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The Ayatollahs' Criticism of Ahmadinejad    [

    Live With a Nuclear Iran or Strike?
    By Laurent Zecchini
    Le Monde

    Tuesday 06 March 2007

    The United States is keeping two irons in the fire with Iran. It is exploring the diplomatic route and economic sanctions, while sending strong signals of its determination to choose the military option: The two American aircraft carriers in the Arabian-Persian Gulf are a modern illustration of "gunboat diplomacy." If Tehran's nuclear headlong rush must be stopped, which - the United States or Israel - should take care of it? Knowing that a bombing campaign will not succeed in razing all of Iran's ballistic missile sites, still less in eradicating the knowledge of its nuclear experts, and knowing that such an offensive will trigger Iranian reprisals against Israel and American interests in the region, what can the purpose of such an operation be?

    If the risks of a military intervention exceed its advantages, can Israel live with a nuclear Iran? Those uncertainties characterize the Israeli population and its officialdom for which the Iranian question is becoming a national obsession. The approach of Ephraim Kam, a recognized expert on Iranian questions at Tel-Aviv's Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS), is all the more original in this context: Examining all the scenarios, he demonstrates a moderation that contrasts strongly with the bellicose accents of certain American and Israeli officials.

    By presenting Tehran as one of the troublemakers fomenting problems in Iraq, the American administration does its utmost to designate a scapegoat for its own fiasco, while simultaneously bolstering its indictment against Iran. It's a situation that recalls the foreplay for the launch of the American "Iraqi Freedom" operation in March 2003. Yet Washington refrains from going all the way. First of all, because the development of the political situation in Tehran could open new negotiation prospects, and then, because the effectiveness of military strikes is unpredictable.

    If that scenario should occur, the destruction of Iran's nuclear installations would have to be envisaged first, before Tehran reaches the threshold of atomic weapons production. After that, Iran would have a potent means of blackmail at its disposal, and it is probable that the international community would concede the Iranian nuclear fait accompli as it has done for India and Pakistan, briefly sanctioned after their 1998 nuclear tests.

    How much time does that leave? The Israelis deem that Iran is three to four years away from the bomb (but they add that that estimate does not take into account a probable secret nuclear program), while American experts talk about five to eight years.

    The goal of such a military intervention would have to be modest: At best, the international community would gain a respite, betting that the Iranian population would hold the Mullahs' regime responsible for the suffering and destruction it would have been subjected to. On the other hand, it is more likely that such a strike would favor a reflexive national unity against the "aggressor." The Israelis would much prefer that the Americans take on a complex and risky military operation. They deem that the United States is better equipped operationally and no doubt also to confront the diplomatic consequences of such an intervention. For the Hebrew state, the question is a veritable strategic challenge: Iranian nuclear sites are dispersed, often buried and situated 1,200 to 1,500 kilometers from Israel's territory, a distance that will be significantly increased should IDF planes have to go around Jordanian, or even Iraqi, air space.

    If the operation is to have any strategic sense at all, the sites of uranium conversion and enrichment and of plutonium production would have to be destroyed. Which means, targeting - at a minimum - the nuclear installations at Isfahan, Natanz and Arak. To cover itself, Israel would have to have tacit American support or agreement. But if Washington concluded that a conflict would risk embroiling America in a war in the Middle East, its answer is not self-evident.

    Possible Coexistence

    Yet the "strategic surprise" of Iran announcing that it has the bomb or indulging in a nuclear test cannot be totally excluded. In those cases, the Hebrew state would have to make do. Ephraim Kam deems that such coexistence is possible, under certain conditions. The first would be that the Israeli secret services be convinced that Iran would not use its nuclear weapons against Israel. The second would be to obtain an explicit commitment from the United States to retaliate with their nuclear weapons if Tehran used theirs. The third is that the Jewish state reach a level of strategic capability - notably in antimissile defense - that effectively deters Iran from using its bomb. The significant broadening of the Iranian political leadership to include moderate elements would constitute another important guarantee. In the end, the condition for such a compromise is the existence of channels of communication between Tehran and Tel-Aviv.

    With President Ahmadinejad having threatened the existence of the Hebrew state, the hypothesis of a Tehran power take-over by a group of fanatics that would put his threat to "erase Israel from the map" into effect cannot be excluded. No more, no doubt, than the possibility of Iran offering its nuclear protection to Syria. But unlike the Baghdad regime, the Iranian regime has not shown a propensity for military adventurism. That attitude could change, but it's not impossible that, once it has an atomic weapon, Iran would consider its bomb a weapon of "last resort," only to be used in the case of "extreme and immediate strategic danger." That theory - of the "sagacity" that possession of a nuclear weapon would confer - is nourished by the restraint - since Hiroshima - demonstrated by the eight powers in possession of nuclear weapons (the UN Security Council's five permanent members, India, Pakistan and Israel): not one has crossed the nuclear Rubicon.

    Could such a "balance of terror" be established in the Middle East? Ephraim Kam seems to believe so, perhaps in underestimating the danger of a proliferation that risks spreading in the region if the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) flies into pieces with the appearance of the "Iranian bomb." Nonetheless: In counterpoint to the gung-ho American scenarios, the dispassionate approach of Israel's principal strategic institute is rather reassuring.

    Go to Original

    The Ayatollahs' Criticism of Ahmadinejad
    By Marie-Claude Decamps
    Le Monde

    Monday 05 March 2007

    It will soon be the hour for prayer in Qom, the sacred city for Iranian Shiites (160 kilometers south of Tehran), and Grand Ayatollah Yussef Saanei is in a hurry. With an impatient gesture of his cane, he speeds up the ritual of tea, nimbly arranges the folds of his robe and, abbreviating the customary courtesies, launches himself: "The Islamic Republic made more progress during the time of Imam Khomeiny - may his soul rest in peace - than recently! We should never have ended up with the present team. It's a sign that we've distanced ourselves from the true objectives of the Revolution and the Imam. Cultured people suffer for it and are bereft of hope." And, breaking with the learned and convoluted style appropriate to one of the most respected of Qom's some 14 Grand Ayatollahs, Yussef Saanei - without ever naming him - draws up a blistering criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

    He talks about "demagoguery," "ineptitude," "un-kept economic promises," even waxes ironic about the future and unpopular gas price increase in Iran: "'They' promised me, as they did every Iranian, to bring the oil money right to my table. Instead of that, 'they're' in the process of taking it out of my gas tank!" He talks about the "rights of man and of the woman," which "were progressing" before the new government. Then, finally, he talks about the nuclear issue.

    Obviously, if this former comrade of Ayatollah Khomeiny - who, before developing moderate positions, was the implacable prosecutor of Revolutionary tribunals - opens himself so incautiously at close to eighty years old, it's because he sees the situation as serious. And, although he takes the precaution of explaining that "slogans, here, as in the United States, are for domestic consumption," he still shows that he is worried by President Ahmadinejad's very hardcore diatribes: "Slogans, they don't realize it; they're bad for Iran's image. The more there are, the more that will compromise the situation. We have nothing to gain from being isolated and - just as much as an American aerial attack - new sanctions would be a catastrophe."

    Does he think that - in such context of crisis - organizing a government conference on the Holocaust several months ago in Tehran helped Iran? "We must never do to others that which we wouldn't like done to ourselves, the Koran teaches," he says, sarcastically. "The Holocaust, that's History; are we going to change the history of nations? I don't see why the government threw itself into this issue. Would we like a Congress on our history? No; all that is very bad for Islam and for Iran!" Then, already standing up, he launches into a panegyric of the former president, the pragmatic Ali Akbar Hachemi Rafsandjani, whose reputation was stained by suspicions of corruption, but who has just been elected overwhelmingly to the Assembly of Experts, an essential cog in the regime: "A campaign of calumnies prevented him from being elected president, but he alone could pull the country out of this tight corner." Just the time to worry that Brussels could one day cease to describe the People's Mudjahadijns - armed dissidents sheltering in Iraq whom the regime fears will be used by the Americans to destabilize the country - as a "terrorist group," since "They are terrorists, and they remain terrorists, even if they've reformed." And he leaves. Prayer does not wait.

    An isolated case, the Grand Ayatollah Saanei? He reflects, a professor of a Koranic seminary explains to us in private, the opinion of many cultured young mullahs in Qom and of the majority of Grand Ayatollahs.

    "The current here has not up until now been with (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad, whose support in Qom is limited to that of fundamentalist Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, two or three others, and several radical foundations. Many Grand Ayatollahs, like Mousavi Ardebeli or Saanei, are ill-at-ease with the "religious populism" of the secular Ahmadinejad and the tensions he creates within the regime and within society. They would prefer former president Rafsandjani, a cultured cleric, but above all a pragmatist better fitted to crisis situations." And, he adds: "Apart from a few, they don't want a deep change, but a more open government. They fear that this policy of intransigence conducted in the name of religion will weaken the country and end up hurting Islam and the whole system, which could ultimately topple."

    Much-Noted Statement

    In fact, although ill, Ayatollah Khomeiny's former dauphin, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri (considered a dissident and pushed aside to the benefit of the present Supreme Guide of the Revolution, the Ayatollah Khamenei), made a much-noted statement several weeks ago with respect to nuclear matters. "We say, 'Death to America,' but the United States is a power with significant resources. (...) We must not provoke it," he said. "People keep repeating: 'Nuclear technology is our right.' But one may obtain a right without creating problems and giving pretexts to others."

    As for the Mullah Fazel Meybodi, in charge of publications for the pilot university Mofid in Qom where over 1,500 students study: He sent a note to the Ettemad-e-Meli journal to put the educational system on its guard. In it, he told us, he explains that in Iran, "There are 30,000 students who take drugs, and a great number of youth whom poverty forces to abandon their studies, but some officials are unaware of these problems and, in the name of religion, lose themselves in sterile argumentation over the color of Mohammed's beard." And, he concludes, "Isn't that as humiliating for Islam's image as the Danish caricatures of the Prophet?"