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Iran Pushes for Talks With US on Nukes, Security    [

    Iran Intelligence War
    By Robert Parry
    TomPaine.com

    Monday 01 May 2006

    In a replay of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction charade, neoconservative supporters of George W. Bush are pushing the U.S. intelligence community to take a more alarmist view about Iran's nuclear program-only this time, the nation's top spy John Negroponte is resisting the pressure unlike former CIA chief George Tenet.

    Tenet joined in Bush's hyping of the WMD evidence about Iraq-famously telling the President that the case was a "slam dunk." But Negroponte is defying hardliners who want a worst-case scenario on Iran's capabilities. Instead, he is citing Iran's limited progress in refining uranium and their use of a cascade of only 164 centrifuges.

    "According to the experts that I consult, achieving-getting 164 centrifuges to work is still a long way from having the capacity to manufacture sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon," Negroponte said in an interview with NBC News on April 20.

    "Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade," said Negroponte, who was appointed last year as the Director of National Intelligence, a new post that supplanted the traditional primacy of the CIA director as the head of the U.S. intelligence community.

    Expressing a similar view about Iran's nuclear program in a speech at the National Press Club, Negroponte said, "I think it's important that this issue be kept in perspective."

    In effect, the Director of National Intelligence was splashing cold water on the fevered assessment of Iran's nuclear progress favored by the neoconservatives. Some Bush supporters are now complaining that Negroponte has shown disloyalty to the President by siding with intelligence analysts who reject the direst predictions on Iran.

    Frank J. Gaffney Jr. an original signer of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, even called for Negroponte's firing because of the Iran assessment and his "abysmal personnel decisions" in hiring senior intelligence analysts who were skeptics about Bush's Iraqi WMD claims, too.

    In an article for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, Gaffney attacked Negroponte for giving top analytical jobs to Thomas Fingar, who had served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, and Kenneth Brill, who was U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which debunked some of the U.S. and British claims about Iraq seeking enriched uranium from Africa.

    The State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research led the dissent against the Iraq WMD case, especially over what turned out to be false claims that Iraq was developing a nuclear bomb. Gaffney specifically faulted Fingar for his testimony against neoconservative favorite John Bolton to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

    "Given this background, is it any wonder that Messrs. Negroponte, Fingar and Brill … gave us the spectacle of absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons?" wrote Gaffney, who was a senior Pentagon official during the Reagan administration.

    Gaffney accused Negroponte of giving promotions to "government officials in sensitive positions who actively subvert the President's policies," an apparent reference to Fingar and Brill. The neoconservatives have long believed that U.S. intelligence should fit administration policies, rather than inform them. [See Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

    Expectations

    When Negroponte was appointed last year, the former ambassador to Honduras and Iraq was expected to be more of a team player. Known as an old Cold Warrior, Negroponte had overseen the U.S. Embassy in Honduras in the early 1980s when the CIA was organizing the contra paramilitary force to attack Nicaragua.

    Negroponte also was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations when the Bush administration made the false case that Iraq was concealing large WMD stockpiles. Negroponte-along with CIA Director Tenet-sat behind Secretary of State Colin Powell when he made his infamous speech to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.

    While some observers expected Negroponte to stay a yes-man for Bush as Director of National Intelligence, others who knew Negroponte suspected that he was too smart and too proud to follow the path of Tenet, who is widely disdained inside the intelligence community for letting the analytic product be thoroughly politicized and corrupted.

    Having demonstrated a measure of independence on Iran, Negroponte also is under attack for allegedly creating a bloated bureaucracy around his new office, which was established to address shortcomings exposed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as well as the Iraq WMD intelligence failures.

    Richard Posner, a well-known advocate of "preemptive" wars who once wrote that "the essence of self-defense is striking the first blow against your assailant," denounced Negroponte's office as "a bureaucratic layer" that causes "delay and loss of information from the bottom up [and] delay and misunderstanding of commands from the top down."

    The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee also has criticized Negroponte's office for its spending. Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said in March that he was concerned that the new office was "putting in more layers and slowing down the process."

    While some of that criticism may be valid, it's typical of Washington's infighting to see politicians pursuing one line of attack when they're really upset about something else.

    UN Report

    The mounting criticism of Negroponte comes as the Bush administration seeks to make the most of a mixed report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which stated on April 28 that the lack of clarity around Iran's nuclear program remains "a matter of concern" as do Iran's intentions.

    While Bush cited the critical aspects of the IAEA report as evidence that a tougher line must be taken against Iran, the report also bolsters Negroponte's assessment that the Iranians are still far away from having the capacity to build a nuclear bomb.

    The IAEA said it took samples of Iran's enriched uranium and confirmed that it was processed only to an enrichment level of about 3.6 percent, when a level of at least 90 percent is needed to make a nuclear bomb. The low level of enrichment would fit better for production of nuclear energy, which is all the Iranians say they want.

    But Bush and his neoconservative advisers may believe that their window for forcing regime change in Iran is closing. The November 2006 elections could bring Republican reversals and leave Bush with less flexibility for launching bombing raids against Iran should he opt for a military attack as many experts believe he will.

    So, to make the case with the American people, the neoconservatives first need to secure a more frightening assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons potential from Negroponte and the U.S. intelligence community.

    As long as the intelligence analysts judge that Iran is years away from even the possibility of nuclear weapons, the argument for another "preemptive" war against a Muslim nation would be a hard sell.

    The Bush administration is still reeling from disclosures that it fixed the WMD intelligence to justify the Iraq War, which so far has claimed the lives of about 2,400 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

    The latest former CIA officer to speak out against the bogus intelligence was Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA covert operations in Europe.

    "It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it's an intelligence failure," Drumheller told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview broadcast April 23, 2006. "This was a policy failure. … The idea of going after Iraq was U.S. policy. It was going to happen one way or the other."

    Drumheller said the White House even ignored intelligence that the CIA got from Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri. The information was rebuffed because Sabri said Iraq didn't have WMD.

    "The policy was set," Drumheller said. "The war in Iraq was coming. And they [White House officials] were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

    Now, the first battle in a prospective "preemptive" war with Iran may be fought over ousting or intimidating Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte-which would then be followed by a whole new round of making the intelligence fit the policy.

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    Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com.

    Go to Original

    Iran Pushes for Talks With US on Nukes, Security
    By Gareth Porter
    Inter Press Service

    Monday 01 May 2006

    Washington - Iranian leaders have been signaling to Washington since late 2005 that Iran wanted direct negotiations with the United States on Tehran's nuclear programme and other outstanding issues between the two countries.

    The campaign began with private talks between Iranian officials and foreign visitors in the country, and has included public suggestions by members of the Iranian parliament for U.S-Iranian talks. But last week, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad indicated for the first time that he is open to talks with Washington.

    In an hour-long press conference Apr. 24, Ahmadinejad said Iran "is ready to talk to all world countries, but negotiation with anybody has its own conditions", and then specifically named the United States. "If these conditions are met, we will negotiate."

    Ahmedinejad's remark, which was reported by the independent Paris-based Iran News Service, went unnoticed in the U.S. media. However, the media did report the Iranian president's statement in the same press conference that talks with the U.S. on Iraq were not necessary now that a government was set up.

    Although Ahmedinejad did not say what Iran's conditions for talks are, the Iranian response to the U.S. proposal last November for bilateral talks on Iraq may be a good indication of what Tehran has in mind. When Iraqi President Jalal Talabani took the U.S. proposal to Tehran on a visit last November, in which he met Ahmedinejad, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, and other top leaders, he was told Iran would agree to talks on two conditions: they would remain private and they would involve all outstanding issues between the two countries.

    Despite a common view in the media, reflecting official U.S. views, that Ahmedinejad has taken Iranian policy in a much more radical direction since he took office last August, Iranian leaders, including those who have been critical of some of Ahmedinejad's public rhetoric, have publicly emphasised that Iran's nuclear policy is not determined by the president.

    In late February and early March, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council for 16 years, Hassan Rohani, stated on two different occasions that Iran's stance on the nuclear issue is decided by the state's top officials and not by the current government. "Iran's general policies do not change with new governments," he said on Feb. 20.

    Although it was the first time that Ahmedinejad had commented on the subject of talks with the United States, his press conference remark was not the first direct public indication by the Iranian government of interest in negotiations with the United States on both the nuclear issue and other security questions.

    On Mar. 6, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said, "What we are saying is that if America abandons its threats and creates a positive atmosphere in which it does not seek to influence the process of negotiations by imposing preconditions, then there will be no impediment to negotiations."

    These new public signals came against a background of a quiet diplomatic campaign by Iranian officials in recent months to communicate Iran's readiness to negotiate directly with the United States on broad security issues. They have sent that message through both diplomats and other prominent figures who have met with them in Tehran.

    A statement published in the International Herald Tribune Wednesday by former foreign ministers of the United States, Germany, Netherlands, Poland, France and Luxembourg, said the five European members of the group had all "met with influential Iranian officials during the past few months and found a widespread interest among them in conducting a broad discussion with the United States on security issues".

    The current campaign is not the first by Iran to interest Washington in direct negotiations on security issues. In early May 2003, Swiss Ambassador in Tehran Tim Guldimann, who represented U.S. interests in the country, forwarded to Washington a one-page Iranian proposal that offered to meet U.S. concerns about the nuclear issue and Iranian support for Hezbollah and other anti-Israeli groups, in return for security guarantees and an end to economic sanctions.

    That negotiating initiative, which was said to have the support of Supreme Leader Khamenei and the Supreme National Security Council, was also preceded by a quiet campaign of signals by Iranian officials through both official diplomatic channels and non-official channels of Iranian interest in such negotiations, according to Paul Pillar, who was then the national intelligence officer on Iran.

    The Iranians apparently believed the time was ripe for negotiations, because of the potential chaos that could engulf Iraq in the wake of the U.S. invasion, and the U.S. need for the cooperation of Iranian-sponsored Shiite political parties and military groups who were responsive to Iranian advice.

    Bush administration officials had also begun in late 2002 to express alarm at the progress made in Iran's nuclear programme and alleged Iranian plans to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

    "The Iranians expected and had plenty of reason to expect that this would be a good moment to approach the United States," says Pillar.

    The George W. Bush administration ignored the Iranian proposal in 2003 and has publicly rejected possible talks with Iran on the nuclear issue in recent months. However, Iran's announcement in early April that it had achieved a 3.6 percent level of enrichment of uranium - the first step toward having a level of enrichment necessary to make a nuclear weapon - has made a negotiated solution to the issue much more urgent.

    Following that announcement, the two top members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman Richard Lugar and ranking Democrat Joseph Biden, called for direct U.S. talks with Iran.

    Some analysts familiar with the thinking of Iranian national security officials believe they have gone ahead with partial enrichment in order to position themselves for broader talks with the United States going beyond the nuclear issue.

    "Enrichment has become a big bargaining chip," says Iranian journalist Najmeh Bozorgmehr, who has had access to top Iranian leaders in off the record interviews for the past several years. "They are producing facts on the ground that would give them leverage in negotiations with the United States."

    Bozorgmehr, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, says the Iranians hope to get the removal of sanctions, security guarantees and guaranteed fuel supply in return for concessions on the fuel enrichment issue.

    Journalist Praful Bidwai reported for IPS last week that government officials and other experts in Tehran told him there was "fairly broad agreement" that a compromise proposal on the nuclear issue and security guarantees and normalisation of U.S. relations with Iran could be negotiated.

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    Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.