Coming Next in Iran: Sanctions, Military Action, and the Yellowcake Story

A very clever story in The Times: "Iran in Scramble for Fresh Uranium Products". Whether the article is great investigative reporting uncovering the truth, a well-developed "information" campaign by US and British officials, or a bit of both, it may point the way towards the US-UK towards Tehran before and after this spring's Iranian elections.



The line of the story is that "diplomatic sources believe that Iran’s stockpile of yellow cake uranium, produced from uranium ore, is close to running out and could be exhausted within months". Therefore, "countries including Britain, the US, France and Germany have started intensive diplomatic efforts to dissuade major uranium producers from selling to Iran". The Foreign Office leaked cables to The Times reporters of British efforts to "urge Kazakhstan, one of the world’s biggest producers, to ignore any possible approaches to obtain imports" and confirmed a similar campaign in Uzbekistan.

The two-fold strategy behind the story? The Times writes, "[This is a move that, while unlikely to cripple any effort to develop a bomb, would blunt [Iran's] ambitions and help to contain the threat." That means:

1. Britain and the US, supported by France, Canada, Australia, and Germany, maintain diplomatic pressure for continued, and possibly enhanced, sanctions against Iran. This will probably come through bilateral and multilateral arrangements rather than UN Security Council action.

2. Britain and the US damp down any calls for direct action against Iran such as military strikes. If Tehran can't get yellowcake, then it can't pose an "imminent threat", can it?

Israel's Other War: US Rejected Aid for Attack on Iran

Throughout the Gaza conflict, its supporters --- both in the Government and in the media --- have insisted that it is part of a wider fight against Iran. Turns out that Gaza might be a substitute: the Israelis wanted to use the bunker-busting bombs, now being dropped on the Gaza Strip, on an Iranian site. From David Sanger in The New York Times:

President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel last year for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.

White House officials never conclusively determined whether Israel had decided to go ahead with the strike before the United States protested, or whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was trying to goad the White House into more decisive action before Mr. Bush left office. But the Bush administration was particularly alarmed by an Israeli request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, where the country’s only known uranium enrichment plant is located.

While the Israelis didn't get their raid, "the White House [did] step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, a major covert program that Mr. Bush is about to hand off to President-elect Barack Obama."