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Paul Merrell

America's Lead Iran Negotiator Misrepresents U.S. Policy (and International L... - 0 views

goingtotehran.com/-international-law-to-congress

war & peace Iran nuclear-non-proliferation-treaty NNTP Iranian-nukes-myth Obama lies

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Last month, while testifying to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wendy Sherman—Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and the senior U.S. representative in the P5+1 nuclear talks with Iran—said, with reference to Iranians, “We know that deception is part of the DNA.”  This statement goes beyond orientalist stereotyping; it is, in the most literal sense, racist.  And it evidently was not a mere “slip of the tongue”:  a former Obama administration senior official told us that Sherman has used such language before about Iranians. 
  • Putting aside Sherman’s glaring display of anti-Iranian racism, there was another egregious manifestation of prejudice-cum-lie in her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that we want to explore more fully.  It came in a response to a question from Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) about whether states have a right to enrich under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).  Here is the relevant passage in Sherman’s reply:  “It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all [and] doesn’t speak to enrichment, period.  It simply says that you have the right to research and development.”  Sherman goes on to acknowledge that “many countries such as Japan and Germany have taken that [uranium enrichment] to be a right.”  But, she says, “the United States does not take that position.  We take the position that we look at each one of these [cases].”  Or, as she put it at the beginning of her response to Sen. Rubio, “It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all” (emphasis added). 
  • Two points should be made here.  First, the claim that the NPT’s Article IV does not affirm the right of non-nuclear-weapons states to pursue indigenous development of fuel-cycle capabilities, including uranium enrichment, under international safeguards is flat-out false.  Article IV makes a blanket statement that “nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”  And it’s not just “countries such as Japan and Germany”—both close U.S. allies—which affirm that this includes the right of non-weapons states to enrich uranium under safeguards.  The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries and the Non-Aligned Movement (whose 120 countries represent a large majority of UN members) have all clearly affirmed the right of non-nuclear-weapons states, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, to pursue indigenous safeguarded enrichment.  In fact, just four countries in the world hold that there is no right to safeguarded enrichment under the NPT:  the United States, Britain, France, and Israel (which isn’t even a NPT signatory).  That’s it.  Moreover, the right to indigenous technological development—including nuclear fuel-cycle capabilities, should a state choose to pursue them—is a sovereign right.  It is not conferred by the NPT; the NPT’s Article IV recognizes states’ “inalienable right” in this regard, while other provisions bind non-weapons states that join the Treaty to exercise this right under international safeguards.       
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  • There have been many first-rate analyses demonstrating that the right to safeguarded enrichment under the NPT is crystal clear—from the Treaty itself, from its negotiating history, and from subsequent practice, with at least a dozen non-weapons states building fuel-cycle infrastructures potentially capable of supporting weapons programs.  Bill Beeman published a nice Op Ed in the Huffington Post on this question in response to Sherman’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, see here and, for a text including references, here.  For truly definitive legal analyses, see the work of Daniel Joyner, for example here and here.  The issue will also be dealt with in articles by Flynt Leverett and Dan Joyner in a forthcoming special issue of the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs, which should appear within the next few days.         From any objectively informed legal perspective, denying non-weapons states’ right of safeguarded enrichment amounts to nothing more than a shameless effort to rewrite the NPT unilaterally.  And this brings us to our second point about Sherman’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony. 
  • Sherman claims that “It has always been the U.S. position that Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty does not speak about the right of enrichment at all [and] doesn’t speak to enrichment, period.”  But, in fact, the United States originally held that the right to peaceful use recognized in the NPT’s Article IV includes the indigenous development of safeguarded fuel-cycle capabilities.  In 1968, as America and the Soviet Union, the NPT’s sponsors, prepared to open it for signature, the founding Director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, William Foster, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee—the same committee to which Sherman untruthfully testified last month—that the Treaty permitted non-weapons states to pursue the fuel cycle.  We quote Foster on this point:   “Neither uranium enrichment nor the stockpiling of fissionable material in connection with a peaceful program would violate Article II so long as these activities were safeguarded under Article III.”  [Note:  In Article II of the NPT, non-weapons states commit not to build or acquire nuclear weapons; in Article III, they agree to accept safeguards on the nuclear activities, “as set forth in an agreement to be negotiated and concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”] 
  • Thus, it is a bald-faced lie to say that the United States has “always” held that the NPT does not recognize a right to safeguarded enrichment.  As a matter of policy, the United States held that that the NPT recognized such a right even before it was opened for signature; this continued to be the U.S. position for more than a quarter century thereafter.  It was only after the Cold War ended that the United States—along with Britain, France, and Israel—decided that the NPT should be, in effect, unilaterally rewritten (by them) to constrain the diffusion of fuel-cycle capabilities to non-Western states.  And their main motive for trying to do so has been to maximize America’s freedom of unilateral military initiative and, in the Middle East, that of Israel.  This is the agenda for which Wendy Sherman tells falsehoods to a Congress that is all too happy to accept them.    
  • Paul Merrell on 14 Nov 13
     
    What should be the reaction of Congress upon discovering that the U.S. lead negotiator with Iran in regard to its budding peaceful use of nuclear power lies to Congress about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's applicability to Iran's actions? 
Paul Merrell

S/RES/487 (1981) of 19 June 1981 - 0 views

domino.un.org/...57312cc8bd93ca852560df00653995

Israel Iranian nukes Iraq UN Security Council Resolution

shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Resolution 487 (1981) Adopted by the Security Council at its 2288th meeting on 19 June 1981 The Security Council, Having considered the agenda contained in document S/Agenda/2280, Having noted the contents of the telegram dated 8 June 1981 from the Foreign Minister of Iraq (S/14509), Having heard the statements made to the Council on the subject at its 2280th through 2288th meetings, Taking note of the statement made by the Director-General of the International Atomic Emergency Agency (IAEA) to the Agency's Board of Governors on the subject on 9 June 1981 and his statement to the Council at its 2288th meeting on 19 June 1981,
  • Further taking note of the resolution adopted by the Board of Governors of the IAEA on 12 June 1981 on the "military attack on the Iraq nuclear research centre and its implications for the Agency" (S/14532), Fully aware of the fact that Iraq has been a party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons since it came into force in 1970, that in accordance with that Treaty Iraq has accepted IAEA safeguards on all its nuclear activities, and that the Agency has testified that these safeguards have been satisfactorily applied to date, Noting furthermore that Israel has not adhered to the non-proliferation Treaty, Deeply concerned about the danger to international peace and security created by the premeditated Israeli air attack on Iraqi nuclear installations on 7 June 1981, which could at any time explode the situation in the area, with grave consequences for the vital interests of all States,
  • Considering that, under the terms of Article 2, paragraph 4, of the Charter of the United Nations: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations", 1. Strongly condemns the military attack by Israel in clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct; 2. Calls upon Israel to refrain in the future from any such acts or threats thereof; 3. Further considers that the said attack constitutes a serious threat to the entire IAEA safeguards regime which is the foundation of the non-proliferation Treaty;
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  • 4. Fully recognizes the inalienable sovereign right of Iraq, and all other States, especially the developing countries, to establish programmes of technological and nuclear development to develop their economy and industry for peaceful purposes in accordance with their present and future needs and consistent with the internationally accepted objectives of preventing nuclear-weapons proliferation; 5. Calls upon Israel urgently to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards; 6. Considers that Iraq is entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it has suffered, responsibility for which has been acknowledged by Israel; 7. Requests the Secretary-General to keep the Security Council regularly informed of the implementation of this resolutio
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12
     
    In 1981, an Israeli air strike destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction in Iraq. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osirak The UN Security Council, where the U.S. had and has veto power, promptly issued Resolution 487 condemning Israel for violation of the U.N. Charter provision forbidding the use of force against the territorial integrity of another nation. The resolution also recognized Iraq and all other nations' right to nuclear development for peaceful purposes. Israel was instructed to never do such things in the future. Yet here we stand today with both Israel and the U.S. threatening military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.   
  • Paul Merrell on 07 Aug 12
     
    But our Constitution commands in article VI: "This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; *and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;* and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding,"  Thus, because the U.S. is still a member of the U.N. Treaty, our Constitution commands that we obey that Treaty and its prohibition against unilateral use of force. There is no applicable exception to the Treaty that would permit the U.S. or Israel to mount an attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities. Thus there is no such exception to the Constitution.
Paul Merrell

Beltway Foreign Policy Groups to Congress: Stay Out of the Way on Iran! « Lob... - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/ss-stay-out-of-the-way-on-iran

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth negotiations Congress Obama

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • The November 24 deadline for Iran and world powers to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program is quickly approaching.
  • If there is a deal on Nov. 24, the White House indicated, in an article authored by David E. Sanger in Sunday’s New York Times, that it would not seek an immediate vote on the agreement or sanctions relief, instead asserting that the administration can, and may need to, roll back some sanctions unilaterally as part of immediate sanctions relief guarantees in a possible agreement. Hawks in Congress may want to portray their position as representing the mainstream consensus but a letter signed by thirty-seven organizations and sent to members of Congress on Thursday offers some indication that many foreign policy groups in the beltway are concerned by Congress’ latest effort to meddle in the final weeks of sensitive diplomacy before the November deadline. The signatories—which include the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; J Street; MoveOn.org; the National Iranian American Council; Progressive Democrats of America; the United Methodist Church and VoteVets— expressed “deep concern with inaccurate and counterproductive rhetoric from a handful of Members of Congress regarding possible outcomes of the current negotiations.”
  • They continue: Particularly irresponsible are threats to oppose any comprehensive agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program that initially suspends US sanctions on Iran through lawful executive action. Congress’ authorization of the President’s power to suspend and re-impose US sanctions on Iran is clear and unmistakable in each piece of legislation it has passed on the subject. Use of these provisions by the President to implement the initial phase of an agreement that ensures Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon would reflect an affirmation, not a subversion, of Congress’ will. The echo chamber on Capitol Hill may give members of the House and Senate the impression that only the threat of military action or crushing sanctions are effective tools in bringing Iran to the negotiating table. (My colleague Ali Gharib and I discussed the disproportionate voice given to individuals from neoconservative organizations at congressional hearings on Iran in a July article in The Nation.)
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  • But the letter sent out on Thursday might give some congressional Democrats pause. Congress may lean hawkish but progressive groups in the beltway are throwing their weight behind the White House’s efforts to reach a diplomatic agreement on Iran’s nuclear program and are urging Congress to stay out of the way.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14
     
    There's more behind this story than appears in its words. "Progressive" organizations have largely stood silent on the topic of war since Obama was elected because they are Obama fans and Obama has been anything but peaceful. But now they turn out because Obama needs Congress to stay out of the Iran situation until negotiations are complete and for some time afterward. The pressure on Congress to intervene is coming from the Israel Lobby. Keep in mind that it's been the consensus position of all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies for many years that Iran has no plans to create a nuclear weapon capability. Several Israeli intelligence and military leaders have said the same thing. The Iranian nukes myth is a propaganda theme of the ultra-right wing Israeli government leadership that has been used for several years in efforts to persuade the U.S. to invade Iran and bomb it back into the Stone Age. And their excuse for involving the U.S. military evaporates if the Obama Administration successfully negotiates an agreement with Iran that limits its lawful development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes that will safeguard from any change of mind in Iran on development of nuclear weapons via, e.g., production limits and on-site inspections. The counter-argument is that such an agreement would have to be ratified by the Senate on grounds that it would be a treaty. But that argument falls short of the mark because: [i] the Executive has always had the unfettered right to negotiate and sign treaties; [ii] the U.S. government is not bound by treaties unless and until the Senate ratifies the treaty; and [iii] Congress already explicitly gave Obama authority to impose and suspend economic sanctions at his discretion. Meanwhile, part of the interim agreement with Iran so that negotiations can take place is a promise by the Obama Administration that it would veto any legislation imposing further sanctions on Iran during the period of negotiation. Because of the Israel Lobby'
Paul Merrell

Newly declassified documents reveal how U.S. agreed to Israel's nuclear program - Diplo... - 0 views

www.haaretz.com/....premium-1.613221

war & peace U.S. Israel-nukes declassify Samson-option Johnson Meir

shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • The Obama administration this week declassified papers, after 45 years of top-secret status, documenting contacts between Jerusalem and Washington over American agreement to the existence of an Israeli nuclear option. The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), which is in charge of approving declassification, had for decades consistently refused to declassify these secrets of the Israeli nuclear program. The documents outline how the American administration worked ahead of the meeting between President Richard Nixon and Prime Minister Golda Meir at the White House in September 1969, as officials came to terms with a three-part Israeli refusal – to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty; to agree to American inspection of the Dimona nuclear facility; and to condition delivery of fighter jets on Israel’s agreement to give up nuclear weaponry in exchange for strategic ground-to-ground Jericho missiles “capable of reaching the Arab capitals” although “not all the Arab capitals.”
  • The officials – cabinet secretaries and senior advisers who wrote the documents – withdrew step after step from an ambitious plan to block Israeli nuclearization, until they finally acceded, in internal correspondence – the content of the conversation between Nixon and Meir is still classified – to recognition of Israel as a threshold nuclear state. In fact, according to the American documents, the Nixon administration defined a double threshold for Israel’s move from a “technical option” to a “possessor” of nuclear weapons. The first threshold was the possession of “the components of nuclear weapons that will explode,” and making them a part of the Israel Defense Forces operational inventory.
  • The second threshold was public confirmation of suspicions internationally, and in Arab countries in particular, of the existence of nuclear weapons in Israel, by means of testing and “making public the fact of the possession of nuclear weapons.” Officials under Nixon proposed to him, on the eve of his conversation with Meir, to show restraint with regard to the Israeli nuclear program, and to abandon efforts to get Israel to cease acquiring 500-kilometer-range missiles with one-ton warheads developed in the Marcel Dassault factory in France, if it could reach an agreement with Israel on these points.
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  • The Johnson and Nixon administrations concluded that, in talks with Rabin, it had been stated in a manner both “explicit and implicit” that “Israel wants nuclear weapons, for two reasons: First, to deter the Arabs from striking Israel; and second, if deterrence fails and Israel were about to be overrun, to destroy the Arabs in a nuclear Armageddon.”
  • According to the documents, the Nixon administration believed that Israel’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would spur the Arab countries to acquire their own such weapons within 10 years, through private contracts with scientists and engineers in Europe. Moreover, “deeply rooted in the Arab psyche is the concept that a settlement will be possible only when there is some parity in strength with Israel. A ‘kamikaze’ strike at the Dimona facilities cannot be ruled out,” the document states.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Sep 14
     
    "The Johnson and Nixon administrations concluded that, in talks with Rabin, it had been stated in a manner both 'explicit and implicit' that 'Israel wants nuclear weapons, for two reasons: First, to deter the Arabs from striking Israel; and second, if deterrence fails and Israel were about to be overrun, to destroy the Arabs in a nuclear Armageddon.'" Which just goes to show that Israel's leadership was very bit as looney-tunes as the U.S. leadership was with its "MAD" Mutually Assured Destruction strategy. What is there about democracy that permits psychopaths to acquire the power they so insanely crave? Humanity would have far better odds of surviving the next 100 years if all members of Congress now chosen by voting were instead chosen from the general population at random and limited to a single term. Then let Congress choose the President and Vice President from five people also randomly chosen. That would also result in a Congress far more representative of the People's interests. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Statistics could prove that mathematically. To boot, that would take care of the campaign finance issues, since there wouldn't be any elections for federal office. Give me 24 hours notice and I'll have the necessary constitutional amendments written. Let's call them the No More Lunatics Running This Asylum Amendments. Or with a bit more thought we could have a name with an acronym that's more descriptive, something like the SANE Amendments. Let's see: the Save America from Nutjobs Evermore Amendments, or ....   Never mind for now. You do the political organizing to get the Amendments adopted and let me know when. I'll crank out the wordsmith work product for the Amendments.  Sheesh! As I've said for years, if it be true that Man was was created in the image of the Creator, that is irrefutable proof that the Creator is as dumb as a doornail and insane to boot. "[I]t it is not really possible to deter Arab leaders when they themse
Paul Merrell

Israel decries US 'knife in back' over Palestinian govt - Yahoo News - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/alestinian-govt-210018880.html

war & peace Israel Palestine Kerry Obama Netanyahu negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Washington's support for a new Palestinian government backed by Israel's Islamist foe Hamas, has left the Jewish state feeling betrayed, triggering a new crisis with its closest ally. Several Israeli ministers expressed public anger on Tuesday after the US State Department said it was willing to work with the new Palestinian unity government put together by the West Bank leadership and Gaza's Hamas rulers. Technocratic in nature, the new government was sworn in on Monday in front of president Mahmud Abbas, with Washington offering its backing several hours later.
  • Speaking to reporters on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the new cabinet would be judged "by its actions.""At this point, it appears that president Abbas has formed an interim technocratic government that does not include ministers affiliated with Hamas," she said. "With what we know now, we will work with this government."
  • The US endorsement was viewed as a major blow for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had on Sunday urged the international community not to rush into recognising the new government, which he said would only "strengthen terror."
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  • "Unfortunately, American naivety has broken all records," said Communications Minister Gilad Erdan, a cabinet hardliner who is close to Netanyahu."Collaborating with Hamas, which is defined as a terror organisation in the United States, is simply unthinkable. "US capitulation to Palestinian tactics badly damages the chance of ever returning to negotiations and will cause Israel to take unilateral steps to defend its citizens from the government of terror which Abu Mazen (Abbas) has set up." Public radio said Netanyahu was feeling "betrayed and deceived," particularly as he had assured his security cabinet that US Secretary of State John Kerry had promised him Washington would not recognise the new government immediately.
  • "And it wasn't immediate -- it was five hours later that this recognition took place," the radio noted ironically. A senior political official quoted by the Israel Hayom freesheet, widely regarded as Netanyahu's mouthpiece, said the US move was "like a knife in the back." - 'Answer with annexation' - Israeli commentators said the Palestinians had chalked up a "major success" in driving a new wedge between Israel and its US ally.
  • With the peace process in tatters, hardliners within Netanyahu's rightwing coalition have been pushing for Israel to take unilateral steps such as the annexation of the main Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.
  • The security cabinet agreed on Monday to set up a team to examine the annexation option, but Yediot Aharonot commentator Shimon Shiffer said the move was a sop to Bennett and other hardliners rather than a serious policy change.
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Jun 14
     
    What's remarkable here is that Obama has apparently ratcheted down his fear of the Israel Lobby. But it's not as though Mr. Netanyahu was not warned that the world would see Israel as responsible if it blew up the Kerry-brokered negotiation between Israel and Palestine. Israel did blow it up by not delivering the last shipment of Palestinian prisoners required by the pre-negotiation agreement, attempting to gain further concessions using their release as leverage.  Palestine responded by joining a large number of U.N. treaty organizations and was thus recognized by most nations on the planet as a nation: a critically important move, because it is recognition by other nations as a nation that qualifies Palestine as a full-fledged U.N. member rather than an observer state, an application Palestine can now make at the time of its choosing. That is also important because Palestine is now positioned to join the Rome Convention that created the International Criminal Court, providing Palestine with legal standing to file war crime charges against high Israeli officials that would then obligate the Court to investigate. Palestine is holding back on that move, using it as bargaining leverage on the world stage.   Palestine also responded by forming a coalition "unity" government with Hamas, the political party that nominally rules the Gaza strip, the world's largest open-air concentration camp. At Israel's request, the U.S. had several years ago designated Hamas as a terrorist organization. But that was a purely political move. It seems that the political situation has changed. Obama is pivoting out of the Mideast as he performs his ballyhooed "pivot to Asia," which is actually a pivot to contain Russia that isn't working and a pivot to subjugate Africa and its huge store of untapped natural resources, including lots of oil. Blocking China's economic deals in Africa with military force seems to be the current top concern in the White House. Israel was already a pari
Paul Merrell

US, Israel are the only countries to oppose UN ban on weapons in outer space | The Elec... - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...ose-un-ban-weapons-outer-space

war & peace Israel NNTP space-arms-race U.N.-vote U.S.-foreign-policy

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • Israel and the United States were the only two countries to vote against a UN resolution calling for the prevention of an arms race in outer space. The resolution was among several dealing with international disarmament passed by the General Assembly on 2 December, including one calling on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and bring its rogue nuclear program under international supervision. China and India, which both have space programs, along with the member states of the European Space Agency, voted for the initiative aimed at keeping space free of weapons.
  • The US and Israel were also the only two countries to vote against a separate UN resolution calling for a prohibition on the development and manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction. That resolution passed with 174 countries voting in favor and a single abstention, Ukraine. Among those voting for the ban on new weapons of mass destruction were Iran and Iraq, two states subjected to devastating war or sanctions on the basis of dubious or fabricated Israeli and American claims that they intended to produce such weapons.
  • The US and Israel were only slightly less isolated when it came to a resolution on the “risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.” The only votes against the resolution were Canada, Israel, the US and its colonial holdover Micronesia. The resolution calls on Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “without delay,” noting that it remains “the only State in the Middle East that has not yet” done so. Since the 1950s, Israel has been making atomic bombs with the complicity and support of its Western sponsors including France, the US and the UK.
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  • The resolution urges Israel to place “all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.”
  • Israel and the United States were the only two countries to vote against a UN resolution calling for the prevention of an arms race in outer space. The resolution was among several dealing with international disarmament passed by the General Assembly on 2 December, including one calling on Israel to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and bring its rogue nuclear program under international supervision. China and India, which both have space programs, along with the member states of the European Space Agency, voted for the initiative aimed at keeping space free of weapons. The US and Israel were also the only two countries to vote against a separate UN resolution calling for a prohibition on the development and manufacture of new types of weapons of mass destruction.
Paul Merrell

Israel Crosses the Threshold II: The Nixon Administration Debates the Emergence of the ... - 0 views

www2.gwu.edu/...ebb485

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Israeli-nukes Nixon

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Washington, D.C., September 12, 2014 – During the spring and summer of 1969, officials at the Pentagon, the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the White House debated and discussed the problem of the emergence of a nuclear Israel. Believing that Israel was moving very close to a nuclear weapons capability or even possession of actual weapons, the Nixon administration debated whether to apply pressure to restrain the Israelis or even delay delivery of advanced Phantom jets whose sale had already been approved. Recently declassified documents produced in response to a mandatory declassification review request by the National Security Archive, and published today by the Archive in cooperation with the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, show that top officials at the Pentagon were especially supportive of applying pressure on Israel. On 14 July 1969, Deputy Secretary of Defense (and Hewlett-Packard co-founder) David Packard signed a truly arresting memorandum to Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, arguing that failure to exert such pressure "would involve us in a conspiracy with Israel which would leave matters dangerous to our security in their hands." In the end, Laird and Packard and others favoring pressure lost the debate. While National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger supported some of their ideas, he also believed that, at the minimum, it would be sufficient for U.S. interests if Israel kept their nuclear activities secret. As he put on his draft memo to President Nixon on or around July 19, "public knowledge is almost as dangerous as possession itself." Indeed, Nixon opposed pressure and was willing to tolerate Israeli nuclear weapons as long as they stayed secret.
  • Earlier this year (2014), in response to a mandatory declassification review appeal filed by the National Security Archive in July 2009, the Interagency Security Classification Appeal Panel (ISCAP) declassified additional documents and information that shed brighter light on this highly sensitive policy debate. NSSM 40 is now declassified and published for the first time as is the formal interagency response to it. The intelligence reports prepared during the NSSM process remain classified, however. These along with other documents in the ISCAP release (including records that were declassified in 2007 and material published in 2006) elucidate the complexity and the enormous sensitivity of the internal debate over how far to apply pressure and what exactly the U.S. should ask of Israel. The interagency response revealed unanimity in goals-Israel should sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and halt its weapons program-but exposed significant divisions over how far Israel should be pressed and whether Washington should use military sales-in particular, withholding the delivery of Phantom jets, as leverage. There were also differences in how various officials assessed and conceptualized Israel's nuclear status at that time, and what commitments could realistically be asked of Israel. It might well be that the split of opinion between Defense and State allowed President Nixon even more freedom in making his own decision.
  • It appears now that a long memorandum written by Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Warnke, a holdover from the Lyndon Johnson administration, to the new secretary of defense, Melvin Laird, was important element in the instigation of NSSM 40. Believing that it would be a danger to US interests if Israel acquired nuclear weapons, Warnke argued in his memo of 15 February 1969 that the United States must respond to the new Israeli nuclear reality and asked Laird to "consider another serious, concerted, and sustained effort to persuade Israel to halt its work on strategic missiles and nuclear weapons." Warnke believed that Washington must be ready to exert heavy pressure on Israel, starting with a presidential demarche. The view that it would be a danger to US security interests if Israel acquired nuclear weapons was at that time a largely non-partisan matter. Senior Democrats and Republicans within both the Johnson and Nixon administrations held that view, and both Laird and his deputy David Packard were responsive to Warnke's arguments that the US should apply pressure. To some extent, as Packard suggested in his July memorandum, even Kissinger seems at one time to have been part of that consensus, though his views were somewhat more subtle and variable. This nonpartisan consensus highlights how at the end independent-in fact, secretive and aloof-President Nixon was as he made his own decisions on the matter. Thus, he ruled against using the Phantoms as pressure and in doing so left the United States with no leverage whatsoever.
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  • The historical picture is far from complete in other areas as well. Most intriguing, we still do not know much about President Nixon's direct involvement in the debate, in particular exactly how, when, and why he ultimately overruled strong advice from senior officials to use pressure against the Israeli government. A draft Kissinger memorandum, declassified in 2007 and included in today's publication, sheds some light on why Nixon may have concluded that keeping the Israeli nuclear program a secret was the optimum solution. Certainly the outcome of the Nixon-Meir secret understanding-which left the Israeli program in place and secret-was significantly different from the recommendations of his key officials (not withstanding National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger), but to this day we have almost no paper trail on the most important element in the policy puzzle: what exactly went on during the Nixon-Meir one-on-one meeting of 26 September 1969. Indeed, it appears that no record exists in the national archives of either country that reveals what was agreed to at the meeting
  • THE DOCUMENTS Except for documents 2, 8, and 10, the following documents are from a file, Israel 471.61, in the 1969 Top Secret records of Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird and his deputy David Packard held at the Federal Records Center in Suitland, Maryland. The file was the subject of a 2006 mandatory declassification review request that led to a final appeal in 2009 by the National Security Archive to ISCAP, which released more information earlier this year.
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Sep 14
     
    An important step along the path toward Israel's current dictation of U.S. foreign policy in the Mideast. Once acquired, Israel let be known its Samson Option, its national policy to take out all Mideast major cities with nukes if Israel was attacked and was about to fall.  
Paul Merrell

Lawsuit aims to block U.S. foreign aid to Israel as clandestine nuclear power - Mondoweiss - 0 views

mondoweiss.net/...lawsuit-clandestine-nuclear

war & peace nukes Israel litigation

shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Aug 16 - No Cached
  •       A lawsuit filed Monday in the D.C. federal district court challenges U.S. foreign aid to Israel. 
  • The U.S. is finalizing a ten-year memorandum of understanding which will reportedly boost aid to $4-5 billion per year. Grant F. Smith, Director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy (IRmep), in the suit challenges the authority of the president and U.S. federal agencies to deliver such foreign aid to Israel. Such aid violates longstanding bans on aid to non-signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) with nuclear weapons programs. Since the bans went into effect, U.S. foreign aid to Israel is estimated to be $234 billion.
  • The lawsuit reveals how in the mid-1970s during investigations into the illegal diversion of weapons-grade uranium from U.S. contractor NUMEC to Israel, Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn amended the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act to ban any aid to clandestine nuclear powers that were not NPT signatories. Symington clarified the legislative intent of the amendments: “…if you wish to take the dangerous and costly steps necessary to achieve a nuclear weapons option, you cannot expect the United States to help underwrite that effort indirectly or directly.” The Obama administration follows precedents established since the Ford administration by ignoring internal agency and public domain information that should trigger Symington & Glenn cutoffs and waiver provisions governing foreign aid. The administration has gone further in criminalizing the flow of such information from the federal government to the public. In 2012 the Department of Energy under U.S. State Department authority passed a secret gag law called “Guidance on Release of Information relating to the Potential for an Israeli Nuclear Capability.” The gag law and related measures promote a “nuclear ambiguity” policy toward Israel. The primary purpose of the gag law is to unlawfully subvert Symington & Glenn arms export controls, the suit alleges.
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  • IRmep won unprecedented release of a Pentagon report about Israel’s nuclear weapons program through a 2014 lawsuit. A 2015 IRmep lawsuit dislodged CIA files about the NUMEC diversion.
Paul Merrell

What GOP Senators Don't Understand About Iran | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...not-understand-about-iran.html

war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iranian-nukes-myth Security Council Obama negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • There’s a charming naiveté to the open letter [PDF] by 47 Republican senators that condescendingly seeks to explain features of the U.S. constitutional system to Iran’s leaders that they otherwise “may not fully understand.” The missive warns that, with respect to “your nuclear negotiations with our government ... any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress” could be revoked by the next president “with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time.”
  • Beyond the amusing inaccuracies about U.S. parliamentary order, it seems there are some features of the nuclear negotiations that the signatory senators don’t fully understand — not only on the terms of the deal, but also on who would be party to an agreement. There are no negotiations on Iran’s “nuclear-weapons program” because the world’s intelligence agencies (including those of the U.S. and Israel) do not believe Iran is currently building nuclear weapons, nor has it made a strategic decision to use its civilian nuclear infrastructure to produce a bomb. An active Iranian nuclear-weapons program would render moot the current negotiations, because Iran would be in fundamental violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). As things stand, Tehran remains within the terms of the NPT, which allows nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but monitors member states to prevent weaponization. Tehran and the IAEA remain in dispute over full compliance with all transparency requirements of the NPT, particularly over alleged previous research into weapons design. But Iran’s nuclear facilities remain under constant monitoring by international inspectors who certify that no nuclear material is being diverted.
  • The current negotiations are focused on strengthening verifiable safeguards against weaponization over-and-above those required by the NPT, yet the Republican-led Congress, egged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is warning that those goals are insufficient, and the terms and time-frame of the deal are unacceptable. The key element missing from the GOP Senators’ letter, however, is that the deal is not being negotiated between Iran and the United States; it is being negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 group, in which the U.S. is joined by Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. Even if the U.S. is the key player in that group, the deal being pursued reflects an international consensus — the same consensus that has made sanctions against Iran so effective. This was likely in the mind of Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who dismissed the letter as “of no legal value” and a “propaganda ploy.” Zarif noted that the deal would indeed be an international agreement adopted by the U.N. Security Council, which a new administration would be obliged to uphold — and that any attempt by the White House or Congress to abrogate, unilaterally modify or impede such an agreement would be a breach of U.S. obligations. 
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    "Zarif noted that the deal would indeed be an international agreement adopted by the U.N. Security Council, which a new administration would be obliged to uphold - and that any attempt by the White House or Congress to abrogate, unilaterally modify or impede such an agreement would be a breach of U.S. obligations." Apparently, I was wrong. I thought Obama would work around the demand for Congressional input by letting the other P5+1 members ink the deal but the U.S. not signing. But a U.N. Security Council Resolution is even stronger medicine for the War Party, since the SC has the power to forbid economic sanctions as well. Take that, Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Boehner!
  • Paul Merrell on 13 Mar 15
     
    Could anything make it more clear that Netanyahu's speech to Congress was only to aid in his reelection in Israel? Israel has been briefed on the negotiations all along, so Netanyahu surely knew that the goal was a Security Council resolution that Congress could not affect. And while admittedly, the fact that it was a Security Council Resolution in the making was not widely known, are we to believe that the Speaker of the House of Representatives did not know that too? So are now not down to the entire spectacle of Netanyahu's speech being political, Netanyahu electioneering and Boehner mud-slinging the President?
Paul Merrell

Responding to Failure: Reorganizing U.S. Policies in the Middle East | Middle East Poli... - 0 views

mepc.org/...nizing-us-policies-middle-east

war & peace Mideast Israel Arabs Shia-nations U.S.-foreign-policy recommendations

shared by Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • I want to speak with you today about the Middle East. This is the region where Africa, Asia, and Europe come together. It is also the part of the world where we have been most compellingly reminded that some struggles cannot be won, but there are no struggles that cannot be lost. It is often said that human beings learn little useful from success but can learn a great deal from defeat. If so, the Middle East now offers a remarkably rich menu of foreign-policy failures for Americans to study. • Our four-decade-long diplomatic effort to bring peace to the Holy Land sputtered to an ignominious conclusion a year ago. • Our unconditional political, economic, and military backing of Israel has earned us the enmity of Israel’s enemies even as it has enabled egregiously contemptuous expressions of ingratitude and disrespect for us from Israel itself.
  • • Our attempts to contain the Iranian revolution have instead empowered it. • Our military campaigns to pacify the region have destabilized it, dismantled its states, and ignited ferocious wars of religion among its peoples. • Our efforts to democratize Arab societies have helped to produce anarchy, terrorism, dictatorship, or an indecisive juxtaposition of all three. • In Iraq, Libya, and Syria we have shown that war does not decide who’s right so much as determine who’s left. • Our campaign against terrorism with global reach has multiplied our enemies and continuously expanded their areas of operation. • Our opposition to nuclear proliferation did not prevent Israel from clandestinely developing nuclear weapons and related delivery systems and may not preclude Iran and others from following suit.
  • • At the global level, our policies in the Middle East have damaged our prestige, weakened our alliances, and gained us a reputation for militaristic fecklessness in the conduct of our foreign affairs. They have also distracted us from challenges elsewhere of equal or greater importance to our national interests. That’s quite a record.
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  • One can only measure success or failure by reference to what one is trying achieve. So, in practice, what have U.S. objectives been? Are these objectives still valid? If we’ve failed to advance them, what went wrong? What must we do now to have a better chance of success? Our objectives in the Middle East have not changed much over the course of the past half century or more. We have sought to 1. Gain acceptance and security for a Jewish homeland from the other states and peoples of the region; 2. Ensure the uninterrupted availability of the region’s energy supplies to sustain global and U.S. security and prosperity; 3. Preserve our ability to transit the region so as to be able to project power around the world; 4. Prevent the rise of a regional hegemon or the deployment of weapons of mass destruction that might threaten any or all of these first three objectives; 5. Maximize profitable commerce; and 6. Promote stability while enhancing respect for human rights and progress toward constitutional democracy. Let’s briefly review what’s happened with respect to each of these objectives. I will not mince words.
  • Israel has come to enjoy military supremacy but it remains excluded from most participation in its region’s political, economic, and cultural life. In the 67 years since the Jewish state was proclaimed, Israel has not made a single friend in the Middle East, where it continues to be regarded as an illegitimate legacy of Western imperialism engaged in racist removal of the indigenous population. International support for Israel is down to the United States and a few of the former colonial powers that originally imposed the Zionist project on the Arabs under Sykes-Picot and the related Balfour Declaration. The two-state solution has expired as a physical or political possibility. There is no longer any peace process to distract global attention from Israel’s maltreatment of its captive Arab populations. After years of deference to American diplomacy, the Palestinians are about to challenge the legality of Israel’s cruelties to them in the International Criminal Court and other venues in which Americans have no veto, are not present, or cannot protect the Jewish state from the consequences of its own behavior as we have always been able to do in the past. Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and siege of Gaza are fueling a drive to boycott its products, disinvest in its companies, and sanction its political and cultural elite. These trends are the very opposite of what the United States has attempted to achieve for Israel.
  • Despite Mr. Netanyahu’s recent public hysteria about Iran and his efforts to demonize it, Israel has traditionally seen Iran’s rivalry with the Arabs as a strategic asset. It had a very cooperative relationship with the Shah. Neither Israelis nor Arabs have forgotten the strategic logic that produced Israel's entente with Iran. Israel is very much on Daesh’s list of targets, as is Iran. For now, however, Israel’s main concern is the possible loss of its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Many years ago, Israel actually did what it now accuses Iran of planning to do. It clandestinely developed nuclear weapons while denying to us and others that it was doing so. Unlike Iran, Israel has not adhered to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or subjected its nuclear facilities to international inspection. It has expressed no interest in proposals for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. It sees its ability to bring on nuclear Armageddon as the ultimate guarantee of its existence.
  • The late King `Abdullah of Saudi Arabia engineered a reversal of decades of Arab rejectionism at Beirut in 2002. He brought all Arab countries and later all 57 Muslim countries to agree to normalize relations with Israel if it did a deal — any deal — with the Palestinians that the latter could accept. Israel spurned the offer. Its working assumption seems to be that it does not need peace with its neighbors as long as it can bomb and strafe them. Proceeding on this basis is not just a bad bet, it is one that is dividing Israel from the world, including Jews outside Israel. This does not look like a story with a happy ending. It’s hard to avoid the thought that Zionism is turning out to be bad for the Jews. If so, given the American investment in it, it will also have turned out to be bad for America. The political costs to America of support for Israel are steadily rising. We must find a way to divert Israel from the largely self-engineered isolation into which it is driving itself, while repairing our own increasing international ostracism on issues related to Israel.  
  • In a stunning demonstration of his country’s most famous renewable resource — chutzpah — Israel’s Prime Minister chose this very moment to make America the main issue in his reelection campaign while simultaneously transforming Israel into a partisan issue in the United States. This is the very opposite of a sound survival strategy for Israel. Uncertainties about their country’s future are leading many Israelis to emigrate, not just to America but to Europe. This should disturb not just Israelis but Americans, if only because of the enormous investment we have made in attempts to gain a secure place for Israel in its region and the world. The Palestinians have been silent about Mr. Netanyahu’s recent political maneuvers. Evidently, they recall Napoleon’s adage that one should never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake. This brings me to an awkward but transcendently important issue. Israel was established as a haven from anti-Semitism — Jew hatred — in Europe, a disease of nationalism and Christian culture that culminated in the Holocaust. Israel’s creation was a relief for European Jews but a disaster for the Arabs of Palestine, who were either ethnically cleansed by European Jewish settlers or subjugated, or both.  But the birth of Israel also proved tragic for Jews throughout the Middle East — the Mizrahim. In a nasty irony, the implementation of Zionism in the Holy Land led to the introduction of European-style anti-Semitism — including its classic Christian libels on Jews — to the region, dividing Arab Jews from their Muslim neighbors as never before and compelling them to join European Jews in taking refuge in Israel amidst outrage over the dispossession of Palestinians from their homeland. Now, in a further irony, Israel’s pogroms and other injustices to the Muslim and Christian Arabs over whom it rules are leading not just to a rebirth of anti-Semitism in Europe but to its globalization.
  • To many, Israel now seems to have acquired the obnoxious habit of biting the American hand that has fed it for so long. The Palestinians have despaired of American support for their self-determination. They are reaching out to the international community in ways that deliberately bypass the United States. Random acts of violence herald mayhem in the Holy Land. Daesh has proclaimed the objective of erasing the Sykes-Picot borders and the states within them. It has already expunged the border between Iraq and Syria. It is at work in Lebanon and has set its sights on Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. Lebanon, under Saudi influence, has turned to France rather than America for support. Hezbollah has intervened militarily in Iraq and Syria, both of whose governments are close to Iran. Egypt and Turkey have distanced themselves from the United States as well as from each other. Russia is back as a regional actor and arms supplier. The Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey now separately intervene in Libya, Syria, and Iraq without reference to American policy or views. Iran is the dominant influence in Iraq, Syria, parts of Lebanon, and now Yemen. It has boots on the ground in Iraq. And now Saudi Arabia seems to be organizing a coalition that will manage its own nuclear deterrence and military balancing of Ir
  • To describe this as out of control is hardly adequate. What are we to do about it? Perhaps we should start by recalling the first law of holes — “when stuck in one, stop digging.” It appears that “don’t just sit there, bomb something” isn’t much of a strategy. When he was asked last summer what our strategy for dealing with Daesh was, President Obama replied, “We don’t yet have one.” He was widely derided for that. He should have been praised for making the novel suggestion that before Washington acts, it should first think through what it hopes to accomplish and how best to do it. Sunzi once observed that “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." America’s noisy but strategy-free approach to the Middle East has proven him right. Again the starting point must be what we are trying to accomplish. Strategy is "the discipline of achieving desired ends through the most efficient use of available means" [John Lewis Gaddis].Our desired ends with respect to the Middle East are not in doubt. They have been and remain to gain an accepted and therefore secure place for Israel there; to keep the region's oil and gas coming at reasonable prices; to be able to pass through the area at will; to head off challenges to these interests; to do profitable business in the markets of the Middle East; and to promote stability amidst the expansion of liberty in its countries. Judging by results, we have been doing a lot wrong. Two related problems in our overall approach need correction. They are “enablement” and the creation of “moral hazard.” Both are fall-out from  relationships of codependency.
  • Enablement occurs when one party to a relationship indulges or supports and thereby enables another party’s dysfunctional behavior. A familiar example from ordinary life is giving money to a drunk or a drug addict or ignoring, explaining away, or defending their subsequent self-destructive behavior.  Moral hazard is the condition that obtains when one party is emboldened to take risks it would not otherwise take because it knows another party will shoulder the consequences and bear the costs of failure. The U.S.-Israel relationship has evolved to exemplify codependency. It now embodies both enablement and moral hazard. U.S. support for Israel is unconditional.  Israel has therefore had no need to cultivate relations with others in the Middle East, to declare its borders, or to choose peace over continued expansion into formerly Arab lands. Confidence in U.S. backing enables Israel to do whatever it likes to the Palestinians and its neighbors without having to worry about the consequences. Israel is now a rich country, but the United States continues to subsidize it with cash transfers and other fiscal privileges. The Jewish state is the most powerful country in the Middle East. It can launch attacks on its neighbors, confident that it will be resupplied by the United States. Its use of U.S. weapons in ways that violate both U.S. and international law goes unrebuked. 41 American vetoes in the United Nations Security Council have exempted Israel from censure and international law. We enable it to defy the expressed will of the international community, including, ironically, our own.
  • We Americans are facilitating Israel's indulgence in denial and avoidance of the choices it must make if it is not to jeopardize its long-term existence as a state in the Middle East. The biggest contribution we could now make to Israel's longevity would be to ration our support for it, so as to cause it to rethink and reform its often self-destructive behavior. Such peace as Israel now enjoys with Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians is the direct result of tough love of this kind by earlier American administrations. We Americans cannot save Israel from itself, but we can avoid killing it with uncritical kindness. We should support Israel when it makes sense to do so and it needs our support on specific issues, but not otherwise. Israel is placing itself and American interests in jeopardy. We need to discuss how to reverse this dynamic.
  • Moral hazard has also been a major problem in our relationship with our Arab partners. Why should they play an active role in countering the threat to them they perceive from Iran, if they can get America to do this for them? Similarly, why should any Muslim country rearrange its priorities to deal with Muslim renegades like Daesh when it can count on America to act for it? If America thinks it must lead, why not let it do so? But responsible foreign and defense policies begin with self-help, not outsourcing of military risks. The United States has the power-projection and war-fighting capabilities to back a Saudi-led coalition effort against Daesh. The Saudis have the religious and political credibility, leadership credentials, and diplomatic connections to organize such an effort. We do not. Since this century began, America has administered multiple disappointments to its allies and friends in the Middle East, while empowering their and our adversaries. Unlike the Gulf Arabs, Egypt, and Turkey, Washington does not have diplomatic relations with Tehran. Given our non-Muslim identity, solidarity with Israel, and recent history in the Fertile Crescent, the United States cannot hope to unite the region’s Muslims against Daesh.  Daesh is an insurgency that claims to exemplify Islam as well as a governing structure and an armed force. A coalition led by inhibited foreign forces, built on papered-over differences, and embodying hedged commitments will not defeat such an insurgency with or without boots on the ground.
  • When elections have yielded governments whose policies we oppose, we have not hesitated to conspire with their opponents to overthrow them. But the results of our efforts to coerce political change in the Middle East are not just failures but catastrophic failures. Our policies have nowhere produced democracy. They have instead contrived the destabilization of societies, the kindling of religious warfare, and the installation of dictatorships contemptuous of the rights of religious and ethnic minorities. Frankly, we have done a lot better at selling things, including armaments, to the region than we have at transplanting the ideals of the Atlantic Enlightenment there. The region’s autocrats cooperate with us to secure our protection, and they get it. When they are nonetheless overthrown, the result is not democracy or the rule of law but socio-political collapse and the emergence of  a Hobbesian state of nature in which religious and ethnic communities, families, and individuals are able to feel safe only when they are armed and have the drop on each other. Where we have engineered or attempted to engineer regime change, violent politics, partition, and ethno-religious cleansing have everywhere succeeded unjust but tranquil order. One result of our bungled interventions in Iraq and Syria is the rise of Daesh. This is yet another illustration that, in our efforts to do good in the Middle East, we have violated the principle that one should first do no harm.
  • Americans used to believe that we could best lead by example. We and those in the Middle East seeking nonviolent change would all be better off if America returned to that tradition and forswore ideologically motivated hectoring and intervention. No one willingly follows a wagging finger. Despite our unparalleled ability to use force against foreigners, the best way to inspire them to emulate us remains showing them that we have our act together. At the moment, we do not. In the end, to cure the dysfunction in our policies toward the Middle East, it comes down to this. We must cure the dysfunction and venality of our politics. If we cannot, we have no business trying to use an 8,000-mile-long screwdriver to fix things one-third of the way around the world. That doesn’t work well under the best of circumstances. But when the country wielding the screwdriver has very little idea what it’s doing, it really screws things up.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Mar 15
     
    Chas Freeman served as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the war to liberate Kuwait and as Assistant Secretary of Defense from 1993-94. He was the editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on "diplomacy" and is the author of five books, including "America's Misadventures in the Middle East" and "Interesting Times: China, America, and the Shifting Balance of Prestige."  I have largely omitted highlighting portions of the speech dealing with Muslim nations because Freeman has apparently lost touch with the actual U.S., Saudi, UAE, Kuwait, and Turish roles in creating and expanding ISIL. But his analysis of Israel's situation and recommendations for curing it seem quite valid, as well as his overall Mideast recommendation to heed the First Law of Holes: "when stuck in one, stop digging."   I recommend reading the entire speech notwithstanding his misunderstanding of ISIL. There is a lot of very important history there ably summarized.
Paul Merrell

IPS - Lavrov Reveals Amended Draft Circulated at "Last Moment" | Inter Press Service - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/...raft-circulated-at-last-moment

war & peace arms-control-law Iran Iranian nukes myth Kerry Obama Israel France Saudis whodunnit

shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Nov 15 2013 (IPS) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed a crucial detail Thursday about last week’s nuclear talks with Iran in Geneva that explains much more clearly than previous reports why the meeting broke up without agreement. Lavrov said the United States circulated a draft that had been amended in response to French demands to other members of the six-power P5+1 for approval “literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.” Lavrov’s revelation, which has thus far been ignored by major news outlets, came in a news conference in Cairo Thursday that was largely devoted to Egypt and Syria. Lavrov provided the first real details about the circumstances under which Iran left Geneva without agreeing to the draft presented by the P5+1.
  • The full quote from Lavrov’s press conference is available thanks to the report from Voice of Russia correspondent Ksenya Melnikova. Lavrov noted that unlike previous meetings involving the P5+1 and Iran, “This time, the P5+1 group did not formulate any joint document.” Instead, he said, “There was an American-proposed draft, which eventually received Iran’s consent.” Lavrov thus confirmed the fact that the United States and Iran had reached informal agreement on a negotiating text. He further confirmed that Russia had been consulted, along with the four other powers in the negotiations with Iran (China, France, Germany and the UK), about that draft earlier in the talks –- apparently Thursday night, from other published information. “We vigorously supported this draft,” Lavrov said. “If this document had been supported by all [members of the P5+1], it would have already been adopted. We would probably already be in the initial stages of implementing the agreements that were offered by it.”
  • Then Lavrov revealed for the first time that the U.S. delegation had made changes in the negotiating text that had already been worked out with Iran at the insistence of France without having consulted Russia. “But amendments to [the negotiating draft] suddenly surfaced,” Lavrov said. “We did not see them. And the amended version was circulated literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.” Lavrov implies that the Russian delegation, forced to make a quick up or down decision on the amended draft, did not realise the degree to which it was likely to cause the talks to fail. “At first sight, the Russian delegation did not notice any significant problems in the proposed amendments,” Lavrov said. He made it clear, however, that he now considers the U.S. maneuvre in getting the six powers on board a draft that had been amended with tougher language – even if softened by U.S. drafters — without any prior consultation with Iran to have been a diplomatic blunder.
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  • “[N]aturally, the language of these ideas should be acceptable for all the participants in this process – both the P5+1 group and Iran,” Lavrov said. The crucial details provided by Lavrov on the timing of the amended draft shed new light on Secretary of State John Kerry’s claim in a press conference in Abu Dhabi on Monday of unity among the six powers on the that draft. “We were unified on Saturday when we presented a proposal to the Iranians.” Kerry said, adding that “everybody agreed it was a fair proposal.” Kerry gave no indication of when on Saturday that proposal had been approved by the other five powers, nor did he acknowledge explicitly that it was a draft that departed from the earlier draft agreed upon with Iran. Lavrov’s remarks make it clear that the other members of the group had little or no time to study or discuss the changes before deciding whether to go along with it.
  • Although the nature of the changes in the amended draft remain a secret, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has charged that they were quite far-reaching and that they affected far more of the draft agreement that had been worked out between the United States and Iran than had been acknowledged by any of the participants. In tweets on Tuesday, Zarif, responding to Kerry’s remarks in Abu Dhabi, wrote, “Mr. Secretary, was it Iran that gutted over half of US draft Thursday night?” Zarif’s comments indicated that changes of wording had nullified the previous understanding that had been reached between the United States and Iran on multiple issues.
  • Zarif’s tweet, combined with remarks by President Hassan Rouhani to the national assembly Sunday warning that Iran’s rights to enrichment are “red lines” that could not be crossed, suggests further that the language of the original draft agreement dealing with the “end game” of the negotiating process was also changed on Saturday. Kerry himself alluded to the issue in his remarks in Abu Dhabi, using the curious formulation that no nation has an “existing right to enrich.” One of the language changes in the agreement evidently related to that issue, and it was aimed at satisfying a demand of Israeli origin at the expense of Iran’s support for the draft. Now the Obama administration will face a decision whether to press Iran to go along with those changes or to go back to the original compromise when political directors of the six powers and Iran reconvene Nov. 20. That choice will provide the key indicator of how strongly committed Obama is to reaching an agreement with Iran.
  • Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 13
     
    The article adds more detail than quoted. The picture that emerges is that John Kerry and French foreign minister Laurent Fabius carried water for the Israelis and Saudis to blow up the negotiation at the last moment, after all sides had preliminarily agreed to a text, by substituting a new and very substantially different text without consulting the other P-5+1 members or Iran. That is a down and dirty negotiation tactic; no wonder the negotiation failed. It should be kept in mind that the Israeli and Saudi governments' real goal is not halting Iran's development of a nuclear industry but is instead to persuade or trick the U.S. into bombing Iran back into the Stone Age, as the U.S. did to Iraq in the early 1990s under Emperor Bush 1 with a repeat performance by Emperor Bush II a decade later.  As to Kerry's preposterous claim that no nation has a right to enrich uranium, in reality every nation has that right jus cogens, with the only limitations being on nations that are members of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which nations still retain the right to enrich up to 20 percent as Iran has been doing. Claims to the contrary are either misinformed or mere false propaganda. See http://armscontrollaw.com/2013/11/07/scope-meaning-and-juridical-implication-of-the-npt-article-iv1-inalienable-right/
Paul Merrell

Iran: A Lesson in the Art of Building Confidence « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/the-art-of-building-confidence

war & peace Iranian-nukes-myth Iran-negotiations

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Much of the comment on yesterday’s “decisive step” towards a “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), which will ensure the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program, has been based on the factsheet put out by the White House. I prefer to base a few observations on the Joint Statement made in Lausanne by the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini and Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. We can be sure that Iran has agreed to every word of the Joint Statement. The same cannot be said of the factsheet, which, in a slightly irritated tweet, Zarif characterized as “spin.” The Joint Statement is far less detailed than the fact-sheet. Even so, it is clear that Iran has had the vision to offer the US and EU many years of confidence that Iran is not using its nuclear know-how to acquire nuclear weapons and that Iran is fully respecting its commitments as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That confidence can come both from the unprecedented access to the program that the inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will enjoy and from the thought that no state bent on acquiring nuclear weapons would come close to granting such access.
  • Peter Jenkins was a British career diplomat for 33 years, following studies at the Universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He served in Vienna (twice), Washington, Paris, Brasilia and Geneva. He specialized in global economic and security issues. His last assignment (2001-06) was that of UK Ambassador to the IAEA and UN (Vienna). Since 2006 he has represented the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Partnership, advised the Director of IIASA and set up a partnership, ADRgAmbassadors, with former diplomatic colleagues, to offer the corporate sector dispute resolution and solutions to cross-border problems. He was an associate fellow of the Geneva Centre for Security Policy from 2010 to 2012. He writes and speaks on nuclear and trade policy issues.
Paul Merrell

Israel opened up to ridicule over leaked Iran tapes | The National - 0 views

www.thenational.ae/...idicule-over-leaked-iran-tapes

war & peace Auction 2016 Iranian-nukes-myth Netanyahu Israel-lobby

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Last week, when it became clear he could not muster enough votes in the Senate to block a presidential veto, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu let fly a final punch. He observed that “the overwhelming majority of the American public sees eye-to-eye with Israel”, not their president.But many of those ordinary Americans may be surprised to learn that Mr Netanyahu’s policy on Iran has long been viewed as implausible and counter-productive by his own security officials. That verdict was underscored by the latest disclosures from Ehud Barak, who was defence minister through the critical years of Israel’s lobbying for an attack on Iran. Leaked audio tapes of Mr Barak speaking to biographers suggest that he and Mr Netanyahu pressed unsuccessfully on three occasions, between 2010 and 2012, for the Israeli military to launch a strike. Each time, he says, they were foiled either by the military’s failure to come up with a workable plan or by the reticence of fellow ministers as they heard of the likely fallout.
  • The truth is that Mr Netanyahu does not approve of any agreement. He would prefer an intensification of sanctions, forcing Iran to break free of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and conceal its nuclear research from all scrutiny.Then his warnings would sound more compelling, as would his demands that the US lead an attack on Iran.Above all, Mr Netanyahu wishes to prevent a rapprochement between the US and Tehran, one that might weaken Israel’s hold on Washington’s Middle East policy and increase the pressure for a real peace process with the Palestinians. Mr Barak’s leaked comments, meanwhile, have damaged everyone involved. The former defence minister has been publicly rebuked as a blabbermouth, and Mr Netanyahu derided for being so ineffectual his cabinet spurned him at what he claimed to be the most fateful moment in Israel’s history.
  • But the tapes’ enduring significance – whatever embellishments Mr Barak made in the telling – is that they confirm years of intimations from Israel’s security establishment that it stood firm against Mr Netanyahu’s reckless approach on Iran.From Meir Dagan, the former Mossad spy chief, to Gabi Ashkenazi, the former military chief of staff, Israel’s security elite has hinted loudly that it was blocking Mr Netanyahu’s efforts to provoke regional conflagration. Such was the opposition, one may suspect that even Messrs Netanyahu and Barak began to have doubts. Had they truly believed Israel could be saved only by bombing Iran, would they not have moved mountains to win over the cabinet and defence establishment?More likely, Mr Netanyahu concluded some time ago that Israel had no military option against Iran. So why fight a doomed battle on Iran to the bitter end, further damaging Israel’s frayed ties with Washington?
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  • Last week Israeli media quoted sources close to Mr Netanyahu saying he knew he would lose from the outset but carried on regardless. The goal was to convince the American public, not Democratic legislators.Mr Netanyahu’s current bluster starts to look like it is aimed less at the nuclear deal than at President Obama himself. Is Mr Netanyahu hoping to turn the Iran issue into a doomsday electoral weapon against the Democrats, helping to clear the path into the White House next year for a Republican?That way, Mr Netanyahu may believe he can still emerge the victor, with a new president prepared to push Iran back into the US line of fire.
  • Paul Merrell on 10 Sep 15
     
    The Iranian Nukes Myth as an Israel Lobby effort to elect a Republican President in the U.S.?
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