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Iran Should Get Better Offer, Blix Says
The European Union should offer Iran greater incentives to forgo any nuclear weapon ambitions, longtime nonproliferation official Hans Blix said yesterday. Blix served as director general of the International Atomic Energy and later as head of the U.N. commission to oversee Iraq’s WMD disarmament following the 1991 Gulf War (see GSN, Dec. 8). “I am not convinced that the EU has offered sufficiently interesting things to the Iranians,” Blix told Agence France-Presse. Tehran was told that it “could expect World Trade Organization membership, access to spare parts for Boeings, and a fuel supply guarantee,” Blix said. “But when you compare these things that have been offered to Iran with what has been offered to North Korea, I am not sure that one is at the negotiations’ end,” he said. European negotiators “are also restrained by the backseat driver whom they have in the car, the Americans,” he added (Agence France-Presse/SpaceWar.com, Dec. 8). A report released in October by the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute says the Israeli air force probably does not have the capability to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday. “Israel has no aircraft carriers and it cannot use airbases in other Middle East states; therefore its operational capabilities are reduced when the targets are located far from its territory,” the report says. It adds that even if Israel had the requisite capabilities, it probably does not have “the kind of intelligence needed to be certain that all the necessary elements of the program were traced and destroyed fully.” The report also says that Israel’s intelligence and military community is divided over its perception of the threat from Iran. While one side “assumes no political pressure can force Iran to stop its military nuclear program, the other school believes that political pressure can be effective in at least delaying the nuclear program significantly,” the report says. “The second school believes that a nuclear Iran with a different regime will not pose a high risk to Israel and can be easily deterred.” The report adds that an effective Israeli attack would “necessitate sustainable strikes on a relatively large number of targets that are well-defended.” It says that the Iranian Bushehr nuclear power plant, while vulnerable to such an attack, is not part of the military nuclear program. “The conclusion is that Israel could attack only a few Iranian targets and not as part of a sustainable operation over time, but as a one-time surprise operation,” the report says (Arieh O’Sullivan, Jerusalem Post, Dec. 7). Experts have said that destroying Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require piloted aircraft to deliver bunker-busting precision bombs and possibly commandos on the ground, the Associated Press reported yesterday. “It’s not a target that you can find on the map, send two F-15s and solve it,” said Itamar Yaar, deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council. Israel has recently been boosting its military, including the purchase of long-range warplanes that could reach Iran and two submarines said to have nuclear weapons capability, according to AP. Some experts have said a lack of good intelligence on targets, the existence of multiple, dispersed nuclear installations underground and improvements to Iran’s defense systems would make a successful military strike difficult. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said a successful strike would have to be a surprise attack, preventing Tehran from removing uranium enrichment equipment from target installations before they are hit. He also said commando raids would likely be necessary. Israeli analyst Gerald Steinberg said even a limited operation to hit crucial components of the Iranian program could be enough. While several experts said the United States had the capability to carry out a successful attack, some doubted whether Israel alone could do so (Steven Gutkin, Associated Press/Seattle Times, Dec. 8). Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s most recent anti-Israel rhetoric has prompted renewed warnings about Iran’s nuclear activities from both Jerusalem and Washington, AP reported today. “Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps,” Ahmadinejad said yesterday. “Any historian, commentator or scientist who doubts that is taken to prison or gets condemned.” “Let’s assume what the Europeans say is true ... Let’s give some land to the Zionists in Europe or in Germany or Austria,” he said. “They faced injustice in Europe, so why do the repercussions fall on the Palestinians?” White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the comment “further underscores our concerns about the regime in Iran. It’s all the more reason why it’s important that the regime not have the ability to develop nuclear weapons.” “The statement that was made today by the Iranian president should be a wake-up call to all of us around the world,” said Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom. “We should do everything we can in order to stop him, and to stop the Iranian effort to develop a nuclear bomb.” Ahmadinejad also reiterated Tehran’s rejection of a nuclear compromise proposal, under which Iran’s uranium enrichment would be moved to Russia. “What are your guarantees that you will supply us with fuel in (the) future?” he said. “Possibly tomorrow, after we have come to depend on you for energy, you will not give us the fuel at a proper time and price.” “The subject of talks with the European countries and the [International Atomic] Energy Agency will be only for the supervision that we will not deviate from peaceful processes,” he said (Salah Nasrawi, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 9).
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