U.S. President George W. Bush said yesterday that a new intelligence report’s finding that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 does not rule the country out as a threat, the New York Times reported (see GSN, Dec. 4).
Bush declared that Iran should not be trusted with technical expertise to enrich uranium for even if it is intended only for civilian energy production. The president also appeared to dismiss calls to open up a direct dialogue with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “Look, Iran was dangerous, Iran is dangerous, and Iran will be dangerous, if they have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at a news conference in which questions largely focused on the report. “What’s to say they couldn’t start another covert nuclear weapons program?” Bush said the conclusion of the National Intelligence Estimate was based on a “great discovery” by the U.S. intelligence community, but he and other officials refused to give further details. Sources said the report’s conclusions were drawn from intercepted conversations and information supplied by people with knowledge of Iranian nuclear work. Bush said the report further emphasized the necessity of international action against Iran to prevent it from becoming a nuclear weapons power. “This report is not an ‘OK, everybody needs to relax and quit’ report,” Bush said. “This is a report that says what has happened in the past could be repeated and that the policies used to cause the regime to halt are effective policies. And let’s keep them up. Let’s continue to work together.” Bush weathered criticism yesterday for saying he first learned of the new findings on the suspected Iranian weapons program in August but that national intelligence chief Mike McConnell did not provide specific details at that time. “That’s not believable,” said presidential candidate and Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.). “I refuse to believe that. If that’s true, he has the most incompetent staff in American, modern American history and he’s one of the most incompetent presidents in modern American history.” Effect on Future SanctionsWhite House officials struggled yesterday to maintain international momentum toward passing a third set of international sanctions against Iran, the Times reported. Bush discussed the report with Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged her counterparts from the four other permanent U.N. Security Council member nations and Germany to continue work on new penalties. One European diplomat said a conference call led by U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns to discuss the report was “listless.” “We’re all flabbergasted,” the diplomat said of the overall report. “You get such a surprise, and then you sit together and consider how to move forward. To be on safe ground, we decided to keep moving forward” on further sanctions. A high-level Bush administration official said the estimate would hinder U.S. efforts to win Chinese approval for new Security Council sanctions against Iran. China appeared at talks last weekend to be reconsidering its opposition to a new council resolution, the official said. The U.S. report “gives the Chinese the opportunity to get off the hook,” the official said (Myers/Cooper, New York Times I, Dec. 4). U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad said his orders to continue pushing for new sanctions “have not changed” due to Iran’s refusal two comply with two past Security Council resolutions demanding that the nation suspend its uranium enrichment program, the Los Angeles Times reported. Khalilzad as early as Friday could introduce a draft sanctions resolution that would target firms and individuals connected to Iranian nuclear activities. “[The intelligence estimate] does not say that Iran does not have the intention to develop a nuclear weapons capability, that it has abandoned the goal of acquiring a nuclear weapons capability permanently,” Khalilzad said. “Therefore it should encourage us that if we pressure Iran, it will change its approach” (Maggie Farley, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 5). Experts said the report would undermine efforts for new sanctions as well as future Bush administration threats of military action against Iran’s nuclear program, the Associated Press reported yesterday. “It would be incredibly difficult to justify to either domestic or foreign audiences that any such [military] step is even remotely necessary if there is not an active weapons effort,” said Paul Pillar, a former CIA analyst who headed the writing of past U.S. intelligence reports on Iran. The modest international sanctions now in place were passed in part due to U.S. assertions that Iran was building a nuclear weapon and could not be trusted with sensitive nuclear knowledge. The measures have not undermined Iran’s policy of pursuing uranium enrichment capabilities. “The Bush administration has perhaps even less credibility now in Beijing and Moscow than Iran's clerics,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an expert on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “China and Russia felt like they were sacrificing their own national interests in order to please Washington. It's highly doubtful they will continue to do so,” Sadjadpour said (Anne Gearan, Associated Press/Google News, Dec. 4). Chinese U.N. envoy Wang Guangya said yesterday that the U.S. report could affect China’s stance. “Certainly I think we will study the contents and also think about the implications for the (U.N. Security) Council's action here,” he said. When asked if the report has decreased the likelihood of passing new sanctions, Wang said, “council members will have to consider that, because … now things have changed.” France and the United Kingdom said yesterday that they would work with the United States to continue pushing the sanctions proposal in spite of international resistance created by the intelligence estimate (Agence France-Presse I/Google News, Dec. 4). “We do need to examine the details of this report,” said Michael Ellam, spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. “But in overall terms the government believes that the report confirms we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons.” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called for strong “negative consequences” if Iran continues its uranium enrichment program (Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Dec. 4). IAEA ResponseAn official close to the International Atomic Energy Agency welcomed the U.S. intelligence report but called for more caution in reaching conclusions about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the New York Times reported. “To be frank, we are more skeptical,” the official said. “We don’t buy the American analysis 100 percent. We are not that generous with Iran.” The official added that the U.S. statement that Iran “halted” nuclear weapons development was “somewhat surprising.” IAEA officials said that Iran should not take advantage of the U.S. report to cease its cooperation with the agency and warned that Tehran must take further steps to clarify its intentions. “We are still worried about certain aspects of Iran’s nuclear program, and we need answers, particularly about so-called military aspects of the program,” the official said (Elaine Sciolino, New York Times II, Dec. 4). Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today that Moscow has seen no proof of Iranian nuclear weapons development before 2003, AFP reported. “We have no information that such a project existed before 2003, although American colleagues stated that the situation was exactly that,” Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying (Agence France-Presse III/Spacewar.com, Dec. 5). Lavrov said Iran has vowed to address all of the U.N. nuclear watchdog’s remaining concerns, AP reported. Meanwhile, Putin said in a meeting with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator yesterday that Tehran’s nuclear program should be transparent and stay under IAEA supervision. “We welcome the extension of your cooperation with the IAEA. We expect that your programs in the nuclear sphere will be open, transparent and be conducted under control of the authoritative international organization,” Putin said. Neither Putin nor Saeed Jalili referred to the U.S. intelligence estimate on Iran (Associated Press II/USA Today, Dec. 4). Ahmadinejad Declares VindicationIranian President Ahmadinejad said yesterday that the U.S. report’s publication represented a “great victory” for Iran, AFP reported. “You saw the report of the U.S. intelligence. They said clearly that the Iranian people were on the just path,” Ahmadinejad said at a rally. “This report tries to extract America from its impasse but it also is a declaration of victory for the Iranian people against the great powers,” he said. “It is the final blow for the enemies of Iran," he said (Stuart Williams, Agence France-Presse IV/Yahoo!News, Dec. 5). Intelligence Changes Cause New FindingsThe conclusions of the U.S. intelligence estimate were reached through a radically reshaped analytical process that drew from extensive information-gathering efforts inside Iran, the Washington Post reported. Past intelligence failures involving claims that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction led National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell to require agencies to source their assertions more thoroughly and seek wider corroboration within the U.S. intelligence community. “‘Do not know’ is a new technical term for an NIE,” said one senior official close to the report’s creation. Intelligence officials said the report’s new conclusion supported the changes to analytical procedures, but the shift has also left the intelligence agencies open to criticism that they did not detect the major Iranian policy shift sooner after it was made. Former and current U.S. intelligence officials said the shortcomings in a 2005 National Intelligence Estimate stating that Iran was “determined” to obtain nuclear weapons were owed to the extreme secrecy surrounding Iran’s nuclear activities. “It's the hardest damn target out there — harder than North Korea,” said a U.S. intelligence official who contributed to the report. “This is a program they tried very hard to hide from us, and it was hard even to fathom who was in charge.” Ellen Laipson, a former National Intelligence Council vice chairman, said the 2005 report drew from the best evidence available at that time. President Bush asked intelligence advisers why information on Iran’s nuclear program was so difficult to obtain during a standard briefing in early summer 2005, according to a high-level U.S. official who witnessed the event. The resulting conversation contributed to a stepped up U.S. effort to gather intelligence on the program. The CIA established a new Iran Operations Division over future months in which analysts and intelligence collectors collaborated to find new hard evidence on Iran’s nuclear activities. The effort turned up intercepted telephone conversations between Iranian nuclear officials and files from a stolen Iranian laptop. Both sources contributed to the conclusion that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program. Senior intelligence officials said there was no “eureka” moment resulting in the change, but rather a gradual conclusion that developed among analysts that Iran had made a “course correction” in 2003. “One reason this is actually an intelligence success is that when we got additional information that could lead to a different conclusion, we had an ability to move in that direction,” said a high-level intelligence official involved in drafting the estimate. The U.S. intelligence community’s new aim to assess intentions as well as capabilities of other nations also contributed to the estimate, leading to doubts that Iran intended to use incoming nuclear supplies for weapons although it had scientific, technical and industrial capabilities to produce nuclear weapons. (Warrick/Pincus, Washington Post II, Dec. 5). U.S. Democratic presidential contenders attacked the Bush administration over the new intelligence report in a debate, criticizing the White House’s reliance on threats of military action against Iran’s nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reported. “I vehemently disagree with the president that nothing’s changed and therefore nothing in American policy has to change,” said Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), a presidential candidate. “We do know that pressure on Iran does have an effect. I think that is an important lesson.” Clinton defended her choice to vote for recent legislation sponsored by senators Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) that unofficially marked Iran’s revolutionary guard as a terrorist entity. When asked if she thought guard members were “proliferators of mass destruction,” Clinton said “many of us believe that.” She said past statements by fellow presidential candidates Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.) suggested they also suspected the Iranian military branch was involved in terrorist activity. Obama and Edwards responded that the Iran threatened Middle East stability although Bush was pushing for war when it was not necessary. “What I believe is that this president, who, just a few weeks ago, was talking about World War III, he, the vice president, the neocons have been on a march to possible war with Iran for a long time,” Edwards said. “We know that they've prepared contingency plans for a military attack” (Martelle/Abcarian, Los Angeles Times II, Dec. 5).
By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Former Senator Warren Rudman, a co-author of a prescient pre-Sept. 11 report on U.S. domestic security vulnerabilities, called this week for unlimited spending on port radiation detection efforts (See GSN, Nov. 27). The former New Hampshire Republican lawmaker’s declaration comes amid a yearlong congressional debate over the efficacy of planned next-generation detectors advocated by the Homeland Security Department. Some of the criticism has focused on the cost of the new Advanced Spectroscopic Portal monitors, which are significantly more expensive than devices now in operation at U.S. seaports. Rudman, though, said cost should not be a factor when addressing the “No. 1 unsolved problem” in protecting the United States against terrorism — port security, particularly vulnerabilities related to a smuggled nuclear device. The man who helped prepare the January 2001 “Hart-Rudman” report warned of the devastating consequences of an improvised nuclear device making it across U.S. borders. “I worry about a nuclear device coming in a sealed container in the port of Miami or the port of New York or the port of L.A., coming in with the seal never broken, never inspected, put on the back of a truck, and off it goes to Denver,” he said Monday during a roundtable discussion with National Journal Group reporters. Rudman said the United States has completed just 20 percent of the port security work he would like to see done. Rudman provided no suggestions for future security enhancement beyond more funding. He said he would spend “unlimited” amounts of money on port security, even if it meant drawing funds away from the Transportation Security Administration, the federal agency that handles airport security. “It’s a huge problem,” he said. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, much legislative attention has been paid to the threat of a nuclear weapon or nuclear material arriving at a U.S. port inside an anonymous metal freight container. By the end of this year nearly all sea cargo unloaded at “major” U.S. seaports is set to be scanned for radiation, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told lawmakers in September Between 2003 and 2006, Rudman served on the board of directors of the Raytheon Co., the firm that produces the ASP monitors and could get a chunk of the $1.2 billion that Homeland Security wants to spend on the technology in the coming years.
Two days of parliamentary talks in India ended today with a walkout of lawmakers opposed to the pending U.S.-Indian nuclear trade deal, the Indo-Asian News Service reported. Critics of the deal said a majority of legislators in parliament’s upper house now oppose the pact, which would enable India to purchase U.S. nuclear materials and technology in exchange for permitting international supervision of the nation’s civilian nuclear activities (see GSN, Nov. 29). “We are not fully convinced. My opposition to the deal continues,” said Sitarum Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “A majority of the house does not agree. We are a democratic people and we should go by democracy.” Yechury spoke for four communist parties that support but do not formally belong to the governing coalition of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The four parties have warned that they could pull their support for Singh if the nuclear deal proceeds, thereby forcing early elections (Indo-Asian News Service I/NDTV, Dec. 5). “If the government wanted to stay in power, it should not proceed with committing the dangerous folly,” Yechury said yesterday during the first, eight-hour session of the house (Economic Times, Dec. 5). Political opponents from the left and the right have expressed concern that the deal’s conditions would excessively limit India’s freedom to pursue its nuclear ambitions. “Please do not proceed on this at all,” Yechury said yesterday. “Do not make India a subordinate ally of the U.S.” “Our opposition is not to the American people. In fact we are pro-American people,” he continued. “Sixty-one percent of the U.S. people are not for [U.S. President George W.] Bush. We are anti-U.S. imperialism.” From the right came fire from the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. “I declare that if we come to power, which we will, we will renegotiate the deal,” party leader Jashwant Sinha said yesterday. “We oppose the deal for three reasons. First, it will affect nuclear deterrence. Second, foreign policy. And third, nuclear policy.” Freedom from U.S. and international oversight would give India the ability to freely develop its nuclear assets, as it has since the nation detonated its first nuclear weapon in 1974. “All the scientists whom I have spoken to have told me that the nuclear isolation has proved to be a boon for India,” he said. Singh government officials defended the deal. “India is too big and proud to be subjugated by the U.S. foreign policy,” said Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal (Mudassir Rizwan, Indo-Asian News Service II/Indianmuslims.info, Dec. 5). Continuing this theme, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee today countered concerns that the deal would restrict India’s freedom to conduct future nuclear tests. The text of the pending deal does not address nuclear testing he said. “If the geopolitical situation arises, we will go for it,” he said. “If India considers it necessary, it will conduct the test and follow the consequences as we had done before.” The United States and other nations imposed a series of economic sanctions against India following its most recent tests in 1998. The deal was worth such risks, Mukherjee said. “We require energy. We require technology. We want to achieve 9 to 10 percent growth,” he said. “We have to go in for cost-effective energy” (Indo-Asian News Service I).
North Korea remains on track to disable its primary nuclear facilities by the end of 2007, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said today (see GSN, Dec. 4). The top U.S. envoy on the North Korean nuclear issue visited the Yongbyon nuclear complex during a two-day visit to the Stalinist state, the Associated Press reported. Pyongyang in October pledged to disable a plutonium-producing reactor and two other facilities at Yongbyon as part of the ongoing denuclearization process. Disablement would leave the plants unable to resume operations for at least a year, according to U.S. officials. “The disablement activities are going well and on schedule,” Hill said before flying to Beijing. “I’m satisfied with the results.” “But, we have to keep working because we have more to do to meet our deadlines,” he added. Officials from other nations in the six-party talks have said that disablement might not be concluded until 2008 due to difficulty in removing 8,000 fuel rods from the reactor. Hill said he hoped work would finish this year, AP reported. “We’re not looking for some sort of cliffhanger. … What we want to see is that this is going on as quickly as possible and we are very much convinced that that is the case,” he said (Audra Ang, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Dec. 5). Pyongyang and Washington have not yet agreed on what must be included in a required declaration of North Korea’s nuclear activities, Reuters reported. The document, due to be submitted this year, must be “complete and correct,” Hill said. “We wanted to make sure that they would include all the facilities, materials and programs,” he said. “There are definitely some differences there.” Hill said he did not know whether there would be another full round this year of six-nation negotiations involving China, Japan, Russia, the United States and both Koreas (Chris Buckley, Reuters/Yahoo!News, Dec. 5). State Department spokesman Tom Casey said yesterday the delay in the talks, which had been expected to resume this week, was not linked to any slowdown by North Korea in preparing the nuclear declaration, Agence France-Presse reported. “I can assure you that, at least my best understanding is there is no substantive reason for the delay, that it is simply a matter of scheduling and logistics, and I would look for the meeting to take place in the near future,” Casey said (P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse I/Channel NewsAsia, Dec. 4). A senior State Department official said yesterday that new nuclear reactors would not be among the awards that North Korea could earn under the denuclearization process, AFP reported. “Such nuclear cooperation is not the goal or intent of the six-party process,” Jeffrey Bergner, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, said in a letter to Representative Edward Markey (D-Mass.). “In addition, even if the designation of North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism were removed, significant legal barriers to nuclear cooperation with North Korea would remain, including several sanctions laws” (P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse II/Yahoo!News, Dec. 4).
Plans to add nine nations into a passport-free European travel zone have raised concerns that terrorists could more easily transport radioactive materials around the continent, the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday. The concerns have been highlighted by last week’s announcements by Hungary and Slovakia that three men were arrested while trying to sell 1 pound of enriched uranium (see GSN, Dec. 3). Those two nations and seven others, some former Soviet states, are scheduled Dec. 21 to join the so-called Schengen Agreement, a treaty that calls on European nations to drop tight passport and customs controls as a way to improve trade. Easing such restrictions could make intercepting nuclear terrorists more difficult, said one nonproliferation expert, who criticized other analysts who played down the importance of the recent seizure. “We seem to be immune to understanding that this is worrisome, [saying] ‘Oh well, it's not enough for a nuclear weapon, or radioactive enough for a dirty bomb,’” said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center. “Enriched uranium at any level is a worry; even if low-enriched uranium, it should be a wake-up call of the danger that someone who might be covertly enriching to make a bomb's worth of highly enriched uranium could get a hold of this as fresh feed to accelerate their enrichment efforts.” Another specialist, however, said the Schengen pact would give authorities more power to chase suspected terrorists and prevent nuclear smuggling. “Slovakia could and should tap into EU expertise and further financial resources to help shield the border,” said Vitaly Fedchenko of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The treaty would also allow law enforcement personnel greater ability to cross borders to pursue suspects, according to the Monitor (Michael Jordan, Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 4).
The Soviet Union’s last president yesterday urged Russia and the United States to maintain a 20-year-old treaty banning all medium-range nuclear missiles, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Oct . 26). Mikhail Gorbachev distanced himself from Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials who have indicated that Moscow might withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty on grounds that it is outdated. “All of these treaties constitute a system, a structure, that maintained a certain stability … but this is something that should continue to work,” said Gorbachev, who signed the pact in 1987 with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan. “It's not some kind of scrap and it's not some kind of old goods to be sold.” He said that Russia and the United States share a “common duty” to keep the treaty in effect. “Improvements can be made, but the preservation of this treaty is extremely important from a practical and a political standpoint,” Gorbachev said. “If we start ruining treaties like this, this would end very badly” (Denise Lavoie, Associated Press/Google News, Dec. 5).
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