http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2013/01/16/new-push-in-us-for-tougher-sanctions-war-threats-against-iran/
Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy magazine reported on Tuesday that a secret State Department cable sent last week from the US consulate in Istanbul found that the Syrian regime probably used what is technically considered a chemical weapon during an attack in the city of Homs in December.
Several thousand protesters from the Khyber Agency marched on Peshawar, the largest Pakistani city near the tribal agencies, and brought the bodies of the victims with them,dumping the corpses outside of a government office.
New Push in US for Tougher Sanctions, War Threats Against Iran
by Jim Lobe, January 17, 2013
Four U.S. non-proliferation specialists are urging the Obama administration to impose tougher economic sanctions against Iran and issue more explicit threats to destroy its nuclear programme by military means.
In a 155-page report, the specialists, who were joined by the head of a right-wing pro-Israel lobby group, the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), said Washington should declare its intent to institute a “de facto international embargo on all investments in, and trade with” Iran, excepting food and medicine, if it does not freeze its nuclear-related work.
The calls come amidst speculation over a critical meeting between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia – plus Germany (P5+1), which have met over the last two months in an apparent effort to unify their positions before meeting with Iran. That meeting has not yet been scheduled, but most observers believe it will take place at the end of the month.
The report, “U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the Changing Middle East,” also said Washington should “increase Iranian isolation, including through regime change in Syria” and “undertake…overt preparations for the use of warplanes and/or missiles to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities with high explosives”.
Only if Tehran provided “meaningful concessions”, among them suspending all uranium enrichment and heavy water-related projects, closing the underground enrichment facility at Fordow, and accepting a highly intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections regime – should sanctions relief be considered, said the report, which was co-authored by FDD’s president, Mark Dubowitz, and David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS).
In that respect, the recommendations appeared to reflect more the position held by Israel than that of the Obama administration, which has suggested that it will not necessarily insist on a total suspension of uranium enrichment – a demand that Iran has consistently rejected and which many Iran specialists believe is a deal-killer – as a condition for possible sanctions relief.
“The report does not offer a realistic formula for negotiating a satisfactory agreement on limiting Iran’s nuclear programme,” said Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association (ACA) and a former top State Department analyst on proliferation issues. “It would require Iran to capitulate on virtually all fronts.”
“Some of the measures it suggests would be likely to disrupt P5+1 unity….and the maximalist requirements it cites for an agreement could convince Tehran that the U.S. objective is regime change, rather than full compliance with its obligations to the IAEA,” he noted.
In at least one respect, however, the report departed from Israel’s views. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has repeatedly threatened to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, warned in September that Tehran could reach what the report called the “critical capability” to quickly build a bomb without detection as early as this spring. The reported concluded that mid-2014 was more likely, although it noted an earlier date was also possible.
“The focal point wasn’t to say, ‘Saddle up, we’re going to war in six months,’” said Leonard Spector, deputy director of the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies and a co-chair of one of the five task forces that contributed to the report. “This was a more careful assessment of how much time we had, and it allows the sort of (sanctions) pressure, which has been mounting, to have more impact.”
Iranian officials have suggested over the last several months that they are willing to make major concessions, including halting their enrichment of uranium up to 20 percent, transferring a substantial portion of their 20-percent enriched stockpile out of the country, and accepting enhanced IAEA inspections, provided they receive major sanctions relief in exchange. But they have also insisted that their right to enrichment of up to five percent is nonnegotiable.
The P5+1 appear divided over how much sanctions relief to offer and in what sequence. Recent reports indicate that Washington and Paris are pressing to require Iran to implement all of these measures, as well as closing Fordow and clearing up all questions raised by the IAEA regarding alleged military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear programme, before any major easing of sanctions can happen.
The new report, which came out of a series of “roundtables” that included presentations by senior administration officials, clearly favours an even tougher stance.
It explicitly endorsed a letter – reportedly drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) – to Obama signed by 73 U.S. senators last month that warned, “There should be absolutely no diminution of pressure on the Iranians until the totality of their nuclear problem has been addressed.” The report called for intensified sanctions and more explicit military threats by the administration.
It also called for stepping up covert action against Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes and exerting greater pressure on China, Hong Kong, Turkey, and the Gulf kingdoms to halt all commerce with Iran.
While the report covered other non-proliferation issues in the Middle East and North Africa, it skipped lightly over Israel, the region’s only nuclear power, noting merely that the Jewish state will consider disarmament initiatives only after all its neighbours make peace with it.
The dearth of attention to Israel, which, unlike Iran, is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), was described by Thielmann as “conspicuous” given the intended scope of the report.
The report also said Washington should threaten the Islamist-led government in Cairo with tough sanctions if it takes steps to gain nuclear capability.
That the report’s recommendations coincided closely with Israel’s positions may have been due in part to the heavy involvement in the project by staff members from both FDD, which has been a leading proponent of “economic warfare” against Iran, and the Dershowitz Group, a media relations firm with FDD shares office space and reportedly cooperates closely.
Several Dershowitz account executives included in the report’s acknowledgments have previously been associated with Hasbara Fellowships, a group set up by the right-wing, Israel-based Aish HaTorah International, to counter alleged anti-Israel sentiment at U.S. universities. IPS inquiries into the project’s sources of funding went unanswered.
The endorsement by Albright, who is frequently cited by mainstream U.S. media as an expert on the technical aspects of Iran’s nuclear programme, of the report’s policy-oriented recommendations, such as making a military attack on Iran more credible, came as a surprise to some proliferation experts, including two who participated in the roundtables but asked to remain anonymous because of the off-the-record nature of the proceedings.
“His expertise is a technical one, but this is mostly a political paper,” noted one expert. “This covers areas that go far beyond his expertise.”
And in Syria..... redlines becoming less clear as the State Department doubts Syria used chemical weapons against rebels - despite a secret State Department report saying that Syria did in fact use chemical weapons....
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/16/us-we-do-not-believe-syria-used-chemical-weapons/
US: We Do Not Believe Syria Used Chemical Weapons
The US did not find Syrian testimony that Assad used a chemical agent in Homs credible
by John Glaser, January 16, 2013
The State Department on Wednesday said that the US does not believe the Syrian military used chemical weapons on its own people, despite reports to the contrary.
Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy magazine reported on Tuesday that a secret State Department cable sent last week from the US consulate in Istanbul found that the Syrian regime probably used what is technically considered a chemical weapon during an attack in the city of Homs in December.
But State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland on Wednesday said the report ”did not accurately convey the anecdotal information that we had received from a third party regarding an alleged incident in Syria in December.”
“At the time we looked into the allegations that were made and the information that we had received, and we found no credible evidence to corroborate or to confirm that chemical weapons were used,” she said.
On Tuesday, soon after Rogin’s article was published, National Security Spokesman Tommy Vietor issued a statement that said, “The reporting we have seen from media sources regarding alleged chemical weapons incidents in Syria has not been consistent with what we believe to be true about the Syrian chemical weapons program.”
The secret cable relied heavily on personal testimony from Syrian doctors and opposition activists, but the State Department did not find it convincing and could not corroborate it.
“It is a responsibility of our embassies and consulates around the world, no matter what kind of anecdotal information you have, to report it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that either at the time or over the longer term it is considered credible by us,” Nuland said. “When this particular message came in from consulate Istanbul, we took it seriously as we do with all such anecdotal reporting, and concluded at the time that we couldn’t corroborate it; we haven’t been able to corroborate it since either.”
The Obama administration has stated in recent months that the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people by the Assad regime is a “red line,” presumably beyond which would prompt US intervention against the regime.
But the truth is, Washington doesn’t perceive any viable plan for military intervention against the Assad regime. Beyond the vastly increased destruction and humanitarian suffering it would cause, the Assad regime appears to be the only thing preventing jihadist terrorists from taking control of the country.
And in Pakistan - an ever shakier government beats back concerns over a massacre...
http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/16/massive-protest-among-khyber-tribesmen-after-military-massacre/
Massive Protest Among Khyber Tribesmen After Military Massacre
Protesters Dump Bodies of Victims at Govt Office in Peshawar
by Jason Ditz, January 16, 2013
Pakistan’s military launches offensives against the Khyber Agency often enough, and claims huge death tolls of ill-defined “militant” factions, but they seem to have struck a particular chord last night, when members of the Frontier Corps (FC) attacked a village and massacred 15 civilians.
Several thousand protesters from the Khyber Agency marched on Peshawar, the largest Pakistani city near the tribal agencies, and brought the bodies of the victims with them,dumping the corpses outside of a government office.
“They entered our houses and killed our relatives to avenge the killing of six security personnel in the same area on Monday night,” insisted one of the protesters, himself a former FC member.
This is the second major massacre the FC has been accused of in less than a month, as they were also found responsible for Christmas Eve attacks on several Balochistan villages, which killed over 50 civilians.
The FC only operates in Balochistan and the tribal areas, and is given more or less a free hand with its attacks. Large civilian death tolls are common in FC raids, but there are rarely any repercussions for such killings, reflecting the relatively few rights Pashtun tribesmen and Balochs have in modern Pakistan.
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