity is misleading. When Mann and Leverett went public with the inside story behind the impending disaster with Iran, the White House dismissed them. Then it imposed prior restraint on them, an extraordinary episode of government censorship. Finally, it threatened them.
Now they are afraid of the White House, and watching what they say. But still, they feel they have to speak out.
Like so many things these days, this story began on the morning of September 11, 2001. On Forty-fifth Street in Manhattan, Mann had just been evacuated from the offices of the U.S. mission to the United Nations and was walking home to her apartment on Thirty-eighth Street -- walking south, toward the giant plume of smoke. When her cell phone rang, she picked it up immediately because her sister worked at the World Trade Center and she was frantic for word. But it wasn't her sister, it was a senior Iranian diplomat. To protect him from reprisals from the Iranian government, she doesn't want to name him, but she describes him as a cultured man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. Since early spring, they had been meeting secretly in a small conference room at the UN.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Yes, she said, she was fine.
The attack was a terrible tragedy, he said, doubtless the work of Al Qaeda.
"I hope that we can still work together," he said.
That same day, in Washington, on the seventh floor of the State Department building, a security guard opened the door of Leverett's office and told him they were evacuating the building. Leverett was Powell's specialist on terrorist states like Syria and Libya, so he knew the world was about to go through a dramatic change. As he joined the people milling on the sidewalk, his mind was already racing.
Then he got a call summoning him back to Foggy Bottom. At the entrance to a specially fortified office, he showed his badge to the guards and passed into a windowless conference room. There were about a dozen people there, Powell's top foreign-policy planners. Powell told them that their first job was to make plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. The second job was to rally allies. That meant detailed strategies for approaching other nations -- in some cases, Powell could make the approach, in others the president would have to make the call. Then Powell left them to work through the night.
At 5:30 a.m. on September 12, they walked the list to the office of the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. Powell took it straight to the White House.
Mann and Leverett didn't know each other then, but they were already traveling down parallel tracks. Months before September 11, Mann had been negotiating with the Iranian diplomat at the UN. After the attacks, the meetings continued, sometimes alone and sometimes with their Russian counterpart sitting in. Soon they traded the conference room for the Delegates' Lounge, an airy two-story bar with ashtrays for all the foreigners who were used to smoking indoors. One day, up on the second floor where the windows overlooked the East River, the diplomat told her that Iran was ready to cooperate unconditionally, a phrase that had seismic diplomatic implications. Unconditional talks are what the U.S. had been demanding as a precondition to any official diplomatic contact between the U.S. and Iran. And it would be the first chance since the Islamic revolution for any kind of rapprochement. "It was revolutionary," Mann says. "It could have changed the world."
A few weeks later, after signing on to Condoleezza Rice's staff as the new Iran expert in the National Security Council, Mann flew to Europe with Ryan Crocker -- then a deputy assistant secretary of state -- to hold talks with a team of Iranian diplomats. Meeting in a light-filled conference room at the old UN building in Geneva, they hammered out plans for Iranian help in the war against the Taliban. The Iranians agreed to provide assistance if any American was shot down near their territory, agreed to let the U.S. send food in through their border, and even agreed to restrain some "really bad Afghanis," like a rabidly anti-American warlord named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, quietly putting him under house arrest in Tehran. These were significant concessions. At the same time, special envoy James Dobbins was having very public and warm discussions in Bonn with the Iranian deputy foreign minister as they worked together to set up a new government for Afghanistan. And the Iranians seemed eager to help in more tactical ways as well. They had intimate knowledge of Taliban strategic capabilities and they wanted to share it with the Americans.
One day during the U.S. bombing campaign, Mann and her Iranian counterparts were sitting around the wooden conference table speculating about the future Afghani constitution. Suddenly the Iranian who knew so much about intelligence matters started pounding on the table. "Enough of that!" he shouted, unfurling a map of Afghanistan. Here was a place the Americans needed to bomb. And here, and here, he angrily jabbed his finger at the map.
Leverett spent those days in his office at the State Department building, watching the revolution in the Middle East and coming up with plans on how to capture the lightning. Suddenly countries like Syria and Libya and Sudan and Iran were coming forward with offers of help, which raised a vital question -- should they stay on the same enemies list as North Korea and Iraq, or could there be a new slot for "friendly" sponsors of terror?
As a CIA analyst, Leverett had come to the view that Middle Eastern terrorism was more tactical than religious. Syria wanted the Golan Heights back and didn't have the military strength to put up a serious fight against Israel, so it relied on "asymmetrical methods." Accepting this idea meant that nations like Syria weren't locked in a fanatic mind-set, that they could evolve to use new methods, so Leverett told Powell to seize the moment and draw up a "road map" to peace for the problem countries of the Middle East -- expel your terrorist groups and stop trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, and we will take you off the sponsors-of-terrorism list and start a new era of cooperation.
That December, just after the triumph over Afghanistan, Powell took the idea to the White House. The occasion was the regular "deputies meeting" at the Situation Room. Gathered around the table were the deputy secretary of state, the deputy secretary of defense, the deputy director of the CIA, a representative from Vice-President Cheney's office, and also the deputy national security advisor, Stephen Hadley.
Hadley hated the idea. So did the representatives from Rumsfeld and Cheney. They thought that it was a reward for bad behavior, that the sponsors of terrorism should stop just because it's the right thing to do.
After the meeting, Hadley wrote up a brief memo that came to be known as Hadley's Rules:
If a state like Syria or Iran offers specific assistance, we will take it without offering anything in return. We will accept it without strings or promises. We won't try to build on it.
Leverett thought that was simply nutty. To strike postures of moral purity, they were throwing away a chance for real progress. But just a few days later, Condoleezza Rice called him into her office, warming him up with talk of how classical music shaped their childhoods. As he told her about the year he spent studying classical piano at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Leverett felt a real connection. Then she said she was looking for someone to take the job of senior director of Mideast affairs at the National Security Council, someone who would take a real leadership role on the Palestinian issue. Big changes were coming in 2002.
He repeated his firm belief that the White House had to draw up a road map with real solutions to the division of Jerusalem and the problem of refugees, something with final borders. That was the only remedy to the crisis in the Middle East.
Just after the New Year, Rice called and offered him the job.
The bowl of grapes is empty and the plate of cheese moves to the center of the table. Leverett's teenage son comes in with questions about a teacher. Periodically, Mann interrupts herself. "This is off the record," she says. "This is going to have to be on background."
She's not allowed to talk about confidential documents or intelligence matters, but the topic of her negotiations with the Iranians is especially touchy.
"As far as they're concerned, the whole idea that there were talks is something I shouldn't even be talking about," she says.
All ranks and ranking are out. "They don't want there to be anything about the level of the talks or who was involved."
"They won't even let us say something like 'senior' or 'important,' 'high-ranking,' or 'high-level,' " Leverett says.
But the important thing is that the Iranians agreed to talk unconditionally, Mann says. "They specifically told me time and again that they were doing this because they understood the impact of this attack on the U.S., and they thought that if they helped us unconditionally, that would be the way to change the dynamic for the first time in twenty-five years."
She believed them.
But while Leverett was still moving into the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, Mann was wrapped up in the crisis over a ship called the Karin A that left Iran loaded with fifty tons of weapons. According to the Israeli navy, which intercepted the Karin A in the Red Sea, it was headed for the PLO. In staff meetings at the White House, Mann argued for caution. The Iranian government probably didn't even know about the arms shipments. It was issuing official denials in the most passionate way, even sending its deputy foreign minister onto Fox News to say "categorically" that "all segments of the Iranian government" had nothing to do with the arms shipment, which meant the "total government, not simply President Khatami's administration."
Bush waited. Three weeks later, it was time for his 2002 State of the Union address. Mann spent the morning in a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and the new president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who kept asking Rice for an expanded international peacekeeping force. Rice kept saying that the Afghans would have to solve their own problems. Then they went off to join the president's motorcade and Mann headed back to her office to watch the speech on TV.
That was the speech in which Bush linked Iran to Iraq and North Korea with a memorable phrase:
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
The Iranians had been engaging in high-level diplomacy with the American government for more than a year, so the phrase was shocking and profound.
After that, the Iranian diplomats skipped the monthly meeting in Geneva. But they came again in March. And so did Mann. "They said they had put their necks out to talk to us and they were taking big risks with their careers and their families and their lives," Mann says.
The secret negotiations with Iran continued, every month for another year.
Leverett plunged right into a dramatic new peace proposal floated by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Calling for "full normalization" in exchange for "full withdrawal" from the occupied territories, Abdullah promised to rally all the Arab nations to a final settlement with Israel. In his brand-new third-floor office at the Old Executive Office Building, a tiny room with a very high ceiling, Leverett began hammering out the details with Abdullah's foreign-policy advisor, Adel Al-Jubeir. When Ariel Sharon said that a return to the '67 borders was unacceptable, Al-Jubeir said the Saudis didn't want to be in the "real estate business" -- if the Palestinians agreed to border modifications, the Saudis could hardly refuse them. Al-Jubeir believed he had something that might actually work.
But the White House wasn't interested. Sharon already rejected it, Rice told Leverett.
At the Arab League meeting, Abdullah got every Arab state to sign his proposal in a unanimous vote.
The White House still wasn't interested.
Then violence in the Palestinian territories began to increase, climaxing in an Israeli siege of Arafat's compound. In April, Leverett accompanied Colin Powell on a tour that took them from Morocco to Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and finally Israel. Twice they crossed the Israeli-army lines to visit Arafat under siege. Powell seemed to think he had authorization from the White House to explore what everyone was calling "political horizons," the safely vague shorthand for a peaceful future, so on the final day Leverett holed up in a suite at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem with a group of senior American officials -- the U. . ambassador to Israel, the U. S. consul general to Jerusalem, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Bill Burns -- trying to hammer out Powell's last speech.
Then the phone rang. It was Stephen Hadley on the phone from the White House. "Tell Powell he is not authorized to talk about a political horizon," he said. "Those are formal instructions."
"This is a bad idea," Leverett remembers saying. "It's bad policy and it's also humiliating for Powell, who has been talking to heads of state about this very issue for the last ten days."
"It doesn't matter," Hadley said. "There's too much resistance from Rumsfeld and the VP. Those are the instructions."
So Leverett went back into the suite and asked Powell to step aside.
Powell was furious, Leverett remembers. "What is it they're afraid of?" he demanded. "Who the hell are they afraid of?"
"I don't know sir," Leverett said.
In the spring, Crown Prince Abdullah flew to Texas to meet Bush at his ranch. The way Leverett remembers the story, Abdullah sat down and told Bush he was going to ask a direct question and wanted a direct answer. Are you going to do anything about the Palestinian issue? If you tell me no, if it's too difficult, if you're not going to give it that kind of priority, just tell me. I will understand and I will never say anything critical of you or your leadership in public, but I'm going to need to make my own judgments and my own decisions about Saudi interests.
Bush tried to stall, saying he understood his concerns and would see what he could do.
Abdullah stood up. "That's it. This meeting is over."
No Arab leader had ever spoken to Bush like that before, Leverett says. But Saudi Arabia was a key ally in the war on terror, vital to the continued U.S. oil supply, so Bush and Rice and Powell excused themselves into another room for a quick huddle.
When he came back, Bush gave Abdullah his word that he would deal seriously with the Palestinian issue.
"Okay," Abdullah said. "The president of the United States has given me his word."
So the meeting continued, ending with a famous series of photographs of Bush and Abdullah riding around the ranch in Bush's pickup.
In a meeting at the White House a few days later, Leverett saw Powell shaking his head over Abdullah's threat. He called it "the near-death experience."
Bush rolled his eyes. "We sure don't want to go through anything like that again."
Then the king of Jordan came to Washington to see Bush. There had to be a road map for peace in Palestine, the king said. Despite the previous experience with Abdullah in Crawford, Bush seemed taken by surprise, Leverett remembers, but he listened and said that the idea of a road map seemed pretty reasonable.
So suddenly they were working on a road map. For moderate Arab states, the hope of a two-state solution would offer some political cover before Washington embarked on any invasion of Iraq. In a meeting with the king of Jordan, Leverett made a personal promise that it would be out by the end of 2002.
But nothing happened. In Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices, opposition came from men like John Hannah, Doug Feith, and Scooter Libby. In Rice's office, there was Elliott Abrams. Again they said that negotiation was just a reward for bad behavior. First the Palestinians had to reject terrorism and practice democracy.
Finally, it was a bitter-cold day just after Thanksgiving and Leverett was on a family trip to the Washington Zoo, standing in front of the giraffe enclosure. The White House patched through a call from the foreign minister of Jordan, Marwan Muasher, who said that Rice had just told him the road map was off. "Do you have any idea how this has pulled the rug out from under us, from under me?" Muasher said. "I'm the one that has to go into Arab League meetings and get beat up and say, 'No, there's going to be a plan out by the end of the year.' How can we ever trust you again?"
On Monday, Leverett went straight to Rice's office for an explanation. She told him that Ariel Sharon had called early elections in Israel and asked Bush to shelve any Palestinian plan. This time Leverett couldn't hide his exasperation. "You told the whole world you were going to put this out before Christmas," he said. "Because one Israeli politician told you it's going to make things politically difficult for him, you don't put it out? Do you realize how hard that makes things for all our Arab partners?"
Rice sat impassively behind her broad desk. "If we put the road map out," she said, "it will interfere with Israeli elections."
"You are interfering with Israeli elections, just in another way."
"Flynt, the decision has already been made," Rice said.
There was also an awkward scene with the secretary of defense. They were in the Situation Room and Leverett was sitting behind Rice taking notes when suddenly Rumsfeld addressed him directly. "Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?"
The room went silent, and Rumsfeld asked it again.
"Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?"
"I'm sorry Mr. Secretary, I don't think I know what you're talking about."
"It looks to me like you were laughing," Rumsfeld said.
"No sir. I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I was just listening to the meeting and taking notes. Didn't mean to disturb you."
The meeting continued, message received.
By that time, Leverett and Mann had met and fallen in love. They got married in February 2003, went to Florida on their honeymoon, and got back just in time for the Shock and Awe bombing campaign. Leverett quit his NSC job in disgust. Mann rotated back to the State Department.
Then came the moment that would lead to an extraordinary battle with the Bush administration. It was an average morning in April, about four weeks into the war. Mann picked up her daily folder and sat down at her desk, glancing at a fax cover page. The fax was from the Swiss ambassador to Iran, which wasn't unusual -- since the U.S. had no formal relationship with Iran, the Swiss ambassador represented American interests there and often faxed over updates on what he was doing. This time he'd met with Sa-deq Kharrazi, a well-connected Iranian who was the nephew of the foreign minister and son-in-law to the supreme leader. Amazingly, Kharrazi had presented the ambassador with a detailed proposal for peace in the Middle East, approved at the highest levels in Tehran.
A two-page summary was attached. Scanning it, Mann was startled by one dramatic concession after another -- "decisive action" against all terrorists in Iran, an end of support for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, a promise to cease its nuclear program, and also an agreement to recognize Israel.
This was huge. Mann sat down and drafted a quick memo to her boss, Richard Haass. It was important to send a swift and positive response.
Then she heard that the White House had already made up its mind -- it was going to ignore the offer. Its only response was to lodge a formal complaint with the Swiss government about their ambassador's meddling.
A few days after that, a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia killed thirty-four people, including eight Americans, and an intelligence report said the bombers had been in phone contact with Al Qaeda members in Iran. Although it was unknown whether Tehran had anything to do with the bombing or if the terrorists were hiding out in the lawless areas near the border, Rumsfeld set the tone for the administration's response at his next press conference. "There's no question but that there have been and are today senior Al Qaeda leaders in Iran, and they are busy."
Colin Powell saw Mann's memo. A couple weeks later he approached her at a State Department reception and said, "It was a very good memo. I couldn't sell it at the White House."
In response to questions from Esquire, Colin Powell called Leverett "very able" and confirms much of what he says. Leverett's account of the clash between Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah was accurate, he said. "It was a very serious moment and no one wanted to see if the Saudis were bluffing." The same goes for the story about his speech in Israel in 2002. "I had major problems with the White House on what I wanted to say."
On the subject of the peace offer, though, Powell was defensive. "I talked to all of my key assistants since Flynt started talking about an Iranian grand bargain, but none of us recall seeing this initiative as a grand bargain."
On the general subject of negotiations with Iran, he responded with pointed politesse. "We talked to the Iranians quietly up until 2003. The president chose not to continue that channel."
That is putting it mildly. In May of 2003, when the U.S. was still in the triumphant "mission accomplished" phase of the Iraq war, word started filtering out of the White House about an aggressive new Iran policy that would include efforts to destabilize the Iranian government and even to promote a popular uprising. In his first public statement on Iran policy since leaving the NSC, Leverett told The Washington Post he thought the White House was making a dangerous mistake. "What it means is we will end up with an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States."
In the years that followed, he spoke out in dozens of newspaper editorials and a book, all making variations on the same argument -- America's approach to rogue nations was all sticks and no carrots, all economic sanctions and threats of war without any dialogue. "To bring about real change," he argued, "we must also offer concrete benefits." Of course states like Iran and Syria messed around in Iraq, he said. Iran was supporting the Iraqi opposition when the U.S. was still supporting Saddam Hussein. It was insane to expect them to stop when the goal of a Shiite Iraq was finally in reach. The only way to solve the underlying issues was to offer Iran a "grand bargain" that would recognize the legitimacy of Iran's government and its right to a role in the region.
But that was an unthinkable thought. The White House ignored him. Democrats ignored him. The Brookings Institution declined to renew his contract.
Then he started talking about the peace offer. By then it was 2006 and the war wasn't going well and suddenly people started to respond: You mean Iran isn't evil? They helped fight the Taliban? They wanted to make peace? He summed it all up in a long paper for a Washington think tank that happened to be scheduled for publication last November, a vulnerable time for the White House, just after the Democrats swept the midterm elections and the Iraq Study Group released its report calling for negotiations with Syria and Iran. When he submitted the paper to the CIA for a routine review, they told him the CIA had no problem with it but someone from the NSC called to complain. "You shouldn't have cleared this without letting the White House take a look at it," the official said.
Leverett told them he wasn't going to let White House operatives judge his criticisms of White House operatives and distilled his argument into an op-ed piece for The New York Times. This time he shared a byline with his wife, who had experienced the peace offer up close. They submitted their first draft to the CIA and the State Department on a Sunday in early December, expecting to hear back the next day.
The next morning, Leverett gave a blistering talk on Bush's Iran policy to the influential conservatives at the Cato Institute. The speech was carried live on C-SPAN. Later that day, he flew to New York and made the same arguments at a private dinner with the UN ambassadors of Russia and Britain. He was starting to have an impact.
By Tuesday, he still hadn't heard from the CIA review board.
They called on Wednesday and told him that there was nothing classified in the piece as far as the agency was concerned, but someone in the West Wing wasn't happy with it and would be redacting large sections.
"You're the clearing agency," Leverett said. "You're the people named in my agreement."
They said their hands were tied.
After consulting a lawyer, Leverett and Mann and a researcher worked through the night to assemble a list of public sources where the blacked-out material had already been published. They also took out one line that might have been based on a classified document.
But the White House wouldn't budge. It was a First Amendment showdown.
On Thursday, Leverett and Mann decided to publish the piece with large sections of type blacked out, 168 words in all. Since the piece had been rendered pretty much incomprehensible, they included a list of public sources. "To make sense of our op-ed article, readers will have to look up the citations themselves."
As they tell their story, Mann rushes off to pick up one of their sons from a play date and Leverett takes over, telling what happened over the following months:
Bush sent a second carrier group to the Persian Gulf.
U.S. troops started to arrest Iranians living in Baghdad, accusing them of working with insurgents.
Bush accused Iran of "providing material support" for attacks on U.S. forces, a formulation that suggested a legal justification for a preemptive attack.
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia pushed through an amendment requiring Bush to get congressional authorization for an attack.
Colin Powell broke his long silence with a pointed warning. "You can't negotiate when you tell the other side, 'Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start.' "
Even Henry Kissinger started giving interviews on the need to "exhaust every possibility to come to an understanding with Iran."
From inside the White House, Leverett was hearing a scary scenario: The Russians were scheduled to ship fuel rods to the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which meant the reactor would become operational by this November, at which point it would be impossible to bomb -- the fallout alone would turn the city into an urban Chernobyl. The White House was seriously considering a preemptive attack when the Russians cooled things down by saying Iran hadn't paid its bills, so they would hold back the Bushehr fuel rods for a while.
That put things into a summer lull. But by August, tensions were rising again. U.S. troops in Baghdad arrested an official delegation of Iranian energy experts, leading them out of a hotel in blindfolds and handcuffs. Then Iran said that it had paid its bills and that the Russians were ready to deliver the Bushehr shipment. In Time magazine, former CIA officer and author Robert Baer quoted a highly placed White House official:
"IEDs are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
Mann steps back out on the deck and starts collecting the scattered toys to prepare the house for a dinner party, the typical modern American mother multitasking her way through a busy day. "The reason I have to be so careful now is that I'm legally on notice and they will prosecute things that I say or do," she says, picking up a plastic truck.
"Because of that one article?"
"Yeah."
Outside, it's getting warmer. There's a heavy haze and floating bugs and for a moment it feels a bit ominous, a gathering silence, one of those moments when giant pods start to sprout in local basements.
"We're tired," Mann says. "Nobody listens."
It seems inconceivable to her that once again a war could be coming, and once again no one is listening. Another pair of lawn mowers joins the chorus and the spell breaks. A cab pulls in the driveway. The caterer comes to prepare for the dinner guests.
Citation: John H. Richardson. "The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know," Esquire, November 2007.
Original URL: http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107
By John H. Richardson
Esquire, November 2007
In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say.
"The hard-liners are upping the pressure on the State Department," says Leverett. "They're basically saying, 'You've been trying to engage Iran for more than a year now and what do you have to show for it? They keep building more centrifuges, they're sending this IED stuff over into Iraq that's killing American soldiers, the human-rights internal political situation has gotten more repressive -- what the hell do you have to show for this engagement strategy?' "
But the engagement strategy was never serious and was designed to fail, they say. Over the last year, Rice has begun saying she would talk to "anybody, anywhere, anytime," but not to the Iranians unless they stopped enriching uranium first. That's not a serious approach to diplomacy, Mann says. Diplomacy is about talking to your enemies. That's how wars are averted. You work up to the big things. And when U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had his much-publicized meeting with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad this spring, he didn't even have permission from the White House to schedule a second meeting.
The most ominous new development is the Bush administration's push to name the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.
"The U.S. has designated any number of states over the years as state sponsors of terrorism," says Leverett. "But here for the first time the U.S. is saying that part of a government is itself a terrorist organization."
This is what Leverett and Mann fear will happen: The diplomatic effort in the United Nations will fail when it becomes clear that Russia's and China's geopolitical ambitions will not accommodate the inconvenience of energy sanctions against Iran. Without any meaningful incentive from the U.S. to be friendly, Iran will keep meddling in Iraq and installing nuclear centrifuges. This will trigger a response from the hard-liners in the White House, who feel that it is their moral duty to deal with Iran before the Democrats take over American foreign policy. "If you get all those elements coming together, say in the first half of '08," says Leverett, "what is this president going to do? I think there is a serious risk he would decide to order an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and probably a wider target zone."
This would result in a dramatic increase in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, attacks by proxy forces like Hezbollah, and an unknown reaction from the wobbly states of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where millions admire Iran's resistance to the Great Satan. "As disastrous as Iraq has been," says Mann, "an attack on Iran could engulf America in a war with the entire Muslim world."
Mann and Leverett believe that none of this had to be.
Flynt Lawrence Leverett grew up in Fort Worth and went to Texas Christian University. He spent the first nine years of his government career as a CIA analyst specializing in the Middle East. He voted for George Bush in 2000. On the day the assassins of Al Qaeda flew two hijacked airplanes into the World Trade Center, Colin Powell summoned him to help plan the response. Five months later, Leverett landed a plum post on the National Security Council. When Condoleezza Rice discussed the Middle East with President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld, Leverett was the man standing behind her taking notes and whispering in her ear.
Today, he sits on the back deck of a house tucked into the curve of a leafy suburban street in McLean, Virginia, a forty-nine-year-old white American man wearing khakis and a white dress shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. Mann sits next to him, also wearing khakis. She's thirty-nine but looks much younger, with straight brown hair and a tomboy's open face. The polish on her toenails is pink. If you saw her around McLean, you wouldn't hesitate:
Soccer mom. Classic soccer mom.
But with degrees from Brandeis and Harvard Law and stints at Tel Aviv University and the powerful Israeli lobby known as AIPAC, she has even better right-wing credentials than her husband.
As they talk, eating grapes out of a bowl, lawn mowers hum and birds chirp. The floor is littered with toy trucks and rubber animals left behind by the youngest of their four children. But the tranquillity is misleading. When Mann and Leverett went public with the inside story behind the impending disaster with Iran, the White House dismissed them. Then it imposed prior restraint on them, an extraordinary episode of government censorship. Finally, it threatened them.
Now they are afraid of the White House, and watching what they say. But still, they feel they have to speak out.
Like so many things these days, this story began on the morning of September 11, 2001. On Forty-fifth Street in Manhattan, Mann had just been evacuated from the offices of the U.S. mission to the United Nations and was walking home to her apartment on Thirty-eighth Street -- walking south, toward the giant plume of smoke. When her cell phone rang, she picked it up immediately because her sister worked at the World Trade Center and she was frantic for word. But it wasn't her sister, it was a senior Iranian diplomat. To protect him from reprisals from the Iranian government, she doesn't want to name him, but she describes him as a cultured man in his fifties with salt-and-pepper hair. Since early spring, they had been meeting secretly in a small conference room at the UN.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
Yes, she said, she was fine.
The attack was a terrible tragedy, he said, doubtless the work of Al Qaeda.
"I hope that we can still work together," he said.
That same day, in Washington, on the seventh floor of the State Department building, a security guard opened the door of Leverett's office and told him they were evacuating the building. Leverett was Powell's specialist on terrorist states like Syria and Libya, so he knew the world was about to go through a dramatic change. As he joined the people milling on the sidewalk, his mind was already racing.
Then he got a call summoning him back to Foggy Bottom. At the entrance to a specially fortified office, he showed his badge to the guards and passed into a windowless conference room. There were about a dozen people there, Powell's top foreign-policy planners. Powell told them that their first job was to make plans to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. The second job was to rally allies. That meant detailed strategies for approaching other nations -- in some cases, Powell could make the approach, in others the president would have to make the call. Then Powell left them to work through the night.
At 5:30 a.m. on September 12, they walked the list to the office of the deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. Powell took it straight to the White House.
Mann and Leverett didn't know each other then, but they were already traveling down parallel tracks. Months before September 11, Mann had been negotiating with the Iranian diplomat at the UN. After the attacks, the meetings continued, sometimes alone and sometimes with their Russian counterpart sitting in. Soon they traded the conference room for the Delegates' Lounge, an airy two-story bar with ashtrays for all the foreigners who were used to smoking indoors. One day, up on the second floor where the windows overlooked the East River, the diplomat told her that Iran was ready to cooperate unconditionally, a phrase that had seismic diplomatic implications. Unconditional talks are what the U.S. had been demanding as a precondition to any official diplomatic contact between the U.S. and Iran. And it would be the first chance since the Islamic revolution for any kind of rapprochement. "It was revolutionary," Mann says. "It could have changed the world."
A few weeks later, after signing on to Condoleezza Rice's staff as the new Iran expert in the National Security Council, Mann flew to Europe with Ryan Crocker -- then a deputy assistant secretary of state -- to hold talks with a team of Iranian diplomats. Meeting in a light-filled conference room at the old UN building in Geneva, they hammered out plans for Iranian help in the war against the Taliban. The Iranians agreed to provide assistance if any American was shot down near their territory, agreed to let the U.S. send food in through their border, and even agreed to restrain some "really bad Afghanis," like a rabidly anti-American warlord named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, quietly putting him under house arrest in Tehran. These were significant concessions. At the same time, special envoy James Dobbins was having very public and warm discussions in Bonn with the Iranian deputy foreign minister as they worked together to set up a new government for Afghanistan. And the Iranians seemed eager to help in more tactical ways as well. They had intimate knowledge of Taliban strategic capabilities and they wanted to share it with the Americans.
One day during the U.S. bombing campaign, Mann and her Iranian counterparts were sitting around the wooden conference table speculating about the future Afghani constitution. Suddenly the Iranian who knew so much about intelligence matters started pounding on the table. "Enough of that!" he shouted, unfurling a map of Afghanistan. Here was a place the Americans needed to bomb. And here, and here, he angrily jabbed his finger at the map.
Leverett spent those days in his office at the State Department building, watching the revolution in the Middle East and coming up with plans on how to capture the lightning. Suddenly countries like Syria and Libya and Sudan and Iran were coming forward with offers of help, which raised a vital question -- should they stay on the same enemies list as North Korea and Iraq, or could there be a new slot for "friendly" sponsors of terror?
As a CIA analyst, Leverett had come to the view that Middle Eastern terrorism was more tactical than religious. Syria wanted the Golan Heights back and didn't have the military strength to put up a serious fight against Israel, so it relied on "asymmetrical methods." Accepting this idea meant that nations like Syria weren't locked in a fanatic mind-set, that they could evolve to use new methods, so Leverett told Powell to seize the moment and draw up a "road map" to peace for the problem countries of the Middle East -- expel your terrorist groups and stop trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, and we will take you off the sponsors-of-terrorism list and start a new era of cooperation.
That December, just after the triumph over Afghanistan, Powell took the idea to the White House. The occasion was the regular "deputies meeting" at the Situation Room. Gathered around the table were the deputy secretary of state, the deputy secretary of defense, the deputy director of the CIA, a representative from Vice-President Cheney's office, and also the deputy national security advisor, Stephen Hadley.
Hadley hated the idea. So did the representatives from Rumsfeld and Cheney. They thought that it was a reward for bad behavior, that the sponsors of terrorism should stop just because it's the right thing to do.
After the meeting, Hadley wrote up a brief memo that came to be known as Hadley's Rules:
If a state like Syria or Iran offers specific assistance, we will take it without offering anything in return. We will accept it without strings or promises. We won't try to build on it.
Leverett thought that was simply nutty. To strike postures of moral purity, they were throwing away a chance for real progress. But just a few days later, Condoleezza Rice called him into her office, warming him up with talk of how classical music shaped their childhoods. As he told her about the year he spent studying classical piano at the Liszt Academy in Budapest, Leverett felt a real connection. Then she said she was looking for someone to take the job of senior director of Mideast affairs at the National Security Council, someone who would take a real leadership role on the Palestinian issue. Big changes were coming in 2002.
He repeated his firm belief that the White House had to draw up a road map with real solutions to the division of Jerusalem and the problem of refugees, something with final borders. That was the only remedy to the crisis in the Middle East.
Just after the New Year, Rice called and offered him the job.
The bowl of grapes is empty and the plate of cheese moves to the center of the table. Leverett's teenage son comes in with questions about a teacher. Periodically, Mann interrupts herself. "This is off the record," she says. "This is going to have to be on background."
She's not allowed to talk about confidential documents or intelligence matters, but the topic of her negotiations with the Iranians is especially touchy.
"As far as they're concerned, the whole idea that there were talks is something I shouldn't even be talking about," she says.
All ranks and ranking are out. "They don't want there to be anything about the level of the talks or who was involved."
"They won't even let us say something like 'senior' or 'important,' 'high-ranking,' or 'high-level,' " Leverett says.
But the important thing is that the Iranians agreed to talk unconditionally, Mann says. "They specifically told me time and again that they were doing this because they understood the impact of this attack on the U.S., and they thought that if they helped us unconditionally, that would be the way to change the dynamic for the first time in twenty-five years."
She believed them.
But while Leverett was still moving into the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House, Mann was wrapped up in the crisis over a ship called the Karin A that left Iran loaded with fifty tons of weapons. According to the Israeli navy, which intercepted the Karin A in the Red Sea, it was headed for the PLO. In staff meetings at the White House, Mann argued for caution. The Iranian government probably didn't even know about the arms shipments. It was issuing official denials in the most passionate way, even sending its deputy foreign minister onto Fox News to say "categorically" that "all segments of the Iranian government" had nothing to do with the arms shipment, which meant the "total government, not simply President Khatami's administration."
Bush waited. Three weeks later, it was time for his 2002 State of the Union address. Mann spent the morning in a meeting with Condoleezza Rice and the new president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who kept asking Rice for an expanded international peacekeeping force. Rice kept saying that the Afghans would have to solve their own problems. Then they went off to join the president's motorcade and Mann headed back to her office to watch the speech on TV.
That was the speech in which Bush linked Iran to Iraq and North Korea with a memorable phrase:
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
The Iranians had been engaging in high-level diplomacy with the American government for more than a year, so the phrase was shocking and profound.
After that, the Iranian diplomats skipped the monthly meeting in Geneva. But they came again in March. And so did Mann. "They said they had put their necks out to talk to us and they were taking big risks with their careers and their families and their lives," Mann says.
The secret negotiations with Iran continued, every month for another year.
Leverett plunged right into a dramatic new peace proposal floated by Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Calling for "full normalization" in exchange for "full withdrawal" from the occupied territories, Abdullah promised to rally all the Arab nations to a final settlement with Israel. In his brand-new third-floor office at the Old Executive Office Building, a tiny room with a very high ceiling, Leverett began hammering out the details with Abdullah's foreign-policy advisor, Adel Al-Jubeir. When Ariel Sharon said that a return to the '67 borders was unacceptable, Al-Jubeir said the Saudis didn't want to be in the "real estate business" -- if the Palestinians agreed to border modifications, the Saudis could hardly refuse them. Al-Jubeir believed he had something that might actually work.
But the White House wasn't interested. Sharon already rejected it, Rice told Leverett.
At the Arab League meeting, Abdullah got every Arab state to sign his proposal in a unanimous vote.
The White House still wasn't interested.
Then violence in the Palestinian territories began to increase, climaxing in an Israeli siege of Arafat's compound. In April, Leverett accompanied Colin Powell on a tour that took them from Morocco to Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and finally Israel. Twice they crossed the Israeli-army lines to visit Arafat under siege. Powell seemed to think he had authorization from the White House to explore what everyone was calling "political horizons," the safely vague shorthand for a peaceful future, so on the final day Leverett holed up in a suite at the David Citadel Hotel in Jerusalem with a group of senior American officials -- the U. . ambassador to Israel, the U. S. consul general to Jerusalem, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs Bill Burns -- trying to hammer out Powell's last speech.
Then the phone rang. It was Stephen Hadley on the phone from the White House. "Tell Powell he is not authorized to talk about a political horizon," he said. "Those are formal instructions."
"This is a bad idea," Leverett remembers saying. "It's bad policy and it's also humiliating for Powell, who has been talking to heads of state about this very issue for the last ten days."
"It doesn't matter," Hadley said. "There's too much resistance from Rumsfeld and the VP. Those are the instructions."
So Leverett went back into the suite and asked Powell to step aside.
Powell was furious, Leverett remembers. "What is it they're afraid of?" he demanded. "Who the hell are they afraid of?"
"I don't know sir," Leverett said.
In the spring, Crown Prince Abdullah flew to Texas to meet Bush at his ranch. The way Leverett remembers the story, Abdullah sat down and told Bush he was going to ask a direct question and wanted a direct answer. Are you going to do anything about the Palestinian issue? If you tell me no, if it's too difficult, if you're not going to give it that kind of priority, just tell me. I will understand and I will never say anything critical of you or your leadership in public, but I'm going to need to make my own judgments and my own decisions about Saudi interests.
Bush tried to stall, saying he understood his concerns and would see what he could do.
Abdullah stood up. "That's it. This meeting is over."
No Arab leader had ever spoken to Bush like that before, Leverett says. But Saudi Arabia was a key ally in the war on terror, vital to the continued U.S. oil supply, so Bush and Rice and Powell excused themselves into another room for a quick huddle.
When he came back, Bush gave Abdullah his word that he would deal seriously with the Palestinian issue.
"Okay," Abdullah said. "The president of the United States has given me his word."
So the meeting continued, ending with a famous series of photographs of Bush and Abdullah riding around the ranch in Bush's pickup.
In a meeting at the White House a few days later, Leverett saw Powell shaking his head over Abdullah's threat. He called it "the near-death experience."
Bush rolled his eyes. "We sure don't want to go through anything like that again."
Then the king of Jordan came to Washington to see Bush. There had to be a road map for peace in Palestine, the king said. Despite the previous experience with Abdullah in Crawford, Bush seemed taken by surprise, Leverett remembers, but he listened and said that the idea of a road map seemed pretty reasonable.
So suddenly they were working on a road map. For moderate Arab states, the hope of a two-state solution would offer some political cover before Washington embarked on any invasion of Iraq. In a meeting with the king of Jordan, Leverett made a personal promise that it would be out by the end of 2002.
But nothing happened. In Cheney's and Rumsfeld's offices, opposition came from men like John Hannah, Doug Feith, and Scooter Libby. In Rice's office, there was Elliott Abrams. Again they said that negotiation was just a reward for bad behavior. First the Palestinians had to reject terrorism and practice democracy.
Finally, it was a bitter-cold day just after Thanksgiving and Leverett was on a family trip to the Washington Zoo, standing in front of the giraffe enclosure. The White House patched through a call from the foreign minister of Jordan, Marwan Muasher, who said that Rice had just told him the road map was off. "Do you have any idea how this has pulled the rug out from under us, from under me?" Muasher said. "I'm the one that has to go into Arab League meetings and get beat up and say, 'No, there's going to be a plan out by the end of the year.' How can we ever trust you again?"
On Monday, Leverett went straight to Rice's office for an explanation. She told him that Ariel Sharon had called early elections in Israel and asked Bush to shelve any Palestinian plan. This time Leverett couldn't hide his exasperation. "You told the whole world you were going to put this out before Christmas," he said. "Because one Israeli politician told you it's going to make things politically difficult for him, you don't put it out? Do you realize how hard that makes things for all our Arab partners?"
Rice sat impassively behind her broad desk. "If we put the road map out," she said, "it will interfere with Israeli elections."
"You are interfering with Israeli elections, just in another way."
"Flynt, the decision has already been made," Rice said.
There was also an awkward scene with the secretary of defense. They were in the Situation Room and Leverett was sitting behind Rice taking notes when suddenly Rumsfeld addressed him directly. "Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?"
The room went silent, and Rumsfeld asked it again.
"Why are you laughing? Did I say something funny?"
"I'm sorry Mr. Secretary, I don't think I know what you're talking about."
"It looks to me like you were laughing," Rumsfeld said.
"No sir. I'm sorry if I gave that impression. I was just listening to the meeting and taking notes. Didn't mean to disturb you."
The meeting continued, message received.
By that time, Leverett and Mann had met and fallen in love. They got married in February 2003, went to Florida on their honeymoon, and got back just in time for the Shock and Awe bombing campaign. Leverett quit his NSC job in disgust. Mann rotated back to the State Department.
Then came the moment that would lead to an extraordinary battle with the Bush administration. It was an average morning in April, about four weeks into the war. Mann picked up her daily folder and sat down at her desk, glancing at a fax cover page. The fax was from the Swiss ambassador to Iran, which wasn't unusual -- since the U.S. had no formal relationship with Iran, the Swiss ambassador represented American interests there and often faxed over updates on what he was doing. This time he'd met with Sa-deq Kharrazi, a well-connected Iranian who was the nephew of the foreign minister and son-in-law to the supreme leader. Amazingly, Kharrazi had presented the ambassador with a detailed proposal for peace in the Middle East, approved at the highest levels in Tehran.
A two-page summary was attached. Scanning it, Mann was startled by one dramatic concession after another -- "decisive action" against all terrorists in Iran, an end of support for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, a promise to cease its nuclear program, and also an agreement to recognize Israel.
This was huge. Mann sat down and drafted a quick memo to her boss, Richard Haass. It was important to send a swift and positive response.
Then she heard that the White House had already made up its mind -- it was going to ignore the offer. Its only response was to lodge a formal complaint with the Swiss government about their ambassador's meddling.
A few days after that, a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia killed thirty-four people, including eight Americans, and an intelligence report said the bombers had been in phone contact with Al Qaeda members in Iran. Although it was unknown whether Tehran had anything to do with the bombing or if the terrorists were hiding out in the lawless areas near the border, Rumsfeld set the tone for the administration's response at his next press conference. "There's no question but that there have been and are today senior Al Qaeda leaders in Iran, and they are busy."
Colin Powell saw Mann's memo. A couple weeks later he approached her at a State Department reception and said, "It was a very good memo. I couldn't sell it at the White House."
In response to questions from Esquire, Colin Powell called Leverett "very able" and confirms much of what he says. Leverett's account of the clash between Bush and Crown Prince Abdullah was accurate, he said. "It was a very serious moment and no one wanted to see if the Saudis were bluffing." The same goes for the story about his speech in Israel in 2002. "I had major problems with the White House on what I wanted to say."
On the subject of the peace offer, though, Powell was defensive. "I talked to all of my key assistants since Flynt started talking about an Iranian grand bargain, but none of us recall seeing this initiative as a grand bargain."
On the general subject of negotiations with Iran, he responded with pointed politesse. "We talked to the Iranians quietly up until 2003. The president chose not to continue that channel."
That is putting it mildly. In May of 2003, when the U.S. was still in the triumphant "mission accomplished" phase of the Iraq war, word started filtering out of the White House about an aggressive new Iran policy that would include efforts to destabilize the Iranian government and even to promote a popular uprising. In his first public statement on Iran policy since leaving the NSC, Leverett told The Washington Post he thought the White House was making a dangerous mistake. "What it means is we will end up with an Iran that has nuclear weapons and no dialogue with the United States."
In the years that followed, he spoke out in dozens of newspaper editorials and a book, all making variations on the same argument -- America's approach to rogue nations was all sticks and no carrots, all economic sanctions and threats of war without any dialogue. "To bring about real change," he argued, "we must also offer concrete benefits." Of course states like Iran and Syria messed around in Iraq, he said. Iran was supporting the Iraqi opposition when the U.S. was still supporting Saddam Hussein. It was insane to expect them to stop when the goal of a Shiite Iraq was finally in reach. The only way to solve the underlying issues was to offer Iran a "grand bargain" that would recognize the legitimacy of Iran's government and its right to a role in the region.
But that was an unthinkable thought. The White House ignored him. Democrats ignored him. The Brookings Institution declined to renew his contract.
Then he started talking about the peace offer. By then it was 2006 and the war wasn't going well and suddenly people started to respond: You mean Iran isn't evil? They helped fight the Taliban? They wanted to make peace? He summed it all up in a long paper for a Washington think tank that happened to be scheduled for publication last November, a vulnerable time for the White House, just after the Democrats swept the midterm elections and the Iraq Study Group released its report calling for negotiations with Syria and Iran. When he submitted the paper to the CIA for a routine review, they told him the CIA had no problem with it but someone from the NSC called to complain. "You shouldn't have cleared this without letting the White House take a look at it," the official said.
Leverett told them he wasn't going to let White House operatives judge his criticisms of White House operatives and distilled his argument into an op-ed piece for The New York Times. This time he shared a byline with his wife, who had experienced the peace offer up close. They submitted their first draft to the CIA and the State Department on a Sunday in early December, expecting to hear back the next day.
The next morning, Leverett gave a blistering talk on Bush's Iran policy to the influential conservatives at the Cato Institute. The speech was carried live on C-SPAN. Later that day, he flew to New York and made the same arguments at a private dinner with the UN ambassadors of Russia and Britain. He was starting to have an impact.
By Tuesday, he still hadn't heard from the CIA review board.
They called on Wednesday and told him that there was nothing classified in the piece as far as the agency was concerned, but someone in the West Wing wasn't happy with it and would be redacting large sections.
"You're the clearing agency," Leverett said. "You're the people named in my agreement."
They said their hands were tied.
After consulting a lawyer, Leverett and Mann and a researcher worked through the night to assemble a list of public sources where the blacked-out material had already been published. They also took out one line that might have been based on a classified document.
But the White House wouldn't budge. It was a First Amendment showdown.
On Thursday, Leverett and Mann decided to publish the piece with large sections of type blacked out, 168 words in all. Since the piece had been rendered pretty much incomprehensible, they included a list of public sources. "To make sense of our op-ed article, readers will have to look up the citations themselves."
As they tell their story, Mann rushes off to pick up one of their sons from a play date and Leverett takes over, telling what happened over the following months:
Bush sent a second carrier group to the Persian Gulf.
U.S. troops started to arrest Iranians living in Baghdad, accusing them of working with insurgents.
Bush accused Iran of "providing material support" for attacks on U.S. forces, a formulation that suggested a legal justification for a preemptive attack.
Senator Jim Webb of Virginia pushed through an amendment requiring Bush to get congressional authorization for an attack.
Colin Powell broke his long silence with a pointed warning. "You can't negotiate when you tell the other side, 'Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start.' "
Even Henry Kissinger started giving interviews on the need to "exhaust every possibility to come to an understanding with Iran."
From inside the White House, Leverett was hearing a scary scenario: The Russians were scheduled to ship fuel rods to the Iranian nuclear reactor in Bushehr, which meant the reactor would become operational by this November, at which point it would be impossible to bomb -- the fallout alone would turn the city into an urban Chernobyl. The White House was seriously considering a preemptive attack when the Russians cooled things down by saying Iran hadn't paid its bills, so they would hold back the Bushehr fuel rods for a while.
That put things into a summer lull. But by August, tensions were rising again. U.S. troops in Baghdad arrested an official delegation of Iranian energy experts, leading them out of a hotel in blindfolds and handcuffs. Then Iran said that it had paid its bills and that the Russians were ready to deliver the Bushehr shipment. In Time magazine, former CIA officer and author Robert Baer quoted a highly placed White House official:
"IEDs are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
Mann steps back out on the deck and starts collecting the scattered toys to prepare the house for a dinner party, the typical modern American mother multitasking her way through a busy day. "The reason I have to be so careful now is that I'm legally on notice and they will prosecute things that I say or do," she says, picking up a plastic truck.
"Because of that one article?"
"Yeah."
Outside, it's getting warmer. There's a heavy haze and floating bugs and for a moment it feels a bit ominous, a gathering silence, one of those moments when giant pods start to sprout in local basements.
"We're tired," Mann says. "Nobody listens."
It seems inconceivable to her that once again a war could be coming, and once again no one is listening. Another pair of lawn mowers joins the chorus and the spell breaks. A cab pulls in the driveway. The caterer comes to prepare for the dinner guests.
Citation: John H. Richardson. "The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know," Esquire, November 2007.
Original URL: http://www.esquire.com/features/iranbriefing1107
U.S. pins Kosovo force on NATO's Afghan commitment
By Kristin Roberts
Reuters, 21 October 2007
KIEV (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will consider shifting U.S. troops from Kosovo to Afghanistan next year if NATO allies do not fulfil their commitments, U.S. government officials said.
Gates, in Ukraine on Sunday to ask eastern European countries for help in the war, had first considered laying the threat before NATO defence ministers this week at a meeting in the Netherlands, senior U.S. officials said.
But upon the advice of senior military officers, the Pentagon chief has extended the U.S. commitment to Kosovo to summer 2008. If NATO allies have not sent more troops, trainers and equipment to Afghanistan by then, Washington will consider pulling its 1,600 troops out of NATO's Kosovo force KFOR.
"The secretary had wrestled with the idea of moving our forces in Kosovo to Afghanistan but decided late this week to extend our KFOR presence until next summer," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
"But beyond that is very much up in the air. The secretary is disappointed in NATO's inability to live up to its commitments and if that doesn't change before then, he's prepared to go to the secretary of state and to the president to discuss yanking our troops out of Kosovo," Morrell said.
Gates has grown increasingly frustrated by the failure of NATO allies to fulfil promises they made more than a year ago to provide troops and equipment to the war in Afghanistan.
The secretary is particularly worried about a shortfall of more than 3,000 trainers for Afghan forces, but commanders also need more combat forces, helicopters and other equipment.
By pinning the U.S. commitment in Kosovo to Europe's commitment in Afghanistan, Gates wants to signal that Europe will be left alone to deal with a still unsteady situation in its own backyard if it does not help the United States in Afghanistan, said officials familiar with the discussions.
NATO took responsibility last year for operations throughout Afghanistan. The United States contributes the most troops in the coalition -- or about 15,000 of a NATO force totaling just under 40,000. Washington also added combat troops and a helicopter force last year after other allies did not respond to a call for help from commanders.
Despite six years of war in Afghanistan, a fight overshadowed in the United States by Iraq, violence has soared in 2007. Taliban suicide bombings are up 50 percent from a year ago and military officers say the group is trying to import the deadly roadside bomb technology that has been used in Iraq.
In Kiev, Gates will ask Ukraine and other members of the Southeast Europe Defence Ministerial to send troops to Afghanistan to help cover that shortfall in trainers, another U.S. defence official said.
The 11-member group sent a 100-troop brigade, called Southeast Europe Brigade or SEEBRIG, to the war zone in 2006.
"It's to have a discussion about SEEBRIG and how SEEBRIG can potentially help in Afghanistan again possibly by undertaking a training mission," the official said when asked about Gates's priorities in Kiev.
Ukraine, which received $11.7 million in U.S. military assistance this year, is considered a strong U.S. partner in Iraq and the Pentagon thinks Kiev might send troops to Afghanistan as well.
Citation: Kristin Roberts. "U.S. pins Kosovo force on NATO's Afghan commitment," Reuters, 21 October 2007.
Original URL: http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-30089220071021?sp=true
Reuters, 21 October 2007
KIEV (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will consider shifting U.S. troops from Kosovo to Afghanistan next year if NATO allies do not fulfil their commitments, U.S. government officials said.
Gates, in Ukraine on Sunday to ask eastern European countries for help in the war, had first considered laying the threat before NATO defence ministers this week at a meeting in the Netherlands, senior U.S. officials said.
But upon the advice of senior military officers, the Pentagon chief has extended the U.S. commitment to Kosovo to summer 2008. If NATO allies have not sent more troops, trainers and equipment to Afghanistan by then, Washington will consider pulling its 1,600 troops out of NATO's Kosovo force KFOR.
"The secretary had wrestled with the idea of moving our forces in Kosovo to Afghanistan but decided late this week to extend our KFOR presence until next summer," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said.
"But beyond that is very much up in the air. The secretary is disappointed in NATO's inability to live up to its commitments and if that doesn't change before then, he's prepared to go to the secretary of state and to the president to discuss yanking our troops out of Kosovo," Morrell said.
Gates has grown increasingly frustrated by the failure of NATO allies to fulfil promises they made more than a year ago to provide troops and equipment to the war in Afghanistan.
The secretary is particularly worried about a shortfall of more than 3,000 trainers for Afghan forces, but commanders also need more combat forces, helicopters and other equipment.
By pinning the U.S. commitment in Kosovo to Europe's commitment in Afghanistan, Gates wants to signal that Europe will be left alone to deal with a still unsteady situation in its own backyard if it does not help the United States in Afghanistan, said officials familiar with the discussions.
NATO took responsibility last year for operations throughout Afghanistan. The United States contributes the most troops in the coalition -- or about 15,000 of a NATO force totaling just under 40,000. Washington also added combat troops and a helicopter force last year after other allies did not respond to a call for help from commanders.
Despite six years of war in Afghanistan, a fight overshadowed in the United States by Iraq, violence has soared in 2007. Taliban suicide bombings are up 50 percent from a year ago and military officers say the group is trying to import the deadly roadside bomb technology that has been used in Iraq.
In Kiev, Gates will ask Ukraine and other members of the Southeast Europe Defence Ministerial to send troops to Afghanistan to help cover that shortfall in trainers, another U.S. defence official said.
The 11-member group sent a 100-troop brigade, called Southeast Europe Brigade or SEEBRIG, to the war zone in 2006.
"It's to have a discussion about SEEBRIG and how SEEBRIG can potentially help in Afghanistan again possibly by undertaking a training mission," the official said when asked about Gates's priorities in Kiev.
Ukraine, which received $11.7 million in U.S. military assistance this year, is considered a strong U.S. partner in Iraq and the Pentagon thinks Kiev might send troops to Afghanistan as well.
Citation: Kristin Roberts. "U.S. pins Kosovo force on NATO's Afghan commitment," Reuters, 21 October 2007.
Original URL: http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-30089220071021?sp=true
Iran needs nuclear energy, not weapons
After recent provocative statements from Tehran, the International Atomic Energy Agency will discuss Iran’s nuclear programme again this month, and could decide to report the country to the UN Security Council. But is US pressure on Iran about suspected weapons programmes, or is it really about securing a western monopoly on nuclear energy?
By Cyrus Safdari
Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2005.
IF YOU read the media coverage of the presentation given to the United Nations General Assembly on 17 September by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you could be forgiven for picturing him pounding his shoe on the podium, old Soviet-style, and yelling “We will bury you!” Press reports on this speech in the United States described him as “threatening”, “aggressive” and “unyielding”. Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post went so far as to claim that he had said that Americans “brought the devastation of Hurricane Katrina upon themselves” (1).
Why was his speech presented in this way? The usual pundits who dominate US newspaper column inches and television talk shows would reply that Iran is not to be trusted because it ran a clandestine nuclear enrichment programme, dramatically exposed in 2002. Like previous assertions on Iraqi weapons, this claim has been conveniently stripped of significant nuances, and has assumed fact status through mindless repetition. It deserves more careful scrutiny.
First, we should note the technical details of the nuclear fuel cycle. Uranium is sold all over the world as yellowcake, which typically contains 70%-90% uranium oxide. It is then purified to obtain uranium hexafluoride. Iran already carries out these transformations under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The final stage is known as enrichment, a process that generates a sufficient amount (3%) of one isotope, uranium 235, to produce nuclear power. To be used in a weapon, the proportion has to reach 90% U-235. Article IV of the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (better known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT) guarantees the “inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”. Signatory countries have the right to enrich uranium.
A review of nuclear industry literature shows that if Iran’s uranium enrichment programme was ever clandestine, it was a poorly guarded secret. Tehran’s intentions to obtain the full nuclear cycle date from the 1970s, when its nuclear energy programme was set up in cooperation with the US and some European governments. In 1974 the Ford administration offered to contribute directly (2), and Iran continued to work on the fuel cycle until the 1979 revolution. In 1981 the new government decided to continue Iran’s nuclear energy projects, and in 1982 Iranian officials announced that they planned to build a reactor powered by their own uranium at the Isfahan nuclear technology centre. The IAEA inspected that and other facilities in Iran in 1983, and planned to assist Iran in converting yellowcake into reactor fuel. The IAEA report stated clearly that its aim was to “contribute to the formation of local expertise and manpower needed to sustain an ambitious programme in the field of nuclear power reactor technology and fuel cycle technology”. But the agency’s assistance programme was terminated under US pressure (3).
In 1984 Iranian radio announced that negotiations with Niger on the purchase of uranium were nearing conclusion, and in 1985 another broadcast openly discussed the discovery of uranium deposits in Iran with the director of Iran’s atomic energy organisation (4). An IAEA spokesman, Melissa Flemming, confirmed in 1992 that its inspectors had visited the mines and Iran had announced plans to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle (5).
Tehran had openly entered into negotiations with several nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine and Spain, for the purchase of nuclear energy facilities and components. Almost all of these deals ultimately fell through after pressure from Washington. The Chinese informed the IAEA of plans to build a uranium enrichment facility in Iran in 1996, and when they too pulled out under US pressure, the Iranians informed the IAEA that they would continue the project none the less. Iran’s nuclear efforts were not entirely clandestine.
“Corrective actions”
After Tehran agreed to implement the NPT’s additional protocol (which allows the IAEA to carry out more intrusive inspections), an IAEA report did find that Iran had failed in the past to report “nuclear material, its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material had been processed and stored”. But subsequent IAEA reports stated that Iran had taken “corrective actions” about many of the failures, and that “good progress has been made in Iran’s correction of breaches”. The remaining unresolved issues would be “followed up as a routine safeguard implementation matter”. The Iranians blame US obstructionism for making them resort to secrecy in obtaining technology to which they were entitled under the NPT (6).
The US assertion that the programme was intended for weapons production is flimsy. In 1995 Thomas Graham, Washington’s chief negotiator for the extension of the NPT, had to admit that the US had seen no actual evidence of an existing weapons programme in Iran (7). Ten years later that is still the case. In March 2005 the New York Times reported that an intelligence review commission report to President Bush had described US intelligence on Iran as “inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran’s weapons programs” (8). Despite almost three years of intensive inspections under the additional protocol, the IAEA has yet to find any evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran.
According to Article 19 of Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the agency may refer Iran to the UN Security Council if it is “unable to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material required to be safeguarded under this agreement, to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. The IAEA has reported that all declared fissile material in Iran has been accounted for, and none has been diverted. So why, in September 2005, did it state that there was an “absence of confidence that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes”?
Why does the IAEA claim that it is not in a position to guarantee that there are no “undeclared facilities” in Iran after all these intensive inspections?
Students of rhetoric are familiar with this pattern. Others may recognise it from its application to Iraq. The US used the dramatic and over-hyped exposure of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme to transfer the burden of proof: it is now up to Tehran to refute the charge of secretly building nuclear weapons. Through a campaign of innuendo and fallacious argument in the US media, the Bush administration has changed the accusation, making it almost impossible for Iran to refute the charge.
Iran struggled to meet the challenge by implementing the additional protocol, permitting expanded inspections and suspending uranium enrichment. But at each step the finishing line was moved farther away. Iran is now in the position of having to prove the impossible: that it does not have secret weapons facilities magically immune to years of IAEA inspections, and that it could not use legitimate nuclear technology to make weapons in the indefinite future. In this manner, accompanied by the exercise of political strongarm tactics over the members of the IAEA board of governors, the Bush administration almost managed to have Tehran referred to the UN Security Council.
According to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany (known as the EU-3 in their negotiations with Tehran on this subject), Iran is to be denied enrichment capacity regardless of whether IAEA inspectors have found actual evidence of a weapons programme in Iran. Why? Because the technology could be used to make bombs. In this form the accusation against Iran is almost irrefutable: practically any advanced technology could be used in a nuclear programme. Iran has allegedly been just five years away from building nukes for the past 25 years.
To claim that Iran should not obtain technology which could be used for nuclear weapons is contrary to the NPT, which encourages “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information”. It also undermines the IAEA’s inspection regime, since the IAEA cannot be expected to predict what technology will or will not be used for in future years.
The political nature of the IAEA’s decision about Iran is clear when compared with the treatment accorded to South Korea and Egypt, two allies of the US. Both were caught red-handed conducting secret nuclear experiments over several years. They got no more than a slap on the wrist from the IAEA (9). Speculation that either could one day build bombs or had “undeclared facilities” did not get them stripped of their NPT rights.
The real Bush target
All this suggests that the emphasis on weapons proliferation is exaggerated. The real targets of the Bush administration’s nuclear shenanigans are the economies of developing countries. The late 20th century was an amazing period of growth and human achievement, much of it fuelled by cheap oil from the Middle East, where it was directly or indirectly monopolised by the imperial powers. Analysts agree that the oil will not last forever, indeed, we may already have reached the point of peak oil. The developing world will bear the brunt of the imminent energy crunch. European countries already rely on nuclear power for a third to a half of their electricity needs, and both France and the US have invested in new enrichment plants. South Korea, China, Britain and the US have all recently announced plans for dramatic expansion of their nuclear power industries. Even Rice has conceded that developing countries will have to turn to nuclear energy (10).
Iran is no exception. Despite its large oil and gas reserves, it already had a clear case for diversifying its energy resources into nuclear power by the 1970s. Since then its population has tripled, while its oil production has almost halved, and it now consumes about 40% of its oil domestically. So when Bush jovially quips “Some of us are wondering why they need civilian nuclear power anyway. They are awash with hydrocarbons” (11), he is being disingenuous.
Iran has a legitimate economic case for using nuclear power, and the means to manufacture the necessary fuel domestically. It also has the legal right to do so. But the US and the European Union demand that Iran and other countries abandon any indigenous capabilities and rely solely on western fuel suppliers to power their economy. This is like Iran demanding that Britain drop all exploitation of North Sea oil and rely solely on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries for its energy needs. Under the guise of non-proliferation, the EU and the US are not only undermining the grand bargain between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear armed states that is the NPT; they also want to create an underclass of nuclear energy have-nots, concentrating what could become the world’s sole major source of energy in the hands of the few nations that have granted themselves the right to it.
Iran presents a convenient opportunity to set a precedent to be used against other aspirants for nuclear power in the developing world. That is why Ahmadinejad was denounced as an uncompromising hardliner in the coverage of his UN presentation. But he did in fact suggest a compromise deal. While defending Iran’s sovereign right to produce nuclear power using indigenously enriched uranium, and enumerating the reasons why Iran cannot rely on promises of foreign-supplied reactor fuel to power its economy, he proposed to operate Iran’s enrichment programme as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries, to ensure that the programme remained transparent and could not be secretly diverted for military purposes. This was no small offer. It closely resembled a proposal previously put to the IAEA by a committee of experts looking into the risk that nuclear technology developed for peaceful purposes might be diverted to non-peaceful uses (12).
Instead of discussing this proposal, or looking for any workable solution, US, Israeli and EU officials continue to insist that the only acceptable objective guarantee of non-proliferation is to close what they describe as the loophole in Article IV of the treaty. These countries want to see the article re-interpreted to deny developing nations the right to indigenous nuclear enrichment technology. There has been a flurry of activity by US-based analysts and thinktanks seeking to legitimise this approach by characterising Article IV as too vaguely worded to be taken seriously. The EU’s foreign affairs spokesman, Robert Cooper, opts for outright denial: “There is no such right” (13).
This is a problematic interpretation of the treaty. If the right to enrich uranium is either non-existent or too vaguely stated in the NPT, then by what right do signatory nations such as Japan enrich uranium? For US pundits, the answer to this is: “Iran is not Japan. Japan recognises all its neighbours; Iran does not accept the existence of Israel” (14). Since when was the exercise of an inalienable right conditional on the recognition of Israel? The suggestion is ironic: Israel is a nuclear-armed non-signatory to the NPT, and regularly threatens to bomb Iran’s civilian nuclear sites.
Former US president Jimmy Carter once famously dismissed reminders of the US’s CIA-engineered 1953 coup in Iran, which ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, after he decided to nationalise Iran’s oil resources, as “ancient history”. But it is not ancient history to Iranians, who still harbour a deep sense of betrayal. Iran is a proud nation with a long history, and it is a history of deep resentment against foreign powers that tried to control Iran. Iranians, from pro-western liberals to fundamentalists, have come to view the nuclear technology issue as a matter of national pride. Even if there were regime change in Iran, the future regime would be just as likely to pursue a nuclear programme as the current one is (and the previous one was). By insisting on humiliating Iran and depriving it of its nuclear technology achievements, the US can only undermine its own interests.
Cyrus Safdari is a researcher and consultant
(1) “Iran’s president does what US diplomacy could not”, Washington Post, 19 September 2005. This is what President Ahmadinejad actually said: “If global trends continue to serve the interests of small influential groups, even the interests of the citizens of powerful countries will be jeopardised, as was seen in the recent crises and even natural disasters such as the recent tragic hurricane”. However, the problem has been compounded by his recent much-publicised call for Israel to be wiped from the map.
(2) Shahid-ur-Rehman Khan, “US under Ford offered Iran closed fuel cycle capabilities”, Nucleonics Week, vol 45, No 45, 4 November 2004.
(3) Mark Hibbs, “US in 1983 stopped IAEA from helping Iran make UF6", Nuclear Fuel, 4 August 2003.
(4) “Uranium find”, BBC Monitoring Service: Middle East, 22 January 1985.
(5) Associated Press, 10 February 2003 and “Front End nuclear capability being developed”, Nuclear Engineering International, 31 March 2003.
(6) “NPT blamed for secrecy”, Nuclear Engineering International, 29 February 2004.
(7) Mark Hibbs, “Iran has ‘no programme to produce fissile material’ ”, Nucleonics Week, 2 February 1995.
(8) New York Times, 9 March 2005.
(9) Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, January-February 2005, vol 61, no 01.
(10) Financial Times, London, 19 September 2005.
(11) At a White House press conference, 13 September 2005.
(12) Bruno Pellaud, “Nuclear fuel cycle: which way forward for multilateral approaches?”, IAEA Bulletin Online, vol 46, no 2, 2004.
(13) Financial Times, Asia Edition, Hong Kong, 7 September 2005.
(14) George Perkovich, “For Tehran, nuclear program is a matter of national pride”, Yale Global, 21 March 2005.
Citation: Cyrus Safdari. "Iran needs nuclear energy, not weapons," Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.mondediplo.com/2005/11/02iran
By Cyrus Safdari
Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2005.
IF YOU read the media coverage of the presentation given to the United Nations General Assembly on 17 September by the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, you could be forgiven for picturing him pounding his shoe on the podium, old Soviet-style, and yelling “We will bury you!” Press reports on this speech in the United States described him as “threatening”, “aggressive” and “unyielding”. Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post went so far as to claim that he had said that Americans “brought the devastation of Hurricane Katrina upon themselves” (1).
Why was his speech presented in this way? The usual pundits who dominate US newspaper column inches and television talk shows would reply that Iran is not to be trusted because it ran a clandestine nuclear enrichment programme, dramatically exposed in 2002. Like previous assertions on Iraqi weapons, this claim has been conveniently stripped of significant nuances, and has assumed fact status through mindless repetition. It deserves more careful scrutiny.
First, we should note the technical details of the nuclear fuel cycle. Uranium is sold all over the world as yellowcake, which typically contains 70%-90% uranium oxide. It is then purified to obtain uranium hexafluoride. Iran already carries out these transformations under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The final stage is known as enrichment, a process that generates a sufficient amount (3%) of one isotope, uranium 235, to produce nuclear power. To be used in a weapon, the proportion has to reach 90% U-235. Article IV of the Treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (better known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, NPT) guarantees the “inalienable right of all the parties to the treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes”. Signatory countries have the right to enrich uranium.
A review of nuclear industry literature shows that if Iran’s uranium enrichment programme was ever clandestine, it was a poorly guarded secret. Tehran’s intentions to obtain the full nuclear cycle date from the 1970s, when its nuclear energy programme was set up in cooperation with the US and some European governments. In 1974 the Ford administration offered to contribute directly (2), and Iran continued to work on the fuel cycle until the 1979 revolution. In 1981 the new government decided to continue Iran’s nuclear energy projects, and in 1982 Iranian officials announced that they planned to build a reactor powered by their own uranium at the Isfahan nuclear technology centre. The IAEA inspected that and other facilities in Iran in 1983, and planned to assist Iran in converting yellowcake into reactor fuel. The IAEA report stated clearly that its aim was to “contribute to the formation of local expertise and manpower needed to sustain an ambitious programme in the field of nuclear power reactor technology and fuel cycle technology”. But the agency’s assistance programme was terminated under US pressure (3).
In 1984 Iranian radio announced that negotiations with Niger on the purchase of uranium were nearing conclusion, and in 1985 another broadcast openly discussed the discovery of uranium deposits in Iran with the director of Iran’s atomic energy organisation (4). An IAEA spokesman, Melissa Flemming, confirmed in 1992 that its inspectors had visited the mines and Iran had announced plans to develop the full nuclear fuel cycle (5).
Tehran had openly entered into negotiations with several nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, Argentina, Germany, Ukraine and Spain, for the purchase of nuclear energy facilities and components. Almost all of these deals ultimately fell through after pressure from Washington. The Chinese informed the IAEA of plans to build a uranium enrichment facility in Iran in 1996, and when they too pulled out under US pressure, the Iranians informed the IAEA that they would continue the project none the less. Iran’s nuclear efforts were not entirely clandestine.
“Corrective actions”
After Tehran agreed to implement the NPT’s additional protocol (which allows the IAEA to carry out more intrusive inspections), an IAEA report did find that Iran had failed in the past to report “nuclear material, its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material had been processed and stored”. But subsequent IAEA reports stated that Iran had taken “corrective actions” about many of the failures, and that “good progress has been made in Iran’s correction of breaches”. The remaining unresolved issues would be “followed up as a routine safeguard implementation matter”. The Iranians blame US obstructionism for making them resort to secrecy in obtaining technology to which they were entitled under the NPT (6).
The US assertion that the programme was intended for weapons production is flimsy. In 1995 Thomas Graham, Washington’s chief negotiator for the extension of the NPT, had to admit that the US had seen no actual evidence of an existing weapons programme in Iran (7). Ten years later that is still the case. In March 2005 the New York Times reported that an intelligence review commission report to President Bush had described US intelligence on Iran as “inadequate to allow firm judgments about Iran’s weapons programs” (8). Despite almost three years of intensive inspections under the additional protocol, the IAEA has yet to find any evidence of a nuclear weapons programme in Iran.
According to Article 19 of Iran’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA, the agency may refer Iran to the UN Security Council if it is “unable to verify that there has been no diversion of nuclear material required to be safeguarded under this agreement, to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”. The IAEA has reported that all declared fissile material in Iran has been accounted for, and none has been diverted. So why, in September 2005, did it state that there was an “absence of confidence that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes”?
Why does the IAEA claim that it is not in a position to guarantee that there are no “undeclared facilities” in Iran after all these intensive inspections?
Students of rhetoric are familiar with this pattern. Others may recognise it from its application to Iraq. The US used the dramatic and over-hyped exposure of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme to transfer the burden of proof: it is now up to Tehran to refute the charge of secretly building nuclear weapons. Through a campaign of innuendo and fallacious argument in the US media, the Bush administration has changed the accusation, making it almost impossible for Iran to refute the charge.
Iran struggled to meet the challenge by implementing the additional protocol, permitting expanded inspections and suspending uranium enrichment. But at each step the finishing line was moved farther away. Iran is now in the position of having to prove the impossible: that it does not have secret weapons facilities magically immune to years of IAEA inspections, and that it could not use legitimate nuclear technology to make weapons in the indefinite future. In this manner, accompanied by the exercise of political strongarm tactics over the members of the IAEA board of governors, the Bush administration almost managed to have Tehran referred to the UN Security Council.
According to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany (known as the EU-3 in their negotiations with Tehran on this subject), Iran is to be denied enrichment capacity regardless of whether IAEA inspectors have found actual evidence of a weapons programme in Iran. Why? Because the technology could be used to make bombs. In this form the accusation against Iran is almost irrefutable: practically any advanced technology could be used in a nuclear programme. Iran has allegedly been just five years away from building nukes for the past 25 years.
To claim that Iran should not obtain technology which could be used for nuclear weapons is contrary to the NPT, which encourages “the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information”. It also undermines the IAEA’s inspection regime, since the IAEA cannot be expected to predict what technology will or will not be used for in future years.
The political nature of the IAEA’s decision about Iran is clear when compared with the treatment accorded to South Korea and Egypt, two allies of the US. Both were caught red-handed conducting secret nuclear experiments over several years. They got no more than a slap on the wrist from the IAEA (9). Speculation that either could one day build bombs or had “undeclared facilities” did not get them stripped of their NPT rights.
The real Bush target
All this suggests that the emphasis on weapons proliferation is exaggerated. The real targets of the Bush administration’s nuclear shenanigans are the economies of developing countries. The late 20th century was an amazing period of growth and human achievement, much of it fuelled by cheap oil from the Middle East, where it was directly or indirectly monopolised by the imperial powers. Analysts agree that the oil will not last forever, indeed, we may already have reached the point of peak oil. The developing world will bear the brunt of the imminent energy crunch. European countries already rely on nuclear power for a third to a half of their electricity needs, and both France and the US have invested in new enrichment plants. South Korea, China, Britain and the US have all recently announced plans for dramatic expansion of their nuclear power industries. Even Rice has conceded that developing countries will have to turn to nuclear energy (10).
Iran is no exception. Despite its large oil and gas reserves, it already had a clear case for diversifying its energy resources into nuclear power by the 1970s. Since then its population has tripled, while its oil production has almost halved, and it now consumes about 40% of its oil domestically. So when Bush jovially quips “Some of us are wondering why they need civilian nuclear power anyway. They are awash with hydrocarbons” (11), he is being disingenuous.
Iran has a legitimate economic case for using nuclear power, and the means to manufacture the necessary fuel domestically. It also has the legal right to do so. But the US and the European Union demand that Iran and other countries abandon any indigenous capabilities and rely solely on western fuel suppliers to power their economy. This is like Iran demanding that Britain drop all exploitation of North Sea oil and rely solely on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries for its energy needs. Under the guise of non-proliferation, the EU and the US are not only undermining the grand bargain between nuclear-armed and non-nuclear armed states that is the NPT; they also want to create an underclass of nuclear energy have-nots, concentrating what could become the world’s sole major source of energy in the hands of the few nations that have granted themselves the right to it.
Iran presents a convenient opportunity to set a precedent to be used against other aspirants for nuclear power in the developing world. That is why Ahmadinejad was denounced as an uncompromising hardliner in the coverage of his UN presentation. But he did in fact suggest a compromise deal. While defending Iran’s sovereign right to produce nuclear power using indigenously enriched uranium, and enumerating the reasons why Iran cannot rely on promises of foreign-supplied reactor fuel to power its economy, he proposed to operate Iran’s enrichment programme as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries, to ensure that the programme remained transparent and could not be secretly diverted for military purposes. This was no small offer. It closely resembled a proposal previously put to the IAEA by a committee of experts looking into the risk that nuclear technology developed for peaceful purposes might be diverted to non-peaceful uses (12).
Instead of discussing this proposal, or looking for any workable solution, US, Israeli and EU officials continue to insist that the only acceptable objective guarantee of non-proliferation is to close what they describe as the loophole in Article IV of the treaty. These countries want to see the article re-interpreted to deny developing nations the right to indigenous nuclear enrichment technology. There has been a flurry of activity by US-based analysts and thinktanks seeking to legitimise this approach by characterising Article IV as too vaguely worded to be taken seriously. The EU’s foreign affairs spokesman, Robert Cooper, opts for outright denial: “There is no such right” (13).
This is a problematic interpretation of the treaty. If the right to enrich uranium is either non-existent or too vaguely stated in the NPT, then by what right do signatory nations such as Japan enrich uranium? For US pundits, the answer to this is: “Iran is not Japan. Japan recognises all its neighbours; Iran does not accept the existence of Israel” (14). Since when was the exercise of an inalienable right conditional on the recognition of Israel? The suggestion is ironic: Israel is a nuclear-armed non-signatory to the NPT, and regularly threatens to bomb Iran’s civilian nuclear sites.
Former US president Jimmy Carter once famously dismissed reminders of the US’s CIA-engineered 1953 coup in Iran, which ousted the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, after he decided to nationalise Iran’s oil resources, as “ancient history”. But it is not ancient history to Iranians, who still harbour a deep sense of betrayal. Iran is a proud nation with a long history, and it is a history of deep resentment against foreign powers that tried to control Iran. Iranians, from pro-western liberals to fundamentalists, have come to view the nuclear technology issue as a matter of national pride. Even if there were regime change in Iran, the future regime would be just as likely to pursue a nuclear programme as the current one is (and the previous one was). By insisting on humiliating Iran and depriving it of its nuclear technology achievements, the US can only undermine its own interests.
Cyrus Safdari is a researcher and consultant
(1) “Iran’s president does what US diplomacy could not”, Washington Post, 19 September 2005. This is what President Ahmadinejad actually said: “If global trends continue to serve the interests of small influential groups, even the interests of the citizens of powerful countries will be jeopardised, as was seen in the recent crises and even natural disasters such as the recent tragic hurricane”. However, the problem has been compounded by his recent much-publicised call for Israel to be wiped from the map.
(2) Shahid-ur-Rehman Khan, “US under Ford offered Iran closed fuel cycle capabilities”, Nucleonics Week, vol 45, No 45, 4 November 2004.
(3) Mark Hibbs, “US in 1983 stopped IAEA from helping Iran make UF6", Nuclear Fuel, 4 August 2003.
(4) “Uranium find”, BBC Monitoring Service: Middle East, 22 January 1985.
(5) Associated Press, 10 February 2003 and “Front End nuclear capability being developed”, Nuclear Engineering International, 31 March 2003.
(6) “NPT blamed for secrecy”, Nuclear Engineering International, 29 February 2004.
(7) Mark Hibbs, “Iran has ‘no programme to produce fissile material’ ”, Nucleonics Week, 2 February 1995.
(8) New York Times, 9 March 2005.
(9) Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, January-February 2005, vol 61, no 01.
(10) Financial Times, London, 19 September 2005.
(11) At a White House press conference, 13 September 2005.
(12) Bruno Pellaud, “Nuclear fuel cycle: which way forward for multilateral approaches?”, IAEA Bulletin Online, vol 46, no 2, 2004.
(13) Financial Times, Asia Edition, Hong Kong, 7 September 2005.
(14) George Perkovich, “For Tehran, nuclear program is a matter of national pride”, Yale Global, 21 March 2005.
Citation: Cyrus Safdari. "Iran needs nuclear energy, not weapons," Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.mondediplo.com/2005/11/02iran
19 October 2007
Opium funding up to 40 percent of Afghan unrest: US general
Agence France-Presse, 18 October 2007
KABUL (AFP) - The top US general in Afghanistan said Thursday he estimated that Afghanistan's rampant opium poppy cultivation was funding up to 40 percent of the Taliban-led insurgency.
General Dan McNeill, head of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), added he had been told by an international expert that this figure was likely low and could reach up to 60 percent.
"It is my best subjective estimate that the insurgency enjoys fiscal resources from the cultivation of poppy probably to the level of 20 to 40 percent of its total fiscal resources," the general told journalists.
The cultivation of opium -- 93 percent of whose world supply comes from Afghanistan, according to the United Nations -- is undermining everything the government and its international allies were trying to do, he said.
Despite internationally backed efforts to cut the drugs trade, Afghanistan's opium production grew by 34 percent this year, according to a UN survey.
There has been pressure on ISAF to be more involved in eradication.
McNeill said this was not the mandate of the 40,000-strong force from 38 nations. "ISAF is neither manned, trained or equipped to be an eradication force but there are other ways ... that we might be able to help," he said.
ISAF officials have already said the force is ready to help by providing training to Afghan security forces, and sharing information and logistics.
Besides funding insurgents, poppy cultivation is corrupting the government and distracting locals from the work under way to rebuild the war-shattered nation, McNeill said.
"People are distracted from the value of the reconstruction because of poppy cultivation and the money inherent within," he said.
In its last year in power in 2001 the extremist Taliban government slashed the production of opium -- the main ingredient of heroin -- to 185 tonnes a year.
It is now estimated at 8,200 tonnes a year, much of it going to Europe, with production the highest in the south where the Taliban's insurgency is the fiercest.
Citation: " Opium funding up to 40 percent of Afghan unrest: US general," Agence France-Presse, 18 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071018/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestnatodrugs
KABUL (AFP) - The top US general in Afghanistan said Thursday he estimated that Afghanistan's rampant opium poppy cultivation was funding up to 40 percent of the Taliban-led insurgency.
General Dan McNeill, head of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), added he had been told by an international expert that this figure was likely low and could reach up to 60 percent.
"It is my best subjective estimate that the insurgency enjoys fiscal resources from the cultivation of poppy probably to the level of 20 to 40 percent of its total fiscal resources," the general told journalists.
The cultivation of opium -- 93 percent of whose world supply comes from Afghanistan, according to the United Nations -- is undermining everything the government and its international allies were trying to do, he said.
Despite internationally backed efforts to cut the drugs trade, Afghanistan's opium production grew by 34 percent this year, according to a UN survey.
There has been pressure on ISAF to be more involved in eradication.
McNeill said this was not the mandate of the 40,000-strong force from 38 nations. "ISAF is neither manned, trained or equipped to be an eradication force but there are other ways ... that we might be able to help," he said.
ISAF officials have already said the force is ready to help by providing training to Afghan security forces, and sharing information and logistics.
Besides funding insurgents, poppy cultivation is corrupting the government and distracting locals from the work under way to rebuild the war-shattered nation, McNeill said.
"People are distracted from the value of the reconstruction because of poppy cultivation and the money inherent within," he said.
In its last year in power in 2001 the extremist Taliban government slashed the production of opium -- the main ingredient of heroin -- to 185 tonnes a year.
It is now estimated at 8,200 tonnes a year, much of it going to Europe, with production the highest in the south where the Taliban's insurgency is the fiercest.
Citation: " Opium funding up to 40 percent of Afghan unrest: US general," Agence France-Presse, 18 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071018/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanunrestnatodrugs
18 October 2007
U.S.-India Links Go Beyond Faltering Nuclear Deal
By Peter Wonacott and Eric Bellman
Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2007
Even if the U.S. and India end up abandoning their landmark nuclear deal, the talks have created strong links between the two countries, whose intertwined political fortunes and burgeoning trade will continue to grow, executives and officials say.
The deal, proposed by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005, appears headed for a delay in implementation, and possibly for the dustbin, because of opposition from leftist politicians in India who support Mr. Singh's government and have threatened to bring down the government if the deal goes ahead. The accord aims to give India access to much-needed, but long-denied, U.S. nuclear technology and fuel. India in return would separate its military and civilian nuclear facilities, and subject the civilian reactors to international inspections.
Mr. Singh suggested last week that he wants to see out the full term of office, which can last an additional 18 months -- remarks widely interpreted to mean he isn't willing to override his allies' opposition and risk an early election. He later told Mr. Bush that the deal was facing "certain difficulties," according to a statement from the Indian Embassy in Washington reporting a phone call between the two leaders on Monday.
U.S. companies could lose out on billions of dollars in potential orders to help build India's energy infrastructure and military. Some U.S. companies are hoping to sell sensitive civilian and military technology to India, a market the pact would have opened.
Bob Pearce, director of global business development at Westinghouse Electric Co. in Pittsburgh, says that as recently as three weeks ago officials at Nuclear Power Corp. of India were talking with Westinghouse and other U.S. suppliers of nuclear-power technology about how they could get involved with the expansion of power capacity in the subcontinent. If final approval of the nuclear deal is delayed for six months or more, it will be tough to move forward with project planning, he said.
"When Prime Minister Singh calls President Bush and says, 'We are having trouble,' that is a concern, of course," Mr. Pearce said. "If this gets too far into next year it will get caught up in Indian and U.S. elections cycle and then could get delayed even further," Mr. Pearce said.
The U.S. government has long barred some defense sales to India through export restrictions on certain technologies. The nuclear deal was supposed to help create momentum to dismantle those barriers, too, as U.S. defense suppliers try to win more Indian business. Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and other U.S. equipment suppliers, for instance, have been hoping to win bids for a deal for 126 fighter jets valued at an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion.
The deal was part of a broader recent courting of India by the U.S. to help fight global terrorism and counter China's rising influence in Asia. The U.S. also is hoping for neater alignment on other strategic issues, such as how to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran -- a country that has long enjoyed friendly ties with India.
If the U.S.-India nuclear deal falls apart, it is unlikely to reverse the warming trend that the negotiations have brought or stem the broadening of ties in other areas. Merchandise trade between the two countries has grown. And after a long lull during the Cold War years, India and the U.S. now regularly conduct military exercises together.
"The security relationship has its own momentum, and we are hoping that momentum continues no matter what happens to the [nuclear] agreement," says James Clad, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for South Asia security policy.
Write to Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com and Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@awsj.com
Citation: Peter Wonacott and Eric Bellman. "U.S.-India Links Go Beyond Faltering Nuclear Deal," Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2007.
Original URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119264464215062194.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2007
Even if the U.S. and India end up abandoning their landmark nuclear deal, the talks have created strong links between the two countries, whose intertwined political fortunes and burgeoning trade will continue to grow, executives and officials say.
The deal, proposed by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005, appears headed for a delay in implementation, and possibly for the dustbin, because of opposition from leftist politicians in India who support Mr. Singh's government and have threatened to bring down the government if the deal goes ahead. The accord aims to give India access to much-needed, but long-denied, U.S. nuclear technology and fuel. India in return would separate its military and civilian nuclear facilities, and subject the civilian reactors to international inspections.
Mr. Singh suggested last week that he wants to see out the full term of office, which can last an additional 18 months -- remarks widely interpreted to mean he isn't willing to override his allies' opposition and risk an early election. He later told Mr. Bush that the deal was facing "certain difficulties," according to a statement from the Indian Embassy in Washington reporting a phone call between the two leaders on Monday.
U.S. companies could lose out on billions of dollars in potential orders to help build India's energy infrastructure and military. Some U.S. companies are hoping to sell sensitive civilian and military technology to India, a market the pact would have opened.
Bob Pearce, director of global business development at Westinghouse Electric Co. in Pittsburgh, says that as recently as three weeks ago officials at Nuclear Power Corp. of India were talking with Westinghouse and other U.S. suppliers of nuclear-power technology about how they could get involved with the expansion of power capacity in the subcontinent. If final approval of the nuclear deal is delayed for six months or more, it will be tough to move forward with project planning, he said.
"When Prime Minister Singh calls President Bush and says, 'We are having trouble,' that is a concern, of course," Mr. Pearce said. "If this gets too far into next year it will get caught up in Indian and U.S. elections cycle and then could get delayed even further," Mr. Pearce said.
The U.S. government has long barred some defense sales to India through export restrictions on certain technologies. The nuclear deal was supposed to help create momentum to dismantle those barriers, too, as U.S. defense suppliers try to win more Indian business. Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and other U.S. equipment suppliers, for instance, have been hoping to win bids for a deal for 126 fighter jets valued at an estimated $6 billion to $8 billion.
The deal was part of a broader recent courting of India by the U.S. to help fight global terrorism and counter China's rising influence in Asia. The U.S. also is hoping for neater alignment on other strategic issues, such as how to deal with a nuclear-armed Iran -- a country that has long enjoyed friendly ties with India.
If the U.S.-India nuclear deal falls apart, it is unlikely to reverse the warming trend that the negotiations have brought or stem the broadening of ties in other areas. Merchandise trade between the two countries has grown. And after a long lull during the Cold War years, India and the U.S. now regularly conduct military exercises together.
"The security relationship has its own momentum, and we are hoping that momentum continues no matter what happens to the [nuclear] agreement," says James Clad, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for South Asia security policy.
Write to Peter Wonacott at peter.wonacott@wsj.com and Eric Bellman at eric.bellman@awsj.com
Citation: Peter Wonacott and Eric Bellman. "U.S.-India Links Go Beyond Faltering Nuclear Deal," Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2007.
Original URL: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119264464215062194.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
17 October 2007
Turkish parliament approves Iraq mission
By Suzan Fraser
The Associated Press, 17 October 2007
ANKARA, Turkey - Parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a possible cross-border offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, although the government appears willing to give diplomatic pressure on the U.S.-backed Iraqi administration more time to work.
Lawmakers voted 507-19 in favor of empowering the government to order the military to cross into Iraq during a one-year period, Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan said. They then burst into applause.
Turkish leaders have stressed that an offensive against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, would not immediately follow the authorization.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States was making clear to Turkey it should not send a massive number of troops into Iraq.
Bush said Turkey has had troops stationed in Iraq "for quite a while."
"We don't think it's in their interest to send more troops in."
Bush also noted that Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's vice presidents, was in Istanbul expressing that Iraq shares Turkey's concerns about terrorist activities, but that there's a better way to deal with the issue than sending more troops into Iraq.
"What I'm telling you is that there's a lot of dialogue going on and that's positive," he said.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to dismiss Bush's comments.
"What's important is the parliament's decision, not what people say," private NTV television quoted him as saying.
Wednesday's motion — authorizing an attack into Iraq sometime in the next year — had the backing from all of Turkey's parliamentary parties except a small Kurdish party.
Oil prices surged to a $89 a barrel after the vote, which overshadowed a U.S. government report that crude oil and gasoline inventories rose more than expected last week.
Hours before the vote, Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called his Turkish counterpart to say that his government was determined to halt the "terrorist activities" of the PKK on Iraqi territory, and he emphasized the need for the two nations to continue to talk, his office said.
In Paris, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, called on PKK rebels to stop fighting in Turkey, while also urging the Turkish government not to launch an incursion.
"We consider activities of PKK against the interests of the Kurdish people first, and then against the interests of Turkey," Talabani told reporters during an official visit to the French capital. "We have asked the PKK to stop fighting, to end the so-called military activity."
Kurdish rebels from the PKK have been fighting since 1984 for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Visiting Syrian President Bashar Assad said Turkey had a legitimate right to stage a cross-border offensive.
"We accept this as Turkey's legitimate right. As Syria, we are supporting all decisions by Turkey and we are standing behind them," Assad said.
Public anger over attacks by Kurdish guerrillas is high but Turkish officials are mindful that two dozen Iraqi campaigns since the 1980s have failed to eradicate the PKK.
Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey "will act with common sense and determination when necessary and when the time is ripe."
Turkey has complained about what it considers a lack of U.S. support in the fight against the PKK. It also is frustrated that a U.S. House panel last week approved a resolution labeling the World War 1-era killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire a genocide.
The resolution is an affront to Turks, who deny there was any systematic campaign to eliminate Armenians.
At the White House news conference, Bush also repeated calls for the Democratic-controlled Congress to drop plans for the resolution.
Noting the number of domestic bills pending before Congress, he said: "One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she will schedule a vote soon on the resolution. But the initiative was in jeopardy after several Democrats withdrew their support and sounded alarms it could cripple U.S. relations with Turkey.
Citation: Suzan Fraser. "Turkish parliament approves Iraq mission," The Associated Press, 17 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey;_ylt=AltWBhHZDGKh4jWwfvozx1lvaA8F
The Associated Press, 17 October 2007
ANKARA, Turkey - Parliament on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a possible cross-border offensive against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, although the government appears willing to give diplomatic pressure on the U.S.-backed Iraqi administration more time to work.
Lawmakers voted 507-19 in favor of empowering the government to order the military to cross into Iraq during a one-year period, Parliament Speaker Koksal Toptan said. They then burst into applause.
Turkish leaders have stressed that an offensive against the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, would not immediately follow the authorization.
In Washington, President Bush said the United States was making clear to Turkey it should not send a massive number of troops into Iraq.
Bush said Turkey has had troops stationed in Iraq "for quite a while."
"We don't think it's in their interest to send more troops in."
Bush also noted that Tariq al-Hashimi, one of Iraq's vice presidents, was in Istanbul expressing that Iraq shares Turkey's concerns about terrorist activities, but that there's a better way to deal with the issue than sending more troops into Iraq.
"What I'm telling you is that there's a lot of dialogue going on and that's positive," he said.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared to dismiss Bush's comments.
"What's important is the parliament's decision, not what people say," private NTV television quoted him as saying.
Wednesday's motion — authorizing an attack into Iraq sometime in the next year — had the backing from all of Turkey's parliamentary parties except a small Kurdish party.
Oil prices surged to a $89 a barrel after the vote, which overshadowed a U.S. government report that crude oil and gasoline inventories rose more than expected last week.
Hours before the vote, Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called his Turkish counterpart to say that his government was determined to halt the "terrorist activities" of the PKK on Iraqi territory, and he emphasized the need for the two nations to continue to talk, his office said.
In Paris, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, an ethnic Kurd, called on PKK rebels to stop fighting in Turkey, while also urging the Turkish government not to launch an incursion.
"We consider activities of PKK against the interests of the Kurdish people first, and then against the interests of Turkey," Talabani told reporters during an official visit to the French capital. "We have asked the PKK to stop fighting, to end the so-called military activity."
Kurdish rebels from the PKK have been fighting since 1984 for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Visiting Syrian President Bashar Assad said Turkey had a legitimate right to stage a cross-border offensive.
"We accept this as Turkey's legitimate right. As Syria, we are supporting all decisions by Turkey and we are standing behind them," Assad said.
Public anger over attacks by Kurdish guerrillas is high but Turkish officials are mindful that two dozen Iraqi campaigns since the 1980s have failed to eradicate the PKK.
Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey "will act with common sense and determination when necessary and when the time is ripe."
Turkey has complained about what it considers a lack of U.S. support in the fight against the PKK. It also is frustrated that a U.S. House panel last week approved a resolution labeling the World War 1-era killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire a genocide.
The resolution is an affront to Turks, who deny there was any systematic campaign to eliminate Armenians.
At the White House news conference, Bush also repeated calls for the Democratic-controlled Congress to drop plans for the resolution.
Noting the number of domestic bills pending before Congress, he said: "One thing Congress should not be doing is sorting out the historical record of the Ottoman Empire."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said she will schedule a vote soon on the resolution. But the initiative was in jeopardy after several Democrats withdrew their support and sounded alarms it could cripple U.S. relations with Turkey.
Citation: Suzan Fraser. "Turkish parliament approves Iraq mission," The Associated Press, 17 October 2007.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071017/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey;_ylt=AltWBhHZDGKh4jWwfvozx1lvaA8F