kompilasi riset

ANTARA News :: Ex-President`s party to form Islamic wing

2007-04-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

Ex-President`s party to form Islamic wing

Bandung, W Java (ANTARA News) - The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) will soon form a new wing called `Baitul Muslimin` which hopefully can accommodate aspirations of Islamic but nationalist ulemas, an official said.

The Baitul Muslimin will be declared at the PDIP headquarters in Jakarta on March 29, party spokesperson Ari Junaedi said here Wednesday.

Leaders of Indonesia`s largest Islamic organizations Hasyim Muzadi of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Dien Syamsuddin (Muhammadiyah) as well as noted Muslim scholar Azyumardi Azra, and other prominent Islamic public figures will attend the declaration, he said.

PDIP cadres who were named governors, district heads, and mayors as well as members of the House Representatives (DPR), the provincial legislative assemblies and the Regional Representatives Council (DPD) will also witness the declaration.

The declaration of the `Baitul Muslimin` will increase number of PDIP`s organization wings to 3. The other two wings are women organization `Srikandi Demokrasi Indonesia` and youth group `Banteng Muda Indonesia`.

Quoting PDIP chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri, Ari said the declaration of the new wing had nothing to do with the preparation for presidential election in 2009.

"We just want to accommodate the Islamic spirit within nationalists. I hope the `Baitul Muslimin` will not disperse existing Islamic mass organizations but together we will uphold justice and welfare," Ari said.

Ari who is a candidate for a doctorate degree in communication at the Bandung-based University of Padjadjaran also said the declaration will also be used to express support for Megawati who is former president to become a speaker at the East Asia Senior Leaders` Forum which will be held in Fukuoka from March 31 to April 1.(*)

ANTARA News :: Ex-President`s party to form Islamic wing

ICRP - PERDA SYARIAT DAN PEMINGGIRAN PEREMPUAN - KOLOM

2007-03-14T22:33:00.000-07:00

11 Agustus 2006 - 03:32 (Diposting oleh: ICRP)
PERDA SYARIAT DAN PEMINGGIRAN PEREMPUAN
Siti Musdah Mulia

I. Pendahuluan

Gagasan awal otononomi daerah (otoda) adalah membangun demokrasi dengan ciri utama partisipasi seluruh masyarakat, termasuk di dalamnya perempuan untuk meningkatkan kesejahteraan sosial masyarakat yang selama ini terabaikan. Otoda merupakan suatu bentuk kebijakan yang memberikan kewenangan kepada daerah dalam batas-batas tertentu agar leluasa mengatur wilayahnya menjadi lebih mandiri dan lebih berkembang sehingga masyarakatnya menjadi lebih sejahtera.

Namun, setelah tujuh tahun pelaksanaan otoda yang terjadi alih-alih mensejahterakan, malahan membuat masyarakat, khususnya kaum perempuan terpinggirkan dan jauh dari ukuran sejahtera. Sejak otoda digulirkan sampai akhir Juli 2006 tercatat 56 produk kebijakan perda dalam berbagai bentuk: peraturan daerah, qanun, surat edaran, dan keputusan kepala daerah. Produk kebijakan daerah tersebut secara tegas berorientasi pada ajaran moral Islam sehingga pantas dinamakan Perda Syariat Islam.

Sebagian perda tersebut secara struktural dan spesifik mengatur kaum perempuan. Sayangnya, pengaturan terhadap perempuan bukan dalam rangka perlindungan dan pemberdayaan, melainkan lebih dimaksudkan sebagai pengucilan dan pembatasan. Perda-perda tersebut meneguhkan subordinasi perempuan; membatasi hak kebebasan perempuan dalam berbusana; membatasi ruang gerak dan mobilitas perempuan; serta membatasi waktu beraktivitas perempuan pada malam hari. Secara eksplisit perda-perda itu mengekang hak dan kebebasan asasi manusia perempuan; menempatkan perempuan hanya sebagai obyek hukum dan bahkan lebih rendah lagi sebagai objek seksual. Perda-perda yang mengandung pembatasan terhadap kedaulatan perempuan dan juga berpotensi melahirkan perilaku kekerasan terhadap perempuan harus digugat dan direvisi karena menyalahi prinsip-prinsip dasar negara Indonesia, yakni Pancasila dan UUD 1945.

Selain itu, produk kebijakan tersebut jelas mengingkari nilai-nilai hak asasi manusia (HAM) sebagaimana dijabarkan dalam UU Nomor 7 tahun 1984 tentang Pengesahan Konvensi Penghapusan Diskriminasi Terhadap Perempuan, UU Nomor 39 tahun 1999 tentang HAM dan UU Nomor 12 tahun 2005 tentang Ratifikasi Kovenan Internasional mengenai Hak-hak Sipil dan Politik. Bahkan, lebih parah lagi perda-perda tersebut menyimpang dari esensi ajaran Islam yang menempatkan manusia, perempuan dan laki-laki sama-sama sebagai makhluk terhormat dan bermartabat, serta memiliki hak dan kebebasan dasar yang harus dihormati. Pembatasan dan pengekangan terhadap perempuan berarti menegasikan keutuhan kemanusiaan perempuan dan Tuhan pasti tersinggung melihat perempuan, makhluk ciptaan-Nya dimarjinalkan.

ICRP - PERDA SYARIAT DAN PEMINGGIRAN PEREMPUAN - KOLOM

Hidayatullah.com - Syariat Islam di Mata Ahmad Syafii Maarif

2007-03-09T23:14:00.000-08:00

Syariat Islam di Mata Ahmad Syafii Maarif

Rabu, 28 Juni 2006

Sebelum menjadi Pejabat Sementara Ketua Umum PP Muhammadiyah tahun, 1999 -2004, Ahmad Syafii Maarif dikenal hati-hati. Belakangan ia kerap memberi pernyataan minor pada kelompok Islam lain

Hidayatullah.com—Prof Dr Ahmad Syafi'i Maarif adalah mantan Ketua Umum Pengurus Pusat Muhammadiyah. Selain kader Muhammadiyah, dia dikenal sebagai seorang ilmuwan, tepatnya menjadi guru besar Ilmu Sejarah di IKIP Yogyakarta.

Lahir di Sumpurkudus, Sumatera Barat, 31 Mei 1935, sejak kecil Syafii Maarif hidup dalam lingkungan keislaman yang kental. Lulusan Madrasah Ibtidaiyah Sumpurkudus ini melanjutkan ke Madrasah Muallim Lintau, Sumbar, dan selanjutnya menempuh ilmu setingkat SLTA di Mualimin Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. Lulus SLTA, dia melanjutkan pendidikan ke Fakultas Hukum Universitas Cokroaminoto Yogyakarta, kemudian melanjutkan ke IKIP Yogyakarta hingga bergelar Sarjana Sejarah.

Syafii melanjutkan program master di Departemen Sejarah Universitas Ohio, Amerika Serikat (AS). Gelar doktor diperolehnya dari Program Studi Bahasa dan Peradaban Timur Dekat, Universitas Chicago, AS, dengan disertasi "Islam as the Basis of State: A Study of the Islamic Political Ideas as Reflected in the Constituent Assembly Debates in Indonesia."

Pengurus Masyarakat Sejarawan Indonesia ini mengaku, di Chicago kuliah di bawah bimbingan Fazlur Rahman, yang juga guru (alm) Nurcholis Madjid, yang dianggapnya banyak memberikan pencerahan, termasuk dalam memahami Al-Qur'an.

“Saya betah di sana, karena cocok dengan dunia intelektualitas saya,” kenang si anak desa yang pernah bercita-cita hanya ingin menjadi penceramah di podium ini.

Ahmad Syafii Maarif menjadi Pejabat Sementara Ketua Umum PP Muhammadiyah sejak 1999 -2004. Posisi ini kemudian diganti oleh Prof Dr Din Syamsuddin dalam Muktamar Muhammadiyah ke-45 di Malang, Jawa Timur.

Sebelumnya, pria yang rajin menulis di berbagai media itu dikenal netral dan hati-hati dalam mengeluarkan argumen bernilai politik. Namun, banyak perubahan padanya, tatkala memberi pernyataan menyangkut masalah gerakan-gerakan Islam. Di bawah ini sebagaian kecil yang didokumentasi hidayatullah.com menyangkut pikiran dan pernyataannya:

Tanggal 10 Agustus 2000, bersama tokoh seperti Hasyim Muzadi (Ketua Umum PBNU) dan Nurcholish Madjid, mengeluarkan pernyataan bersama di Hotel Indonesia, yang isinya menolak upaya mengembalikan Piagam Jakarta. Judul pernyataan mereka: “Kami Menolak Pencantuman Kembali Piagam Jakarta dalam UUD 1945.”

Alasannya, dimasukkannya kembali tujuh kata itu akan membangkitkan kembali prasangka-prasangka lama dari kalangan luar Islam mengenai ‘negara Islam’ di Indonesia. Prasangka-prasangka ini jika dibiarkan berkembang akan dapat mengganggu hubungan antar kelompok yang pada ujungnya menimbulkan ancaman disintegrasi.

Tanggal 1 Agustus 2005, Syafii meminta agar Majelis Ulama Indonesia (MUI) mengkaji kembali fatwanya. Ulama-ulama di MUI dianggapnya tak paham pluralisme. Menurutnya, MUI harus mempelajari pluralisme untuk memahami implikasi yang muncul akibat fatwa tersebut. Ia juga minta pemerintah mengantisipasi agar fatwa ini tak diadopsi Pemerintah Daerah ke dalam Peraturan Daerah (Perda).

“Bangsa ini masih ada banyak masalah. MUI seharusnya belajar banyak lagi masalah pluralisme,” katanya dikutip Koran Sinar Harapan.

Karena memunculkan perdebatan, Syafii meminta MUI mengkaji kembali 11 butir fatwa hasil Musyawarah Nasional ke-7 itu. Ketegangan, kata dia, menunjukkan tujuan fatwa sendiri tidak sepenuhnya tercapai.

Entahlah, meski fatwa adalah menyangkut masalah hukum dari kesepakatan ulama yang ahli bidang fikih, ilmuwan Sejarah ini tetap keras mengatakan fatwa itu tidak benar. “Tidak semua fatwa yang dikeluarkan MUI itu tepat. Misalnya fatwa untuk menghukum agama lain. Ini tidak tepat. Seolah-olah MUI itu tidak punya pekerjaan lain,” katanya.

Syafii juga menyatakan sulit memahami fatwa MUI tentang pelarangan Ahmadiyah, pengharaman pemikiran liberal dan pluralisme.

"Alih-alih mencerdaskan dan membimbing umat ke jalan yang benar, fatwa tersebut malah menjadi bahan bakar tindakan anarkisme, vandalisme, dan anti demokrasi di tengah umat," katanya seolah menganggap biang kekerasan adalah Fatwa MUI.

Ahmad Syafii Maarif juga mempopulerkan istilah “preman berjubah”. Istilah itu muncul tanggal 9 Agustus 2005 dalam kolom ‘Resonansi’ di harian Republika. Kolom itu pun berjudul “Preman Berjubah”.

''...kita punya kesempatan emas untuk menyampaikan apa yang terasa secara sopan tetapi tajam. Tidak seperti cara-cara sementara pihak yang menyerbu suatu tempat yang mereka nilai 'berbahaya' bagi Islam seperti yang mereka pahami. Cara semacam ini adalah cara preman berjubah, jauh dari dari sifat seorang ksatria.'' Demikian tulis Syafii Maarif.

Istilah itu kembali diucapkannya dalam salah satu acara di stasiun TV dalam rangka memperingati sewindu reformasi. Hadir dalam dialog tersebut antara lain Akbar Tandjung, Wiranto, dan Adnan Buyung Nasution.

Ketika itu Syafii mengatakan, "Pada 2030 nanti Pancasila sebagai karya brilian Bung Karno harus sukses diamalkan, karena sekarang penentang Pancasila sudah tidak ada lagi setelah para preman berjubah kehilangan energi".

Pernyataannya ini dipopulerkan lagi oleh sekelompok orang yang selama ini dikenal sebagai aktivis liberal, dan dijadikan kumpulan buku berjudul Kala Fatwa Jadi Penjara (Wahid Institute, 2006, hlm. 234-236). Buku ini membahas tentang penolakan terhadap fatwa-fatwa MUI menyangkut liberalisme.

Dalam acara bedah buku dan diskusi otobiografi Ahmad Syafii Maarif, Titik-titik Kisar di Perjalananku di Jakarta (19 Juni 2006), Syafii mengatakan bahwa partai-partai Islam tak pernah membela rakyat. Partai-partai Islam hanya menjadikan agama sebagai kendaraan politik. "Itu fakta. Tidak seorang pun bisa membantahnya," katanya seperti dikutip koran Suara Karya, 20 Juni 2006.

Ia juga mengatakan, partai-partai berdasarkan Islam makin tidak punya pengikut. “Itu kenyataan dan fakta yang harus dilihat," ujarnya.

Syafii juga mengajak masyarakat untuk tak berharap pada partai Islam. Ia bahkan menyebut-nyebut parpol Islam tidak akan pernah bersatu. "Selama mereka hanya memikirkan perut, mereka tidak akan pernah bisa bersatu."

Bagaimana pandangannya terhadap partai Islam, misalnya PKS? "Dulu Partai Masyumi, sebelum dibubarkan, lebih bagus. Orang-orang Masyumi dikenal moralis, tidak memikirkan diri sendiri, dan hidup sederhana. Beda dengan kelakuan elite politik sekarang. Dia (PKS) kan baru. Kita belum tahu kalau dia berkuasa. Jadi, kita masih harus wait and see terhadap PKS ini," katanya.

Dalam bukunya, Mencari Autentisitas dalam Kegalauan (PSAP, 2004), Syafii mengatakan, pluralisme agama dan budaya sejak ribuan tahun sudah merupakan fakta dalam sejarah. Oleh karena itu, harus diakui, dihormati, dan disyukuri. Pluralisme agama dan budaya, menurutnya, memperkaya bangunan kemanusiaan universal.

Ia juga mengatakan, gagasan Negara Islam lebih banyak disebabkan oleh sikap reaktif umat terhadap perkembangan politik abad ke-20, bukan oleh kesungguhan untuk menciptakan sebuah tatanan kehidupan Islami yang komprehensif, utuh, dan substansial.

Sikap dan pandangan di atas menempatkan Syafii menjadi “guru” bagi orang-orang liberal. Simak pendapat Sukidi, aktivis Jaringan Intelektual Muhammadiyah (JIMM) di harian Kompas (Selasa, 6 Juni 2006), saat menyambut peluncuran buku otobiografi Ahmad Syafii Maarif berjudul Titik-titik Kisar di Perjalananku.

“Sebagai ulama yang benar-benar ‘alim’ sehingga dipanggil Buya, pilihan hidup sederhana benar-benar merefleksikan kondisi umatnya yang sederhana, serba miskin dan penuh penderitaan. Ia resapi kondisi umatnya itu dalam kehidupan. Peran profetiknya ibarat seorang ‘nabi’ yang oleh (alm) Nurcholish Madjid ditafsirkan sebagai ‘guru moralitas’ dan ‘guru kebenaran’. Hidupnya diabadikan untuk menyertai dan mengabdi pada umat dan bangsa, dalam menggapai moralitas dan kebenaran yang diperjuangkan secara konkret, tidak sekadar dalam ide dan angan-angan.

Di tengah bertaburan elite agama yang menjadikan umatnya sebagai modal dan mobilisasi politik, Buya Syafii justru menjauhi sifat itu. Ia mentransendensikan dirinya dari nafsu birahi politik. Kepada umat, ia tebarkan pencerahan dengan akal rasional dan budi pekerti yang baik, juga sebuah peringatan.

"Aku ingatkan bahwa cara-cara radikalisme itu sepanjang sejarah Indonesia hanya punya satu risiko: gagal!," tutur pria yang sering dipanggil pengagumnya dengan Buya itu dalam otobiografinya. [cha, berbagai sumber]

Hidayatullah.com - Syariat Islam di Mata Ahmad Syafii Maarif

Dan Froomkin - Bush Puzzled by Doubters - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T22:32:00.000-08:00

Bush Puzzled by Doubters

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; 5:30 PM

President Bush yesterday sounded perplexed that anyone would think he is preparing to attack Iran -- going so far as to make a sour face and lower his voice in a mocking imitation of his critics.

"I guess my reaction to all the noise about, you know, 'He wants to go to war' is, first of all, I don't understand the tactics, and I guess I would say it's political," Bush told C-SPAN's Steve Scully yesterday.

"On the other hand, I hope that the members of Congress, particularly in the opposition party, understand the grave danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon. Therefore, we all need to work together to solve the problem."

Here's the text and video of the interview. Thinkprogress has a video clip of Bush's sour-faced cynic-imitation.

So where is all that "noise" coming from? Why might anyone be doubting Bush's stated intentions?

Well, it could be that when it comes to the Middle East, the war in Iraq has so damaged Bush's credibility that even some of his natural allies don't believe what he has to say anymore -- even his pro forma denials of hostile intentions toward Iran.

And then there's the fact that those sour-faced, unhappy-sounding critics Bush was mocking have, time and again, been proved right.

Dan Froomkin - Bush Puzzled by Doubters - washingtonpost.com

Dennis Ross - The Art of the Possible Peace - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

The Art of the Possible Peace
Rice's First Task: A Viable Israeli-Palestinian Cease-Fire

By Dennis Ross
Thursday, February 15, 2007; A27

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will travel to the Middle East this weekend and hold a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Her stated purpose is to discuss permanent-status issues with an eye toward producing an agreement on a political horizon for ending the conflict. For many, such a political horizon has been long overdue; with it, they argue, both Israelis and Palestinians will know how the conflict ends and find it easier to confront those who oppose peace.

Many, including Rice, see Saudi, Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian leaders as sharing a perception of Iran as a threat. With such common fears, the thinking goes, the leaders should be willing to accept the necessary hard compromises and end the Palestinian conflict (or show how it can be ended) so Iran can no longer exploit the conflict to build its following and put the region's moderates on the defensive.

The assessment of the common threat perception is correct. But basing policy only on this misses an important regional reality. Priorities differ on how best to respond to the Iranian threat. For the Saudis, weaning Hamas away from Iran and producing intra-Palestinian peace is more important than trying to forge peace between Palestinians and Israelis. For the Israelis, however, an intra-Palestinian peace that entails accommodating Hamas (and that does not require Hamas to change its hostile posture toward Israel) is hardly a basis for reaching out to Palestinians in a way that would satisfy the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians.

And one sure way to threaten intra-Palestinian peace is to push now for a political horizon that inevitably will mean Palestinian compromises on core issues such as refugees. Will Hamas accommodate giving up the Palestinian right of return? A political horizon that purports to outline the endgame will require such a concession, and Hamas is not going to accept it or a process likely to produce it.

Of course, the compromises won't be one-sided. But is Israel likely to contemplate excruciating concessions on Jerusalem or territory with a Palestinian government led in part by those who refuse to acknowledge its existence or renounce terrorism? My point is that the political options available for peacemaking between Israelis and Palestinians have been reduced. And Rice's efforts have to be guided by what is possible, not by what is most desirable.

In Middle Eastern terms, what is logical and possible is intra-Palestinian peace and Palestinian-Israeli calm. That would argue for a comprehensive cease-fire to be negotiated between Abbas and Olmert. A deal would require all Palestinian attacks against Israelis to stop and all smuggling of weapons into Gaza or the West Bank to end. In return, the Israelis would stop all incursions, targeted killings and arrests. As Palestinians demonstrate that they are fulfilling their responsibilities, checkpoints would be lifted and crossing points opened, making economic revitalization possible.

This agreement would differ from previous cease-fires in that it would be negotiated with clear understandings of what constitutes a violation and penalties for violations. Israel might be willing to accept such a deal because Hamas would have to enforce the cease-fire -- not merely observe it. Hamas's readiness to enforce it would mean for the first time that Hamas was acting to prevent "resistance," which would signal that its fundamental credo might be changed.

Hamas might be willing to accept such a cease-fire for two reasons: First, it needs a respite. Second, in an atmosphere where life is improving and conflict with Israel is deferred, Hamas is likely to believe its superior organization will allow it to supplant Fatah and dominate Palestinian society.

For his part, Abbas has long favored a comprehensive cease-fire, and he, too, might believe that Hamas would be transformed by having to fulfill responsibilities.

In any case, a comprehensive cease-fire could change the atmosphere between Israelis and Palestinians and lead to a negotiation designed to pursue the vision that Olmert originally campaigned on -- an extensive Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Only this withdrawal would not be unilateral and would depend on Palestinian performance on security obligations.

A comprehensive cease-fire won't be hammered out without intensive U.S. brokering. Even Rice's more ambitious desire for a political horizon need not be surrendered. But to accomplish it, she must get the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians to publicly embrace basic trade-offs on the core issues, even if Arab leaders must get out in front of Abbas and Olmert on stating their acceptance of the compromises. Both leaders are politically weak; Abbas needs Arab political cover if he is to accept historic concessions on refugees and security, while Olmert must show that the Arab world has adopted unprecedented compromises if he is to justify crossing historic thresholds on Jerusalem and borders. Absent that, Rice will need to change her horizon for what is possible in the Middle East.

The writer was director for policy planning in the State Department under President George H.W. Bush and special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton. He is counselor of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

Dennis Ross - The Art of the Possible Peace - washingtonpost.com: "."

Dan Froomkin - Bush Fails to Reassure

2007-03-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

Bush Fails to Reassure

By Dan Froomkin

Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, February 15, 2007; 4:32 PM

President Bush did nothing at yesterday's news conference to reassure those who think his administration may once again be using faulty intelligence to build a case for war.

Bush spoke in the wake of conflicting, mostly anonymous administration claims of Iranian involvement in arming Iraqis with sophisticated bombs. He did back off from the claim that Teheran was directly responsible.

Dan Froomkin - Bush Fails to Reassure - washingtonpost.com

Talking Tough to Stay in Power - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T22:18:00.000-08:00

Talking Tough to Stay in Power

By Anders Aslund
Sunday, February 18, 2007; B02

Vladimir Putin spoke his mind when he launched into an anti-American tirade in Munich recently, accusing the United States of having "overstepped its national borders in every way: in the economy, in politics, and in the humanitarian sphere it imposes its policies on other states. Well, who likes this?" Given the United States' Iraq troubles, it is natural that the Russian president would thrive on American weakness. But his speech was as notable for what it said about his domestic politics.

Putin obviously thinks he is riding high. The Russian economy is booming. Incredibly, in the past seven years, Russia's gross domestic product has grown by 500 percent, measured in current dollars (from $200 billion in 1999 to $1 trillion last year). The world is desperate for Russia's oil and gas, and Putin remains astoundingly popular at home. His successor is certain to be handpicked by him. One can only marvel at how adeptly he handles a 3 1/2 -hour televised news conference, with detailed answers, alternating charm and combativeness.

Despite all that, Putin has painted himself into a corner as he faces the end of the two terms in office that the Russian constitution allows him. This is a man who speaks the language of a modern leader trying to rebuild his country, when in fact he and his cronies have really just wanted to enrich themselves. Having spent his time as president undermining democracy, property rights, the free press and the rule of law by taking over Yukos oil (and throwing its owner into a Siberian prison) and then other big companies, now he and his coterie must cling to power somehow -- or risk losing it all if they cannot stage-manage a transition to the proper person.

The tolerance of corruption in the Putin regime is astounding. Recently, for instance, a Swiss court established that Minister of Communications Leonid Reiman, a close personal friend of Putin's, was the owner of telecommunications assets in Russia worth more than a billion dollars. But this has not been reported in major media in Russia, and Reiman remains at his post without having offered any explanation or apology, only an implausible blanket denial.

How can Putin and his cronies give this up?

It seems clear that Putin has these worries in mind when he fulminates on the world stage against the United States. Such words have the effect of increasing his popularity and therefore his grip on the country, which has been suffocated by his near-total control of television stations, newspapers, nominations of candidates, political parties and even public meetings. The evidence of a growing Russian authoritarianism is clear: Russia is one of the few countries that has declined since 2000 from "partly free" to "not free," according to Freedom House's meticulous ratings.

Russia's foreign policy in these seven years has changed accordingly, showing how brazen national political values do affect a country's behavior outside its borders. Recently, for instance, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov boasted: "Not one single significant international problem can be resolved without Russia or against Russia." Rather than acting as a problem-solver -- as Putin did in his first term when, for instance, he cooperated with the U.S. effort against the Taliban in Afghanistan -- he is now positioning himself as a spoiler on the world stage when it comes to the United States and its allies.

Nevertheless, Putin has managed to charm some Western leaders -- former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, outgoing French President Jacques Chirac and, most notably, President Bush. Just this month, Bush told the Wall Street Journal: "Vladimir Putin has kept his word on everything he's said to me." Well, then he cannot have said much. Putin reciprocated in his anti-American Munich speech: "I consider the president of the United States my friend. He is a decent person." He could as well have said: "He is a useful fool."

Putin has divided the European Union by pampering its southern members -- France, Greece, Italy and Spain -- while antagonizing Poland and the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which have tied themselves closely to the United States. In Moscow, the four latter states are called the "aggressive new minority" in the E.U.

Russia has shown itself to be most aggressive in foreign policy in its own neighborhood of former Soviet republics. It has antagonized these countries so badly with its bullying -- oil cutoffs, transportation blockades, trade shutdowns, immigration crackdowns -- that they are all rushing for the exits and seeking closer cooperation with NATO and the E.U. or working to develop new energy pipelines that skirt Russia. Russia's role in the region is dwindling despite its growing oil- and gas-fueled national wealth. As nationalist intellectual Stanislav Belkovsky, director of the National Strategy Institute in Moscow, recently put it: "In 2006, Russia ceased to be a regional power."

Likewise, even as it declares itself an energy superpower, Russia has tripped itself up. In the past year, it has bombarded its neighbors with rude surprises: oil taxes and higher gas prices; spigots closed to force a political point. No amount of reassurance at this point can erase concerns in Europe about Russia as a reliable energy supplier. In the post-Soviet space, both friends and foes of Russia are repelled, finding Putin's regime too unreliable and abrasive. They all now are trying to reduce their dependence on Russia.

The ultimate question is how the Putin regime will end. For the first time in Russian history, the secret police are fully in charge, right to the top. A tightly knit circle of Putin's friends from his St. Petersburg KGB days rules in the Kremlin. Led by Igor Sechin, Putin's closest colleague, they control virtually all security organs. There is much speculation about whether they can even be overruled by Putin himself. The closest parallel to the Sechin group in the past is the group controlled by Joseph Stalin's secret police chief Lavrentii Beria, though there is one great difference: Unlike Putin, Stalin was not a creature of the security apparatus; he manipulated it for his own needs. There is another big difference: This group is interested only in amassing great wealth, not in controlling the lives of its countrymen. Which is why it is alarmed by the prospect of the 2008 presidential election and why Moscow is awash with rumors that Putin will find a way to stay on.

Given what is at stake, the United States can no longer be a mere bystander in this drama. Six years of soft policy on Russia have done nothing but encourage the Kremlin's anti-Western stand. Bush could learn a lesson from Mikheil Saakashvili, president of Georgia, to carry a big stick when dealing with Putin. When Bush compliments Putin, he evokes only contempt in the Kremlin. President Ronald Reagan knew how important it was to speak the truth loudly and clearly. Vice President Cheney's speech in Vilnius, Lithuania, last May was a welcome departure, which enraged the Kremlin. It's the time for the White House to follow through.

The West persuaded Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to ratify the Helsinki conventions on human rights and free and fair elections in 1975. The Helsinki conventions played an important role in undermining the Soviet dictatorship. The United States should invoke them again as Russia approaches a new round of parliamentary and presidential elections, in which it now appears that every rule in the book is set to be violated.

Indeed, in Munich Putin saved his rudest abuse for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was founded on the Helsinki conventions and is the international organization for monitoring elections. Like Brezhnev, Putin accused the OSCE of "interfering in the internal affairs of other countries," but the Helsinki conventions made democracy an international concern. Putin and his cronies may not like that, but given the link between Russia's domestic policies and its foreign behavior, it's important for the West to insist.

aaslund@petersoninstitute.org

Anders Aslund is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. His book "How Capitalism Was Built" will be published by Cambridge University Press next fall.

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

Talking Tough to Stay in Power - washingtonpost.com

Charles Krauthammer - The Putin Doctrine - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T22:16:00.000-08:00

The Putin Doctrine

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 16, 2007; A23

Vladimir Putin -- Russia's president, although the more accurate title would be godfather -- made headlines last week with a speech in Munich that set a new standard in anti-Americanism. He not only charged the United States with the "hyper-use of force," "disdain for the basic principles of international law" and having "overstepped its national borders in . . . the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations." He even blamed the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which the United States has been combating with few allies and against constant Russian resistance, on American "dominance" that "inevitably encourages" other countries to acquire them.

There is something amusing about criticism of the use of force by the man who turned Chechnya into a smoldering ruin; about the invocation of international law by the man who will not allow Scotland Yard to interrogate the polonium-soaked thugs it suspects of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, yet another Putin opponent who met an untimely and unprosecuted death; about the bullying of other countries decried by a man who cuts off energy supplies to Ukraine, Georgia and Belarus in brazen acts of political and economic extortion.

Less amusing is the greater meaning of Putin's Munich speech. It marks Russia's coming out. Flush with oil and gas revenue, the consolidation of dictatorial authority at home and the capitulation of both domestic and Western companies to his seizure of their assets, Putin issued his boldest declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself on the world stage.

Perhaps the most important line in his speech was the least noted because it seemed so innocuous. "I very often hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs," he said. "It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so."

Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko once boasted that no conflict anywhere on the globe could be settled without taking into account the attitude and interests of the Soviet Union. Gromyko's description of Soviet influence constitutes the best definition ever formulated of the term "superpower."

And we know how Putin, who has called the demise of the Soviet Union the greatest political catastrophe of the 20th century, yearns for those superpower days. At Munich, he could not even disguise his Cold War nostalgia, asserting that "global security" was ensured by the "strategic potential of two superpowers."

Putin's bitter complaint is that today there remains only one superpower, the behemoth that dominates a "unipolar world." He knows that Moscow lacks the economic, military and even demographic means to challenge America as it did in Soviet days. He speaks more modestly of coalitions of aggrieved have-not countries that Russia might lead in countering American power.

Hence his increasingly active foreign policy -- military partnerships with China, nuclear cooperation with Iran, weapon supplies to Syria and Venezuela, diplomatic support as well as arms for a genocidal Sudan, friendly outreach to other potential partners of an anti-hegemonic (read: anti-American) alliance.

Is this a return to the Cold War? It is true that the ex-KGB agent occasionally lets slip a classic Marxist anachronism such as "foreign capital" (referring to Western oil companies) or the otherwise weird adjective "vulgar" (describing the actions of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which infuriated Putin by insisting upon a clean election in Ukraine). He even intimated that he might undo one of the unequivocal achievements of the late Cold War era, the so-called "zero option" agreement of 1987, and restore a Soviet-style, medium-range ballistic missile force.

Nonetheless, Putin's aggressiveness does not signal a return to the Cold War. He is too clever to be burdened by the absurdity of socialist economics or Marxist politics. He is blissfully free of ideology, political philosophy and economic theory. There is no existential dispute with the United States.

He is a more modest man: a mere mafia don, seizing the economic resources and political power of a country for himself and his (mostly KGB) cronies. And promoting his vision of the Russian national interest -- assertive and expansionist -- by engaging in diplomacy that challenges the dominant power in order to boost his own.

He wants Gromyko's influence -- or at least some international acknowledgment that Moscow must be reckoned with -- without the ideological baggage. He does not want to bury us; he only wants to diminish us. It is 19th-century power politics at its most crude and elemental. Putin does not want us as an enemy. But at Munich he told the world that, vis-à-vis America, his Russia has gone from partner to adversary.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

Charles Krauthammer - The Putin Doctrine - washingtonpost.com

What Tehran Is Really Up To - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

What Tehran Is Really Up To

By Daniel L. Byman
Sunday, February 18, 2007; B01

Reports that Iran is arming various factions in Iraq are about as surprising as claims that Mafia members have been seen in Las Vegas casinos. Iran has been meddling in its neighbors' affairs for a long time, and not just in Iraq. Teheran has trained terrorist and guerrilla groups in Bosnia, Lebanon and Palestine, all of which are far from Iran.

So when U.S. military officials displayed explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons that they say Iran provided to Shiite militias in Iraq, we have to recognize that this was no big departure for the Iranians.

As President Bush and Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged last week, finding Iranian arms in Iraq does not prove the more important, and harder to make, argument that Iran is ordering its Iraqi proxies to attack U.S. troops. It may seem absurd to give Iran the benefit of the doubt, in light of its sorry track record on nuclear proliferation and support for radicalism in general, but we can't understand what Iran is up to without an appreciation for its broader Iraq strategy, which goes well beyond Tehran's desire to undermine U.S. policy. Iranian leaders calculate that they will need formidable proxies should the United States leave, and indeed Iran will face many challenges in Iraq if U.S. forces depart.

So why would Iran arm Iraqis and perhaps direct attacks on U.S. forces? For most Iranians, Iraq is an emotional issue. They see the daily suffering of Iraqis, both from the chaos in Iraq in general and at the hands of Sunni suicide bombers. They empathize with their fellow Shiites in Iraq, with whom they have historic ties and shared religious traditions. Though they rejoice over the downfall of Saddam Hussein (Iran suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties in the bitter war of 1980-88, which Hussein launched against it) they blame the United States for the violence that has swept Iraq since Hussein fell.

Iran worries about the United States. When Ayatollah Khomeini took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution, he made anti-Americanism a core of the new regime's foreign policy. The United States has been hostile ever since, even tilting toward Iraq during its war with Iran. The United States and Iran have not had diplomatic relations since 1979, and have periodically confronted each other.

In the decade before 9/11, Iran structured its military forces to fight America, even when the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf region was confined to the conservative oil states of the Arabian peninsula. Since 9/11, the United States has occupied Iraq with more than 100,000 troops, put significant forces in Afghanistan and Central Asia, and strengthened its security relationship with Pakistan. Iran perceives itself as surrounded. The United States has repeatedly made threats against the Iranian regime, has refused to surrender anti-regime Iranian terrorists found in Iraq, organized international economic pressure on the country, led a diplomatic effort to deny Iran the right to develop nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and pointedly included military force against Iran as an option after dispatching two aircraft carriers to the Persian Gulf region-- hostile steps, in Iranian eyes, that reinforce paranoia.

Tehran does not want the secular and pro-Western Iraq that America dreams of, and it wants to ensure that the U.S. doctrine of preventive regime change is dead. So far, developments in Iraq have worked out in Iran's favor -- indeed, Iran appears to be the one state that is winning this war. Iraq is too weak to pose a military threat to Iran for years and perhaps decades to come. The democratic procedures that the United States imposed on Iraq put in power Shiite leaders who are far friendlier to Tehran than to Washington.

Iran is less nervous than it was in 2003, but it remains understandably anxious. The long-term role of U.S. forces and the future of the Shiite regime in Iraq are open questions. Instability in Iraq could lead to waves of refugees returning to Iran, as happened during the Iran-Iraq war, and could excite unrest among Iran's Kurdish and Arab populations. Expecting an American withdrawal sooner or later, Iran wants to prepare for a postwar era by maximizing its influence now.

The United States focuses on how Iran's arming of its Iraqi proxies hurts U.S. interests, but this is hardly Iran's only concern. The Iraqi Shiite groups that have received arms may be more loyal to Iran after American forces depart. Even more important, they will be stronger than their Iraqi rivals. In Lebanon, Iran helped build Hezbollah from disparate small Shiite movements, welding it together against rivals in the Shiite community and, over time, making it stronger than non-Shiite groups. The goal is the same in Iraq.

Many Iranian leaders, particularly the president and the emerging conservative political elite, are profoundly anti-American. They want the United States to fail in Iraq and elsewhere, and they share an ideological bond with many radical Iraqi groups. So it is not surprising that Iran works with its closest Shiite proxies in Iraq, providing them with EFPs and other weapons that make them far more capable of fighting U.S. forces. Other Iranian elites have more complex feelings about the United States, though none is favorable, and Iranians want to bury the doctrine of regime change. Even if Iranians do not control the attacks, Iran knows that some of the people it trains and equips may at some point be involved in anti-American operations, thus keeping the heat on U.S. forces.

But Iran could easily be even more aggressive in Iraq. Tehran could provide sophisticated weapons to a wider range of Iraqi groups than it reportedly has so far. Iran's Shiite proxies do at times attack American forces, but their principal targets are Sunni militias. They could kill a lot more Americans than they have. Iran could be encouraging them to convert relatively peaceful parts of Iraq into battlefields similar to the wildest parts of Anbar province.

Iraq's Shiites are not Iran's only interest. Tehran also has a long history of working with (and also against) various Kurdish groups. Iran recognizes theIraqi Kurds as the strongest and most organized military force in the country, and has cultivated good relations with Kurdish leaders. Iran has its own restive Kurdish population, and wants to ensure that its Kurds don't use bases in Iraq or otherwise exploit the conflict to advance their own sectarian interests.

Iran also has a history of cultivating Sunnis when doing so seemed advantageous. It has reached out to a range of revolutionary Sunni groups and has good ties to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other organizations whose ideology is closer to Osama Bin Laden's than to Khomeini's. The 9/11 commission found that Iran had engaged in low-level tactical cooperation with Sunni militants linked to al-Qaeda. And Tehran can be intensely practical. During the Iran-Iraq war, Iran worked with Israel and the United States to gain much-needed weapons. Dealing with the Sunnis may follow a similar logic, though mutual suspicion will limit the extent of relations.

Ironically, Iran's long-term position could weaken when the United States draws down its forces. At first, the U.S. withdrawal will expand the power vacuum and Iran will try to fill it, but the limited chaos Iran foments can easily become uncontrolled. Iran's economic and military power is limited, and Iran's theocratic model of governance has little appeal for most Iraqis. Even many Shiite militants have at times been hostile to Iran, and respected moderates such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani are careful to maintain their distance from Tehran. Sunnis already rage against perceived Iranian dominance.

In a postwar environment, Tehran will have lost a lever against U.S. pressure and may find itself both overextended and vulnerable in Iraq -- a weakness that the United States might exploit in years to come.

dlb32@georgetown.edu

What Tehran Is Really Up To - washingtonpost.com

Jackson Diehl - Can a Saudi Dealmaker Rescue Bush? - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T21:43:00.000-08:00

Can a Saudi Dealmaker Rescue Bush?

By Jackson Diehl
Monday, February 19, 2007; A19

For 22 years Prince Bandar bin Sultan wheeled and dealed his way through Washington as Saudi Arabia's ambassador. By his account -- provided expansively to favored journalists -- he had a hand in most of America's major initiatives in the Middle East over a generation. During George W. Bush's presidency, for example, he brokered U.S. rapprochement with Libya and previewed plans for the invasion of Iraq two months before the war.

For a while after returning home in the summer of 2005, Bandar kept a low profile. Some speculated he was out of favor with the kingdom's ruler, Abdullah, despite his appointment as national security adviser. Now he's back: Since the beginning of the year the prince has suddenly begun wheeling and dealing his way around the Middle East.

In the past month Bandar has held three meetings with the Iranian national security chief, Ali Larijani, most recently last Wednesday in Riyadh. He's met twice with Vladimir Putin, in Moscow and Riyadh, to talk about Middle East affairs; overseen talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leaders; and quietly shuttled to Washington to brief President Bush. He helped broker this month's Palestinian accord on a unity government as well as a Saudi-Iranian understanding to cool political conflict in Lebanon. And he's been talking with the most senior officials of the Iranian and U.S. governments about whether there's a way out of the standoff over Iran's nuclear weapons.

Can Bandar bail the United States out of the multiple crises it has stumbled into in the Middle East? Maybe not, but Washington's old friend may be one of the best bets a desperate Bush administration has going at the moment. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has maneuvered herself into a corner by refusing to talk to Syria and Iran and boycotting the Hamas-led Palestinian government. Consequently there's little the United States can do diplomatically to defuse the conflicts in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, not to mention Iraq. Rice tried calling on Egypt, abruptly dropping the administration's previous urging that its autocratic government "lead the way" in democratizing the Middle East. But Egypt has been unable to deliver: It tried and failed to pry Syria away from its alliance with Iran, and it tried and failed to win concessions from Hamas.

That leaves Saudi Arabia and the hyperkinetic Bandar. In his last visit to Washington he offered a rosy report on his travels. Iran, he assured his American friends, had been taken aback by President Bush's recent shows of strength in the region, by the failure of his administration to collapse after midterm elections and by the unanimous passage of a U.N. resolution imposing sanctions on Tehran for failing to stop its nuclear program. The mullahs, he said, were worried about Shiite-Sunni conflict spreading from Iraq around the region, and about an escalating conflict with the United States; they were interested in tamping both down.

Bandar and Larijani already worked to stop incipient street fighting between Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement and pro-Western Sunni and Christian parties several weeks ago. But the Saudis have bigger plans: Bandar reported to Washington that he's hoping to split Iran from Syria -- reversing the maneuver that Egypt tried. The means would be a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran over a Lebanese settlement that included authorization of a U.N. tribunal to try those responsible for the murder of former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. That would be poison to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who almost certainly was behind the murder.

Bandar's spin and dazzle make it tempting to think he can pull off almost anything. It's also easy to forget that he works in the interests of Saudi Arabia, not the United States. The results can be disappointing. Bush got a reminder of that when Bandar brokered the "Mecca agreement" between Palestinian leaders Abbas and Khaled Meshal of Hamas. Bush administration policy has been to strengthen Abbas at Hamas's expense; the accord undercut that approach and all but ruined Rice's plan to begin developing a "political horizon" at a meeting with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today.

Washington tried to set a couple of red lines for the Mecca talks: Hamas, it said, should be forced to accept international demands that it renounce violence and recognize Israel; and its prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, should not lead the new Palestinian cabinet. Bandar disregarded both.

That doesn't mean the old Bush family friend is not still welcome at the White House. The Palestinian deal was secondary for Bandar; his main aim is to defuse the multiple threats posed by Iran. If he can find a way to broker a deal that stops the Iranian nuclear program, and kick-starts a strategic dialogue between Tehran and Washington, it will be his greatest feat of all.

View all comments that have been posted about this article.

Jackson Diehl - Can a Saudi Dealmaker Rescue Bush? - washingtonpost.com

E. J. Dionne - The Antiwar Rallying Point - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

The Antiwar Rallying Point

By E. J. Dionne
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; A13

Two things are now abundantly clear about the future of U.S. policy toward Iraq. First, majorities in both houses of Congress have lost faith in President Bush's approach to the war. Second, the president will do all he can to resist changing his strategy by trying to split his critics into ineffectual factions.

Bush's choice is certainly bad for opponents of the war, but it's also bad for American foreign policy.

The president is inviting a full-scale confrontation over his warmaking powers in the expectation that the Democrats' narrow majorities will deprive them of the votes they need to win such a fight. He is ready to split the country rather than give any ground to those who ask whether it's wise to risk ensnaring American troops in a Sunni-Shiite civil war.

The challenge to critics of the war is to make the debate about Bush, not about themselves, and to make clear that the president has rebuffed all efforts to pursue a bipartisan path out of Iraq, beginning with his rejection of the core recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, headed by James A. Baker III and Lee Hamilton.

Changing our policy will require a substantial Republican rebellion. The 17 House Republicans who voted for the resolution opposing the president's surge and the seven Senate Republicans who tried to get a vote for the House-passed measure are a start.

The next steps pursued by the war's critics must be premised on the goal of expanding this circle of Republican opposition, because, as Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) put it on "Meet the Press" over the weekend, "Republican influence on the president might be more decisive than the Democratic voices."

For now, the war's opponents are focused on three strategies. One would be to cut off funds for the war, but there is currently no majority in either house for this. A second approach, expected to come from Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), would propose restrictions on troop deployments -- for example, forbidding the redeployment of units that have been home for less than a year and imposing substantial training requirements on the troops who are sent.

The Murtha measure would at least force a much-needed debate on the damage this war has done to our armed forces and the extraordinary burdens being borne by the brave minority of Americans who serve. It would also sidestep the political damage of doing anything that could be construed by Bush's supporters as "failing to support our troops."

But the sense that the proposal has been crafted in part for reasons of political convenience and the intricate restrictions it would place on the military are precisely what could doom it. The war's opponents need other options.

A third path, offered by Sens. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.), would have Congress revisit its original 2002 Iraq resolution to make clear that the war authorized then (against Saddam Hussein and what turned out to be nonexistent weapons of mass destruction) had nothing to do with putting American troops in the midst of a Muslim civil war now.

The Biden-Levin idea has the advantage of pushing Republicans who are quietly doubtful about Bush's path out into the open. In particular, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who rightly called this weekend for a more bipartisan approach to Iraq, nonetheless keeps voting his party's line. That, in turn, enables Bush to pursue the very sort of divisive partisanship on the war that Lugar says he's against.

Lugar and others in his party who harbor doubts about Bush's approach must be challenged again and again to justify actions that allow the president to bull ahead by dividing his opposition.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has an additional idea: Opponents of the war need to force full consideration of the original Baker-Hamilton proposals that, he said, promised to put American policy "on a trajectory to have our combat troops out of Iraq this time next year" and reflected "the center of gravity in Congress." Whatever its flaws, the Iraq Study Group report could still serve as a focal point for sharply reducing America's military role in Iraq before the 2008 election.

"The refusal of the administration to try to work with others to resolve this in a responsible manner has created a very polarized atmosphere," Van Hollen said. "They've refused to listen to anyone else."

That should be the central theme of the president's critics because it's true -- and because it offers the best rallying cry for those seeking to change a disastrous policy.

postchat@aol.com

E. J. Dionne - The Antiwar Rallying Point - washingtonpost.com

David Ignatius - Signals From Tehran - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T21:23:00.000-08:00

Signals From Tehran

By David Ignatius
Friday, February 23, 2007; A19

The title of the two-page Iranian document is "Gentlemen's Agreement." In convoluted English, it lists 11 points of understanding supposedly reached in September between Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani and his European counterpart, Javier Solana, on a temporary, partial, not-quite suspension of uranium enrichment.

What's interesting isn't the purported agreement -- Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, insists there wasn't one -- but the fact that the Iranians are circulating the document and signaling through various channels that they want to restart dialogue. Indeed, when Larijani met Solana in Munich this month, "he expressed the willingness to resume talks to prepare final negotiations," according to a source close to Solana.

"We're getting pinged all over the world by Iranians wanting to talk to us," Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview yesterday. The problem, says Burns, is that the Iranians haven't yet said the "magic word," which is that they will actually suspend enrichment in exchange for the suspension of U.N. sanctions.

With Iran still publicly defying the United Nations over its nuclear program, the United States and its allies agreed yesterday to tighten the pressure another notch by preparing a second U.N. Security Council resolution with additional sanctions. Burns said Russia and China agreed to back the new resolution in a meeting yesterday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "It may not be substantially stronger, but it will be stronger," said Burns, who will travel to London on Monday to negotiate the details of the new resolution.

U.S. and European officials think Iran's new interest in negotiations is a sign that pressure on Tehran is working. The campaign includes the initial U.N. sanctions resolution, which shook the Iranians because it was backed by Russia and China; tough U.S. banking sanctions, accompanied by a successful Treasury Department push to dissuade European and Japanese banks from lending to Iran; and calculated muscle-flexing by the Bush administration, which has sent an additional aircraft carrier task force to the Persian Gulf and seized Iranian operatives inside Iraq.

"We are hopeful that all these pressure points will influence the internal debate in Iran," says Burns. And they appear to be doing just that.

The multipronged squeeze on Tehran surprised President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials, who seemed confident when I visited the country in September that they were in the driver's seat and that it was the United States that was weakened and isolated. "We knocked them off stride and put them on the defensive," argues Burns. A British official who follows the issue closely agrees: "The Iranians have moved from cockiness to division and nervousness."

Western officials see various signs of an altered political balance in Tehran: public criticism of Ahmadinejad's management of the economy by former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani; a letter challenging the president's economic policy signed by 150 members of the Iranian parliament; criticism of Ahmadinejad's handling of the nuclear issue by former members of the Iranian negotiating team and by a hard-line newspaper; and now new signals from Larijani and others that Iran wants to resume the preliminary negotiations it broke off last year.

"The financial sanctions have had a real impact," says the British official. "They lead to a general insecurity about economic viability."

So does all this mean it's time to go back to the bargaining table? Not yet, say a number of U.S. and European officials. They insist that the Iranians must stop haggling and agree to quit enriching uranium. Russian officials told me in Moscow last week that President Vladimir Putin passed the message to a top Iranian emissary this month that Tehran must agree to a "timeout" in enriching uranium if it wants to settle the nuclear issue.

The Iranians continue to dicker, in what Western officials regard as a tactical ploy to get out of trouble. Their efforts center on paragraph eight of the "Gentlemen's Agreement" their officials have been circulating. That part of the document proposes that if U.N. sanctions are lifted, Iran would agree to a two-month period "during which Iran in a voluntary and non-binding and temporary move avoids installation of next cascades" for enrichment. In other words, the Iranians wouldn't add additional centrifuges that would allow industrial-scale enrichment but would continue spinning their modest initial cascade of centrifuges.

No deal, say U.S. and European officials. The only way the Iranians can escape sanctions is to suspend enrichment and sit down at the table. If they do so, an array of goodies awaits. Meanwhile, the strategy of confrontation continues, and U.S. and European officials -- who haven't had much to cheer about recently -- seem confident that it's working.

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://blog.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

David Ignatius - Signals From Tehran - washingtonpost.com

Andrew Grotto - Pragmatism Trumps Ideology on North Korea - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:33:00.000-08:00

Pragmatism Trumps Ideology on North Korea

By Andrew Grotto
Special to washingtonpost.com's Think Tank Town
Friday, February 23, 2007; 12:00 AM

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her team -- led by Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill -- deserve credit for scoring a major victory in negotiations with North Korea last week. Trading one million tons of heavy fuel oil for North Korea's plutonium production program, which Pyongyang likely used to produce the fissile core for the atomic weapon it tested late last year, is akin to swapping a journeyman fullback for a star quarterback.

After all, the U.S. and its partners in the negotiations -- China, Russia, Japan and South Korea -- can get their hands on one million tons of fuel oil any time they need. Gaining international control over North Korea's budding nuclear weapons program is an altogether different opportunity.

Still, the deal cut in Beijing last week is only a first step towards a grand bargain with North Korea. Whether that grand bargain is achieved over the next few years will depend on North Korea's sincerity about nuclear disarmament, which is by no means certain. But ultimate success will also require that national security pragmatists within the Bush Administration prevail over the conservative ideologues who blocked or sabotaged negotiations with Pyongyang for six fruitless years.

Former and even current administration officials wasted no time attacking the deal with North Korea, including former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who thoroughly trashed the very idea of negotiations, and deputy national security advisor Elliott Abrams, who objected to a provision of the plan that would remove North Korea from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. These attacks highlight policy divisions that continue to dog the Bush administration and its conservative supporters across Washington.

For more than six years, the Bush administration has been divided between ideologues who think the best way to deal with nuclear weapons proliferation is to overthrow regimes or squeeze them into collapse, and pragmatists who think this approach backfires. The ideologues view negotiations as a reward for bad behavior that will encourage further proliferation. Vice President Cheney and his inner circle, civilian leaders at the Pentagon, and Undersecretary of State Robert Joseph hew to this line.

This faction won most of the internal debates in President Bush's first term, as the United States either rejected negotiations outright or imposed unrealistic conditions on U.S. participation. In the case of North Korea, the United States had insisted that North Korea freeze its plutonium program before receiving any incentives.

That strategy clearly failed. Proliferation problems worsened almost across the board. North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and tested a nuclear bomb; Iran continues to build uranium enrichment centrifuges; and global confidence in the nuclear nonproliferation regime is waning.

The ideologues' strategy of confrontation failed because it strengthened the determination of North Korea (and Iran) to acquire nuclear weapons in order to deter military action by the United States without offering countervailing incentives and disincentives.

The credibility of a U.S. threat to overthrow offending regimes, however, dissipated as the insurgency in Iraq began to metastasize. And while the United States can squeeze regimes, it cannot suffocate them without the help of partners, such as China. China, however, rejects the regime change strategy and opposes measures that could end the Kim dynasty in North Korea.

In contrast, pragmatists in the Bush administration view negotiation more practically. As former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it, "You can't negotiate when you tell the other side, 'Give us what a negotiation would produce before the negotiations start'." This means offering a country both incentives and disincentives for renouncing nuclear arms.

He is right. Countries must be backed into a corner, but they must also be offered an attractive way out. That's what happened with Libya, the Bush administration's lone success at convincing a country to renounce nuclear weapons. Years of sanctions and isolation had backed the Gaddafi regime into a corner, and the United States and its allies offered it an attractive way out -- a grand bargain whereby Libya verifiably renounces nuclear weapons and terrorism in exchange for normalized relations with the United States and Europe.

Last week's deal with North Korea -- which if implemented, will look very much like the deal struck with Libya -- appears to put Secretary Rice in this latter, pragmatic camp. But will her faction prevail in the end? According to press accounts, Secretary Rice circumvented the normal interagency policy process to get the deal, knowing that hardliners led by Vice President Cheney and his inner circle would oppose it.

President Bush supports the deal for now, but contentious negotiations with Pyongyang over the core issue -- the dismantlement of North Korea's entire weapons program -- lie ahead. We can expect North Korea to drag its feet while raising its demands. Over time, this misbehavior might stoke well-founded doubts that it will ever come clean on its nuclear program. The inevitable bumps along the way will likely present skeptics with ample opportunities to press their case that negotiation is futile.

They may be right. But pragmatism means that we should at least try, knowing that the alternative to negotiation is an ever-growing North Korean stockpile of plutonium for bombs or sale on the nuclear black market.

Andrew Grotto is a Senior National Security Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

Andrew Grotto - Pragmatism Trumps Ideology on North Korea - washingtonpost.com

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Clinton and Obama's Hollywood Scene - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:28:00.000-08:00

Clinton and Obama's Hollywood Scene

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, February 23, 2007; A19

It was a good day for Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack -- and, what the heck, Dennis Kucinich.

It was a bad day for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and David Geffen.

It was a good day for the Republican Party, particularly George W. Bush, John McCain and Dick Cheney.

It was a bad day for the Democratic Party, opponents of the Iraq war and advocates of national health insurance.

The petty feud was started by big-time producer Geffen's brutal remarks about the Clintons, which appeared after he helped raise a ton of Hollywood money for Obama. The grudge match revived those depressing cliches about the Democrats: their affection for circular firing squads and their habit of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

You wonder what Clinton and Obama will learn from this. Both might study the long Democratic nomination fight that began in 1987, well in advance of the 1988 election.

There was an obvious front-runner named Gary Hart, a smart, young former Colorado senator who promised to lead his party out of the 1930s into the 1990s. There was a young Delaware senator named Joe Biden, the same guy who's running this time. Biden wasn't the clear No. 2 that Obama is now, but he got some good early reviews.

Before election year dawned, Hart and Biden were knocked out of the race, because of their own mistakes for sure, but also because of whispering campaigns and subterranean attacks by their opponents.

By the fall of 1987, the Democrats looked like ineffectual dwarfs, to use the word popular back then. A Republican operative named Haley Barbour -- now Mississippi's governor -- happily declared: "At the beginning of this year, the American people questioned whether the Democrats had the first team on the field. I think everything that's happened has confirmed that it's a real amateur hour. It's been a confirmation of people's idea that these aren't the big boys."

Obama and Clinton lieutenants and their full-of-themselves fundraisers: Read Barbour a few times and remember that the Democrats blew the 1988 election. Today, the party has its most talented collection of candidates since 1960. That could change fast.

Political junkies know the week's story line, but in brief: Geffen, a Hollywood mogul who co-hosted a $1.3 million fundraiser for Obama, trashed Bill and Hillary Clinton to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who gets the powerful to say the darnedest things. The Clinton and Obama camps went to war, rocking computers all over the country with incendiary e-mails.

The Clinton side insisted that Obama -- the let's-end-negative-politics candidate -- disown Geffen. The Obama forces trashed Clinton for accepting support from a South Carolina Democrat who suggested that Obama would doom the ticket because he's black.

Just lovely. Because Clinton pulled her saintly opponent off his pedestal and made her new enemy Geffen into an Obama problem, she might be seen as the net winner. In truth, both campaigns showed they care a lot more about themselves than the causes (and the party) to which they claim to be devoted.

That's why every other Democratic presidential candidate was smiling, and why Republicans were gleeful, too. Absent the explosions set off by Geffen's therapy session with Dowd, the big news would have been Dick Cheney's mean jab at John McCain.

McCain, ensnared in Bush's Iraq disaster, tried to disentangle himself by going after Cheney and former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Cheney's devastating pushback in an interview with ABC News made McCain look wimpy and less than straight-talking: "John said some nasty things about me the other day, and then next time he saw me, ran over to me and apologized. Maybe he'll apologize to Rumsfeld."

But the Hollywood news pushed the Republican eye-scratching over Iraq onto the back pages. It also shrank coverage of the first big Democratic forum in Nevada (only Obama skipped it), where the candidates sparred about serious issues, notably over how to achieve universal health coverage.

Oh, but health care is so boring compared with a Hollywood big shot who drops hints about Bill Clinton's love life. Yeah? Tell that to the family of someone who died of cancer because she had no insurance and couldn't afford a screening test.

Clinton, Obama and their brilliant staffs don't own the Democratic Party, no matter how much money they raise in Hollywood. If they think this is all about their personal drama, they should quit politics and go into the movies. Geffen can put up the money.

postchat@aol.com

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Clinton and Obama's Hollywood Scene - washingtonpost.com

Failing in Baghdad -- The British Did It First - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:22:00.000-08:00

Failing in Baghdad -- The British Did It First

By Toby Dodge
Sunday, February 25, 2007; B01

At the center of Baghdad's neglected North Gate War Cemetery, near the edge of the old city walls, stands an imposing grave. Sheltered from the weather by a grandiose red sandstone cupola, it is the final resting place of a man from whom George W. Bush could have learned a great deal about the perils of intervening in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Stanley Maude was head of the British army in Mesopotamia when he marched into Baghdad on a hot, dusty day in March 1917. Soon thereafter, he issued the British government's "Proclamation to the People of Baghdad," which eerily foreshadowed sentiments that Bush and his administration would express 86 years later: British forces, Maude declared, had entered the city not as conquerors, but as liberators.

Maude had arrived in Baghdad after a long and arduous military campaign. British forces had been fighting the Ottoman army for 2 1/2 years and had suffered one of the worst defeats of World War I in the six-month siege of the eastern city of Kut, which had ended in an ignominious surrender to the Turks in April 1916.

Having rallied from that loss and finally reached Baghdad, Maude tried to create common cause between the British army and the city's residents, whom he saw as having been oppressed by 400 years of Ottoman rule. "Your lands have been subject to tyranny," he declared in his proclamation, and "your wealth has been stripped from you by unjust men and squandered." He promised that it was not "the wish of the British Government to impose upon you alien institutions." Instead, he called on residents to manage their own civil affairs "in collaboration with the political representatives of Great Britain."

Maude did not live to see the failure of his efforts to rally the people of Iraq to the British occupation. He died eight months later, having contracted cholera from a glass of milk.

After his death, British policy toward Iraq changed repeatedly as the army attempted to dominate the country and suppress the population, while the government strove to adjust to Britain's diminished role in the international system after WWI. Initially, the aim was simply to annex the territory and make it part of the Empire, run in a fashion similar to India. But Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech in January 1918 did in that idea. In setting out America's vision for the postwar world, Wilson expressly attacked the duplicitous diplomacy of European imperialism, which he blamed for dragging the world into prolonged military conflict.

This meant that a modern, self-determining state was now to be built in Iraq. Britain was to take the lead, but its effort was to be continually scrutinized by the League of Nations, which had been set up under Wilson's watchful eye at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war.

In an echo of what is happening under the U.S. occupation, hopes for a joint Anglo-Iraqi pact to rebuild the country were dashed by a violent uprising. On July 2, 1920, a revolt, or thawra, broke out along the lower Euphrates, fueled by popular resentment of Britain's heavy-handed behavior in Iraq. The British army had set about taxing the population to pay for the building of the Iraqi state, while British civil servants running the administration refused to consult Iraqi politicians, judging them too inexperienced to play a role in the new government.

The rebellion quickly spread across the south and center of the country. Faced with as many as 131,000 insurgents armed with 17,000 modern rifles left over from the war, the British army needed eight months to regain full control of Iraq; 2,000 British troops were killed, wounded or taken prisoner and 8,450 Iraqis were killed. To make matters worse, the British government was forced to pour troops back into Iraq, long after the end of the war, to stabilize the situation.

The revolt forced Britain to devolve real power to Iraqi politicians. At the head of this new administration the British placed a newly created king, Faisal ibn Hussein, famous for his association with Lawrence of Arabia during the war. But the revolt had as much influence in Britain as it did in Iraq itself. The "blood and treasure" expended in putting down the violence made the continued occupation extremely unpopular. The public's discontent reached its peak in the general election campaign of November 1922. The leader of the opposition, conservative Andrew Bonar Law, captured the national mood when he declared: "We cannot alone act as the policeman of the world."

Newspapers and candidates organized their electioneering around the "bag and baggage" campaign demanding that Britain withdraw from Iraq as soon as it could. After defeating wartime coalition leaders David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, the victorious Bonar Law pledged that "at the earliest possible moment, consistent with statesmanship and honour, the next government will reduce our commitments in Mesopotamia."

U.S. presidential candidates now campaigning to seize the White House in 2008 should be forewarned, however: It took Britain 10 more years to jettison its financial and military commitments to Iraq. During that period, a number of governments struggled to reduce the size of the forces deployed in Iraq and the amount of money being spent there. They strove for a decade to stabilize the country and meet Britain's pledges to the international community while trying to placate domestic opinion. The tensions involved in this exercise -- building a state from scratch with a hostile population, under severe budgetary constraints and in the face of rising domestic anger -- ultimately led to the failure of the whole exercise.

Like Maude's before him, Bush's policy in Iraq has resulted in a series of unintended outcomes. In the face of ever-increasing violence, the stirring rhetoric about Iraq becoming a beacon of democracy in the Middle East has been quietly dropped. Instead, the operation in Iraq has been placed on the frontline of the global fight against terrorism: It is better to battle terrorists on the streets of Baghdad than in Brooklyn or Houston, the mantra goes.

Where does this leave U.S. policy toward Iraq? Historical studies often divide military interventions into three general phases. The first phase, the initial decision to invade, is shaped by common misperceptions that the conflict will be short and that military force can be used to achieve political objectives. World War I began with an assumption that British troops would be home by Christmas; Bush declared "mission accomplished" after three weeks.

The second phase is marked by a slow realization that both these assumptions are wrong. The policy failure leads to increasingly desperate attempts to stay the course, to pour in ever greater numbers of troops, gambling on a resurrection of the initial policy. This middle stage comes to an end with the decision to disengage. Interestingly, this choice -- admitting defeat and going home -- is usually taken by a new government.

The 1920 revolt, followed by the change of government in London in 1922, led to a prolonged but largely unsuccessful attempt to do nation-building on the cheap. The final transformation of policy was marked by another change of government. The election of May 1929 resulted in a Labor administration. The new foreign policy team found it easier to identify the contradictions at the heart of Britain's relations with Iraq and find ways to overcome them. It recommended Iraq for unconditional membership to the League of Nations in 1932, unceremoniously dumping Britain's commitment to building a democratic and stable state.

Iraq became a fully independent state that same year. But it was unable to defend itself against its neighbors, or to impose order without assistance. The government was ultimately dependent on the British air force to guarantee its survival.

Eighty years later, after failing to stabilize Iraq, the U.S. government has come face to face with the high costs of the new "forward-leaning" foreign policy of the Bush doctrine. Comparisons with other military interventions suggest that Bush will continue to pursue a largely unvarying policy in Iraq, deploying all the troops and resources at his disposal in an attempt to correct the mistakes that have been made. The result, as the president himself has recognized, will be to push the difficult decisions about the future of U.S. involvement in Iraq onto his successor.

History, however, has two final disturbing lessons for the next president. The governing elite nurtured by the British to take their place -- the Iraqi royal family and their associates brought to the country in 1921 -- proved unfit for the purpose and were swept aside by a military coup in 1941. The British army was forced to reinvade and restore them to power. Yet even this second invasion was not enough. The violent instability that engulfed Iraq and resulted in the rise of Saddam Hussein was triggered by the murder of the royal family by Iraqi army officers in July 1958. The crime was committed in the name of Arab nationalism, as a strike against British interference in a sovereign Arab nation.

Here is what Britain's history of failure at building a democratic state in Iraq in the 1920s and '30s tells George W. Bush and his successors: If, like Gen. Maude, they fail to deliver on the promises of a better future for the Iraqi people, then Iraq will continue as a font of violent instability long after those who made the promises have been buried.

t.dodge@qmul.ac.uk

Toby Dodge, author of "Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied" (Columbia Univ. Press), is associate professor of international politics at the University of London and a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Failing in Baghdad -- The British Did It First - washingtonpost.com

Jim Hoagland - Fighting Iran -- With Patience - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:20:00.000-08:00

ighting Iran -- With Patience

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, February 25, 2007; B07

Nuclear weapons have a way of forcing presidents to reverse policies thought to be carved in stone. So it was with Ronald Reagan and the Soviet Union, and so it may be now with George W. Bush and the two surviving members of the "axis of evil."

To the outrage of some supporters and the mockery of his critics, President Bush has blessed a tentative, quarter-loaf diplomatic deal aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear arsenal. And he has a shot at reaching a modus vivendi with Iran on nuclear proliferation as well -- if he disregards both the outrage and the mockery, as he should.

"There is movement behind the scenes," a European diplomat who closely follows Iran told me last week. "The Iranians are nervous and want to get engaged." Details of a confidential Iranian proposal that has been circulating in Brussels and Tehran for four months support the view that there could be an opening on the Iranian front despite the angry rhetoric from Iran triggered by last week's new indictment of its nuclear ambitions by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Bush vigorously ruled out rewarding bad behavior by foreign adversaries in his first term. Saddam Hussein's manipulation of the international community was a driving force in Bush's labeling Iraq, along with North Korea and Iran, as irredeemably evil in 2002 and invading Iraq a year later.

But now Bush countenances providing economic and diplomatic rewards to North Korea, and ultimately to Iran, to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons in the hands of two regimes that behave as badly as anyone could want. The bravado of the first Bush term has been replaced by a sadder and quieter way of doing business abroad as Iraq has sapped U.S. capabilities and political cohesion.

The sense of a U-turn is reinforced by Bush's reliance this time on the negotiating skills of his diplomatic corps and on European and Asian partners to reach, enforce and pay for the projected deals, which would serve as twin tombstones for a brief era of U.S. unilateralism.

The change on North Korea is described by former administration officials as a strategic decision by the president to start "to pry the lid off" of that starving, tyrannized remnant of the Cold War by offering Pyongyang a path for peaceful change. Cooperation in the six-party negotiations would also help stabilize China's relations with Japan and the United States, in this view.

The president reportedly surprised Chinese President Hu Jintao during their lunch at the White House last April by suggesting that, if the nuclear impasse could be resolved, the time was right for a formal peace treaty to end the Korean conflict. And when North Korea defied Chinese "advice" by conducting a nuclear test in October, China became more engaged in pulling Pyongyang back to the negotiating table.

Unfortunately, Bush cannot rely on Russia to play a similarly helpful role with Iran. President Vladimir Putin seems willing to take enormous risks with global stability for short-term, largely commercial reasons. And divisions in Iran's leadership make the reaching of a "mutual suspension" accord -- under which Tehran will suspend enriching uranium in return for the suspension of U.N. sanctions -- more difficult.

But U.S. and European policy should play on those divisions, which have visibly surfaced as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rants on in full-throated belligerence while officials closer to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, offer proposals that have the virtue at least of identifying the chief remaining obstacles to a deal.

Last autumn, Iran's Ali Larijani told European Union negotiator Javier Solana that Iran could accept the Russian-E.U. proposal for an international consortium to enrich and reprocess nuclear fuel for Iran -- if the enrichment and reprocessing were done on Iranian soil.

A diplomatic device known as a nonpaper (so its existence can be denied) and dated Oct. 1, 2006, describes a "gentlemen's agreement" by the two diplomats to use the proposal "to help open the way to negotiations." When I telephoned him in Berlin last week, Solana affably but deftly warded off questions about the nonpaper, then added: "Nothing has been agreed. Nothing has been put forward in formal terms."

Precisely. The Iranian condition is unacceptable to Washington. But the fact that it was put forward at all suggests that the pressures generated by the U.S. Treasury's campaign to limit finance and export credits to Iran and condemnation by the United Nations are taking a toll on the Iranians -- as these tools did on North Korea.

Bush seems to have decided to employ strategic patience in seeking a verifiable nuclear deal with North Korea and to have taken a long-range view of regional stability. He should do no less with Iran, however much manufactured outrage or contrived mockery it provokes, in Tehran or in Washington.

jimhoagland@washpost.com

Jim Hoagland - Fighting Iran -- With Patience - washingtonpost.com

Robert D. Novak - Deauthorizing Iraq - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:19:00.000-08:00

Deauthorizing Iraq

By Robert D. Novak
Monday, February 26, 2007; A15

Democratic senators face trouble this week trying to cleanse themselves of the stain of voting for President Bush's Iraq war resolution. Republican senators who have turned against the U.S. military intervention in Iraq are not interested in bailing out Democrats by approving their proposal to repeal the authorization overwhelmingly passed by Congress in 2002.

As Congress returns this week from the year's first recess, an amendment to repeal authorization is supposed to be attached to the bill containing homeland security recommendations by the Sept. 11 commission. But Sen. Norm Coleman, who has become prominent among Republican critics of Bush's war policy, told me from his home state of Minnesota that he would oppose deauthorization and predicted that no more than two Republican senators would vote for it.

One of those two Republican senators would have to be Nebraska's Chuck Hagel, who has fearlessly critiqued Bush's war policy. But Hagel told me that he is not inclined to support a repeal. If Hagel is lost, Democrats might fall short of the 50 votes necessary for final passage, much less the 60 necessary to close off debate. George W. Bush may be an unpopular president fighting an unpopular war, but Democrats are finding it hard to make war policy from Capitol Hill.

Democrats do not cloak the political nature of their efforts. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, participating in a Nevada forum for Democratic presidential candidates last week, exultantly announced to applause his intent to "revoke the president's authority that he was given . . . to go to war." The mantra is not limited to the presidential hopefuls from the Senate. On the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico also called for de-authorization.

The de-authorization effort follows a series of frustrations for Democrats. Biden, having regained the Foreign Relations chairmanship after the 2006 elections, pushed a harshly worded, though nonbinding, antiwar resolution that went nowhere. A milder bipartisan measure fell short of the votes needed for cloture. Democratic backing for a plan to place conditions on the funding for Bush's surge of troops dropped off when its sponsor, Rep. John Murtha, bragged that troops in the field "won't have the equipment" under his plan.

As Congress began its break, Biden and Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, looked to events 37 years ago. A 1964 resolution (passed with only two dissenting votes in the Senate) gave President Lyndon B. Johnson his requested free hand in Vietnam because of a trumped-up attack on a U.S. naval vessel in the Gulf of Tonkin. It was repealed in 1970 as an amendment to a noncontroversial bill.

But as is true with most Iraq-Vietnam analogies, de-authorization of the Tonkin Gulf resolution bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated today. President Richard M. Nixon began pulling combat troops out of Vietnam soon after he took office in 1969, and he offered no objection to repeal of the LBJ resolution. It passed the Senate 81 to 10, with unanimous support from Republicans.

In contrast, the proposed 2007 de-authorization looks like a Democratic effort to escape the wrath of the antiwar party faithful. Of the 29 Democrats who voted for the 2002 war resolution over four years ago, 21 are still in the Senate, seven are up for reelection next year and three -- Biden, Christopher Dodd and Hillary Clinton -- are running for president.

After checking with antiwar Republicans on recess last week, I found that several who had favored a nonbinding resolution rejecting Bush's policy are loath to give Democrats a get-out-of-jail-free card on Iraq. An exception was Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, who indicated he might favor de-authorization but would never vote to cut off funds. However, Coleman told me: "I don't see us going back and rewriting history." Similarly, Hagel said: "We are not going back and rewind every decision we made."

Hagel's position is critical. Before the recess, Biden and Levin sought support from the conservative who had been one of only two Republicans to back their tough nonbinding resolution. Hagel has long been appalled by Bush's war policy, but he is rightly suspicious of Democratic ploys that would have no impact on dire conditions in Iraq.

Robert D. Novak - Deauthorizing Iraq - washingtonpost.com

David Ignatius - U.S. Sanctions With Teeth - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:05:00.000-08:00

U.S. Sanctions With Teeth

By David Ignatius

Wednesday, February 28, 2007; Page A19

Everybody knows that economic sanctions don't work. Just look at the decades of fruitless pressure on Cuba. But guess what? In the recent cases of North Korea and Iran, a new variety of U.S. Treasury sanctions is having a potent effect, suggesting that the conventional wisdom may be wrong.

These new, targeted financial measures are to traditional sanctions what Super Glue is to Elmer's Glue-All. That is, they really stick. Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt doesn't even like to call them sanctions, preferring the term "law enforcement measures." Explains Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence: "Sanctions are scoffed at. They have a bad history."

A Shared Stake in Iraq's Future

» Zalmay Khalilzad | The agreement on the oil law should give us confidence that Iraqis are willing and able to take the steps needed for Iraq's success.

Norman Ornstein: Better Presidential Succession
Colbert I. King: Who Left D.C.'s Schools to Decay?
The Editorialist: 'I Was Wrong' Watch

OPINIONS: Think Tank Town | On Faith | PostGlobal

Authority for the new sanctions, as with so many other policy weapons, comes from the USA Patriot Act, which in Section 311 authorizes Treasury to designate foreign financial institutions that are of "primary money laundering concern." Once a foreign bank is so designated, it is effectively cut off from the U.S. financial system. It can't clear dollars; it can't have transactions with U.S. financial institutions; it can't have correspondent relationships with American banks.

The new measures work thanks to the hidden power of globalization: Because all the circuits of the global financial system are inter-wired, the U.S. quarantine effectively extends to all major banks around the world. As Levey observed in a recent speech, the impact of this little-noticed provision of the Patriot Act "has been more powerful than many thought possible."

Treasury applied the new tools to North Korea in September 2005, when it put a bank in Macao called Banco Delta Asia on the blacklist. There was no legal proceeding -- just a notice in the Federal Register summarizing the evidence: Banco Delta Asia had been providing illicit financial services to North Korean government agencies and front companies for more than 20 years, according to the Treasury notice. The little Macao bank had helped the North Koreans feed counterfeit $100 bills into circulation, had laundered money from drug deals and had financed cigarette smuggling. North Korea "pays a fee to Banco Delta Asia for financial access to the banking system with little oversight or control," Treasury alleged.

Wham! The international payments window shut almost instantly on Pyongyang's pet bank. Transactions with U.S. entities stopped, but the Treasury announcement also put other countries on notice to beware of Banco Delta Asia. The Macao banking authorities, realizing that they needed the oxygen of the international financial system to survive, took regulatory action on their own and froze the bank's roughly $24 million in North Korean assets. And around Asia, banks began looking for possible links to North Korean front companies -- and shutting them down.

A similar financial squeeze is being applied to Iran. Here again, the impact has come from the way private financial institutions have reacted to public pressure from Treasury. "As banks do their risk-reward analysis, they must now take into account the very serious risk of doing business in Iran, and what the risks would be if they were found to be part of a terrorist or proliferation transaction," says Kimmitt.

Treasury began squeezing Iran last September, when it accused Bank Saderat, one of the largest government-owned banks, of financing terrorism by funneling $50 million to Hezbollah and Hamas since 2001. The Treasury order cut the bank off from any access to the U.S financial system, direct or indirect. A similar ban was imposed in January on Bank Sepah, which Treasury alleged was a key intermediary for Iran's Aerospace Industries Organization, the agency that oversees the country's ballistic missile program.

Meanwhile, top Treasury officials began visiting with bankers and finance ministers around the world, warning them to be careful about their dealings with Iranian companies that might covertly be supporting terrorism or weapons proliferation. This whispering campaign was enough to convince most big foreign banks in Europe and Japan to back away from Iran.

The new sanctions are toxic because they effectively limit a country's access to the global ATM. In that sense, they impose -- at last -- a real price on countries such as North Korea and Iran that have blithely defied U.N. resolutions on proliferation. "What's the goal?" asks Levey. "To create an internal debate about whether these policies [of defiance] make sense. And that's happening in Iran. People with business sense realize that this conduct makes it hard to continue normal business relationships."

David Ignatius - U.S. Sanctions With Teeth - washingtonpost.com

Dan Froomkin - Cheney's Rules for the Press - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

Cheney's Rules for the Press

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 28, 2007; 2:26 PM

After nine days of almost completely ignoring the small pool of reporters who diligently followed him around through seven countries, Vice President Cheney yesterday finally agreed to a short group interview. But only on one condition: The reporters would have to agree not to tell anyone that the person they talked to was him.

Cheney's insistence on being identified as a "senior administration official" -- even when the transcript shows he spoke in the first person -- is in some ways laughably trivial.

But in other ways, the vice president's decision to extort reporters into a ridiculous agreement reflects the contempt Cheney has for the press corps.

Chicago Tribune reporter Mark Silva, for instance, filed a slew of informative, detailed and richly textured pool reports about the trip -- most of them reposted on the Tribune's Washington-bureau blog, The Swamp.

In one pool report last week, Silva slapped down as absurd rumors in the blogosphere that an earlier briefing he described as being from an administration official had actually been from Cheney himself. "I do not use that term when describing the vice president," Silva wrote.

But yesterday, when Silva and others were summoned to the front of Cheney's C-17 cargo plane on the flight out of Afghanistan, he found himself forced to change his policy.

"Sometimes, the rules in which we are confined by the White House throw all good reason to the wind," Silva wrote in an e-mail to me early this morning. "I had two options, not to report what the SAO said or to report it by the rules. Felt it was more important to report what was said."

As it turns out, this particular case was so absurd that some reporters -- who weren't directly a party to the agreement -- have blown Cheney's cover sky high.

David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times: "Vice President Dick Cheney, thinly veiled as a 'senior administration official,' told reporters on his plane on Tuesday that it was not correct that he 'went in to beat up on' the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for failing to confront Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

"'That's not the way I work,' said Mr. Cheney, violating the first rule of conducting a background interview: never refer to yourself in the first person, when it makes it obvious who is talking. 'The idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.'"

Terence Hunt writes for the Associated Press: "Who was the mystery official on Vice President Dick Cheney's plane? There were plenty of clues about his identity if you read a transcript of his remarks. . . .

"The transcript did not spell out why the official on Cheney's plane would not be quoted by name."

In his final pool report from the trip, Silva wrote that when Cheney's plane stopped for refueling in Great Britain, the reporters who had taken part in the interview were finally able to read the transcript released by the White House. That led Silva "to admire the integrity of a great, soon-departing stenographer who produced the script in dedicated devotion to truth with the reporting of a simple pronoun: 'I' . . .

"Check it all out -- it's an interesting finale to a trip that carried many restrictions on press coverage in the name of security. It's worth the read."

Silva has more to say about "hiding behind titles" in his latest blog post (which also includes some great pictures).

Excerpts

Other beauts from the transcript:

"I've often spoken and would reiterate again today, when you think about the debate at home, some of my friends on the other side of the aisle arguing that we need to get out of Iraq, then you go spend some time with our allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, you can't help but be convinced that that would have a devastating impact, devastating consequences for what they're trying to do, what they've agreed to do in terms of their ongoing efforts with us as allies in these struggles in this part of the world."

Indeed. See Cheney's Feb. 23 interview with ABC News's Jonathan Karl.

"Q You've spoken also, though, about some of the things that Speaker Pelosi and Representative Murtha have said how that does play to the hands of --

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I was asked by one of your colleagues."

(That would be Cheney's Feb. 21 interview with Karl.)

"Q But your answer was very articulate.

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I responded very carefully.

"Q And you suggested that they make -- they lend comfort to terrorists, essentially.

"SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, what I said was that that the al Qaeda strategy is based on the notion that they can break the will of the American people. They know they can't beat us in a stand-up fight. But they do believe -- and I think there's evidence to support this -- that they can, in fact, force us to change our policy if they just kill enough Americans, create enough havoc out there. And they cite Beirut in 1983; Mogadishu, 1993, kill Americans, America changes its policy and withdraws. And Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri believe this. They talk about it. It's not a mystery.

"And my point was that if we follow what I believe Speaker Pelosi really wants to do in terms of withdraw, that that would validate the al Qaeda strategy. I was very careful in those words I selected. I didn't say 'give aid and comfort to terrorists.' I didn't say 'unpatriotic.' I said it would validate the al Qaeda strategy."

The transcript then shows a "****" which typically means that the interview went even further on background -- most likely off the record -- before resuming. One can only imagine what was said there.

Dan Froomkin - Cheney's Rules for the Press - washingtonpost.com

Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Wright - Punishment to Fit the Nuclear Crime - washingtonpost.com

2007-03-03T19:54:00.000-08:00

Punishment to Fit the Nuclear Crime

By Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Wright

Friday, March 2, 2007; Page A13

A joint sting operation by the CIA and officials from the Republic of Georgia foiled an attempt by a Russian man to sell nuclear-bomb-grade uranium on the black market last summer. This event, only made public in January, was the latest in a series of alarming incidents that remind us of the severity of the threat posed by nuclear terrorism.

To build a nuclear weapon, terrorists must acquire materials from a state. National governments are unlikely to cooperate with terrorists because they fear retaliation from the victim of such an attack and its allies, but rogue scientists, generals or other individuals can work with criminal networks to deliver nuclear weapons to the highest bidder. To counter this danger, we should make the illegal transfer of nuclear materials a crime against humanity triable by international tribunals and by national courts in every country.

Current efforts to close down the nuclear black market have an Achilles' heel -- certain states will not cooperate and will even protect nuclear criminals. For instance, A.Q. Khan, Pakistan's "father of the bomb," lives comfortably under house arrest; U.S. officials have not been allowed even to interrogate him. Pakistan's government is too frightened of a domestic backlash to act harshly against a national hero. Globally, of the dozens suspected of involvement in his network, only three have been successfully prosecuted.

During the Cold War, the United States used deterrence to avert Armageddon; the Soviet Union understood that aggression, even of a conventional nature, would carry too high a price. This old wisdom offers new hope; the United States should actively deter individuals who trade in nuclear materials by making the costs of such behavior unacceptably high.

Making nuclear transfer a crime against humanity captures the enormity of the offense and would dramatically increase the cost of getting caught. Nuclear transfer threatens the lives of millions of people. It merits a place in infamy alongside genocide and other evils. Creating a nuclear transfer taboo would strip away feigned protestations of innocence and illusions of a victimless crime. It would stigmatize black-market financiers and other facilitators of nuclear transfers as the ultimate merchants of death.

In addition to highlighting the dangers of this action, making nuclear transfer a crime against humanity would greatly expand opportunities for prosecution, denying national governments the ability to shelter these criminals.

The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction over crimes against humanity. The inclusion of nuclear transfer as such a crime could be confirmed at the next review conference, in 2009. The ICC could then indict and prosecute those suspected of such acts. Even if the United States cannot bring itself to join the ICC, it could work with allies to empower the ICC to act, just as the Bush administration has done on Darfur.

Similarly, as a matter of international law, crimes against humanity are subject to universal jurisdiction. That means that any nation, including the United States, could prosecute nuclear traders anywhere in the world. National governments can pass statutes confirming such jurisdiction in their courts.

Finally, the U.N. Security Council could pass a Chapter VII resolution urging a prosecutor to investigate these cases or even establish a special tribunal to prosecute those suspected of nuclear transfer. A tribunal could be a fallback if efforts to incorporate nuclear transfer into the ICC charter were unsuccessful.

This initiative would make international law work as a tool of American national security strategy rather than as a constraint on it. Failing states would no longer provide safe haven for rogue individuals. The potential costs of nuclear transfer for criminal networks would clearly exceed its potential rewards. It would be multilateralism and international law at its best: hard-edged tools to further American and global interests.

Most important, it is the only way to overcome a real problem. The status quo -- trusting nondemocratic states to safeguard U.S. security interests by cracking down on their criminal networks -- has failed. The convention on genocide was signed after the Holocaust. This time, we should not wait until after the fact to act.

Anne-Marie Slaughter is dean of Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and a co-director of the Princeton Project on National Security. Thomas Wright is senior researcher for the Princeton Project on National Security.

Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Wright - Punishment to Fit the Nuclear Crime - washingtonpost.com

It’s the War, Senators - New York Times

2007-03-03T19:28:00.000-08:00

It is not an inspiring sight to watch the United States Senate turn the most important issue facing America into a political football, and then fumble it. Yet that is what now seems to have come from a once-promising bipartisan effort to finally have the debate about the Iraq war that Americans have been denied for four years.

The Democrats’ ultimate goal was to express the Senate’s opposition to President Bush’s latest escalation. But the Democrats’ leaders have made that more difficult — allowing the Republicans to maneuver them into the embarrassing position of blocking a vote on a counterproposal that they feared too many Democrats might vote for.

We oppose that resolution, which is essentially a promise never to cut off funds for this or any future military operation Mr. Bush might undertake in Iraq. But the right way for the Senate to debate Iraq is to debate Iraq, not to bar proposals from the floor because they might be passed. The majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, needs to call a timeout and regroup. By changing the issue from Iraq to partisan parliamentary tactics, his leadership team threatens to muddy the message of any anti-escalation resolution the Senate may eventually pass.

As it happens, the blocked Republican alternative, proposed by Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, itself represents an end run around the Senate’s constitutional responsibilities. The rational way to oppose cuts in funds is to vote against them, if and when any ever come before the Senate. Mr. Reid should not be shy about urging fellow Democrats to vote against this hollow gimmick, which tries to make it look as if the senators support Mr. Bush’s failed Iraq policies by playing on their fears of being accused of not supporting the troops.

America went to war without nearly enough public discussion, and it needs more Senate debate about Iraq this time around, not less. The voters who overturned Republican majorities in both houses last November expect, among other things, to see energized Congressional scrutiny of the entire war — not just of the plan for an additional 21,500 troops but also of the future of the 130,000 plus who are already there.

Another Republican resolution, proposed by Sen. John McCain, gives the appearance of moving in that more promising direction by ticking off a series of policy benchmarks and then urging the Iraqi government to meet them. But listing benchmarks is one thing. It is another to spell out real consequences for not meeting them, like the withdrawal of American military support. Instead of doing that, the McCain resolution hands an unwarranted blank check to Mr. Bush’s new Iraq commander, Lt. Gen. David Petraeus. It breathtakingly declares that he “should receive from Congress the full support necessary” to carry out America’s mission.

Frustrated by the Senate’s fumbles, the House plans to move ahead next week with its own resolution on Mr. Bush’s troop plan. When the Senate is ready to turn its attention back to substance again, it should go further.

Senators need to acknowledge the reality of four years of failed presidential leadership on Iraq and enact a set of binding benchmarks. These should require the hard steps toward national reconciliation that the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki continues to evade and that the White House refuses to insist on.

Tips

It’s the War, Senators - New York Times

Fudging the Budget - New York Times

2007-03-03T19:10:00.000-08:00

February 6, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Fudging the Budget

By STEVEN RATTNER

WHEN President Bush sent his new budget to Congress yesterday, he trumpeted a continuing decline in the deficit and projected a swing back into the black by 2012.

But the accounting in the thick volumes issued by his Office of Management and Budget bears about as much similarity to the practices of private sector companies as Sanskrit does to Chinese. For sometimes obscure and sometimes political reasons, the federal government reports its finances in a way that portrays them far more favorably than they deserve.

The “official” deficit figure for the 2006 fiscal year is just under $250 billion. But a more accurate calculation would indicate a deficit nearly three times higher, and that is even without including some vast obligations the government owes. And while a strong economy is pushing down that headline deficit, the government’s financial commitments actually grew more rapidly last year than in 2005.

In fact, the federal government itself obliquely acknowledges this chimera in a flotilla of other reports, including the obscure Financial Statement of the United States, prepared by the Government Accountability Office using methods closer to what a shareholder would find in an annual report.

These adjustments concentrate on one gap in federal budget bookkeeping: the government’s failure to properly account for the cost of pensions for its own workers. Simply incorporating this liability would increase the federal deficit by roughly $200 billion.

But the official accounting is also misleading another way — specifically, in the way it handles Social Security. In 2006, the federal government received $185 billion more in Social Security taxes than it paid out in benefits. Unlike a private company, which keeps such overages in its pension fund to cover future benefits, the White House pockets the money and declares the deficit to be smaller.

Interestingly, until 1968, the federal government followed private sector practice by putting trust funds like Social Security in separate budgetary silos. Then President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed a commission that brought these programs into a new “unified budget.”

While the commission argued that a single federal budget would be less confusing and more reflective of the government’s overall impact on the economy, skeptical commentators noted the salubrious effect — in the midst of the Vietnam era guns-and-butter debate — of wrapping in the Social Security surplus.

Even if we adjusted properly for pensions and entitlements, we would leave unaddressed the largest financing gap, unheralded by President Bush yesterday: by some estimates, $39 trillion would have to be set aside now to pay for Social Security, Medicare and similar benefits that have already been promised. Just a year ago, those future obligations were $3 trillion less. Taken as a whole, the federal government’s commitments have grown from $20 trillion in 2000 to $50 trillion today.

To be sure, arcane and even misleading accounting policies long predate the current administration; for the past 10 years, the G.A.O. has cited “material weaknesses in financial reporting” by the government. In recent Congressional testimony, David M. Walker, comptroller general of the accountability office, said, “Our fiscal and financial condition is worse than advertised.”

And of course, the private sector has its shortcomings, particularly in providing medical benefits to retirees. But when it comes to pension obligations, the disparity is striking. Just two weeks ago, the consulting firm Towers Perrin reported that at the end of 2006, the pension funds of the Fortune 100 companies were actually overfinanced.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the damage from gaming federal accounting idiosyncrasies grows exponentially. When President Johnson created the unified budget for the 1969 fiscal year, the ultimate effect was to turn a deficit of $507 million into a surplus of $3.2 billion. Today, our budgetary sleight-of-hand obscures hundreds of billions of dollars of shortfalls.

Sadly, the solutions to this problem are well known and painful: more revenues (yes, including from rolling back President Bush’s tax giveaway to the rich) or less spending (at long last, public outrage seems to be curbing the pork barrel “earmarking” process in Congress).

But we’ll have to go further than that. To make meaningful progress, we will need to tackle Social Security and Medicare. One glimmer of hope regarding Social Security has emerged from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, whose many years of studying corporate financial statements doubtless contribute to his offering to work toward solutions with “no preconditions.” Both Democrats and Republicans should pull up chairs at Secretary Paulson’s table with open minds.

Building a political consensus behind difficult measures would be easier if the public were more accurately apprised of our fiscal condition. Unfortunately, simply importing private sector accounting practices wouldn’t properly express the complexity of the federal government’s activities and obligations.

Instead, we need to elevate “accrual accounting,” which better measures the government’s future pension responsibilities, to the same level of public visibility as the “cash accounting” figures that are now emphasized. And our primary measure of our deficit should exclude the Social Security surplus. Finally, our obligations for future entitlements payments — the $39 trillion — should also be emphasized in reports like today’s.

Back in 1802, Thomas Jefferson beseeched his Treasury secretary to adopt finances for America “as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books” so that “every man of any mind in the union should be able to comprehend them.” More than 200 years later, that advice remains regrettably unheeded.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act tried to reform misleading private sector practices. The federal government needs a similar effort.

Steven Rattner is managing principal at the Quadrangle Group, a private investment firm.

Fudging the Budget - New York Times

Why Accuse Iran of Meddling Now? U.S. Officials Explain - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:53:00.000-08:00

February 15, 2007

Why Accuse Iran of Meddling Now? U.S. Officials Explain

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 — One of the questions posed by skeptics about the Bush administration assertions about Iran’s meddling in Iraq is why the charges are coming to light only now, when American officials say the shipment of lethal weapons from Iran to Shiite militias was first detected several years ago.

Among possible explanations for the timetable, some critics have suggested, is that the White House is making its assertions now in an effort to blame Iran for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, or that President Bush is trying to lay a legal and political groundwork for a military strike against the government in Tehran, which he singled out in 2002 as a member of the “axis of evil.”

In recent interviews and in a military briefing on Wednesday in Baghdad, American officials have offered a more direct explanation for the timetable: attacks with the device have increased sharply in recent months, prompting the United States to react, and then to justify its actions.

According to one military official, reports of the “explosively formed penetrator,” as the weapon is known, first surfaced in late 2003. But attacks with the device have steadily increased since then. The last quarter of 2006 was a particularly dangerous period in terms of attacks with the device, with a new high reached in December.

As the attacks have gone up, so have the American casualties. Since 2004, at least 170 Americans have been killed and 620 wounded in attacks with the device. But a significant number of those casualties occurred in the last part of 2006.

Faced with stepped-up attacks, military officials said they began to carry out raids to try to disrupt efforts to train and equip Shiite militants with the weapon. That led to the detention of Iranian officials — and questions from the Iraqi government, the public and the press about why the American military was capturing and detaining Iranians, including some officials who said they were diplomats.

American officials assert that the raids produced additional evidence implicating a branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Quds Force, in supplying the devices, a charge Iran has denied.

Even so, the decision by American military officials to put forward the evidence in a full-scale briefing was not an easy call, according to Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American military spokesman in Iraq. One concern was that discussing the weapon would let adversaries know how effective it is.

After concluding that efforts to warn the Iranians through diplomatic channels not to send the weapons components were not producing results, Bush administration officials and military commanders in Baghdad decided to organize a briefing and present some of the evidence in a session last Sunday.

“The intent of the press conference was to talk about a force protection issue, not politics,” General Caldwell said on Wednesday.

Why Accuse Iran of Meddling Now? U.S. Officials Explain - New York Times

Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:45:00.000-08:00

February 16, 2007

Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran

By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that the United States had no intention of attacking Iran and that any American military efforts against it would be confined to Iraq to disrupt the smuggling of bomb-making materials over the border.

“For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran,” he said at a Pentagon news conference. “We are not planning a war with Iran.”

Even if the Bush administration were able to establish that Iran’s top leaders knew and authorized the smuggling, Mr. Gates said, there would probably be no change in the Bush administration’s strategy of limiting its military response to actions within Iraq.

Questions about the administration’s intentions toward Iran have re-emerged in recent days after senior officials, beginning last weekend, laid out what they said was evidence that bomb-making materials from Iran were being supplied to Shiite militants in Iraq.

Mr. Gates and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, repeated Thursday that weapons used against American troops were coming from Iran and that personnel from the Quds Force, a paramilitary arm of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, were involved.

But both officials said, as President Bush did at a White House news conference on Wednesday, that they lacked evidence that Iran’s top leaders were involved in the weapons smuggling.

“Whether or not more senior political leaders in Iran know, we don’t know,” Mr. Gates told reporters in the Pentagon. “Frankly, for me, either way it’s a worry.”

General Pace ignited some controversy earlier this week while visiting Indonesia, when he told reporters that American forces had confirmed that some bomb materials found inside Iraq were made in Iran, but “that does not translate that the Iranian government, per se, for sure, is directly involved in doing this.”

Those remarks conflicted with comments by a senior Defense Department analyst who said, at a briefing in Baghdad over the weekend, that the effort was being directed “from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”

Asked about the discrepancy, General Pace said Thursday that the analyst in Baghdad “didn’t make a clear enough break between fact and assessment” when he said there was high-level Iranian involvement, “or those listening didn’t hear the break between fact and assessment.”

Mr. Gates said he was sensitive to the public skepticism about American intelligence claims as a result of faulty prewar intelligence about Iraq. He said he insisted that the statements about Iranian weapons smuggling “make it exactly clear what we know and what we don’t know.”

In an interview on Thursday, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, said the United States could not invade Iran without specific Congressional authority.

“The president has said that he supports a diplomatic solution of the situation in Iran,” Ms. Pelosi said, speaking to six reporters in her office. “I would take him at his word. I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for any president to go into Iran.”

Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.

Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran - New York Times

2 Palestinian Leaders Meet to Pave Way for a New Cabinet - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:34:00.000-08:00

February 16, 2007

2 Palestinian Leaders Meet to Pave Way for a New Cabinet

By GREG MYRE

GAZA, Feb. 15 — After months of difficult negotiations and bloody Palestinian street fighting, the Hamasled Palestinian government resigned Thursday to pave the way for a unity government that will include Hamas and the rival Fatah movement.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas submitted his cabinet’s resignation on Thursday evening at a meeting with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, at Mr. Abbas’s seaside compound in Gaza City. The agreement is intended to help prevent a resurgence of the internal Palestinian battles that have claimed nearly 100 lives in the Gaza Strip since December.

There was no immediate sign that a new Palestinian government would win a restoration of direct financial assistance that Israel and Western countries cut when Hamas came to power a year ago.

American diplomats told Mr. Abbas, who is from Fatah, that Washington would shun the new government as long as it did not meet several conditions, according to one of Mr. Abbas’s top aides, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Israel, the United States and the European Union have demanded that the Palestinian government recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous agreements. But with Mr. Haniya set to retain his post in the new government, which will again include many prominent Hamas figures, it appears highly unlikely that the new cabinet will explicitly meet the conditions.

“I am not certain that the full scope of this agreement is clear to anyone,” Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who was in Turkey on Thursday, said on Turkish television. “The initial signs are not very encouraging.”

The Bush administration, like the Israeli government, has contacts with Mr. Abbas. But Israel and the United States refuse to deal with Hamas, which they classify as a terrorist organization.

Washington’s stance toward a new Palestinian government may be clarified when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives for a meeting with Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas, set for Monday in Jerusalem.

Mr. Abbas seeks a resumption of negotiations with Israel, which collapsed six years ago, several months after the Palestinians began an uprising in September 2000.

“The unity government must be given a chance,” said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Mr. Abbas. “After the formation of the unity government there shouldn’t be any excuse for not holding negotiations.”

Mr. Haniya’s resignation was mostly a formality, as Mr. Abbas immediately asked him to form the new government, which is to be presented to the Palestinian parliament for approval within five weeks.

Hamas will continue to hold the largest number of cabinet posts. Fatah, which refused to take part in the previous government after losing elections to Hamas last year, will have at least a half dozen ministerial portfolios, and other factions and independents will also have posts.

“Brother Ismail Haniya presented me with his government’s resignation, and I charged him with forming his new cabinet,” Mr. Abbas said Thursday after their meeting. “We call on you to be committed to the high interests of the Palestinian people,” he said to Mr. Haniya.

There was no word on who would hold the key post of interior minister, overseeing several branches of the security forces, including the police. Mr. Abbas is responsible for all other security agencies.

Under a preliminary agreement reached last week in Saudi Arabia, Hamas is to nominate an independent figure to lead the Interior Ministry, and Mr. Abbas can accept or reject the choice. Security force members, some loyal to Fatah, others to Hamas, were deeply involved in the recent Palestinian infighting in Gaza.

Palestinians celebrated in the streets when Hamas and Fatah announced their agreement last week. But on Thursday many expressed doubts about whether a unity government would survive.

Rawya Shawa, an opposition member of the Palestinian parliament, said she would vote to support a unity government, but without much enthusiasm. “In principle I support power-sharing,” she said, “but it won’t be easy for Hamas and Fatah to get along together, and I’m not sure a unity government will last long.”

2 Palestinian Leaders Meet to Pave Way for a New Cabinet - New York Times

Iranian Force, Focus of U.S., Still a Mystery - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:32:00.000-08:00

February 17, 2007

Iranian Force, Focus of U.S., Still a Mystery

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — Like so much else about the Iranian state, the Quds Force, which conducts overseas operations for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, remains remarkably mysterious even to those who closely study the country.

The Quds Force is under intense scrutiny by American intelligence agencies because it is suspected of supplying sophisticated explosives to Iraqi militants. Among those detained in recent American raids on Iranian offices in Iraq were several Iranians identified by the United States military as Quds operatives, including a diplomat said to be the No. 2 official in the Quds Force.

Questions about what exactly Quds Force officers have done and whether they acted at the direction of the Iranian leadership have taken on particular urgency as the Bush administration sends more troops to damp the violence in Baghdad. But the competing power centers inside the Iranian government, and the intense secrecy that obscures decision making, make answers elusive.

“We know that the Quds Force is involved,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters on Thursday. “We know the Quds Force is a paramilitary arm of the I.R.G.C.,” he added, using the abbreviation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“So we assume that the leadership of the I.R.G.C. knows about this,” Mr. Gates said. “Whether or not more senior political leaders in Iran know about it, we don’t know.”

Most independent experts say it is only logical to assume that Iran deployed large numbers of operatives in Iraq as soon as Saddam Hussein was ousted in 2003. Many of Iraq’s Shiite clerics, politicians and militia leaders have close ties to Iran, where some spent years in exile while Mr. Hussein and the Sunnis of his Baath Party ruled Iraq.

And the past role of the Quds Force as the long arm of the Islamic revolution abroad, performing a mix of military, intelligence and training operations, has been widely reported in past conflicts like those in Lebanon and Bosnia. Its name, the Arabic word for Jerusalem, symbolizes the Iranian government’s commitment to driving Israelis out of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Quds Force “is the handpicked elite of an already elite ideological army,” said Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University.

As part of the Revolutionary Guard, the force officially answers to the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and not the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, though Mr. Ahmadinejad is believed to have personal ties to many senior guard officials.

But the Quds Force is cloaked in secrecy inside Iran and is the subject of considerable guesswork from scholars in the United States, who in interviews this week offered estimates of its size ranging from 3,000 to 50,000 men. The true number, along with details of the strength and budget of the entire Revolutionary Guard, is hidden even from the Iranian Parliament, said Mr. Milani, according to legislators he has spoken with.

Some specialists even question whether the Quds Force exists as a formal unit clearly delineated from the rest of the Revolutionary Guard.

“It could be that anyone with an intelligence role in the Revolutionary Guard is just called Quds,” said Vali R. Nasr, who studies Iran and political Islam at the Naval Postgraduate School.

Whether properly identified as part of the Quds Force or not, members of the Revolutionary Guard mobilized intelligence and paramilitary agents in Lebanon in the 1980s, where they trained the Shiite militia Hezbollah; in Afghanistan, during the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s and episodically since then; in the former Yugoslavia, supporting the Bosnian Muslims against Serbian forces; and in other trouble spots.

The guard has also been accused of supporting terrorist attacks outside Iran, notably the 1996 truck bomb attack on the Khobar Towers complex in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American service members. In December, a federal judge ruled that the government of Iran bore responsibility for the Khobar Towers attack and ordered Tehran to pay survivors of those killed more than $253 million.

The Revolutionary Guard was created after the Islamic revolution that overthrew the shah in 1979. The government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did not trust the existing Iranian military, where support for the monarchy remained strong. The new rulers established the guard as a parallel military force, recruited from among the revolution’s most devout religious supporters.

In the past 25 years, the Revolutionary Guard, whose strength is estimated by Western specialists at 125,000 to 300,000, has gradually evolved into more of a conventional military and has become deeply involved in lucrative business enterprises inside and outside Iran. But all along, it has conducted overseas operations, both covert and overt, often under the Quds Force name.

The actions of the Quds Force are not necessarily ordered by Ayatollah Khamenei, and the supreme leader may not even get reports of all its actions, said Hooshang Amirahmadi, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. “The Iranian government is a very loose grouping of power centers,” blurring lines of control and authority, he said.

There have been past instances of actions by rogue intelligence officers that the Iranian government has disavowed. In 1999, for example, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry blamed rogue officers for the killings of five prominent critics of the government’s conservative wing.

But Mr. Amirahmadi said he did not think the Iranian leadership should be allowed to sidestep responsibility for actions by its operatives in Iraq. “The Bush administration can’t say, ‘We have a C.I.A., but we don’t control it,’ ” he said, adding that the same rules should apply to Tehran.

Though the American allegations about the Quds Force have received attention from administration officials and the media only in recent weeks, they are not new. On several occasions over the last year, senior Pentagon officials have spoken publicly about the Iranian role in Iraq.

More recently, Bush administration officials have engaged in a balancing act, engaging in harsher rhetoric about Iranian actions and offering more evidence on sophisticated improvised explosive devices, which they say are traceable to Iran, but vehemently denying they have any plans to go to war against the country.

But by all accounts, the imperfect nature of American intelligence agencies’ reporting on Iran makes certain conclusions difficult to reach. “I just don’t think we have a very acute understanding of the internal workings of the regime in Iran,” said Patrick Clawson, an Iran expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Iranian Force, Focus of U.S., Still a Mystery - New York Times

Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

February 18, 2007

Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times. Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, spoke Saturday after a procedural vote to start debate on an Iraq resolution failed.

By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — The Senate on Saturday narrowly rejected an effort to force debate on a resolution opposing President Bush’s troop buildup in Iraq, but Republican defections emboldened Democrats to promise new attempts to influence the administration’s war policy.

The 56-to-34 vote in a rare Saturday session was the second time Republicans were able to deny opponents of the troop increase a debate on a resolution challenging Mr. Bush, and it came just a day after the House formally opposed his plan to increase the military presence in Iraq.

But the outcome, four votes short of the 60 needed to break a procedural stalemate, suggested that Democrats were slowly drawing support from Senate Republicans for what was shaping up to be a drawn-out fight between the Democrat-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush over his execution of the war.

Seven Republicans split from their party and joined 48 Democrats and one Independent in calling for a debate — five more Republicans than during a similar showdown earlier this month. All but two of the seven face re-election next year.

The Republicans who broke ranks were Senators John W. Warner of Virginia, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Gordon H. Smith of Oregon, Norm Coleman of Minnesota, and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine.

Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the majority leader, said the result showed that Senate sentiment was running against the president.

“A majority of the United States Senate just voted on Iraq, and a majority of the United States Senate is against the escalation in Iraq,” Mr. Reid said as he withdrew the resolution. He and other party leaders said they intended to introduce quickly more substantive proposals on Iraq when the Senate returns from a weeklong break and begins considering legislation to enact recommendations from the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.

“We will be relentless,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the third-ranking Democrat. “There will be resolution after resolution, amendment after amendment, all forcing this body to do what it has not done in the previous three years: debate and discuss Iraq.”

Democrats would not divulge the details of their next step, but one official said it would focus on the mission of American troops in Iraq and try to skirt the more politically difficult question of federal money for the military.

Republicans derided Saturday’s vote as political theater and said stark divisions among Democrats on the question of military spending would complicate the party’s efforts to advance legislation designed to stop the war.

“We want a debate about Iraq that includes funding for the troops,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. “They’ve denounced the surge. The question is, are they going to fund the troops?”

Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said on Saturday that Mr. Bush urged Congress to approve his pending request for $93 billion through Sept. 30 for military operations and played down the importance of the House and Senate votes.

“This week’s voting gave the world a glimpse of democracy’s vigor,” Mr. Snow said in a statement. “The next votes should provide unmistakable assurance of this nation’s resolve in achieving success.”

But Democrats said the votes in Congress — the first major clashes over the war — reflected widespread public unease with the idea of deepening involvement in Iraq.

“It may be called a surge, but I believe it is a plunge,” said Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “A plunge into the sectarian cauldron, a plunge into the unknown.”

Republicans continued to try to make the case that Democrats were shutting down a full-fledged Senate review of Mr. Bush’s Iraq strategy by refusing the Republicans a chance to offer an alternative that would place the Senate on record against cutting off money for armed forces in the field.

“The majority cannot tell the minority what we are going to have one vote on, take it or leave it,” said Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, defending his party’s stance as senators squared off at noon. Democrats were leery of the Republican plan, written by Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, because of its potential to attract the most Senate votes and to overshadow Senate action criticizing the troop increase. Some lawmakers also believed that Congress might be asked to restrict military spending, and they did not want their hands tied by an earlier vote on a more symbolic resolution.

A vote to open debate would have allowed the Senate to begin considering the identical language that was approved on Friday by the House. The resolution states, in part, that “Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on Jan. 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.”

Without 60 votes for the procedural motion, the Senate was unable to start debate. It was an outcome that left Democrats accusing Republicans of ducking a vote directly opposing Mr. Bush’s policy, even though many of the Republicans had significant reservations about the conduct of the war and concerns for the political repercussions.

“The American people can see what is happening here,” said Senator Ben Nelson, Democrat of Nebraska. “They know that some want to prevent a vote at all costs.”

Mr. Nelson and Mr. Warner co-wrote an earlier, more detailed bipartisan resolution disagreeing with the troop buildup. But that proposal stalled on Feb. 5, when the Republican leadership held its ranks together against the Democratic plan to allow a vote on that plan but not on the Gregg alternative. Mr. Warner sided with Republicans in that initial vote but broke from his party on Saturday.

“We have the right to respectfully disagree,” Mr. Warner said. “Mr. President, do you need 21,500 additional men and women in this conflict to go into the streets and alleys of Baghdad?”

Some Republicans accused Democrats of political posturing in advance of the 2008 presidential and Congressional elections and of undermining military forces and the administration. They said opponents of Mr. Bush were trying to have it both ways, by criticizing his policy but not taking the more politically risky step of curtailing spending on the war.

“If you think we are in the middle of civil war, cut off funding,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said to his colleagues.

The Saturday session drew a throng of spectators who lined up outside the Capitol hoping to get a glimpse of the debate. The Senate has met on Saturday only 14 times in the past decade and conducted votes on only five of those occasions, records show.

Nine Republican senators were not present for the vote, including Senator John McCain of Arizona, a presidential candidate, who was campaigning in Iowa. Two other Republicans, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee, had left for Baghdad.

But with the burden of reaching 60 votes on their side, Democrats, particularly the party’s presidential candidates, did not miss the showdown. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York campaigned in New Hampshire in the morning and came back for the vote; Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, who had been in South Carolina, also came back. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware flew from Iowa to Washington before a scheduled return to Iowa on Saturday night.

Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq - New York Times

Rice Tries to Hold Together Plan for Mideast Talks - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

February 19, 2007

Rice Tries to Hold Together Plan for Mideast Talks

By HELENE COOPER

RAMALLAH, Feb. 18 — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice struggled Sunday to hold together her ambitious plan to restart Middle East peace talks, even as arguments continued over a new Palestinian unity government in a signal that the Bush administration’s renewed peace push might have arrived at a bad time.

Ms. Rice, shuttling between Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank, said she planned to continue to push a peace initiative between Israel and the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, despite his recent agreement in principle to form a unity government between his Fatah faction and Hamas, which the United States and Israel view as a terrorist organization.

“I’m committed to this,” Ms. Rice told reporters at the end of a day of preparatory meetings with Palestinian and Israeli officials. “As long as I’m secretary of state, that’s what I’m going to do.”

The new talks — the first such negotiations in six years — are set for Monday. Ms. Rice will act as host for the meeting with Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel at her hotel in Jerusalem.

During a meeting with Mr. Abbas at his heavily fortified compound in Ramallah, Ms. Rice made clear that she was willing to begin work on a peace deal with him even if the United States boycotted a unity government. That might allow Mr. Abbas, as the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to hold talks with Israel even if a new Palestinian unity government did not recognize Israel or renounce violence, two conditions that Israel and the United States have both demanded.

Mr. Abbas’s aides were buoyant after the meeting. “We’re encouraged,” one Palestinian official said.

But the big question now is whether Israel will agree to restart peace talks with Mr. Abbas while it is boycotting the government he helped negotiate. For Ms. Rice, that may be a tough sell.

The Israelis committed to attend the Monday meeting, which was supposed to be the first step in rejuvenating the peace process. But for the past three days, Israeli officials have been dumping cold water on any talk of further cooperation with the Palestinians unless a new government recognizes Israel.

“The path to a Palestinian state goes through renunciation of terrorism and violence,” Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Saturday night. Mr. Olmert added Sunday, in broadcast comments, that a Palestinian government that does not recognize Israel and renounce violence “cannot receive recognition, and there will not be cooperation with it.”

Mr. Olmert reiterated that point when Ms. Rice returned to Jerusalem from her meeting in Ramallah, Israeli officials said.

Ms. Rice said she expected the effort on peace negotiations to be slow. “If we ask people to run at this point, I think somebody will fall down,” she said.

And even if talks do begin, they are likely to be hampered by the reality that both Mr. Abbas, who has to share power with Hamas, and Mr. Olmert, whose approval ratings are low, may not have the political capital to make compromises.

The prospects for energized peace talks got even worse two weeks ago when Mr. Abbas and Hamas reached the power-sharing agreement, brokered by the Saudi government, in Mecca.

The Mecca agreement includes a vague promise to “respect” previous peace deals, which some Palestinian officials have said they hope can persuade Western donors to restore direct aid that was cut off after Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. But the Mecca pact makes no mention of recognizing Israel, nor any mention of renouncing violence toward it, which Western donors have said are conditions for restoring aid.

Both Israeli and Bush administration officials were angry about the agreement, arguing that Hamas got a deal without being forced to bring its views closer to those of Mr. Abbas, who is viewed by the United States, the European Union and Israel as more moderate.

During Sunday’s session, Ms. Rice and Mr. Abbas discussed the proposed composition of the new Palestinian cabinet, American and Palestinian officials said. Hamas and Mr. Abbas’s Fatah Party have yet to resolve some key government posts, including who will be interior minister, a post that controls the Hamas-dominated parallel police force.

Mr. Abbas defended his unity deal with Hamas, saying it ended weeks of fighting between Hamas and his Fatah faction that killed almost 100 Palestinians.

“Let me just say, I understand fully the desire to end the violence among the Palestinians,” Ms. Rice said. “That period of time was terrible.”

Diplomats and Middle East analysts said that while Mr. Abbas could represent the Palestinians and initiate peace talks with Israel, he probably could not conclude those talks unless the entire Palestinian government recognized Israel.

Rice Tries to Hold Together Plan for Mideast Talks - New York Times: "2007"

Iran Says Sunnis, Using Pakistan as Base, Planned Fatal Bombing - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

February 19, 2007

Iran Says Sunnis, Using Pakistan as Base, Planned Fatal Bombing

By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, Feb. 18 — The Iranian Foreign Ministry charged Sunday that Sunni insurgents from Iran used Pakistan as a base to plan a bombing that killed 11 people and wounded more than 30 in the southeastern border city of Zahedan last week. The ministry said it had demanded an explanation from the Pakistani ambassador.

“We summoned the Pakistani ambassador to explain what happened,” Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the ministry, said during his weekly news conference on Sunday. “Both sides will suffer from insecurity and we decided to set up a committee to raise the security at the borders.”

A car loaded with explosives detonated in front of a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards last Wednesday.

A second bomb was set off in Zahedan on Friday evening. The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that it caused no casualties. But the news agency said the police clashed with an armed group and exchanged gunfire after the blast.

Zahedan, the capital of the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, is home to many ethnic Baluchis, who are Sunni Muslims. A majority of Iranians are Shiites. A Baluchi group opposed to the government, the Jondollah Organization of Iran, claimed responsibility for both attacks.

A senior security official said 65 people had been arrested in connection to the blasts.

Newspapers in Tehran reported Sunday that the state-run Hamoun channel in Sistan-Baluchistan broadcast a two-minute confession by a suspect, Nasrollah Shamsi Zehi, who was accused of being involved in the deadly bombing. He said he had robbed a bank in Zahedan, then escaped to Pakistan where he was trained by Jondollah for two months and was told that he would receive $1,200 for each mission.

Iran has accused the United States and Britain of provoking the Sunni insurgents. The authorities have said that the efforts are part of the plot to sow discord among Sunnis and Shiites in the country. Gen. Mohammad Ghaffari, a commander of security forces in the province, told the Fars news agency that a film that was confiscated from the suspects proved that the group was “affiliated to intelligence agencies of some of the foreign countries, such as the U.S. and Britain.”

The news agency also quoted what it called informed sources as saying that the explosives used in the bombings were American.

Iran blamed the United States and Britain for a series of bombings in the southern city of Ahwaz in Khuzestan Province in 2006. Those bombings were also carried out by Iranian Sunnis. The government hanged 12 men after accusing them of carrying out the attacks, which killed eight people.

Tensions have increased between Iran and the United States in recent months. The United States has accused Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and of arming Shiite insurgents in Iraq. Iran has rejected both charges and contends that the United States wants to find a scapegoat for its problems in Iraq.

The Revolutionary Guards announced Sunday that they would hold three days of maneuvers starting Monday. The exercises, at least the second so far this year, are aimed at displaying Iran’s military capacity as concerns about a confrontation with the United States are increasing.

The maneuvers will take place in 16 of Iran’s 30 provinces, and 60,000 soldiers will take part, the IRNA news agency reported Sunday.

Iran Says Sunnis, Using Pakistan as Base, Planned Fatal Bombing - New York Times

No Progress in Middle East Talks - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:18:00.000-08:00

February 19, 2007

No Progress in Middle East Talks

By HELENE COOPER and STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM, Feb. 19 — The first peace talks in six years between the leaders of Israel and the Palestinians ended without any apparent concrete progress beyond an agreement to meet again. But Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who convened the meeting, said she intended to keep pursuing the process for the rest of her time in office.

After two hours of talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Ms. Rice read a vaguely worded joint statement saying the two men “discussed their views of the diplomatic and political horizon” and had agreed to meet again “soon.”

Ms. Rice and her aides made clear that Mr. Abbas’s decision to bring his Fatah faction into a joint “unity” government with Hamas, which Western governments consider to be a terrorist organization, had complicated her efforts at peacemaking.

She suggested that if this meeting had not already been scheduled before the unity-government agreement was reached, Mr. Olmert might not have agreed to meet with Mr. Abbas.

Still, she praised Mr. Abbas for supporting international requirements that the Palestinians recognize the right of Israel to exist, that they forswear violence and that they accept previously negotiated agreements with Israel. Hamas has resisted all three steps.

Neither Mr. Olmert nor Mr. Abbas appeared by Ms. Rice’s side as she read the official statement, reflecting the tenuous nature of the talks, which apparently are so fragile that no side has even been willing to label them as “negotiations.” One American official called them “an informal dialogue”; the official statement read by Ms. Rice referred to them simply as “efforts.”

“The president and the prime minister agreed that they would meet together again soon,” Ms. Rice said. “In that vein, I expect to return soon.” But she expects that the two men will meet again “within weeks, not months,” even if it is without her.

The commitment from Mr. Olmert to meet again with Mr. Abbas is a minor victory for Mr. Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, since it signals that Israel will continue to deal with him despite the unity-government agreement, reached earlier this month in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Later in the day, Mr. Olmert said: “There will be a dialogue, and we will continue the communication channel with Abu Mazen. We will not accept a situation in which we have no channels of communication with the Palestinian public, as I think this will be a dire mistake — all this without compromising over the principle we have established: not to conduct ties or acknowledge institutions that fail to endorse the basic principles which are the foundation to any future dealings.”

But according to a senior Israeli official, Mr. Olmert told a group of visiting American congressmen today that he is “very frustrated and disappointed with the Palestinians.” The official continued: “He wasn’t frustrated with the meeting itself, but with the feeling that Abu Mazen is going toward Hamas, not the other way around. The prime minister feels that the bottom line is moving toward the extremists, not the pragmatists.”

The Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that Mr. Abbas had agreed to the Mecca deal to end the fighting between Hamas and Fatah, and said that Mr. Abbas, as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, “recognizes Israel, and that’s what really matters.”

Ms. Rice made it clear that she felt it wise to continue to talk to Palestinians like Mr. Abbas who accept Israel and nonviolence, which she said represented the majority of Palestinian people.

But a new Palestinian unity government that doesn’t explicitly recognize Israel or renounce violence — and thus far, the Mecca agreement does not oblige it to — will make these talks on a “political and diplomatic horizon” for a settlement even more complicated.

It is one thing for Israel to begin talks with Mr. Abbas while it continues to boycott a government including Hamas that Mr. Abbas helped to create. But it is quite another for Israel to actually make meaningful progress toward a substantial peace settlement with a government that refuses to recognize it or renounce violence against it.

Ms. Rice defended the decision to hold the talks right now.

“Sure, we could have said, ‘We’ll just wait until it all sorts out,’ ” she said today. But the Mecca agreement has strained relations between Mr. Abbas and Mr. Olmert to the point, Mr. Rice said, that the two needed to clear the air between them: “It’s really valuable that they sat face to face.”

Still, Middle East analysts who have been critical of the Bush administration’s hands-off stance on Arab-Israeli peace negotiations for the last six years lauded Ms. Rice for getting back into the game.

“In this environment, given the odds against even launching a process, what she’s done is an achievement,” said Aaron David Miller, a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center who was a senior adviser for Arab-Israeli relations at the State Department under the last three presidents.

Even so, he cautioned that the odds for success will remain long until the Palestinians acquire a government that is willing to recognize Israel. “Oddly enough, we’re now dressed up for the party — the possibility of serious Israeli-Palestinian talks — but we’ve got nowhere to go,” Mr. Miller said.

The Israeli government also remains deeply skeptical of Mr. Abbas’s ability to deliver calm in the Palestinian territories, let alone a peace agreement with Israel.

Mr. Olmert and his aides view Mr. Abbas as having been weakened by the Mecca agreement, because the hosts of the talks, the Saudis, treated him not so much as the Palestinian president, but as a leader of the Fatah faction, and an equal to the exiled Hamas political leader, Khaled Meshal.

The Israelis also believe that Mr. Abbas arrived at Mecca weakened by the fighting in Gaza, in which forces loyal to Hamas took over northern Gaza and large parts of Gaza City. Fatah forces did not collapse, but they did not defeat Hamas, and were perceived as weaker.

Mr. Abbas argued to Ms. Rice that the top priority for the Palestinians, and for him as their president, was to stop the infighting; thus, his willingness to abandon his call for early elections and instead pursue creation of a unity government led by Hamas and including Fatah.

Ms. Rice and the Americans were against the idea of a Fatah unity deal with Hamas; one senior official said today that Washington was “surprised” by the deal and none too happy about it. But Mr. Abbas told her that he felt there was no other choice.

In Gaza, the Hamas spokesman, Ismail Radwan, said that Ms. Rice “did not succeed in pressuring President Abbas to withdraw from the unity government.” Mr. Radwan said that Hamas “calls on the U.S. administration to respect the Palestinian people’s will, and recognize the government, and open a dialogue with the government.”

The meeting today, beginning with a stilted three-way handshake among Ms. Rice, Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas, took place at Ms. Rice’s hotel in Jerusalem. According to a senior Bush administration official, after about an hour of discussions about the Mecca accord and the proposed unity government, Ms. Rice turned to the two men and said: “Let’s go upstairs and talk about your future.”

The three then went to Ms. Rice’s suite on the 10th floor, overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City, where they talked for more than an hour about what Ms. Rice has termed the “political horizon”: diplomatic-speak for the contours of an eventual Palestinian state.

American officials said that Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas have agreed to meet again in the next few weeks. But a senior Israeli official said that while contacts between the two men would continue, including phone calls, the next face-to-face meeting may not come so quickly. “Soon is the future, and not necessarily the near future,” the official said.

Standing in the way of that next meeting are the still-to-be-determined specifics of the national unity government. In particular, the United States and Israel want to see what formal goals the government sets out on paper. Such a document would not commit the Hamas movement, but it could go further than the vague Mecca agreement toward meeting the three requirements of Western donor nations concerning relations with Israel.

Ms. Rice will probably make her next visit after the new government is formed, perhaps in mid- to late March.

If no new government is ultimately formed, or if one is formed that does not meet the three conditions, then very little will have changed. The Americans will continue to talk to Mr. Abbas as the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the legally established leadership of the Palestinians, and as the Palestinian president. They will continue to shun the Hamas-dominated Palestinian Authority and allow no direct financing of it.

But at the least, Ms. Rice appears set to use the power of her office to drag Mr. Olmert into holding regular conversations with Mr. Abbas.

As Ms. Rice and her aides now seem to understand, one senior American official said, “the status quo here means deterioration.”

No Progress in Middle East Talks - New York Times

Splits Emerge Between U.S. and Europe Over Aid for Palestinians - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:14:00.000-08:00

February 22, 2007

Splits Emerge Between U.S. and Europe Over Aid for Palestinians

By HELENE COOPER

BERLIN, Feb. 21 — Fractures between the United States and Europe began to appear Wednesday over whether the new Palestinian unity government was likely to receive international economic support even as the Middle East peace negotiators officially continued their wait-and-see approach.

After the meeting here of representatives of the so-called quartet of Middle East peace negotiators — the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union — the group released a statement that “reaffirmed” its support for a Palestinian government that would recognize Israel and renounce violence.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said repeatedly that unless the new unity government meets those conditions, the United States will continue its economic boycott of the Palestinian government. So far, the Saudi-brokered government, which included the moderate president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, and the militant Islamic movement Hamas, does not.

But European officials appeared more willing to hold out the possibility of finding members of a new unity government with whom to work. “There are ways that we can be flexible,” one European official said.

The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, who has said that the United States and Europe should look for ways to engage Hamas, was pointed during a news conference about not threatening to continue the boycott if the new government did not recognize Israel.

The quartet communiqué said, “Clearly in this statement we support the formation of a new Palestinian government,” Mr. Lavrov said. “It was also underscored that further steps must be taken to support the Palestinians. One certainly shouldn’t speak of a boycott in this regard.”

In the United States Congress, Representative Nita M. Lowey, Democrat of New York, is blocking $86 million that the Bush administration wants to strengthen Mr. Abbas’s security forces. An aide to Ms. Lowey said she would lift the hold when the State Department provided guarantees that the money would be used only for nonlethal security assistance, like uniforms and communications equipment.

The United States and other Western countries cut off close to $1 billion in direct aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas won last year’s parliamentary elections.

The United States will have a tough balancing act as it tries to keep the quartet united in an economic boycott of the Palestinian government while trying to bolster Mr. Abbas in peace talks with Israel. Those talks, which began Monday with a summit meeting between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, ended a few hours later with little sign of progress.

Mr. Abbas has maintained that he agreed to the pact to end the violence between Hamas and Fatah, which has left more than 100 Palestinians dead.

Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Mr. Olmert said Wednesday that he was willing to meet “again and again” with Mr. Abbas. But he also made clear that serious peace negotiations were unlikely unless the Palestinian government was willing to recognize Israel.

“The agreement signed between Fatah and Hamas does not promise any change in the basic policy toward Israel,” Mr. Olmert said at a news conference.

Hamas says it has no objections to Mr. Abbas’s negotiating with Israel, but Mr. Abbas has limited authority, and Mr. Olmert indicated that would limit the scope of their discussions.

Greg Myre contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

Splits Emerge Between U.S. and Europe Over Aid for Palestinians - New York Times

Iran’s President Vows to Keep Enriching Uranium Despite Expiration of U.N. Deadline to Stop - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:10:00.000-08:00

February 22, 2007

Iran’s President Vows to Keep Enriching Uranium Despite Expiration of U.N. Deadline to Stop

By GRAHAM BOWLEY and BRIAN KNOWLTON

Unbowed by international pressure, Iran’s president vowed yesterday to press ahead with the country’s uranium enrichment program, even as a United Nations deadline to shut the program down passed.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran had a right to pursue nuclear technology and “will continue our work to reach our right in the shortest possible time,” according to the ISNA news agency. Speaking in Siahkal in northern Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, “Obtaining this technology is very important for our country’s development and honor.”

The United Nations seems unlikely to take swift action, because of a sense that the limited sanctions already imposed on Iran by the Security Council are working. Two Council ambassadors in New York and officials in Washington indicated that Iran’s stance had become less truculent and more flexible.

A report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, expected to be released today, will detail the extent of Iran’s compliance with the United Nations demands.

The report may intensify the debate among Western governments about whether to impose more punishing sanctions. It may also deepen the debate within the Bush administration over whether and when to take military action.

Though Mr. Ahmadinejad took a hard line yesterday, he has said in recent days that Iran is prepared to negotiate and offered to stop enriching uranium if Western nations did the same — a proposal that the Bush administration dismissed out of hand.

“Do you believe that’s a serious offer?” Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said yesterday. “It’s pretty clear that the international community has said to the Iranians, ‘You can have nuclear power, but we don’t want you to have the ability to build nuclear weapons.’ And that is an offer we continue to make.”

Germany, which along with France and Britain has led negotiations with Iran on behalf of the European Union, held out hope that talks could be reconvened, but only if Tehran sent clear signals of its sincerity.

American-led efforts to build pressure on Iran gained a prominent backer yesterday when India announced that it had banned the export of anything that could assist the Iranian nuclear program.

In contrast to past instances, when the United States and other countries have cited Iran’s noncompliance as a reason for prompt international action, diplomats said that the only political conversations now in progress about Iran were taking place within national governments, and that United Nations ambassadors in New York had not yet met to discuss their ideas. They said efforts to formulate a United Nations response to the broken deadline would probably take many weeks.

Warren Hoge contributed reporting from the United Nations.

Iran’s President Vows to Keep Enriching Uranium Despite Expiration of U.N. Deadline to Stop - New York Times

Arab States, Wary of Iran, Add to Their Arsenals but Still Lean on the U.S. - New York Times

2007-03-03T18:03:00.000-08:00

February 23, 2007

Arab States, Wary of Iran, Add to Their Arsenals but Still Lean on the U.S.

By HASSAN M. FATTAH

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 22 — As fears grow over the escalating confrontation between Iran and the West, Arab states across the Persian Gulf have begun a rare show of muscle flexing, publicly advertising a shopping spree for new weapons and openly discussing their security concerns.

Typically secretive, the gulf nations have long planned upgrades to their armed forces, but now are speaking openly about them. American military officials say the countries, normally prone to squabbling, have also increased their military cooperation and opened lines of communication to the American military here.

Patriot missile batteries capable of striking down ballistic missiles have been readied in several gulf countries, including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, analysts say, and increasingly, the states have sought to emphasize their unanimity against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“There has always been an acknowledgment of the threat in the region, but the volume of the debate has now risen,” said one United Arab Emirates official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the subject. “Now the message is there’s a dialogue going on with Iran, but that doesn’t mean I don’t intend to defend myself.”

The Persian Gulf monarchies and sheikdoms, mostly small and vulnerable, have long relied on the United States to protect them. The United States Fifth Fleet is based in Bahrain; the United States Central Command is based in nearby Qatar; and the Navy has long relied on docking facilities in the United Arab Emirates, which has one of the region’s deepest water ports at Jebel Ali.

The United States, too, has begun a significant expansion of forces in the gulf, with a second United States aircraft carrier battle group led by the John C. Stennis now in the Persian Gulf and with minesweeping ships.

The expansion has helped calm fears among gulf governments that the United States could pull out of the region in the future, even as it has raised concerns about a potential American confrontation with Iran, accidental or intentional.

As tensions with Iran rise, many gulf countries have come to see themselves as the likely first targets of an Iranian attack. Some have grown more concerned that the United States may be overstretched militarily, many analysts say, while almost all the monarchies, flush with cash as a result of high oil prices, have sought to build a military deterrent of their own.

“The message is first, ‘U.S., stay involved here,’ and second, ‘Iran, we will maintain a technological edge no matter what,’ ” said Emile el-Hokayem, research fellow at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a research center based in Washington. “They are trying to reinforce the credibility of the threat of force.”

Military officials from throughout the region descended this week on the Idex military trade fair, a semiannual event that has become the region’s largest arms market, drawing nearly 900 weapons makers from around the world. They came ready to update their military capacities and air and naval defenses. They also came armed with a veiled message of resolve.

“We believe there is a need for power to protect peace, and strong people with the capability to respond are the real protectors of peace,” said Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of the emirate of Abu Dhabi, at the exposition. “That is why we are keen to maintain the efficiency of our armed forces.”

The Persian Gulf has been a lucrative market for arms. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Oman spend up to 10 percent of their gross domestic product on the military, amounting to nearly $21 billion, $4 billion and $2.7 billion, respectively, estimates John Kenkel, senior director of Jane’s Strategic Advisory Services.

If they follow through on the deals announced recently, it is estimated that countries like the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Saudi Arabia will spend up to $60 billion this year. The biggest buyer in 2006, according to the defense industry journal Defense News, was Saudi Arabia, which has agreed to buy 72 Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets for $11 billion. It also has a $400 million deal to upgrade 12 Apache AH-64A helicopters to the Longbow standard. The kingdom also reportedly plans to acquire cruise missiles, attack helicopters and tanks, all for a total of $50 billion.

Kuwait reportedly bought 24 Apache Longbow helicopters, while the United Arab Emirates has continued to take delivery of 80 F-16 Block 60 fighters, with plans to buy air tankers, missile defense batteries and airborne early warning systems. Bahrain ordered nine UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters in an estimated $252 million deal, while Oman reportedly bought 30 antitank rocket launchers in a $48 million purchase and is planning a naval overhaul.

“It is a message to enemies that ‘We are taking defense seriously,’ ” Mr. Kenkel said, emphasizing that the new arms were for deterrence.

“If the U.S. ever does pull back, these countries in the gulf have realized, they may have to fend for themselves,” Mr. Kenkel said. “As the Boy Scouts say, always be prepared.”

The most marked change is in the public nature of the acquisitions, which previously would have been kept secret, many analysts here said, itself a form of deterrence.

“They have been doing these kinds of purchases since the ’90s,” said Marwan Lahoud, chief executive of the European missile maker MBDA. “What has changed is they are stating it publicly. The other side is making pronouncements so they have to as well,” he said, speaking of Iran’s recent announcements about its weapons capacity.

Senior United States military officials say gulf countries have become more nervous as Iran has conducted naval maneuvers, especially near the Straits of Hormuz, the main artery through which two-fifths of the world’s oil reaches markets.

“A year ago you could have characterized the interaction with the Iranians as professional,” said Vice Adm. Patrick Walsh, departing commander of the Fifth Fleet. “What’s different today has been the number and amount of exercises and the proximity of those exercises to the Straits of Hormuz themselves.”

The exercises were among the reasons for the expansion of Navy forces in the region, he said, but have also raised alarm about the potential for accidents to lead to an unintended war.

Admiral Walsh said that American warships remained in international waters, and that Iranian and American ships kept close watch on one another. Some critics of the Bush administration have alleged that the increased military presence in the gulf risks igniting a conflict.

Admiral Walsh said the increased American presence was aimed at o reassuring gulf states that the United States remained committed to their security, but also welcomed their efforts to build deterrence.

“We have found that we need to be physically present to prevent such armed behavior,” he said of the Iranian maneuvers. “We’re mindful we’re not giving up any water, but also being careful not to take a provocative stance.”

Arab States, Wary of Iran, Add to Their Arsenals but Still Lean on the U.S. - New York Times

Iran Expanding Nuclear Effort, Agency Reports - New York Times

2007-03-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

February 23, 2007

Iran Expanding Nuclear Effort, Agency Reports

By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — In open defiance of the United Nations, Iran is steadily expanding its efforts to enrich uranium, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported Thursday. In response, the Bush administration immediately pressed for more severe sanctions against the country, at a moment of greatly increased tensions between Washington and Tehran.

In a mild surprise to outside experts, the nuclear agency reported that Iran was now operating or about to switch on roughly 1,000 centrifuges, the high-speed devices that enrich uranium, at its nuclear facility at Natanz.

“They are very serious,” said David Albright, a former inspector who is now president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private nuclear study group. “They are installing faster than was commonly expected.”

Coming on the heels of the Bush administration’s accusations that Iran’s Quds Force is sending deadly bombs and other weapons into Iraq, the report heightens what has become a growing confrontation.

Since the last energy agency assessment of Iran’s progress, President Bush has ordered a second aircraft carrier group into waters in striking distance of Iran, an unsubtle reminder that, if diplomacy fails, Mr. Bush could order a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But senior administration officials have insisted in recent days that the show of military force is intended only to remind Iran of Washington’s options, and they have dismissed the idea that Mr. Bush is considering an attack.

On Thursday, administration officials said they hoped to use the agency’s conclusions to return to the Security Council for approval of deeper sanctions, and they said the United States would work outside the Council to persuade banks around the world to cut off more lending and export credits to Iran, in hopes of further damaging its oil infrastructure. Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns will go to London on Monday to begin that process, meeting with the four other permanent members of the Security Council and Germany to talk about tougher sanctions. While Russia and China agreed to the December resolution, which required the inspectors to report back on Iran’s compliance in 60 days, they indicated at the time that they were unwilling to increase the penalties.

The report appeared to confirm that the Iranian government was somewhat behind schedule in its nuclear ambitions: it boasted a year ago of plans to have roughly 3,000 centrifuges running by about now. But the 1,000 that it has nearly ready to run is still more than most outside experts believed it could install. If the country could operate 3,000 centrifuges continuously for a year, it could produce about one weapon’s worth of highly enriched uranium.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Thursday that even though the Iranians were not as far along as they would like to be, they were still far closer to learning how to make bomb-grade uranium than Israel was comfortable with. He dodged questions about at what point Israel might lean toward military action, a step American officials have said that they are trying to discourage.

“We’re a long way from that,” one senior administration official said earlier this week. “We want to make sure that the Israelis are, too.” He said he had no indication that Israel was planning unilateral action.

The report comes at a time of debate within the administration over whether and how to find a way to negotiate with Iran without violating Mr. Bush’s stricture that the country must first suspend its enrichment work. Officials say they are trying to exploit fissures in Iranian society, as some Iranian groups are beginning to question whether the hard-line position taken by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and some of the country’s ruling ayatollahs is worth the cost in sanctions and isolation.

“There are people in Iran who recognize that the path that they’re on is not a useful path, not a constructive path,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Berlin before the release of the report. She said if Iran suspended enrichment, “We could begin negotiations on whatever they would like to talk about.”

On Thursday, Mr. Burns said in an interview that he believed the Security Council resolution in December was having an effect. “We did not fully anticipate the strong impact that it would have,” he said. “It has divided the government in Tehran and frankly knocked them off stride.”

But Iran’s leaders have continued to reject Mr. Bush’s condition for talks — a suspension of nuclear activity — which would essentially undercut their only real leverage in negotiations. Unlike North Korea, which agreed in principle in recent days to freeze its production of new nuclear material, Iran is not believed to possess nuclear weapons, meaning that the uranium enrichment is its main bargaining chip.

Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice are also concerned about losing leverage, senior officials say. With oil at $60 a barrel, they are concerned that no sanctions can truly harm Iran. And negotiating while Iran expands its enrichment capacity, they fear, would mean that as negotiations dragged on, Iran would get closer to being able to produce a nuclear weapon.

In its December resolution , the Security Council gave Iran 60 days to both suspend its operations and answer a series of questions. Open issues, it said, included research on high explosives, which are necessary to detonate an atom bomb, as well as the design of a missile warhead.

“Without such cooperation and transparency,” the report said, “the agency will not be able to provide assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran or about the exclusively peaceful nature of that program.”

Moreover, the Iranians have sharply restricted the access of inspectors to many of the sites they once had freedom to visit. Inspectors were allowed several recent visits to the nuclear complex at Natanz, and their report reflected greater-than-expected progress there. In addition to the 362 centrifuges in its pilot plant there, Iran in recent months has been installing an additional 656 machines in two cavernous underground halls at the complex. Of those, inspectors say, roughly half are at the final stage of testing before the introduction of uranium, and the other half were “in the final stages of installation.”

The report said that between Nov. 2 and Feb. 17, Iranian crews fed 145 pounds of uranium into the pilot plant for enrichment. That is more than they had done in previous intervals. But their effort still produced only about 15 pounds of low-enriched uranium — too little for anything but experimental analysis.

The inspectors expected that effort to expand quickly, saying that Iran planned to begin feeding uranium into the new centrifuges in the big halls by the end of this month, and to continue installing more centrifuges there so that, by May, the total number of operating machines would come to 3,000.

“They’re forging ahead,” said a European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of protocol. “They’re not moving at a huge pace but they’re moving.”

“It’s fairly clear,” the diplomat added, “that Iran still has not addressed the outstanding issues — the scope and intent of the program.”

The Iranians say the cavernous underground halls will eventually hold 54,000 centrifuges, allowing the enrichment of uranium by the ton for reactor fuel rods — or, if the Bush administration’s fears come true, nuclear arms.

The atomic agency in its report said Iran had already moved into the cavernous halls nearly 10 tons of unenriched uranium — enough, nuclear experts said, to make at least one atom bomb. In all, at its sprawling plant at Isfahan, Iran has produced some 200 tons of uranium now ready for enrichment at Natanz. If turned into weapons-grade uranium, that would be enough for more than a dozen nuclear weapons.

Iran Expanding Nuclear Effort, Agency Reports - New York Times

Senate Democrats in Bid to Limit U.S. Role in Iraq - New York Times

2007-03-03T17:56:00.000-08:00

February 23, 2007

Senate Democrats in Bid to Limit U.S. Role in Iraq

By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 — Senior Senate Democrats, stepping up their confrontation with President Bush over Iraq policy, are preparing legislation that would limit the role of United States troops there to counterterrorism efforts and prohibit them from interceding in sectarian violence.

Senate officials said Thursday that the proposal now being drafted would be a new turn in their attempts to force the White House to halt its troop buildup in Baghdad. They described it as more substantive than the nonbinding resolution of opposition to the increase that stalled in the Senate last Saturday.

The officials would speak only if not identified because the central proposal was still being drafted and needs to be presented to all Senate Democrats when they return from a weeklong recess next Tuesday.

They said the proposal was intended to essentially overturn the 2002 resolution granting Mr. Bush the authority to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and limit the military to combating Al Qaeda in Iraq, keeping Iraq from becoming a haven for terrorists and training Iraqi forces. The proposal’s goal, officials said, would be to allow combat forces not engaged in those duties to be removed from Iraq next year.

The chief authors are Senators Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The plan is to try to attach the proposal to an antiterrorism bill the Senate expects to begin considering Tuesday.

Lawmakers and senior aides said that such a plan was unlikely to pass Congress, and even if it did, it would certainly be vetoed by President Bush. But Democrats say their intention is to keep pressure on both Mr. Bush and Congressional Republicans who are facing a public frustrated with the war. Democrats say that other Iraq proposals are likely to emerge as well.

Senate Democrats say they prefer the emphasis on the mission of American troops over a plan by some House members to try to limit United States military involvement by putting restraints on troop deployments based on readiness and equipment availability.

Senate Democrats have been discussing such an approach in recent weeks and decided to forge ahead after Senate Republicans were able to block a vote on the resolution criticizing the troop buildup even though 56 senators, including 7 Republicans, voted last Saturday to debate the resolution.

In meetings with Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, and other Democratic leaders, officials said a consensus emerged that trying to redefine the 2002 resolution was the best approach. Officials said lawmakers and senior aides were still refining the exact language that would be used and were uncertain whether the new proposal would explicitly repeal the initial Iraq war resolution, amend it or take another avenue. “We haven’t crossed that bridge yet,” one official said.

But he and others said they believed the initiative made good political and policy sense because the circumstances had changed so much since the 2002 vote, with Saddam Hussein executed and the search for weapons of mass destruction coming up empty.

Senator Biden foreshadowed his approach in a speech last week when he said that the “the best next step is to revisit the authorization Congress granted the president in 2002 to use force in Iraq. That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“We gave the president that power to destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and, if necessary, to depose Saddam Hussein,” he said. “The W.M.D. were not there. Saddam Hussein is no longer there. The 2002 authorization is no longer relevant to the situation in Iraq.”

Republican leaders have already said they expected the new Democratic effort to be blocked. But Democrats said they saw it as the next step to building a case against Mr. Bush’s war effort and that Republicans could be drawn to it if the war continued to go badly.

They said they believed that the initiative had the capacity to attract broad support from Democrats even though members of the party were splintered over how aggressively to confront Mr. Bush over the war. Officials said they were heartened that the Democratic senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, two strong war opponents, seemed open to the idea of embracing the new proposal by Senators Levin and Biden.

Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, would not discuss the plans that Democrats have for moving forward on Iraq policy next week, saying no final decisions had been made on how to proceed.

Senate Democrats in Bid to Limit U.S. Role in Iraq - New York Times

Leaving the Options Open With Iran - New York Times

2007-03-03T16:24:00.000-08:00

News Analysis

Leaving the Options Open With Iran

By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — As the Bush administration tries to rally allies to tighten sanctions on Iran yet again, it is sending mixed messages to Tehran about its commitment to a diplomatic solution, trying to create new openings for negotiations even while holding open, ever so vaguely, the possibility that the United States might some day resort to force.

In Australia on Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney, one of the strongest advocates of pressing for a “regime change” in Iran, reiterated his belief that a diplomatic solution was possible. But Mr. Cheney noted that “the president has also made it clear that we haven’t taken any options off the table,” a phrase that President Bush frequently uses but has conspicuously avoided in recent weeks while discussing the issue.

At the same time, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice restated her willingness to meet the Iranians anyplace to talk about anything as long as they first agree to stop producing nuclear fuel, even temporarily.

White House officials insist that there is no contradiction.

“The idea that we are ginning up another war — there is no evidence for that,” one senior administration official said Friday. The official added that Iran needed to know that it could not let negotiations drag on forever, and that any talk of military options was a signal that Washington would not negotiate endlessly while Tehran used the time to continue its work on uranium enrichment.

But, so far, the White House has declined to say at what point the Iranians will have pushed the United States too far — in other words, how many working centrifuges in Iran would be too many, or at what point it would be impossible to guarantee that Iran could not achieve a “nuclear option,” the ability to turn ostensibly civilian nuclear facilities into bomb-making ones.

For now, administration officials say, Mr. Bush is happy to leave the Iranians guessing. He ordered an additional aircraft carrier into waters within striking distance of Iran and its nuclear facilities last month, a step that senior officials say they believe took the Iranian leadership by surprise. He has issued warnings to the Iranians not to meddle in Iraq and has focused on intelligence findings that the most deadly bombs used against Americans in Iraq bear marks of Iranian origins.

But Mr. Bush has denied that he is trying to provoke Iran into a response that would provide a pretext for direct confrontation. “To say it is provoking Iran is just a wrong way to characterize the commander in chief’s decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way,” Mr. Bush said at a news conference on Feb. 15, shortly after accusing Iranian forces, but not necessarily the country’s leadership, of worsening the violence in Iraq.

In interviews in recent days, three administration officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity because they were speaking about a strategy still being developed, said the carrier movements, the accusations about weapons in Iraq and the use of sanctions against the government were all intended to provide Mr. Bush with some leverage in dealing with Iran.

The officials have made little secret of their desire to fuel dissatisfaction inside Iran with the country’s fiery president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who on Friday vowed anew to continue enriching uranium, saying, “If we show weakness in front of the enemies, they will increase their expectations.”

R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for policy and the lead negotiator on Iran, said Thursday that the multipronged approach was showing an effect. “We’ve roiled their government, and I think we’ve shocked them a bit,” he said.

Mr. Burns is headed to London for a meeting on Monday with France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China about devising a new, tighter set of sanctions against the Iranian government — one that might include a further crackdown on export credits or conventional arms sales.

Mr. Burns will undoubtedly run into more resistance from the Russians and the Chinese, who told American officials flatly in December that they would not put additional economic pressure on the Iranians. But Mr. Burns said he was not looking for a major escalation of sanctions, and other administration officials say that modest steps would be fine for now.

“The most important thing about the last resolution was that we achieved a consensus, we kept the Russians and Chinese on board,” one senior administration official said. “And in the end, that’s what has serious impact in Iran.”

Administration officials say that the need to hold that consensus together is overriding the differences on Iran that roiled the administration in its first term. Back in 2002 and 2003, when the prospect of a nuclear-capable Iran was more distant, the administration decided not to explore several offers through intermediaries to open discussions. Mr. Cheney and others argued that the success they anticipated in Iraq would chasten the Iranians, bringing them to the table on more favorable terms.

Mr. Cheney, however, appears increasingly isolated now that many of his protégés have departed the Defense Department, the State Department and other corners of the administration. He was described by several top officials as only a minor player in the president’s decision in May to offer incentives to Iran if it agreed to suspend its fuel production.

But the Iranians did not accept last year’s offer, and if the administration and the Europeans are unable to find a formula that works for all sides, the talk of military options is bound to persist.

“No one has defined where the red line is that we can’t let the Iranians step over,” one senior official said. But Mr. Bush, the official said, is determined “not to let them get one lugnut turn away from having a bomb.”

Some diplomats who are trying to bridge the differences between Washington and Tehran insist that Mr. Bush is going to have to give some ground. “To focus only on suspension in my view is not the right approach,” Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said early this week to The Financial Times.

In Vienna on Friday, Dr. ElBaradei repeated his idea of a “time out” to allow talks, with Tehran halting uranium enrichment and the United Nations suspending sanctions. And he has consistently preferred to allow a modest amount of face-saving “research and development” in Iran, and focus instead on preventing the country from having an industrial capacity to produce nuclear fuel.

So far, though, Mr. Bush has said that even that much nuclear knowledge cannot be allowed in a country he does not trust.

Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran.

Leaving the Options Open With Iran - New York Times

U.S. Set to Join Iran and Syria in Talks on Iraq - New York Times

2007-03-03T15:38:00.000-08:00

February 28, 2007

U.S. Set to Join Iran and Syria in Talks on Iraq

By HELENE COOPER and KIRK SEMPLE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — American officials said Tuesday that they had agreed to hold the highest-level contact with the Iranian authorities in more than two years as part of an international meeting on Iraq.

The discussions, scheduled for the next two months, are expected to include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian and Syrian counterparts.

The announcement, first made in Baghdad and confirmed by Ms. Rice, that the United States would take part in two sets of meetings among Iraq and its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, is a shift in President Bush’s avoidance of high-level contacts with the governments in Damascus and, especially, Tehran.

Critics of the administration have long said that it should do more to engage its regional rivals on a host of issues, including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Lebanon. That was the position of the Iraq Study Group, the high level commission that last year urged direct, unconditional talks that would include Iran and Syria.

While the newly scheduled meetings may not include direct negotiations between the United States and Iran, and are to focus strictly on stabilizing Iraq rather than other disputes, they could crack open a door to a diplomatic channel.

Iraqi officials had been pushing for such a meeting for several months, but Bush administration officials refused until the Iraqi government reached agreement on pressing domestic matters, including guidelines for nationwide distribution of oil revenue and foreign investment in the country’s immense oil industry, administration officials said. The new government of Iraq maintains regular ties with Iran.

“I would note that the Iraqi government has invited Syria and Iran to attend both of these regional meetings,” Ms. Rice told a Senate panel on Tuesday, in discussing the talks, which will include Britain, Russia, and a host of international organizations and Middle Eastern countries.

The first meeting — which will include senior Bush administration officials like the State Department Iraq envoy David Satterfield, will be in Baghdad in the first half of March, administration officials said. In early April, Ms. Rice will attend a ministerial level conference, presumably with her Iranian and Syrian counterparts, which will likely be somewhere else in the region, administration officials said.

A year ago, Iranian and American officials announced a planned meeting between the American ambassador to Baghdad and Iranian officials to help stabilize Iraq but the meeting never occurred.

The Iraqi foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, called America’s anticipated face-to-face contact with Iran and Syria — two countries that the Bush administration has accused of destabilizing Iraq — “very significant.”

“Iraq is becoming a divisive issue in the region,” Mr. Zebari said in a telephone interview from Denmark, where he is traveling on business. But, he continued, “Iraq can be helpful to its neighbors also. It can provide a platform for them to work out their differences.”

The United States has accused Iran of meddling in Iraq, including shipping lethal weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq which the Bush administration says have been used in attacks against American troops.

The new United States intelligence chief, Mike McConnell, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that Iran was training anti-American Iraqi Shiites at sites in Lebanon and Iran to use armor-piercing weapons against American troops. Mr. McConnell said it was “probable” that top Iranian leaders, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were aware that weapons had been supplied by Iran.

A State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, said the Iranian-made weapons would be “certainly at the top of our list” in the meetings.

The issue of whether the United States should talk to Iran and Syria has been a steady drumbeat in Washington for several months. When the Iraq Study Group raised it in December, it was quickly brushed off by Mr. Bush, who instead embarked on the more confrontational approach.

In addition to the accusations of Iranian meddling in Iraq, the United States has also been confronting Iran over its nuclear program, which Bush administration officials say is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, a charge that Tehran denies. Vice President Dick Cheney said last week that “all options are still on the table” for Washington to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a comment that has heightened fears that the administration is considering attacking Iran’s nuclear sites.

Administration officials characterized the conflicting signals as part of a larger diplomatic strategy for dealing with Iran that verges on a high-level game of chicken. One senior administration official said that while some Bush officials have advocated looking for ways to talk to Iran and Syria, they did not want to appear to be talking to either country from a position of weakness. By ratcheting up the confrontational talk, the administration official said, the United States was in more of a driver’s seat. He asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.

“We became convinced that the Iranians were not taking us seriously,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who until December was the top aide to Ms. Rice. “So we’ve done some things to get them to take us seriously, so now we can try diplomacy.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, called the announcement a “first step, but it is not enough on its own.”

“Our national security requires a robust diplomatic effort in the Middle East, and the Bush administration cannot again settle for mere half measures,” he said.

Still, administration officials made it clear that, at least for now, any engagement would be limited to talks about Iraq, and not larger issues like Iran’s nuclear program.

The United States broke off diplomatic relations with Iran after the 1979 Islamist revolution and the storming of the American Embassy in Tehran. America still has diplomatic relations with Syria, including a chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Damascus.

Ms. Rice and her deputies have, for several months, pointed to an international conference on Iraq that was established after the American invasion as an available channel to talk to Iran and Syria. Administration officials were working with the United Nations and the Iraqi government last fall to set up the next meeting of the conference, which is sometimes called the International Compact on Iraq. But American officials put off the meeting in part to press the Iraqi government to pass the oil law, administration officials said. The Iraqi government approved a draft of the law on Monday.

As of now, Ms. Rice has announced no plans to hold separate one-on-one talks with her Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, at the planned April meeting.

In 2004, the first meeting of the International Compact on Iraq, held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El Sheik, opened with chatter about whether then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would hold direct talks with his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharrazi.

Mr. Powell and Mr. Kharrazi did not hold a formal session. But the Egyptian hosts of the meeting made the two talk to each other, by seating them side-by-side at dinner. Afterward, an annoyed Mr. Powell said that he and Mr. Kharrazi stuck to polite diplomatic chitchat, discussing subjects like reconstruction after the earthquake in Bam, Iran, and avoiding sensitive topics like the disagreement over Iran’s nuclear program.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington and Kirk Semple from Baghdad. Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

U.S. Set to Join Iran and Syria in Talks on Iraq - New York Times

Senate Democrats Vow to Confront Bush on Iraq but Are Still Working Out the Details - New York Times

2007-03-03T15:13:00.000-08:00

Senate Democrats Vow to Confront Bush on Iraq but Are Still Working Out the Details

Doug Mills/The New York Times

Senators Kent Conrad of North Dakota, right, the Budget Committee chairman, and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican, questioned Defense Department officials at a hearing Thursday.

By CARL HULSE and JEFF ZELENY

Published: March 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, March 1 — Senate Democrats tried Thursday to bridge their political differences over how to confront President Bush on Iraq even as they acknowledged that agreement on an approach remained out of reach.

Skip to next paragraph

Go to Complete Coverage »

“We have not gotten our arms around how the caucus is going to move forward,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said as Democrats searched for a plan that would satisfy antiwar lawmakers, keep the party’s centrists on board and win over some Republicans.

The leadership had been preparing to move forward this week with a proposal that would have essentially repealed the 2002 resolution granting Mr. Bush the power to invade Iraq and imposed new restrictions on how American troops could be used there.

But the plan put off some Democrats, because it said explicitly that “the president is authorized to use the armed forces of the United States in Iraq” for the purposes of protecting American forces and bases, training Iraqi soldiers and policemen, conducting operations against terrorists and protecting Iraq’s borders.

Critics of the war, particularly those who opposed the 2002 authorization, worried that this approach would effectively put them on record as sanctioning almost any use Mr. Bush and his commanders might make of the troops, giving Democrats shared responsibility for a war that most of them now oppose and several have rejected all along.

“It’s still George Bush’s war,” said Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, “but we run the risk of gaining some ownership of it if we don’t make it absolutely clear that we are the party that wants to get out of there.”

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat, said he believed that the party’s leaders were close to reaching a new consensus, but he cautioned that any legislation would have to be precisely written.

“I haven’t given up,” he said. “I really think we can carefully word this and come up with strong support in our caucus. But I am one of the 23 who voted against the war, and I want to read this very carefully to make sure I am not authorizing the war at this point.”

Democrats sought to smooth over the problems by drafting another proposal, which began circulating Thursday. That version made it clear that the intent was to narrow the initial authority for the war and placed new emphasis on the phased redeployment of troops. It also put stricter limits on the United States role in protecting Iraq’s borders and said the conflict required a political rather than a military solution.

Mr. Reid said the Democrats were determined to move legislatively on the war after finishing work on a domestic security measure.

Senate Democrats were somewhat defensive about their internal divisions, which have left them open to criticism that unlike the House of Representatives, they have yet to weigh in with a strong vote on the war even though public dissatisfaction with it contributed to their election gains in November.

“We’ve only been in the majority for six weeks,” said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, another member of the leadership, adding that there had been dozens of committee hearings about what to do. “We are working our way for how to do it right,” she said, “and that’s a lot better than we’ve done in the last three to four years.”

Mr. Reid sought to play down any party divisions, saying Democrats were united behind the broad idea that the “war in Iraq is going wrong.” He noted that 49 senators, nearly all of them Democrats, sought unsuccessfully last month to force a vote on a proposal opposing the administration’s troop buildup in Iraq but were thwarted procedurally by Republicans.

Even as the Democrats searched for a policy solution, the political sensitivity over trying to restrict war spending was brought into sharp focus on Thursday.

Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota and chairman of the Budget Committee, raised the idea of cutting $20 billion from the president’s $145 billion request for next year for Iraq and Afghanistan. But he quickly dropped that idea after fellow Democrats insisted on keeping the president’s number in the nonbinding budget framework that is the first step toward bills financing all of the government’s programs, not just the war.

Democrats in the House and the Senate say that even with popular sentiment against the war, trying to agree on how to influence its course is proving much more difficult than some had anticipated.

In the Senate, a working group of nine Democratic senators and their senior aides have been meeting privately throughout the week, trying to resolve their disagreements on how to limit the president’s war authority.

”It’s tricky finding the right formula where you can express the reservations about what’s going on without interrupting legitimate military activities that are being conducted because we’re there,” said Senator Jim Webb, a Virginia Democrat who was elected last fall. “That’s the debate right now.”

Senate Democrats Vow to Confront Bush on Iraq but Are Still Working Out the Details - New York Times

Latest Reports on Iran and North Korea Show a Newfound Caution Among Analysts - New York Times

2007-03-03T14:53:00.000-08:00

Latest Reports on Iran and North Korea Show a Newfound Caution Among Analysts

By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, March 1 — For more than three years, American intelligence officials have insisted that they learned from their mistakes in the months leading to the Iraq war, when murky information about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs was presented as fact and inconclusive judgments were hardened into statements of near certainty.

The more calibrated intelligence assessments that have come to light in recent weeks, particularly on Iran and North Korea, appear to show a new willingness by American spy agencies to concede the limits of their knowledge.

The new caution reflects adherence to what some officials now call “the Powell Rule.” That rule is intended to avoid a repetition of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s humiliation after the satellite photos and intercepted communications he presented to the United Nations Security Council as proof that Iraq was stockpiling banned weapons turned out to be nothing of the sort.

It was in large part because of the Iraq intelligence debacle that top intelligence officials over the past year have overhauled the way in which they pass judgments about some of the world’s most difficult spying targets, including Iran and North Korea. The new operating approach is intended to ensure that intelligence is solid before it is publicly presented, and even then, that clear distinctions are made between facts and inferences.

Intelligence professionals have several motivations for the new approach. Those include protecting their own credibility and ensuring that assessments can stand up to careful scrutiny in the wake of multiple government investigations condemning the prewar intelligence assessments about Iraq. Officials also said that greater caution had become ever more necessary because of increasing inexperience in the work force; about 50 percent of current intelligence analysts have less than five years of experience.

At the same time, the use of specific, careful language is seen by intelligence professionals as a barrier that can help to prevent intelligence assessments from being exaggerated, twisted or otherwise misused by policy makers to advance specific agendas.

Under the new guidelines, the assessments produced by intelligence agencies must include detailed descriptions of the subjects on which analysts disagree, and analysts must now “show their work” by including in their judgments the chain of logic that led them to their conclusions.

Intelligence analysis has always been more art than science, and in recent statements, American intelligence officials have laid bare the limits of what they believe they know about Iran and North Korea. Officials have said they are certain that Iranian paramilitary groups are providing lethal bomb material to Iraqi Shiite groups, but they do not know whether this support has been approved at the highest levels of government in Tehran.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, Mike McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said that it was possible Iran could produce a nuclear weapon by the beginning of the next decade, but that it was also possible Iran would not develop a weapon until 2015. At the same hearing, another top official acknowledged publicly that the American intelligence agencies were less certain today than they were five years ago about whether North Korea was pursuing a clandestine uranium enrichment program.

John D. Negroponte formalized the new analytical procedures in a directive issued in January, one of his last acts as director of national intelligence. The directive stated that “the analytic process must be as transparent as possible” and that “analysis must be objective and independent of political considerations.”

The pre-emptive war doctrine that President Bush has articulated since the Sept. 11 attacks holds that the United States has an obligation take action against security threats before they fully materialize. A corollary embraced by the White House has held that policy makers must assume the worst about the intentions of adversaries, even with imperfect intelligence about their intentions and capabilities.

That worst-case approach was very much on display when Mr. Bush said with certainty in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. On North Korea, Mr. Bush said in November 2002 that “contrary to an agreement they had with the United States, they’re enriching uranium, with the desire of developing a weapon.”

As intelligence agencies have backed away from those views, some former officials worry that the Iraq experience may cause the pendulum to swing too far in the direction of circumspection. They say that they hope the administration does not accept at face value the denials from North Korea and Iran about their banned weapons programs.

“I worry about that, but I am not willing to accept that doomsday is upon us,” said John R. Bolton, who stepped down in December as ambassador to the United Nations after it was clear he would not win Senate confirmation. Mr. Bolton said he still believed that policy makers would not allow intelligence analysts’ new caution to soften the United States’ policies toward its enemies too much.

The intelligence community’s renewed emphasis on debate and dissent has been reflected in decisions about which officials earned promotions in the aftermath of the Iraq intelligence failures.

Thomas Fingar, who once ran the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, is now in charge of all analysis for the director of national intelligence.

It was Mr. Fingar’s State Department office in 2002 that produced one of the most significant dissents to that year’s National Intelligence Estimate, now discredited, challenging the majority view that Iraq had bought aluminum tubes to build up its nuclear weapons program.

During an interview late last year, Mr. Fingar said it was now his job to ensure there was as much competitive analysis as possible before intelligence reports were completed, if only to avoid a repeat of the 2002 N.I.E. findings, which were pivotal to the Senate vote that authorized the Iraq war.

“The basic idea is to avoid a premature rush to an artificial consensus,” Mr. Fingar said. “The interesting thing is not when analysts agree. It’s when they disagree.”

David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

Latest Reports on Iran and North Korea Show a Newfound Caution Among Analysts - New York Times

Venezuela and Iran Strengthen Ties With Caracas-to-Tehran Flight - New York Times

2007-03-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

enezuela and Iran Strengthen Ties With Caracas-to-Tehran Flight

By SIMON ROMERO

Published: March 3, 2007

CARACAS, Venezuela, March 2 — Iran is already Venezuela’s closest ally outside Latin America, with ventures to produce oil and build cars and tractors together. Now, travelers between the countries can also take a weekly flight between Caracas and Tehran.

The flight, which was inaugurated here on Friday and includes a stop in Damascus, Syria, is operated in a code-share agreement by the Venezuelan state-controlled airline Conviasa and Iran’s national carrier, Iran Air.

Officials at Conviasa said that the company would use a Boeing 747 on the route and that soon it would also make available a European-made Airbus 340.

Under President Hugo Chávez, Venezuela has tightened relations with Iran and expressed explicit support for its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Chávez has also reached out to Syria, making plans to build a $1.5 billion oil refining complex there. He sees relations with Iran and Syria, both under United States sanctions, as a centerpiece of a foreign policy aimed at countering American influence around the world.

Mr. Chávez “is much loved in our country, and our people want to come here to get to know this land,” Abdullah Zifan, Iran’s ambassador to Venezuela, said when plans for the flight were announced last month.

Venezuela is considering extending its economic cooperation agreements to the military sphere. It is discussing a venture with Iran to produce remotely piloted aircraft that could be used for surveillance along the border with Colombia.

Iranian officials are already a staple of state television shows here, invited to discuss the country’s array of agreements in Venezuela, including one to produce Peugeot-inspired Semand sedans at a plant that is expected to start commercial output near Caracas this month.

For Conviasa, the Tehran route will raise its international profile. The airline said in a statement that it would “offer excellent service at solidarity prices,” although no one at Conviasa could immediately say what a ticket to Tehran would cost.

Venezuela and Iran Strengthen Ties With Caracas-to-Tehran Flight - New York Times

Iran and Saudis Plan Summit Talks on Crises - New York Times

2007-03-03T14:14:00.000-08:00

Iran and Saudis Plan Summit Talks on Crises

By HASSAN M. FATTAH and NAZILA FATHI

Published: March 2, 2007

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, March 1 — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran will visit Saudi Arabia on Saturday for a summit meeting with King Abdullah intended to tackle the Middle East’s growing sectarian and political crises, Iranian officials said Thursday.

Skip to next paragraph

Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans his first state visit to Saudi Arabia Saturday to hold a summit meeting with King Abdullah.

The visit, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first state visit to Saudi Arabia, was initiated by Iran, said a former Saudi official with knowledge of the discussions.

It marks the culmination of months of diplomatic efforts by the two regional powers, as well as other Arab countries, to settle the political standoff in Lebanon, cool sectarian violence in Iraq and possibly even avert a looming confrontation with the United States.

To some the trip is seen as a defensive move by an increasingly isolated Iran while to others it marks the start of another public relations offensive for the bellicose president.

“When the views of the two countries get closer, they can play an influential role in the chaotic situation of the Islamic world and the Middle East,” Mohammad Hosseini, Iran’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told the official Iranian news agency, IRNA. “Unrest is increasing in the Middle East and if the situation continues, it will become a threat for all the countries in the region.”

A Saudi official confirmed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s visit, which will include a meeting with King Abdullah on Sunday, but the official Saudi news agency, SPA, made no mention of the trip, adding weight to the theory that the visit was an Iranian initiative.

Rumors of a likely meeting between the leaders had been circulating in Saudi Arabia for the past week, several analysts said, but the exact date appears to have been set within the last few days, just before the United Nations is expected to begin deliberating tougher sanctions on Iran for its continued uranium enrichment efforts in violation of United Nations resolutions.

The announcement also comes just two days after the United States agreed in principle to hold a high-level meeting with Iraq’s neighbors, including Iran and Syria, to help stabilize Iraq, setting the stage for the highest-level contact between American and Iranian officials in more than two years.

The American decision to participate in that Iraqi regional meeting in Baghdad on March 10 was unconnected to the Saudi-Iranian summit talks, American officials said. They claimed to be untroubled by the summit plans despite their strong mistrust of Mr. Ahmadinejad.

King Abdullah and Mr. Ahmadinejad are expected to discuss ways of ending the political standoff in Lebanon between the American-backed government of Fouad Siniora and Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran. Both countries are also concerned that growing sectarian tensions in Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere in the region could fuel further instability.

“The last visit by an Iranian official to Riyadh was by national security chief Ali Larijani last month, but the Iranians were left feeling quite unsatisfied,” said Adel al-Toraifi, a Riyadh-based Saudi analyst with close ties to the government.

Experts said talks had broken down when the Iranians balked at a deal that would increase Hezbollah’s representation in the government, but would also start an international tribunal to try suspects connected to the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, in 2005, a Saudi priority.

Hezbollah took to the streets of Beirut in December demanding a greater role in the government, and threatening to continue its protest until Mr. Siniora resigns or gives its allies more seats in the cabinet.

“The Iranians want to come to an understanding with the Saudis,” said Khaled Dakhil, professor of political sociology at King Saud University in Riyadh. “The Iranians want the help of the Saudis on the nuclear front, and they do want to improve relations between Syria and Saudi Arabia.”

Other likely agenda items are finding a peaceful conclusion to the standoff with the international community. Iran has sought to emphasize to its Persian Gulf neighbors that if the United States attacks it, they too will be affected, analysts say.

The six Persian Gulf states that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council have insisted to Iran that they will not veer from United Nations Security Council resolutions, and that they are preparing to defend themselves.

“They want to deliver two messages — ‘It is bad for the area; if we are attacked you will be affected,’ ” Abdelaziz Sager, chairman of the pro-Saudi Gulf Research Center in Dubai, said of the Iranians. “The other message is, ‘If you have an easy way to solve the crises, tell us what it is.’ They know that the best thing that can happen to Iran at this stage is for the Americans to attack them.”

With Iran poised to gain from possibly two civil wars in the Middle East — one in Iraq and a potential one in Lebanon — Saudi Arabia in recent months has abandoned its behind-the-scenes checkbook diplomacy to take a central, more aggressive role in tempering the region’s conflicts.

The kingdom has increased its public involvement in Iraq and its support of the Sunni-led government in Lebanon, and last month played host to Hamas and Fatah at a meeting in Mecca to settle the differences between the feuding Palestinian factions and form a national unity government.

The talks on Saturday may be a sign that Saudi Arabia’s shuttle diplomacy has begun to have an effect.

“It is a matter of pure interests and the Iranians understand that very well and have their own interests to protect,” said Osama Safa, head of the Lebanese Center for Policies, a research center. “The Saudis have several cards to play at this point, and they will be played when Ahmadinejad comes to Saudi Arabia.”

In Tehran, many were skeptical about the political significance of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s trip. Saudi officials had good relations with former Iranian presidents, like Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, but Mr. Ahmadinejad became a political threat after his fiery rhetoric against Israel and in support of the Palestinians began resonating on Arab streets.

“Riyadh knows that if it wants to have serious discussions with Iran, it has to do it directly with Mr. Khamenei or through Mr. Larijani or Velayati,” said Abbass Abdi, a political analyst in Tehran, speaking of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ali Akbar Velayati, a former foreign minister and more moderate politician who is close to Mr. Khamenei. “This trip is more like a show for Mr. Ahmadinejad to say that Iran is not an isolated country.”

Hassan M. Fattah reported from Dubai, and Nazila Fathi from Tehran. Nada Bakri contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon; Rasheed Abou-Alsamh from Jidda, Saudi Arabia; and Helene Cooper from Washington.

Iran and Saudis Plan Summit Talks on Crises - New York Times

Leaders Spar Over Iran’s Aims and U.S. Power - New York Times

2007-03-03T13:13:00.000-08:00

Leaders Spar Over Iran’s Aims and U.S. Power

Richard Perry/The New York Times

'The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation's resources to fund terrorism, and fuel extremism, and pursue nuclear weapons.' - President Bush

By JIM RUTENBERG and HELENE COOPER

Published: September 20, 2006

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 19 — President Bush and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, separated by several hours and oceans of perspective, clashed at the United Nations on Tuesday over Iran’s nuclear ambitions and each other’s place in the world.

Skip to next paragraph

Transcript: President Bush's United Nations Address (September 19, 2006)

Transcript of Ahmadinejad's Speech (UN.org) (PDF)

Iran’s President Says Nuclear Activities Are Peaceful (September 19, 2006)

Video: Excerpt of Bush’s Speech

Video of Ahmadinejad's Speech (UN.org)

Audio: The Back Story With The Times's U.N. Bureau Chief

Enlarge This Image

Richard Perry/The New York Times

President Jacques Chirac, listening to President Bush’s speech, downplayed talked of division with Mr. Bush.

Stan Honda/AFP -- Getty Images

President Bush was escorted by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan as he arrived at the United Nations.

The two leaders bookended a long day of speeches at the opening of the General Assembly, but seemed to speak past each other as European and American diplomats continued the delicate work of setting terms for talks with Iran over its uranium enrichment program.

Speaking near the prime time of television viewing, Mr. Ahmadinejad, tieless in his trademark off-white sport jacket, accused the United States — while for the most part avoiding naming it directly — of hegemony and hypocrisy, and said it did not seem to have the political will or ability to halt violence in Iraq.

He said that his nation was pursuing only a peaceful nuclear program, and that it was the United States that was using its nuclear weapons to intimidate the world. He said repeatedly that the United Nations Security Council was too beholden to the United States to control it.

“Excellencies, the question needs to be asked, if the governments of the United States or the United Kingdom, who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the organs of the U.N. can take them to account?” Mr. Ahmadinejad said.

Speaking in the morning, Mr. Bush made a direct appeal to the Iranian people from the United Nations, telling them their leaders were misleading them about the United States’ intentions while using their national treasury to sponsor terrorists and build nuclear weapons.

“You deserve an opportunity to determine your own future,” Mr. Bush said during a roughly 20-minute address during the opening session of the General Assembly. “The greatest obstacle to this future is that your rulers have chosen to deny you liberty and to use your nation’s resources to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons.”

It was a rare moment of diplomatic theater between Mr. Bush and his leading Middle Eastern nemesis, a man whose nation is increasingly asserting itself in the region that lies at the heart of Mr. Bush’s foreign policy, and whose nuclear program is a subject of deep concern to the American, European, Chinese and Russian officials trying to rein it in.

Mr. Ahmadinejad had kept a low profile throughout the day, lending a sense of anticipation and buildup to an address that placed him, at least for a night, on an equal platform with President Bush.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who saw his speech last year as a defining moment on the world stage, has called the Holocaust a myth and regularly inveighs against Israel and Jews. His country is in violation of a United Nations deadline to halt its uranium enrichment program.

His repeated references to what he called a lack of “legitimacy” at the Security Council appeared to set the stage for Iran to argue that the Security Council has no authority to impose sanctions against Tehran.

He referred to the United States as “the occupiers” when speaking of Iraq, “the big powers” when referring to the Security Council and “masters and rulers of the entire world” when referring to what he said was an imbalance between world powers and other countries.

He criticized America for not calling for a cease-fire during the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon this summer. “Apparently the Security Council can only be used to ensure the rights of the big powers,” the Iranian president said. “When the oppressed” are targeted, he said, “the Security Council must remain aloof and not even call for a cease-fire.”

Despite anticipation that Mr. Ahmadinejad and Mr. Bush would perhaps have a chance encounter inside the United Nations complex, Mr. Ahmadinejad was not in the building for Mr. Bush’s address and did not attend a luncheon given by the secretary general, Kofi Annan.

Mr. Bush made his remarks hours before Mr. Ahmadinejad addressed the General Assembly himself, creating an expectation of a robust war of words by day’s end.

In an address tailored for both international and domestic consumption, Mr. Bush reiterated his demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment but added, “Despite what the regime tells you, we have no objection to Iran’s pursuit of a truly peaceful nuclear power program.”

It was unclear how many of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s constituents were in a position to hear Mr. Bush’s message, given tight state controls on media in Iran. Many residents have satellite dishes, but the government recently began a campaign to confiscate them; many also have access to the Persian-language broadcasts of Voice of America.

Mr. Bush also defended his foreign policy, exhorting the world leaders in attendance to join with him in his goal of transforming the Middle East by pushing for democracy there.

“From Beirut to Baghdad, people are making the choice for freedom,” Mr. Bush said. “And the nations gathered in this chamber must make a choice, as well: will we support the moderates and reformers who are working for change across the Middle East, or will we yield the future to the terrorists and extremists?

Aides said the speech was in essence a capstone to the series of addresses Mr. Bush has given over the last two weeks intended to refocus the nation’s attention on the threats of terrorism and the administration’s efforts to fight it.

Speaking to what he called “the broader Middle East,” Mr. Bush said, “Extremists in your midst spread propaganda claiming that the West is engaged in a war against Islam. This propaganda is false, and its purpose is to confuse you and justify acts of terror.”

Mr. Bush also met with President Jacques Chirac of France, and they pledged to continue working together on Iran. Mr. Chirac played down comments he made Monday that were interpreted as a sharp break with Mr. Bush, when he indicated that talks with Iran could begin at the same time as the suspension of uranium enrichment, an action the United States demands as a precondition for talks.

Still, in a sign of the uphill battle that is facing the United States as it tries to hold together its coalition seeking to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions, there was little talk of sanctions. Senior Bush officials had initially predicted a breakthrough on a sanctions resolution this week.

Mr. Chirac did not utter the word sanctions during his speech to the General Assembly, repeatedly emphasizing the need for continued talk as Iran continues to resist calls to suspend its program.

United States officials said they were willing to agree to a compromise in which a drive for sanctions at the Security Council would end at the same time the Iranians would end their enrichment program. But a senior Bush official cautioned Tuesday that it is far from certain whether Iran would agree.

“We believe there’s a debate going on within Iran,” the official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, was supposed to arrive in New York for talks with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, on Sunday, and had still not arrived late Tuesday night.

In his remarks, Mr. Bush did not mention Mr. Ahmadinejad by name, directing his criticism at Iran’s “leaders” in general. White House officials disputed any suggestion that Mr. Bush had avoided using the Iranian president’s name so as not to inflame the situation.

Iran’s Leader Relishes 2nd Chance to Make Waves - New York Times

2007-03-03T13:01:00.000-08:00

Iran’s Leader Relishes 2nd Chance to Make Waves

Don Pollard/Council on Foreign Relations

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran had an exchange with members of the Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday evening.

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: September 21, 2006

When President Bush and his advisers decided to allow President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran into the country to address the United Nations, their strategy was simple: containment.

There would be no visits to other cities where he could denounce Washington or question Israel’s legitimacy. There would be no opportunities, beyond his speech to the General Assembly, to turn questions about his nuclear intentions into repeated diatribes about America’s nuclear arsenal.

It turned out that Mr. Ahmadinejad had a Plan B.

The scope of his determination to dominate not only the airwaves but the debate became evident yesterday evening, when he entered a hotel conference room on the East Side with a jaunty smile, a wave and an air of supreme confidence.

Over the objections of the administration and Jewish groups that boycotted the event, Mr. Ahmadinejad, the man who has become the defiant face of Iran, squared off with the nation’s foreign policy establishment, parrying questions for an hour and three-quarters with two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations, then ending the evening by asking whether they were simply shills for the Bush administration.

Never raising his voice and thanking each questioner with a tone that oozed polite hostility, he spent 40 minutes questioning the evidence that the Holocaust ever happened — “I think we should allow more impartial studies to be done on this,” he said after hearing an account of an 81-year-old member, the insurance mogul Maurice R. Greenberg, who saw the Dachau concentration camp as Germany fell — and he refused to even consider Washington’s proposal for Russia to provide Iran with nuclear reactor fuel, and take it back once it is used. (Without the capacity to enrich fuel on its own soil Iran would be unable to make fuel suitable for a nuclear weapon.)

He traced the history of 50 years of unfilled deals with the United States, Germany, France and others — skipping over the Iranian revolution and the hostage-taking that followed — and concluded, “How can we rely on these partners.” His solution? The United States should shut down its own fuel production and “within five years, we will sell you our own fuel, with a 50 percent discount!” He settled back into his seat with a broad smile that some in the group described as a smirk.

The decision by the council’s president, Richard N. Haass, to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad to the session touched off a rare outcry protest in an organization whose meetings are usually as staid as the portraits of long-forgotten diplomats on its walls.

Mr. Haass, who ran the policy planning branch of the State Department during Mr. Bush’s first term, first had to fend off senior administration officials who had argued that he should not give Mr. Ahmadinejad the legitimacy of a hearing — especially with the likes of Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under President Bush’s father, or Robert D. Blackwill, who directed Iraq policy at the White House under Condoleezza Rice.

“It’s fair to say that Dr. Rice thought this was a bad idea,” one senior State Department official said. “A really, really bad idea.”

So did leaders of several Jewish groups, whom Mr. Haass invited — and who promptly asked if the council would have invited Hitler in the 1930’s. “Some of us considered quitting to make it clear how offensive this is,” said Abraham H. Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who was one of the Jewish leaders whose attendance Mr. Haass sought.

But after a flurry of phone calls, including with Elie Wiesel, the writer and Holocaust survivor, they decided against a mass resignation — particularly after the council made the session a “meeting” rather than a dinner. (There were light hors d’oeuvres on the side; Mr. Ahmadinejad never touched them.)

“It is more offensive to break bread with the guy,” Mr. Foxman said. “I thought dinner was crossing the line.”

But the council pointed out that it had served as host for many world leaders equally skilled at repressing dissidents, developing suspected weapons programs, shutting down a free press and denouncing Israel.

“We’ve had Castro,” said Lisa Shields, the council’s communications director, ticking off the gallery of leaders Washington considered rogues. “We’ve had Arafat, and Mugabe. We’ve had Gerry Adams.”

The greeting yesterday evening was not exactly overwhelming. There were no introductory handshakes, no diplomatic niceties. All of the Americans who were invited to attend, including four journalists, were members of the council. Iran’s effort to bring in television cameras was deflected, apparently because the council feared that the session would be used for political purposes in Iran, where Mr. Ahmadinejad is presumably eager to show that even if President Bush refused to meet him, he got his message across.

In fact he did — meeting academics in the morning and religious leaders at midday, and speeding from the council meeting for another television interview. He did most of this without leaving the Intercontinental Hotel on 48th Street in Manhattan.

The council would not say how many of the invitees had refused to attend. But members said they knew of more than a half-dozen, from the publisher Mort Zuckerman to the former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright. It is unclear why some declined. A few claimed scheduling conflicts, rather than moral objections.

The handful who had a chance to quiz the Iranian president went out of their way, within the limits of diplomatic etiquette, to make clear to Mr. Ahmadinejad that they thought his characterizations of Israel and the Holocaust were repugnant and that his nuclear strategy was self-defeating. He gave no ground.

When Martin S. Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel, told Mr. Ahmadinejad that Iran “did everything possible to destroy’’ efforts to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the president said, “If you believe Iran is the reason for the failure, you are making a second mistake.’’ Why, he asked, should the Palestinians be asked to “pay for an event they had nothing to do with’’ in World War II, saying that they had nothing to do with the systematic killing of Jews — if those killings, he added, had happened at all.

“In World War II about 60 million people were killed,’’ he said at one point, when pressed again on his refusal to accept that the Holocaust happened. “Two million were military. Why is such prominence given to a small portion of those 60 million?’’

A few minutes later, he asked a question himself: “In the Council on Foreign Relations, is there any voice of support for the Palestinians?’’

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s habit of answering every question about Iranian policy with a question about American policy was clearly wearing on some of the members, but at the end they acknowledged that he was about as skillful an interlocutor as they had ever encountered. “He is a master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution,’’ Mr. Scowcroft said, shaking his head. Mr. Blackwill emerged from the conversation wondering how the United States would ever be able to negotiate with this Iranian government.

“If this man represents the prevailing government opinion in Tehran, we are heading for a massive confrontation with Iran,” he said.

In fact, on the main issue speeding the two countries toward confrontation, Iran’s nuclear program, the president was unwilling to discuss specifics. He insisted that he was fully cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency, even though it had pages of questions his government refused to answer.

Instead, he steered the whole conversation toward Iran’s rights under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, ignoring an effort by Ashton B. Carter, a Harvard professor, to get him to answer whether the nuclear effort was worth the cost to Iranian society.

“The U.S. doesn’t speak for the whole world,’’ Mr. Ahmadinejad responded, noting that at a meeting of nonaligned nations in Cuba over the weekend “118 countries defended the right of Iran to enrich.’’

And as he left, it was with a jab to his hosts. “At the beginning of the session, you said you were an independent group,’’ he said. “But almost everything that I was asked came from a government position.’’ Then he smiled, thanked everyone and left the room with a light step.

Iran’s Leader Relishes 2nd Chance to Make Waves - New York Times

Iran Is Given More Time to End Uranium Enrichment - New York Times

2007-03-03T12:57:00.001-08:00

September 22, 2006

Iran Is Given More Time to End Uranium Enrichment

By HELENE COOPER

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 — The United States has agreed, once again, to extend the “weeks, not months” deadline that it set in June for Iran to stop uranium enrichment or face Security Council sanctions. The new deadline: early October.

A senior Bush administration official said Thursday that foreign ministers from the six world powers seeking to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions decided Tuesday night to give Iran a little more time to comply with their demand. Iran missed an Aug. 31 deadline for suspending enrichment, and the United States is pushing for a new measure imposing travel bans and asset freezes on Iranian officials.

European officials urged Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to allow more time for the European Union diplomat Javier Solana to continue talks with Iran’s nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, and she agreed, United States and European officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity under diplomatic rules.

The new deadline was first reported Thursday in The Washington Post.

At a news conference at the United Nations on Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said talks were “moving on the right path,” but Iran was seeking “guarantees” and a “framework” because it had “bitter experiences’’ with unfulfilled promises by the West.

He held out the slight possibility that Iran might agree at some point to end nuclear activities. “We have said that under fair conditions and just conditions, we will negotiate about it, under fair and just conditions,” he said. “We will tell you when the time arrives.”

He added: “The bottom line is we do not need the bomb. Some think that bombs can be effective in international relations, but we know that these nuclear arsenals will not benefit anyone.”

Iran Is Given More Time to End Uranium Enrichment - New York Times

Iran Leader, at U.N., Skirts Issue of Hezbollah’s Disarmament - New York Times

2007-03-03T12:57:00.000-08:00

Iran Leader, at U.N., Skirts Issue of Hezbollah’s Disarmament

Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

In a wide-ranging news conference Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed topics including Israel and nuclear energy.

By WARREN HOGE

Published: September 22, 2006

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, refused to say Thursday whether he would comply with a Security Council demand for the disarmament and disbanding of Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed guerrilla group that fought a 34-day war with Israel.

Skip to next paragraph

Multimedia

Audio

Back Story: David Sanger on Ahmadinejad’s Visit (mp3)

Iran Is Given More Time to End Uranium Enrichment (September 22, 2006)

Memo From Iran: At Home, Tehran Deals With a Restive Arab Minority (September 22, 2006)

“I’d like to say that Lebanon’s affairs are its own affairs, and we don’t want to interfere,” he said, when asked about the resolution that ended the combat in Lebanon last month.

He was also evasive about whether Iran would comply with the resolution’s call for an arms embargo to keep Hezbollah from rearming.

He said that the United Nations Charter gave people the right to defend themselves and that “we give spiritual support to all those who want to uphold their rights.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad spoke at a wide-ranging news conference in a packed United Nations conference hall in which he also reiterated Iran’s denial that it was pursuing a nuclear weapon and chastised Western countries for trying to curb Iran’s right to pursue nuclear energy. “Iran considers the nuclear issue a political one,” he said. “They’re not concerned about the bomb, they want to stop the development of our country.”

Asked about his threat to wipe Israel off the map, he argued that his criticism of Israel had been misinterpreted as a rejection of Jews. “These Zionists are not Jews,” he said. “This is the biggest deception we have faced. They are a power group, a power party. We oppose any group that seeks raw power.”

He said Iran “loves everyone around the world, Jews, Christians, Muslims.” But, returning to Israel, he said, “We announce and declare loudly that you will be condemned by the rest of the world if you displace people from their homes.”

His attitude was less belligerent than it had been in his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday evening. He was dressed in what has become his signature light gray jacket over open-necked pink shirt. He smiled frequently, alluding to universal desires for love, justice, peace and happiness, and even apologizing to New Yorkers whom he had seen out his car window having to wait for his motorcade to pass before they could cross the street.

As in his General Assembly address, he depicted Iran as a growing country impatient with the current United Nations order that, he said, gave undeserved authority to the nations that won World War II and limited respect to the countries like Iran that had arisen since.

“When you look at the Security Council, we see that some members of the Council are in fact party to many conflicts around the world,” he said. Even though these countries created the problems, he said, under current arrangements “they nevertheless sit in judgment of world affairs.”

Iran Leader, at U.N., Skirts Issue of Hezbollah’s Disarmament - New York Times

The Iraq Report

2007-03-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

The Iraq Report
From "New Way Forward" to New Commander.
by Kimberly Kagan
03/01/2007 12:00:00 AM

This report, the first of a series, describes the purpose, course, and results of coalition military operations between January 10, 2007, when President Bush announced a change in U.S. strategy in Iraq, and February 10, when General David Petraeus replaced General George Casey as overall U.S. commander in Iraq. It describes operations in Baghdad, in the villages and towns around the capital, and in Diyala province to the northeast. All of these operations preceded the Baghdad Security Plan now getting underway. Some of them were aimed at preparing for that operation; others were independent undertakings responding to local opportunities or challenges. This report describes in detail and evaluates significant combat on Haifa Street in Baghdad, and clear-and-control operations south of Baqubah in Diyala province, placing these operations within the overall strategic context of the struggle. It discusses coalition efforts to disrupt al Qaeda networks in Iraq, the probable effects of those efforts, and the integral relationship between those efforts and efforts to stem sectarian violence. This report also briefly addresses the evidence for at least tacit Iranian support for Sunni insurgents in Diyala. Subsequent editions of the Iraq Report will be published at www.weeklystandard.com approximately every two weeks, and will chronicle and analyze ongoing coalition military operations both in Baghdad and throughout Iraq.

To download the complete report in PDF form, click here.

Introduction

On January 10, 2007, President Bush announced that he would commit more American forces to Iraq, particularly to Baghdad, to secure the population of the capital city. This update places the unfolding Baghdad Security Plan, Operation Enforcing the Law, in context by reviewing the military operations that U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi troops conducted in the month before it began. This background information is necessary for understanding the changes that may occur as a result of the Baghdad Security Plan. Only then can we evaluate that plan's effect on Baghdad and Iraq, and its relationship to the larger U.S. mission in Iraq.

To evaluate a military plan, it is necessary to look at the same categories that military planners use to generate it: the mission, the enemy that generated the mission, terrain, the timing of events (including friendly and enemy movement), the available friendly forces, and the civilian population. One must then examine the different options open to commanders and discuss the balances of risk and opportunity. One then evaluates why they have chosen the course of action they have on the basis of the information they have available. Then, one must evaluate the execution of the plan. One must examine how the commanders and their units react to contingencies and follow up on operations to achieve their goals.

It is also necessary to evaluate the overall concept of operations--how the organization intends to reach its objectives. Military organizations must set and meet a hierarchical series of objectives that will accomplish the overall goal: tactical objectives, such as destroying a safe haven or holding a piece of terrain; operational objectives, such as securing a city; and strategic objectives, such as establishing a secure and democratic government. These objectives are hierarchical: the tactical objectives must contribute to the operational level objectives, and they in turn must lead to the strategic level objectives. It is not possible simply to focus on strategic objectives or on tactical objectives; one must accomplish tactical missions and operational missions to achieve strategic success.

This edition of the Iraq Report reviews the nature of the mission, the concept of operations, the enemy, the terrain, the timing of events, and some aspects of the civilian population during early 2007. It demonstrates how events in the provinces and in the outskirts of Baghdad influence events in the capital. From open sources, the Iraq Report shows the nature of the al Qaeda network in Iraq, and some aspects of how and where it is now functioning. It discusses some significant military engagements in Diyala Province, in Baghdad, and in Najaf. These operations demonstrate how terrorists bring sectarian violence to a community. They also show different approaches that local commanders have taken to solving the problem of sectarian violence. This Iraq Report shows why some recent military operations have succeeded and others failed.

Insurgencies and counterinsurgencies are complex. But they are also comprehensible. The fragments of information available in open sources form a cogent, overall pattern that policymakers and other informed observers can understand, just as they can understand any military operation.

General Casey's Mission Statement and Intent

General George Casey remained in command of Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) until February 10. As the top-ranking general in Iraq, General Casey set the mission for coalition forces in Iraq in January and early February: "Since the inauguration of the Iraqi government, MNF-I forces remain in Iraq at the behest of its leaders. Coalition forces are committed to supplementing Iraqi Security Forces in ongoing operations--and striking at al Qaeda in Iraq in particular--but increasingly are focused on helping build and train the ISF with the eventual goal of leaving Iraq able to secure its streets, its borders and its citizenry without Coalition help."

Concept of Operations / Operational Design

The pattern of operations in January and early February supported this mission. In early January and February, American, Coalition, and Iraqi forces throughout Iraq engaged in coordinated raids and strikes in order to disrupt terrorist, insurgent, and militia networks. They killed or captured terrorists, destroyed enemy safe-havens, and oversaw controlled detonations of weapons caches. U.S. troops supplemented Iraqi Security Forces which requested assistance. They also trained Iraqi forces.

American forces were particularly active during this period within Baghdad and in the belt of cities and towns that surrounds the capital (from Falluja south and east to Mahmudiyah, Iskandariyah, Salman Pak, north to Balad Ruz and Baqubah, west to Tikrit and Balad and thence back to Falluja). Most of these towns are within one or two hours' drive of Baghdad--easy commuting distance for businessmen and insurgents. Operations in Baghdad focused on clearing out significant insurgent strongholds and attempting to turn cleared areas over to Iraqi forces. Operations around Baghdad focused on disrupting insurgent networks that had established bases and built up weapons caches in towns and villages all around the capital. These networks move weapons and fighters along various routes from these bases to attack targets in Baghdad, Falluja, Baqubah, and elsewhere. Coalition operations focused on disrupting these networks by clearing out these bases. In some cases, U.S. forces remained behind after the clearing operations to keep the insurgents out. Most, but not all, of these operations were part of a larger effort to create the preconditions for the success of the Baghdad Security Plan, but they were not part of that plan, which was not yet operative during the period covered by this report. This period also saw operations in Anbar Province, in the north (Ninewah and Salah-ad-Din provinces), and to the south. These operations will be considered in subsequent reports.

Operations Outside of Baghdad: Disrupting Terrorist Networks

U.S. forces use their intelligence assets to identify insurgents and IEDs directly targeted at coalition forces, but they also use intelligence to develop an image of how the insurgent group functions. They then identify particular "nodes" in the network that seem to enable a disproportionate number of other insurgents to function: leaders, weapons caches, safe havens, or assembly points. Units leave their base for one or several days, cordon and search an area, or otherwise take control of a location in order to seize people or information. Alternatively, they destroy important, identified enemy sites. They then return to their base. In subsequent operations, they may exploit the intelligence that they collect.

Many of the military operations in Iraq in January followed this pattern. MNF-I Press releases describe such activities weekly in various neighborhoods and suburbs of Baghdad. Beyond the capital, such targeted raids occurred in Tarmiya (series of raids, January 6-8); Risalah (January 14); Balad (January 12); al-Haswah (January 13); near Samarra (week of January 13); Jazeera (outside Ramadi, January 17); Falluja, Tikrit, North Karmah and the vicinity of eastern Balad (January 21, apparently coordinated).

These raids aimed to disrupt the ways that insurgents conduct their activities. Some insurgent groups rely heavily on particular leaders to function. Insurgents rely on particular locations in order to move and meet freely to plan operations, transport goods, and store them. Insurgents assemble car bombs and other explosive devices in "safe" areas. Other insurgents transport them to the locations where they will be used, and still others emplace them so that they will harm friendly forces or civilians. Car bombs, truck bombs, and other IEDs do not usually originate in the locality where they explode.

But some of these raids are actually part of larger operations (although it is not always immediately apparent from media coverage or press releases when this is the case). MNF-I reported a raid outside of Balad Ruz on January 11. This raid was not a single incident, but was one part of a well-planned, ten-day clearing operation involving 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. The operations around Balad Ruz are worth attention because they illustrate the links between terrorism and sectarian violence in Iraq. They also demonstrate how kinetic counterinsurgency operations can unfold successfully in rural areas, and how security can be a necessary prerequisite for economic and political development. The events in Balad Ruz also show the links between terrorism in the cities and countryside of Iraq.

Terrorism and Sectarian Violence in Balad Ruz: Clearing Rural Villages

A large, Wahhabist terrorist group with links to al Qaeda has been operating in the southern outskirts of Balad Ruz, a town of roughly 80,000 in Diyala Province. Diyala has long been an insurgent stronghold. U.S. forces killed al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi near Baqubah, the provincial capital, on June 8, 2006. Balad Ruz is located about an hour's drive north of Baghdad and about 35 miles east of Baqubah. The main road to the north and east of Baqubah goes through Muqdadiyah, and the main road south of Baqubah goes to northern Baghdad. U.S. forces are stationed at Muqdadiyah and Baqubah, and so traveling from one to the other is not always easy. Balad Ruz sits upon the secondary roads that link Muqdadiyah with Baqubah and southeastern Baghdad. Terrorists use this secondary road to circumvent U.S. forces.

Balad Ruz is well-located for terrorists for other reasons. The road from Baqubah to Balad Ruz ends at Mandali, the last town before the mountainous Iranian border, 24 miles west of Balad Ruz. Mandali is not a border crossing, but a secondary road runs from Mandali to the major border crossing at Khanaqin, 48 miles north. And a road without an authorized point of entry crosses the Iraq-Iran border 24 miles north of Mandali. So it is possible to travel from the Iranian border to Balad Ruz with a quick drive or a 2-3 day walk (with or without a donkey). The road from Mandali continues south to Kut.

The Wahhabists in this area have been inciting sectarian violence in Balad Ruz and Baqubah. The Council, as they called themselves, issued judgments (a common practice of Sunni Islamist groups when they can control an area, and one of the first means they use to assert the supremacy of Sharia law as they interpret it--and, thereby, demonstrate their own domination), and they were tied to al Qaeda and to Zarqawi. In November, they kidnapped several families from local Shiite tribes, and killed all the men--thirty-nine civilians. They also perpetrated attacks almost daily on the people of Balad Ruz, Iraqi forces, and coalition forces. They frightened the local residents in the town and outlying lands where they established their safe-havens. Many left the area, while the remainder complied with the terrorists' demands out of sympathy or fear. Consequently, the terrorists turned the tiny villages south of Balad Ruz, once predominantly Shiite, into almost exclusively Sunni habitations. As the terrorists perpetrated violence there, merchants closed their shops in Balad Ruz.

The 5th Squadron of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment (3rd BCT, 1st Cavalry Division) was conducting reconnaissance on 12 November just south of Balad Ruz. The 5-73 discovered a weapons cache in thick date palm groves and irrigation canals. At that time, well-trained enemies defended the stockpiles, and the U.S. forces fought them for four days. When they had defeated the enemy, the U.S. forces returned to their base and developed intelligence about the enemy, which was unusual. It did not behave like other insurgent groups, which often detonate weapons remotely, flee when U.S. forces make contact, and return only when they leave.

The 3rd BCT, 1st Cavalry Division conducted deliberate, small-scale raids and air assaults (the movement of infantry soldiers into combat by helicopter) during the next six weeks in order to establish and identify patterns of enemy behavior. The enemy became predictable by moving south whenever it was attacked from the north. These raids also drove the enemy into what it thought was a safe-haven or good defensive position. The terrorists massed their forces in sparsely populated agricultural areas, rather than in the population center in Balad Ruz. The inhabitants live in tiny villages, grow wheat, and herd sheep. The terrain is criss-crossed with irrigation canals and ditches. The enemy was well organized and well prepared to fight. They developed a complex system of signals, fortified irrigation ditches and dug spider holes in them, used motorcycles to move through the canals, and fought in squads (small formations of 9-11 soldiers operating together--the squad is the smallest unit in most armies). Enemy fighters physically separated themselves from the population, making it possible for U.S. forces to conduct major combat operations without harming civilians, which is normally a difficult problem in a counterinsurgency environment. Even so U.S. forces dropped leaflets to inform the villagers that they would soon be arriving in force, to ensure that the civilian population knew that military forces were coming and what their intentions were.

On January 4, the 3rd BCT, 1st Cavalry Division launched Operation Turki Bowl (named after Turki Village, the southernmost objective), along with the 5th Iraqi Army Division. Air assault operations closed off the southern escape routes, while maneuver forces began to clear the agricultural villages from the north. The enemy destroyed bridges and placed obstacles on the roads in order to slow forward movement and divert vehicles toward explosives. Forward elements of the enemy sent up a smoke signal to indicate that U.S. and Iraqi forces had arrived. And U.S. and Iraqi forces did not find any military-age men in the villages it cleared on the first day of operations. Likewise, they found few young or middle-aged men in their house-to-house searches on subsequent days. According to one detained witness, insurgents fled into the irrigation canals on motorcycles as soon as they heard U.S. helicopters.

During operations, U.S. forces spotted some bands of men on motorcycles driving through the canals, and called in artillery or close air support. Masked men also used the vehicles regularly to inform inhabitants about which roads the group had mined, and indeed, the insurgents continued to mine return routes after American vehicles passed through in their forward sweep. U.S. and Iraqi forces ultimately found concealed motorcycles, in addition to arms caches. During the operation, other villagers informed the ground forces about weapons caches, escape routes, and safe havens.

After several days, some of the men returned home to the villages. Troops discovered and questioned a group of seven and another of nine on two farms--suggesting that a few squads or their remnants had returned. U.S. soldiers found no evidence against them. They also detained a group of fifteen men in Turki Village for illegal possession of heavy weapons, including an Iranian-made machine gun.

The operation concluded on January 13. U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 100 insurgents and detained 50 others during Operation Turki Bowl, though the enemy never fought as intensely as it had in November. Coalition troops discovered 25 weapons caches, which contained armaments that would sustain a large terrorist network: 1,172 Katyusha rockets, 1,039 rocket propelled grenades, 171 TOW anti-tank missiles, machine guns, and anti-tank mines. The insurgents were well-prepared to defend their position against infantry and vehicle assaults. And they were apparently perpetrating violence and supplying weapons as far west as Baqubah.

Following combat operations, the U.S. and Iraqi forces built a combat outpost where they each stationed a company permanently to patrol the area. Their mission is to provide security for the area, so that insurgents do not return. Shopkeepers in Balad Ruz have reopened for business. The mayor of Balad Ruz has allocated attention and local resources to the area, which had not been governed effectively by the town. The governor of Diyala visited Balad Ruz, and he and the mayor have compiled a plan to get the money from Baghdad that they need for reconstruction and economic growth. The hope is that displaced residents will be able to return to this area.

In subsequent patrols, the Iraqi and U.S. companies discovered another substantial weapons cache. The network has not regrouped locally. A suicide bomber attacked a group of civilians in Balad Ruz during the Ashura holiday, as they made the religious procession to their mosque. He killed twenty and wounded sixty people in this attack designed to kill and inspire fear in local Shiites, undermining their confidence in the otherwise improving security situation. On February 1, the day after the attacks, local civic leaders and tribal sheiks nevertheless met with the governor of Diyala Province and the commanders of the Iraqi Army and Police in the region to discuss the security situation and reconstruction. Local citizens also attended the meeting.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have been operating in Baqubah and Muqdadiyah to follow up on their successes in Balad Ruz. On February 21, Iraqi border police found a large cache of weapons east of Balad Ruz in Mandali, a town on the border with Iran. The cache contained anti-personnel mines, mortar rounds, ammunition, and a rocket-propelled grenade. Mandali is a remote town, and the roads to and from it lead west to Balad Ruz (and thence to Baqubah and Baghdad), or else to Iranian border-crossings.

Placing a weapons cache in Mandali makes sense only if fighters are moving across the Iran-Iraq border. The Iranian region to the east of this border is remote and sparsely inhabited. Mandali is located at 380 feet above sea level. Immediately to its east across the border, mountains rise steeply to 3,000 foot peaks that continue well into Iran. The level fields of Diyala province, in contrast, are only an hour from Baghdad. They are vexed by violence. One must deduce from the evidence that fighters are moving weapons from the Iranian side of the border to Iraq.

Weapons may be coming through the border crossing Khanaqin or along the trail that reaches Mandali. Coalition forces raided an alleged foreign fighter facilitator site near Khanaqin in early December, and killed one terrorist who opened small arms fire at a U.S. aircraft returning from the mission. A concealed bomb exploded in Khanaqin during the Ashura ceremonies, killing and wounding civilians in that town (the population of which is predominantly Shiite Kurdish) just an hour before the one in Balad Ruz. Together, this evidence suggests that Sunni foreign fighters have a network that operates between Iran and the towns of Khanaqin, Mandali, Balad Ruz, and Baqubah.

Operation Turki Bowl helps highlight the nature of sectarian violence in Iraq. Sunni and Shiite families were living together in rural villages outside of Balad Ruz without violence and sectarian killing. The al Qaeda-linked insurgent group moved into the desolate, rural area because it was not governed effectively from Balad Ruz, nor patrolled by U.S. or Iraqi forces, and because it offered excellent cover and concealment. The insurgents sparked a Shiite exodus from the area by kidnapping Shiite families and executing the young men. This terrorist act not only conveyed the horrible symbolic message of sectarian violence. It also deprived the Shiite families of the men who could defend them from further violence. The local Sunni population collaborated with the terrorists largely because they feared them. Some young men fought with the terrorists, whether willingly or through intimidation. When U.S. and Iraqi forces arrived in the tiny villages and searched from house to house, the locals provided them information about weapons caches and insurgent activity. In Balad Ruz, sectarian violence and collaboration with terrorists occurred because strong terrorists were physically present. When coalition forces removed the terrorists, the violence stopped, refugees began to return, and political and economic processes began anew.

This operation and others like it around the belt of villages and cities around Baghdad were designed to have an effect beyond the immediate local area. Caches of weapons as large as those found near Balad Ruz could also have supplied major insurgent activities in Baqubah and in Baghdad. Simply eliminating these caches would not, achieve larger effects without the Baghdad Security Plan. Eliminating them as coalition forces prepare to clear and retain large areas of Iraq's capital deprives the enemy of some resources that he would otherwise use to defeat the Baghdad Security Plan. Although not a part of that plan, which had not yet begun when Operation Turki Bowl was underway, these operations are part of an effort to establish the preconditions for the success of the BSP.

Patrols and Raids to Oust Insurgents and Stabilize Baghdad

Haifa Street--Typical and Atypical

In January, units inside of Baghdad conducted a variety of patrols and raids to disrupt insurgent activity and stabilize Iraq's capital city, but these were not part of Operation Enforcing the Law, the Baghdad Security Plan begun on February 13.

Some raids, like the fight along Haifa Street in the Karkh neighborhood of Baghdad, were reactions to requests by Iraqi Security Forces who could not handle the violence in their areas of operation without American help. A large-scale, multi-day battle between insurgent and coalition forces erupted on Haifa Street in early January. The Haifa Street battle was atypical of joint U.S.-Iraqi engagements in December and January--and indeed, insurgent engagements--in scale and duration. But in some ways, the Haifa Street battle shows the parameters that guided coalition commanders last month, when they addressed a difficult security problem in Baghdad. Haifa Street also received significant media attention that did not place the battle clearly within the larger context of the challenges in Iraq and coalition plans and operations. It is therefore worth reviewing in some detail.

Haifa Street runs for two to three miles through central Baghdad along the west bank of the snaking Tigris River. Many of its buildings are high-rise apartments, some twenty-stories high. Because of their central location and height, their commanding view of Baghdad, and their proximity to the Green Zone, the buildings on Haifa Street are dominant urban terrain, and highly defensible. By the beginning of 2005, insurgents were using Haifa Street as a safe-haven. In spring 2005, the 1st battalion of the 9th Cavalry Regiment (part of the 4th BCT of the 1st Cavalry Division) cleared the neighborhood, conducted presence-patrols along with Iraqi forces, and repaired damage that they caused to the roads during combat. They departed, and left Iraqi forces in charge. Some Shiite families fleeing Khadimiyah, to the north of Karkh, moved into residences on Haifa Street. They were "protected" by a leading member of the Jaysh al-Mahdi who operated in the vicinity of Haifa Street until he was arrested. Sunni insurgents then returned to the Haifa Street area from other neighborhoods and victimized the Shiite refugees inhabiting the buildings. U.S. forces are attested patrolling the area in mid-October 2006. Even then, Haifa Street was marked by violence. Snipers shot at U.S. forces from rooftops and threw grenades at them from the high-rises.

On Saturday, January 6, 2007, Iraqi troops on patrol discovered a fake checkpoint in the neighborhood, manned by insurgents. The Iraqi forces killed thirty insurgents on that day. That night, the insurgents dumped in the neighborhood twenty-seven corpses of Shiites whom they had executed. On Sunday January 7, an insurgent sniper killed two Iraqi security guards at a neighborhood mosque where he was hiding. On Monday, January 8, "gunmen roamed the streets, distributing leaflets threatening to kill anyone who might enter the area." When the Iraqi unit in the area attempted to oust the insurgents from their stronghold later that day, two of their soldiers were killed in action. The Iraqi unit then called in American forces to help them clear out the insurgents' safe-haven.

The American reinforcements, the 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, (part of the 3rd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division, equipped with Stryker light armored vehicles), had been operating as a strike force in early January, going to hotspots and temporarily improving local force ratios. On January 3, 2007, before the Haifa Street battle, elements of that unit continued Operation Arrowhead Strike III, in and around the Hurriyah neighborhood, in the Khadimiyah district in northwestern Baghdad. They conducted "clear and control" operations "in order to disrupt terrorist and militia activity and enable control and retention by coalition and Iraqi security forces." It is not clear from open-source data whether their move to Haifa Street disrupted Operation Arrowhead Strike III, or whether they had completed that mission when they went to Haifa Street.

The 1-23 Infantry Battalion moved out of its assembly area at 3:30 a.m. on Tuesday, January 9. Two hours later, it had joined with the Iraqi forces around Tala'a Square, on the north end of Haifa Street and in the center of the neighborhood, occupied buildings, and began rounding up suspects. Approximately 1,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops were in the area. At 7:00 a.m., the insurgents began firing on U.S. and Iraqi troops and their vehicles from sniper positions on the roofs and the doorways of buildings. They also coordinated their mortar fire, indicating a high degree of training and cohesiveness. And they continued to fight, rather than running away from American forces, as the enemy typically had done, surprising American forces. U.S. and Iraqi forces had not cordoned off the area before or during the fight. The insurgents occupied positions in successive buildings, and moved effectively from building to building as the American and Iraqi forces went from one to the next. The battalion from the Stryker Brigade called for close air support from Apache helicopters and F-18s, which targeted the snipers on the building roofs until roughly noon. On the ground, the U.S. battalion remained engaged for eleven hours. They patrolled the area after dark with their heavy vehicles, and Iraqi soldiers took positions on the rooftops. No U.S. troops were killed in action. They killed fifty-one insurgents, and captured 21, including several foreign fighters.

The Iraqi unit remained in the neighborhood, but the Stryker battalion had left the area by one week later. The First Cavalry Division had taken responsibility for patrolling Haifa Street by January 16. Conflicting and unreliable witness reports do not allow one to determine whether and how often American troops patrolled the area. Insurgents had reinfiltrated the area by 23 January, just two weeks after the 1-23 Infantry Battalion initially confronted them, according to intelligence reports mentioned by a spokesman for Prime Minister Maliki. The 1-23 Infantry therefore returned to clear the area of insurgents once again. Operation Tomahawk Strike 11, as it was called (after the Tomahawks, the nickname of the 1-23 Infantry Battalion), began when that battalion entered the area from the south at 2:00 a.m. on 24 January. They were ultimately joined by Iraqi forces and by elements of the 2nd BCT of the 1st Cavalry Division. Their mission was "aimed at rapidly isolating insurgents and gaining control of this key central Baghdad location.... Reducing sectarian violence is vital in transferring security responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces and provides a safer living environment for Iraqi residents," according to officials. Together, the units brought infantry, Strykers, and Bradleys (more heavily armored fighting vehicles than the Strykers, with tracks rather than wheels) into the fight. Americans moved from building to building. An enemy in a Shiite neighborhood on the east side of the Tigris River shelled them with mortars, and snipers opposed them from covered positions on street level and from the windows of buildings. They identified a major weapons cache at Karkh High School, cordoned off the area, and allowed only pedestrian traffic on Haifa Street.

According to Iraqi officials, the engagement on 24 January was not part of the Baghdad Security Plan. Rather it was meant to "prepare the way for a more concerted effort to clear out and hold troubled neighborhoods." Like the operations in the Baghdad suburbs, the fight for Haifa Street was an effort to create the preconditions for the success of the BSP by denying the insurgents bases and safe havens from which to disrupt that operation when it began.

By February 1, 2007, the 1st of the 23rd Infantry Battalion had left Haifa Street again, and elements of the 6th Iraqi Army Division were patrolling that sector.

The battles on Haifa Street illustrate a pattern of U.S. and Iraqi Army engagements in Baghdad. U.S. forces cleared the area of insurgents in 2005, and then turned the area over to Iraqi troops. The year of sectarian violence destabilized the area, allowing Shiite militiamen to gain some control over the neighborhood. The Iraqi soldiers were able to patrol the area, though obviously not without challenge. Sunni militants moved in, took over the stronghold, and tried to establish control over the area. The Iraqi unit responded first in the emergency. But it did not think that it had the capability to clear the area of insurgents without American assistance. From the difficulty that American forces had, that judgment was surely correct. The Iraqis called for and received American help within 24 hours.

But U.S. forces did not remain in sufficient numbers to retain the area. Rather, Iraqi troops stayed behind. American troops may have patrolled the area after the fight, but it took less than two weeks for insurgents to reoccupy the area. When U.S. forces had flowed elsewhere, the insurgents re-entered the neighborhood.

It may be significant that this second enemy had a stronghold across the Tigris River, in a Shiite neighborhood, and that commanders identified ending sectarian violence as a priority there. But this is a speculation from the evidence, rather than a firm conclusion.

The Stryker Brigade, which has different vehicles and capabilities from other U.S. units, did not have a bounded area of operations (AO) in Baghdad. Rather, in this time period, it responded to problems throughout the Baghdad AO whenever it was needed. From the Haifa Street fight, we see that it had the ability to clear a small but difficult area. It did not to remain to control and retain areas, nor did other American forces. Rather, they left Iraqis behind, exposing the neighborhood to insurgents after it withdrew. The solution is probably not to pin down Stryker units, which are more mobile than others, but rather to keep other units in areas to prevent the enemy from moving and operating freely.

Haifa Street is emblematic of the reactive, raiding posture that U.S. forces adopted throughout the theater in December 2006 and January 2007. When intelligence--whether Iraqi or U.S. or Coalition--pinpointed a major insurgent stronghold, U.S. forces raided it to capture insurgents and deprive them of a safe haven. Once again, such activities are unlikely to produce large-scale effects by themselves, or even when combined into a broader raiding program. They can, however, weaken enemy forces in preparation for significant clear-and-control operations to follow. It is unclear whether this was the objective of American operations on Haifa Street, but it is likely to be the most important result.

Setting the conditions for the Baghdad Security Plan

The second battle on Haifa Street, therefore, fits into two patterns. In some ways, it was a reaction to the failure of U.S. forces to hold the neighborhood after January 9. It was also a high-profile preliminary operation that set the conditions for the Baghdad Security Plan.

Weapons Caches

In January and early February, much of the reported activity in Baghdad focused on identifying weapons caches and destroying insurgent safe-havens in and around the city. Some of these operations were ongoing, and others apparently aimed to set the conditions for beginning the Baghdad Security Plan.

The units assigned to Multi-National Division-Baghdad (MND-Baghdad) conducted 34 operations at company level or higher, including 7,400 patrols, from February 3-9, 2007. Many of these were joint U.S. and Iraqi patrols. Patrols are detachments of units sent out by their commanders to secure the unit or harass the enemy. Patrols were searching for weapons in areas where insurgents were known to operate. According to Brigadier General John Campbell, the deputy commander of MND-Baghdad, the location and mission of operations are likely to shift as the Baghdad Security Plan is implemented.

MND-Baghdad units discovered and destroyed sixty weapons caches between 3 and 9 February. The searches by two RSTA Squadrons (reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition units) and one Stryker Brigade outside of Baghdad found huge stockpiles. Soldiers from one U.S. squadron, partnered with one Iraqi Army battalion, discovered more than 400 mortar rounds northeast of the capital. Soldiers from another U.S. squadron, similarly partnered with the Iraqi Army, discovered multiple weapons caches in Yusufiyah, south of Baghdad, including one that contained over 1,100 high-explosive mortar rounds. And those from a third U.S. Brigade Combat Team, partnered with an Iraqi Brigade, conducted raids and seized a variety of weapons and munitions. Military officials said that operations in Arab Jabour, south of the capital, "target[ed] local al-Qaida terrorists" who were making car bombs or supplying the component parts for such devices. Troops also discovered rocket propelled grenades and a truck-mounted rocket launcher, as well as small arms. In a village west of Baghdad, operations by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers destroyed a building used by terrorists as a sniper position, where they also suspected weapons were being stored. These events occurred on February 9, 2007.

These weapons stockpiles show the extent to which enemies have built up their capabilities, but also where: an unspecified area northeast of the capital; south of Baghdad in the mostly Sunni suburb called Arab Jabour and in Mahmudiyah; and in the west of Baghdad. The locations of these weapons caches are not random.

In early January, aides to Iraq's Prime Minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, identified the areas surrounding Baghdad as safe-havens for Sunni insurgents who stockpile and manufacture the car bombs and other explosives that terrorists use in the central areas of Baghdad. Baghdad is surrounded by farmland and other rural terrain. There are many impoverished villages on its outskirts, and larger settlements beyond them. Fighters can follow several lines of communication (roads and rivers) from these cities, through these villages, and into, through, and out of Baghdad. The caches at Arab Jabour and Mahmudiyah suggest that fighters move into and out of the city along the southern highways, picking up weapons at the major stockpiles. The enemy may then place the weapons in smaller caches, from which they can place explosives on routes that U.S. troops move along. Alternatively, enemy operatives transport the weapons to Baghdad. Likewise, they move along the northern highways from Baqubah to Baghdad, and foment sectarian violence in both cities. Caches located in western Baghdad may supply insurgent activities in Baghdad or Falluja (just an hour to its west by car), and an insurgent network links both cities. Consequently, U.S. forces have been stationed along the major lines of communication (roads and rivers) into and out of Baghdad.

Terrorist Networks Ringing Southern and Western Baghdad: al Qaeda and Car Bombs

Car and truck bombs are the hallmark weapons of al Qaeda, and coalition attempts to stop car-bombing rings can illustrate where al Qaeda operates in and around Baghdad, and throughout Iraq.

Arab Jabour has been a haven for al Qaeda operatives for some time. This predominantly Sunni suburb lies to the south of Baghdad, stretching through rural areas along the west bank of the Tigris River, lined with date palms. The U.S. has captured and killed several high-value al Qaeda leaders there--a military emir (as al Qaeda calls its commanders) and a cell leader for that neighborhood--sometime before December 2006. The 4th BCT, 25th Infantry Division, has been encountering well-trained and organized enemies there, who coordinate fire in a disciplined way. Arab Jabour sits astride major lines of communication into Baghdad--the Tigris, and the road that runs along it into central Baghdad--connecting the suburb easily with the violent neighborhoods of Doura and Rusafa. The latter has been targeted recently as a center of car-bomb manufacturing in Baghdad. Coalition forces conducted an airstrike on Arab-Jabour on February 2, 2007, targeting leaders of a major car- and truck-bomb making cell. Ground forces called in another airstrike on a building in that neighborhood on February 8, 2007, after estimating that there were seven terrorists belonging to the vehicle bombing network inside. These activities permitted coalition forces to find the weapons caches there.

The roads out of Arab Jabour link to Mahmudiyah, due south of Baghdad, and Salman Pak, to its southeast along the Tigris. Terrorist operatives have been captured in Salman Pak this winter, where they were storing arms in a mosque. U.S. and Iraqi forces found a major car-bomb manufacturing site there in mid-February. And a hostage taking in the same incident also suggests, but does not prove, an al Qaeda footprint in that town.

Mahmudiyah, a town less than fifteen miles south of Baghdad, was a safe-haven for al Qaeda terrorists and other insurgent groups two years ago, and beheadings regularly occurred there. Now, a U.S. Forward Operating Base (FOB) protects it. Its market has recently reopened, and it is thriving. The U.S. units in Mahmudiyah also monitor traffic moving along the highway that leaves Baghdad directly to the south (known to U.S. forces as Main Supply Route Tampa--one of the principal roads linking American forces in Iraq to their logistics bases in Kuwait).

Al Qaeda terrorists are still using smaller safe-havens outside of Mahmudiyah, particularly in Yusufiyah, a small town to its northwest (and about twenty miles southwest of Baghdad). The Yusufiyah power plant was once a major al Qaeda stronghold. Yusufiyah still has an important position on the lines of communication to Baghdad's south and west. It is possible to travel down the Euphrates River from Falluja to Yusufiyah, and from there to follow roads that join Route Tampa (as U.S. forces call it) to the north or south of Mahmudiyah. A road just outside of Mahmudiyah links Yusufiyah, to its northwest, with Salman Pak, to its east.

U.S. forces have been working to prevent al Qaeda from re-establishing a large safe-haven in Yusufiyah, and from traveling through that town to Baghdad. Terrorists threatened to kill local inhabitants in November, trying to displace them from the town. The 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment "Polar Bears," (from the 2nd BCT, 10th Mountain Division), have been patrolling the city since early November. In December, Iraqi Army Special Forces and coalition advisors killed and captured terrorists in Yusufiyah linked to murder and kidnapping. In early January, combat operations around Yusufiyah were undertaken by a battalion of Iraqi army soldiers, paired with a troop from 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, (from the 2nd BCT, 10th Mountain Division). They detained 82 terrorist suspects involved in a car-bomb making network. An air assault three miles to the northwest of Yusufiyah captured six suspected terrorists. U.S. troops again found major and minor weapons caches in and around Yusufiyah in early February, including a huge stockpile of mortars designed to be used as IEDs rather than indirect fire weapons.

The sectarian violence in Yusufiyah was, as in Balad Ruz, imported by terrorists. And indeed, some sectarian violence is exported by terrorists moving from Baghdad to its south, or along the southern beltway: a number of people were kidnapped at gunpoint in Shiite village 47 miles south of Baghdad in Imam [Ebrahim], and eleven were shot. Imam Ebrahim sits on a secondary road that connects Route Tampa (south of Mahmudiyah and Iskandariyah) with the road along the Tigris that links Salman Pak and Kut.

The events in Balad Ruz illustrate how al Qaeda operated east of Baqubah and north of Baghdad. A series of raids from January 6-8 targeted al Qaeda operatives in Tarmiyah, located on the Tigris River--and a major highway to Baghdad--near the junction of Salah-ad-Din, Baghdad, and Diyala provinces. Coalition forces found six major weapons caches near Tarmiyah. Terrorists repeatedly attempted to remove the weapons from the caches during the operation, and they exchanged fire with coalition forces.

Future editions of the Iraq Report will describe extensive multi-national military operations in the other sectors of the theater, MND-West (Anbar), MND-North (Nineweh, Salah-ad-Din, and Diyala, of which only the latter was discussed here), MND-South East (Karbala, Kut, and Hillah), and MND-Central-South (including Basra, Amarah, and Nasiriyah). As we have seen, operations in these areas may alter the flow of insurgents and their supplies into and out of Baghdad, as well as the provincial cities in their own sectors.

The Enemy and the Impending Surge - Adaptation in Baghdad in January and early February

Various enemies in Iraq perpetrate the violence there: al Qaeda, Ansar-al-Islam, and other Sunni extremists; former Baath regime elements and other Sunni malcontents; Jaysh al-Mahdi, the Sadrist militia; the Badr Corps; other Shiite militias; and local vigilantes. These enemies adapt to U.S., Coalition, and Iraqi forces. Military planners trace enemy behavior to identify typical patterns and exceptions. Some of the enemy's exceptional behavior in January seems to pertain to the impending surge of U.S. forces. Holidays and anniversaries provided occasions for spectacular attacks to promote sectarian violence, particularly around the Shiite religious holiday of Ashura, the holiest day of which fell on January 31.

Helicopters

Insurgents shot down six U.S. helicopters between January 20 and February 9, as part of a concerted strategy. Military intelligence documents report that al Qaeda in Mesopotamia advocated attacking aircraft in late 2006, and is responsible for three of the crashes. Insurgents have increased attacks on U.S. helicopters since August. Major General James E. Simmons suggested the enemy was using helicopter attacks in response to the unfolding Baghdad Security Plan, in order to generate "strategic effects." He did not specify what those "strategic effects" were. But one may speculate that insurgents are attacking helicopters in an effort to break the will of the United States to fight.

Experiences in the Soviet-Afghan War form a significant part of al Qaeda's military thought. In 1985, Soviet forces in Afghanistan launched a series of significant operations designed to bring a basic level of security to the country. These operations relied much more heavily on the use of helicopters both to transport Soviet infantry and to support that infantry with mobile firepower (since the terrain in Afghanistan made the use of tanks, artillery, and armored personnel carriers difficult). The United States supplied the Afghan mujahideen with Stinger surface-to-air missiles, with which they began to bring down numerous Soviet helicopters and even the occasional transport aircraft. Soviet pilots began to refuse to fly combat missions in contested areas, and the Soviet offensive ground to a halt. It seems very likely that some among the insurgents in Iraq are attempting to replicate this success against the U.S. This attempt is not likely to succeed, however, because the terrain and other conditions of the struggle in Iraq are so different from those that allowed the mujahideen to succeed in Afghanistan. It remains unclear, moreover, to what extent the insurgents in Iraq are using new weapons or simply new tactics in their efforts to shoot down U.S. helicopters.

Spectacular Attacks

Shelling and roadside bombs targeted Shiite neighborhoods, such as Adhamiya and Khadimiyah, in Baghdad during the culminating day of Ashura. But the most spectacular attacks occurred against the civilians in procession in Balad Ruz (described above) and in Najaf.

A large group of heavily-armed fighters prepared a defensive position in the palm groves outside of Najaf during Ashura, apparently planning to assassinate Shiite leaders such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, pilgrims traveling to and from Karbala, and holy sites such as the Imam Ali mosque. The group claimed that the Twelfth Imam, whom Shiites believe has been hidden since the ninth century and will return, was present among them. When the fighters attacked a police checkpoint, Iraqi forces responded. Local leaders planned an attack on the encampment the following morning. Forces from Iraq's 8th Army Division in Babil province assisted the police in Najaf, in a province where security has been transferred from Coalition to Iraqi Security Forces. When the battle protracted, U.S. helicopters and tanks from Baghdad joined the Iraqi forces. The fighters shot down one of the helicopters. The battle lasted for fifteen hours. Iraqi and Coalition forces killed approximately 250 gunmen. Locals dispute the identity of the fighters, some claiming that they were foreign Sunni fighters, others that they were Iraqi fighters, and still others that they were splinter Shiites.

The next Iraq Report will examine the reaction of the Shiite militias, especially those in Baghdad, to the security plan.

Assessment and Conclusions

In January, General Casey relied on targeted raids throughout the theater, supplemented by intermittent patrols of urban territory. Whenever possible, Iraqi forces conducted the raids or patrols, and they called for reinforcement by U.S. forces when they could not resolve problems on the ground.

General Casey's statements and actions suggest that he believed U.S. units were present in country not to end the insurgency or al Qaeda's involvement in it, but rather to train the Iraqis to fight the insurgents themselves. Unit commanders at the brigade level and below repeatedly state that their goal was training the Iraqis to conduct a counterinsurgency. Few stated that their mission was defeating the insurgency, securing the population, or ending sectarian violence. Nevertheless, most operational summaries relate the number of insurgents killed and captured, and the number of weapons seized. These patterns suggest that subordinate officers believed that higher commands assessed them based upon these raiding metrics, despite the apparent focus on training Iraqi Security Forces. There appears, therefore, to have been some tension in the purpose of American military operations in Iraq between the desire to kill insurgents and seize weapons caches and the stated aim of training Iraqis and transitioning to Iraqi control. It is unclear whether General Casey believed that attriting the insurgents' personnel and equipment would facilitate the transition or that such operations provided opportunities to train Iraqi forces or both. In any case, the numbers of "trained and ready" Iraqi Security Forces and of the number of killed and captured enemy fighters or the amount of seized enemy hardware are indirect and unreliable measures of success. They measure inputs--the amount of energy we and the Iraqis are putting into the project--rather than outputs--the increasing or decreasing security and stability of Iraq.

It is extremely difficult to measure the effectiveness of efforts to disrupt terrorist networks through raids and strikes, moreover. Certainly, U.S. forces gain important intelligence this way. They remove high-profile figures in insurgent movements. And they reduce the quantity of weapons and explosives that some insurgents have available. When the number of troops is limited, raiding the nodes of an insurgent network allows the counterinsurgent to use his forces economically and disproportionately. But raids cannot capture or destroy all insurgents or all nodes of their network. They do not eliminate all weapons in such a heavily-armed country. And raids do not prevent some of the extrajudicial killings (torture and executions) that constitute sectarian violence.

The United States does not have enough forces in Iraq to defeat the insurgency through raids and strikes. These types of military operations cannot eliminate the entire network of terrorists or weapons caches faster than they regenerate. Targeted raids do not work well in dense urban areas where an active insurgency exists. Intermittent patrolling allows insurgents quickly to move into neighborhoods when patrols are absent. The Haifa Street battles show how quickly insurgents can move into a security vacuum in a Baghdad neighborhood if forces are not present constantly. The insurgents returned less than two weeks after a fierce battle with American forces that lasted for eleven hours.

The operations in Balad Ruz used targeted raids as a way of gathering intelligence about the enemy's behavior. Then, units there physically secured the area outside the village to deny the enemy a safe-haven and communications routes. The sparse population density and the thoroughness of the operation have precluded the enemy from regenerating itself in this area as quickly.

Eliminating large weapons caches and known insurgent strongholds in the Baghdad beltway helped set the conditions for the Baghdad Security Plan to unfold more safely. But it is difficult to see any path by which targeted raids and strikes would end the insurgency without an area security plan. In January, the Iraqi Army conducted patrols to show their presence, and U.S. troops accompanied them intermittently. Patrols that show the physical presence of forces in an area are not the same as establishing area security. Units on intermittent patrols do not establish close relationships with the local population that are essential for generating useful intelligence, and the intermittent nature of patrols creates the opportunity for insurgents to regenerate their organizations.

The American officers involved in the Haifa Street mission reported that their mission was to clear and control the area. But these "clear-and-control" operations proceeded very quickly and ended with a planned withdrawal. Army doctrine defines "clear" as "a tactical mission task that requires the commander to remove all enemy forces and eliminate organized resistance in an assigned area." And it defines "control" as "a tactical mission task that requires the commander to maintain physical influence over a specified area to prevent its use by an enemy." These tasks require time and physical presence. As the Haifa street battles did not accomplish these tasks (eliminate organized resistance and prevent the enemy from returning), they were not "clear-and-control" missions so much as raids, which are operations, "usually small scale, involving a swift penetration of hostile territory to secure information, confuse the enemy, or to destroy installations. [Raids end] with a planned withdrawal upon completion of the assigned mission." Those following the war in Iraq should not accept at face value the terms ascribed to particular military operations. Raids and patrols are different from clear-and-control operations, and the differences are apparent from the nature and duration of the operation, whatever label military spokesmen attach to the undertaking.

Proposals that U.S. forces remain responsible for fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, while Iraqi forces fight the sectarian violence, ignore the synergy of these two problems, moreover. The process by which al Qaeda inserted itself in the villages south of Balad Ruz illustrates the difficulty of trying to separate these intertwined problems. The mostly Shiite agricultural community in Balad Ruz lived alongside a Sunni population. Al Qaeda entered the area, kidnapped Shiite families, and executed the men. Most Shiite families left the area. The Sunni families that remained behind collaborated with al Qaeda to some extent, because the terrorists frightened them. They recruited almost all the young, local, Sunni men into their operations. Some of the locals were probably ideologically committed, but most were participating because peer pressure and survival required complicity. This conclusion stems from the fact that many of the young village men returned, unarmed, to their homes when the terrorists had been killed or driven off, and violence did not resume. Iraqi forces would not patrol the area alone, because the operatives were too well trained and organized. When U.S. troops arrived in force, they cleared the area with a skillful operation, and were able to kill or drive off the terrorists. The sectarian violence in the area then fell dramatically. Only the constant operations of the American unit in the area before Operation Turki Bowl, however, allowed U.S. forces to develop the intelligence necessary to clear out this terrorist threat, and to see past the sectarian violence to the underlying cause of the problem--al Qaeda. U.S. forces that do not address the problem of sectarian violence will also fail to detect many al Qaeda operatives and key nodes of the terrorist network. There is no way to separate fighting the terrorists in Iraq from attacking the problem of sectarian violence there.

Iran and Iraq

Recent controversies over Iranian involvement in Iraq have focused on the forensic evidence of weapons--whether their manufacture indicates an Iranian source. The current discussions ignore the patterns of human movement and weapons caches along the border that the open source evidence displays. Fighters or facilitators and weapons were apparently moving over the Iran-Iraq border in Diyala province in the winter months of 2006-2007. These facilitators and fighters seemed to support Sunni Islamists in Diyala who were attacking Shiite inhabitants of the province, rather than protecting Shiite locals. It is not clear whether the Iranian government supported these fighters or facilitators, or even whether these fighters and facilitators originated in Iran or crossed Iran from Pakistan or Afghanistan, with or without Teheran's active assistance. This report does not trace events in the south, and so does not draw conclusions about Iranian involvement there, but it is clear that Sunni terrorists in Diyala have been drawing support from across the Iranian border. The Iraq Report will follow up on these issues in the future.

Kimberly Kagan is a military historian who has taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Yale University, Georgetown University, and American University. She is a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University, where she teaches the History of Military Operations; an affiliate of the Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University; and a visiting fellow at Yale International Security Studies. She is the author of The Eye of Command (University of Michigan Press, 2006), and the founder and executive director of the new Institute for the Study of War, UnderstandingWar.org.

The Iraq Report

kompilasi riset

ANTARA News :: Ex-President`s party to form Islamic wing

ICRP - PERDA SYARIAT DAN PEMINGGIRAN PEREMPUAN - KOLOM

Hidayatullah.com - Syariat Islam di Mata Ahmad Syafii Maarif

Dan Froomkin - Bush Puzzled by Doubters - washingtonpost.com

Dennis Ross - The Art of the Possible Peace - washingtonpost.com

Dan Froomkin - Bush Fails to Reassure

Bush Fails to Reassure

Talking Tough to Stay in Power - washingtonpost.com

Charles Krauthammer - The Putin Doctrine - washingtonpost.com

What Tehran Is Really Up To - washingtonpost.com

Jackson Diehl - Can a Saudi Dealmaker Rescue Bush? - washingtonpost.com

E. J. Dionne - The Antiwar Rallying Point - washingtonpost.com

David Ignatius - Signals From Tehran - washingtonpost.com

Andrew Grotto - Pragmatism Trumps Ideology on North Korea - washingtonpost.com

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Clinton and Obama's Hollywood Scene - washingtonpost.com

Failing in Baghdad -- The British Did It First - washingtonpost.com

Jim Hoagland - Fighting Iran -- With Patience - washingtonpost.com

Robert D. Novak - Deauthorizing Iraq - washingtonpost.com

David Ignatius - U.S. Sanctions With Teeth - washingtonpost.com

U.S. Sanctions With Teeth

Who's Blogging?

Save & Share ArticleWhat's This?

Dan Froomkin - Cheney's Rules for the Press - washingtonpost.com

Anne-Marie Slaughter and Thomas Wright - Punishment to Fit the Nuclear Crime - washingtonpost.com

Punishment to Fit the Nuclear Crime

Who's Blogging?

Save & Share ArticleWhat's This?

It’s the War, Senators - New York Times

Tips

Fudging the Budget - New York Times

Fudging the Budget

Why Accuse Iran of Meddling Now? U.S. Officials Explain - New York Times

Why Accuse Iran of Meddling Now? U.S. Officials Explain

Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran - New York Times

Defense Chief Again Says U.S. Will Not Wage War With Iran

2 Palestinian Leaders Meet to Pave Way for a New Cabinet - New York Times

2 Palestinian Leaders Meet to Pave Way for a New Cabinet

Iranian Force, Focus of U.S., Still a Mystery - New York Times

Iranian Force, Focus of U.S., Still a Mystery

Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq - New York Times

Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq

Rice Tries to Hold Together Plan for Mideast Talks - New York Times

Rice Tries to Hold Together Plan for Mideast Talks

Iran Says Sunnis, Using Pakistan as Base, Planned Fatal Bombing - New York Times

Iran Says Sunnis, Using Pakistan as Base, Planned Fatal Bombing

No Progress in Middle East Talks - New York Times

No Progress in Middle East Talks

Splits Emerge Between U.S. and Europe Over Aid for Palestinians - New York Times

Splits Emerge Between U.S. and Europe Over Aid for Palestinians

Iran’s President Vows to Keep Enriching Uranium Despite Expiration of U.N. Deadline to Stop - New York Times

Iran’s President Vows to Keep Enriching Uranium Despite Expiration of U.N. Deadline to Stop

Arab States, Wary of Iran, Add to Their Arsenals but Still Lean on the U.S. - New York Times

Arab States, Wary of Iran, Add to Their Arsenals but Still Lean on the U.S.

Iran Expanding Nuclear Effort, Agency Reports - New York Times

Iran Expanding Nuclear Effort, Agency Reports

Senate Democrats in Bid to Limit U.S. Role in Iraq - New York Times

Senate Democrats in Bid to Limit U.S. Role in Iraq

Leaving the Options Open With Iran - New York Times

Leaving the Options Open With Iran

U.S. Set to Join Iran and Syria in Talks on Iraq - New York Times

U.S. Set to Join Iran and Syria in Talks on Iraq

Senate Democrats Vow to Confront Bush on Iraq but Are Still Working Out the Details - New York Times

Senate Democrats Vow to Confront Bush on Iraq but Are Still Working Out the Details

The Reach of War

Latest Reports on Iran and North Korea Show a Newfound Caution Among Analysts - New York Times

Latest Reports on Iran and North Korea Show a Newfound Caution Among Analysts

Venezuela and Iran Strengthen Ties With Caracas-to-Tehran Flight - New York Times

enezuela and Iran Strengthen Ties With Caracas-to-Tehran Flight

Iran and Saudis Plan Summit Talks on Crises - New York Times

Iran and Saudis Plan Summit Talks on Crises

Leaders Spar Over Iran’s Aims and U.S. Power - New York Times

Leaders Spar Over Iran’s Aims and U.S. Power

Related

Transcript: President Bush's United Nations Address (September 19, 2006)

Transcript of Ahmadinejad's Speech (UN.org) (PDF)

Iran’s President Says Nuclear Activities Are Peaceful (September 19, 2006)

Multimedia

Video: Excerpt of Bush’s Speech

Video of Ahmadinejad's Speech (UN.org)

Save & Share Article What's This?

Save & Share Article What's This?