Rooyesh

Asharq Al-Awsat is reporting Dr Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council [SNSC] of Iran and the official in charge of nuclear program, has tendered his resignation for the fifth time in recent months to Supreme Leader [of the Islamic Revolution] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian sources have said that the resignation is in protest against what he described in his resignation letter as irresponsible behavior and statements by the president of the republic and his colleagues, which have obstructed the course of the negotiations with the European Union and current steps to ward off threats against Iran and its strategic interests.

Although the supreme leader has rejected Larijani’s resignation just as he previously did, sources close to the SNSC’s secretary have stressed to Asharq Al-Awsat that Larijani is very displeased with the actions of Ahmadinejad and his Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who Larijani considers unqualified to head Iranian diplomacy at a critical time that necessitates having an experienced politician and diplomat, one who is capable of facing challenges. Larijani’s disagreements with Ahmadinejad and Mottaki surfaced recently when the former visited Baghdad to consult with Iraqi officials on Iran’s conditions for attending the Sharm al-Sheikh conference. At a time when Larijani’s talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki reached an important juncture whereby they reached some sort of agreement on how to deal with the security issue and the role that Iran can play to help Al-Maliki’s government contain terrorism, Iran’s Ambassador in Iraq Hasan Kazemi Qomi made statements in which he announced that Mottaki would go to Sharm al-Sheikh. The statements enraged Larijani such that he said in response to a question by a correspondent of some news agency that he knew nothing about Manouchehr Mottaki’s travel plans, and that the news was a surprise to him. An advisor to Larijani in the secretariat of the SNSC told Asharq Al-Awsat that following Larijani’s successful visits to Saudi Arabia, the supreme leader put him in charge of the file on Gulf States and neighboring countries. Nevertheless, on his visit the UAE and the Sultanate of Oman, Ahmadinejad did not consult with Larijani, and made very provocative statements on the resumption of relations with Egypt. This is in addition to his statements during his private meetings with UAE President Sheikh Khalifah Bin-Zayid, and Sheikh Muhammad Bin-Rashid, UAE prime minister, UAE vice president, and ruler of Dubai, on how to deal with the problem concerning the three islands; Abu Musa, Tunb al-Kubra and Tunb al-Sughra, which the UAE wants back. Larijani and a team of advisors had studied all aspects of the islands’ issue. Moreover, contacts between Iran and the UAE were supposed to be held through Larijani and the UAE Government away from the limelight later this year. Ahmadinejad’s visit, however, has torpedoed Larijani’s initiative. On the other hand, Mottaki’s statements at the World Economic Forum that Iran does not have the intention to erase Israel [from the map] and that it is impossible to erase countries nowadays, and [the fact that] he later reneged on his statements after being directly reprimanded by President Ahmadinejad have prompted Larijani to consider them as irresponsible statements that have greatly harmed Iran according to one of his advisors. It seems that the supreme leader’s rejection of Larijani’s resignation could calm the situation. However, the scheduled talks with the United States in Baghdad on 28th May are a point of genuine disagreement between the SNSC’s secretary and Ahmadinejad’s government. The foreign minister plans to dispatch Dr Mohammad Javad Zarif, the former head of the permanent Iranian mission to the United Nations, to Baghdad to hold talks with US Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Larijani believes that although Zarif has mastered the English language and is knowledgeable about the American culture, traditions, and mentality, he has been trained more than necessary while the talks require an important politician such as Dr Mohammad Javad Larijani, [Ali Larijani's] brother and advisor of the chief of the judiciary authority for international affairs. Mohammad Javad Larijani participated in the recent Davos forum in Jordan alongside Mottaki.

Yet another American citizen has disappeared in Iran and is feared to be in detention, according to Human Rights Watch, a nongovernmental organization based in New York. Ali Shakeri, an Iranian-American dual citizen, was scheduled to leave Iran on May 13, but “he disappeared from the radar,” Human Rights Watch’s Hadi Ghaemi told ABC News.

Ghaemi has been in touch with Shakeri’s associates who say the political activist and writer from Irvine, Calif., was in Iran to visit his mother who died while he was there. According to a statement released by Human Rights Watch, those associates believe Shakeri is “being detained by Iranian authorities.” “The Iranian government has not provided any public information about his whereabouts,” the statement continued. If Shakeri is detained, he would be the third Iranian-American to be detained by Iran in recent weeks in addition to others who have been prevented from leaving the country. The U.S. State Department could not confirm that Shakeri was missing or detained, but deputy spokesman Tom Casey said, “We are concerned by the fact that there appears to be a pattern here of harassment against private citizens and against private Iranian-Americans, and that’s something that I guess the Iranians will have to offer an explanation for.” Casey said the U.S. does not plan to raise the subject of the detained Americans during an historic meeting with Iran planned for next Monday. For the first time in decades, the United States and Iran will hold high-level talks in Baghdad between U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and Iranian officials. Casey said that meeting would focus exclusively on issues related to Iraq. The United States accuses Iran of fomenting sectarian violence in Iraq by providing munitions and training to armed groups in an effort to destabilize the country and attack U.S. troops.

As Iran ignores another Security Council deadline to suspend the enrichment of uranium, the idea of allowing it to engage in limited enrichment under strict inspection is being more widely discussed. This would be a “third way” solution between the continuation of sanctions, which have been ineffective in stopping Iran’s activities, and a military attack, which would plunge the region into conflict and probably not be supported by some of the closest US allies.

So urgent is the situation becoming that there is talk in intelligence circles of mounting operations against Iran in which its purchases of nuclear and missile equipment on the black market (to which it has been forced by sanction to turn) would be sabotaged by the deliberate planting of defective material. Such operations could, at best, simply slow Iran down, but the US network CBS says that some are already underway. ABC News reports in addition that President Bush has authorised the CIA to conduct what ABC calls “non-lethal covert action against Iran involving propaganda, disinformation and the manipulation of Iran’s international banking transactions”. These stories indicate that the US is not going to adopt the “third way”. The concept of a negotiated agreement to accept but also to put limits on enrichment has gained ground with comments from Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In an interview with the New York Times, he said: “We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich. “From now, it’s simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that’s a fact.” Dr ElBaradei said: “The fact of the matter is that one of the purposes of suspension, keeping them from getting the knowledge, has been overtaken by events.” (Update: In a speech on Thursday, Mr ElBaradei sought to explain his remarks. He said that he wanted to prevent Iran from reaching industrial-scale production of enriched uranium. He added that in his view, Iran was three to eight years from making a bomb, if that is what it chooses to do. Iran says it will not do so.) His remarks about accepting some enrichment immediately led to complaints from the US and those countries most strongly supporting it - Britain, France (President Nicolas Sarkozy holding firm here) and Germany. They reckon that it undermines the current approach, which is a combination of applying pressure through sanctions (aimed at stopping Iran from getting nuclear and missile technology) and offering help with the development of civilian nuclear energy, as long as enrichment is not part of that. The British UN ambassador Sir Emyr Jones Parry told reporters in London recently that if Iran did not comply with UN demands, there would be more sanctions. “There will be more of the same - more people and more companies in Iran under sanctions,” he said. The issue is expected to be discussed at the G8 summit in Germany early next month. Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear watcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London said that the idea of an enrichment agreement was a “fallback position.” “If Iran gets enrichment technology, then the present strategy will have failed,” he said. “However, if this strategy is seriously challenged, there will be tension between those whose impulse is to hold out for suspension and those who think there is a new reality. “An agreement with Iran would have to limit its enrichment, perhaps to the number of centrifuges it has already installed, and there would have to be a strict system of inspections, with surprise visits. Such a system would have to go beyond the extra measures Iran agreed to some time ago but never ratified. The closest precedent would be what happened in Iraq where inspectors had the power to go where they wanted.” Iran says that it has no intention of building nuclear weapons but is simply exercising its right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to develop fuel to a limited level for use in power stations. The US and some Western countries argue that Iran does not need to make the fuel itself and that it wants to position itself, at least, to be able to enrich fuel to the higher level needed for a nuclear bomb.

CBS News has learned that Iran is continuing to make progress on its expanded efforts to enrich uranium — in spite of covert efforts by U.S. and other allied intelligence agencies to actively sabotage the country’s nuclear program. “Industrial sabotage is a way to stop the program, without military action, without fingerprints on the operation, and really, it is ideal, if it works,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Non-Proliferation and now Senior Fellow in Non-Proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Sources in several countries involved told CBS News that the intelligence operatives involved include former Russian nuclear scientists and Iranians living abroad. Operatives have sold Iran components with flaws that are difficult to detect, making them unstable or unusable. “One way to sabotage a program is to make minor modifications in some of the components Iran obtains on the black market, and because it’s a black market … you don’t know exactly who you are dealing with,” Fitzpatrick says. Senior government representatives, who spoke to CBS News on condition that neither they nor their country be identified, pointed to the case of the exploding power supplies. Installed at the pilot enrichment facility at Natanz in April 2006 as Iran was first attempting to enrich uranium, the power supplies, used to regulate voltage current, blew up, destroying 50 centrifuges. The head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, Vice-President Gholamreza Aghazadeh said in January of this year that the equipment had been “manipulated.” There is other evidence, CBS News was told, that some of the technical difficulties Iran is having in consistently running its centrifuges are the results of a concerted effort at industrial sabotage. Sources familiar with the U.S. effort against Iran tell CBS News that U.S. intelligence agencies have run several programs in recent years, employing different techniques, including modifying components in hard-to-detect ways and making subtle changes to technical documents and drawings, rendering them useless. “Governments [interested in deterring Iran] are investing a lot of effort to disrupt the Iranian trade, or track their purchases,” Albright says. Iran is vulnerable to industrial sabotage because it is prohibited from buying what it wants on the open market. Instead, analysts say, it has turned to the black market, focusing efforts to clandestinely acquire the technology in Western Europe. Intelligence sources tell CBS News that Iranian agents working from the Islamic Republic’s consulate in Frankfurt, Germany, have shipped home banned components using the protection and secrecy of diplomatic bags. Although export controls are stronger in Europe than in many other countries, the Iranians still need European products because of either their quality or reliability, or because they already have European-manufactured products and are looking for spare parts. But the procurement network is global, and trans-national, analysts say. In Dubai and other neighboring nations, Iran has established a shifting network of front companies. “These are clandestine efforts. Iran frequently changes its front companies, frequently changes its financial arrangements, and government intelligence agencies have been looking at this,” says Fitzpatrick Albright says Iran has become even more sophisticated in its illicit procurement efforts than the network established by AQ Khan that obtained components and materiel for Pakistan’s bomb program. “They have moved beyond just front companies and are very hard to detect,” he said. “The Iranians are very clever.” Iran is described as “highly suspicious” and “almost paranoid,” and is believed to be predisposed to believe that any of its many technical problems may be the result of foreign sabotage. “It’s impossible to say the extent to which Iran has discovered any industrial espionage,” Fitzpatrick says. “Any technical problems that Iran experiences in its program, some of which were the result of its own speed-up effort, Iran may attribute to foreign espionage.” According to diplomats, getting the Iranians to believe that components may have been tampered with can be as effective in delaying the program as the real thing. But the diplomats also warn that with enough money and time, Iran’s nuclear ambitions cannot be derailed by sabotage alone.

Iran is to introduce petrol rationing in two weeks in a move that belies its status as the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter and threatens to trigger a popular backlash against its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The country’s motorists - used to some of the cheapest fuel in the world - will be restricted to three litres a day under a scheme to cut fuel consumption and reduce the burden on Iran’s struggling economy of providing subsidised petrol.

The population is already restive over rising prices amid an inflation rate estimated at 20% to 30%. It also contradicts Mr Ahmadinejad’s pre-election promise to reduce poverty and bring Iran’s oil wealth to “people’s tables”. But the country has a large budget deficit caused by fuel subsidies and there are fears that rising demand could exhaust Iran’s oil-exporting capacity within 15 years. The ration plan, earmarked for June 7, was to start this week but was delayed amid difficulties in smart card technology at filling stations. Worries over political consequences have prompted speculation that it may be postponed indefinitely. However, the government had already upset motorists by announcing on Tuesday that a litre of petrol would go up by 1p to 5p. While tiny by western standards, the rise is controversial in a country where cheap fuel is taken for granted. Under rationing, things will get tougher. Kamal Daneshyar, head of parliament’s energy committee, said drivers would pay 20p a litre for petrol above their quota. A Tehran-based analyst, who requested anonymity, predicted that rationing would trigger more inflation. But he added: “This country can’t go on consuming and wasting the amount of fuel that it does. It is one of the top three per capita users of energy in the world. Keep going at that rate and we will end up consuming all the hydrocarbons we produce. It has great strategic implications for Iran as an energy exporter.” Mr Ahmadinejad’s woes at home were compounded overseas yesterday when a spokesman at the White House called a new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency into Iran’s nuclear activities “a laundry list of Iran’s continued defiance of the international community”. Iran had not only ignored a UN security council deadline to stop uranium enrichment activity but had expanded it, according to the IAEA report. Relations with the US are likely to deteriorate further after reports that Iran has imprisoned another Iranian-American affiliated with George Soros’s Open Society Institute - the fourth dual citizen to be detained in Iran in recent months. Tehran-based social scientist and urban planner Kian Tajbakhsh was arrested on around May 11. Tehran has accused the Soros group of promoting “soft revolution” - a term used to refer to a perceived US plot to undermine the Islamic state.

Source: Guardian

IT IS easy to see why nine American warships carrying 17,000 personnel were sent steaming into the Persian Gulf, in broad daylight, on Wednesday May 23rd. That show of force coincided with a planned announcement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggesting that Iran has been taking big strides in its nuclear programme, despite demands from the UN, Europe and America that the Islamic republic co-operate with international inspections and stop its research.

Adding to the pressure France’s new president, Nicolas Sarkozy, made it clear, again on Wednesday, that he considers a nuclear-armed Iran “unacceptable” and that he would support tougher sanctions to discourage the government in Tehran. It is unclear whether that will make much difference in Iran. The country’s leaders, who relish confrontation, have promised to resist “any kind of threat”. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently gave warning of “severe” retaliation—presumably including attempts to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, where the American warships patrol and through which huge quantities of crude oil pass each day—if foreign forces were to attack Iran. Outsiders worry that Iran is moving faster than expected in its nuclear programme. The IAEA says some 1,300 centrifuges are now spinning to enrich uranium at a facility in Natanz, a difficult task that many were not sure Iran could pull off. Some 3,000 centrifuges are probably needed to produce enough weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb in less than a year, and Iran may bring another 600 online by this summer. Iran insists the programme is strictly civilian, but many outsiders are convinced that the real intention is to get the means to make a nuclear weapon sooner rather than later. A diplomatic confrontation will continue as outsiders struggle to bring effective pressure to bear. Iran’s negotiators will meet representatives from America and Europe later this month when they will claim to be willing to deal pragmatically over the nuclear programme. But attempts to talk have failed before. Even understanding the relative strengths of extremists and moderates among Iran’s leaders is difficult. The former seem to have an upper hand at the moment, apparently supporting insurgents in neighbouring Iraq and, possibly, in Afghanistan. In Iran itself the space for liberals and dissidents is shrinking: women are harassed for immodest dress; an Iranian-American female scholar was recently arrested, jailed and charged—bizarrely—with plotting the overthrow of the regime. Less widely reported was the detention of Hossein Mousavian, a former top nuclear negotiator. He is accused of espionage after he allegedly had contact with employees of a foreign embassy. Iran is also holding an Iranian-American journalist for Radio Farda, an American-funded Persian-language station. Nor is it clear how the moderates in Iran, backed by a large middle class, can be encouraged to assert themselves. Tougher economic sanctions over the nuclear programme would risk generating more support for the hardliners, as would any military strikes. But engagement of Tehran’s leaders in effect means letting the country get away with flouting international rules on nuclear development. More troubling, the IAEA’s boss, Mohamed ElBaradei, has split from western powers, with a suggestion that Iran should be allowed to retain some uranium-enrichment capacity—a proposal that is expected to draw complaints from American and European envoys. Source: Economist The coming week may act as a barometer for the prospects of any progress soon. On May 28th America’s ambassador in Iraq will meet an Iranian counterpart, but to talk only about Iraq’s security both sides insist. A couple of days later the next round of negotiations is expected between the EU’s foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, and Iran’s current nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani. Despite the show of force and the reports of the IAEA, there is little sign that Iran is ready to back down.