Monthly Archives: November 2013

Britain, Government, Iran, United Nations, United States

The Iranian deal exposes concerns but it’s worth the risk…

GENEVA AGREEMENT

Whilst the initial period of the Geneva agreement lasts only six months, and much of what has been agreed is based on trust, there is no doubt that Iran could have been in a position to assemble a nuclear device by next summer. Even a modest hiatus in its atomic preparations should be embraced as it pretty much ensures Israel will take no precipitate action.

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The interim agreement is a good way of testing if Iran can be trusted to keep its word. Tehran has agreed to give UN and IAEA inspectors’ better access to its reprocessing facilities, a promise that will be difficult to fudge or renege on without exposing bad faith or some covert hidden agenda. Critics are right in their assertions that the accord does nothing to dismantle Tehran’s capability to process weapons grade uranium whenever it wants, but securing the right to inspect the regime’s nuclear plants is a necessary and vital concession. This establishes a clear diplomatic tripwire that Tehran crosses at its peril.

There is, though, still much to worry about in this deal. The Iranian economy has been brought to its knees by western sanctions and the regime has been more than desperate to win a respite to mollify internal dissent and unrest. In many ways, President Hassan Rouhani has achieved that objective at comparatively modest cost, and has subsequently strengthened the grip of Iran’s religious dictatorship.

Israeli fears are well known in letting Iran off the hook. But others, too, notably Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, have greeted the Geneva agreement with stony silence. They fear that a diplomatic win for Tehran will strengthen the resolve even further of President Assad in Syria, Iran’s client state and political ally.

On the balance of things, the Geneva deal should be deemed a worthy risk. Tehran has felt the full throttle of western sanctions and the sharpness of its teeth. It must also realise that having offered Iran diplomatic concessions and held Israel in check, President Obama will have no option but to take punitive military action if Iran reneges on its nuclear promises.

The onus in turning this interim deal into something permanent is now on Barack Obama and William Hague, Britain’s Foreign Secretary. Their job will be to tame and dismantle Tehran’s nuclear threat once and for all. Any final agreement must see Iran disband its tens of thousands of uranium processing centrifuges – far more than is needed for any purely civilian atomic energy programme. Iran’s plant for making plutonium – which can only have a military intent – must also be dismantled. It would also make sense for Tehran to dispose of the excessive amounts of low enriched uranium it already possesses – enough to make at least six atomic bombs if those stocks were sufficiently enriched to weapons grade material.

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Government, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Politics, United Nations, United States

The Geneva agreement between the U.S. and Iran…

INTERIM DEAL

The interim deal between the United States and Iran has made significant progress that will halt the advancement of the Iranian nuclear program, but it is also weak in some important respects.

The deal makes no mention of potential military action if Iran does not live up to its obligations. However, the deal is a ground-breaking agreement that will attempt to resolve longstanding concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The interim deal ties Tehran to an ongoing diplomatic process whose primary rewards remain deferred until a far more ambitious and comprehensive agreement can be achieved.

Describing the agreement as an ‘initial, six-month deal’, President Obama said it includes ‘substantial limitations’ that will deter Iran from creating a nuclear weapon.

U.S. negotiators said the deal addresses Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and its existing enriched uranium stockpiles, but details on this remain unclear. It also dealt with Iran’s centrifuges, a component part needed which can enrich uranium for fuel for a bomb, and its ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium using the Arak reactor.

Mr Obama, both in his televised statement to the nation and the fact sheet issued by the White House, committed to no additional nuclear-related sanctions against Iran as long as Iran abides by it. Many in Congress, though, have said new sanctions are necessary to make sure Iran abandons what they consider a path toward developing nuclear weapons. Others say that whilst they share Mr Obama’s desire to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran through diplomacy continuity for stronger sanctions against Iran is still needed to make sure diplomacy succeeds. Bipartisan legislation is expected in the United States that will impose tough new economic sanctions if Iran undermines the interim accord or if the dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is not underway by the end of the six-month period.

For some, the interim deal provides the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism with billions of dollars of cash in exchange for cosmetic concessions which will neither freeze nor significantly roll-back its nuclear infrastructure.

Whilst there is also a perception that this is a deal that reflects Iran buckling under the weight of international sanctions which has truly bowed to global pressure, there is also a risk of the final deal being buttressed if factors such as a hard deadline for a final agreement is pursued, a caveat previously imposed by the United Nations Security Council. The UN has passed multiple resolutions demanding that Iran suspend its production of nuclear fuel, with a threat of military force if terms are not met.

Contentiously, before the deal in Geneva had been announced, Iranian officials said that any interim deal must declare production of nuclear fuel as an ‘Iranian sovereign right’. But even limited enrichment facilities will allow Iran to still be in a position to build all the elements to acquire a nuclear infrastructure without ever actually turning it on. The permission to enrich will ensure that the Iranian nuclear program remains an international issue for many years.

ISRAEL

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now appears to have little choice but to accept this deal that he has derided as deeply flawed.

Mr Netanyahu believes the six-month deal leaves Iran’s military nuclear capabilities largely intact, while giving Iran relief from painful economic sanctions, undermining negotiations on the next stage. At the same time, Israel’s strongest piece of leverage, the threat of a military strike on Iran, seems to be out of the question despite Netanyahu’s insistence it would remain on the table. Mr Netanyahu has referred to the deal as a ‘historic mistake.’

He said Israel was not bound by the agreement, and reiterated Israel’s right to ‘defend itself by itself,’ a veiled reference to a possible military strike against Iran.

Mr Netanyahu has spent years warning the world against the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, calling it an existential threat due to Iranian references to Israel’s destruction, its support of hostile militant groups on Israel’s borders and its development of missiles capable of reaching Israel and beyond.

Israel also believes that a nuclear-armed Iran will provide militant groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah an ‘umbrella’ of protection that will embolden them to carry out attacks.

Netanyahu had said that any deal must ensure that Iran’s enriching of uranium — a key step toward making a nuclear bomb — must end. He also said all enriched material should be removed from the Islamic Republic, and called for the demolition of a plutonium reactor under construction.

A deal that would satisfy Israel was never likely from the outset due to differing ‘red lines’ between Israel and the U.S.

While Israel sees any enrichment as a cause for concern, the U.S. was willing to tolerate nuclear development as long as it was unable to produce weapons.

U.S. negotiators have said that the relief from sanctions was minimal and that the most biting economic measures, including sanctions on Iran’s vital oil industry, remained in place and more could be imposed if Iran fails to follow through.

Israel’s relationship with the U.S. will be critical as it conducts peace talks with the Palestinians in the coming months. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is mediating the talks, has set an April target date for reaching an agreement, and there is widespread speculation that the Americans will step up their involvement as the deadline approaches. Given this, Israel’s main card – military action against Iran – appears to be out of the question despite some hard hitting Israeli rhetoric on the Geneva agreement.

Enrichment is at the heart of the dispute because it can be used for peaceful purposes or for producing a nuclear bomb. Tehran insists its nuclear program is for civilian usage such as energy production and for use in medical treatment.

Uranium at low levels of enrichment, up to 20 percent, is used in research or generating electricity. Uranium must be enriched to a far higher level — above 90 percent — to produce a warhead. So far, Iran is not known to have produced any at that level, but Israel argues that the technology for doing so is the same as that for enriching at lower levels.

Under the compromise, enrichment would be capped at the 5 percent level, and Iran’s stockpile of 20 percent uranium would be ‘neutralised,’ effectively preventing it from reaching weapons-grade level. Also construction on the plutonium reactor is to be suspended. The White House also promised ‘intrusive monitoring’ of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Israel says any enriched uranium in Iranian hands is potentially dangerous, since its centrifuges can quickly convert it to weapons grade. Israel believes that Iran’s ability to keep its nuclear infrastructure intact will allow it to quickly resume the program if the talks fail.

In all, about 250 kilograms (550 pounds) of highly enriched uranium is needed to make a weapon. Iran already has about 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of enriched uranium.

The Geneva accord is not all bad for Israel, since Iran is deemed to have capped enrichment activity and slowed construction of the plutonium reactor. However, Iran’s ability to ‘break out and make a nuclear explosive device does remain intact, and is a concern being expressed by Israeli officials.

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Arts, Government, History, Politics, Society, United States

John F. Kennedy and his legacy 50-years on…

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

The reputations of presidents’ are based on a number of factors, but luck plays a significant part – not just in terms of what happens while they are in office, but also the luck of who writes their biographies once they have gone. Wars, for example, give presidents a boost, whilst, conversely, any financial crises will have the reverse effect.

The pre-eminent political biographer, Robert Caro, delivered a monumental multivolume labour of love that has, in many respects, redeemed the reputation of Lyndon B. Johnson. Some may deduce that LBJ emerges as the luckiest president of the past century.

Robert Caro’s LBJ depicts and portrays an ultimate fixer, a politician who knew better than anyone how to get his way in the challenging and demanding burrow and nest of Washington. Because of how Caro has written, it’s Johnson’s guile that people look to when they ask how President Obama could do better in his dealings with Congress.

But, as the established stock of LBJ has risen, John F. Kennedy has become the man who merely talked about the transformative legislative programme that Johnson himself turned into reality. In the long shadow cast by LBJ, Kennedy is perceived as a glamorous but slight figure, a crowd-pleasing president who was brave, attractive and ambitious, yet ultimately ineffectual. On the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, many of his admirers are trying to reverse this image. For example, Caro focuses on foreign policy, which was Kennedy’s strength and Johnson’s weakness. LBJ’s achievements were undoubtedly domestic; Caro, as yet, has failed to explain the terrible mess Johnson made of Vietnam. Caro’s ‘unfinished’ biography will surely have to tell in some future volume the tragic coda of this calamitous episode.

The presidency of John F. Kennedy ended just as he was finding ways to move beyond the stagnant and terrifying philosophical logic of cold war confrontation that had taken the world to the brink of catastrophe in the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963, it looked as though Kennedy had stumbled on the path to a more peaceful future. Johnson was the man who departed from it.

During the last year of his life Kennedy’s quest for safer relations with the Russians is evidenced from the speeches Kennedy gave in the summer of 1963 about war, peace and the means of moving from one to the other. The Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), a nuclear arms control agreement that Kennedy signed into law in October 1963, was probably his proudest achievement of his presidency up to that point.

Some commentators may suggest this was a sure indicator of things to come, the first step towards a stable and secure coexistence between the superpowers. Others, like economists, may treat Kennedy as a moral visionary, but economists are not historians. A man, they say, who possessed the gifts of oratory and character that was able to change to change the course of history at this perilous juncture is based on two questionable assumptions.

The first is that treaties matters. The LTBT was only what it said it was: limited. It specifically prohibited further nuclear testing in space or underwater but clearly permitted it underground. The treaty had been watered down from something more comprehensive, first by Russian qualms about international oversight and then by the misgivings of the US joint chiefs about the government of Nikita Khrushchev. Charles de Gaulle refused to sign it.

Arguing, though, that it was a landmark moment (as opposed to changing the course of history) is probably better placed. The treaty certainly signalled that the US and the Soviets could agree on something substantial. It also showed that a US president could get such an agreement passed the Senate, which had a tendency of shooting down plans for peace. We should look no further than from all of that which followed-on from the failure of Woodrow Wilson to get the Senate to ratify the League of Nations in 1919, a deficiency that continually haunted Kennedy. Kennedy did, however, secure ratification of the LTBT by an impressive margin of 80 votes to 19. This subsequently opened the door to the creation and ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which was approved by the Senate in 1969 and has been vital in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons around the world.

The contention that speeches actually matter is highly dubious. In his book, ‘To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace’, by Jeffrey Sachs, the author believes that Kennedy’s oratory in 1963 – above all the ‘peace speech’ he delivered in Washington, DC, on 10 June that year – was crucial in persuading Russia’s leaders, US politicians and people all over the world that the time was right for a sea change in international affairs. Whilst Sachs talks up Kennedy’s logic with beauty and how it had the power to move, he provides no evidence that such rhetoric made the vital difference. Are we to conclude that just because Kennedy said it was time for peace the Soviets quickly signed a peace treaty? Sachs does infer that such a treaty came into being because they had been persuaded by what Kennedy had said.

The near calamity of the Cuban missile crisis is recognised as persuading both sides to look for alternatives. However, we should not take for granted that this took the form of turning away from war to peace. It wasn’t so much the risk of Armageddon, but the temporary loss of control that terrorised both sides. The LTBT and NPT were ways of reasserting control as the two superpowers had struggled for something to cling onto as they moved wearily about in the dark without direction. The treaties may have limited the ability of others to get nuclear weapons but it didn’t stop the superpowers from ramping up their own arsenals or persistently pursuing proxy wars around the globe.

Kennedy’s decision to focus on foreign affairs in 1963 was not without cost. It came at the expense of doing other, equally urgent things. The last 100 days in office encompassed both sides of Kennedy; the statesman and chancer on the one hand, the moralist and opportunist on the other.

Other commentators like Thurston Clarke in his book, ‘An Intimate Portrait of a Great President’, also celebrate Kennedy’s great achievement in getting the LTBT passed the Senate but suggests it was done by calling in political favours that could not then get cashed in elsewhere. Forcing the treaty through, for example, came at the expense of a concerted push on civil rights legislation. Clarke says that was a choice between ‘ethics and history’ with Kennedy, a vain, and when he needed to be, a cold-hearted man, choosing history. He was known to weigh himself after every swim, terrified that he was turning into a jowly, middle-aged man. Kennedy’s charm could be turned on and off like a light switch.

Nevertheless, like most commentators Clarke is convinced that this was a great man cut down at the moment of his greatest potential. He insists that Kennedy would have enacted his own comprehensive civil rights legislation in his second term, and argues that Kennedy had seen the folly of his Vietnam escapade and was determined to get out. He was just waiting for the right moment, which would come with his re-election.

The plausibility of this must be questioned. Presidents invariably think they will achieve in their second term what they failed to do in their first but it rarely happens like that. Kennedy’s mantra in 1963 was talked up as being what he was going to do ‘after 1964’ but he was also a well-established ditherer who made sure there was always a get-out clause. There is no evidence, for instance, that he knew how to get round the openly racist Southern bloc in the Senate. In 1963, he sounded more like someone who had parked comprehensive civil rights legislation than a politician who knew how to accomplish it. The day after his peace speech, he gave a powerful talk on civil rights – but he also told black civil rights leaders that they should learn to be more like the Jews and focus on education as the path to improvement.

Clarke cites as evidence of how much Kennedy meant to people and how much his passing mattered. In an unsentimental age, when it was unusual to shed tears in public (and unthinkable for many men), so many cried when they heard of the president’s assassination. According to a Gallup survey 53 per cent of Americans had wept in the days following his death. They shed tears because ordinary people felt a connection and shared a feeling that his death represented the loss of some unspoken promise.

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