the human province

I was just watching OTV, and they showed footage of the latest explosion in the Chevrolet neighborhood just north of Beirut. It was a huge explosion, and I saw at least 3 or 4 mangled bodies, some still in cars, others with their gory limbs strewn about on the ground.

Naharnet has an updating banner that says that the target was an Internal Security Forces (ISF) vehicle and that "a senior security officer was targeted." Now they're being more precise and saying that it was Captain Wissam Eid, who has a high-ish position in the darak (security forces). It's also being said that there was an unnamed judicial official among the victims.

Everyone always speaks of a "message" that's being relayed by this bomb or that. Perhaps I'm just daft, but I don't know what these messages are, to whom they're addressed or from whom they're postmarked. It's like playing the telephone game (téléphone cassé, if you're from Lebanon) where a message gets sent down a chain of whispering kids until it's unintelligible at the end. The only difference is that instead of whispers and kids, it's car bombs and mangled corpses.

If the Naharnet count is right, we can chalk up ten dead people today in the game of téléphone cassé.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The news here is that the Levant is due for a tsunami, which reminds me of reactions that I got after the big one in Indonesia. It was obviously an American/Jewish underwater tsunami bomb, I was told by one Pakistani guy. When I asked why "the Jews" and "the Americans" would do that, he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question on earth: "To kill Muslims, obviously!"

According to the Algerians (via the Arabist), things are just warming up:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l'ouest algérien, vendredi. L'origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L'hypothèse d'un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l'autre rive, comme l'Espagne, l'Italie ou la France est avancée. "On peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'une expérience scientifique d'armes conventionnelles", explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d'astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L'Expression.

L'hypothèse d'un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n'a touché qu'une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d'une magnitude de 4,6 sur l'échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Sometimes I wonder if I've become too acclimated to the local weather of conspiracy theories, but when things like this come up, I know that I've still got a long way to go. 

There was just another bomb on the Corniche in al-Manara next to the Military Sports Club and the cafe where I often go for arguileh and tea on Sunday mornings. According to Reuters, there have been 4 deaths and more injured so far.

LBC is reporting that Future party MP Walid 'Aydu was killed in the explosion. Judging from the pictures on television, the explosion was a pretty bad one.

Al-Manara is pretty much my old neighborhood in West Beirut. (I used to live about 5-6 minutes by foot from the bomb site.) I'm trying to call my friends who still live in the area, but, as usual, the networks are jammed and I can't get through. I'm sure they're all right, but you can never help yourself from worrying nonetheless...

UPDATE: LBC is now saying that the death toll is 10 people, including 'Aydu's son and bodyguards. (I'm not sure how people are spelling his name in English -- it may be Eidu.)

UPDATE2: The body count is now apparently up to 15. Ya haram.

Harper's has a three-part segment on the possibility of war with Iran on its Washington Bablyon. Ken Silverman creates an online forum of different characters: Part 1 features independent analysts; Part 2, CIA officials; and Part 3, members of think tanks.

The verdict does not look good. There are a lot of quotable tidbits in the different segments, so I'm not going to bother, except to focus on one argument I found interesting from Milt Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989:

I am seeing constant trumpeting by the administration of "evidence" of Iranian weapons, equipment, or technology, linked with American casualties in Iraq. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by Iranian gambling in our Iraqi casino -- especially as there are time-honored rules, at least a half-century old, for proxy wars. The Soviets and Chinese armed our adversaries in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, where we suffered about 100,000 killed in action. Nevertheless, successive American administrations never gave serious thought to attacking either China or the U.S.S.R. in response to their arming of our enemies. And I personally funneled much of the ordnance to the Afghan resistance fighters that killed 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Here again, the U.S.S.R. never seriously considered striking at the source of their torment in Afghanistan.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I was just watching OTV, and they showed footage of the latest explosion in the Chevrolet neighborhood just north of Beirut. It was a huge explosion, and I saw at least 3 or 4 mangled bodies, some still in cars, others with their gory limbs strewn about on the ground.

Naharnet has an updating banner that says that the target was an Internal Security Forces (ISF) vehicle and that "a senior security officer was targeted." Now they're being more precise and saying that it was Captain Wissam Eid, who has a high-ish position in the darak (security forces). It's also being said that there was an unnamed judicial official among the victims.

Everyone always speaks of a "message" that's being relayed by this bomb or that. Perhaps I'm just daft, but I don't know what these messages are, to whom they're addressed or from whom they're postmarked. It's like playing the telephone game (téléphone cassé, if you're from Lebanon) where a message gets sent down a chain of whispering kids until it's unintelligible at the end. The only difference is that instead of whispers and kids, it's car bombs and mangled corpses.

If the Naharnet count is right, we can chalk up ten dead people today in the game of téléphone cassé.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The news here is that the Levant is due for a tsunami, which reminds me of reactions that I got after the big one in Indonesia. It was obviously an American/Jewish underwater tsunami bomb, I was told by one Pakistani guy. When I asked why "the Jews" and "the Americans" would do that, he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question on earth: "To kill Muslims, obviously!"

According to the Algerians (via the Arabist), things are just warming up:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l'ouest algérien, vendredi. L'origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L'hypothèse d'un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l'autre rive, comme l'Espagne, l'Italie ou la France est avancée. "On peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'une expérience scientifique d'armes conventionnelles", explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d'astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L'Expression.

L'hypothèse d'un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n'a touché qu'une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d'une magnitude de 4,6 sur l'échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Sometimes I wonder if I've become too acclimated to the local weather of conspiracy theories, but when things like this come up, I know that I've still got a long way to go. 

There was just another bomb on the Corniche in al-Manara next to the Military Sports Club and the cafe where I often go for arguileh and tea on Sunday mornings. According to Reuters, there have been 4 deaths and more injured so far.

LBC is reporting that Future party MP Walid 'Aydu was killed in the explosion. Judging from the pictures on television, the explosion was a pretty bad one.

Al-Manara is pretty much my old neighborhood in West Beirut. (I used to live about 5-6 minutes by foot from the bomb site.) I'm trying to call my friends who still live in the area, but, as usual, the networks are jammed and I can't get through. I'm sure they're all right, but you can never help yourself from worrying nonetheless...

UPDATE: LBC is now saying that the death toll is 10 people, including 'Aydu's son and bodyguards. (I'm not sure how people are spelling his name in English -- it may be Eidu.)

UPDATE2: The body count is now apparently up to 15. Ya haram.

Harper's has a three-part segment on the possibility of war with Iran on its Washington Bablyon. Ken Silverman creates an online forum of different characters: Part 1 features independent analysts; Part 2, CIA officials; and Part 3, members of think tanks.

The verdict does not look good. There are a lot of quotable tidbits in the different segments, so I'm not going to bother, except to focus on one argument I found interesting from Milt Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989:

I am seeing constant trumpeting by the administration of "evidence" of Iranian weapons, equipment, or technology, linked with American casualties in Iraq. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by Iranian gambling in our Iraqi casino -- especially as there are time-honored rules, at least a half-century old, for proxy wars. The Soviets and Chinese armed our adversaries in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, where we suffered about 100,000 killed in action. Nevertheless, successive American administrations never gave serious thought to attacking either China or the U.S.S.R. in response to their arming of our enemies. And I personally funneled much of the ordnance to the Afghan resistance fighters that killed 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Here again, the U.S.S.R. never seriously considered striking at the source of their torment in Afghanistan.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I was just watching OTV, and they showed footage of the latest explosion in the Chevrolet neighborhood just north of Beirut. It was a huge explosion, and I saw at least 3 or 4 mangled bodies, some still in cars, others with their gory limbs strewn about on the ground.

Naharnet has an updating banner that says that the target was an Internal Security Forces (ISF) vehicle and that "a senior security officer was targeted." Now they're being more precise and saying that it was Captain Wissam Eid, who has a high-ish position in the darak (security forces). It's also being said that there was an unnamed judicial official among the victims.

Everyone always speaks of a "message" that's being relayed by this bomb or that. Perhaps I'm just daft, but I don't know what these messages are, to whom they're addressed or from whom they're postmarked. It's like playing the telephone game (téléphone cassé, if you're from Lebanon) where a message gets sent down a chain of whispering kids until it's unintelligible at the end. The only difference is that instead of whispers and kids, it's car bombs and mangled corpses.

If the Naharnet count is right, we can chalk up ten dead people today in the game of téléphone cassé.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The news here is that the Levant is due for a tsunami, which reminds me of reactions that I got after the big one in Indonesia. It was obviously an American/Jewish underwater tsunami bomb, I was told by one Pakistani guy. When I asked why "the Jews" and "the Americans" would do that, he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question on earth: "To kill Muslims, obviously!"

According to the Algerians (via the Arabist), things are just warming up:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l'ouest algérien, vendredi. L'origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L'hypothèse d'un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l'autre rive, comme l'Espagne, l'Italie ou la France est avancée. "On peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'une expérience scientifique d'armes conventionnelles", explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d'astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L'Expression.

L'hypothèse d'un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n'a touché qu'une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d'une magnitude de 4,6 sur l'échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Sometimes I wonder if I've become too acclimated to the local weather of conspiracy theories, but when things like this come up, I know that I've still got a long way to go. 

There was just another bomb on the Corniche in al-Manara next to the Military Sports Club and the cafe where I often go for arguileh and tea on Sunday mornings. According to Reuters, there have been 4 deaths and more injured so far.

LBC is reporting that Future party MP Walid 'Aydu was killed in the explosion. Judging from the pictures on television, the explosion was a pretty bad one.

Al-Manara is pretty much my old neighborhood in West Beirut. (I used to live about 5-6 minutes by foot from the bomb site.) I'm trying to call my friends who still live in the area, but, as usual, the networks are jammed and I can't get through. I'm sure they're all right, but you can never help yourself from worrying nonetheless...

UPDATE: LBC is now saying that the death toll is 10 people, including 'Aydu's son and bodyguards. (I'm not sure how people are spelling his name in English -- it may be Eidu.)

UPDATE2: The body count is now apparently up to 15. Ya haram.

Harper's has a three-part segment on the possibility of war with Iran on its Washington Bablyon. Ken Silverman creates an online forum of different characters: Part 1 features independent analysts; Part 2, CIA officials; and Part 3, members of think tanks.

The verdict does not look good. There are a lot of quotable tidbits in the different segments, so I'm not going to bother, except to focus on one argument I found interesting from Milt Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989:

I am seeing constant trumpeting by the administration of "evidence" of Iranian weapons, equipment, or technology, linked with American casualties in Iraq. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by Iranian gambling in our Iraqi casino -- especially as there are time-honored rules, at least a half-century old, for proxy wars. The Soviets and Chinese armed our adversaries in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, where we suffered about 100,000 killed in action. Nevertheless, successive American administrations never gave serious thought to attacking either China or the U.S.S.R. in response to their arming of our enemies. And I personally funneled much of the ordnance to the Afghan resistance fighters that killed 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Here again, the U.S.S.R. never seriously considered striking at the source of their torment in Afghanistan.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I was just watching OTV, and they showed footage of the latest explosion in the Chevrolet neighborhood just north of Beirut. It was a huge explosion, and I saw at least 3 or 4 mangled bodies, some still in cars, others with their gory limbs strewn about on the ground.

Naharnet has an updating banner that says that the target was an Internal Security Forces (ISF) vehicle and that "a senior security officer was targeted." Now they're being more precise and saying that it was Captain Wissam Eid, who has a high-ish position in the darak (security forces). It's also being said that there was an unnamed judicial official among the victims.

Everyone always speaks of a "message" that's being relayed by this bomb or that. Perhaps I'm just daft, but I don't know what these messages are, to whom they're addressed or from whom they're postmarked. It's like playing the telephone game (téléphone cassé, if you're from Lebanon) where a message gets sent down a chain of whispering kids until it's unintelligible at the end. The only difference is that instead of whispers and kids, it's car bombs and mangled corpses.

If the Naharnet count is right, we can chalk up ten dead people today in the game of téléphone cassé.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The news here is that the Levant is due for a tsunami, which reminds me of reactions that I got after the big one in Indonesia. It was obviously an American/Jewish underwater tsunami bomb, I was told by one Pakistani guy. When I asked why "the Jews" and "the Americans" would do that, he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question on earth: "To kill Muslims, obviously!"

According to the Algerians (via the Arabist), things are just warming up:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l'ouest algérien, vendredi. L'origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L'hypothèse d'un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l'autre rive, comme l'Espagne, l'Italie ou la France est avancée. "On peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'une expérience scientifique d'armes conventionnelles", explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d'astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L'Expression.

L'hypothèse d'un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n'a touché qu'une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d'une magnitude de 4,6 sur l'échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Sometimes I wonder if I've become too acclimated to the local weather of conspiracy theories, but when things like this come up, I know that I've still got a long way to go. 

There was just another bomb on the Corniche in al-Manara next to the Military Sports Club and the cafe where I often go for arguileh and tea on Sunday mornings. According to Reuters, there have been 4 deaths and more injured so far.

LBC is reporting that Future party MP Walid 'Aydu was killed in the explosion. Judging from the pictures on television, the explosion was a pretty bad one.

Al-Manara is pretty much my old neighborhood in West Beirut. (I used to live about 5-6 minutes by foot from the bomb site.) I'm trying to call my friends who still live in the area, but, as usual, the networks are jammed and I can't get through. I'm sure they're all right, but you can never help yourself from worrying nonetheless...

UPDATE: LBC is now saying that the death toll is 10 people, including 'Aydu's son and bodyguards. (I'm not sure how people are spelling his name in English -- it may be Eidu.)

UPDATE2: The body count is now apparently up to 15. Ya haram.

Harper's has a three-part segment on the possibility of war with Iran on its Washington Bablyon. Ken Silverman creates an online forum of different characters: Part 1 features independent analysts; Part 2, CIA officials; and Part 3, members of think tanks.

The verdict does not look good. There are a lot of quotable tidbits in the different segments, so I'm not going to bother, except to focus on one argument I found interesting from Milt Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989:

I am seeing constant trumpeting by the administration of "evidence" of Iranian weapons, equipment, or technology, linked with American casualties in Iraq. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by Iranian gambling in our Iraqi casino -- especially as there are time-honored rules, at least a half-century old, for proxy wars. The Soviets and Chinese armed our adversaries in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, where we suffered about 100,000 killed in action. Nevertheless, successive American administrations never gave serious thought to attacking either China or the U.S.S.R. in response to their arming of our enemies. And I personally funneled much of the ordnance to the Afghan resistance fighters that killed 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Here again, the U.S.S.R. never seriously considered striking at the source of their torment in Afghanistan.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I was just watching OTV, and they showed footage of the latest explosion in the Chevrolet neighborhood just north of Beirut. It was a huge explosion, and I saw at least 3 or 4 mangled bodies, some still in cars, others with their gory limbs strewn about on the ground.

Naharnet has an updating banner that says that the target was an Internal Security Forces (ISF) vehicle and that "a senior security officer was targeted." Now they're being more precise and saying that it was Captain Wissam Eid, who has a high-ish position in the darak (security forces). It's also being said that there was an unnamed judicial official among the victims.

Everyone always speaks of a "message" that's being relayed by this bomb or that. Perhaps I'm just daft, but I don't know what these messages are, to whom they're addressed or from whom they're postmarked. It's like playing the telephone game (téléphone cassé, if you're from Lebanon) where a message gets sent down a chain of whispering kids until it's unintelligible at the end. The only difference is that instead of whispers and kids, it's car bombs and mangled corpses.

If the Naharnet count is right, we can chalk up ten dead people today in the game of téléphone cassé.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The news here is that the Levant is due for a tsunami, which reminds me of reactions that I got after the big one in Indonesia. It was obviously an American/Jewish underwater tsunami bomb, I was told by one Pakistani guy. When I asked why "the Jews" and "the Americans" would do that, he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question on earth: "To kill Muslims, obviously!"

According to the Algerians (via the Arabist), things are just warming up:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l'ouest algérien, vendredi. L'origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L'hypothèse d'un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l'autre rive, comme l'Espagne, l'Italie ou la France est avancée. "On peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'une expérience scientifique d'armes conventionnelles", explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d'astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L'Expression.

L'hypothèse d'un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n'a touché qu'une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d'une magnitude de 4,6 sur l'échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Sometimes I wonder if I've become too acclimated to the local weather of conspiracy theories, but when things like this come up, I know that I've still got a long way to go. 

There was just another bomb on the Corniche in al-Manara next to the Military Sports Club and the cafe where I often go for arguileh and tea on Sunday mornings. According to Reuters, there have been 4 deaths and more injured so far.

LBC is reporting that Future party MP Walid 'Aydu was killed in the explosion. Judging from the pictures on television, the explosion was a pretty bad one.

Al-Manara is pretty much my old neighborhood in West Beirut. (I used to live about 5-6 minutes by foot from the bomb site.) I'm trying to call my friends who still live in the area, but, as usual, the networks are jammed and I can't get through. I'm sure they're all right, but you can never help yourself from worrying nonetheless...

UPDATE: LBC is now saying that the death toll is 10 people, including 'Aydu's son and bodyguards. (I'm not sure how people are spelling his name in English -- it may be Eidu.)

UPDATE2: The body count is now apparently up to 15. Ya haram.

Harper's has a three-part segment on the possibility of war with Iran on its Washington Bablyon. Ken Silverman creates an online forum of different characters: Part 1 features independent analysts; Part 2, CIA officials; and Part 3, members of think tanks.

The verdict does not look good. There are a lot of quotable tidbits in the different segments, so I'm not going to bother, except to focus on one argument I found interesting from Milt Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989:

I am seeing constant trumpeting by the administration of "evidence" of Iranian weapons, equipment, or technology, linked with American casualties in Iraq. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by Iranian gambling in our Iraqi casino -- especially as there are time-honored rules, at least a half-century old, for proxy wars. The Soviets and Chinese armed our adversaries in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, where we suffered about 100,000 killed in action. Nevertheless, successive American administrations never gave serious thought to attacking either China or the U.S.S.R. in response to their arming of our enemies. And I personally funneled much of the ordnance to the Afghan resistance fighters that killed 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Here again, the U.S.S.R. never seriously considered striking at the source of their torment in Afghanistan.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.

I was just watching OTV, and they showed footage of the latest explosion in the Chevrolet neighborhood just north of Beirut. It was a huge explosion, and I saw at least 3 or 4 mangled bodies, some still in cars, others with their gory limbs strewn about on the ground.

Naharnet has an updating banner that says that the target was an Internal Security Forces (ISF) vehicle and that "a senior security officer was targeted." Now they're being more precise and saying that it was Captain Wissam Eid, who has a high-ish position in the darak (security forces). It's also being said that there was an unnamed judicial official among the victims.

Everyone always speaks of a "message" that's being relayed by this bomb or that. Perhaps I'm just daft, but I don't know what these messages are, to whom they're addressed or from whom they're postmarked. It's like playing the telephone game (téléphone cassé, if you're from Lebanon) where a message gets sent down a chain of whispering kids until it's unintelligible at the end. The only difference is that instead of whispers and kids, it's car bombs and mangled corpses.

If the Naharnet count is right, we can chalk up ten dead people today in the game of téléphone cassé.

Akiva Eldar has a very non-explicit opinion piece in Ha'aretz about the nuclear weapons in the Middle East. I have the feeling that Israeli laws on its "secret" nuclear program prevent him from being more explicit, but he nonetheless poses a question that I've been asking for some time now:

How can a country, which according to endless foreign reports has kept secret for years several atomic weapons, manage to rally the international community in a struggle against a neighboring country that insists on acquiring nuclear energy? What do Israeli politicians answer to those asking why Iran should not be allowed to acquire the same armaments that are already in the arsenals of neighboring countries, like Pakistan and India? The common response is that "Iran is the sole country whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, declares openly that he intends to destroy the state of Israel." This argument is a double-edged sword, par excellence, used by a country that sports a radiant nuclear glow (according to foreign press reports, of course), and who has a senior minister, one assigned to dealing with strategic threats, who has threatened to bomb the Aswan Dam.

Again without being explicit, he calls for a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but he says that this should be done "when the conflict is resolved," which seems a little too much like waiting for Godot to me. History has shown that countries that get the bomb are very unlikely to give it up (with the exception of South Africa). So if Israel waits until Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan all have the bomb, a nuke-free Middle East will never happen, because while the chances of Israel giving up the bomb seem slim, the chances of getting all those other states to give it up are nil.   

The news here is that the Levant is due for a tsunami, which reminds me of reactions that I got after the big one in Indonesia. It was obviously an American/Jewish underwater tsunami bomb, I was told by one Pakistani guy. When I asked why "the Jews" and "the Americans" would do that, he looked at me as if I had just asked the stupidest question on earth: "To kill Muslims, obviously!"

According to the Algerians (via the Arabist), things are just warming up:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l'ouest algérien, vendredi. L'origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L'hypothèse d'un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l'autre rive, comme l'Espagne, l'Italie ou la France est avancée. "On peut supposer qu'il s'agit d'une expérience scientifique d'armes conventionnelles", explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d'astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L'Expression.

L'hypothèse d'un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n'a touché qu'une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d'une magnitude de 4,6 sur l'échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Sometimes I wonder if I've become too acclimated to the local weather of conspiracy theories, but when things like this come up, I know that I've still got a long way to go. 

There was just another bomb on the Corniche in al-Manara next to the Military Sports Club and the cafe where I often go for arguileh and tea on Sunday mornings. According to Reuters, there have been 4 deaths and more injured so far.

LBC is reporting that Future party MP Walid 'Aydu was killed in the explosion. Judging from the pictures on television, the explosion was a pretty bad one.

Al-Manara is pretty much my old neighborhood in West Beirut. (I used to live about 5-6 minutes by foot from the bomb site.) I'm trying to call my friends who still live in the area, but, as usual, the networks are jammed and I can't get through. I'm sure they're all right, but you can never help yourself from worrying nonetheless...

UPDATE: LBC is now saying that the death toll is 10 people, including 'Aydu's son and bodyguards. (I'm not sure how people are spelling his name in English -- it may be Eidu.)

UPDATE2: The body count is now apparently up to 15. Ya haram.

Harper's has a three-part segment on the possibility of war with Iran on its Washington Bablyon. Ken Silverman creates an online forum of different characters: Part 1 features independent analysts; Part 2, CIA officials; and Part 3, members of think tanks.

The verdict does not look good. There are a lot of quotable tidbits in the different segments, so I'm not going to bother, except to focus on one argument I found interesting from Milt Bearden, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 until the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989:

I am seeing constant trumpeting by the administration of "evidence" of Iranian weapons, equipment, or technology, linked with American casualties in Iraq. I don't know why anyone would be surprised by Iranian gambling in our Iraqi casino -- especially as there are time-honored rules, at least a half-century old, for proxy wars. The Soviets and Chinese armed our adversaries in the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, where we suffered about 100,000 killed in action. Nevertheless, successive American administrations never gave serious thought to attacking either China or the U.S.S.R. in response to their arming of our enemies. And I personally funneled much of the ordnance to the Afghan resistance fighters that killed 15,000 Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Here again, the U.S.S.R. never seriously considered striking at the source of their torment in Afghanistan.

The AP reports on news from the Daily Telegraph that Israel wants American permission to fly over Iraq to get to Iran:

Israel opened negotiations to fly through U.S. controlled airspace in Iraq to carry out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, a British newspaper reported Saturday. Israel's deputy defense minister denied the claim.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted an unnamed Israeli defense official as saying the talks were aimed at planning for all scenarios, including any future decision to target Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli bombers would need a corridor through U.S.-administered airspace in Iraq to carry out any strikes, the official was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

I know that Iraq doesn't exactly have an air force and that the US controls Iraqi airspace, but does that really change the fact that, as a sovereign nation, Iraq should decide who is allowed to cross its airspace? Granted, there would be no way for Baghdad to enforce a denial of Israeli sorties in Iraqi airspace, but with all of the rhetoric we hear about Washington being in Iraq to help its sovereign government, you wouldn't think that it would be asking too much for the US to enforce Iraqi decisions on this matter.

Unfortunately, we've seen all too many times how American respect for sovereignty is only valid so long as it's in America's interests to respect it.

Otherwise, I can't say that I'm surprised that Israel is planning a contingency plan of attack on Iran in case no agreement can be made between the UN and Tehran. After all, much to France's chagrin, Israel attacked the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981.

In some disconcerting news from the BBC, US "Iran attack plans" have been revealed. To my mind, the interesting part of this news is the idea that there are "two triggers" that could lead to a US attack:

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says the trigger for such an attack reportedly includes any confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon - which it denies.

Alternatively, our correspondent adds, a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq could also trigger a bombing campaign if it were traced directly back to Tehran.

If "confirmation" of a nuclear weapons program is anything like the air tight case for Iraq, then we can expect the bombs to be raining down in Iran by the end of the year. My guess though is that it'll be a combination of "new intelligence" about an Iranian bomb and a particularly bad attack on US troops in Iraq that will convince the White House to pull both triggers.

If this were another administration, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that this is just saber rattling, but it's not another administration. (And coincidentally, saber rattling is pretty much the last thing you want to do to a country who'd like to get nuclear weapons, because you keep threatening regime change -- especially when you're not really in any position to follow through on your belligerent rhetoric.)

I've just gotten through reading a Washington Post op-ed by retired Lt. Gen. William Odom on why victory is no longer an option in Iraq. In it, he argues that the main reasons generally given for staying in Iraq -- namely, preventing a sectarian bloodbath, curbing Iranian power in the region and stopping the formation of a safe haven for Al-Qaeda -- were all pretty much inevitable problems caused when the US made the decision to invade Iraq.

He gives four steps toward changing US policy in Iraq in particular and the Middle East in general:

The first and most critical step is to recognize that fighting on now simply prolongs our losses and blocks the way to a new strategy. Getting out of Iraq is the pre-condition for creating new strategic options. Withdrawal will take away the conditions that allow our enemies in the region to enjoy our pain. It will awaken those European states reluctant to collaborate with us in Iraq and the region.

Second, we must recognize that the United States alone cannot stabilize the Middle East.

Third, we must acknowledge that most of our policies are actually destabilizing the region. Spreading democracy, using sticks to try to prevent nuclear proliferation, threatening "regime change," using the hysterical rhetoric of the "global war on terrorism" -- all undermine the stability we so desperately need in the Middle East.

Fourth, we must redefine our purpose. It must be a stable region, not primarily a democratic Iraq. We must redirect our military operations so they enhance rather than undermine stability. We can write off the war as a "tactical draw" and make "regional stability" our measure of "victory." That single step would dramatically realign the opposing forces in the region, where most states want stability. Even many in the angry mobs of young Arabs shouting profanities against the United States want predictable order, albeit on better social and economic terms than they now have.

I found the article so interesting and reasonable that I did some internet searching on Odom and came across this interview with him by Hugh Hewitt. In the way only a retired general can speak, Odom does not shy away from hard questions, nor from answering them clearly and honestly, without spin.

This is the first time that I've seen anyone of any stature in the government, much less in the military (even if he is retired), come out and say the things that I've been thinking for a while. He agrees that there's not much the US can do now to win in Iraq or prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. And he agrees that the current American strategies are counterproductive on both counts, to say the least. There's one part in the interview where he loses me: when he gets into a Huntingtonian hypothesis that I find pretty silly about how different religions are better suited to democracy than others (Protestants > Catholics > Hindus and Budhists > Muslims and "Confucionists").

Besides that, though, his ideas about democracy, and particularly the idea that it takes more than elections to constitute one, are interesting. And I think he's right that Iraq just doesn't have the tradition that's necessary for a liberal democracy; these traditions take a lot of time and sometimes bloodshed before they come into their own. I don't think this has anything to do with being Muslim or Arab, though.

I highly recommend reading the whole interview, but here are some highlights:

On democracy:

WO: Yes, there are only about 24, 25, 26 countries in the world of 191 members at the United Nations that have truly liberal democracies. There are lots of democracies, but they're illiberal, meaning that they have various levels of tyranny. Rights are not secure, Russia has elections, India has elections, it has a great reputation as a democracy, but your property rights are not stable at the lower, at the village level. A mother-in-law can throw acid in the face of a daughter-in-law and not be taken to the court. There are lots of illiberal things about it. Now those countries are all in the Western political tradition, with a very few exceptions. Japan and I would include South Korea and Taiwan now. The rule on political scientists is their constitutional order generally sticks if it lasts for a generation, about 20 years or more. So the countries I count are ones that have had stable, liberal orders for more than a generation.

HH: Now in the Washington Post article, you said none is a country with Arabic and Muslim political cultures. Does Turkey not qualify in your calculation, General?

WO: It's a borderline case, but it hasn't yet been 20 years since the last military intervention.

HH: And so that's not a counterexample to your hypothesis?

WO: No, it's not yet. I would like for it to be, and it is the white hope.

HH: What about Indonesia?

WO: Indonesia's about as illiberal as you can get.

HH: But does it have a constitutional order? They've had a couple of elections...

WO: No. No way. Here's what constitutes a constitutional order. It's not a piece of paper. A piece of paper, as the Russians, they can put up with anything written on it. The British don't have a written constitution. It is an agreement on three things at least. Rules to decide who rules, rules to make new rules, rights the state cannot abridge. Now who must agree? If you have a referendum, that's irrelevant. The elites must agree. Who are the elites? Anybody with enough guns or enough money, or both, to violate the rules with impunity if they want to. Now every one of those countries have groups that violate the rules with impunity, even though they have a constitutional order, I mean, a piece of paper. So I'm looking at countries where the rules have been made [to] stick. By this standard, when did we get a Constitution? Only in 1865.

[...]

HH: But what about Lebanon, General? Prior to Arafat's arrival, and the ruinous introduction of the PLO in exile...

WO: They've never had a constitutional order, because there were always factions there that have made the rules when they wanted to. I mean, it's been...there are almost no stable constitutional systems with three or four or five constitutional orders. Look how unstable Canada becomes occasionally over the French. Switzerland is a huge exception. Britain, with four tribes, is suffering devolution.

HH: But then...now, that's where I get confused, because are you arguing that there's just no hope, they need strong men there because they simply cannot support...

WO: No, I'm saying that we can't do much about it. I'm saying if you're going to go in, and by ventriloquy expect to create this kind of an order, then you’re not going to be able to do that. You're going to fail at that. I've been involved in several practical cases. In Vietnam, I wrote a book after I retired, reflecting on three cases, El Salvador, Guatemala and the Philippines, but what I was always thinking about was my year involved in pacification and development in Vietnam.

HH: And so the purple finger elections of 2005, of no counterargument to you?

WO: Oh, look. Elections are easy to hold. I grew up in Tennessee, where Boss Ed Crump rigged the elections every year. We knew that. Mayor Daley, the Pendergast machine, boss Tweed? Come on, don’t tell me about elections in the U.S. being honest.

HH: I didn't make that...I was saying what did that mean, the people, the millions that turned out?

WO: It meant that we held an election out there, and people came and voted.

HH: And what did that, do they aspire to order, General?

WO: Sure, they want order, but voting doesn't produce order.

HH: I know that, but I'm trying to get at, do you think they aspire to freedom?

WO: Sure. But the question is, how do they get the elites to agree on the rules so that their freedom doesn’t just mean free to kill each other?

HH: And do we help them get closer to the order in which freedom can flourish?

WO: We have made it much worse.

HH: Much worse than Saddam?

WO: Yeah.

On what leaving will mean:

HH: Now you also write in the article that we must, that you dismiss the idea it will get worse if we leave.

WO: No, I said it doesn't matter how bad it gets, it's not going to get better by us staying there. You see, I'm not one of those...I personally think that we might end up finding less of a terrible aftermath than we've pumped ourselves up to expect, because the President and a lot of other people have really made a big thing of trying to scare us about that. What I'm saying is even if their scare scenarios turn out to be the case, that is the price we have to pay to get out of this trap, and eventually bring a stability to that region which if the Iraqis and other Arab countries want to become liberal systems, they can do it. They’re not going to do it the way we're headed there now.

HH: From your Sunday Post piece is this couple of lines. "Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath, express fear that quitting it will leave a bloodbath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a failed state, or some other horror. But this aftermath is already upon us. A prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists." Do you...

WO: I think that's a pretty accurate description of what's happened over the past four years.

HH: So you don't think it can get worse?

WO: Yeah, it can get worse. It's gotten worse every year.

HH: But how much worse could it get if we weren't there?

WO: I don’t know. I don't think it...look, it will eventually get as bad it can get if we stay there long enough.

On Iran:

HH: All right. Next in your article, you wrote, "We must continue the war to prevent Iran's influence from growing in Iraq." That's one of the arguments you attribute to proponents of staying. And I do believe that's a very important issue. Do you believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons?

WO: Sure. They're going to get them.

HH: And should we do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because we can't. We've already squandered what forces we have, and we're going to have more countries proliferate. If somebody told us not to proliferate, and that if we wanted to do it and we started, that they were going to change our regime, you damn well bet we'd get nuclear weapons. Well, that's the approach we've taken. We could not have increased Iranian incentives for getting nuclear weapons faster, or more effectively, than the policy we've used to keep to prevent them from getting them.

HH: How many years have they been pursuing them, though, General? Long before we invaded Iraq.

WO: Yes, and we had been talking about changing the regime for many years before.

HH: Yes, but the fact remains that they're very much closer now than they have been in the past, and you don't think we should do anything to stop that?

WO: No.

HH: And do you believe the statements of Khatamei...

WO: If we can...look, we tried to stop Pakistan, we tried to stop India, and as soon as they go them, we turned around and loved them.

HH: Are the statements...

WO: Now that's the policy of proliferation that we pursued.

HH: Are the statements of President Ahmadinejad alarming to you?

WO: No.

HH: Why not?

WO: Because I've done a study on Iranian foreign policy back from the fall of the Shah's time up to about 1995. And not withstanding all the rhetoric, and which I believe some of, that we would find the Iranians pursuing a very radical foreign policy in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were not. They were pursuing...they did not try to steal nuclear weapons up there. They did not spend money into the hands of Islamic radicals. The money that came in for Islamic radicals was brought by Pakistani bagmen from Saudi Arabia. The Iranians pursued a very conservative policy. They've had two radical policies. One was toward Hezbollah and Israel, and the other's been toward us.

HH: Do you believe that they were responsible for the massacre of the Jews at the synagogue in South America?

WO: They might well have been.

HH: Do you believe that they have armed Hezbollah with the rockets that rain down on Israel?

WO: Yes.

HH: Do you believe they would use a nuke against Israel?

WO: Not unless Israel uses one against them.

HH: Could you be wrong about that?

WO: Of course you can be wrong about the future.

HH: Are you gambling with Israel's future, then, to allow a radical regime...

WO: No, Israel's gambling with its future by encouraging us to pursue this policy.

HH: So Israel should not take unilateral action, either?

WO: That's up to them, but I think it'll make it worse for them. Israel's policies thus far have made its situation much worse. If you read all of the Israel press, you'll find a lot of them there are firmly in my camp on this issue. And I've talked to many Israelis who are very sympathetic with the view I have on it. You're making it much, much worse for Israel.

HH: Are you familiar...

WO: If I were an Israeli right now, given Olmert's policies and Bush's policies, I would fear for my life.

I've quoted a fairly meaty chunk of the interview, but there's still a lot more, and I suggest reading it all.

I don't have much to add to this, except that I agree with most of what Odon has to say. There's a point in the interview where Hewitt tries to make it sound like there were more dead Iraqis under Saddam than as a result of this war. Putting aside the fact that most of Saddam's heinous murdering (at least that on a large scale) had ebbed by 2003, if we just look at the numbers (and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about counting the dead to make policy decisions), then most accounts agree that Saddam was responsible for murdering or "disappearing" about 300,000 Iraqis. If we add to that the death of 1 million people during the Iran-Iraq war, you get 1.3 million deaths spread over 24 years for a rough annual average death rate of 55,000 people. In comparison, there have been an estimated 650,000 Iraqi deaths from the time of the invasion to October 2006, for a rate of over 185,000 deaths a year. If Hewitt would like to compare this war favorably with Saddam Hussein's rule, looking at death rates is not going to help his case.

Another point that Odon makes that I've been thinking about a lot lately is the difference between Iran's intentions and its rhetoric. The fact of the matter is that the decision-making process in Tehran is notoriously opaque, and we don't really know what their intentions are, but it seems reasonable to assume that like most other international actors, they are reasonable in that they have the survival of their regime as a motivator. Hewitt doesn't agree and brings up (not unreasonably, I might add) the milleniarian leanings of Ahmadinejad:

HH: It doesn't matter if they're Millennialists who want to bring in...

WO: No, it doesn't. It doesn't.

HH: So what they think and what their intentions are don't matter, General?

WO: You don't know what their intentions are. You're just listening to their rhetoric.

HH: Well, should we ever pay attention to what people say?

WO: Yes, we should pay attention sometimes, but I can...I'd pay attention to that, and when I do, I see that it's very much really the way Kim Jung Il uses his rhetoric. He knows how to cause us to jump up in the air and get all excited, and cause people of your frame of mind, and particularly the neocons' frame of mind, to start doing things that are not in the U.S. interests. And then as you hit the ground, we'd pay him off and bribe him.

This reminds me of a recent segment on NPR where Jarad Zarif, Iranian ambassador to the UN, was interviewed, followed by some questions for George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Both underline the fact that Iranian nuclear ambitions have not changed since even before the reformist Khatami was president; the only thing that's changed is Tehran's rhetoric.

So the question is whether hostile rhetoric is enough to escalate tensions and advocate possible (probable?) attacks on Iran. I think not. There are a number of reasons for this, and I've gone over them here before, but in a nutshell, I think it's a bad idea because US attacks would not be able to stop Iran's nuclear program, would destroy the reform movement in Iran, and would set the US up for Iranian retaliation, which I don't think its ready for, including, but not limited to, a worsening of the situation in Iraq and the explosion of border between Israel and Lebanon. Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not even have the power to effectuate foreign policy -- that task is left to Khamenei, so it seems strange to put so much stock in his remarks, as incendiary and hostile as they may be.

The London Review of Books has another article by Norman Dombey, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Sussex University, on Iran and the bomb. He looks at historical precedents, especially when Israel bombed the Iraqi Osirak reactor in 1981 while looking a little into the nuts and bolts of Iran's nuclear programs:

The Arak reactor is certainly more suitable for producing plutonium than Osirak would have been: it can run on natural uranium fuel (0.7 per cent U-235, 99.3 per cent U-238), so the irradiated fuel rods would be good sources of plutonium. Israel and India obtained plutonium for their weapons programmes from this type of reactor. Arak is not due to be finished until 2009 at the earliest and it will need to run for at least one year before its fuel rods can be withdrawn and plutonium extracted. Nevertheless, when constructed, the reactor is expected to be inspected regularly by the IAEA, specifically in order to detect any diversion of nuclear material for potential weapon use.

So, until or unless Iran withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the facilities at Natanz and Arak are safeguarded by the IAEA. Cameras are installed at Natanz (they function continuously), and there are monthly inspections. Similar arrangements will be made for Arak. Any enriched uranium or plutonium made will be under IAEA seal and will not be available for casting into the core of a weapon. There is no pressing nuclear threat from Iran at the moment; nor does there appear to be a tipping point in sight, beyond which it would be impossible to prevent the country from acquiring weapons.

Sources close to the US and Israeli governments nevertheless insist that Iran represents a significant threat, which needs to be dealt with without delay. They assert that Iran has a clandestine programme in addition to its declared programme, as Iraq had. Israeli intelligence claims that Iran is close to having an implosion capability, which it will need to make compact weapons. Yet according to Seymour Hersh, writing in the New Yorker in November, the CIA recently completed an assessment of the evidence for the existence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons programme. The report, which was based on satellite and other data, concluded that there was no evidence of a secret programme. Nor can it be assumed that Iran could make weapons small enough to fit into missiles without testing: the dud North Korean test shows that even with testing success cannot be taken for granted.

A diplomatic solution is available, but the US and its EU allies do not want to consider it. It is the same deal I have mentioned in these pages before, whereby Iran would be allowed limited enrichment rights (say, up to 5 per cent enrichment), together with security guarantees and technical help. Richard Haass, who was director of policy planning at the State Department until 2003, believes that 'Iran should be offered an array of economic, political and security incentives', including 'a highly limited uranium-enrichment pilot programme so long as it accepts highly intrusive inspections'.

Ha'aretz has an interview with King Abdullah of Jordan. In it, he confirms that Jordan is thinking about starting a nuclear program:

"[T]he rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

"The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We've been discussing it with the West.

"I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction."

In other words, you're saying that you expect Israel to join the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].

"What's expected from us should be a standard across the board. We want to make sure this is used for energy. What we don't want is an arms race to come out of this. As we become part of an international body and its international regulations are accepted by all of us, then we become a united front."

This sort of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East was obvious but not inevitable. (I've brought it up before here and here.) As I've mentioned before, the Middle East should be a nuclear free zone, but since Pakistan, India and Israel all have nuclear weapons (and Iran is most likely doing it's best join the club), it seems inevitable that the Gulf States, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and now Jordan will follow suit.

Such an explosive region is already problematic, but I find the prospect of all the players being armed with nuclear weapons more than a little disconcerting.