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The US Treasury’s top anti-terrorism official Stuart Levey will hold talks on Thursday with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme. Tzipi and Levey, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, will discuss a push for more international

sanctions on Iran, foreign ministry spokesman Mark Regev said. “Israel supports a hardening of sanctions already imposed” on the Islamic republic, Regev said. “Diplomacy must be firm and speak with one voice in order to succeed. “The Tehran regime must understand that business as usual cannot continue while it is pursuing its nuclear programme.” The UN Security Council has slapped two sets of sanctions on Iran over its atomic drive and is expected to press a third if Tehran does not meet international demands to halt uranium enrichment, a key part of the nuclear process. The West and Israel fears Iran is seeking to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme. Tehran says its programme is peaceful and has repeatedly refused to yield to the pressure. Israel — widely considered the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power — considers Iran its arch-enemy following repeated remarks by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.

Source: AFP

Five members of the Tehran bus drivers’ union were detained today outside the home of the union’s jailed leader, Mansur Osanlu, Radio Farda reported. Osanlu’s wife, Parvaneh Osanlu, said security forces are surrounding their home in Tehran. Members of the union were planning to hold a protest outside the house to call for the release of Osanlu and another jailed union activist, Mahmud Salehi.

The planned gathering was part of a worldwide day of action to free the two men, called by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. In an interview with Radio Farda today, the head of the International Transport Federation, David Cockroft, said the organization is “shocked and angered” by the “outrageous and unnecessary action” taken against Osanlu and Salehi. Cockroft said the detention of the activists is “unnecessary and provocative harassment [of] people who are doing the simple job of defending the rights of trade union members in important parts of the Iranian economy.”

Iranian police said on Thursday they have arrested 20 young people in a raid on party in the city of Karaj outside Tehran, the site of an illegal rock concert last week where 230 were detained. Police Colonel Majid Bazmun told the state IRNA news agency that police surrounded

the building where the “decadent gathering” was taking place after acting on a tip-off from a member of the public. “All the people who attended the party were arrested by the police forces. The case will be handed over to the judiciary when the investigation has been completed,” he added. The latest action come a week after police arrested 230 people in a raid on a “Satan-worshipping” underground rock concert in Karaj, in one of the biggest such arrests in recent months. There has been no further information over the fate of those arrested at the rock concert. Iran is currently in the midst of one of its tightest moral crackdowns in years, which has already seen thousands of women warned by the police for dressing that is deemed to be unIslamic. Mixed-sex parties are strictly illegal in Iran.

It is forbidden to consume alcohol in public or private and attend gatherings with improperly-clad members of the opposite sex. Dancing to Western music is also frowned upon. Iran’s overall police chief Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghaddam said that the moral crackdown, dubbed the drive to “elevate security in society”, would continue as it had proved popular with the public. “With respect to the evaluation of the police and people’s satisfaction the plan to elevate security in society will be pursued with full force,” he told the Mehr news agency. “The plan of elevating social security, which has been imposed in different phases, has made people feel more secure in society and increased people’s confidence in the police,” he added.

Source: AFP

Robin Wright of the Washington Post reports fourteen months after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice offered to talk to Iran, the failure of carrot-and-stick diplomacy to block Tehran’s nuclear and regional ambitions is producing a new drumbeat for bolder action, including the possible use of force.

The emerging debate — evident in an array of new reports, conferences and commentaries — is still in the early stages, but some of the language urging the Bush administration to be more aggressive during its final 17 months is reminiscent of arguments from think tanks and commentators that shaped the case for invading Iraq. “A lot of people were willing to give diplomacy a chance, but at some point there have to be results,” said Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, an advocate of the Iraq war. “It’s been a year since Rice agreed to talk to the Iranians if they accepted U.N. terms, and it’s only bought them more time for their nuclear program.” Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates are committed to economic sanctions and pressure through the United Nations. But proponents of tougher policy reflect the views of a small part of the Bush administration open to military options if Iran does not suspend a uranium-enrichment program that can be subverted for a nuclear bomb. The drumbeats are also louder because of Iraq. Since May, the first formal talks between U.S. and Iranian envoys in 28 years have not deterred Iranian support for Iraqi Shiite militias targeting U.S. troops and the Green Zone.

Explosives that U.S. officials say come from Iran accounted for one-third of U.S. combat deaths last month in Iraq, according to U.S. officials. “Discussions about attacking Iran began with the nuclear issue, but it has now become a silver bullet to also deal with Iran’s activities with Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, and even to provoke a process of regime change,” said Augustus Richard Norton, a retired Army colonel now at Boston University. A possible timetable has emerged as well. “The consensus I’m hearing is to give the [U.N.] Security Council process more time but not unlimited time, and, at some point in the spring of 2008, there has to be a good hard look at whether that process should continue and whether other options should then be considered,” said Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East expert for the Congressional Research Service. Many advocates of tougher action are speaking out at a time when the administration faces an “internal crisis of confidence” over the viability of its diplomatic strategy, said Suzanne Maloney, a former Iran expert with the State Department and now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There’s a sense of frustration with the strategy, even among those who favor a less kinetic approach. . . . The one clear alternative with some proponents is the bombing option,” she said. Not all those pushing for bolder action call for military force but, instead, say current policy has not changed Iran’s behavior. As with Iraq, however, they do not question that Iran is working on weapons of mass destruction and is intent on dominating the region.

Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute recently wrote that assuming that Iran wants stability in Iraq is “as naive as it is dangerous. . . . U.S. and Iranian interests in Iraq are diametrically opposed, and will continue to be until one side wins and the other loses.” He depicted diplomacy with Iran as “a mirage, a tactical tool to divert U.S. policy attention away from the Revolutionary Guards and intelligence officials charged with implementing the Iranian leadership’s objectives.” “For the U.S. government to succeed in Iraq,” Rubin argued, “it must engage not with the illusion of Iranian policy, but refine its strategies to neutralize and counter the Iranian strategies.” “Deterring the Ayatollahs,” a new publication by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, backs economic sanctions and diplomacy, but co-editors Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt also conclude that neither may work, and that deterring Iran once it develops a nuclear weapon will be “much more difficult than deterrence was during the Cold War.” Echoing arguments put forth before the Iraq invasion, contributor Gregory Giles writes that “a nuclear Iran would pose serious challenges in terms of controlling its nuclear force, the risk of transfer of nuclear technology, and possible support for WMD terror.” In the Hoover Institution’s Policy Review, Kori Schake, a former member of the National Security Council in the Bush administration, outlines military options — including destroying Iran’s nuclear program, ousting the government by missile strikes and special forces operations, and a token “demonstration strike” to show Iran’s vulnerability — if Tehran obtains nuclear weapons. The Heritage Foundation’s Web site has a section labeled “Iran: The Rising Threat,” advocating aggressive diplomacy and tough sanctions with a willingness to use force to stave off Iran’s becoming a nuclear power. Heritage recently hosted a meeting on Iranian challenges to nuclear and energy security. Author Norman Podhoretz goes the furthest in his Commentary essay “The Case for Bombing Iran.” He warns that diplomacy with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is akin to appeasement of the Nazis.

“Like Hitler, [Ahmadinejad] is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran. . . . The plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force — any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938,” he writes. Unlike the 2003 Iraq invasion, the next step on Iran is less clear, said Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute. “I like the idea of anything that gets rid of the nuclear weapons program and the regime, but I’m not persuaded that bombing achieves that,” she said. “It may be our last option, but I’m not sure we’re there yet.”

Diplomatic talks with Iran are failing to stem the insurgency in neighboring Iraq, the U.S. State Department said, as the military revealed Iranian-linked bomb attacks on troops are increasing. Two rounds of talks between Ambassador Ryan Crocker and his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, and lower level security discussions, haven’t “yielded positive results,” spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington yesterday.

Roadside attacks against U.S. soldiers using armor-piercing bombs have increased, McCormack said, citing Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq.

The U.S. has repeatedly accused Iran of training and financing insurgents in Iraq and stoking violence between the country’s Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities. Iran denies the charges and yesterday held the latest round of security talks with Iraq, when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki visited Tehran.

McCormack’s comments came as the U.S. military raided a terrorist cell yesterday in Baghdad suspected of transporting weapons from Iran. U.S. forces killed 30 suspected militiamen and detained 12 others in the raid in eastern Baghdad’s mainly Shiite Muslim area of Sadr City.

Roadside bombs supplied by Iran caused 23 of 69 combat deaths suffered by U.S.-led forces in Iraq last month, the New York Times reported yesterday, citing Odierno.

The devices, known as “explosively formed penetrators,” fire copper slugs that can pierce armored vehicles and were used in a record 99 attacks in July, the newspaper said.

Iran-Iraq Ties

Iran shares a 1,458-kilometer (906-mile) border with Iraq to the west and both have Shiite Muslim majorities. The two states fought an eight-year war in the 1980s and have increased political and economic ties since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Muslim-led regime.

Maliki met yesterday with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Vice President Parviz Davudi to discuss security in Iraq, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“Iran and Iraq have a heavy responsibility for establishing peace and security in the region,” IRNA cited Ahmadinejad as saying. Maliki said he wants to expand ties with Iran and appealed to the country’s industries to invest in infrastructure projects in Iraq, IRNA reported.

Syria, accused by the U.S. of allowing insurgents to cross the border into Iraq, also hosted security talks yesterday.

Representatives from the U.S. military in Iraq and U.S. Embassy in Damascus were “observers” at the meeting that was attended by Iraq’s neighbors, said McCormack.

Sourse: Bloomberg

WITH America determined to thwart Iran’s possibly nuclear-tipped ambitions, and the Islamic Republic set on blocking the superpower’s regional sway, some are calling the contest between Iran and the United States a new cold war. As in the last one, the adversaries have mostly shied from hitting each other directly, preferring propaganda, proxy fighters and subtler pressures. In contrast to the last one,

America has so far fared badly. Its burden in Iraq refuses to lighten, and its strategy of pacifying the region by (vainly) encouraging the Arabs to democratise has alienated allies almost as much as its support for Israel. Meanwhile, Iran is enriching uranium in defiance of the UN Security Council and basking in the reflected glory of its clients, Hizbullah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine and Shia militias in Iraq. The beleaguered Bush administration, looking for a comeback strategy, has now reverted to more traditional ways of rallying its friends. What appears to be a charm offensive began with President Bush’s call, in mid-July, for a regional peace meeting to address the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arab leaders had long demanded such an event, both to placate their restless publics and to undercut Iran, which is working hard to exploit the Palestinian cause to bolster its image as a protector of Muslim rights. Whether the meeting, expected late this year, can achieve a real breakthrough in the peace process remains to be seen. But at least the Bush administration is showing signs of engagement.

This week America’s secretaries of state and defence kicked off an unusual joint tour of the region with a still more concrete show of commitment to American allies. Over the coming decade, officials announced, America would be supplying them with some $63 billion worth of arms. The package included a 25% increase in military aid to Israel, raising its value from $2.4 billion a year to $3 billion, and a ten-year pledge to continue bolstering Egypt’s military with an annual $1.3 billion in aid. More controversially, at least in the American Congress, the deal also included a planned $20 billion in weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the five smaller monarchies that face Iran across the Persian Gulf. The planned arms transfers, say analysts, are intended to signal that America expects to maintain its role as a guarantor of regional stability, even in the event of a withdrawal from Iraq. Yet, with the exception of the sharp rise in aid to Israel, the big numbers do not amount to much that is really new. America has maintained the same level of military aid to Egypt since 1979, when Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David peace accords with Israel. In fact, the new commitment marks the end of an unwritten rule that divided American military aid to the peace partners by a 2:3 ratio in Israel’s favour. Egypt’s share will now shrink to two-fifths of Israel’s, leaving aside what the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, describes as a “detailed and explicit” promise to maintain the qualitative edge in military technology that Israel has traditionally held over Arab neighbours.

And in any case, Congress has moved to condition a slice of aid to Egypt this year on improvements in the country’s human-rights record. As for the Gulf, the announcement of $20 billion in promised arms sales over ten years is plainly intended to scare, or deter, Iran. The sum falls far short of what the Gulf monarchies would likely have spent anyway. From 1990-2000, for instance, Saudi Arabia bought some $40 billion-worth of American military gear. Last year alone, the six Gulf Co-operation Council countries signed defence contracts worth more than $20 billion, half of them with American suppliers. Even so, and despite the fact that Israeli officials say they do not oppose the sale, objections have been raised in the American Congress. Some legislators accuse Saudi Arabia, in particular, of “tacit approval” for Islamist terrorism. But American qualms about the kingdom go beyond point-scoring local politics. Zalmay Khalilzad, America’s representative to the United Nations, recently hinted that Saudi support for some Sunni political parties in Iraq has weakened the Shia-dominated, American-backed government. American press reports assert that Saudi nationals make up the single largest group of suicide bombers in Iraq. In fact, America’s relations with its Arab allies have been increasingly strained. In March King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia raised eyebrows by describing America’s occupation of Iraq as illegal, and later refused to meet the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. Despite American prompting to take a more forceful stance, Gulf leaders have kept their serious worries about Iran’s ambitions mostly quiet. Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, once a frequent visitor, has avoided Washington in recent years.

He has also ignored American protests over human-rights abuses. On the day he met with Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, an Egyptian court rejected an appeal to release Ayman Nour, a politician who challenged Mr Mubarak in the 2005 elections, from prison on medical grounds. One thing that could transform America’s standing in the region would be real progress towards George Bush’s newly re-iterated “vision” of a Palestinian state. Hoping that getting talks started will increase support for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, against the Islamists of Hamas who now run the Gaza Strip, the Bush administration is calling for an international “meeting” in the autumn. American officials have been avoiding the weightier word “conference” used by their Arab allies, leading observers to suspect that this will end up merely as a high-profile session of the regular confab for the Palestinians’ international donors. But an announcement this week that Saudi Arabia might attend could spur something more serious. The Saudi-brokered coalition between Hamas and Mr Abbas’s Fatah party earlier this year, though short-lived, went against the preference in America and Israel (and sections of Fatah) for squeezing Hamas out of power. If the Saudis are now readier to co-operate with the American game, it may be a sign that those arms sales are doing their work. And it would serve the interests of both countries by helping to spoil Iran’s pose as a defender of the Palestinians.

Diplomacy in slow motion

Mr Olmert has not said that Israel will attend, only that he hopes many other Arab countries do. That could be seen as kicking the ball back in the Arabs’ court. Israel has so far refused to accept the Arab League’s peace initiative, which calls for full normalisation only if Israel withdraws completely from the West Bank and recognises the right Palestinian refugees claim to return to homes now in Israel. But in recent weeks Israeli officials have once again been talking about removing settlements from large parts of the West Bank, the proposal on which Mr Olmert was elected, but which has been a political taboo since last summer’s war in Lebanon. Things seem to be moving—but glacially. So it is perhaps small wonder that Iran and its allies appear unshaken by America’s latest moves. Syria’s foreign minister, Walid Muallem, said of the proposed arms transfers that supplying weapons was an odd way to achieve peace. One Tehran daily, Jomhuri Islami, dismissed America’s diplomacy as being as “useless as a chocolate teapot”.

Source: Economist

An Iranian minister said he believed the United States had dropped the idea of attacking Iran but wanted to topple its leadership through what he called a “soft revolution.” Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei, a cleric, said Iran’s enemies had waged “psychological warfare” to prepare for military action against the Islamic Republic.

In comments carried on Wednesday by the government-owned Iran daily, he suggested the country’s successful defense against Iraqi forces during the 1980-88 war and more recent U.S. setbacks in Iraq had however forced the Americans to rethink. “The resistance of the Iranian nation during the eight years of holy war and the defeat of the enemies in the Middle East caused the Global Arrogance (the United States) to put aside the option of a military attack against Iran,” he said. The United States accuses Iran of fomenting instability in Iraq. Iran blames the presence of U.S. forces for the violence threatening to tear its neighbor apart.

Washington and Tehran are also at loggerheads over Iran’s nuclear program. Asked about the Iranian minister’s comments, Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said in a written statement: “The Iranian people clearly deserve a government that provides good jobs and services for its citizens and a peaceful foreign policy, not fuel rationing and support of terrorism, but decisions about their government will be made by the people of Iran.” Iranian, U.S. and Iraqi officials on Monday held the first meeting of a joint committee aimed at easing Iraq’s security crisis which they agreed to set up during landmark talks in Baghdad that began in May. Tehran has kept up its fierce anti-U.S. rhetoric despite the two old foes holding their highest profile face-to-face dialogue since Washington cut ties after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Iran’s detentions this year of four Iranian-Americans, and last month’s televised “confessions” of two of them, have further stoked tension.

The U.S. administration, which believes Tehran is seeking to build atom bombs, says it would prefer a diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff but has not ruled out military action. Iran, which insists its nuclear program is solely aimed at generating electricity, has threatened to retaliate if attacked. It says Washington is working for a “soft revolution” in Iran with the help of intellectuals and others in the country. Mohseni-Ejei listed what he said were plans by the United States and its allies to undermine and discredit Iran’s leaders: “The first one which the Americans are leading … is to create disputes and divisions among the revolutionary forces.” He said they were also trying to portray the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West and Israel, as “useless in order to ready the ground for the entrance of some of their own elements into the government.” But, Mohseni-Ejei said: “This plot will not be successful.”

Source: Reuters