The Obama administration's charges that an Iranian paramilitary force plotted the assassination of the Saudi ambassador to the United States have prompted denials and counter-charges from the Iranian regime. While Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said the government is ready to investigate U.S. claims, admission of official guilt is seen as unlikely.
Stressing the gravity of the accusations, U.S. officials are pressing Iran on multiple fronts. Washington is hoping to use the assassination plot to build international momentum to isolate Iran and put pressure on the regime to rethink its controversial nuclear program, which may include new sanctions. The Obama administration is reportedly urging the UN nuclear watchdog -- the IAEA -- to release new classified intelligence information in its quarterly report next month to show Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capability. Iran repeatedly claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Iran also came under fire for its widespread human rights abuses, including the use of torture and secret executions, according to a new UN report.
The case of the alleged terror plot was submitted at Saudi Arabia's request to the UN Security Council, but it is not clear what action Saudi Arabia or the United States will seek from the body. U.S. President Barack Obama has vowed to "apply the toughest sanctions and continue to mobilize the international community" to isolate Iran.
U.S. Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen told the Senate Banking Committee that the United States was considering the possibility of sanctioning Iran's central bank. Washington has already designated five people, including four senior officers of the Quds Force, in relation with the terrorism plot plus sanctioned a major Iranian commercial airline for supporting the IRGC and Quds Force. In solidarity, the UK also froze the assets of the five men. So far, Russia and China, veto-wielding members of the Security Council, have reacted cautiously to the U.S. allegations.
Amid the new U.S.-led sanctions campaign are fresh signs of the difficulties Iran faces in its nuclear program. A new report from Washington-based think tank ISIS says the country's nuclear program has suffered significant setbacks due to a 2010 Stuxnet cyberattack, assassinations of several top Iranian nuclear scientists, and powerful sanctions that have limited access to nuclear materials and equipment. However, the report concludes that Iran's atomic program continues "on a trajectory toward being dedicated to producing weapon-grade uranium for nuclear weapons." It recommends that the international community effectively implement sanctions to further limit Iran's ability to advance its centrifuge program.
Charles D. Ferguson, president of the independent Federation of American Scientists, also recommends targeted sanctions or tougher export controls that ensure Iran does not get the equipment required to sustain its nuclear program. However, broader sanctions such as those targeting the banking sector or the economy as a whole are misguided, he says, because of the pain inflicted on the Iranian people.
U.S. policy toward Tehran, which has included toughening of sanctions as well as offers of engagement and greater economic cooperation, has so far failed to persuade Tehran to halt uranium enrichment. James Dobbins of Rand Corporation says in the new CFR Crisis Guide that it's important to continue to bolster sanctions "both to dissuade Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, but also to dissuade other countries from going down a similar path."
But Vali Nasr of Tufts University says there are limits to what sanctions can do to alter Iranian behavior, largely because the country has access to oil revenue that lessens the impact, and because Iran is accustomed to coping with sanctions. Further, some analysts express doubt that any new measures will persuade the Iranian government to give up its nuclear program. "I don't see the Iranians retreating one iota on the nuclear program", says proliferation expert Shannon Kile at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Background Materials
The Lengthening List of Iran Sanctions, CFR Backgrounder
Towards Enhanced Safeguards for Iran's Nuclear Program, Federation of American Scientists
Iran-United States: After the Iranian Bomb, National Defense University
This article first appeared on CFR.org.
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Yet Charles D. Ferguson wrote in an NY Times Op-Ed dated September 29, 2011:
"For once, it is strategically expedient for the United States and its allies to take Ahmadinejad at his word. They should provide Iran with 50 kilograms of [20%enriched unranium] fuel, without any conditions. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/30iht-edvaez30.html?_r=1
Now instead of fretting over Iran's nuclear program and the hyperbolic paranoia attached to it by Israel, people should instead be concerned with the fact that Stuxnet has bred DUQU, dubbed the "son of Stuxnet" and it's attacking systems all over Europe and carrying out espionage against manufacturers of industrial control systems and in the process of stealing sensitive industrial data to launch another attack. Stuxnet has been linked to Israel by many experts studying this cyberwarfare phenomenum.
It's said that these cyber threats are like nothing the security IT community has seen before and are capable of unleashing doomsday scenarios, like wreaking havoc in chemical plants to create toxic spills and bringing down banks to name just two.
Folks, THIS IS WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD BE SCRUTINIZING AND TRYING TO BRING DOWN! Those who are letting this genie out of the bottle are threatening our very existance. Heck, but let's all just obssess about Iran that never attacked any other country without provocation. Meanwhile, someone else is building the ultimate weapon of domination.
The following link has excerpts from experts in the field on these massive cyber threats.:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/19124/brace_for_son_of_stuxnet_duqu_spies_on_scada?source=rss_blogs
America cannot make these accusations without proper grounds. The frivolous nature of America's actions show the world it is an abuser of authority and less legitimate as a member of the international community than the US will admit.
WHERE IS THE ACTUAL EVIDENCE?
Hollow claims have been reported as fact for too long.
The truth is that the evidence is abundant. Iran is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the IAEA, hiding us much as they can of the bomb effort. Then, what they can't hide, they make dual-use, and claim it is for civilian use -- however implausible that sounds.
Face it: they have no need for THAT much 20% U235, nor for a neutron initiator -- except for their bomb program.
Just as the other countries have a right to try and stop the iranians from developing the bomb, because they perceive a toothless iran as best for their own interests.
Indeed there are plenty of countries out there who have defied the world and gone on to develop nukes (India and Pakistan, to name 2), and no doubt they had to deal with sabotage and sanctions while they developed the bomb. yet today india is nuclear, and the americans are falling over themselves for the privilege of selling material and parts to the Indians.
The real question in this case is, who prevails in the end?
Iran wants WTO membership and trade with the west, but they can do without. It's time for dialogue not more BS. We need to come up with real solutions for Iranian nuclear program, we also need to deescalate the tensions so that Iranians can force reforms on their own government. Holding our breath and jumping up and down is not going to help anything. Look at North Korea that has 1/100th of Iranian capabilities, money and influence as a good example.
Those clever Persians.
As an Indian I am extremely happy and relived that my stupid Govt. has seen the light, and reversed its earlier moves... american inspired... to "punish" Iran.
India today has moved to repair the damage its stupidity had caused, and now treats Iran as a respected equal partner.
If India, Pakistan, Israel, and the other 5 can have the bomb, so can Iran. On this issue why isnt America even handed with Israel and Iran? Nuclear aparthied will not work.
I do not approve of all the things Irans leadership stands for, but if they are going to be held to account for their behaviour, then so should Israel for its land grab and oppression of the Palestinian people, as well as Saudi Arabia, which is worse than Iran in many ways.
I'm also not sure that many countries are cheering about Stuxnet, let alone the real - not fictional, but real - assassination of Iranian scientists. These raise sovereignty and criminal issues, where Iran is squarely the victim and it is the US and Israel who appear to have gone rogue.
The Iranian nuclear issue is being handled very badly, as though the entire world consisted of tea partiers for whom Iran is the evil-to-the-bone bogeyman and any action, no matter how violent and/or duplicitous, is warranted. But the entire world does not consist of that public.
An Iranian Bomb would be a bad thing from a non-proliferation standpoint (though perhaps not as bad as the Pakistani/Indian ones), but the American no-holds-barred approach does more to isolate the US than Iran. The world would follow a non-proliferation policy that is reasonable, not one that is riddled with lies, hypocrisy and outright murder.
I get the feeling that some Saudi prince looked ahead to the succession battle that will be coming up soon (the present king just underwent more surgery, and the brother who is next in line for that title is battling cancer, with the probable next on up being so extreme that where prohibiting women from even driving is seen as the norm, he is considered 'conservative' and the youngest of the brothers is 60) when the question of how the title gets handed down to the next generation, rather than sideways amongst the brothers, and decided that would go better, from his point of view, if the ambassador had been killed.
He probably had no experience at all in espionage operations, even as a fully briefed observer, but had heard enough to cobble together this idiocy, and thought that even if the hit happened, everyone would trace it as far back as Iran, and leave it there (they would and will, for public consumption, but there's probably some 'off the books' looking being done by Saudi intelligence)
It's really quite unbelievable how you are never open to any possibility that the government of Iran might have done some wrong. Not in killing peaceful protesters in 2009, and not here.
Really, Richard, you should leave Canada and move to that utopia.
Also, the same neocons that pushed us into invading Iraq are trying to pressure the State Department to take MeK off the terrorist list.
This is just another attempt by the neocons and Israeli-firsters to use the U.S. military to do Israel’s dirty work.
So, in a coupe of years, a new reason that Iran doesn't have the capability, but soon will, will be the talk of the town, there will likely have been a few more pieces of 'evidence' of the existance of such a program put forward, a few more pieces of such 'evidence' dropped from the public consciousness because enough details have either eventually been offered to make it possible to show they are false, or the realisation that they fall into the category of 'so vague that they can't be definitively disproved, but also don't actually show anything to a reasonable person to make them accept them as something to pay attention to', and the effort to isolate Iran will be spinning its wheels but despite the smoke, not moving things forward.
Interesting, wouldn't you say?