...American interests in the Middle East and the war on terror.

Am I the only person that tastes a little bile upon hearing the term "the war on terror". It strikes me as even more nauseating in cases such as this where it's being used so matter-of-factly as if we all agree with it and it's amorphic definition. It's preposterous and hides some very sinister and ill conceived motives and ideas.

But aside from this disturbing point it sounds like he's saying what many people have been saying - we need to start behaving like adults. We need to sit down and have real diplomatic negotiations and relations with Iran. Not silly staring contests to see who will blink first, or temper tantrums when if we don't get everything our way. It's the only way anything positive will ever occur for either country.

Aside from the semantic vagueness of a war on a tactic, other Presidents have come up with marginal names for "wars" against no particular enemy, with especially silly acronyms, such as JFK's War On Poverty (WOP) or Carter's treatment of dealing with inflation as the Moral Equivalent Of War (MEOW).

Nevertheless, it is equally inaccurate to speak of "the" War in Iraq. Iraqi operations are a major campaign, within the Central Command, with Afghanistan also being a substantial, albeit far more multinational. Realistically, it is worth having a framework that can include such things as joint antiterror work with the ASEAN nations or Europe, which are more intelligence and training "operations other than war." The Balkans need to fit somewhere, although they are less a matter of terrorism. Counterproliferation against nation-states also needs to go somewhere, especially when it involved real defenses in the waters between Korea and Japan, and in Japan, against actual missiles. Let me not start on why Iran is a more existential threat than North Korea, and we carefully observe the fiction of the 800-pound gorilla of Israeli nuclear weapons, which have taken claim of the most comfortable couch in the figurative living room.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

I think that Hillary and all other Democratic candidates propose US-Iran "Grand Bargain"
without calling it "Grand Bargain".
However, I don't see what US have to give up in this "Grand Bargain"? US pretty much get everything they want and need. It sounds too good be true.

mcboo: re: If our track record for recognizing these sorts of threats and the people we use as informants, contacts and political connections in those countries is any indication, then I'd go so far as to say we have no idea what the hell we're doing and probably never have had.

Having recently watched 60 Minutes on Curve Ball I have a cui bono question.

The neo cons are visibly and pubblicly slavering to invade Iraq. {and Iran). Iraq was the most secular Moslem state and the most highly controlled. A dissatified young Moslem man goes wandering around and disappears for two years. When he reappears, he provides false information which alledgedly provokes us into the Iraq War and which Colin Powell peddles to the UN despite grave misgivings among some of the intelligence agencies experts. We go to war and take out Sadam and proceed, which is probably forseeable to confront. Iran.
So Al Qaeda has its far enemy( the US)fighting its near enemy(the Shia).

Question: Where was Curve Ball during those two years?

I agree that "antiterror" doesn't have much meaning. That being stipulated, there are certain classes of attacks that are attainable with less than a large nation-state base. While I do not minimize the threat, perhaps in some nonobvious ways, of WMDs, I tend to think of "terrorism", at a grand strategic level, with neither a military nor law enforcement model, but a public health one.

Every year, we have tens to hundreds of thousands of death from motor vehicle accidents, cardiovascular diseases, and a number of other condition that no one expects to eradicate. I use "eradicate" here in a particular epidemiological meaning: remove the source of death and disease from existence. Assuming there aren't more than the two secure cultures in labs, we've achieved that with one disease, over a couple of hundred years: smallpox. There are a handful of other infectious diseases, some mostly limited to Africa, which might be eradicated in the fairly near term. Of better known disease, the eradication of polio is probably the closest; there were some false celebrations that it was gone from the Western Hemisphere, but its end is close.

In general, however, public health/epidemiology looks at two problems: reducing the incidence of causes of morbidity and mortality (disease and death respectively), and reducing the virulence of incidents when they do occur. I see terrorism much in the same light. It isn't going to disappear. Its incidence can be reduced. The virulence of terrorist attacks can be reduced.

Reducing the incidence of terrorism won't come through any one mechanism. In some cases, economic development and the reduction of economic exploitation may help. Some brilliant diplomacy might deal with some of the religious and ethnic issues, but I doubt they can be rubbed out -- it then becomes, at the first line of defense, an intelligence problem to detect the threats, and, use a variety of means to stop the attack. Those means include law enforcement, economic/financial actions, and military operations mostly small, and some large.

There is also a need to limit the impact of events, which includes hardening vulnerable and critical target systems. It is rather silly for terrorists to try to smuggle chemical weapons into the US, when there are vulnerable chemical plants and toxic chemicals in transit. Telecommunications and the electrical power grid is vulnerable to certain threats. In most cases, it's fairly well understood how to harden the systems, but it will take money. Some of the increased vulnerabilities, especially in the electrical power grid, are unforeseen consequences of deregulation.

I see attacks on infrastructure, or accidents and disasters hitting vulnerable infrastructure, as significantly more likely then ICBM attack. Theater ballistic missiles are another matter of higher priority, but a few tens of billions could be shifted. Reallocating the costs of the Iraq operation is rather obvious.

There are ways to have a more open debate about some parts of national security, but there are also parts that legitimately need to be out of public view. The latter doesn't mean that there aren't ways to have independent review, without simply accepting the executive view. Congress, however, is going to have to take on more responsibility than it has in years.

I can deal with specifics, and, over the last month or so, I've been writing extensively on intelligence at Wikipedia. Certainly, we can get into more specific discussions here.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Much more clear, thank you Don! ;)

One of the biggest problems we and our assorted "friends" in the region have with Iran is that it is becoming more and more of an influential player in the region.

Let us speak of a hypothetical country in the Middle East, which we shall call...Syria. Through several layers of contractors, an OSINT report was requested on the underground tunnels in a certain area, since the original requester (I really don't know who it was) though the elusive Iraqi WMD had been smuggled into the Batcave the hidden tunnels under Damascus. You see, Gotham City is really Damascus. The clever Syrians only made it look like an American city in the movies, and Catwoman was really wearing a burka with very special effects.

A contractor I know, who is, among other things, a retired military C3I officer, was asked to analyze the tunnels. She had retired from the Air Force after becoming a fully qualified AWACS battle controller, at a time when women were not allowed on AWACS combat missions, something she saw as career-limiting.

Unknown to all of us, among her assorted and rich academic credentials was a very solid background in geology. She checked for about an hour and called back the contract monitor. "There can't be underground tunnels under Damascus. It's a form of sandstone. Unless you lined them with steel and concrete, they'd collapse as fast as they were dug.

"But...we have a brochure here than says Damascus Rapid Transit, with a train. It must be a subway."

"I'm telling you they couldn't have a subway, secret tunnels or the Batcave. What's the URL of that brochure?" click-click..."that's not a subway. It's a monorail. Look closely."

"But we know there must be tunnels!"

"Read...my...lips. (Well,over the phone). There can't be tunnels in that rock. Now, they do have karst caves in the mountains outside. Those could be made into shelters. Should I look at them?"

"No, we hired you to find the tunnels."

"Never mind. I'm not going to bill you. I can't stand this any more. Maybe someone else will find the tunnels. Maybe Batman will turn out to be a Syrian Ba'ath party leader, and Robin is his love child. You go figure it out. I'm done with this."
And that, as far as I know, is where it was left.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Howard, I always enjoy reading your posts and have a great deal of respect for your vast experience & knowledge. However I too have some of those thing (certainly not in your fields specifically). And my experience & mind tells me that most people in intelligence (making policy decisions) are neither smart (as I define it) nor right very often. I grew up reading the DoD Soviet Military Power publications every year as if they were the next volume of Harry Potter. I know the fantasyland many of these people reside in. And now that I'm an adult, I require a bit more convincing. If only they could clone a few of you to lend a hand perhaps things would improve slightly.

In the meantime I see what we are doing, want to do, and are threatening to do and I call foul. I know for a fact there are better ways to do things, we just need a better team. And nowhere in all of this, ever, will I embrace secrecy. I know there are occasions when it's helpful but if that means we have to deal with where we are now I say ban it all. No secrecy at all if you can't us it responsibly.

And this country certainly hasn't.

Howard, do you have a timeframe for Operation Hide and Seek, above?
This is not a happy-making story.

The Israeli journos et al know but can't tell their truths, however they see them. Any information based on details from their knowledgable/reliable sources is verboten.

For now.

There's more and more evidence that virtually no one at the top levels, and I include Congress, reads or believes things unless they agree with their own preconceptions.

Negotiations with the EU dragged on for 2 years over this issue and got nowhere, despite the fact the EU and the US offered Iran a very generous package of carrots to give up enrichment to include assistance building a light water reactor, economic aid and investment, and support for WTO membership. So, in essence Iran would have what they say they want (nuclear power) and the int'l community would be satisfied with their inability to divert uranium to bomb-making. All the blame for the breakdown in negotiations lies with Tehran, who have proved to be intransigent. When you have radicals running a nation, it's very difficult to get any kind of compromise out of them.

I agree engagement is the right direction to go in regards to relationships with Iran. Unfortunately our present regime cannot admit they want to talk, because they need to maintain their posturing as tough and in charge, not weak, which talking and negotiating are to them. Again, I and many of the comment-ors on this article think the present government is making logical types of decisions based on the facts that exist. I'm afraid that they are driven by their agenda which includes feeding the military industrial complex any way they can. Hopefully there are some saner minds that can stay their hands in attacking Iran. What a catastrophe that would be.

Yes! Isn't it curious that there are multiple stories of persons providing false information to intelligence officers and even though those stories were disproved, they still managed to work their way into the administration's decision-making process about the war and into the media stories that supported it. There are three such persons that come to mind:

1. Curveball (mobile biolabs)
   
2. Rocco Martino (yellowcake forgeries)
   
3. Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri (biological, chemical and nuclear weapons)

In the latter case, an article by James Bamford about al-Haideri says that al-Haideri was coached by members of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which in turn had been set up by the Rendon Group:

The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.

Rendon is a man who fills a need that few people even know exists. Two months before al-Haideri took the lie-detector test, the Pentagon had secretly awarded him a $16 million contract to target Iraq and other adversaries with propaganda. One of the most powerful people in Washington, Rendon is a leader in the strategic field known as "perception management," manipulating information -- and, by extension, the news media -- to achieve the desired result. His firm, the Rendon Group, has made millions off government contracts since 1991, when it was hired by the CIA to help "create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power." Working under this extraordinary transfer of secret authority, Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

There is a pattern here, and it seems it is being repeated in the buildup to our new war against Iran. How many of the many claims about the Iranian threat can we believe at this point?

The PR firm that's pushing for a war with Iran is Benador Associates. Elena Benador, the firm's owner, has admitted to planting a false story about a new Iranian law requiring Jews in Iran to wear yellow insignia, reminiscent of Nazi Germany. The story was completely made up, but rightwing news media ran with it. Both Jim Lobe at Asia Times (The Andean condor among the hawks) and Larry Cohler-Esses at the Nation (Bunkum From Benador) have written articles about Benador, exposing their lies. They're worth reading. 

“The healthy man does not torture others — generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” ~~ C. G. Jung

The real reason why the US can't offer any grand bargains to Iran is because of the influence-peddling of the Pro-Israeli Lobby (link):

The real threat that Iran poses to Israel is that Iran and the US may start to get along, thus undermining Israel's strategic value to the US and creating an obstacle to Israel's regional ambitions. Promoting emnity between the US and Iran also gives the pro-Israeli lobby a reason to exist, even though it is contrary to broader US interests.

Utter Nonsense.

The "generous package" that the EU-3 offered to Iran was laughed at by independent analysts and other EU-3 diplomats as "a lot of gift wrapping around a pretty empty box" (link) Giving up enrichment means that Iran would forever be reliant on the good graces of others to power its economy.

The US deliberately torpedoed the EU3-Iran talks (link):

Clearly incapable of compelling the US to budge, the European strategy has ever since been to procrastinate on the talks in the hope that Iran would fail to call the EU’s bluff, while searching for an exit strategy that would enable the EU to pass the blame on to Iran.

Note that during the Iran-Eu3 talks, Iran suspended enrichment and allowed more stringent IAEA inspections that it was legally obligated to permit - and still no evidence of a nuclear weapons program was found. Iran only withdrew from the negotiations after the EU-3 violated the terms of the negotiations by moving the goalposts (link) when it demanding that Iran's "voluntary, non-legally binding" suspension of enrichment become permanent and obligatory.

In short, Iran already tried suspending its enrichment program and negotiating - and was cheated. Since then, the Iranians are the ones who have made generous offers (such as placing additional limits on their nuclear progra to ensure that it can't even theoretically be used to make bombs, or their 2003 peace offer) that the US has refused to even acknowledge.

I suppose that depends on the credibility of the threat. When Khruschev told the US "we will bury you", a rhetorical threat using a Russian idiom of which a better translation would be "Our system will outlive yours. We will be at your funeral." He first said this in 1956, which was hardly the most dangerous part of the Cold War, but the USSR of the time was a credible threat to the US, with demonstrated nuclear weapons on bombers (and possibly submarines) that could reach the US.

We did not immediately demand that the Soviets disarm. When there was a proxy war in Hungary, we did nothing.

Now, Israel receives a rhetorical threat from a man who, as opposed to Khruschev, does not directly command his country's armed forces, which says, much as Khruschev, "Out system will outlive yours. Yours will disappear from the pages of history", the response from Israel and the US is to treat this as an existential and immediate threat to Israel. Iran has no current capability to attack Israel in any serious way. In perhaps 5-10 years, if they aggressively pursue nuclear weapons, they might have a limited number of weapons, certainly far less than the stockpile of Israel, which is estimated to have the third or fourth largest number of nuclear weapons (kind of a tossup with Britain, which has more if it could sortie all of its missile subs, rather than the one usually on patrol.

Further, the Supreme Leader of Iran, who does have operational control of their military, issued a fatwa including the phrase, "Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued the fatwa that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam".

Now, how much of the threatening is rhetoric and how immediate is that threat, by Cold War standards? I don't know how old you are, but I remember "ducking and covering" during the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the edge of a primary target. As a result of documents declassified around 1990 (I can dig up the link but don't have it at hand), nuclear war was much closer then than the US realized. Among the military options under active consideration was a large amphibious invasion. The Soviet commander on the island had several tactical nuclear weapons, mounted on FROG artillery rockets, and he had predelegated release authority to use them against invading US troops.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Mightn't it help if Iran stopped threatening Israel's existence as a Jewish state?

Iran is already dependent on free trade for the fuel it needs for it's economy, and nuclear energy will not change this dynamic. We live in an interdependent world, and Iran is far more energy independent than most other nations. That argument is bogus. The package was significant despite your cynicism.

it all comes down to trust, abdul. Here is a government that only ackonwledged their clandestine program after they were outed by political opponents. They also denied they were arming Hezbollah all the way up to the Israeli war, then did a 180 and admitted they were arming Hezbollah, when they figured it was in their interests. Do you want to see nukes in the hands of Iranian radicals and then proliferated to God knows who else? This is the central question, because that is exactly where the mullahs are going, and the int'l community (including Russia and China) are not fooled at all.

Pure clarification: to what clandestine program do you refer?

As far as nuclear weapons being in the hand of Iranian radicals, first, I want to see solid evidence that Iran is not only working on legitimate nuclear programs, but on a weapons program. I'd certainly like to hear how that relates to their Leader's fatwa against it.

If they were developing nuclear weapons, which I am not convinced they are doing, I am not convinced they will proliferate. I certainly am not happy to see a massive and undeclared nuclear arsenal in the hands of an increasingly militant Israeli government, and might actually see MAD stability developing. Nevertheless, I haven't yet seen any technical evidence that suggests Iran is actively pursuing a credible nuclear weapons capability.

If you have technical specifics, please bring them up. A relatively small uranium enrichment capability is not a bomb factory. I'd actually be more concerned with what they are doing with plutonium, but that also doesn't seem close to weaponization.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

First, let me speak generally to proliferation, as with Egypt. This is a matter of legitimate concern, not for any specific country.

The mechanisms for verification and for avoiding between the US and Russia are quite good. In addition to the "national means of technical verification", there are liaison teams, 24/7, in one anothers' strategic warning centers, with their own communications back to their national command authorities.

Second, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is showing signs of age, and suffering from the same structural problem as the UN Security Council: the five privileged members reflect the victor of WWII, rather than current strategic balances. Contrast that economically to the G-8. Contrast to the list of powers with significant nuclear arsenals.

Add to those contrasts the reality that after the "Axis of Evil" speech, Iraq, but not North Korea, was threatened. I won't single out the Bush Administration for unwise policies driven by a speech, as FDR's "Unconditional Surrender" policy extended the war with Japan, at least by a few months with a lot of killing.

I propose that the NPT be amended to allow additional states to join as declared nuclear powers: definitely India, Israel and Pakistan, with North Korea a questionable issue. This assumes they start working with nonproliferation and arms reduction, and just might deter states, such as Egypt or Iran, from saying they have to have their own nuclear weapons.

Israel's open secret of nuclear capabilities is, if there is a true nuclear development program in Iran, one of the drivers to the latter. I am not calling on Israel to disarm. I am, however, calling on them to declare. In return, I would have the US offer them several things that could be stabilizing in the area:

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

If Nejad is correct Iran has 3,000 centrifuges spinning which can produce enough uranium over time to produce weapons, and there are reports of secret sites dug into mountains and below ground. Again, unless you're looking at high level intel, you can't address specific tech details.

When it comes to nukes, if you're wrong once, the consequences can be catatstrophic.

The MAD Cold War safeguards do not exist with Iran, nor could they be considered reliable, when you are dealing with a government that does their dirty work through proxy organizations, while denying any involvement.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Certainly I'll forgive the digression, but I hope you'll forgive me if I don't follow up on it (I guess I want to digress from your digression. :-))

Rather than the technical aspects of intelligence policy and procedures, what interests me more is the political implications. Yes, I realize there must be policies and procedures in place that aim to prevent political manipulation of intelligence, and I applaud your efforts in that realm, but will any of that really matter in the face of a very definite effort such as that of this administration to cherry-pick the evidence anyway, and/or, what's worse, to have a hand, albeit indirectly perhaps, in planting it?

I'm curious whether you see the same sort of pattern that I do. Does it not seem curious that we have not one, not two, but three stories of hapless individuals who were completely discredited early on, yet whose information was rehabilitated as it were (I didn't mention earlier that al Haideri failed a polygraph prior to the dissemination of the info he provided in the U.S. media). We know that one of these individuals, rather than being merely a "hapless" applicant for a visa," was in fact recruited and coached by the INC (al Haideri), and that the forgeries provided by another individual (Martino) were augmented by additional information that could only have come from SISMI (Italian intelligence) itself.

Some of what I cited above is a discussion of the well-funded effort by the first Bush administration to engage in an overseas PR effort to dislodge Saddam. It's illegal for the U.S. to engage in such propaganda efforts domestically, but in our world of global media, this seems to be a way to skirt the law, as stories planted in various international media outlets are almost immediately picked up by the U.S. press. It's not only the things that the administration was saying that led us to war in Iraq, after all, but the media played a significant part, by shaping internal attitudes about the war.

Do you, Howard, have any knowledge of any of the political aspects of all this? Are you familiar with the activities of the Rendon Group, or of Benador Associates? What do you think about them?

I'm deeply concerned that a PR effort similar to the one that convinced Americans that the war with Iraq was a terrific idea is now being directed toward a new war with Iran. I wholeheartedly agree with Steve's points about negotiation, but if such a PR effort manages to convince the public that Iran is evil incarnate, it won't much matter, will it?

“The healthy man does not torture others — generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” ~~ C. G. Jung

At some point, one has to trust the intelligence services to be largely composed of honorable men and women -- but in both the White House and Congress, the motto of "trust but verify" also applies.

I have no firsthand knowledge of the intelligence services, and I hope that what I wrote earlier didn't sound like a wholesale indictment of them. That wasn't my intention. My understanding is that there were many very honorable persons in the intelligence services who risked their jobs over some of this stuff. The problem appears to have come primarily from higher, more politicized layers.

If there is no verification of PR efforts, or intelligence that might be used to drive them, I'm afraid for the Republic.

Me too. 

“The healthy man does not torture others — generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.” ~~ C. G. Jung

Satellite photos don’t lie

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

Just imagine what Israel's OFEK7 can do.

Starting guess when? another regional electronic phenomenon caused customers of Israeli satellite tv co "YES" to go ballistic because their signals were grossly affected by somethingorother and the co. wasn't responding to the growing complaints in a timely manner.

"YES" got the government involved who discovered that it was the German UNIFL naval blockade's radar causing the problems. They later added the Dutch UNIFL spyship radar as another likely cause and eventually settled on them as the culprit. The Dutch were surprised, did due diligence and had their system(s) checked out: which they did. The Israelis were not impressed and the Dutch are not pleased.

I'm bemused over author B.Michael acerbic stressing of the lack of physical infrastucture indicating any security/defensive measures taken to serve what some (Syrians and Lebanese?) are calling the "Box on the Euphrates".

Well, it's a little hard to answer you, Brook. If the idea is to panic whenever anyone makes noises about nuclear weapons, I suppose it's irrelevant if anyone knows anything about the subject.

In the case of North Korea, no one wanted an arms race, but North Korea was also one hell of a lot farther along than Iran, was directly saber-rattling at (non-nuclear) Japan and South Korea, and there were specific countermeasures that could be taken. It was relevant that their long range missile exploded, IIRC, before it hit 2 minutes of its flight bath.

I do consider it fear-mongering when Iran is not showing any smoking-gun equivalents to a serious weapons (i.e., warhead and delivery system) program. As far as your argument that other countries are making noises, show me that they are doing more than making noise, and I might be more concerned. Mark Twain used to tell a story about a man who started a rumor of a gold strike in Hell, and, finally, he saw so many people going there, he decided to go himself.

Until Israel declares its nuclear arsenal and, along with India and Pakistan, takes part in nuclear arms control, there is going to be noisemaking. An analysis of the correlation of forces, and knowing the actual capability of single-stage nuclear weapons, suggests that the capability of any of these nations would be minimal.

Rather than trying to ban programs, where the genie is out of the bottle, I'm more concerned about finding ways to make the situation more stable -- and, in some cases, that may involve variants on MAD. It definitely involves being sure countries with nuclear weapons programs get positive control technology. It means revising the NPT so it addresses realities of power, not the WWII Big Five.

I am personally far more worried about threats from the US either being biological, or deliberate failures being caused in our chemical industry. Credit where credit is due; DHS recently has started being proactive in chemical safety.

It's rather hard to debate you when you want to talk about noisemaking and I feel it's necessary to talk about capability.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

lally my post above addresses the very real concern that Iran is going to spark a regional arms race or at least a regional enrichment race that could lead to arms production.

This is a very difficult political decision to make. You have some capability at the present time to set back Iran's program for years. Do you use it or do you continue the diplomatic course, knowing Iran is not going to stop enrichment and will eventually have enough material to make a bomb?

The idea of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and a host of other very upopular governments that can be overthrown at any time in possession of the world's most dangerous weapons has got to keep a lot of analysts up late at night. You're talking about a dozen mini-Pakistans out there.

Don't debase yourself by going down the sarcastic road. My point was you actually are thinking rationally, but when has rationality been a factor in a political decision made in the Middle East the past 50 years? I mean, really -- tell me. We're still talking about countries that don't even have Israel on a map of the region. They've kept Palestinians couped up for generations in refugee camps waiting on Israel to disappear.

I agree that Iran still faces significant challenges, but it doesn't change the fact that their push forward is prompting a reaction. Regional and int'l consensus is that Iran is not trustworthy, and nobody fully believes their plea of peaceful power. This perception is the reality.

Every government in that region survives on a patina of stability, including Iran, which is governed by a theocratic click that are resorting to more and more repressive measures to hold onto power. a counter-revolution is very possible there, which could leave a lot of highly radioactive nuclear material beyond the governments power to control. Political leaders have to consider these scenarios.

We've just spent over $ 100 million taxpayer dollars helping Pakistan secure their nuclear facilities, and only the realtive stability of their army has kept their government from collapsing. We're talking about re-creating that dangerous scenario a dozen times over. Do you want to suggest there is no potential for danger at all under these conditions?

Having a right to take a particular action and whether it is wise to be allowed to do so are two different things. Yes, Egypt has a right to build 20 nuclear reactors, but Mubarak's successor is far from secured, and the potential for political chaos there is high over time. So, no, I don't want Egypt to start enriching uranium, but if Sweden chose to do so -- no problem. Yes, that is hypocritical. It's also sensible.

We've got several options short of military vis-a-vis Iran like a blockade to cut off refined gasoline. My problem with Iran is not necessarily what they are doing but who is doing it. These are individuals that believe very much in the clash of civilizations and that Western ideology has failed and should be replaced by theocracy. Nejad makes these remarks over and over, and the levers of power there are cotnrolled by those who think like this.

I already said your position is the rational one. I didn't appreciate the sarcastic tone you used. It was unnecessary. You're not reading my post, and you're completely ignoring the links I've sent you to back up my position. If you want a monologue, just say so.

My position could be construed as irrational -- because that is the way political leaders react to situations. Vladimir Putin, for example, ordering Cold War-style bomber patrols resumed, when the US announces plans to put up a shield in Europe. Is that rational? No, not if you examine all the actual technological facts re: the shield. (not to mention it's not even in place) These facts have no bearing on the reactions of political leaders.

We flew cap patrol over NY post-9/11 for days, even though all air traffic was grounded. Was that rational?

For that matter we kept a SAC bomber in the air 24/7 for the entire duration of the Cold War, even when there was limited threat of nuclear holocaust. Was that rational?

You cannot discount the significance of fear (rational or not) in political decision-making. Politicians and military planners have to consider worst-case scenarios.

You also cannot ignore the very real possiblity of radicals gaining control of any one of the governments in the Middle East. This is a political reality in that region. That kind of political instability makes the current NPT structure and IAEA authority irrelevant, in the event of a coup.

There is an interesting article today about Nejad discussing the possiblity of enrichment in Switzerland with Arab leaders. It's interesting. If it's true, then that means Iran is shifting from their hard line -- a good thing. Stay tuned.

For now, the proliferation of nuclear technology in the Middle East is reality, and Iran is the principle reason behind it. I've sent you links to back up this claim, and you've not responded with anything that disproves what I am saying.

wait a minute. you said you wanted more proof that arab governments were doing more than just making noise about nuclear technology. i delivered.

the types of reactors to be constructed are not available yet, but it's more than co-incidental that there wasn't much talk among Arabs about nuclear technology 2 years ago, and now everybody suddenly has to have it. It is cheap on the back end, but requires enormous investment on the front end, plus you have the waste disposal problem we've yet to solve and the constant fear of another Chernobyl, if something goes wrong. Nuclear reactors would be my last choice, especially in Iran. Does it really make sense in a (fossil-fuel rich) nation criss-crossed with earthquake faults to go the nuclear route? If they wanted to be cutting edge, it seems they would be working on fusion or hydrogen power plants. I don't buy the peaceful power line for a second and neither do any of the Arab governments. If they want the option of the bomb in the future, they have to have some type of program.

Here's a blurb from a website re: Iran's program.

Fissile material alone does not constitute a bomb. The next steps in the process are technically demanding and costly. In the 1980s, the father of the Pakistan bomb, A. Q. Khan, cashed in on his experience by establishing an international nuclear black market. When the Libyan nuclear program was dismantled two years ago, evidence was found that he had sold Iran detailed instructions with diagrams on how to manufacture a nuclear device and build nuclear warheads for missiles. Some of these documents were released last week to the International Atomic Energy Agency

I'm not going to continue playing FUD with you. Produce some evidence of weapons programs, or I am no longer discussing this, unless you offer technical arguments -- yourself, not random links -- to support your position.

If they wanted to be cutting edge, it seems they would be working on fusion or hydrogen power plants.

Here's a blurb from a website re: Iran's program.

Fissile material alone does not constitute a bomb.

The next steps in the process are technically demanding and costly.

In the 1980s, the father of the Pakistan bomb, A. Q. Khan, cashed in on his experience by establishing an international nuclear black market. When the Libyan nuclear program was dismantled two years ago, evidence was found that he had sold Iran detailed instructions with diagrams on how to manufacture a nuclear device and build nuclear warheads for missiles. Some of these documents were released last week to the International Atomic Energy Agency

Thank you, for proving better than I could express, that your objections are emotional and, as you have said, not rational.

I try to put myself in the very different decisionmaking shoes of the Iranians, including their loudmouth. You may or may not have seen a quantitative analysis I did some months ago, assessing an aggressive Iranian program against a conservative Israeli program, and seeing no especially sane --- which can include irrational -- Iranian program for attacking anyone.

What's the alternative, even taking Goldschmidt at face value? Preventive, not preemptive war at anyone who seems a remote possibility? What really scares me, because I have a hell of a lot more experience in BW, is that some bunch of loons, with money and some competent people, decide nuclear weapons are not more work than they are worth, and go biologiacal.

Tonight, I was reading some declassified CIA studies on interactions in the Middle East, mostly Arab but some Persian. There are parallels to dealing with the Japanese and to a lesser extent the Chinese, where visible criticism causes a loss of face they will die over rather than accept.

As for rationality, I see no evidence that Iran is capable of developing, without any warnings catching it, a serious nuclear weapons program -- much less implement it. MAD is a bad analogy that has some relevance, as does CW in WWII -- everybody had at least some chemical weapons, but with the exception of Japan against China, no one used it.

I write for Wikipedia myself -- just finished an article on "clandestine HUMINT operational techniques". I know that there is good material on Wiki, and also stuff that comes out of comic books. I've been an OSINT consultant, and, long ago, I had internal access. I'm not as convinced that it's all that possible to build a credible WMD program in complete secrecy.

It's not just Bush and the Axis of Evil -- although I can give you very specific examples on how FDR's off-the-cuff Unconditional Surrender demand probably prolonged the war. It's Israel's aggressiveness (e.g., Lebanon), their refusal even to declare their nuclear weapons and take any stabililizing steps (second-strike deterrent can be stabilizing), and the apparent abandonment of their active SRBM/IRBM/counter rocket program.

If I put myself, where I don't want to be, in Iranian and Palestinian shoes, I'd feel intense pressure to have a WMD program, yet my gut doesn't tell me, based on anything more than supposition, that they have a serious program. Above all, they don't seem to making any real strides to a Pu-239 production capability, a prerequisite for a real nuclear program.

Iran is not a responsible government nor a stable one, and foreign enrichment in exchange for some economic aid and financial investment in their country seems fair to me.

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]