Iran sends a message: We’ll never suspend uranium enrichment

[Tigermike 3,046]

They have never had any intention of stopping their ambition of obtaining nuclear weapons. Yeah, yeah they say their intentions are peaceful. Do you believe them?

What would Winnie the Pooh do?

Iran says uranium enrichment is a "red line"

Tue Jun 17, 2008 1:43pm EDT

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday uranium enrichment was its "red line" and would continue, despite an enhanced offer of incentives from big powers to stop activity the West fears could yield nuclear bombs.

The EU's top diplomat, Javier Solana, presented Tehran on Saturday with an adjusted package of economic benefits designed to persuade it to curb its nuclear work, and said Iran should stop enrichment during negotiations to implement the offer.

"We have repeatedly said that enrichment is our red line and we should enjoy this technology. The work will be continued," deputy foreign minister Alireza Sheikhattar told reporters, according to the state news agency IRNA.

The incentive package agreed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last month and delivered by Solana is a revised version of one rejected by Iran in 2006.

Western powers have warned Iran it will face more sanctions if it spurns the offer. Iran has shown no sign it will change its position, and suggested it was in no hurry to respond to the incentives proposal, saying it is being reviewed.

"We will give our answer as soon as possible. But we do not know exactly when it will be," the Iranian official said.

The incentives package offers Iran the chance to develop a civilian nuclear program with light water reactors -- seen as harder to divert into bomb-making than the technology Tehran is now developing -- and legally binding fuel supply guarantees.

It also offers trade and other benefits, including the possibility of Iran buying civil aircraft from the West.

A prominent Washington think-tank, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) said the package contained two important new additions.

ISIS noted a passage saying the powers would "support" continued research and development (R&D) in nuclear energy "as confidence is gradually restored" in Iran's intentions. This suggested R&D could go on even during an enrichment halt and set a longer-term timetable for resolving core issues, it said.

ISIS said the offer also alluded to possible security guarantees, a prime Iranian concern, by citing readiness to "reaffirm obligations under the U.N. Charter to refrain ... from the use of force against (Iran's) territorial integrity".

NO STRAIGHT ANSWER

A senior Iranian official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters Iran's response would not be a straight yes-or-no answer. "It will be a discussable response. We might accept some elements of the proposal and reject some others," he said.

"But suspension of enrichment is not on the agenda."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Monday Europe would take further sanctions against Iran, speaking of immediate action to freeze the overseas assets of Iran's biggest bank, the Bank Melli.

But after a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, Solana said the EU had yet to decide on a new round of sanctions. The U.N. Security Council has imposed three rounds of limited sanctions on Iran since 2006.

Iran insists, as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, that it has the right to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, including enriching uranium, for peaceful purposes. It says it wants nuclear power only for electricity generation.

The process provides fuel for power plants or, if concentrated to heighten the enrichment level, atomic bombs.

Washington says it wants a diplomatic solution to Iran's nuclear row with the West that has helped push oil prices to record highs, but has not ruled out military action as a last option. Tehran says its response to attack would be "painful".

(Additional reporting by Mark Heinrich in Vienna; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Andrew Roche)

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BARACK OBAMA

Obama's 'Key' Foreign Policy Adviser: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”

A runaway metaphor is not the worst sin in the world. But if former Navy Secretary Richard Danzig really is a potential national security adviser under President Obama, he's doing his potential future boss no favors when he talks like this:

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.

Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”

He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans.

(Lest anyone suspect that the Telegraph is exaggerating Danzig's role in the campaign, note Obama called Danzig "one of our key foreign policy advisers" in November 2007.) The best explanation of the metaphor in the article comes here:

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”

(So in the Danzig/Obama foreign policy vision... who's Tigger? We know Piglet has already been banned from the metaphor out of sensitivity to Muslims. Apparently Sen. Harry "the war is lost" Reid is Eeyore under this scenario.)

Jen Rubin suggests "Obama get rid of advisors who make people wonder if he is really ready to sit at the grown-up’s table." We've already seen Obama defend his summits-anytime-anywhere-with-anyone policy by pointing out that Iran, Venezuela and Cuba are geographically tiny, a strikingly irrelevant piece of data in a world of asymmetrical threats.

It's good that Obama is going to Iraq and Afghanistan. And he would be wise to articulate a national security policy that relied more on personal meetings with Gen. David Petraeus and less on reading Winnie the Pooh.

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If the Messiah is elected president and he goes hat in hand to talk to Ahmadinejad and Ahmadinejad says they have no intention of stopping, what will the Messiah do then? If Ahmadinejad tells him that in fact they already have enriched uranium and intend to build several bombs. What will Winnie the Pooh do then?