EU-DIGEST

Iran: Spinning out of control

The stakes are rising. A stolen election has ruptured Iranian society, creating the most profound political crisis since the regime was founded. Barack Obama's extended hand is starting to tire and he badly needs success. Meanwhile, the whirring centrifuges spin Iran ever closer to the threshold of being able to manufacture a nuclear bomb. Next week the five permanent members of the UN security council plus Germany and the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, will sit down with Iran's nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, for the first time in a year. They have said they expect a serious response to their demands to halt Tehran's nuclear program, but have yet to receive a commitment that the topic is even on the agenda.The risks of all this are clear.

If Iran refuses to discuss its nuclear program, to answer the International Atomic Energy Agency's mounting questions, and defies a security council demand to suspend all sensitive nuclear activities, the US will revert to a more traditional posture which contemplates the use of force. No one will be happy, except Israel and Dick Cheney perhaps, that Mr Obama's liberal dreams of changing the way superpowers behave will have been shattered by a regime that enjoys even less legitimacy at home than it does abroad.

Note EU-Digest: Use of force is not necessary and would be a stupid move. What could be done effectively to topple the regime is a total embargo on all trade with Iran. The regime already is under lots of pressure at home by opposition parties and a total embargo would certainly topple the present leadership. The opposition parties in Iran must also be encouraged to continue going into the streets and challenge the regime.

Labels: EU, Iran, Nuclear proliferation, US

Israeli Defense official: "Israel readying for attack on Iran" - by Amos Harel, Anshel Pfeffer and Jack Khoury

"Israel's recent deployment of warships across the Red Sea should be seen as serious preparation for an attack on Iran, an Israeli defense official told the Times of London on Thursday.Earlier this week, two Israel Navy gunboats openly sailed through the Suez Canal into the Red Sea. The ships that passed through the Suez Canal on Tuesday were two Sa'ar 5 gunboats, the Hanit and the Eilat. This follows a similar incident in late June, when an Israeli Dolphin-class submarine passed through the canal, later returning the same way. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit confirmed the crossings and said that Cairo's agreements with Jerusalem permit Israeli military ships to transit the canal. He declined to speculate on whether the voyage was meant as a warning to Iran or anyone else.

Israel has an interest in a naval presence in the Red Sea for two reasons: the effort to halt arms smuggling from Iran to the Gaza Strip - which, according to international media reports, mainly takes place by sea from Iran to Sudan, and then overland via Egypt, and the effort to bolster its deterrence against Iran in the event of a direct conflict breaking out." Note EU-Digest: this is sensationalist reporting, because in reality Israel would certainly not carry out open naval activities if it was planning to attack another country or carry out surveillance activities. So the above report seems to be mainly for the purpose of intimidation and seems to be in-line with recent statements made by the US State Department.

Labels: Egypt, Iran, Israel, Nuclear proliferation, US

Tehran readies proposals for West

Iran is preparing a package of proposals to present to Western powers that could be a basis for future talks, the country's foreign minister said Saturday. Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters that the package will deal with political and economic issues as well as security and international affairs, but he did not say whether its proposals also covered Iran's nuclear activities.

The U.S. and its European allies want to draw Iran back into negotiations over its nuclear program. At the Group of Eight summit in Italy last week, President Obama said there is now a September "time frame" for Iran to respond to offers to discuss its nuclear program.

Labels: EU, Iran, Nuclear proliferation, US

President Barack Obama’s nuclear-free vision began as a student - by Catherine Philp

President Obama’s trip to Moscow to hammer out nuclear arms reductions is the first concrete step towards the fulfilment of a long and passionately held vision: a nuclear-free world. In a student magazine article written 26 years ago, at the height of the Cold War, the Columbia postgraduate weighed up how the United States and Russia might “dial down the danger humanity faces” in pursuit of total nuclear disarmament. Mr Obama is the first US President to begin setting out a step-by-step agenda for eliminating nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.

His stance has brought him as much condemnation as approval, with opponents denouncing him as naive and dangerous in a world where more and more rogue nations are joining the nuclear race. But few people are aware of how far back his mulling of the issue goes, or how passionately it was held.

Labels: Barack Obama, Nuclear proliferation, Russia, US

Iran says Europe no longer qualified to conduct nuclear talks- by Lucia Kubosova

Iran says Europe is no longer qualified to hold nuclear talks due to its meddling with the post-election protests in the country, with Sweden, as the new EU presidency, calling up officials from the 27-member bloc to discuss the next diplomatic move. The EU has played a significant part in international efforts to make Tehran comply with the world's rules on nuclear power. Three EU states - Germany, France, and the UK - have been leading the negotiations along with the US, Russia and China. Speaking to journalists at the official opening of the presidency, Swedish prime minister Fredrik Reinfeld made clear that Europe wants to support the democratic forces in Iran but also avoid isolating the country from the rest of the world. "That's the balance we need to strike," he said.

EU-Digest: Mr. Fredrik Reinfeld is certainly capable in coming up with a stronger comment than this "wishy-washy" statement he made on Iran?

Labels: Democracy, EU, Iran, Nuclear proliferation, Sanctions, Sweden

The Election, Economy, War, and Peace - by Noam Chomsky

Looking at the US political scene today- A good question is why the margin of victory for Obama in the past election was so small, given the circumstances. One possibility is that neither party reflected public opinion at a time when 80% think the country is going in the wrong direction and that the government is run by "a few big interests looking out for themselves," not for the people, and a stunning 94% object that government does not attend to public opinion. As many studies show, both parties are well to the right of the population on many major issues, domestic and international. It could be argued that no party speaking for the public would be viable in a society that is business-run to an unusual extent. Evidence for that is substantial. At a very general level, evidence is provided by the predictive success of political economist Thomas Ferguson’s "investment theory" of politics, which holds that policies tend to reflect the wishes of the powerful blocs that invest every four years to control the state. More specific illustrations are numerous. To mention just one, for 60 years the US has failed to ratify the core principle of international labor law, which guarantees freedom of association.

Note EU-Digest: where we might see a few differences between between the two parties is in how the Democrats will deal with the Middle East. New York Senator Hillary Clinton, intend to revive international arms-control efforts, which have been on hold during the eight years of President George W. Bush's administration. Such initiatives inevitably arouse suspicion and testiness among Israeli officials, who are anxious about the erosion of their country's nuclear deterrent capability. Jim Hoagland, who writes a column on foreign affairs in The Washington Post, wrote that Obama should learn from president John F. Kennedy and call for worldwide nuclear disarmament. Hoagland's columns generally express the consensus of the U.S. foreign affairs establishment. Kennedy was the last American president to have tried to stop the Israeli nuclear project. He threatened that there would be serious ramifications vis-a-vis U.S. support for Israel if the reactor in Dimona was not opened to frequent visits by inspectors.

Labels: Barack Obama, Israel, Nuclear proliferation, Nuclear weapons, US politics