The Latest from Iran (27 September): Is There a Compromise Brewing?

NEW Iran’s Nukes: Did Gates Just Complicate the Obama Position?
NEW Transcripts: Secretary of Defense Gates on CNN, ABC
Iran's Nuclear Program: Gary Sick on the US Approach after the "Secret Plant"
Iran’s “Secret” Nuclear Plant: Israel Jumps In
Iran: The “Die Zeit” Article on Opposition and Change
Iran Video: Ahmadinejad Interview on CNN’s Larry King
The Latest from Iran (26 September): The False Flag of the Nuke Issue

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2100 GMT: Back to Compromise? After a day of tough signals, this paragraph on Press TV's website from President Ahmadinejad return-from-US press conference in Tehran jumps out: ""By his change of rhetoric, Obama has signaled a strong commitment in the presence of the General Assembly. If the American government is seriously pursuing the path of change, Obama's speech can be considered a start."

2045 GMT: Mir Hossein Mousavi's website Kalemeh is down, and Mehdi Karroubi's Tagheer is still suspended 72 hours after announcing it was going off-line for construction.

1830 GMT: Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi Giving Up Key Position? Tabnak offers the intriguing report that Ayatollah Yazdi, a firm supporter of President Ahmadinejad, is resigning from the Secretariat of the Assembly of Experts.Yazdi will retain his membership of the Assembly and his Vice Chair post, but his withdrawal from the Executive diminishes a key challenger to Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Yazdi was absent from the recent Assembly of Experts meeting.

1545 GMT: An Economic Victory for the Republican Guard. An Iranian consortium in which the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps is reputed to be a major actor has bought a 51 percent stake in the State telecommunications firm in the biggest privatisation in Iran's history.

1445 GMT: Another Ministerial Fraud? After the criticism of the Ministers of Interior and Science for dubious doctoral degrees from British universities, now it is the Minister of Transport Hamid Behbahani who faces allegations of false credentials. An article in the French daily newspaper Libération, claims Behbahani plagiarised parts of a work of the Professor Christophe Claramunt, his Chinese colleagues, and the Canadian academic Gerry Forbes for a 2006 publication in a Lithuanian journal.

1440 GMT: Your Latest Proof of the "Velvet Revolution". A Revolutionary Guard offical has said that the television signals of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting were jammed during the election campaign. Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali claimed that "enemies of the country" had tried to jam the transmission during a Presidential campaign debate.

1200 GMT: Report that student activists Ali Rafai and Mohsen Jafari have been released from detention.

1045 GMT: The New York Times Gets the Story Wrong...Big-Time. EA's Mr Smith picks up on this morning's article by , NewDavid Sanger and William Broad, which opens:

The Obama administration plans to tell Iran this week that it must open a newly revealed nuclear enrichment site to international inspectors “within weeks”, according to senior administration officials. The administration will also tell Tehran that inspectors must have full access to the key personnel who put together the clandestine plant and to the documents surrounding its construction, the officials said Saturday.

The story asserts that, while "Iranian officials have...said the facility near Qom is for peaceful purposes, they have not explained why it was located inside a heavily guarded base of the Revolutionary Guards".

Mr Smith notes:

This is incorrect. In remarks yesterday to Iranian Television, [Iran's top nuclear offcial Ali Akhbar] Salehi said that they felt like they needed to build a plant for uranium enrichment with maximum security to avoid 'stopping the production of enriched uranium for peaceful purposes'. I think everyone agrees that Natanz [Iran's first enrichment plant] isn't that secure, built as it is in open air. Therefore you would have to think that Iran is getting pushed in going underground with its nuclear plants because of the never-ending military threats, mostly from Israel but also, incessantly, from the US.

So I wonder what would have happened if the hawks in Tel Aviv and DC had actually kept quiet rather than waving the military scarecrow all the time.

The US can say whatever it wants, but the heart of the matter is that, unless the IAEA proves that Iran has been feeding uranium into these plants, there is no violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now, we can discuss ad libitum what the real aims of Iran are, as Sick has valiantly done, but everyone is, so far, putting intentions on trial, rather than actual, hard evidence on violations by Iran. True, Iran has been lying and is not reliable in its disclosures. But does this amount to legal violation? It doesn't appear so...

0835 GMT: This is More Like It. A day after Iran's nuclear negotiator offered Iran's willingness to consider International Atomic Energy Agency access to the second enrichment facility, its ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, puts on a show of defiance: "I categorically reject that there have been any concealment or any deception."

As we predicted, Soltaniyeh rests Iran's legal case on the second plant on the claim that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty did not force revelation of the facility's construction, only its imminent capacity for enrichment: "It is a pity that none of these three leaders have legal advisers to inform them that according to comprehensive safeguards we are only obliged to inform six months before we put nuclear material [into the plant]."

The ambassador adds the flourish that it is Washington, Paris, and London who are the nuclear rule-breakers:

Those three countries in fact have violated for the last 40 years NPT articles. The United Kingdom has [a] secret program of [Trident] nuclear submarines...[costing more than £30 billion.... France is also working on the nuclear weapon programs continuously. Americans are working hard on the nuclear weapon posture review. These are all deceptions and concealment.

0825 GMT: Two new pieces on the Iran nuclear programme. Ali Yenidunya takes a look at Israel's intervention (rhetorical so far) while Gary Sick assesses how the "secret plant" story shapes US strategy and tactics in talks with Tehran.

0655 GMT: Acting Tough. In a move about as surprising as the Pope's endorsement of Catholicism, Iran has announced that it has test-fired two short-range missiles in a missile exercise called "Great Prophet IV". And there will be more launches as the exercise is planned to last several days.

The signal to the "West" --- We Won't Be Pushed Around --- will poke US and UK media into headlines of how this demonstrates Tehran's threat in the context of the furour over the second enrichment plant.

0615 GMT: And a Deal on the International Front? US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton moved quickly to welcome the comment of Iran's lead official on the nuclear programme, Ali Akhbar Salehi, that Iran would permit visits by the International Atomic Energy Agency, under the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to its second enrichment plant (a "defensive facility"). Clinton said:

It is always welcome when Iran makes a decision to comply with the international rules and regulations, and particularly with respect to the IAEA. We are very hopeful that, in preparing for the meeting on October 1, Iran comes and shares with all of us what they are willing to do and give us a timetable on which they are willing to proceed

Hmm.... Salehi's remark appears to have been a holding statement while the Ahmadinejad Government considers its next move, and Clinton's welcome --- unsurprisingly --- fits into a US strategy to back Tehran into a corner of acceptance. The Los Angeles Times reports this morning:

The U.S. and its allies plan to demand that Iran provide "unfettered access" to scientists and information regarding an underground uranium enrichment plant suspected of being part of a secret nuclear weapons program, an Obama administration official said Saturday. A deadline for the access has not yet been determined, but Iran probably would have to comply within weeks.

0600 GMT: Relatively little breaking in Iran this morning, as we look for further signals that there is a compromise plan, led by or involving Hashemi Rafsanjani, making its way through the Iranian system.

What little has come out points more to the continued fencing between opposing camps. Reports are circulating of more official complaints against Mir Hossein Mousavi's campaign, while Mehdi Karroubi's Etemade Melli party website has published information about the abuse and rape of another detainee.

The most interesting claim is that Sardar Khorshidi, the father of President Ahmadinejad's son-in-law and a decorated commander during the Iran-Iraq War, has said he personally witnessed vote-rigging in the June election. He also points to the fragility of the regime: ""If each protester had a stick on Qods Day, the Army wouldn't have withsood them."

Comments

[Norman]

In he LAtimes, an interesting analysis
"I believe the Iranians, if they feel they're really under the gun, will act differently," said Ephraim Halevy, former head of Israel's foreign intelligence service. "What will happen if there's a change of events and the pressure in Tehran will reach a high pitch, whether it's a result of new sanctions or an outbreak of new tensions in the body politic and strains inside the leadership that are becoming ever stronger and more prominent? Suddenly public sentiment has begun to veer in a different direction."

[Amy]

Scott
Far be it from me to argue the legality of the plant, but the rule you cite was changed in 1992. Iran signed onto the changes at that time, but later tried to rescind that section. IAEA makes no allowance for individual signees to reject parts of the agreement they don't wish to comply with http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE58O4Z520090925" rel="nofollow">according to Reuters

NOTIFICATION RULES

* The United States and major Western allies believe Iran violated its nuclear non-proliferation safeguards agreement with the IAEA about when it should inform the agency of a new nuclear facility or plans for one.

* Under the original IAEA statute governing member states, such a declaration was not required until six months before nuclear materials were introduced into a new atomic facility.

* But in 1992, the 35-nation IAEA Board of Governors decided this not was not sufficient time to arrange requisite inspections. They amended the rule to say notification has to be made "as soon as the decision to construct or to authorize construction has been taken, whichever is earlier."

* This amendment is known in the safeguards community as "Code 3.1." Iran and many other countries signed up to it.

* Western diplomats with access to intelligence said Iran started building the undeclared second enrichment plant in 2006. "Iran was then observing the modified Code 3.1, so (legally) it should have notified the IAEA then," one diplomat said.

* In 2007 Iran reverted to the previous arrangement -- a six-month notice period -- in protest after the IAEA governors referred its case to the U.N. Security Council in 2006, a move that led to three sets of punitive sanctions.

Since then, Iran generally has refused to provide advance design information on planned nuclear sites to the IAEA.

* The IAEA's stance is that countries cannot unilaterally go back to the old system, but rather are bound to the new one.

[Guzelvis]

No wonder Gadhafi trashed Ahmadinejad at U.N. Read the funny story @ http:www.thelintscreen.co

[Amy]

Since the regime knows the people are wise to the "external threat" card, might the missile launch be, in part, an effort to gin up Israeli concerns and rhetoric to create evidence of an external threat? (Similar provocations worked that way for Bush--he just didn't fire off a missile)

[Arshama]

Spiegel online predicts massive sanctions against the IRI. According to an expert Iran is already capable of building nuclear weapons. The new facilitiy near Ghom has enough space for 3000 centrifuges, necessary for the production of military nuclear material within three to six months : http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,651579,00.html
This regime is not willing to accept international rules, and it never will. AN and the IRGC apply to the miltary logic, inside and outside the country. Launching missiles shortly after the UN council is another deliberate confrontation with the world community. As no faction inside Iran is able to stop this confrontational course, the world has to do so. Military actions against the IRI are certainly not the best solution, but AN does everything to forge the IRI into a new super power in the Middle East. His military complex aims at Israel AND neighbouring Arab states. I am convinced that Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf states will not accept this situation, especially because of AN's obvious lack of international responsibility.
@ Amy: How can the "external threat" card work, as long as this regime is a daily threat to its own citizens?

[Scott Lucas]

Arshama,

I need to work through some info but good source says these are old Pakistani centrifuges, raising question of whether 2nd site is really up to standard/capability of Natanz.

S.

[Scott Lucas]

Amy,

The key is that Iranian Parliament never ratified the Subsidiary Agreement (Code 3.1). While this may be splitting hairs, it will be the position that Iran Gov't takes in the talks with 5+1. More importantly, it is the basis that Russia and China can use to drag feet on tougher sanctions regime.

S.

[Peter]

Let's be careful not to assume the following :

1) Russia is relatively unconcerned with the prospect of Iran becoming a nuclear power.

2) Russia has no significant interest in a warmer relationship (and the attendant financial benefits) with the US than was the unfortunate case in the latter part of the Bush administration.

The legalese doesn't really matter. If Russia isn't interested in pressuring Iran then any excuse will do and the latest revelation is insignificant just as Mr. Smith has pointed out. On the other hand, should it decide that it's interests would be better served by aligning with the US, GB & France on this matter, then it will do so given a reasonable excuse such as this latest revelation.

IMHO, Medvedev's recent comments indicate that either he's already come to an agreement with the Obama administration, or, at a minimum, Russia is willing to consider aligning more closely with the US on this matter -if- Obama is willing to pay his price.

[Bill Davit]

Scott,

You are correct about the Pakistani centrifuges. Not all because Iran has built some of their own, however all are UNRENCO designs which Khan stole for Pakistan decades ago. Pakistan called them Pak-1. Its interesting to note Khan had incomplete designs and was still able to get them to work. Incidentally his attempts to gather further information once he reached a road block lead to the discover of the stolen URENCO centrifuge designs. Research the name, Mark Hibbs, he has published a number of articles on nuclear proliferation and he is almost always spot on. I cannot remember the exact article but he did confirm the URENCO designs were the ones being used in Iran. His article along with a few others noted this find as especially problematic for the US knowing where the Pakistan program ended up. The irony is the US largely turned a blind eye towards the Pakistan nukes in light of geopolitical agendas.

It should also be noted while Iran insists on the "peacful" aspect they are absolutely silent about the reactor to use the fuel being no where near completion. Instead they are insistent on the centrifuges and as we can all see moving at warp speed. This is indicative of a weapons program based on their priorties.

[Scott Lucas]

Bill,

Thank you for the additional information. I still think, in light of 2007 NIE and subsequent US intelligence reports, that Iran slowed if did not suspend its military nuclear programme from 2003 and I am not convinced that latest revelations on Qom point to an acceleration which means military nuclear capability is imminent.

S.