1/11/11

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed yesterday that sanctions have taken a toll on Iran's nuclear program. Current and former Israeli officials have also downgraded their concern in recent days, citing sanctions, covert actions and technical disruptions. As Washington Post columnist David Ignatius recently wrote, "What's increasingly clear is that low-key weapons - covert sabotage and economic sanctions - are accomplishing many of the benefits of military action, without the costs. It's a devious approach - all the more so because it's accompanied by near-constant U.S. proposals of diplomatic dialogue - but in that sense, it matches Iran's own operating style of pursuing multiple options at once."  The two-pronged approach to dealing with Iran, both pursuing coordinated pressure and offering genuine opportunities for engagement, will continue to take time and strategic patience. The "diplomatic marathon"  is proving fruitful and winning important converts.

Iran's nuclear program continues to suffer technological setbacks.  The spread of the Stuxnet malware has plagued Iran's nuclear program, causing a large number of centrifuges to crash.  A report by the Institute for Science and International Security concludes, "The attacks seem designed to force a change in the centrifuge's rotor speed, first raising the speed and then lowering it, likely with the intention of inducing excessive vibrations or distortions that would destroy the centrifuge... Such overt and covert disruption activities have had significant effect in slowing Iran's centrifuge program, while causing minimal collateral damage."  ISIS also points out that, "President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently admitted that a software attack affected Iran's centrifuges.  ‘They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts,' he told reporters at a media conference. The timing of the removal of about 1,000 centrifuges is consistent with another Iranian official's statement of when Iran suffered a cyber attack." 

But the program's troubles go deeper, as the Arms Control Association's Greg Thielmann, former senior professional staffer of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Peter Crail point out. "If Stuxnet indeed crippled Iran's nuclear program as several headlines read, it was already limping."  They write, "The most fundamental problem with Iran's enrichment program appears to be its own centrifuge design. Called the P-1 after a Pakistani mock-up of a Dutch design pilfered in the 1970s, the centrifuge that Iran has been attempting to operate is known to be temperamental and fault-prone. Centrifuge technology is already a very difficult process to master, since it requires constructing complex machinery at precise specifications to allow the cylindrical devices to spin at supersonic speeds, day in and day out. Reverse engineering faulty, smuggled equipment, as Iran has tried to do, only makes this challenge worse." [ISIS, 12/22/10. Thielmann and Crail, 12/8/10]

Israeli officials agree that sanctions and technical setbacks have further delayed Iran's nuclear program.  Jeffery Goldberg wrote yesterday, "I spoke with one of the Israeli officials I quoted in my article last year about the coming confrontation between Israel and Iran, and he put the chances of an Israeli strike on Iran in the next year at less than 20 percent -- and he was one of the Israelis who felt, in the spring of last year, that it would be necessary for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities by the end of 2011. ‘People have very different opinions inside the defense establishment,' he said, when I reached him, ‘but it's clear to all analysts that the virus and the sanctions are working better than we thought.'"

According to the New York Times, "Last week, the departing director of Mossad, Israel's intelligence service, Meir Dagan, said he believed that the Iranians would not be able to make a bomb until 2015, at the earliest, ‘because of measures that have been deployed against them.'" Dagan's estimate followed comments from Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, who also believes Iran's program has been stunted.  As Reuters reported in December, "The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran's nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday. Saying Iran remained his government's biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful." [New York Times, 1/10/11. Jeffrey Goldberg, 1/10/11. Reuters, 12/29/10]

Clinton confirms that sanctions are working-and diplomacy is paying off.  Yesterday CNN International reported that, "Economic sanctions are helping to slow Iran's nuclear program, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday. ‘The most recent analysis is that sanctions have been working,' she said during the taping of a television show in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. ‘They have made it much more difficult for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions. Iran had technological problems that have made it slow down its timetable. So we do see some problems in Iran.'"  As Kenneth Pollack recently wrote, "sanctions, both those contained in the [United Nations] resolution itself and those enacted by member states (particularly the EU, Japan and South Korea) in conformity with the provisions of the resolution, go far beyond what most believed possible... they have gotten Tehran's attention, with no less a figure than former-President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warning his countrymen that the sanctions are no joke and that the country's situation is dire."

David Rothkopf of Foreign Policy Magazine notes "the dogged attention to maintaining diplomatic pressure that has been led very effectively by Secretary of State Clinton. Whether it has been the recent public dismissals of the Iranian effort to divide and conquer major powers by inviting a few but not the United States on guided tours of their nuclear facilities or the effort to blunt the effectiveness of third party initiatives such as those of Brazil and Turkey, the U.S. State Department has had to work feverishly to manage the fractious coalition of forces needed to put meaningful pressure on the Iranians." [CNN, 1/10/11. Kenneth Pollack, National Interest, 10/20/10. David Rothkopf, 1/10/11]

Progress in the diplomatic "marathon" will be step-by-step - but we have the time. The next step in the complicated process of finding a diplomatic solution begins January 21 in Istanbul when the permanent five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany meet for two days of talks with Iranian representatives on their country's nuclear program. Expectations for the meeting should be tempered, as Secretary Clinton has said, "I don't think we can put timetables on it. This is more of a day-by-day assessment. We know where we're headed, and that is to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. We know we have the vast majority of the world with us on that... we'll take it step by step." Nicholas Burns, former undersecretary of state for political affairs, puts strategic patience in a broader context: "As Americans ponder this complex foreign policy challenge, we would do well to remember two essential truths about our struggle with Iran. The first is that it is more likely to be a marathon than a sprint. The second is that the U.S. is now and shall remain much more influential, purposeful, and powerful than the insular and cynical gang of retrogrades that make up the Ahmadinejad government. In my view, Obama's patient, careful, and sophisticated policy makes much more sense for our country, as well as for Israelis, than an early resort to war by Israel that risks causing more problems than it resolves." [Secretary Clinton, 12/3/10. Amb. Burns, 8/19/10]

What We're Reading

E.U. envoys in the Middle East are urging Brussels to treat East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state.

The Tunisian government has ordered all schools and universities to be indefinitely closed following continuing violent protests.

In a forceful appeal for religious freedom, Pope Benedict XVI urged Pakistan to repeal contentious blasphemy laws.

The Organization of American States is set to recommend that the governing party candidate in Haiti's presidential election should be dropped from the run-off vote, reports say.

A Nigerian court dismissed a lawsuit seeking to bar President Goodluck Jonathan from vying for the ruling party ticket.

Ivory Coast's ambassador to the U.N. says a unity government could be possible if incumbent Laurent Gbagbo drops his claim to the presidency.

Under duress at home, Venezuela's combative president has been striking an unusually conciliatory tone on the international scene.

Spain's interior minister declared that a cease-fire declaration by the Basque separatist group ETA was not sufficient to guarantee an end to Spain's four-decade fight against the group.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton touched down in Yemen's capital on a one-day trip focused on the breadth of Washington's relations with a key partner government  in the struggle against al Qaeda and Islamic extremism.

Arab tribesman attacked a vehicle convoy carrying southern Sudanese traveling from the country's north to their home region, which is holding an independence referendum.

Arnold Fields, the U.S. official in charge of overseeing the billions of dollars being spent to rebuild Afghanistan, has resigned.

Commentary of the Day

Stephen Kinzer writes U.S. foreign policy is stuck in a cold war mindset of imperial dominance; It's time to listen to allies like Turkey and adjust.

Peter Tasker suggests the current level of Chinese earnings is high and probably unsustainable.

Christopher Preble decries the "hysterical revisionism" of neoconservatives on defense spending, given that spending is still slated for growth.