FDD

Iran still developing nuclear weapons (RWC)

Iran will likely have the means to produce nuclear weapons before the end of this year, says Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz.

Mofaz is a former Israeli Defense Minister and was once chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Force.

He said, at a speech at Yale University, that Iran could possibly build nuclear arms within months.

He also said that any means of ensuring that Iran does not acquire nuclear weapons are valid.

“Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, and I'd like to believe that the rest of the world will not allow it to happen.” 

“All is fair in the efforts to make sure it doesn't."

He said the "Iranian regime is the number one threat to mankind in the 21st century.

“It is a multi-dimensional, multi-armed threat, which increases every day, every hour."

Ahmadinejad and Israeli's 60th Anniversary (RWC)

The mouthy Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has once again said that Israel will "be soon swept away."

It is the second time in the last couple of years that the Iranian president has predicted the eradication of the Jewish state.

Ahmadinejad seems to be playing with a shortage of marbles. He has recently claimed his country is being secretly led by the Islamic “Mahdi”, who has mysteriously returned across the centuries.  As I recall, he is to make his appearance by popping out of a well.

About Israel’s 60th anniversary celebration, Ahmadinejad said last week:

"This terrorist and criminal state is backed by foreign powers, but it will soon be swept away by the Palestinians,"

“it would be futile to hold a birthday ceremony for something which is already dead."

The Iranian president said the anniversary celebrations can’t save this "rotten and stinking corpse." He meant Israel.

Ahmandinejad has said that the Jews in Israel should be sent to Europe or Alaska.

Mission Accomplished? (CM)

Eli Lake reports that top spy Michael McConnell has had second thoughts about the National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. If the goal of the NIE was to tie Bush’s hands, it succeeded marvelously. Eli writes:

The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency's assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner. …

The release of the December 2007 estimate at best delayed American diplomatic efforts to pass a third U.N. Security Council resolution sanctioning Iran's uranium enrichment, an activity the mullahs have continued for two years despite warnings from all five permanent members of the security council. The estimate also drew rare rebukes from American allies, including Israel, France, and the United Kingdom who said their intelligence agencies did not concur with the American assessment that Iran had frozen its plan to produce an A-bomb.

More here.

NIE Fallout (CM)

Rafael L. Bardaji, who directs one of the best think tanks in Europe, writes:   

By considering Iran’s nuclear programme to have been halted, the NIE has called an end to a great number of things. First and foremost is George W. Bush’s policy of suffocating the Teheran regime by exercising greater political pressure and imposing stricter sanctions. ….   

Second, the NIE has stripped the White House of its main reason for pushing for further sanctions on the UN Security Council. If securing these sanctions was always going to be a tricky matter, now the balance has clearly swung in favour of those who advocate a more conciliatory approach to Teheran. Very soon the Russians will authorise the delivery of fissionable material for the Busher reactor and nobody will be able to firmly oppose them.   

Third, the NIE has blown away the incipient intra-European consensus regarding policy towards Iran. Whilst London and Paris had remained united in their belief that it was necessary to continue punishing the Ayatollah regime in economic, financial and technological terms, Germany, the European country that has the strongest trade links with the Islamic Republic, has never been that enthusiastic about imposing further sanctions.   

More here.

Neo-Churchillian (CM)

The Guardian reports:

Tony Blair has accused Iran of backing and financing terrorist attacks, and warned that the threat of militant Islam is similar to that posed by fascism in the early 20th century.

In his first major speech since leaving office, Mr Blair said that Iran was prepared to destabilise peaceful countries in support of the "deadly ideology" driving Muslim extremism. …

He said: "This ideology now has a state, Iran, that is prepared to back and finance terror in the pursuit of destabilising countries whose people wish to live in peace."  …

"There is a tendency even now, even in some of our own circles, to believe that they are as they are because we have provoked them and if we left them alone they would leave us alone," he said. "I fear this is mistaken. They have no intention of leaving us alone."

More here.

Challenging Ahmadinejad & Associates (CM)

The Wall Street Journal editorializes today:

The Bush Presidency is running out of time to act if it wants to stop Iran from gaining a bomb. With GIs fighting and dying in Iraq, Mr. Bush also owes it to them not to allow enemy sanctuaries or weapons pipelines from Iran. If the President believes half of what he and his Administration have said about Iran's behavior, he has an obligation to do whatever it takes to stop it.

More here.

Hitler at Columbia? (CM)

Bret Stephens writes:

John Coatsworth, acting dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, made the remark that "if Hitler were in the United States and . . . if he were willing to engage in a debate and a discussion to be challenged by Columbia students and faculty, we would certainly invite him." This was by way of defending the university's decision to host a speech yesterday by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad….

[I]n hosting and perhaps debating Hitler, Columbia's faculty and students would not have been "confronting" him, much as they might have gulled themselves into believing they were. Hitler at Columbia would merely have been a man at a podium, offering his "ideas" on this or that, and not the master of a huge terror apparatus bearing down on you. To suggest that such an event amounts to a confrontation, or offers a perspective on reality, is a bit like suggesting that one "confronts" a wild animal by staring at it through its cage at a zoo.

There is also the question of just what ideas would be presented by Hitler at Mr. Coatsworth's hypothetical conference, and whether they would be an accurate reflection of his beliefs and intentions. In his 1933 speech, [German] Ambassador [Hans] Luther made the case for Hitler's "peaceful intentions" in Europe, according to historian Rafael Medoff. Millions of Europeans believed this right up to September 1939, just as millions of Americans did right up to December 1941.

Let's assume, however, that Hitler had used the occasion of his speech not just to dissimulate but to really air his mind, to give vent not just to Germany's historical grievances but to his own apocalyptic ambitions. In "Terror and Liberalism" (2003), Columbia alumnus Paul Berman observes the way in which prewar French socialists--keenly aware and totally opposed to Hitler's platform--nonetheless took the view that Germany had to be accommodated and that the real threat to peace came from their own "warmongers and arms manufacturers." This notion, Mr. Berman writes, rested in turn on a philosophical belief that "even the enemies of reason cannot be the enemies of reason. Even the unreasonable must be, in some fashion, reasonable."

So there is Adolf Hitler on our imagined stage, ranting about the soon-to-be-fulfilled destiny of the Aryan race. And his audience of outstanding Columbia men are mostly appalled, as they should be. But they are also engrossed, and curious, and if it occurs to some of them that the man should be arrested on the spot they don't say it. Nor do they ask, "How will we come to terms with his world?" Instead, they wonder how to make him see "reason," as reasonable people do.

In just a few years, some of these men will be rushing a beach at Normandy or caught in a firefight in the Ardennes. And the fact that their ideas were finer and better than Hitler's will have done nothing to keep them and millions of their countrymen from harm, and nothing to get them out of its way.

More here.

Administration Officials: Tehran's Influence in Iraq Is Called Surprisingly Deep (AM)

The Washington Post reports: "The Bush administration has begun mobilizing support for a third U.N. resolution that would impose tougher sanctions against Iran, as the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad said yesterday that one of the biggest and still unfolding surprises in Iraq has been the depth of Iran's intervention."  (Emphasis added.)

Other big, unfolding surprises include that night may follow day, Ahmadinejad may not be looking to play the "stabilizing ... neighborly" role Secretary Rice was hoping for, and this Peyton Manning guy may turn out to be pretty good after all.

Oh, and remember how the State Department explained last year that multi-lateral negotiations with the mullahs were the way to go because we had now gotten Russia, China and the Europeans on board for a list of specific punitive measures if Iran did not desist on its nuclear weapons program?  (Some among us were skeptical — see, e.g., here, here and here.) The Post today also reports that 

the United States has met resistance from China, Russia and Germany to sweeping new measures against Iran, said diplomats familiar with the debate. A meeting in Berlin of Iran experts from the six governments last week was described by Western envoys as "chilly" and "a disaster" because Germany balked. As a result, they now expect any new U.N. resolution to be only slightly tougher than the ones passed in December and March.

We sure seem to get surprised a lot on Iran.

It’s A Start (CM)

Thee United States has decided to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group's business operations and finances

More here.

Al-Qaeda in Iran (CM)

Eli Lake writes in the NY Sun:

One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.

That is a consensus judgment from a final working draft of a new National Intelligence Estimate, titled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland," on the organization that attacked the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The estimate, which represents the opinion of America's intelligence agencies, is now finished, and unclassified conclusions will be shared today with the public. …

The judgment that Iran has hosted Al Qaeda's senior leadership council is likely to draw some criticism from those outside the government who doubt Iran plays a significant role in bolstering Sunni jihadist terrorism. Iran's Shiite Muslims are considered infidels by the Salafi sect of Sunnis that comprise Al Qaeda.

While there is little disagreement that a branch of Al Qaeda's leadership operates in Iran, the intelligence community diverges on the extent to which the hosting of the senior leaders represents a policy of the regime in Tehran or the rogue actions of Iran's Quds Force, the terrorist support units that report directly to Iran's supreme leader. …

An intelligence official sympathetic to the view that it is a matter of Iranian policy to cooperate with Al Qaeda disputed the CIA and State Department view that the Quds Force is operating as a rogue force. "It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "It's a bit like saying the directorate of operations for the CIA is not really carrying out U.S. policy."

Some intelligence reporting suggests, the source said, that the current chief of the Quds Force, General Qassem Sulamani, has met with Saad bin Laden, Mr. Adel, and Mr. Abu Ghaith.

The link between Iran and Al Qaeda is not new, in some cases. The bipartisan September 11 commission report, for example, concluded: "There is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of Al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers."

According to the commission, a senior Al Qaeda coordinator, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, said eight of the September 11 hijackers went through Iran on their way to and from Afghanistan.

In 2005, both Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and the then ambassador at large for counterterrorism, Cofer Black, disclosed that America believes that senior Al Qaeda leaders reside in Iran.

More here.