Frederick K Cox International Law Center Symposium
Cosponsored by the Libra Institute
made possible in part by the Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities
"Katyn: Justice Delayed or Justice Denied?"
February 4-5, 2011 - Moot Courtroom (A59)
Friday 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. (CLE credit)
Saturday 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. (no CLE credit)
Lunch provided for all registered attendees,
Keynote: Stephen Rapp, United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes
REGISTRATION required for all symposium attendees. 6.5 hours CLE credit will be available for a $200 fee to lawyers who attend
___________________
An Interdisciplinary Symposium
"Divided Loyalties: Professional Standards and Military Duty"
Cosponsored by the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center
Institute for Global Security Law and Policy
Law-Medicine Center
Center for Social Justice
Friday, February 11, 2011
8:45 a.m.-5:00 p.m. - Moot Courtroom (A59)
Lunch provided for all registered attendees
Speakers: Deborah Ascheim, MD, Mount Sinai School of Medicine; George Annas, Boston University; David Frakt, Barry University Law School, Orlando; Jon Hanson, Harvard Law; Beth Hillman, UC, Hastings; Steven Reisner, Physicians for Human Rights.
REGISTRATION required for all symposium attendees. 6.5 hours CLE credit will be available, pending approval, for a $200 fee to lawyers who attend
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Gulf Coast Leadership Summit in the Offing
Dear James O.,
You are invited to participate in the Gulf Coast Leadership Summit, scheduled on April 19 - 21, 2011 during the first anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. The Summit will be held at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, site of the first hearing of the National Oil Spill Commission.
To register: Click here to respond Government officials, military officials, and diplomats register for free for all three days. Registration for the April 19, 2011 program is free for all registrants.
In recent years, the five states of the U.S. Gulf Coast have been slammed by major hurricanes and by a major oil disaster. The people, businesses, institutions, and environment of the Gulf Coast continue to be affected by these disasters. But there is also a major opportunity to chart a better future. Especially with the billions of dollars being spent in the region by BP and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and billions more expected to be provided to the region by BP oil spill fines.
The Gulf Coast Leadership Summit brings together large and small businesses; investors from throughout the U.S. and around the world; local, state, and federal government officials; military bases; nonprofit organizations and professional associations; celebrities interested in making a difference; and the media to empower a better future for the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The vision of the Summit is to bring together everyone who wants a better future for the U.S. Gulf Coast. For individuals, this means seeing what new jobs the Summit has to offer. For small businesses, it means identifying additional oil spill compensation and other resources needed to rebuild and expand. For local and state economic development officials, it means listening to and meeting investors from around the country and beyond, interested in investing in new economic sectors in the five U.S. Gulf States. For local and state emergency management officials, it means identifying the latest and most effective solutions to prepare for and respond to future disasters, including more oil spills and future hurricanes.
The Summit features general sessions, break-out sessions, an exhibition, press conferences, and networking opportunities.
April 19, 2011 Program (FREE FOR ALL)
The Summit program on April 19 features the latest information on the impact of the BP oil spill on people, businesses, and the environment. Experts from Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas will provide individuals with details on the latest opportunities for jobs. And government and business leaders will provide small businesses with details on additional oil spill compensation and other resources. This day is organized as a public service and is free to all.
April 20, 2011 Program (Free for government, military, diplomats; fees for corporate, nonprofit, association, and education attendees)
The Summit program on April 20 features local, state, and federal officials listening to presentations from a wide variety of investors, interested in expanding in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Investors making presentations will represent the television and motion picture industry; the renewable energy industry, including solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and ocean energy; companies producing environmental technologies, interested in new locations in the Gulf Coast; major infrastructure projects, such as high-speed rail; companies producing disaster response solutions, interested in new locations in the Gulf Coast; and foreign companies seeking new locations in the Gulf Coast for new manufacturing operations. The April 20 program will also feature presentations to local, state, and federal officials on the latest disaster response technologies and solutions.
April 21, 2011 Program
The Summit program on April 21 features working sessions for leaders representing Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, providing an opportunity to develop roadmaps for each of the five states. The roadmaps will serve as a powerful plan to empower a better future for the people of the five states.
You may register for the entire event; for one day only; or for a combination of two days. Registration is complimentary - as a public service - for all government officials, the military, and diplomats. Various fees, to cover Summit expenses, are charged to corporate, nonprofit, association, and education registrants - a substantial discount applies if you register by December 24, 2010.
To register: Click here to respond
If you have an interest in Summit sponsorship, exhibiting, or speaking, please contact us via email at info@leadershipforum.us
The Summit is produced by the Gulf Coast Leadership Forum (www.leadershipforum.us). The Summit organizers have worked for years trying to improve the lives of the people of the U.S. Gulf Coast, producing four national Katrina reconstruction conferences and two national oil spill disaster response conferences.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Best Regards,
Gulf Coast Leadership Summit
www.leadershipforum.us
Click here to respond
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Having trouble with the link? Simply copy and
paste the entire address listed below into your
web browser:
http://guest.cvent.com/d/jpCJ4N5JjUmLE7bQa5Qq5w/r7hg/P1/1Q?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
You are invited to participate in the Gulf Coast Leadership Summit, scheduled on April 19 - 21, 2011 during the first anniversary of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. The Summit will be held at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, site of the first hearing of the National Oil Spill Commission.
To register: Click here to respond Government officials, military officials, and diplomats register for free for all three days. Registration for the April 19, 2011 program is free for all registrants.
In recent years, the five states of the U.S. Gulf Coast have been slammed by major hurricanes and by a major oil disaster. The people, businesses, institutions, and environment of the Gulf Coast continue to be affected by these disasters. But there is also a major opportunity to chart a better future. Especially with the billions of dollars being spent in the region by BP and the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and billions more expected to be provided to the region by BP oil spill fines.
The Gulf Coast Leadership Summit brings together large and small businesses; investors from throughout the U.S. and around the world; local, state, and federal government officials; military bases; nonprofit organizations and professional associations; celebrities interested in making a difference; and the media to empower a better future for the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The vision of the Summit is to bring together everyone who wants a better future for the U.S. Gulf Coast. For individuals, this means seeing what new jobs the Summit has to offer. For small businesses, it means identifying additional oil spill compensation and other resources needed to rebuild and expand. For local and state economic development officials, it means listening to and meeting investors from around the country and beyond, interested in investing in new economic sectors in the five U.S. Gulf States. For local and state emergency management officials, it means identifying the latest and most effective solutions to prepare for and respond to future disasters, including more oil spills and future hurricanes.
The Summit features general sessions, break-out sessions, an exhibition, press conferences, and networking opportunities.
April 19, 2011 Program (FREE FOR ALL)
The Summit program on April 19 features the latest information on the impact of the BP oil spill on people, businesses, and the environment. Experts from Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas will provide individuals with details on the latest opportunities for jobs. And government and business leaders will provide small businesses with details on additional oil spill compensation and other resources. This day is organized as a public service and is free to all.
April 20, 2011 Program (Free for government, military, diplomats; fees for corporate, nonprofit, association, and education attendees)
The Summit program on April 20 features local, state, and federal officials listening to presentations from a wide variety of investors, interested in expanding in the U.S. Gulf Coast. Investors making presentations will represent the television and motion picture industry; the renewable energy industry, including solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, and ocean energy; companies producing environmental technologies, interested in new locations in the Gulf Coast; major infrastructure projects, such as high-speed rail; companies producing disaster response solutions, interested in new locations in the Gulf Coast; and foreign companies seeking new locations in the Gulf Coast for new manufacturing operations. The April 20 program will also feature presentations to local, state, and federal officials on the latest disaster response technologies and solutions.
April 21, 2011 Program
The Summit program on April 21 features working sessions for leaders representing Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas, providing an opportunity to develop roadmaps for each of the five states. The roadmaps will serve as a powerful plan to empower a better future for the people of the five states.
You may register for the entire event; for one day only; or for a combination of two days. Registration is complimentary - as a public service - for all government officials, the military, and diplomats. Various fees, to cover Summit expenses, are charged to corporate, nonprofit, association, and education registrants - a substantial discount applies if you register by December 24, 2010.
To register: Click here to respond
If you have an interest in Summit sponsorship, exhibiting, or speaking, please contact us via email at info@leadershipforum.us
The Summit is produced by the Gulf Coast Leadership Forum (www.leadershipforum.us). The Summit organizers have worked for years trying to improve the lives of the people of the U.S. Gulf Coast, producing four national Katrina reconstruction conferences and two national oil spill disaster response conferences.
We look forward to seeing you soon!
Best Regards,
Gulf Coast Leadership Summit
www.leadershipforum.us
Click here to respond
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Having trouble with the link? Simply copy and
paste the entire address listed below into your
web browser:
http://guest.cvent.com/d/jpCJ4N5JjUmLE7bQa5Qq5w/r7hg/P1/1Q?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
FBI identifies top nine security threats in banking industry for 2011
From the FBI's January 3 Infragard report:
16. January 3, BankInfoSecurity.com - (National) Top 9 security threats of 2011. Mobile banking and social networks are expected to pose new security threats in the payments space in 2011. But security experts said those threats would not displace the Zeus botnet, malware attacks, and phishing threats, which for years have plagued banking institutions. Fraud attempts will escalate, not diminish, as new threats and channels blossom in 2011. As 2010 came to a close, Information Security Media Group caught up with a handful of leading industry experts to get their takes on the top security threats of 2011. The top 9 threats of 2011 include:(1) Mobile Banking Risks, (2) Social Networking Risks, (3) Malware, Botnets, and DDoS attacks, (4) Phising, (5) ACH Fraud that leads to Corporate Account takeovers, (6) Cloud Computing Risks, (7) Insider Threats, (8) First Party Fraud, and (9) Skimming Attacks. Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=3228
16. January 3, BankInfoSecurity.com - (National) Top 9 security threats of 2011. Mobile banking and social networks are expected to pose new security threats in the payments space in 2011. But security experts said those threats would not displace the Zeus botnet, malware attacks, and phishing threats, which for years have plagued banking institutions. Fraud attempts will escalate, not diminish, as new threats and channels blossom in 2011. As 2010 came to a close, Information Security Media Group caught up with a handful of leading industry experts to get their takes on the top security threats of 2011. The top 9 threats of 2011 include:(1) Mobile Banking Risks, (2) Social Networking Risks, (3) Malware, Botnets, and DDoS attacks, (4) Phising, (5) ACH Fraud that leads to Corporate Account takeovers, (6) Cloud Computing Risks, (7) Insider Threats, (8) First Party Fraud, and (9) Skimming Attacks. Source: http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/articles.php?art_id=3228
George Kennan, Iran Hawk by Martin Kramer
Posted: 04 Jan 2011 12:53 AM PST
In the November issue of Foreign Policy, Karim Sadjadpour, Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published an essay entitled “The Sources of Soviet Iranian Conduct.” Until recently, Sadjadpour had been one of the foremost advocates of “engagement” with the Iranian regime—a policy that has come to naught. Now he makes a fallback case for “containment,” explicitly evoking the memory of the renowned American diplomat George F. Kennan. It was Kennan who, in his famous “long telegram” of 1946 (later published as “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”), first elaborated the concept that became known as “containment.” That approach guided much of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union through the Cold War.
Sadjadpour employs the rhetorical device of taking ten passages in Kennan’s famous essay and substituting “Iranian” for “Soviet,” “Tehran” for “Moscow,” “Khamene’i” for “Stalin,” and so on. Kennan is thus transformed into a full-blown prophet “anticipating today’s Iran.… Kennan’s wisdom does not call on the United States to shun dialogue with Tehran, but merely to temper its expectations. In the process, Kennan would caution, America should remain ‘at all times cool and collected’—and allow the march of history to run its course.” One is led to conclude that a resurrected Kennan would have the United States avoid military confrontation with Iran, preferring to “contain” it by other means.
Kennan died in 2005 at the age of 101, and just what he would say about Iran today is anybody’s guess. But if the exercise is valid at all, perhaps it is only fair to ask what Kennan did say about Iran. During two crises, in 1952 and 1980, he made policy recommendations—in 1952, to the State Department in private, and in 1980, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in public.
1952
In 1951, Iran’s new nationalist premier Mohamed Mossadegh challenged Britain over control of Iran’s oil. This prompted Kennan (by that time, January 1952, a private citizen awaiting confirmation as ambassador to the Soviet Union) to write a long, unsolicited memo to Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
“The thesis to which we acquiesced in Iran,” he wrote, “that such arrangements [i.e. Western concessions] can be cancelled or reversed abruptly, on the basis of somebody’s whim or mood, is preposterous and indefensible.” The West had every right to thwart Iran’s actions by force: “Had the British occupied Abadan [Iran's oil fields and refineries], I would personally have no great worry about what happened to the rest of the country.” The only possible concern, he added, was the Soviet response. But if the Soviets wanted war, “I doubt that Abadan would be the place they would choose to start it. Abadan is a long way from the Soviet frontier.”
Indeed, if any of the West’s vital strategic assets in the Middle East were jeopardized by “local hostility,” Kennan argued, they should be “militarily secured with the greatest possible despatch.” “To retain these facilities and positions we can use today only one thing: military strength, backed by the resolution and courage to employ it. There is nothing else that will avail us.” The least concession would invite disaster:
The idea that the appetites of local potentates can be satiated and their deep-seated resentments turned into devotion by piecemeal concessions and partial withdrawals is surely naïve to a degree that should make us blush to entertain it. If these people think they have us on the run, they will plainly not be satisfied until they have us completely out, lock, stock, and barrel, and then they will want to crow for decades to come about their triumph, in a way that will hardly be compatible with minimum requirements of western prestige. The only thing that will prevent them from achieving this end is the cold gleam of adequate and determined force. The day for other things, if it ever existed, has now passed.
Kennan was unconcerned that the “locals” might resist in any effective way: “If we do this quietly, with determination, and without being apologetic about it, there may be a great many flamboyant words and a certain amount of brandishing of weapons against us, but I doubt that there will be much more.” And he dismissed counter-arguments that forceful action might mire the West in conflict—estimates “often based on calculations relating to a major adversary, when it is actually a local adversary with which we would have immediately to contend.” In other words, the Persians weren’t Russians.
The argument for “containment” of Iran was made not by Kennan but against him. The push-back came from State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau, which reacted with alacrity to his key proposal. “We cannot view with equanimity the suggestions about a possible British occupation of Abadan,” wrote the bureau head in response to Kennan, “with its conceivable attendant consequences in the rest of Iran. It appears to us that the moral disaster for us in the rest of Asia might well prove incalculable…. We still believe that patient, intelligent, constructive statesmanship offers the best prospect of basic solutions. There are still some indications that we may yet find solutions to the Iranian oil problem.”
Kennan had the last word in the exchange. If the United States persisted in its mistaken approach, he warned, it could lose “those specific facilities which are really vital and important and could probably quite successfully be held by force and determination.” The United States could only “rescue some of the most vital of the western positions” by “act[ing] rapidly, with determination, discarding our fatuous desire to be ‘liked’ and making it clear that the Russians are not the only serious people in this world.”
1980
By the time of Iran’s revolution, Kennan’s status as a revered wise man of foreign affairs had grown enormously. In February 1980, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited him to testify in the midst of a double crisis. Iranian militants had seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November, and the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in December. The committee sought Kennan’s insights on the best U.S. response.
The headline of the Washington Post on the morning after Kennan’s appearance told a surprising story: “George Kennan Urges Tougher Stance on Iran.” Just how tough? Here is the first paragraph of the report (by Don Oberdorfer, February 28, 1980):
Veteran diplomat and historian George F. Kennan yesterday advocated a declaration of war against Iran over the hostage issue and quiet diplomacy with the Soviets over Afghanistan as well as a range of other alternatives to current U.S. foreign policy.
On reading this, all of Washington must have gasped, and it is worth repeating Kennan’s precise words to the committee, since he spoke some of them in prepared remarks and others in the course of an exchange. There was, he said in his prepared remarks,
a limit on the time we can afford to temporize with the problem [of the hostages]. If we temporize too long, our concern for their safety may be deprived of much of its meaning. I feel therefore that we should hold in readiness means of unilateral pressure on the Iranian regime, not excluding the military one, which, if the efforts of the Secretary General of the United Nations should fail, might be more effective in persuading the Iranian authorities that it would be to their interest to release these people.
The committee chair, California Senator S.I. Hayakawa, a conservative Republican, could hardly believe his ears, and he pressed Kennan on “military alternatives.” “What would it do to the fate of the hostages?” Sen. Hayakawa asked. “Would we have a confrontation with the U.S.S.R. if we took that path? At the same time I am not disavowing such a path, still I would like to ask some questions about the dangers and prospects involved.”
Kennan then dropped his bombshell:
A number of times, since these people were locked up and since we began to hear the series of unprecedented insults and expressions of contempt for this country that we have heard from the ayatollah [Khomeini], I have wondered why we and our Government did not simply acknowledge the existence of the state of hostility brought about by the behavior of the Iranian Government, and, having done that, then regard ourselves as at war with that country. Having taken that step, then we could do the normal thing, which would be to ask a third power to represent our interests in Iran, in which case the hostages would become their immediate responsibility, not ours. We would then also intern the Iranian official personnel in this country, I hope humanely, and not in the way that they have interned ours—because, after all, we have obligations to ourselves, too. But by doing this, we would put ourselves in a position, first of all, to offer the Iranians something to get them off the hook; namely, an exchange of their personnel, which might be helpful. But in any case, it would also put us in a position to make our own decisions about such military action that we might wish to take if it became necessary.
I don’t think that it would be useful for me to speculate on the sort of things we could do, because some of them might necessitate taking advantage of the element of surprise.
Kennan did allow that “any sort of harsher action against Iran to solve this problem” would have to be prefaced by “careful communication with the Soviet Government in an effort to explain to them exactly what we are doing and why.” As in 1952, the Soviet reaction mattered to Kennan—and other possible reactions didn’t.
This wasn’t the only hard line Kennan toed. Even if Iran did release the American hostages, Kennan urged that the United States regard Iran as a pariah until it admitted its error. From Kennan’s prepared remarks:
Even should the hostages be released, it would be wrong for us to attempt to establish at any early date normal official relations with the present Iranian regime. What the Iranian authorities have done has been a grievous affront to international law, to diplomatic practice, and to the entire international community. To offer to forget it before there has been evidence of a clear readiness on the official Iranian side to recognize their fault, accompanied by satisfactory and reliable assurances against the repetition of such conduct, would not offer a promising basis for future relations with that regime.
In the subsequent Q&A, Sen. Hayakawa pointed to “Khomeini’s approval of the terrorists and all them being totally intransigent and not admitting any fault whatsoever.” He asked Kennan “from whom can we expect this recognition of their fault without an overthrow of the present government?” Kennan did not think the regime was “very firmly” in power. “But if they do remain in power, and if they continue to take this present attitude, I would certainly not think that we should send any other official personnel there or have diplomatic relations with them at all.”
The Kennan testimony, and especially the call for a declaration of war, ricocheted through Washington, and it prompted a column by conservative journalist William F. Buckley, Jr. “I wasn’t there,” wrote Buckley,
but I can imagine that the Senators stared at [Kennan] as though he had been entered by an incubus. Dr. Strangelove. Professor Kennan continued with his characteristic calm. Yes, we should have declared war, and then instantly interned all Iranians living in this country, holding them hostage against the safe return of our own citizens. We should, moreover, have prepared to take such military measures as might seem advisable in the event our hostages were harmed.
Holy caterpillar! To declare war in this country would require a researcher to inform the president and Congress on just how to go about doing it.
Buckley waxed enthusiastic about the idea of a war declaration (he called it “a wonderful demystifier”) and praised Kennan for proposing it: “That such a recommendation should have been made by someone once dubbed one of the principal ambiguists among American intelligentsia reminds us that purposeful thought is still possible.”
But Kennan also drew flak. One contemporary critic, the columnist and former Democratic presidential adviser John P. Roche, wrote that “some have unkindly suggested that Kennan’s declaration of war was an indication he is senile.” Not so, opined Roche, pointing instead to Kennan’s archaic notions of diplomatic privilege. Kennan, he wrote derisively, “wants foreign service clubhouses to be shown the respect they merit. If not, send for a gunboat.” Roche’s preferred option on the hostages: “We just have to sit it out.” Once again, the case for restraint was made not by Kennan but against him.
In sum, when Kennan was asked for his wisdom on Iran in 1980—and in a prominent forum, too—he expressed views directly opposed to those Sadjadpour would attribute to him. Sadjadpour: “Kennan’s wisdom does not call on the United States to shun dialogue with Tehran, but merely to temper its expectations.” In reality, Kennan did call on the United States to shun dialogue with Iran until it admitted the error of its ways—hardly a tempered expectation. Sadjadpour: “In the process, Kennan would caution, America should remain ‘at all times cool and collected’—and allow the march of history to run its course.” In reality, Kennan called for the United States to declare war on Iran and contemplate military action, in view of the “limit on the time we can afford to temporize.”
In the very same testimony Kennan urged that the United States exercise supreme caution in challenging the Soviets over Afghanistan: “It is up to us to eliminate from our words or actions anything that might unnecessarily contribute to a heightening of the existing military-political tension.” Why the vast difference in approach? For Kennan, the Soviets were a “major adversary” while Iran was merely a “local adversary.” In Kennan’s eyes, Iran wasn’t on par with the Soviet Union—not even close—and deserved to be treated accordingly. Seizing and occupying Iran’s oil fields, declaring war against it, brandishing threats of military action—Kennan consistently advocated the toughest possible posture against Iran during the two great Iran crises he witnessed. He was ever respectful of Soviet Russia and always contemptuous of Iran.
So it isn’t difficult to imagine a resurrected Kennan shocking a Congressional committee by insisting that the United States bomb Natanz. That Kennan instead has been turned into a posthumous supporter of “containing” Iran is amusing—or would be, if it weren’t so misleading.
* Sources: Kennan’s memo of January 22, 1952 and the subsequent exchange with the Near Eastern Affairs bureau are preserved in Kennan’s papers in the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, box 164, folder 28. Kennan’s Senate testimony of February 27, 1980 was published in Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Security Interests and Policies in Southwest Asia, pp. 87-123.
* Note: An abbreviated version of this post also appeared as a letter in the January 2011 issue of Foreign Policy, with a reply by Karim Sadjadpour. More on this to come.
In the November issue of Foreign Policy, Karim Sadjadpour, Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, published an essay entitled “The Sources of Soviet Iranian Conduct.” Until recently, Sadjadpour had been one of the foremost advocates of “engagement” with the Iranian regime—a policy that has come to naught. Now he makes a fallback case for “containment,” explicitly evoking the memory of the renowned American diplomat George F. Kennan. It was Kennan who, in his famous “long telegram” of 1946 (later published as “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”), first elaborated the concept that became known as “containment.” That approach guided much of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union through the Cold War.
Sadjadpour employs the rhetorical device of taking ten passages in Kennan’s famous essay and substituting “Iranian” for “Soviet,” “Tehran” for “Moscow,” “Khamene’i” for “Stalin,” and so on. Kennan is thus transformed into a full-blown prophet “anticipating today’s Iran.… Kennan’s wisdom does not call on the United States to shun dialogue with Tehran, but merely to temper its expectations. In the process, Kennan would caution, America should remain ‘at all times cool and collected’—and allow the march of history to run its course.” One is led to conclude that a resurrected Kennan would have the United States avoid military confrontation with Iran, preferring to “contain” it by other means.
Kennan died in 2005 at the age of 101, and just what he would say about Iran today is anybody’s guess. But if the exercise is valid at all, perhaps it is only fair to ask what Kennan did say about Iran. During two crises, in 1952 and 1980, he made policy recommendations—in 1952, to the State Department in private, and in 1980, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in public.
1952
In 1951, Iran’s new nationalist premier Mohamed Mossadegh challenged Britain over control of Iran’s oil. This prompted Kennan (by that time, January 1952, a private citizen awaiting confirmation as ambassador to the Soviet Union) to write a long, unsolicited memo to Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
“The thesis to which we acquiesced in Iran,” he wrote, “that such arrangements [i.e. Western concessions] can be cancelled or reversed abruptly, on the basis of somebody’s whim or mood, is preposterous and indefensible.” The West had every right to thwart Iran’s actions by force: “Had the British occupied Abadan [Iran's oil fields and refineries], I would personally have no great worry about what happened to the rest of the country.” The only possible concern, he added, was the Soviet response. But if the Soviets wanted war, “I doubt that Abadan would be the place they would choose to start it. Abadan is a long way from the Soviet frontier.”
Indeed, if any of the West’s vital strategic assets in the Middle East were jeopardized by “local hostility,” Kennan argued, they should be “militarily secured with the greatest possible despatch.” “To retain these facilities and positions we can use today only one thing: military strength, backed by the resolution and courage to employ it. There is nothing else that will avail us.” The least concession would invite disaster:
The idea that the appetites of local potentates can be satiated and their deep-seated resentments turned into devotion by piecemeal concessions and partial withdrawals is surely naïve to a degree that should make us blush to entertain it. If these people think they have us on the run, they will plainly not be satisfied until they have us completely out, lock, stock, and barrel, and then they will want to crow for decades to come about their triumph, in a way that will hardly be compatible with minimum requirements of western prestige. The only thing that will prevent them from achieving this end is the cold gleam of adequate and determined force. The day for other things, if it ever existed, has now passed.
Kennan was unconcerned that the “locals” might resist in any effective way: “If we do this quietly, with determination, and without being apologetic about it, there may be a great many flamboyant words and a certain amount of brandishing of weapons against us, but I doubt that there will be much more.” And he dismissed counter-arguments that forceful action might mire the West in conflict—estimates “often based on calculations relating to a major adversary, when it is actually a local adversary with which we would have immediately to contend.” In other words, the Persians weren’t Russians.
The argument for “containment” of Iran was made not by Kennan but against him. The push-back came from State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau, which reacted with alacrity to his key proposal. “We cannot view with equanimity the suggestions about a possible British occupation of Abadan,” wrote the bureau head in response to Kennan, “with its conceivable attendant consequences in the rest of Iran. It appears to us that the moral disaster for us in the rest of Asia might well prove incalculable…. We still believe that patient, intelligent, constructive statesmanship offers the best prospect of basic solutions. There are still some indications that we may yet find solutions to the Iranian oil problem.”
Kennan had the last word in the exchange. If the United States persisted in its mistaken approach, he warned, it could lose “those specific facilities which are really vital and important and could probably quite successfully be held by force and determination.” The United States could only “rescue some of the most vital of the western positions” by “act[ing] rapidly, with determination, discarding our fatuous desire to be ‘liked’ and making it clear that the Russians are not the only serious people in this world.”
1980
By the time of Iran’s revolution, Kennan’s status as a revered wise man of foreign affairs had grown enormously. In February 1980, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee invited him to testify in the midst of a double crisis. Iranian militants had seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran in November, and the Soviet Union had invaded Afghanistan in December. The committee sought Kennan’s insights on the best U.S. response.
The headline of the Washington Post on the morning after Kennan’s appearance told a surprising story: “George Kennan Urges Tougher Stance on Iran.” Just how tough? Here is the first paragraph of the report (by Don Oberdorfer, February 28, 1980):
Veteran diplomat and historian George F. Kennan yesterday advocated a declaration of war against Iran over the hostage issue and quiet diplomacy with the Soviets over Afghanistan as well as a range of other alternatives to current U.S. foreign policy.
On reading this, all of Washington must have gasped, and it is worth repeating Kennan’s precise words to the committee, since he spoke some of them in prepared remarks and others in the course of an exchange. There was, he said in his prepared remarks,
a limit on the time we can afford to temporize with the problem [of the hostages]. If we temporize too long, our concern for their safety may be deprived of much of its meaning. I feel therefore that we should hold in readiness means of unilateral pressure on the Iranian regime, not excluding the military one, which, if the efforts of the Secretary General of the United Nations should fail, might be more effective in persuading the Iranian authorities that it would be to their interest to release these people.
The committee chair, California Senator S.I. Hayakawa, a conservative Republican, could hardly believe his ears, and he pressed Kennan on “military alternatives.” “What would it do to the fate of the hostages?” Sen. Hayakawa asked. “Would we have a confrontation with the U.S.S.R. if we took that path? At the same time I am not disavowing such a path, still I would like to ask some questions about the dangers and prospects involved.”
Kennan then dropped his bombshell:
A number of times, since these people were locked up and since we began to hear the series of unprecedented insults and expressions of contempt for this country that we have heard from the ayatollah [Khomeini], I have wondered why we and our Government did not simply acknowledge the existence of the state of hostility brought about by the behavior of the Iranian Government, and, having done that, then regard ourselves as at war with that country. Having taken that step, then we could do the normal thing, which would be to ask a third power to represent our interests in Iran, in which case the hostages would become their immediate responsibility, not ours. We would then also intern the Iranian official personnel in this country, I hope humanely, and not in the way that they have interned ours—because, after all, we have obligations to ourselves, too. But by doing this, we would put ourselves in a position, first of all, to offer the Iranians something to get them off the hook; namely, an exchange of their personnel, which might be helpful. But in any case, it would also put us in a position to make our own decisions about such military action that we might wish to take if it became necessary.
I don’t think that it would be useful for me to speculate on the sort of things we could do, because some of them might necessitate taking advantage of the element of surprise.
Kennan did allow that “any sort of harsher action against Iran to solve this problem” would have to be prefaced by “careful communication with the Soviet Government in an effort to explain to them exactly what we are doing and why.” As in 1952, the Soviet reaction mattered to Kennan—and other possible reactions didn’t.
This wasn’t the only hard line Kennan toed. Even if Iran did release the American hostages, Kennan urged that the United States regard Iran as a pariah until it admitted its error. From Kennan’s prepared remarks:
Even should the hostages be released, it would be wrong for us to attempt to establish at any early date normal official relations with the present Iranian regime. What the Iranian authorities have done has been a grievous affront to international law, to diplomatic practice, and to the entire international community. To offer to forget it before there has been evidence of a clear readiness on the official Iranian side to recognize their fault, accompanied by satisfactory and reliable assurances against the repetition of such conduct, would not offer a promising basis for future relations with that regime.
In the subsequent Q&A, Sen. Hayakawa pointed to “Khomeini’s approval of the terrorists and all them being totally intransigent and not admitting any fault whatsoever.” He asked Kennan “from whom can we expect this recognition of their fault without an overthrow of the present government?” Kennan did not think the regime was “very firmly” in power. “But if they do remain in power, and if they continue to take this present attitude, I would certainly not think that we should send any other official personnel there or have diplomatic relations with them at all.”
The Kennan testimony, and especially the call for a declaration of war, ricocheted through Washington, and it prompted a column by conservative journalist William F. Buckley, Jr. “I wasn’t there,” wrote Buckley,
but I can imagine that the Senators stared at [Kennan] as though he had been entered by an incubus. Dr. Strangelove. Professor Kennan continued with his characteristic calm. Yes, we should have declared war, and then instantly interned all Iranians living in this country, holding them hostage against the safe return of our own citizens. We should, moreover, have prepared to take such military measures as might seem advisable in the event our hostages were harmed.
Holy caterpillar! To declare war in this country would require a researcher to inform the president and Congress on just how to go about doing it.
Buckley waxed enthusiastic about the idea of a war declaration (he called it “a wonderful demystifier”) and praised Kennan for proposing it: “That such a recommendation should have been made by someone once dubbed one of the principal ambiguists among American intelligentsia reminds us that purposeful thought is still possible.”
But Kennan also drew flak. One contemporary critic, the columnist and former Democratic presidential adviser John P. Roche, wrote that “some have unkindly suggested that Kennan’s declaration of war was an indication he is senile.” Not so, opined Roche, pointing instead to Kennan’s archaic notions of diplomatic privilege. Kennan, he wrote derisively, “wants foreign service clubhouses to be shown the respect they merit. If not, send for a gunboat.” Roche’s preferred option on the hostages: “We just have to sit it out.” Once again, the case for restraint was made not by Kennan but against him.
In sum, when Kennan was asked for his wisdom on Iran in 1980—and in a prominent forum, too—he expressed views directly opposed to those Sadjadpour would attribute to him. Sadjadpour: “Kennan’s wisdom does not call on the United States to shun dialogue with Tehran, but merely to temper its expectations.” In reality, Kennan did call on the United States to shun dialogue with Iran until it admitted the error of its ways—hardly a tempered expectation. Sadjadpour: “In the process, Kennan would caution, America should remain ‘at all times cool and collected’—and allow the march of history to run its course.” In reality, Kennan called for the United States to declare war on Iran and contemplate military action, in view of the “limit on the time we can afford to temporize.”
In the very same testimony Kennan urged that the United States exercise supreme caution in challenging the Soviets over Afghanistan: “It is up to us to eliminate from our words or actions anything that might unnecessarily contribute to a heightening of the existing military-political tension.” Why the vast difference in approach? For Kennan, the Soviets were a “major adversary” while Iran was merely a “local adversary.” In Kennan’s eyes, Iran wasn’t on par with the Soviet Union—not even close—and deserved to be treated accordingly. Seizing and occupying Iran’s oil fields, declaring war against it, brandishing threats of military action—Kennan consistently advocated the toughest possible posture against Iran during the two great Iran crises he witnessed. He was ever respectful of Soviet Russia and always contemptuous of Iran.
So it isn’t difficult to imagine a resurrected Kennan shocking a Congressional committee by insisting that the United States bomb Natanz. That Kennan instead has been turned into a posthumous supporter of “containing” Iran is amusing—or would be, if it weren’t so misleading.
* Sources: Kennan’s memo of January 22, 1952 and the subsequent exchange with the Near Eastern Affairs bureau are preserved in Kennan’s papers in the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, box 164, folder 28. Kennan’s Senate testimony of February 27, 1980 was published in Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Security Interests and Policies in Southwest Asia, pp. 87-123.
* Note: An abbreviated version of this post also appeared as a letter in the January 2011 issue of Foreign Policy, with a reply by Karim Sadjadpour. More on this to come.
Foundation for Defense of Democracy weekly newsletter (Jan. 4th)
PREDICTIONS FOR 2011: Jennifer Rubin writes in The Washington Post:
Few would argue that in 2010 the world became less dangerous and unpredictable. … What’s ahead in 2011?
Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells me:
I can’t predict what will happen in 2011. I can predict what won’t happen: No end to the war being waged against the West by both Shia and Sunni jihadists; no separate peace for Israel no matter how much President Obama and/or Israelis want it; no dynamic economic recovery in any nation that does not encourage entrepreneurism; no reform at the chronically corrupt and ironically named United Nations; no cure for the common cold.
Continuing with the "don’t get your hopes up" world view, Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of the Shalem Center, offers this:
Bibi Netanyahu will weather all the storms and will be in office throughout the year.
U.S.-Israel relations, at a pretty much all time low, will not improve much.
Gilad Shalit, tragically, will not be released, though we should each have a Matzah on our table every Shabbat as a symbolic reminder of his affliction.
Israel-Turkey relations will not warm in any significant way.
Israel will not attack Iran in 2011 (though I wish I were wrong), though more Iranian experts will die mysteriously and other snags will hit their system.
The U.S. will also not attack Iran, and sanctions will not be significantly toughened. The West will continue to demonstrate its moral failure and will abdicate responsibility to protect the freedoms we would not want to live without but are too cowardly to actually fight to defend.
On a more optimistic note, incoming House Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says: "We say it every New Year’s Eve: Next year in Havana! One day, it WILL be true!"
More here.
IRAN UPDATE: Israeli officials believe Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been set back:
They now assess Iran is three years from having a nuclear weapon, owing to "technical" problems in the nuclear weapons program. …
The apparent explanation of the longer time line is the destruction caused by a worm, introduced into Iran’s nuclear-related computer system that technical experts claim has virtually destroyed parts of the system.
IT analysts say the Stuxnet worm has destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges in a key Iranian facility. …
The IT experts claim the worm only could have been developed by cyber warriors working for national governments because of the resources involved. Some suggest that Israel and several European states pooled their knowledge of Iranian IT systems that support the nuclear program. …
The implication is that Israel successfully attacked Iran’s nuclear program without firing a shot. That is not confirmed, but the prospect is both scary and tonight’s good news.
More here.
However:
U.S. officials are worried Iran could deploy a new generation of centrifuges that would shorten the time needed to enrich uranium and reach nuclear weapon status.
More here.
FDD's Mark Dubowitz writes in The Wall Street Journal of a
major new front in the global effort to tighten the economic screws on Tehran. Under pressure from the United States, the Indian central bank last week blocked domestic buyers of Iranian oil from making payments through the Asian Clearing Union. …
The Indian government decision to shut off the ACU as a clearing-house for oil trades is only one part of a bigger effort. The Europeans have already cut tech transfers to and future investments in Iranian oil and natural gas, severely damaging Tehran’s ability to sustain current production. The Iranian energy industry is now in a slow-motion death spiral. To accelerate its demise, the Obama administration should take a number of other steps …
[S]anctions need time to work. The near-miraculous attack of the Stuxnet virus on Iran’s centrifuges and the untimely deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists may have bought the administration that time, and further strengthened those who want to use economic sticks to beat back Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
Iranian crude oil sanctions are the next logical step -- especially after the U.S., EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada have targeted energy investment in, and technology transfer to, the Iranian energy industry, and Washington has cracked down on Iran’s refined petroleum imports. Companies active in the Iranian crude oil market that want to be ahead of the next sanctions curve might want to start looking for alternative suppliers.
More here.
The Journal runs an accompanying editorial noting that
Delhi is changing its tune as sanctions momentum builds. …
While it’s laudable that India is making trade with Iran more difficult in the short term, its action won’t matter much if companies simply shift their trade to other willing conduits. Iran still exports around three-quarters of its oil to Asian nations, including China, Japan and South Korea.
Yet the more countries that enact sanctions, the harder it will be for companies to justify the business. Under U.S. law, Treasury can ban companies that transact with Tehran either explicitly or through a third party. Whatever their public rhetoric, Indian companies will not want to be on such a U.S. blacklist.
More here.
Reza Kahlili asks: Is Iran About to Test a Nuclear Bomb In North Korea?
[R]eports from inside Iran indicate that a team of Iranian nuclear scientists have been sent to North Korea and that the two governments have agreed on a joint nuclear test in North Korea with a substantial financial reward for the Kim Jong-Il government.
It is no secret that Iran and North Korea are collaborating in a ballistic missile program.
More here.
The Economist reports that Iran's economy
could lead to Mr Ahmadinejad’s downfall. Many of Iran’s 76m-odd people in 2011 are going to feel a more painful pinch than at any time since the war with Iraq ended in 1988. Unemployment, according to official figures, has been rising inexorably -- and will go higher still. Given that the definition of employed includes those working only a few hours a week and that women are excluded from the figures, the official rate of 15% recorded towards the end of 2010 is surely an underestimate; the official figure for the jobless young was 29% and rising.
The production of oil, the country’s main source of income, has been steadily falling due to a lack of technology and investment. In 1978 Iran produced 6m barrels a day; in 2000, 4.5m; most recently, 3.5m. This will fall further in 2011.
The officially recorded inflation rate in late 2010 was 9%; the unofficial figure is reckoned to be at least 30%. The price of many essential items has doubled in the past four to five years.
Meanwhile, sanctions are biting. The increasing difficulty Iran has in using the international banking system is making it ever harder for the country to get credit or foreign investment.
But the trickiest issue for Mr Ahmadinejad in 2011 is his proclaimed policy of gradually removing subsidies that have enabled poor Iranians to get essential goods and utilities, including petrol, gas, electricity, cooking oil and bread, for very little money. The president seems determined to reduce subsidies, alongside a complex compensation scheme to soften the blow to the poor. If he retreats, his authority will be weakened. If he presses ahead, he could provoke another bout of anger in the streets.
More here.
However:
Most of Iran’s biggest crude buyers in Asia are finding ways around difficulties in financing oil trade and see little disruption in 2011 flows after cuts this year, even as a dispute over payment methods threatens to stall sales to India.
Iran is OPEC’s second-largest exporter, and around three-quarters of its 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of exports flow to Asia.
International sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme have tightened this year, but United Nations measures do not forbid the purchase of Iranian crude. Only the United States prohibits oil firms from buying Iran’s oil.
Still, sanctions on the financial sector have made all transactions including in oil more difficult, and the United States has put pressure on countries trading with the Islamic Republic to abandon dealings.
More here.
Reuters reports:
Iran’s day-to-day business is being affected by tighter international, U.S. and European Union sanctions imposed in response to Western fears the country’s nuclear activities are aimed at developing bombs. …
Following are details on firms that have been moving away from Iran in the last six months and on others still dealing with the country:
More here.
FYI: FDD provided the USG (and in some cases the Europeans) detailed information on many of these companies and publicly identified them in FDD reports and articles.
David Feith says that HSBC (formerly the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is shilling for Iran. The details are here.
WHY MAHMOUD DON’T READ SO GOODLY: The Washington Post reports:
Iran is overhauling its education system to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by the government to fortify Islamic values …
Dozens of professors have already retired or been fired on the grounds that they did not sufficiently support the new policy.
The changes are aimed at offsetting the growing influence of a middle class that increasingly embraces individualism and shares modern aspirations. …
Many students, professors and parents voice the fear that the plans will only undermine Iran’s traditionally high academic standards. The three years of academic and curricular purges that followed the revolution, they say, stalled the intellectual development of Iranian youths. …
"The Program for Fundamental Evolution in Education and Training," envisages schools becoming "neighborhood cultural bases," where teachers will provide "life" guidance, assisted by selected clerics and members of the paramilitary Basij force.
More here.
AFTER NEW START: In my column this week, I note:
National-security hawks lost a battle last week when 71 members of the Senate -- not all of them Democrats -- voted to ratify New START. The treaty limits America’s non-nuclear long-range weapons. Its verification provisions are not as rigorous as those negotiated in the 1991 START treaty. And, perhaps most troubling, the Russians have made clear that they view the agreement as limiting America’s deployment of a comprehensive system of defenses against missile attacks.
President Obama insists that the treaty does not mandate such constraints. What’s more, he has gone on record, for the first time, unambiguously supporting missile defense. National-security hawks -- not all of them Republicans -- should now ask him to back that up with funds for the development, testing, and deployment of missile defenses. …
Were we to deploy a comprehensive missile-defense system, it would be senseless for most nations to invest in offensive nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Such weapons would become obsolete. Those who hope to rid the world of nuclear weapons entirely should think of missile defense as a means toward that end -- a better means than reducing our own nuclear arsenal in the hope that foreign despots will be moved to emulate us rather than seek advantages over us.
More here.
IBD opines:
The U.S. may have ended Russia’s superpower status, but in speeding through the New START treaty we are letting its gangster successors threaten our own superpower status.
More here.
THE AF-PAK THEATER: FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht writes:
We shouldn’t fool ourselves: If we take away American troops on the ground, our ability to wage war against Al Qaeda-affiliated forces in Afghanistan will cease to exist. …
The Taliban–Al Qaeda fusion, which is already advanced (it’s much more intertwined now than it was on September 11, 2001), will continue on both sides of the Durand Line. Pakistan is today a headache. But it could get a lot worse. This may seem like an abstract scenario to many on the left and the "realist" right (September 11 is, in American years, a long time ago), but to the CIA, which remains the vanguard in our battle against Islamic militancy, it might not be. And in that, there is hope. As much as Langley may now despise the Pakistanis, we are still wedded to them. And a bad marriage here is much, much better than an acrimonious divorce.
More here.
I debated the Af-Pak conflict on CNN's Parker Spitzer last week. The clip is here.
SAUDI UPDATE: Actually, there’s not much to update. Saudi textbooks continue to convey hateful, intolerant, and extremist content and to sanction the killing of "unbelievers." Jennifer Rubin writes:
We’ve done nothing to cajole the Saudis into cleaning up their textbooks, which find their way into Muslim schools around the globe.
More here.
IRAQ UPDATE: The oil is flowing:
Iraq’s new oil minister says production has hit the highest level in two decades as Baghdad drives to challenge Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer. But the going is going to be tough.
Oil Minister Abdul-Karim Elaibi claimed Monday that output had increased 100,000 barrels a day to 2.6 million bpd and will hit higher targets "sooner than expected."
Iraq plans to boost production to as much as 12 million bpd by 2017, which would put the Iraqis more or less alongside Saudi Arabia’s current capacity.
But that’s a target many in the global energy industry say is far too ambitious and unlikely to be met.
More here.
HALF A LOAF? A joint survey conducted by the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah found that a majority of Palestinians oppose compromise on key core issues.
More here.
This corroborates the findings of “Palestinian Pulse,” an FDD social media study. More on that study here.
ISRAEL/TURKEY UPDATE: Netanyahu rules out apology to Turks over flotilla.
Few would argue that in 2010 the world became less dangerous and unpredictable. … What’s ahead in 2011?
Cliff May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells me:
I can’t predict what will happen in 2011. I can predict what won’t happen: No end to the war being waged against the West by both Shia and Sunni jihadists; no separate peace for Israel no matter how much President Obama and/or Israelis want it; no dynamic economic recovery in any nation that does not encourage entrepreneurism; no reform at the chronically corrupt and ironically named United Nations; no cure for the common cold.
Continuing with the "don’t get your hopes up" world view, Daniel Gordis, senior vice president of the Shalem Center, offers this:
Bibi Netanyahu will weather all the storms and will be in office throughout the year.
U.S.-Israel relations, at a pretty much all time low, will not improve much.
Gilad Shalit, tragically, will not be released, though we should each have a Matzah on our table every Shabbat as a symbolic reminder of his affliction.
Israel-Turkey relations will not warm in any significant way.
Israel will not attack Iran in 2011 (though I wish I were wrong), though more Iranian experts will die mysteriously and other snags will hit their system.
The U.S. will also not attack Iran, and sanctions will not be significantly toughened. The West will continue to demonstrate its moral failure and will abdicate responsibility to protect the freedoms we would not want to live without but are too cowardly to actually fight to defend.
On a more optimistic note, incoming House Foreign Affairs Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says: "We say it every New Year’s Eve: Next year in Havana! One day, it WILL be true!"
More here.
IRAN UPDATE: Israeli officials believe Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been set back:
They now assess Iran is three years from having a nuclear weapon, owing to "technical" problems in the nuclear weapons program. …
The apparent explanation of the longer time line is the destruction caused by a worm, introduced into Iran’s nuclear-related computer system that technical experts claim has virtually destroyed parts of the system.
IT analysts say the Stuxnet worm has destroyed up to 1,000 centrifuges in a key Iranian facility. …
The IT experts claim the worm only could have been developed by cyber warriors working for national governments because of the resources involved. Some suggest that Israel and several European states pooled their knowledge of Iranian IT systems that support the nuclear program. …
The implication is that Israel successfully attacked Iran’s nuclear program without firing a shot. That is not confirmed, but the prospect is both scary and tonight’s good news.
More here.
However:
U.S. officials are worried Iran could deploy a new generation of centrifuges that would shorten the time needed to enrich uranium and reach nuclear weapon status.
More here.
FDD's Mark Dubowitz writes in The Wall Street Journal of a
major new front in the global effort to tighten the economic screws on Tehran. Under pressure from the United States, the Indian central bank last week blocked domestic buyers of Iranian oil from making payments through the Asian Clearing Union. …
The Indian government decision to shut off the ACU as a clearing-house for oil trades is only one part of a bigger effort. The Europeans have already cut tech transfers to and future investments in Iranian oil and natural gas, severely damaging Tehran’s ability to sustain current production. The Iranian energy industry is now in a slow-motion death spiral. To accelerate its demise, the Obama administration should take a number of other steps …
[S]anctions need time to work. The near-miraculous attack of the Stuxnet virus on Iran’s centrifuges and the untimely deaths of key Iranian nuclear scientists may have bought the administration that time, and further strengthened those who want to use economic sticks to beat back Iran’s nuclear aspirations.
Iranian crude oil sanctions are the next logical step -- especially after the U.S., EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Canada have targeted energy investment in, and technology transfer to, the Iranian energy industry, and Washington has cracked down on Iran’s refined petroleum imports. Companies active in the Iranian crude oil market that want to be ahead of the next sanctions curve might want to start looking for alternative suppliers.
More here.
The Journal runs an accompanying editorial noting that
Delhi is changing its tune as sanctions momentum builds. …
While it’s laudable that India is making trade with Iran more difficult in the short term, its action won’t matter much if companies simply shift their trade to other willing conduits. Iran still exports around three-quarters of its oil to Asian nations, including China, Japan and South Korea.
Yet the more countries that enact sanctions, the harder it will be for companies to justify the business. Under U.S. law, Treasury can ban companies that transact with Tehran either explicitly or through a third party. Whatever their public rhetoric, Indian companies will not want to be on such a U.S. blacklist.
More here.
Reza Kahlili asks: Is Iran About to Test a Nuclear Bomb In North Korea?
[R]eports from inside Iran indicate that a team of Iranian nuclear scientists have been sent to North Korea and that the two governments have agreed on a joint nuclear test in North Korea with a substantial financial reward for the Kim Jong-Il government.
It is no secret that Iran and North Korea are collaborating in a ballistic missile program.
More here.
The Economist reports that Iran's economy
could lead to Mr Ahmadinejad’s downfall. Many of Iran’s 76m-odd people in 2011 are going to feel a more painful pinch than at any time since the war with Iraq ended in 1988. Unemployment, according to official figures, has been rising inexorably -- and will go higher still. Given that the definition of employed includes those working only a few hours a week and that women are excluded from the figures, the official rate of 15% recorded towards the end of 2010 is surely an underestimate; the official figure for the jobless young was 29% and rising.
The production of oil, the country’s main source of income, has been steadily falling due to a lack of technology and investment. In 1978 Iran produced 6m barrels a day; in 2000, 4.5m; most recently, 3.5m. This will fall further in 2011.
The officially recorded inflation rate in late 2010 was 9%; the unofficial figure is reckoned to be at least 30%. The price of many essential items has doubled in the past four to five years.
Meanwhile, sanctions are biting. The increasing difficulty Iran has in using the international banking system is making it ever harder for the country to get credit or foreign investment.
But the trickiest issue for Mr Ahmadinejad in 2011 is his proclaimed policy of gradually removing subsidies that have enabled poor Iranians to get essential goods and utilities, including petrol, gas, electricity, cooking oil and bread, for very little money. The president seems determined to reduce subsidies, alongside a complex compensation scheme to soften the blow to the poor. If he retreats, his authority will be weakened. If he presses ahead, he could provoke another bout of anger in the streets.
More here.
However:
Most of Iran’s biggest crude buyers in Asia are finding ways around difficulties in financing oil trade and see little disruption in 2011 flows after cuts this year, even as a dispute over payment methods threatens to stall sales to India.
Iran is OPEC’s second-largest exporter, and around three-quarters of its 2 million barrels per day (bpd) of exports flow to Asia.
International sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme have tightened this year, but United Nations measures do not forbid the purchase of Iranian crude. Only the United States prohibits oil firms from buying Iran’s oil.
Still, sanctions on the financial sector have made all transactions including in oil more difficult, and the United States has put pressure on countries trading with the Islamic Republic to abandon dealings.
More here.
Reuters reports:
Iran’s day-to-day business is being affected by tighter international, U.S. and European Union sanctions imposed in response to Western fears the country’s nuclear activities are aimed at developing bombs. …
Following are details on firms that have been moving away from Iran in the last six months and on others still dealing with the country:
More here.
FYI: FDD provided the USG (and in some cases the Europeans) detailed information on many of these companies and publicly identified them in FDD reports and articles.
David Feith says that HSBC (formerly the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is shilling for Iran. The details are here.
WHY MAHMOUD DON’T READ SO GOODLY: The Washington Post reports:
Iran is overhauling its education system to rid it of Western influence, the latest attempt by the government to fortify Islamic values …
Dozens of professors have already retired or been fired on the grounds that they did not sufficiently support the new policy.
The changes are aimed at offsetting the growing influence of a middle class that increasingly embraces individualism and shares modern aspirations. …
Many students, professors and parents voice the fear that the plans will only undermine Iran’s traditionally high academic standards. The three years of academic and curricular purges that followed the revolution, they say, stalled the intellectual development of Iranian youths. …
"The Program for Fundamental Evolution in Education and Training," envisages schools becoming "neighborhood cultural bases," where teachers will provide "life" guidance, assisted by selected clerics and members of the paramilitary Basij force.
More here.
AFTER NEW START: In my column this week, I note:
National-security hawks lost a battle last week when 71 members of the Senate -- not all of them Democrats -- voted to ratify New START. The treaty limits America’s non-nuclear long-range weapons. Its verification provisions are not as rigorous as those negotiated in the 1991 START treaty. And, perhaps most troubling, the Russians have made clear that they view the agreement as limiting America’s deployment of a comprehensive system of defenses against missile attacks.
President Obama insists that the treaty does not mandate such constraints. What’s more, he has gone on record, for the first time, unambiguously supporting missile defense. National-security hawks -- not all of them Republicans -- should now ask him to back that up with funds for the development, testing, and deployment of missile defenses. …
Were we to deploy a comprehensive missile-defense system, it would be senseless for most nations to invest in offensive nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. Such weapons would become obsolete. Those who hope to rid the world of nuclear weapons entirely should think of missile defense as a means toward that end -- a better means than reducing our own nuclear arsenal in the hope that foreign despots will be moved to emulate us rather than seek advantages over us.
More here.
IBD opines:
The U.S. may have ended Russia’s superpower status, but in speeding through the New START treaty we are letting its gangster successors threaten our own superpower status.
More here.
THE AF-PAK THEATER: FDD’s Reuel Marc Gerecht writes:
We shouldn’t fool ourselves: If we take away American troops on the ground, our ability to wage war against Al Qaeda-affiliated forces in Afghanistan will cease to exist. …
The Taliban–Al Qaeda fusion, which is already advanced (it’s much more intertwined now than it was on September 11, 2001), will continue on both sides of the Durand Line. Pakistan is today a headache. But it could get a lot worse. This may seem like an abstract scenario to many on the left and the "realist" right (September 11 is, in American years, a long time ago), but to the CIA, which remains the vanguard in our battle against Islamic militancy, it might not be. And in that, there is hope. As much as Langley may now despise the Pakistanis, we are still wedded to them. And a bad marriage here is much, much better than an acrimonious divorce.
More here.
I debated the Af-Pak conflict on CNN's Parker Spitzer last week. The clip is here.
SAUDI UPDATE: Actually, there’s not much to update. Saudi textbooks continue to convey hateful, intolerant, and extremist content and to sanction the killing of "unbelievers." Jennifer Rubin writes:
We’ve done nothing to cajole the Saudis into cleaning up their textbooks, which find their way into Muslim schools around the globe.
More here.
IRAQ UPDATE: The oil is flowing:
Iraq’s new oil minister says production has hit the highest level in two decades as Baghdad drives to challenge Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer. But the going is going to be tough.
Oil Minister Abdul-Karim Elaibi claimed Monday that output had increased 100,000 barrels a day to 2.6 million bpd and will hit higher targets "sooner than expected."
Iraq plans to boost production to as much as 12 million bpd by 2017, which would put the Iraqis more or less alongside Saudi Arabia’s current capacity.
But that’s a target many in the global energy industry say is far too ambitious and unlikely to be met.
More here.
HALF A LOAF? A joint survey conducted by the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah found that a majority of Palestinians oppose compromise on key core issues.
More here.
This corroborates the findings of “Palestinian Pulse,” an FDD social media study. More on that study here.
ISRAEL/TURKEY UPDATE: Netanyahu rules out apology to Turks over flotilla.
The Academy for Criminal Justice Sciences seeks an editor
REMINDER: ACJS Today Editor Position Announcement
Dear Colleagues,
The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences is seeking applications for the position of Editor of ACJS Today, the official online newsletter of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. The Executive Board of the Academy will appoint the Editor for a three-year term. Beginning in 2012, ACJS Today will be published five times a year, with issues in January, March, May, September, and November. This Editor’s first issue will in 2012 and will be determined by the date of appointment and in consultation with the current editor.
Please review the ACJS Today Editor Position Announcement at http://www.acjs.org/pubs/167_666_14483.cfm. ACJS policies regarding editorships and operation are available for review through links on the announcement page. Those interested in being considered should provide a formal proposal to the Editor Search Committee no later than January 17, 2011.
Applications and requests for further information should be directed to:
Kenneth J. Novak
University of Missouri-Kansas City
816-235-1599
novakk@umkc.edu
Sincerely,
Ken
Kenneth J. Novak
ACJS Region 3 Trustee
Chair, ACJS Today Editor Search Committee
novakk@umkc.edu
An annotated list of journals in criminal justice and criminology: A guide for authors
Dear Colleagues,
The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences is seeking applications for the position of Editor of ACJS Today, the official online newsletter of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. The Executive Board of the Academy will appoint the Editor for a three-year term. Beginning in 2012, ACJS Today will be published five times a year, with issues in January, March, May, September, and November. This Editor’s first issue will in 2012 and will be determined by the date of appointment and in consultation with the current editor.
Please review the ACJS Today Editor Position Announcement at http://www.acjs.org/pubs/167_666_14483.cfm. ACJS policies regarding editorships and operation are available for review through links on the announcement page. Those interested in being considered should provide a formal proposal to the Editor Search Committee no later than January 17, 2011.
Applications and requests for further information should be directed to:
Kenneth J. Novak
University of Missouri-Kansas City
816-235-1599
novakk@umkc.edu
Sincerely,
Ken
Kenneth J. Novak
ACJS Region 3 Trustee
Chair, ACJS Today Editor Search Committee
novakk@umkc.edu
An annotated list of journals in criminal justice and criminology: A guide for authors
This on Iran and the Palestinians from Dr. Ely Karmon
Iran attempting to leverage Palestinian "resistance" to further its
vision for the region
See this article by Roni Drukan at Canada Free Press website:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31705
Over the past week, Iranian media have made repeated reference to the
second anniversary of Israel's Operation Cast Lead, citing Palestinian
"resistance" (terror) as the only option for resolving the conflict.
As peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are stalled, Iran
fills the vacuum by encouraging Hamas to continue the armed struggle
against Israel and by trying to convince arabs from moderate states to
support Iran's militant course of action against Israel.
Tehran views the "22-Day War" (Israel's Operation Cast Lead) as a direct
continuation of the "33-day War" (second Lebanon War in 2006). Iran
believes fierce combat "resistance" is an effective and viable way of
defeating Israel, or at least of forcing it to pay a heavy price.
Iran is using Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza to
attack Israel from 2 fronts. While Shiite Hezbollah was founded by Iran
and is used to spread the Iranian revolution into Lebanon, Hamas is a
Sunni organization. By supporting Hamas' terror against Israel, Iran
puts aside its Shiite Islamic aspiration for advancing the fight against
the Jewish state.
During an official visit in Syria, Iranian security official Ali Baqeri
emphasized that plans aimed at brokering a compromise between
Palestinians and the Zionist regime are doomed to failure. He went on to
say that the "popularity of the discourse of resistance among the
regional governments is growing, and resistance has become a dominant
political approach in the region."
While meeting with Palestinians leaders, the Iranian top security
official underlined the key role of resistance in determining the future
of the region.
This is part of Tehran's long-term strategy to turn the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the ongoing conflict between Israel and
Hezbollah, into a common denominator in its attempt to persuade the Arab
and Muslim world to adopt its leadership and ideology. The Iranian stamp
below shows Iran's agenda with regard to the armed struggle against
Israel.
Iran is trying to create a new world order. In recent addresses,
President Ahmadinejad has been reiterating his belief that Iran
represents a viable alternative to the existing world order, and that
Iran is, at the very least, an equal player in terms of determining what
he refers to as the "regional equations." Ahmadinejad has repeatedly
emphasized the fall of communism and the "severe difficulties faced by
capitalism", claiming that Iran and its ideological teachings are
emerging as the next major alternative to these ideologies. Ahmadinejad
also claimed that the old world order centered around the US and the
West is no longer valid, and neither are the attempts to solve the
region's problems, especially the Palestinian question, by forging an
agreement with Israel.
Iran's ideology which goes against the western agenda needs to keep the
Palestinian-Israel conflict alive. To do that, Iran will continue to
support radical Islamic terror against Israel and western interests in
the region.
Commentary:
The article above mentions the global Iranian ambitions beyond the
Middle East. It notes that "in recent addresses, President Ahmadinejad
has been reiterating his belief that Iran represents a viable
alternative to the existing world order."
Actually, Ahmadinejad declared already in October 2006: "The Iranian
people...[can] quickly become an invincible global power... as soon as
it achieves advanced technologies," clearly meaning nuclear
technologies.
The Iranian president has materialized these global ambitions by
engaging his country in an aggressive strategy of political, economic
and ideological penetration in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia,
where it unsuccessfully tried to become a full member of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The fact that Ahmadinejad has repeatedly emphasized the fall of
communism and the "severe difficulties faced by capitalism", claiming
that "Iran and its ideological teachings are emerging as the next major
alternative to these ideologies," strengthens the argument of those
which sustain that the radical Islamist ideologies, in this case the
Shi'a Khomeinist brand, have become a threat not only to the Western
democratic regimes but to all those states, ideologies and religious
movements which do not accept this new religious world view.
It should be also stressed that the Iranian expansion strategy and the
export of its Khomeinist revolution include the indiscriminate use of
terrorism and subversion. The two major tools of this strategy are the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Lebanese Hezbollah,
whose flags clearly symbolize the global ambitions of their masters.
Hezbollah
IRGC
Ely Karmon, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scholar
International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and
The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at
The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)
Herzlyia, Israel
Tel.: 972-9-9527277
Cell.: 972-52-2653306
Fax.: 972-9-9513073, 972-9-7716653
E-mail: ekarmon@idc.ac.il
Web: http://www.ict.org.il/
vision for the region
See this article by Roni Drukan at Canada Free Press website:
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/31705
Over the past week, Iranian media have made repeated reference to the
second anniversary of Israel's Operation Cast Lead, citing Palestinian
"resistance" (terror) as the only option for resolving the conflict.
As peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians are stalled, Iran
fills the vacuum by encouraging Hamas to continue the armed struggle
against Israel and by trying to convince arabs from moderate states to
support Iran's militant course of action against Israel.
Tehran views the "22-Day War" (Israel's Operation Cast Lead) as a direct
continuation of the "33-day War" (second Lebanon War in 2006). Iran
believes fierce combat "resistance" is an effective and viable way of
defeating Israel, or at least of forcing it to pay a heavy price.
Iran is using Hezbollah, its proxy in Lebanon, and Hamas in Gaza to
attack Israel from 2 fronts. While Shiite Hezbollah was founded by Iran
and is used to spread the Iranian revolution into Lebanon, Hamas is a
Sunni organization. By supporting Hamas' terror against Israel, Iran
puts aside its Shiite Islamic aspiration for advancing the fight against
the Jewish state.
During an official visit in Syria, Iranian security official Ali Baqeri
emphasized that plans aimed at brokering a compromise between
Palestinians and the Zionist regime are doomed to failure. He went on to
say that the "popularity of the discourse of resistance among the
regional governments is growing, and resistance has become a dominant
political approach in the region."
While meeting with Palestinians leaders, the Iranian top security
official underlined the key role of resistance in determining the future
of the region.
This is part of Tehran's long-term strategy to turn the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the ongoing conflict between Israel and
Hezbollah, into a common denominator in its attempt to persuade the Arab
and Muslim world to adopt its leadership and ideology. The Iranian stamp
below shows Iran's agenda with regard to the armed struggle against
Israel.
Iran is trying to create a new world order. In recent addresses,
President Ahmadinejad has been reiterating his belief that Iran
represents a viable alternative to the existing world order, and that
Iran is, at the very least, an equal player in terms of determining what
he refers to as the "regional equations." Ahmadinejad has repeatedly
emphasized the fall of communism and the "severe difficulties faced by
capitalism", claiming that Iran and its ideological teachings are
emerging as the next major alternative to these ideologies. Ahmadinejad
also claimed that the old world order centered around the US and the
West is no longer valid, and neither are the attempts to solve the
region's problems, especially the Palestinian question, by forging an
agreement with Israel.
Iran's ideology which goes against the western agenda needs to keep the
Palestinian-Israel conflict alive. To do that, Iran will continue to
support radical Islamic terror against Israel and western interests in
the region.
Commentary:
The article above mentions the global Iranian ambitions beyond the
Middle East. It notes that "in recent addresses, President Ahmadinejad
has been reiterating his belief that Iran represents a viable
alternative to the existing world order."
Actually, Ahmadinejad declared already in October 2006: "The Iranian
people...[can] quickly become an invincible global power... as soon as
it achieves advanced technologies," clearly meaning nuclear
technologies.
The Iranian president has materialized these global ambitions by
engaging his country in an aggressive strategy of political, economic
and ideological penetration in Africa, Latin America and Central Asia,
where it unsuccessfully tried to become a full member of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The fact that Ahmadinejad has repeatedly emphasized the fall of
communism and the "severe difficulties faced by capitalism", claiming
that "Iran and its ideological teachings are emerging as the next major
alternative to these ideologies," strengthens the argument of those
which sustain that the radical Islamist ideologies, in this case the
Shi'a Khomeinist brand, have become a threat not only to the Western
democratic regimes but to all those states, ideologies and religious
movements which do not accept this new religious world view.
It should be also stressed that the Iranian expansion strategy and the
export of its Khomeinist revolution include the indiscriminate use of
terrorism and subversion. The two major tools of this strategy are the
Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Lebanese Hezbollah,
whose flags clearly symbolize the global ambitions of their masters.
Hezbollah
IRGC
Ely Karmon, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scholar
International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) and
The Institute for Policy and Strategy (IPS) at
The Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)
Herzlyia, Israel
Tel.: 972-9-9527277
Cell.: 972-52-2653306
Fax.: 972-9-9513073, 972-9-7716653
E-mail: ekarmon@idc.ac.il
Web: http://www.ict.org.il/
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