Source:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/joint-arab-military-force-by-omar-ashour-2015-04

           What Good Is an Arab Military Alliance

                                     By

                             Omar Ashour 

APR 13, 2015

The framework nuclear agreement that Iran and the P-5 (China, Britain, France, Russia, and the United States) plus Germany recently reached represents progress on one major security challenge in the Middle East. But, as some Arab countries move to establish a joint military force, another security question is emerging: Will such an alliance leave the region better or worse off, particularly given today’s growing Sunni-Shia divide?

 

 

A nine-country Saudi-led coalition, which includes Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Jordan, is already carrying out airstrikes against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen – an effort that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei recently declared will end with the Saudis’ “noses [being] rubbed to the soil.” Yet Egypt’s president, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has indicated that the coalition’s mandate may be extended beyond Yemen.

But what is that Mandate?

 

A few objectives can be excluded from the start. For example, post-conflict democratization cannot be the goal, given that Arab regimes lack the credentials or knowhow to craft democracies, and their militaries are neither willing nor able to assist in the process. Similarly, humanitarian intervention can be ruled out, owing not only to most Arab regimes’ lack of experience and inglorious human-rights records, but also because none of the official statements related to the founding of the joint force have remotely suggested that upholding human rights was ever a concern.

 

Stabilization might be an objective, but only if the relevant governments can agree on shared threats and how to address them. They could, for example, take the classic “balance of power/terror” approach, by intervening to undermine the more powerful actor in a conflict, force it to the negotiating table, and dictate the terms of any compromise, thereby ensuring that they benefit from the newly created status quo.

 

But the rise of Arab military coalitions raises serious concerns, not least because the history of Arab-led military interventions – unlike those carried out by the West in places like Bosnia, Kosovo, and even Libya – does not contain any promising precedent. Such interventions were usually aimed at empowering a proxy political force over its military and political rivals, instead of averting humanitarian disaster or institutionalizing a non-violent conflict-resolution mechanism following a war.

 

Egypt’s military intervention in Yemen in the 1960s is a case in point. By late 1965, Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser had sent 70,000 troops in Yemen to support a republican coup against royalist forces. Despite using prohibited chemical weapons against Yemeni guerillas from 1963 to 1967 – a first in an intra-Arab conflict

– Egypt failed to achieve its objectives.

 

On top of its military humiliation, Egypt’s international reputation suffered, with the United Nations General Assembly condemning the Egyptian forces’ use of banned chemical weapons against villages that supported the monarchy.
 The adventure also took a heavy economic toll; by 1965, Egypt had run up a foreign debt of nearly $3 billion, forcing it to add a “defense tax” to finance the Yemen war.

 

The Syria-dominated “Arab Deterrent Force” did not fare much better when it intervened in Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s, failing either to end the brutal fighting or to secure vulnerable Palestinian refugees. After 1982, when the Lebanese government failed to extend the ADF’s mandate, it turned into a purely Syrian military force – one that ended up committing some of the worst atrocities against Palestinian factions and refugees in the so-called “War of the Camps” in 1985.

 

Brief and less complex interventions were also unsuccessful in ending violent crises – and in some cases even exacerbated them. A clear example is the recent Egyptian airstrikes in Libya, which have not only undermined the UN-led peace process in a deeply divided country, but have also empowered the most extreme elements.

 

Of course, history is not a definitive guide to the future; an Arab-led intervention today could turn out very differently. But there is little to indicate that it will; indeed, despite hundreds of Saudi airstrikes on Houthi-controlled military bases and seaports, the rebels continue to advance. If emerging Arab military coalitions are to avoid the mistakes of past interventions, their members must reconsider their approach, including the structural deficiencies that contributed to past failures.

 

Many factors affect the outcome of a military intervention in a civil war, especially if it involves a ground offensive. In particular, Arab leaders should focus on revising the processes by which national-security policy is formulated, improving civil-military relations, providing the relevant training in peacekeeping and peace-building, reforming the political culture, and addressing socio-psychological complexes.

 

If Arab leaders fail to overcome these deficiencies, the latest Arab force could become the Middle East’s newest source of anti-democratic, sectarian-based instability, potentially intensifying the Sunni-Shia conflict. That is the last thing the region needs
 

Omar Ashour

, Senior Lecturer in Security Studies and Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter and an associate fellow at Chatham House, is the author of The De-Radicalization of Jihadists: Transforming Armed Islamist Movements and Collusion to Collision: Islamist-Military Relations in Egypt

 

Source:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2015/04/10/yemen-at-war-the-new-shia-sunni-frontline-that-never-was/

Analysis · Middle East

Yemen at War: The New Shia-Sunni Frontline                         That Never Was

                                  By

                  Catherine Shakdam      

 

April 10, 2015

 

This war in Yemen is not a religious one, but world powers are doing a really good job at turning it into one.
 

(Image: Google Maps)

In utter and complete violation of international law, Saudi Arabia, the world’s most violent and repressive theocracy, declared war on its southern neighbor Yemen, on March 25, 2015, calling on a broad military coalition to lend its support.

Behind Saudi Arabia stands

Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Sudan, the UAE, the U.S., the EU, and Pakistan.

As unsuspecting Yemenis slept in their homes, Saudi Arabia and Co. unleashed a deluge of bombs onto the capital, Sana’a, caring little for the millions of civilians below, intent on crushing their designated enemy, the Houthis.

The new object of the kingdom’s disaffection, the Houthis are a Yemeni rebel group hailing from northern Sa’ada organized under the leadership of Abdel-Malek Al Houthi and have been actively depicted in western and pro-KSA media as the source of all evil, a Shia rebel faction in collusion with Iran, the new enemy to hate and, above all, the new target to destroy.

And while such a narrative could be easily construed as politically charged, the mere manifestation of Saudi Arabia’s paranoiac fear that  Iran might one day ambition to dissolve its mighty Arabian empire, labelling the Houthis as Shia and inferring they represent Yemen’s entire Shia community has only served to fuel negative sectarian sentiment while stripping all Shia in Yemen from their inalienable national civil rights.

The equation has been as follows: Houthis are Shia and therefore all Shia in Yemen are Houthis. Since all Houthis are in alliance with Iran and therefore inherently bad, all Shia in Yemen should be treated with suspicion and eventually neutralized.

While this rhetoric serves the kingdom’s reactionary religious stance, appealing to its radical religious leadership, it has put Yemen and of course all Yemenis in the crossfire of a dangerous debate: freedom of religion. More importantly such a reduction of Yemen’s political, social, and religious makeup is as bias as it is profoundly erroneous.

In the words of famous Irish politician, David Trimble,

 “The dark shadow we seem to see in the distance is not really a mountain ahead, but the shadow of the mountain behind—a shadow from the past thrown forward into our future. It is a dark sludge of historical sectarianism. We can leave it behind us if we wish.”

So what happened in Yemen that the world has felt compelled to revert to religious labeling and shaming in order to advance its political agenda on the ground?

The first element here that needs to be understood is that Saudi Arabia, the main instigator of violence and promoter of hate, is itself defined within the parameters of religious radicalism— in essence, reactionary Sunni Wahhabis are prone to reject anything that does not fall in line with their understanding of the divine. This trait has been amply demonstrated by Riyadh in its brutal and often bloody repression campaign against Shia rights activists in the eastern province of  Qatif.

The arrest and subsequent sentencing to death of Sheikh Nimr Al Nimr stands as testimony to Saudi Arabia’s intolerance towards whoever or whatever is perceived to represent a threat to its authority—religious, political or otherwise.

But back to Yemen….

A Lesson in Religion: What is Zaidism?

To better understand what is at play and truly grasp the tragedy that is unfolding in this once joyous nation of southern Arabia, one needs to go back to the social-religious makeup of Yemen.

Yemen is a Muslim nation. And though Islam acts as the axis upon which the constitution has been weaved, it is important to understand that unlike its northern neighbor Saudi Arabia,

Yemen is at heart a tolerant and religiously inclusive country.

Now, Yemen’s Muslim population can be broken down into two main religious groups: the Sunnis to the south and the Zaidis to the north.

Zaidism, the oldest branch of Shia Islam, carries very little difference to Sunnism—at least not in the sense many might think. Just as Sunni Islam is not Saudi Arabia, Zaidism is not Shia Iran.

Now, about 40 percent of Yemen’s total population is Zaidi. Yemen’s Zaidi tradition dates back to eighth century AD, when the Ummah (Muslim community) was experiencing its first great schism.

Inspired by Imam Hussein’s grandson, Zayd, Zaidis are also known as Fivers and are different in their philosophy from the Twelvers—mainstream Shia Islam.

With a religious tradition stretching back across the centuries, Yemeni Zaidis are hardly an oddity or even a new religious phenomenon as some media have attempted to portray them to be. If the world suddenly woke up to Yemen’s Zaidi character, it is mainly because the religious suddenly appeared as a potent political catalyst, a weapon of opportunity.

Came along the Houthis…. As it happens, the Houthis, a tribal faction from northern Sa’ada organized politically under the denomination, Ansarallah, are Zaidi Muslims. And while they never hid this factor from their identity, their affiliation to Zaidi Islam has been of no consequence when it comes to their political demands.

Like any other political groups in Yemen, the Houthis have defined themselves through their demands, not their faith, as the Saudis and the world would do for them!

While all Houthi tribesmen—not to be confused with the group’s political arm, Ansarallah, since the faction now includes within its ranks Sunnis—are Zaidis, not all Zaidis are Houthis. The Houthis are merely a tribal group within Yemen; they do not speak or represent the whole of Yemen’s Zaidi community. And while the Houthis carry immense weight within Ansarallah, not all Ansarallah members are Houthis. Many of Ansarallah leaders—Ali Al Amad, for example—do not belong to the Houthi tribe.

It is this confusion that has fed the wave of abuses that has befallen Yemen Zaidis and to a greater extent Yemen’s broad Shia community.

As noted by Hawra Zakery, a rights activist with Shia Rights Watch, “Considering the increasing anti-Shia movements in Middle East, it is critical that politicians and media outlets differentiate between militant groups and majority of Shia populations in order to present this minority in a more realistic picture.”

She added, “The Houthis themselves say to aim to speak for the Yemeni people and represent the Yemeni people’s aspirations, beyond religious dogma and such differentiation is critical.”

The Shia Boogeyman

Shia Islam stands now the boogeyman, the twisted religious ideology that everyone is so very scared of. Thing is, no one really knows why. And therein lies an interesting question indeed.

Why is it, for example, that the Houthis continue to be labelled as this “Shia rebel group” when other groups do not enjoy the same flurry of adjectives?  Not even Al Qaida. Why not describe Al Qaida as this Sunni radical/Wahhabi terror group? Or would that be upsetting for Saudi Arabia? Would that automatically entails painting off all Wahhabis and Sunnis for that matter, under the terror brush?

Actually yes it would! And of course that would be unfair, prejudice and above all self-defeating.

Playing religion to fuel negative sentiments and somewhat rationalize violence will only lead to more senseless violence and bloodshed.

And while the world remains at war with Yemen, Shia Rights Watch has rung the alarm, calling on world powers to honor their commitments to international law and human rights and change the pervasive narrative which is tearing Yemen apart from the inside out.

“Freedom of religion is an alienable right. Yemen’s Shia community should not be turned into a political target so that to fit foreign powers’ agenda. People should not have to feel threatened in their religious identity and be turned into easy targets of hate, shun by society as they are members of a minority,” said SRW in a statement.

SRW actually argues that groups such as Al Qaida and ISIS have benefited from the rise of anti-Shia sentiments, both in Yemen and the broader region, as reducing the debate to a framework of Sunni versus Shia fits directly into its politico-religious narrative. The rights groups have not been alone in this assessment.

Marwa Osman, a political analyst and commentator with RT stressed earlier this April that Saudi Arabia’s anti-Shia campaign will carry heavy repercussions throughout the Middle East.

(Image: Shia Rights Watch)

“The violence in Yemen began this month on March fourth when a car bomb exploded outside a stadium in Beitha,”  wrote SRW in its March report, “which resulted in the death of 10 Shias and the wounding of 50 more. This was only the beginning of the casualties as 167 Shias were murdered, and 400 were injured. 143 of the deaths and 350 of the injuries took place on March 20^th when the Islamic State terrorists performed four mosque bombings. This is the first month this year that Yemen has had reported anti-Shia incidents, but the invasion by neighboring Gulf States may bring more casualties. The Arab coalition forces have already begun racking up the civilian casualties, which include a refugee camp, and the invasion cannot end well.”

 

 

More troubling yet, Yemeni Zaidis have been turned away from hospitals in the capital, refused care by doctors on account of their Zaidism over the past few months—yet another manifestation of this new rising hatred politicians and media have fueled and fed.

Hossam Al Hamdi, an administrator at one of Sana’a hospitals said he personally witnessed two incidents when Zaidi  patients were told to leave the premises and seek treatment elsewhere. “There’s been a great deal of tensions within the communities as a lot of people have transferred their political antipathy of the Houthis onto all Yemeni Zaidis … This is really a worrying development as Yemen has never experienced such problems before.”

While Yemen suffered many woes over the years, decades and centuries, sectarianism was never part of the equation. Are we to believe that Yemen Zaidi community, which community has been around since the eighth century suddenly became a potent threat to national security? Or is it that politicians would much rather exploit religion to rationalize very worldly ambitions: money and power.

This war in Yemen is not a religious one, but world powers are doing a really good job at turning it into one.

Let us all remember why Saudi Arabia sent the heavy cavalry in Yemen: oil and control over the world oil route.

Related

Catherine Shakdam

Catherine Shakdam is a political analyst for the Middle East with a special focus on Yemen and radical movements. The Associate Director of the Beirut Center for Middle Eastern Studies, she has contributed her analyses to the Middle East Monitor, Foreign Policy Association, Your Middle East, IslamistGate, Majalla, ABNA, Open Democracy, International Policy Digest, Eurasia Review and many more. A regular commentator on NewsMax and Etijah TV she has also worked as a contributing analyst for Wikistrat and helped oversee several rights campaign in both Yemen and Bahrain. 

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The Iranian Nuclear Program and its Bureaucrat-in-Chief

Source:http://warontherocks.com/2015/04/the-iranian-nuclear-program-and-its-bureaucrat-in-chief/?singlepage=1
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iran/index.html

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    The Iranian Nuclear Program and its                               Bureaucrat-in-Chief

                                  By

                             Aaron Stein   

April 8, 2015 ·

 

 

 

During negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, President Obama repeatedly pressed the intelligence community to make a determinative judgment on the real intentions of Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader. The intelligence community remained divided, however, and failed to come to a consensus on Khamenei’s policy goals.

 

 

Writing in 2009, Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment described Khamenei as “the single most powerful individual in a highly factionalized, autocratic regime” even though “he does not make national decisions on his own.” Instead, Sadjadpour notes, he rules “the country by consensus rather than decree, with his own survival and that of the theocratic system as his top priorities.”

  Based on the few open-source documents (listed on Jeffrey Lewis’ Arms Control Wonk blog and available in FBIS) describing Iran’s nuclear decision-making after it was revealed that Iran had an undeclared nuclear program in August 2002, Iran’s nuclear policies are made by consensus and based on Khamenei’s careful bureaucratic management of Iran’s political factions. As Farzan Sahbet and this author noted, “Analyzing the Islamic Republic of Iran’s fragmented political system is a notoriously difficult task, and Tehranology is at the best of times an imprecise science.” For simplicity, Iran’s most prominent political currents are divided into four categories forming two broad camps: reformists and centrists, who together form the “moderate” camp, and neo- and traditional principalists, who constitute the “conservative” camp.

 

 

These camps were all represented in the deliberations about the direction of Iran’s nuclear policy after the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the civilian arm of the Mujahedin Khalq (MEK), shined a light on the infrastructure supporting Iran’s two nuclear programs in August 2002. (MEK is a terrorist organization working to overthrow the Islamic Republic’s government.) The camps adopted different policies vis-à-vis engagement with the West, albeit with one key exception: all agreed on the need for Iran to maintain its enrichment program, and thereby ensure that its “right to enrich” was not undermined. Iran’s subsequent decision-making reflected the country’s politics. During times of conservative empowerment (2005-2013), Iran grew more combative. By contrast, during times of “moderate” rule (1998-2005; 2013-Present), Iran was more amenable to political compromise on the nuclear issue.


In the latest round of negotiations, Iran’s moderates have the upper hand, which suggests that the United States has an overarching interest in pushing forward with negotiations intended to reach a final agreement to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

 The current Iranian government is moderate in its outlook, which means that the international community has an opportunity to finalize an agreement with robust inspections.

A more conservative government, for example, may balk at the terms required to assure the world that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful.


Moreover, Iran’s commitments – released in a U.S. government fact sheet about the negotiations – further suggest that key Iranian moderates are influencing nuclear decisions and, most importantly, have been able to sway the Supreme Leader to tepidly embrace their positions. Iran has made key concessions that if implemented will severely curtail any conceivable route to the bomb. This position is at odds with Khamenei’s history of support for Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as well as the policies pursued by conservative elements between 2005 and 2013. However, they are in line with Iran’s diplomatic history, suggesting that the route to a successful negotiation started in Tehran.



The Nuclear Program

Iran’s nuclear weapons program began in 1985. Two years later, Khamenei personally led a delegation to Pakistan to procure the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle. A year after, a representative from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp met with a representative from the AQ Khan network in Dubai. Iran ultimately purchased the list of Khan’s European suppliers for specialized centrifuge components, as well as a document detailing the reduction of uranium gas to metal and then the manufacturing of the precise spheres used in the core of a nuclear weapon.


Iran subsequently divided its nuclear program into two. The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) oversaw the civil side of the program and was based at Tehran University and later at the Kalaye Electric facility, where Iran first enriched uranium in 1999. The military’s efforts were separate from the AEOI’s work, and further divided into two components: the first centered on procurement and was based at Sharif University; and the second focused on developing the tools and designs needed to deliver and detonate a nuclear warhead. This program, it appears, was based at Lavizan Shian.


Bureaucratic Politics


After the NCRI revealed much of Iran’s undeclared nuclear infrastructure in August 2002, Khamenei put together a bureaucratic entity dubbed the “Council of Heads” to craft and review Iran’s nuclear policies, particularly as they pertained to the then negotiations with the EU-3. The Council was under the direction of Hassan Rouhani, but included key conservative leaders like Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and the Khamenei-appointed director of the AEOI, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh. This entity balanced the interests of the so-called conservatives and moderates, which thus gives Iranian nuclear researchers a glimpse into the inter-bureaucratic dynamics underpinning the Iranian nuclear negotiating position.


During these debates, Khamenei acted as the bureaucrat-in-chief, and ultimately sought to balance the conflicting proposals put forward by Iran’s differing political factions. From the outset, the moderate camp advocated for a more conciliatory approach to the West, whereas Aghazadeh and Velayati both argued in favor of a more hardline approach. The AEOI’s position, it appears, was based on ignorance and a lack of understanding about the IAEA’s environmental sampling techniques used to detect particles of enriched uranium.
According to Rouhani, the AEOI was “taken aback” by the results of IAEA sampling, before learning that contamination came from the centrifuges purchased from Pakistan. These surprises, in turn, resulted in Rouhani working to bring “all issues involving the nuclear case … under one person’s authority” and his “orders be mandatory for all organizations related to the case.” Having learned this lesson, it stands to reason that the IAEA now serves as a deterrent against Iranian cheating at declared facilities – with the contamination at Sharif University remaining a point of suspicion about a potential military program.


The Foreign Ministry, by contrast, was concerned about the possibility of Iran’s nuclear case being referred to the United Nations Security Council, which would imply indirectly the potential for U.S.-led military action. This debate was taking place months after the United States and its coalition partners easily defeated the Iraqi military during its march to Baghdad, and before the start of the insurgency. Indeed, the United States was at the apex of its power in the region, and thus the speculation that Iran could be next was rife in Western and regional capitals.


Despite this threat, Iran still sought to find a middle ground. The Council never endorsed a plan to end enrichment. Instead, the policy was to pursue a strategy of “suspension,” whereby Iran would retain its nuclear infrastructure after the questions about its nuclear program were resolved.

This suggests that threat of U.S. military action, while a salient factor in these early negotiations, was second to that of Iran’s steadfast insistence on maintaining some semblance of an enrichment program.


This position was ultimately reflected in the language in the 2004 Paris Agreement, which entailed Iran “suspending” enrichment and conversion, but not an Iranian commitment to give up its enrichment program. Khamenei’s actions during this period suggest that he was the final arbiter on Iran’s nuclear policy. However, that policy was shaped during debates in the Council of Heads. Between 2003 and 2005, Khamenei sought to balance the moderate and conservatives factions’ against one another and ultimately endorsed a middle ground, whereby he agreed to suspend enrichment and conversion, albeit while keeping elements of the military program in place.


Khamenei’s deference to the moderate position shifted in 2004, owing to the empowerment of the Iranian conservative movement, and the eventual election of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thereafter, Iran’s position began to reflect the more conservative members on the Council of Heads; ultimately resulting in Iran restarting its enrichment program in 2006. This policy shift took place at a time when the U.S. military option had not yet been discredited. This suggests that domestic politics drive Iran’s decision-making calculus – and therefore Iran’s willingness to cooperate after the 2013 election of Rouhani is indicative of the empowerment of Iran’s moderates over that of the conservative movement.





The Return of the Moderates


The United States was caught off-guard when Hassan Rouhani beat the Khamenei-favored Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf in the 2013 election. During the campaign, Iran’s moderates endorsed reaching a nuclear agreement with the P5+1. Following Rouhani’s victory, Khamenei authorized the negotiations by calling for “heroic flexibility” and labeling Javad Zarif, Iran’s Foreign Minister, and his negotiating team as “children of the Revolution.” Iran’s position during the recent multi-staged negotiations was similar to that of its position in 2003.


Enrichment remained the one red line, but in a similar position to that of the Foreign Ministry between 2003 and 2005, the Iranian side was far more willing to make serious concessions.
There are three key differences from Iran’s previous moderate-led negotiations. First, as of 2014, Iran had installed some 19,000 centrifuges under vacuum of which about 10,000 were actually enriching uranium. Second, during the Ahmadinejad presidency, Iran decided to build a secret centrifuge facility, near the city of Qom. The facility is buried under a mountain and is impervious to all but the latest version of U.S. penetrating munitions. Third, within the latest iteration of Iran’s internal bureaucratic debates, the 2003 Khatami position favoring greater transparency appears to have won out.


Balanced against these key challenges has been the centralization of Iran’s nuclear file. Rouhani, speaking in 2005, notes that before the revelation in August 2002 that the program was fragmented and few people inside Iran had a complete understanding of Iran’s nuclear research. This admission further suggests that there was, in fact, two centrifuge programs in Iran. Centralization, in turn, has streamlined Iran’s negotiating position and may explain why the position long-held by Iran’s moderates were reflected in the U.S. fact sheet.




The Agreement and the Challenges

These political changes – and the proposed policy fixes – are evident in the U.S. drafted fact sheet on the parameters of the final agreement the two parties will try to reach before the end of June. Iran has agreed to reduce the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz to ensure that the time needed to enrich a reduced stockpile of low enriched uranium to 90% would be greater than or equal to one year. To do so, Iran will decrease the number of centrifuges installed at Natanz to 5,104. The key P5+1 concession, it appears, is the allowance of 1,000 centrifuges at Fordow, while requiring Iran to remove fissile material from the site and mandating that the installed centrifuges don’t spin uranium hexafluoride gas – and thus will not be producing enriched uranium at the site.



Instead, per Zarif’s comments on the subject, the facility will be upgraded with an unnamed P5+1 member state to produce medical isotopes, which probably entails only a select number of the 1,000 centrifuges on site separating non-fissile isotopes for medical purposes. Similarly, the U.S. fact sheet indicates the core of Iran’s heavy water reactor, the IR-40, will be replaced to decrease the amount of plutonium produced from the fuel rods. Moreover, in a concession that the United States has been trying to wrangle from Iran for close to five decades, the agreed framework includes an Iranian agreement to forego reprocessing.


To further protect against the threat of Iranian “sneak-out,” whereby Iran could try and construct a secret facility to enrich uranium, the U.S. fact sheet calls for inspections in centrifuge machine shops and, critically, the monitoring of Iran’s uranium mines and uranium conversion facility. These twin provisions, once enforced, will allow for the IAEA to monitor the complete front-end of Iran’s nuclear fuel cycle – and thereby ensure with a level of credibility that Iran cannot produce centrifuges in secret, syphon off uranium converted at the conversion facility, and then enrich it in an undisclosed location. These inspections, when paired with the conversion of Arak and the agreement not to reprocess, deprive Iran of any conceivable route to acquiring the necessary fissile material (enrich uranium or separated plutonium) to construct a nuclear weapon.



The potential problems stem from the pace and sequencing of sanctions relief, which appears tied to Iran’s on-going discussions with the International Atomic Energy Agency about the allegations surrounding its previous weapons-related experiments. The sequencing and pace of sanctions relief remains the biggest obstacle to the drafting of a final accord. The two sides have never been closer to signing a comprehensive agreement that would address the international community’s justifiable concerns about Iran’s nuclear program. The framework – should it be finalized – is robust and includes hitherto never implemented inspection provisions to ensure that Iran cannot cheat and surreptitiously develop nuclear weapons.


The available evidence indicates that Khamenei remains Iran’s bureaucrat-in-chief and is taking his cues from the moderates beneath him. Enrichment remains a key red line, but at least for now the faction within Iran advocating for greater transparency has the political weight within the bureaucracy to conclude an agreement with robust nonproliferation provisions.

The critical test is still to come. Iran still has to finalize the agreed upon framework. There is little doubt that the sanctions issue will remain difficult to overcome. But there is indication that both sides have sufficient political will to overcome this decades old problem. This political will, in turn, stems from the empowerment of Iranian moderates, who have long advocated for an agreement with P5+1, but lacked the bureaucratic influence to convince the Supreme Leader.
 


Aaron Stein is a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy and an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.




Source
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2015/iran-150407-voa02.htm?_m=3n%2e002a%2e1387%2eka0ao00b2h%2e19uh

      Obama:

   Iran Could Build Bomb After 13 Years

In-Depth Coverage  

 

by VOA News April 07, 2015

President Barack Obama said Iran would be kept at least a year away from being able to build a nuclear weapon for more than a decade due to a framework deal agreed upon last week. However, he conceded Tuesday the buffer period shrinks to almost nothing after 13 or more years.


Obama, defending an emerging deal agreed to by Iran and six world powers, was pushing back against critics' claims that the deal fails to eliminate the risk because it allows Iran to keep enriching uranium.


The president told the American news media organization NPR that Iran's capabilities will be capped for a decade at 300 kilograms - not enough to convert to a stockpile of weapons-grade material.


Justified concerns could rise in years 13 to 15, Obama said, when Iran could use 'advanced centrifuges that enrich uranium fairly rapidly, and at that point, the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.'



Breakout time

Breakout time refers to how long it would take to build a nuclear bomb if Iran decided to pursue one full-bore - in other words, how long the rest of the world would have to stop it. The framework deal expands Iran's breakout time - currently two to three months - to at least a year. But that constraint would stay in place only for 10 years, at which point some restrictions would start phasing out.


The admission comes as Obama seeks to sell the framework deal to critics and quiet a growing chorus questioning whether the deal his administration, along with other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany, have negotiated merely delays the certainty of a nuclear-armed Iran. Obama has insisted that Iran will not produce a nuclear weapon on his watch, which ends in roughly 20 months, but has made no similar assurances about his successors.


'The option of a future president to take action if in fact they try to obtain a nuclear weapon is undiminished,' he said.


Israeli concerns

Obama also rejected a call by Israel that any final nuclear agreement with Iran include a 'clear and unambiguous Iranian commitment of Israel's right to exist.'

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had issued the demand Friday while strongly criticizing the framework nuclear deal reached last Thursday at talks in Switzerland.

In the NPR interview, Obama said, 'The notion that we would condition Iran not getting nuclear weapons in a verifiable deal on Iran recognizing Israel is really akin to saying that we won't sign a deal unless the nature of the Iranian regime completely transforms. And that is, I think, a fundamental misjudgment.

'We want Iran not to have nuclear weapons precisely because we can't bank on the nature of the regime changing. That's exactly why we don't want to have nuclear weapons. If, suddenly, Iran transformed itself to Germany or Sweden or France, then there would be a different set of conversations about their nuclear infrastructure,' he said.

Israel insists the framework nuclear agreement reached last week in Switzerland threatens its survival and Netanyahu has said he would press U.S. lawmakers not to give Tehran 'a free path to the bomb.'


Netanyahu, Congress

In appearances on U.S. television on Sunday, Netanyahu said he has discussed the issue with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress - nearly two-thirds of House of Representatives members and a similar number in the U.S. Senate.

Obama said the framework nuclear deal reached with Iran was a 'good deal' that was reached through 'tough, principled diplomacy.'

The framework deal reached last week is aimed at providing relief from international sanctions in exchange for curbing Tehran's nuclear program. The agreement followed months of intensive talks - the latest round in Lausanne, Switzerland - and sets the stage for a final agreement to be completed by June 30, a deadline the sides have set for themselves.

Iran's President Hassan Rouhani has vowed that Iran will honor all of its pledges in the agreement 'as long as the other side honors its promises as well.'

Obama also said in the NPR interview released Tuesday that the U.S. and European negotiators are trying to reach a deal with Iran in which sanctions could be reimposed without a U.N. Security Council vote, where Tehran-ally Russia could exercise its veto power.

"We are absolutely convinced we can do it again," Obama said of the international sanctions, which have crippled Iran's economy.

He said a reimposition of sanctions would be triggered if the International Atomic Energy Agency were to find Tehran violating the agreement.

Meanwhile, about 200 Iranian hard-liners rallied against the framework deal struck last week, the official IRNA news agency reported Tuesday.

The rally coincided with a closed session of parliament during which Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who led Iran's negotiating team at the talks, appeared before lawmakers to explain the agreement.

The gathering of hard-liners took place in front of parliament in Tehran without permission by authorities, IRNA reported. Protesters carried banners calling the agreement a "defeat" - despite the establishment's overwhelming support of the framework deal, including by Rouhani.

Some material for this report came from Reuters and AP.