International Affairs: April 2006 Archives

Guess who is the new vice-chaircountry of the United Nations Disarmament Commission? Which country is now responsible for overseeing the commission's priorities of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation?

The recent record of the Disarmament Commission was far from satisfactory, but now, more than ever, it should use the opportunity of an agreed agenda to strengthen the disarmament machinery to effectively deal with new emerging threats and challenges, the new Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs, Nobuaki Tanaka, said today upon the opening of the Commission’s substantive session. ...

In other business, the following delegations were elected as Vice-chairpersons, by acclamation: Chile, Uruguay and Iran.

Yes, that's right -- Iran is now in change of preventing nuclear proliferation.

(HT: James Taranto.)

Mark Steyn proposes a fun experiment to help understand the world's reaction to Ahmadinejad and the crazy Iranians.

You know what's great fun to do if you're on, say, a flight from Chicago to New York and you're getting a little bored? Why not play being President Ahmadinejad? Stand up and yell in a loud voice, "I've got a bomb!" Next thing you know the air marshal will be telling people, "It's OK, folks. Nothing to worry about. He hasn't got a bomb." And then the second marshal would say, "And even if he did have a bomb it's highly unlikely he'd ever use it." And then you threaten to kill the two Jews in row 12 and the stewardess says, "Relax, everyone. That's just a harmless rhetorical flourish." And then a group of passengers in rows 4 to 7 point out, "Yes, but it's entirely reasonable of him to have a bomb given the threatening behavior of the marshals and the cabin crew."

That's how it goes with the Iranians. The more they claim they've gone nuclear, the more U.S. intelligence experts -- oops, where are my quote marks? -- the more U.S. intelligence "experts" insist no, no, it won't be for another 10 years yet. The more they conclusively demonstrate their non-compliance with the IAEA, the more the international community warns sternly that, if it were proved that Iran were in non-compliance, that could have very grave consequences. But, fortunately, no matter how thoroughly the Iranians non-comply it's never quite non-compliant enough to rise to the level of grave consequences. You can't blame Ahmadinejad for thinking "our enemies cannot do a damned thing."

As Mr. Steyn points out, the Iranian braggadocio should be enough to motivate us to substantial action.

It's interesting that the factors seen in Iraq that apparently prompt so many to cry "civil war!" are even more prevalent in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority... yet few people who are critical of Iraq are also calling American/European involvement with the Palestinians a debacle.

Violent clashes and mass protests erupted Saturday across the West Bank and Gaza Strip between followers of the militant group Hamas and Fatah rivals, after a Hamas leader accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of treachery.

The two sides traded gunfire and hurled stones and firebombs, escalating a fierce power struggle between militant and moderate factions focused on control over Palestinian security forces.

Abbas said Saturday he would not allow the accusations to plunge the Palestinians into civil war.

Too late? Should the West withdraw its involvement with the Palestinians? Were the years of "peace process" a wasted effort?

(HT: Jonah Goldberg.)

Maybe I haven't been following the news closely enough, but apparently this story broke six days ago and I only heard about it tonight: in 2000, President Bill Clinton tried to trick Iran by sending them fake plans for a nuclear bomb... but oops, he sent them real plans.

the transfer of classified data to Iran was personally approved by then-President Clinton and that the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program.

The CIA, using a double-agent Russian scientist, handed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb to Iran, according to a new book "State of War" by James Risen, the New York Times reporter, who exposed the Bush administration's controversial NSA spying operation, claims the plans contained fatal flaws designed to derail Tehran's nuclear drive.

But the deliberate errors were so rudimentary they would have been easily fixed by sophisticated Russian nuclear scientists, the book said.

The operation, which took place during the Clinton administration in early 2000, was code named Operation Merlin and "may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA," according to Risen.

It called for the unnamed scientist, a defector from the Soviet Union, to offer Iran the blueprint for a "firing set" -- the intricate mechanism which triggers the chain reaction needed for a nuclear explosion.

The Russian was told by CIA officers that the Iranians already had the technology detailed in the plans and that the ruse was simply an attempt by the agency to find out the full scope of Tehran's nuclear knowledge.

But, contrary to orders not to open the packet, he added a note which made it clear he could help fix the flaws for money.

Risen states in his book, "It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first approved by Clinton."

Holy crap, nice going.

(HT: Right-Wing & Right Minded and Its [sic] a Matter of Opinion.)

Mark Steyn lays out a compelling explanation of why we have to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

But it doesn't have to come to that. Go back to that Argentine bombing. It was, in fact, the second major Iranian-sponsored attack in Buenos Aires. The year before, 1993, a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed 29 people and injured hundreds more in an attack on the Israeli Embassy. In the case of the community center bombing, the killer had flown from Lebanon a few days earlier and entered Latin America through the porous tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. Suppose Iran had had a "dirty nuke" shipped to Hezbollah, or even the full-blown thing: Would it have been any less easy to get it into the country? And, if a significant chunk of downtown Buenos Aires were rendered uninhabitable, what would the Argentine government do? Iran can project itself to South America effortlessly, but Argentina can't project itself to the Middle East at all. It can't nuke Tehran, and it can't attack Iran in conventional ways.

So any retaliation would be down to others. Would Washington act? It depends how clear the fingerprints were. If the links back to the mullahs were just a teensy-weensy bit tenuous and murky, how eager would the U.S. be to reciprocate? Bush and Rumsfeld might--but an administration of a more Clinto-Powellite bent? How much pressure would there be for investigations under U.N. auspices? Perhaps Hans Blix could come out of retirement, and we could have a six-month dance through Security-Council coalition-building, with the secretary of state making a last-minute flight to Khartoum to try to persuade Sudan to switch its vote.

Perhaps it's unduly pessimistic to write the civilized world automatically into what Osama bin Laden called the "weak horse" role (Islam being the "strong horse"). But, if you were an Iranian "moderate" and you'd watched the West's reaction to the embassy seizure and the Rushdie murders and Hezbollah terrorism, wouldn't you be thinking along those lines? I don't suppose Buenos Aires Jews expect to have their institutions nuked any more than 12 years ago they expected to be blown up in their own city by Iranian-backed suicide bombers. Nukes have gone freelance, and there's nothing much we can do about that, and sooner or later we'll see the consequences--in Vancouver or Rotterdam, Glasgow or Atlanta. But, that being so, we owe it to ourselves to take the minimal precautionary step of ending the one regime whose political establishment is explicitly pledged to the nuclear annihilation of neighboring states.

Lots more, all good.

According to the new Hamas-led Palestinian government, Israel is to blame for Palestinian suicide bombers who target Israelis because of that nation's "brutal aggression". What's most tragic is that these Israeli-caused suicide bombs are undermining the peace process that Hamas is striving towards so valiently!

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - A Palestinian suicide bomber struck a packed fast-food restaurant during Passover on Monday, killing nine other people and wounding dozens in the deadliest attack in more than a year.

In a sharp departure from the previous Palestinian government's condemnations of bombings, the Hamas-led administration said the attack resulted from Israel's "brutal aggression." The bloodshed and the hard-line stance could set the stage for harsh Israeli reprisals and endanger Palestinian efforts to secure desperately needed international aid.

Aw, too bad, maybe the kleptocratic Palestinian government will actually have to do some work, build an economy, and provide for its own citizens. Too bad suicide isn't more profitable, but I suppose it's one way to deal with unemployment.

Although I think it's likely that America will attack Iran I think it's very unfortunate and that there are many better options. Ironically, America may be forced to deal with Iran militarily because we will probably be unable to convince our "allies" to participate sufficiently to make less violent solutions viable.

For example, Representative Steve Israel has written an article arguing that restricting Iran's import of gasoline would convince the mullahs to drop their nuclear program.

Still, there is one option to consider before resorting to war. Iran may be a major exporter of oil, but it imports 40 percent of its gasoline because it has a limited refining capacity. And like us, its population is sensitive to the price of gas in an uncertain economy.

If diplomatic, economic and other tools don't work in dissuading the Iranian regime from its nuclear ambitions, reducing the amount of gas that goes into Iran may. Doing so would dramatically increase the cost of gasoline in Iran and put political pressure on the government to rethink its nuclear program and isolation in the world. A global commitment to keeping gas out of Iran is more effective and manageable than keeping oil in.

Such a strategy could possibly be effective, if the rest of the world was willing to agree. However, this is exactly the sort of solution that would require consensus from Russia and whatever other countries refine Iran's oil into gasoline. America couldn't enforce such an embargo alone unless we were willing to use military force to disrupt pipelines over land and disrupt shipping overseas. Attacking a foreign ship at sea is an act of war, so unless we get, for example, Russia to agree to stop refining oil for Iran then we simple exchange a war with Iran for a war with Russia. Not a good trade.

The only effective action that America can take on its own, without using our military against countries other than Iran, is to attack Iran itself. Given the near-certainty that the UN its various kleptocrat members will refuse to enforce substantial sanctions against Iran, we'll end up being forced into the military option by our reluctant "allies".

It's worth remembering that countries don't have allies, they have interests. We'll work with anyone else whose interests coincide with ours; anyone who claims to be an ally but who has different interests is only making the claim to hinder us and help themselves.

Spengler explains how demographics will compel America to attack Iran. I just want to get on record with a prediction that we will be performing airstrikes against Iran within 2006. America is weary of "nation building" in Iraq, but I bet the majority of the public will demand that we prevent Iran from fielding a nuclear weapon.

At the end of March I wrote about the minor attempt to liberalize the French job market, "Does anyone really doubt that President Chirac and Prime Minister de Villepin will eventually cave in and reject the proposed reforms? The Franch surrender, that's what they do." And of course I was right, because in response to the riots France has scrapped the youth job law intended to increase employment rates for France's youth (the "CPE") and replaced it with yet another doomed socialistic scheme.

French President Jacques Chirac has announced that the new youth employment law that sparked weeks of sometimes violent protests will be scrapped. ...

The plan to replace the CPE was announced after a meeting between the president, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and other senior ministers on Monday.

The new package of measures includes offering state support for employers hiring young people who face the most difficulties in gaining access to the labour market.

So instead of inching towards a free economy, the French government will now subsidize jobs for young workers (who can never be fired). Sounds like a great plan!

Foreign Affairs has a fascinating look at America's ascendancy to nuclear primacy since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

Personally I think it's good for America to be stronger than anyone else in the world, but the article examines both the positive and potential negative outcomes.