Sanctionizing

Or not:

Iran sees no risks to its gasoline imports, an oil official said on Tuesday, a day after France's Total TOTA PA joined the list of Western oil companies stopping sales to Iran due to sanctions.

The head of the National Iranian Oil Products Distribution Company told the oil ministry website SHANA that consumption was declining, helping trim Iran's reliance on gasoline imports.

"Under any conditions we are able to supply the country's gasoline needs and there is no problem in producing or importing gasoline," said Farid Ameri, sharing the optimism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has dismissed the sanctions threat.

And until it does, sanction will never have a chance to work. If they were going to work at all . . .

Actually, the action by Total will have more of an impact than the government admits. But sanctions have a long way to go. Now if the world were to stop buying Iranian oil . . .

Iran

The protests continue today, with hundreds arrested and new demonstrations reported . . .





But they haven't lost their sense of humor - the poster had this tagged under "comedy."

Israel & Iran, addendum


So what does Israel get from its attack?

Three more years to perfect an anti-missile shield. If it can't be done in that period, it doesn't attack.

Iran's bomb


The NY Times today reports that the International Atomic Energy Agency believes that Iran can construct a nuclear bomb, which is pretty much what many people who have studied the situation believe.

Well, except for a good portion of the intelligence community, but that's a story in itself.

Iran has the materials, has the know-how, and very clearly is determined not only to build a bomb, but will. The only question is what, if anything, the rest of the world will do about it.

The real problem as far as the U.S. is concerned is this: in the short-term, it's not in the U.S.'s interests to bomb the hell out of their facilities. Iranian cooperation in Iraq and Afghanistan clearly outweighs the danger to the U.S. that an Iranian nuke would. Even long term - and even without a functioning and foolproof anti-ballistic missile system - Iran's direct threat to the U.S. in minuscule.

If you're Israel, on the other hand, the situation is completely reversed. A bomb (or missile) in the hands of a government that doesn't think you should exist is an obvious danger.

The Bush administration weighed the situation and, reportedly, nixed Israeli plans to take out the Iranian weapons program last year. Things really haven't changed from America's point of view, and won't, no matter who's in the White House.

Could Israel take out the Iranian weapons program?

All of the calculations you see consider an attack by Israeli aircraft. Such a raid would be difficult, since it would require a large number of sorties; given the size of the Iranian program, the distance from Israel, and the size of the Israeli air force, most calculations start with three completely separate waves of attack aircraft over a number of days.

But that's not the only way Israel could attack, even assuming it used conventional weapons. Israel not only has medium-range missiles that could strike Iran, it has been developing cruise missiles that can, or at some point in the very near future, will be able to do the job. The real problem for Israel is what happens next - the reaction of its allies even more than Iran must be weighed against the potential threat.

The irony in all of this is that the more money and manpower Iran devotes to the nuke program, the less resources it has to put into its actual economy. Iran sees itself as a world power; it has spent the last several years trying to build up connections and alliances around the globe, most notably in Venezuela. When you look at some of those operations, though, the country's lack of expertise and stature become apparent. They can't even manufacture bicycles efficiently, as a story in the Wall Street Journal detailed. (If you're looking for (unclassified) reasons U.S. and some, not all, European intelligence agencies are skeptical of the Iranian bomb program, that's exhibit one.)

Sanctions that further weaken the Iranian economy would help Israel indirectly, but at the end of the day, they're not going to prevent the Iranians from building nuclear weapons if it really wants to (and it does). For Israel, a strike after sanctions are in place would seem to be the best strategy - weaken the economy, and destroy the bombs. But of course its allies won't like that at all.

Not an easy dilemma. Based on past experience, I'd be betting on a strike against Iran at the beginning of next year - a strike that is launched mostly by missiles rather than planes, and that targets Iran's rocket program as well as its nuclear facilities, secret and otherwise.

NY Times story.
Wall Street Journal story. (You may need a subscription.)

Iran, nukes, and sanctions


Sanctions have less than zero chance of stopping Iran's development and final testing of a nuclear weapon, which is probably less than a year away.

With perhaps one exception - if no one buys Iran's oil, its economy will collapse within three months.

If we're not talking about that, we're not serious about sanctions.

Draw your own conclusions

Tehran today - gunshots

Iran . . .


. . . is not about us.

Tehran, Sunday

Tehran, today

Iran's satellite

Iran announced today that it had successfully launched a satellite Monday to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of its revolution.

Despite what you'll read, the surprise isn't that they launched the satellite - they've been working on that for quite a while. What's news is the fact that the launch apparently came without additional test flights of the launch vehicle, the SAFIR-2, which reportedly suffered setbacks during testing this fall. Iran had originally intended on launching its satellite by the end of March 2009, but problems with the rocket were said to have pushed back the time schedule.

Of course, the launch gives rise to all sorts of media stories interpreting it as a direct challenge to the West and Obama. The truth is, the Iranian rocket program - which includes actual nuclear capable missiles, not just "conventional" rockets like SAFIR-2 - has been ongoing for quite some time. So the challenge has been there. Needless to say, the missiles make Iran's ongoing nuclear bomb development program a very serious matter.

Neither the satellite, whose function remains to be seen, nor the rocket pose a direct threat to the U.S. The military missile program, on the other hand, could certainly become a serious regional threat within a few years - with or without any technology transfer between it and a supposedly civilian program.

Did Iran push up the time schedule in an effort to get a better deal from the West on the nuclear program as the world economy - and theirs - threaten to collapse? Could be.

More likely, the guys in charge of the satellite program might just have decided they wanted to keep their jobs.

Iran's nukes

As the Bush administration wound down, a number of stories filtered out of the White House concerning Iran's nuclear program. The headlines focused on two thing - the alleged vetoing of an Israeli plan to bomb an Iranian facility, and a U.S. covert operation against the Iranians.

The person or persons who mentioned the covert program ought to be shot, but that's another issue.

Buried inside the stories and implicit in some of the details was the fact that Iran probably now has enough nuclear material for one bomb. Which means that within a relatively short time, they will have enough material for two or three. (I'll skip the details here for space. You need more than one warhead since you want to be able to test the design and still have a bomb left in case you need it. As a practical matter, a country would probably need or at least want material for anywhere from four to six warheads before a test; the test announces that you have the weapon and, certainly in this case, invites an immediate strike from Israel if you don't have something to retaliate with. The design, by the way, doesn't have to be tested on your soil.)

Nothing looming on the horizon seems likely to prevent Iran now from "harvesting" additional material. Its missile program, while far from perfect, is already capable of sending a warhead to Israel.

We haven't formally entered a new era of Middle East calculus yet, but we're only a few months away.

Except as a deterrent against an invasion or direct attack, Iran's nuclear program may prove next to useless; nuclear bombs handcuff responsible leaders to a much greater extent than conventional weapons. But that surely remains to be seen, and the next steps of "engaging" Iran over the issue will be extremely interesting.

Can I get a duh . . .


From the NY Times . . .

Documents Say Iran
Aids Militias From Iraq

American officials have long cited Iranian training and weapons as reasons for the lethality of attacks by Shiite fighters in Iraq. Iranian officials deny that such training takes place.

Now, more than 80 pages of newly declassified intelligence documents for the first time describe in detail an elaborate network used by Iraqis to gain entry into Iran and train under Iranian supervision. They offer the most comprehensive account to date to support American claims about Iranian efforts to build a proxy force in Iraq. Those claims have become highly politicized, with Bush administration critics charging that accounts of Iranian involvement have been exaggerated.

Actually, the story reminds us one hopeful fact - the friction between the Iraqi trainees and the Iranians.

The whole story is here.

They say four, you say three, I say . . .

By now, everyone who cares has probably heard that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards tried photoshopping their way to intimidation by altering a shot of a screwup into a success, replacing a missile launch failure with a copy of a successful one. The shot on the left is the one they released first; the other is the (supposedly) real version:



A better view of the (supposedly) undoctored version:





I say 'supposedly' because everything in the image should be treated with suspicion; start with the varying trajectories and make yourself crazy from there...

I'm no analyst so we'll let the experts digest the tea leaves, but I would point out that the missile on the erector - and it would seem the others - isn't a Shahab-3, Iran's medium range ballistic missile* that's got everyone's panties in a twist. At best (worst?) that's a theater missile, with a much shorter range and smaller payload. And if that photo is real, it looks to have about as much chance of hitting its target as I have of nailing a muskrat with a headshot at half a mile with a .44 . . .

Still hurts if you get hit with with it, of course. And you might argue that Iran's ineptness only makes them more dangerous, not less . . .

* - Another weapon whose accuracy and specs remain to be proven, but we'll leave that for another day. There's no question that it is a potent missile, at least on paper, though.

Give me a break

Forget the boats, take out their f'ing homes.

Iran's nukes


It just keeps getting worse . . .

Iran Receives Nuclear Fuel in Blow to U.S.

By HELENE COOPER

Published: December 18, 2007

WASHINGTON — The United States lost a long battle when Russia, as it announced on Monday, delivered nuclear fuel to an Iranian power plant that is at the center of an international dispute over its nuclear program. Iran, for its part, confirmed on Monday plans to build a second such plant.

The article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/world/middleeast/18diplo.html?ex=1355720400&en=bd086d949a4bca7e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink