Other writing

Sorry that this blog has been silent for more than a week.

If you want to read my most recent blog posts, then check out these links:

On August 14, I posted about "China's energy future" on the e-ir blog, Climate Politics: IR and the Environment.

At Duck of Minerva on August 5, I blogged "Another Iran Data Point." A former CIA Director (under W) says a strike on Iran "seems inexorable."

July 28, I posted "Identifying Groupthink," which pointed out some additional hypocrisy exhibited by Journolist critics.

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What Iranian nuclear program?

This is all over the blogosphere, but I wanted to save the link for myself. The latest official National Intelligence Estimate for Iran (public version) says that Iran is NOT developing a nuclear weapon. They stopped military work years ago:

We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program

Because Iran has a uranium enrichment program, the NIE also says this in the following clause: "we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

More conclusions:

We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon.

Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we judged previously.

As Patrick Jackson notes, this part of the NIE is interesting given what the US has been saying about Iran's President these past two years:

Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs. This, in turn, suggests that some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might—if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible—prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.

We just might get a negotiated solution yet.

It seems quite unlikely now that the U.S. could muster a case for war before the end of the Bush administration.


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Quacks

As previously announced, I have been posting international relations material at the Duck of Minerva group blog:

Tonight, I posted "Iran, the IAEA and the US."

Thursday, November 1, I posted "Forced assignments." It discusses the Iraq-related revolt of the diplomats at the Department of State.

Friday, October 26, I posted a "Link roundup." it discusses some interesting reading from around the web. Go there and you'll find links to noteworthy posts or articles about Iran, Iraq, Syria and baseball.

On Tuesday, October 23, I posted "O Captain! my Captain!" The post is about a recent newspaper article written by 12 former US Army Captains who are unhappy about the war in Iraq.

October 21, a Sunday, I posted "Escalation: Turkey enters the war?" Yes, it is about Iraqi Kurdistan and its relations with neighboring Turkey.


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"That's yesterday's tape"

For the title of this post, I've quoted a line from "Groundhog Day," the classic Bill Murray movie about a guy who discovers that he's literally reliving the same day of his life -- again and again. In the film, everyone around the main character says and does the same thing every day unless he changes the pattern.

Study President George W. Bush's August 28 speech before the American Legion and you might start to think he's playing "yesterday's tape" when discussing American foreign policy.

The speech setting and content are reminiscent of Vice President Dick Cheney's VFW speech in August 2002. Indeed, many of the President's claims about Iran sound eerily familiar to those who recall the buildup to the Iraq war.

Specifically, didn't Bush give much the same speech on October 7, 2002, in Cincinnati, Ohio?

Nuclear threats

Bush, October 2002:

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.....America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Bush, August 2007:

Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.

Regime change

Bush, 2002:

regime change in Iraq is the only certain means of removing a great danger to our nation.

Bush 2007:

We seek an Iran whose government is accountable to its people -- instead of to leaders who promote terror and pursue the technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.

War

Bush, October 2002:

The time for denying, deceiving, and delaying has come to an end. Saddam Hussein must disarm himself -- or, for the sake of peace, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.

Bush, 2007:

Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.

For those not following the larger story all that closely, Iran signed a "significant" deal with the IAEA this past summer -- and the US is nonetheless trying to get other major powers to increase sanctions and pressure.

To those who recall IAEA and UNMOVIC inspections in 2002-03, this too may sound familiar.


Hat tip: Glenn Greenwald.


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Iran: state-sponsored terror update

Though I have not seen a followup to the various speculative media reports from last month -- perhaps it was a trial balloon? -- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is apparently being officially designated as terror organization. As the Washington Post explained in August, the elite 125,000-member force will be the

"first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said -- a highly unusual move because it is part of a government."

Former CIA officer Robert Baer wrote about the possible implications in Time, August 18:

it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.

Here's the "regime change" logic likely to underpin any future attack on the Guard units:

there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to a democratic and friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

Reactions? Here's an old one from Bloomberg:

Subir Raha, the government-appointed head of India's biggest oil company, said the U.S. would be ``stupid'' to attack Iran and risk imposing record oil prices on the global economy.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls an attack on Iran "insane."

It has now been two and a half years since President George W. Bush himself declared that the idea of US preparations to attack Iran was "simply ridiculous."

Of course, even then, he said "all options are on the table."


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