Condemning The Repression Of The Iranian Baha'i Community And Calling For The Emancipation Of Iranian Baha'is - Part III

Floor Speech

The central question--whether Iran will be able to proceed with its plans to enrich uranium--is now before the United Nations, with the Russians and the Chinese reluctant to impose sanctions on Tehran. A discouraged former I.A.E.A. official told me in late March that, at this point, ``there's nothing the Iranians could do that would result in a positive outcome. American diplomacy does not allow for it. Even if they announce a stoppage of enrichment, nobody will believe them. It's a dead end.''

Another diplomat in Vienna asked me, ``Why would the West take the risk of going to war against that kind of target without giving it to the I.A.E.A. to verify? We're low-cost, and we can create a program that will force Iran to put its cards on the table.'' A Western Ambassador in Vienna expressed similar distress at the White House's dismissal of the I.A.E.A. He said, ``If you don't believe that the I.A.E.A. can establish an inspection system--if you don't trust them--you can only bomb.''

There is little sympathy for the I.A.E.A. in the Bush Administration or among its European allies. ``We're quite frustrated with the director-general,'' the European diplomat told me. ``His basic approach has been to describe this as a dispute between two sides with equal weight. It's not. We're the good guys! ElBaradei has been pushing the idea of letting Iran have a small nuclear-enrichment program, which is ludicrous. It's not his job to push ideas that pose a serious proliferation risk.''

The Europeans are rattled, however, by their growing perception that President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney believe a bombing campaign will be needed, and that their real goal is regime change. ``Everyone is on the same page about the Iranian bomb, but the United States wants regime change,'' a European diplomatic adviser told me. He added, ``The Europeans have a role to play as long as they don't have to choose between going along with the Russians and the Chinese or going along with Washington on something they don't want. Their policy is to keep the Americans engaged in something the Europeans can live with. It may be untenable.''

``The Brits think this is a very bad idea,'' Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council staff member who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center, told me, ``but they're really worried we're going to do it.'' The European diplomatic adviser acknowledged that the British Foreign Office was aware of war planning in Washington but that, ``short of a smoking gun, it's going to be very difficult to line up the Europeans on Iran.'' He said that the British ``are jumpy about the Americans going full bore on the Iranians, with no compromise.''

The European diplomat said that he was skeptical that Iran, given its record, had admitted to everything it was doing, but ``to the best of our knowledge the Iranian capability is not at the point where they could successfully run centrifuges'' to enrich uranium in quantity. One reason for pursuing diplomacy was, he said, Iran's essential pragmatism. ``The regime acts in its best interests,'' he said. Iran's leaders ``take a hard-line approach on the nuclear issue and they want to call the American bluff,'' believing that ``the tougher they are the more likely the West will fold.'' But, he said, ``From what we've seen with Iran, they will appear superconfident until the moment they back off.''

The diplomat went on, ``You never reward bad behavior, and this is not the time to offer concessions. We need to find ways to impose sufficient costs to bring the regime to its senses. It's going to be a close call, but I think if there is unity in opposition and the price imposed''--in sanctions--''is sufficient, they may back down. It's too early to give up on the U.N. route.'' He added, ``If the diplomatic process doesn't work, there is no military `solution.' There may be a military option, but the impact could be catastrophic.''

Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, was George Bush's most dependable ally in the year leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. But he and his party have been racked by a series of financial scandals, and his popularity is at a low point. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said last year that military action against Iran was ``inconceivable.'' Blair has been more circumspect, saying publicly that one should never take options off the table.

Other European officials expressed similar skepticism about the value of an American bombing campaign. ``The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically,'' the European intelligence official told me. ``He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse.'' An American attack, he said, would alienate ordinary Iranians, including those who might be sympathetic to the U.S. ``Iran is no longer living in the Stone Age, and the young people there have access to U.S. movies and books, and they love it,'' he said. ``If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.''

Another European official told me that he was aware that many in Washington wanted action. ``It's always the same guys,'' he said, with a resigned shrug. ``There is a belief that diplomacy is doomed to fail. The timetable is short.''

A key ally with an important voice in the debate is Israel, whose leadership has warned for years that it viewed any attempt by Iran to begin enriching uranium as a point of no return. I was told by several officials that the White House's interest in preventing an Israeli attack on a Muslim country, which would provoke a backlash across the region, was a factor in its decision to begin the current operational planning. In a speech in Cleveland on March 20th, President Bush depicted Ahmadinejad's hostility toward Israel as a ``serious threat. It's a threat to world peace.'' He added, ``I made it clear, I'll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel.''

Any American bombing attack, Richard Armitage told me, would have to consider the following questions: ``What will happen in the other Islamic countries? What ability does Iran have to reach us and touch us globally--that is, terrorism? Will Syria and Lebanon up the pressure on Israel? What does the attack do to our already diminished international standing? And what does this mean for Russia, China, and the U.N. Security Council?''

Iran, which now produces nearly four million barrels of oil a day, would not have to cut off production to disrupt the world's oil markets. It could blockade or mine the Strait of Hormuz, the 34-mile-wide passage through which Middle Eastern oil reaches the Indian Ocean. Nonetheless, the recently retired defense official dismissed the strategic consequences of such actions. He told me that the U.S. Navy could keep shipping open by conducting salvage missions and putting minesweepers to work. ``It's impossible to block passage,'' he said. The government consultant with ties to the Pentagon also said he believed that the oil problem could be managed, pointing out that the U.S. has enough in its strategic reserves to keep America running for sixty days. However, those in the oil business I spoke to were less optimistic; one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict.

Michel Samaha, a veteran Lebanese Christian politician and former cabinet minister in Beirut, told me that the Iranian retaliation might be focused on exposed oil and gas fields in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. ``They would be at risk,'' he said, ``and this could begin the real jihad of Iran versus the West. You will have a messy world.''

Iran could also initiate a wave of terror attacks in Iraq and elsewhere, with the help of Hezbollah. On April 2nd, the Washington Post reported that the planning to counter such attacks ``is consuming a lot of time'' at U.S. intelligence agencies. ``The best terror network in the world has remained neutral in the terror war for the past several years,'' the Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said of Hezbollah. ``This will mobilize them and put us up against the group that drove Israel out of southern Lebanon. If we move against Iran, Hezbollah will not sit on the sidelines. Unless the Israelis take them out, they will mobilize against us.'' (When I asked the government consultant about that possibility, he said that, if Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel, ``Israel and the new Lebanese government will finish them off.'')

The adviser went on, ``If we go, the southern half of Iraq will light up like a candle.'' The American, British, and other coalition forces in Iraq would be at greater risk of attack from Iranian troops or from Shiite militias operating on instructions from Iran. (Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, has close ties to the leading Shiite parties in Iraq.) A retired four-star general told me that, despite the eight thousand British troops in the region, ``the Iranians could take Basra with ten mullahs and one sound truck.''

``If you attack,'' the high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna, ``Ahmadinejad will be the new Saddam Hussein of the Arab world, but with more credibility and more power. You must bite the bullet and sit down with the Iranians.''

The diplomat went on, ``There are people in Washington who would be unhappy if we found a solution. They are still banking on isolation and regime change. This is wishful thinking.'' He added, ``The window of opportunity is now.''

[Page: E1789]
--

International Atomic

Energy Agency,

September 12, 2006.

Hon. PETER HOEKSTRA,
Chairman, House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, DC.

SIR: I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the Staff Report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy, dated 23 August 2006, entitled ``Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States'', contains some erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information.

The caption under the photograph of the Natanz site on page 9 of the report states that ``Iran is currently enriching uranium to weapons grade using a 164-machine centrifuge cascade''. In this regard, please be informed that information about the uranium enrichment work being carried out at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) at Natanz, including the 3.6% enrichment level that had been achieved by Iran, was provided to the IAEA Board of Governors by the Director General in April 2006 (see GOV/2006/27, paragraph 31). The description of this enrichment level as ``weapons grade'' is incorrect, since the term ``weapon-grade'' is commonly used to refer to uranium enriched to the order of 90% or more in the isotope of uranimum-235. The Director General's April 2006 report, as well as all of his other reports on the implementation of the safeguards in Iran, are posted on the IAEA's website at http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran.

The first bullet on page 10 states that ``Iran had covertly produced the short-lived radioactive element polonium-210 (Po-210), a substance with two known uses; a neutron source for a nuclear weapon and satellite batteries''. The use of the phrase ``covertly produced'' is misleading becasue the production of Po-210 is not required to be reported by Iran to the IAEA under the NPT safeguards agreement concluded between Iran and the IAEA (published in IAEA document INFCIRC/214). (Regarding the production of Po-210, please refer to the report provided to the Board of Governors by the Director General in November 2004 (GOV/2004/83, paragraph 80)).

Furthermore, the IAEA Secretariat takes strong exception to the incorrect and misleading assertion in the Staff Report's second full paragraph of page 13 that the Director of the IAEA decided to ``remove'' Mr. Charlier, a senior safeguards inspector of the IAEA, ``for allegedly raising concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program and concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear programme is to construct weapons''. In addition, the report contains an outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might have been for ``not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program''.

In this regard, please be advised that all safeguards agreements concluded between a State and the IAEA in connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons require the IAEA to secure acceptance by the State of the designation of IAEA safeguards inspectors, before such inspectors may be sent to the State on inspection (INF-CIRC/153 (Corr.), paragraphs 9 and 85). Under such agreements, each State has the right to object to the designation of any safeguards inspector, and to request the withdrawal of the designation of an inspector, at any time, for that State (http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Docments/Infeircs). Accordingly, Iran's request to the Director General to withdraw the designation of Mr. Charlier authorizing him to carry out safeguards inspections in Iran, was based on paragraph (a)(i) of Article 9 and paragraph (d) of Article 85 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement. I should also like to note here that Iran has accepted the designation of more than 200 Agency safeguards inspectors, which number is similar to that accepted by the majority of non-nuclear weapon States that have concluded safeguards agreements pursuant to the NPT.

Finally, it is also regrettable that the Staff Report did not take into account the views of the United Nations Security Council, as expressed in resolution 1696 (2006), which inter alia, ``commends and encourages the Director General of the IAEA and its secretariat for their ongoing professional and impartial efforts to resolve all remaining outstanding issues in Iran within the framework of the Agency.''

While it is unfortunate that the authors of the Staff Report did not concult with the IAEA Secretariat stands ready to assist your Committee in correcting the erroneous and misleading information contained in the report.

Yours sincerely,

VILMOS CSERVENY,
Director, Office of External Relations
and Policy Coordination.

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document ``outrageous and dishonest'' and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some ``erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements.'' The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents.

After no such weapons were found in Iraq, the IAEA came under additional criticism for taking a cautious approach on Iran, which the White House says is trying to building nuclear weapons in secret. At one point, the administration orchestrated a campaign to remove the IAEA's director general, Mohamed El Baradei. It failed, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

Yesterday's letter, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post, was the first time the IAEA has publicly disputed U.S. allegations about its Iran investigation. The agency noted five major errors in the committee's 29-page report, which said Iran's nuclear capabilities are more advanced than either the IAEA or U.S. intelligence has shown.

Among the committee's assertions is that Iran is producing weapons-grade uranium at its facility in the town of Natanz. The IAEA called that ``incorrect,'' noting that weapons-grade uranium is enriched to a level of 90 percent or more. Iran has enriched uranium to 3.5 percent under IAEA monitoring.

When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said his intent was ``to help increase the American public's understanding of Iran as a threat.'' Spokesman Jamal Ware said yesterday that Hoekstra will respond to the IAEA letter.

Rep. Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), a committee member, said the report was ``clearly not prepared in a manner that we can rely on.'' He agreed to send it to the full committee for review, but the Republicans decided to make it public before then, he said in an interview.

The report was never voted on or discussed by the full committee. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the vice chairman, told Democratic colleagues in a private e-mail that the report ``took a number of analytical shortcuts that present the Iran threat as more dire--and the Intelligence Community's assessments as more certain--than they are.''

Privately, several intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Negroponte's spokesman, John Callahan, said in a statement that his office ``reviewed the report and provided its response to the committee on July 24, '06.'' He did not say whether it had approved or challenged any of the claims about Iran's capabilities.

``This is like prewar Iraq all over again,'' said David Albright, a former nuclear inspector who is president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security. ``You have an Iranian nuclear threat that is spun up, using bad information that's cherry-picked and a report that trashes the inspectors.''

The committee report, written by a single Republican staffer with a hard-line position on Iran, chastised the CIA and other agencies for not providing evidence to back assertions that Iran is building nuclear weapons.

It concluded that the lack of intelligence made it impossible to support talks with Tehran. Democrats on the committee saw it as an attempt from within conservative Republican circles to undermine Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has agreed to talk with the Iranians under certain conditions.

The report's author, Fredrick Fleitz, is a onetime CIA officer and special assistant to John R. Bolton, the administration's former point man on Iran at the State Department. Bolton, who is now ambassador to the United Nations, had been highly influential during President Bush's first term in drawing up a tough policy that rejected-talks with Tehran.

Among the allegations in Fleitz's Iran report is that ElBaradei removed a senior inspector from the Iran investigation because he raised ``concerns about Iranian deception regarding its nuclear program.'' The agency said the inspector has not been removed.

A suggestion that ElBaradei had an ``unstated'' policy that prevented inspectors from telling the truth about Iran's program was particularly ``outrageous and dishonest,'' according to the IAEA letter, which was signed by Vilmos Cserveny, the IAEA's director for external affairs and a former Hungarian ambassador.

Hoekstra's committee is working on a separate report about North Korea that is also being written principally by Fleitz. A draft of the report, provided to The Post, includes several assertions about North Korea's weapons program that the intelligence officials said they cannot substantiate, including one that Pyongyang is already enriching uranium.

The intelligence community believes North Korea is trying to acquire an enrichment capability but has no proof that an enrichment facility has been built, the officials said.

--

Congress of the United States,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, September 15, 2006.

Hon. Christopher Shays,

Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, Washington, DC.

DEAR MR. CHAIRMAN: According to the Washington Post (``U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report by House Panel,'' September 14, 2006), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) conducted a prepublication review of a House Intelligence Committee staff report on Iran which has come under scrutiny for making false, misleading and unsubstantiated assertions about Iran's nuclear program.

In the article, a spokesperson for the DNI confirmed that the agency did review the report prior to its publication. Yet, the final committee staff report ``included at least a dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to substantiate,'' including the gross exaggeration that the level of uranium enrichment by Iranian nuclear plants has now reached ``weapons-grade'' levels of 90 percent when in reality the correct enrichment level found by the International Atomic Energy Agency was 3.6 percent. (Letter from IAEA Director of External Relations and Policy Coordination Vilmos Cserveny to Chairman Peter Hoekstra, September 12, 2006.)

The publication of false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements by a House Committee is regrettable, but the role of the DNI raises important questions:

(1) Was the text of the report given to DNI for review identical to the text later released to the public by the Committee?

(2) Did the DNI recognize those claims made in the report that were wrong or impossible to substantiate at the time DNI conducted its prepublication review?

(3) During its review, did DNI also note the same false, misleading and unsubstantiated statements as those deemed by the IAEA in its letter to the Committee to be wrong or impossible to substantiate?

(4) In its response to the Committee, did DNI state the inaccuracies it found, and seek correction or clarification of those parts of the prepublication report?

(5) Did the DNI approve the report, in spite of false and exaggerated claims made in the report?

There are troubling signs, which this Subcommittee has attempted to investigate, that the Administration is leading the U.S. toward a military conflict with Iran.

In June, our Subcommittee held a classified members briefing, at my request, to investigate independent reports published in the New Yorker magazine and the Guardian that U.S. military personnel have been or are already deployed inside and around Iran, gathering intelligence and targeting information, and reports published in Newsweek, ABC News and GQ magazine, that the U.S. has been planning and is now recruiting members of MEK to conduct lethal operations and destabilizing operations inside Iran.

Unfortunately, neither the Department of State nor the Department of Defense chose to appear for the classified briefing. Nearly three months later, the Subcommittee has been unable to question State or DOD directly on those reports. However, this Subcommittee was briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and I believe that the Subcommittee should use its oversight authority to compare the statements and information provided to Members about Iran's nuclear program at the briefing, with information provided to the House Intelligence Committee for their report.

These are precisely the sort of questions this Subcommittee is designed to pursue. The latest report implicating DNI passivity or complicity in embellishing the danger of the Iranian nuclear program should be aggressively investigated by our Subcommittee immediately. We cannot and must not permit this Administration to build a case for war against Iran on falsehoods and pretext. We have seen similar patterns with the twisting of intelligence to create a war against Iraq and we must not let this happen again. I ask that the Subcommittee invite the DNI to appear immediately before the Committee. It is imperative that our questions be answered in an expeditious manner.

Sincerely,

Dennis J. Kucinich,
Ranking Minority Member.

http://thomas.loc.gov/

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