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State Department Requests Funds to Pressure Iran
The U.S. State Department is seeking $75 million in emergency funding for radio and television broadcasts into Iran and other activities designed to increase opposition to the country’s government, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 15). The budgeted 2006 outlay to support Iranian dissidents is $10 million, the Post reported. “The United States will actively confront the policies of this Iranian regime, and at the same time we are going to work to support the aspirations of the Iranian people for freedom in their own country,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. However, Martin Indyk, head of Middle East policy at the Brookings Institution, said the opposition elements the Bush administration hopes to support have failed in the past, and U.S. aid could undermine their credibility. “It’s hard to see how $75 million makes a dent in that political reality,” Indyk added. Rice is scheduled to travel to the Middle East next week to discuss the “strategic challenge to the world represented by the Iranian regime,” the State Department announced, while Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns is expected to discuss the issue with officials from the Group of Eight industrialized nations (Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, Feb. 16). Senator Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) criticized the Bush administration’s Middle East policy following Rice’s remarks, the Associated Press reported. “I don’t see, Madame Secretary, how things are getting better. I think things are getting worse. I think they’re getting worse in Iran,” Hagel said. Rice said Washington is examining “the full range of potential sanctions” the Security Council could implement relative to Iran’s nuclear program. The Bush administration does not plan to begin with aggressive moves, she said. “There is not a common view on when or how sanctions ought to be taken,” Rice said, “but the Iranian regime is giving the world a very good set of reasons to take serious measures.” “We want to look at the effect on the international community as a whole of any actions that we take, economies and the like,” she said. “I think you will see us trying to walk a fine line in what actions we take” (Anne Gearan, Associated Press/IranMania.com, Feb. 15). French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy today accused Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under the guise of a peaceful energy program, AP reported. “No civil nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program. It is a clandestine military nuclear program,” Douste-Blazy said. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, demanded that Tehran re-impose a uranium enrichment moratorium if it hopes for cooperation with Moscow on enrichment. “When confidence in the Iranian nuclear program is re-established ... we could come back to the possible implementation of the right that Iran has to develop a nuclear energy sector full scale,” Lavrov said (George Jahn, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16). Chinese cooperation on Moscow’s compromise proposal could help resolve the standoff, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alekseyev said today. “We are counting on the continuation of close contacts with our Chinese colleagues and other interested countries,” Interfax quoted Alekseyev as saying (Associated Press/eitb24.com, Feb. 16). The British opposition Conservative Party announced that military action against Iran must be considered, Agence France-Presse reported today. British Prime Minister Tony Blair should follow President George W. Bush’s example and leave all his options open, Conservative defense spokesman Liam Fox said in Washington. “It was wrong for the European Union’s foreign affairs spokesman Javier Solana to rule out the use of force. It is wrong for Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, to echo him,” Fox said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16). German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she remains determined to resolve the dispute with Iran peacefully, AFP reported. “Germans should not have any fear. We are without doubt living in a time of fresh conflicts but we are behaving in a firm and responsible manner,” Merkel told Germany’s Stern periodical in an interview published today. Merkel said she believed there was “a real chance for a negotiated solution” (Agence France-Presse/IranMania.com, Feb. 15). Few experts believe Iran is likely to soon develop a nuclear weapon, AP reported today. “It’s a very complicated process requiring precision from design and engineering to manufacture and installation, and there’s a lot of room for problems,” said Corey Hinderstein, an analyst with the Institute for Science and International Security. “A vast percentage of centrifuges have to be rejected in testing, up to 60 percent rejection,” said Frank Barnaby, a former British weapons scientist. While Iran has disclosed plans to install 50,000 centrifuges at its Natanz facility, fewer than half the 1,140 centrifuges assembled by 2004 were good enough to use in cascades, the International Atomic Energy Agency has reported. Experts said Iran could push ahead with 1,500 centrifuges and produce enough highly enriched uranium for one weapon — though even that would take about three years, they said. Added Barnaby, “Who do you deter with just one weapon?”(Charles Hanley, Associated Press/IranMania.com, Feb. 16). Iranian parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel and his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolas Maduro, yesterday signed a document condemning nuclear weapons but endorsing the right of all nations to nuclear energy, AP reported. “We condemn the making, development and accumulation of nuclear arms, (and) we ratify the right of all countries to make peaceful use of nuclear energy,” the document says (Jorge Rueda, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 16).
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