"No nation has ever been coerced into giving up a nuclear
programme, but many have been convinced to do so by the disappearance of the
threat."
China, Russia want
more diplomacy: China said on Tuesday the Iranian nuclear standoff could
still be defused through negotiations without a showdown in the United Nations,
and urged countries to intensify efforts for a diplomatic compromise. China voted for an IAEA resolution on
Iran because it believed that decision would encourage further talks, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters in Beijing. "There are severe difficulties and
complex circumstances, but nonetheless we still believe there's still space to
appropriately resolve the Iran nuclear issue through negotiations," he
said. "The international community shouldn't
abandon such diplomatic efforts," he added, urging "restraint and
patience".
Russia's foreign minister warned against threatening Iran over its
nuclear program Monday after Defense Secretary Rumsfeld reportedly agreed with
a German interviewer that all options,
including military response, remained on the table. FM Sergey Lavrov called for talks to
continue with Tehran. http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2006/2/7/95916/18150
Obviously, everyone, China and Russia included, is motivated by an
Iranian oil threat. But the Bush
administration continues to push the diplomatic buttons towards conflict. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, some
wondered if they weren’t playing a diplomatic game of chicken designed to force
Saddam to flee. He didn’t. The Iranians have taken a similar
position, only they have the oil card Saddam did not.
–kwc
Fear of U.S. Drove Iran's Nuclear Policy
Gareth Porter, Inter
Press Service News Agency, Feb. 07 2006
WASHINGTON - The
George W. Bush administration's adoption of a policy of threatening to use
military force against Iran disregarded a series of official
intelligence estimates going back many years that consistently judged Iran's fear of a U.S. attack to
be a major motivating factor in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials who
were directly involved in producing CIA estimates on Iran revealed in separate
interviews with IPS that the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on Iran
have consistently portrayed its concerns about the military threat posed by the
United States as a central consideration in Tehran's pursuit of a nuclear
weapons capability.
Paul
Pillar, who managed
the writing of all NIEs on Iran from 2000 to 2005 as the national intelligence
officer for the Near East and South Asia, told IPS that all of the NIEs on Iran
during that period addressed the Iranian fears of U.S. attack explicitly and
related their desire for nuclear weapons to those fears. "Iranian
perceptions of threat, especially from the United States and Israel, were not
the only factor," Pillar said, "but were in our judgment part of what
drove whatever effort they were making to build nuclear weapons."
Pillar
said the dominant view of the intelligence community in the past three years
has been that Iran would seek a nuclear weapons capability, but analysts have
also considered that a willingness on the part of Washington to reassure Iran
on its security fears would have a significant effect on Iranian policy.
Pillar said one of the things analysts have taken into
account is Iran's May 2003 proposal to the Bush administration to negotiate on
its nuclear option and its relationship with Hezbollah and other anti-Israel
groups as well as its own security concerns. "It was seen as an indicator of Iran's willingness to
engage," he said.
A second theme in the NIEs, alongside the emphasis on
Iranian fears of U.S. military intentions, was Iran's aspiration to be
the "dominant regional superpower" in the Persian Gulf. However, the estimates suggested that the Iranian regime
would not pursue that aspiration through means that would jeopardise the
possibility of a relationship with the United States.
Ellen
Laipson, now
president of the Henry L. Stimson Centre in Washington, managed three or four
NIEs on Iran as national intelligence officer for the Near East from 1990 to
1993, and closely followed others as vice chair of the National Intelligence
Council from 1997 to 2002.
In an interview with IPS, she said the Iranian fear of an
attack by the United States has long been "a standard element" in
NIEs on Iran.
Laipson said she was "virtually certain the
estimates linked Iran's threat perceptions to its nuclear programme". She added, however, that she was
not directly involved in preparation of NIEs that focused exclusively on Iran's
nuclear programme, as distinct from overall assessments of Iranian intentions
and capabilities.
Laipson said the intelligence analysts had a "fairly
consistent understanding" of Iranian perceptions of threat. "We could
tell they were afraid of the U.S. both from their behaviour and from their
public statements," Laipson recalled. The acuteness of those Iranian fears
of U.S. attack fluctuated over time, she said, in response to different
developments.
The 1991 Gulf War, in which U.S. forces destroyed most of
the Iraqi army, caused the Iranians to become much more concerned about U.S.
military intentions, according to some scholarly analyses of Iranian thinking,
because of the awareness that the same thing could happen to Iran.
The aggressive stance of the Bush administration toward Iran
again increased Iranian fears of a U.S. attack. In early 2002, a secret
Pentagon report to Congress on its "Nuclear Posture Review" named
Iran as one of seven countries against which nuclear weapons might be used
"in the event of surprising military developments". The report was
obtained by defence analyst William Arkin, who revealed its contents in the Los
Angeles Times on Jan. 26, 2002.
Five days later, Pres. Bush referred to Iran in his State of
the Union address as being part of an "axis of evil", along with Iraq
and North Korea. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction," he said,
"these regimes pose a grave and growing danger."
Although it did not refer directly to fears of the United
States, a declassified letter from the CIA to Senate Intelligence Committee
Chairman Bob Graham on Apr. 8, 2002 alluded to the linkage between Iranian
perceptions of threats and its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The letter stated, "There appears to be broad consensus
among Iranians that they live in a highly dangerous region and face serious
external threats to their government, prompting us to assess that Tehran will
pursue missile and WMD technologies indefinitely as critical means of national
security."
The letter then suggested that the external threats were
focused largely on the United States, adding that "persistent suspicion of U.S. motives
will help preserve the broad consensus among Iran's political elite and public
for the pursuit of missile and WMD technologies as a matter of critical
national security".
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the spokesman for
the Iranian government stated that, in a "unipolar world", Iran had
to have policy that would avoid war with the United States.
That
preoccupation with averting a U.S. attack cut both ways: it forced the Iranian leaders to seek a
political-diplomatic accommodation with the United States, as illustrated by
its cooperation with the United States in Afghanistan after 9/11, and its offer
of broad negotiations on all major issues between the two countries in 2003. But
when the United States failed to respond to those efforts, it also strengthened
the argument for pressing ahead with a nuclear option.
Joseph Cirincione, a non-proliferation specialist at the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, told IPS that an
analysis that links Iran's security concerns about the United States have
driven its quest for nuclear weapons would be consistent with the history of
other nations' policies toward acquiring nuclear weapons.
"No nation has ever
been coerced into giving up a nuclear programme," he said, "but many have been convinced to do so by the
disappearance of the threat."
Cirincione cited three former Soviet republics,
Argentina and Brazil, South Africa and Libya as examples of countries that decided to give up nuclear
weapons only after fundamental international or internal changes eliminated the
primary security threat driving their nuclear programmes.
*Gareth Porter is an historian and national
security policy analyst. His latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance
of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in June 2005.
(END/2006)
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32068
