Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave?“, the report asserts that the acquisition by Tehran of nuclear weapons  would above all be intended to deter an attack by hostile powers, presumably including Israel and the United States, rather than for aggressive purposes.

And while its acquisition may indeed lead to greater tension between Iran and its Sunni-led neighbours, the 50-page report concludes that Tehran would be unlikely to use nuclear weapons against other Muslim countries. Nor would it be able to halt its diminishing influence in the region resulting from the Arab Spring and its support for the Syrian government, according to the author, Alireza Nader.

“Iran’s development of nuclear weapons will enhance its ability to deter an external attack, but it will not enable it to change the Middle East’s geopolitical order in its own favour,” Nader, an international policy analyst at RAND, told IPS. “The Islamic Republic’s challenge to the region is constrained by its declining popularity, a weak economy, and a limited conventional military capability. An Iran with nukes will still be a declining power.”

The report reaches several conclusions all of which generally portray Iran as a rational actor in its international relations.

While Nader calls it a “revisionist state” that tries to undermine what it sees as a U.S.-dominated order in the Middle East, his report stresses that “it does not have territorial ambitions and does not seek to invade, conquer, or occupy other nations.”

Further, the report identifies the Islamic Republic’s military doctrine as defensive in nature.  This posture is presumably a result of the volatile and unstable region in which it exists and is exacerbated by its status as a Shi’a and Persian-majority nation in a Sunni and Arab-majority region.

Iran is also scarred by its traumatic eight-year war with Iraq in which as many as one million Iranians lost their lives.

The new report comes amidst a growing controversy here over whether a nuclear-armed Iran could itself be successfully “contained” by the U.S. and its allies and deterred both from pursuing a more aggressive policy in the region and actually using nuclear weapons against its foes.

Iran itself has vehemently denied it intends to build a weapon, and the U.S. intelligence community has reported consistently over the last six years that Tehran’s leadership has not yet decided to do so, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made.

Official U.S. policy, as enunciated repeatedly by top officials, including President Barack Obama, is to “prevent” Iran from obtaining a weapon, even by military means if ongoing diplomatic efforts and “crippling” economic sanctions fail to persuade Iran to substantially curb its nuclear programme.

A nuclear-armed Iran, in the administration’s view – which is held even more fervently by the U.S. Congress where the Israel lobby exerts its greatest influence – represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish state.

In addition, according to the administration, Iran’s acquisition of a weapon would likely embolden it and its allies – notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah – to pursue more aggressive actions against their foes and could well set off a regional “cascade effect” in which other powers, particulary Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt, would feel obliged to launch nuclear-weapons programmes of their own.

But a growing number of critics of the prevention strategy – particularly that part of it that would resort to military action against Iran – argue that a nuclear Iran will not be nearly as dangerous as the reigning orthodoxy assumes.

A year ago, for example, Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA analyst who served as National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, published a lengthy essay in ‘The Washington Monthly’, “We Can Live With a Nuclear Iran: Fears of a Bomb in Tehran’s Hands Are Overhyped, and a War to Prevent It Would Be a Disaster.”

More recently, Colin Kahl, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) who also served as the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy adviser for much of Obama’s first term, published two reports – the first questioning the “cascade effect” in the region, and the second, published earlier this week and entitled “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlining a detailed “containment strategy” — including extending Washington’s nuclear umbrella over states that feel threatened by a nuclear Iran — the U.S. could follow to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, like Hezbollah, and persuade regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

In addition, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution whose 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, will publish a new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy”, that is also expected to argue for a containment strategy if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon.

Because both Brookings and CNAS are regarded as close to the administration, some neo-conservative commentators have expressed alarm that these reports are “trial balloons” designed to set the stage for Obama’s abandonment of the prevention strategy in favour of containment, albeit by another name.

It is likely that Nader’s study – coming as it does from RAND, a think tank with historically close ties to the Pentagon – will be seen in a similar light.

His report concedes that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would lead to greater tension with the Gulf Arab monarchies and thus to greater instability in the region. Moreover, an inadvertent or accidental nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran would be a “dangerous possibility”, according to Nader who also notes that the “cascade effect”, while outside the scope of his study, warrants “careful consideration”.

Despite Iran’s strong ideological antipathy toward Israel, the report does not argue that Tehran would attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, as that would almost certainly lead to the regime’s destruction.

Israel, in Nader’s view, fears that Iran’s nuclear capability could serve as an “umbrella” for Tehran’s allies that could significantly hamper Israel’s military operations in the Palestinian territories, the Levant, and the wider region.

But the report concludes that Tehran is unlikely to extend its nuclear deterrent to its allies, including Hezbollah, noting that the interests of those groups do not always – or even often – co-incide with Iran’s.  Iran would also be highly unlikely to transfer nuclear weapons to them in any event, according to the report.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The first launch of a Trident missile on Jan. 18, 1977 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Credit: U.S. Air Force

But Chekhov’s storytelling trope is troubling if applied to the world’s weapons technology today, which include an estimated 17,300 nukes – used primarily by nations as props to leverage international power.

According to the Ploughshares Fund’s World Nuclear Stockpile Report, an estimated 8,500 nukes belong to Russia and 7,700 to the U.S. The seven other nations with a nuclear arsenal trail far behind: they include France (300), China (240), the U.K. (225), Pakistan (90-110), India (60-110), Israel (60-80) and most recently North Korea (<10).

“It’s hard to imagine any military mission that will require the use of one nuclear weapon. The use of 10 weapons would be a catastrophe beyond human experience, and 50 is unthinkable,” said Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation based in the U.S.

“The number you need to actually deter an enemy from attacking the U.S. with or without nuclear weapons is very, very low. To be on the safe side, you might want a couple of hundred,” he told IPS.

“The idea that we need thousands of nuclear weapons… is an outmoded, irrational, expensive legacy of the Cold War,” he said.

While the U.S.’s nuke budget is secret, Cirincione estimates that in the next decade, the U.S. will spend 640 billion dollars on nukes and its related programmes – such as missile defence systems, environmental clean-up of nuclear activity and the technological upgrade of the current nuclear arsenal.

Asked about the U.S.’s role in pushing for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation on the international scale, Cirincione said, “The U.S. is probably the most influential voice in this debate, but it can’t do it alone. Most importantly, it needs Russia to reduce the arsenals with them.”

On Feb. 5, 2011, the U.S. and Russia entered into force a New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), in which both nations agreed by 2018 to limit the number of their warheads to 1,550; and the number of their combined intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments to 800.

“If the U.S. and Russia can agree to cut their arsenals in half, for example, as they did in the 1980s and the 1990s… it would be universally applauded, and it would be very difficult for bureaucracies and political opponents to resist that in either country,” said Cirincione.

But U.S. progress for disarmament and non-proliferation has stalled in the past few years. George Perkovich, director of the Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, attributes the U.S.’s balk partly to internal politics in Washington.

In his April 2013 monograph, Do Unto Others: Toward a Defensible Nuclear Doctrine, Perkovich writes, “A relatively small, specialized community of experts and officials shapes U.S. nuclear policy.”

Members of this community often distort nuclear threats to the U.S., as well as the best ways to respond to such threats, argues Perkovich. They do this not in the U.S.’s national security interest, but in their own career interests to prevent “their domestic rivals from attacking them as too weak to hold office”.

Nukes deter U.S.-led regime change

Perkovich also notes in his monograph that Iran, North Korea and Pakistan believe having their own nuclear arsenals deter U.S.-led regime change. They fear the fates of nuclear-free Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011.

Asked how the U.S. should respond if future world governments – oppressive or not, who are acting against U.S. interests – continue pursuing nukes to prevent regime change, Perkovich told IPS that would be a difficult problem.

“The one and only thing nuclear weapons are good for is to keep people from invading your country. So, states and leaders that worry about getting invaded tend to find nukes attractive, or alliance with the U.S. attractive,” he said.

“Non-proliferation would be easier to achieve if states didn’t worry they were going to be invaded and/ or overthrown if they didn’t have nuclear weapons.

“The problem, clearly, is that some governments are so brutal and menacing to their own people and neighbours that it is hard to foreswear trying to remove them,” he added.

Perkovich recommended that the U.S. limit pressure against repressive governments to political and moral means, as well as to sanctions; and that the U.S. clarify it won’t act militarily, if the repressive regime does not attack its neighbours or seek nukes.

Cirincione, author of Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons, argued that vying for nukes, in Iran and North Korea’s cases, may actually be counterproductive.

“I don’t think it improves their security, I think it isolates them even further,” he said. “It prevents them from forging the kind of international ties that can really aid their country, build their economies (and) increase their influence.

“That means that in order to stop those countries from getting or keeping nuclear weapons, you have to address their legitimate security concerns. A part of the engagement with those countries has got to be security assurances that guarantees then that you won’t attack them, or that their neighbours won’t attack them.”

Obama’s nuclear legacy

During his December 2012 speech at the National War College in Washington, U.S. President Barack Obama said, “Missile by missile, warhead by warhead, shell by shell, we’re putting a bygone era behind us.”

Cirincione explained that pursuing nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation has been important to Obama since his youth. Obama’s first foreign policy speech as president – in Prague in April 2009 – and his first foreign policy speech after re-election both focused on nukes.

“The president faces a multitude of pressing issues, but only two of them threaten destruction on a planetary scale: global warming and nuclear weapons,” said Cirincione.

While opposition to nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation is prevalent inside Washington, it pales in comparison to opposition facing warming, immigration, or tax reform.

“This is an opportunity for the president to make a major improvement in U.S. and global security with a relatively small investment of his time,” said Cirincione, who explained that Obama’s efforts to curb nukes may conclude a historic arc, which started with President John F. Kennedy’s efforts in the 1960s and was accelerated by President Ronald Reagan’s efforts in the 1980s.

Cirincione said, “(Obama’s) got three and a half years to do it. If he starts now, he can get the job done. He can change U.S. nuclear policy to put it irreversibly on a path to fewer nuclear weapons, and eventually (eliminate) this threat from the face of the earth.”

The report, “If All Else Fails: The Challenges of Containing a Nuclear-Armed Iran,” outlines a detailed “containment strategy” designed to deter Tehran’s use of a nuclear bomb or its transfer to non-state actors, and persuade other regional states not to develop their own nuclear arms capabilities.

“The United States should do everything in its power to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, and no option should be left off the table,” said Colin Kahl, the lead author of the 80-page report and the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official during most of Obama’s first term.

“But we also have to consider the possibility that prevention efforts – including the use of force – could fail,” he added in an email to IPS. “In that case, we’d need a strategy for managing and mitigating the threats a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to vital U.S. interests and allies. That’s what we’re focusing on.”

The administration, according to the report, has so firmly committed itself to a prevention policy – including threatening military action if diplomatic efforts and economic pressure fail – that cannot explicitly endorse a different approach “without damaging the very credibility it needs to effectively address the Iranian nuclear challenge,” according to the report.

At the same time, however, Tehran may be able to achieve “an unstoppable breakout capability” or build a weapon in secret before preventive measures have been exhausted. In addition, a U.S. or Israeli military strike may inflict only minimal damage to Iran’s nuclear programme while strengthening hard-liners in the regime who believe a nuclear deterrent is the only way to ensure its survival.

“Under any of these scenarios, Washington would likely be forced to shift toward containment regardless of current preferences,” the report notes, arguing that Washington needs to think through the requirements for an effective strategy.

The new report adds to a growing literature about U.S. options in dealing with Iran, which has itself repeatedly denied that its nuclear programme is designed to develop nuclear weapons.

The U.S. intelligence community has also reported consistently over the last six years that Iran’s leadership has not yet decided to build a weapon, although the increasing sophistication and infrastructure of its nuclear programme will make it possible to build one more quickly if such a decision is made. U.S. intelligence agencies have expressed confidence that they will be able to detect any effort by Iran to achieve a “break-out” capacity.

Since coming to office in 2009, the Obama administration has described its efforts to dissuade Iran from developing a nuclear weapon as a “dual-track” approach involving both diplomatic outreach through the so-called P5+1 process of negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, and economic pressure exerted primarily through the imposition of harsh economic sanctions – some multilateral, most unilateral – designed to “cripple” the Iranian economy.

While the sanctions have clearly damaged Iran’s troubled economy, Tehran has so far rejected far-reaching concessions demanded by the Western members of the P5+1, such as suspending all operations at its underground Fordo enrichment facility and shipping most of its 20-percent enriched-uranium stockpile out of the country.

While there have been some exchanges between the P5+1 and Iran since their last meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan last month, the diplomatic process appears to have been put on hold pending next month’s presidential elections in the Islamic Republic.

The lack of progress on the diplomatic front combined with technological advances in Iran’s nuclear programme – with estimates that Tehran will have likely enough enriched uranium to build a bomb within a very short period by next spring or summer — has provoked a simmering conflict here.

It revolves around pro-Israel and proliferation hawks pushing for yet more draconian sanctions and “credible threats of force” by the administration on the one hand and more dovish forces who are calling for more emphasis on the diplomatic track.

Much of the foreign policy establishment, including former senior military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials, lean to the latter camp; recent reports by blue-ribbon task forces of The Iran Project, the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for the National Interest have shown a developing elite consensus in favour of greater U.S. flexibility at the negotiating table.

In Congress, where the Israel lobby enjoys its greatest influence, however, the emphasis remains on the pressure track. Measures currently being circulated in both houses of Congress target foreign companies and banks in ways that, if enforced, would impose a virtual trade embargo against Iran.

The new report, the latest in a series by CNAS on Iran policy, does not address either strategy, although Kahl has in the past argued for greater U.S. flexibility in negotiations.  It is likely, however, to fuel the ongoing debates between the hawks and doves on whether Washington can indeed live with a nuclear-armed Iran if its “prevention” strategy fails.

A containment strategy, according Kahl and his two-co-authors, Raj Pattani and Jacob Stokes, would integrate five key components: deterrence, defence, disruption, de-escalation and de-nuclearisation.

Deterrence would involve, among other steps, strengthening Washington’s threat to retaliate in kind if Iran uses nuclear weapons and extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella to other regional states in exchange for their commitment not to pursue independent nuclear capabilities.

Defence would aim to deny Iran any benefit from its nuclear weapons by building up U.S. missile-defence capabilities and naval deployments in the region and increasing security co-operation with Gulf countries and Israel.

Disruption would include “shap(ing) a regional environment resistant to Iranian influence” by, among other steps, building up Egypt and Iraq as strategic counterweights; “promoting evolutionary political reform” in the Gulf; and increasing aid to moderate elements among Syrian rebels and the Lebanese Army as a counter to Hezbollah.

De-escalation would be designed to prevent any Iran-related crisis from spiralling to nuclear war “persuading Israel to eschew preemptive nuclear doctrine and other destabilizing nuclear postures,” creating crisis-communication mechanisms and exploring confidence-building measures with Iran; assuring Tehran that “regime change” is not Washington’s goal, and providing it with “’face-saving’ exit ramps” during crises.

Finally, de-nuclearisation would try to constrain Iran’s nuclear programme and limit broader damage to the non-proliferation regime by maintaining and tightening sanctions against Iran and strengthening interdiction efforts.

The report stressed that such a strategy would entail major costs, including “doubling down on U.S. security commitments to the Middle East,” making the administration’s military “rebalancing” to the Asia/Pacfic more difficult; “greatly complicate efforts to promote reform” allied Arab states; and “increase the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy at the very time the Obama administration hopes to move in the opposite direction.”

The CNAS report was immediately assailed by several prominent neo-conservatives who have long been warning that Obama, given his clear reluctance to risk war in another predominantly Muslim country, would himself eschew his prevention strategy in favour of “containment by another name.”

But, as noted by Kahl, the hard-line neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute published a paper 18 months ago that concluded that “containing and deterring” a nuclear-armed Iran could be the “least-bad choice” for U.S. policy if Washington can “demonstrate that it can deter both Iran’s use of nuclear weapons and aggression by Tehran’s network of partners and terrorist proxies.”

Kahl’s position on containment is also expected to be echoed with the anticipated publication by Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst at the Brookings Institution, of his new book, “Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy’. Pollack’s 2002 book, “The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq,” helped persuade many liberals and Democrats to back the invasion.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

The lack of publicity stands in contrast to the strong public stand taken by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who has consistently called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Credit: Bomoon Lee/IPS

“Nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation are not utopian ideals,” he says. “They are critical to global peace and security.”

Still, the Group of 77, the largest single coalition of 132 developing countries, implicitly accuses the United Nations of falling short in its efforts to publicise a meeting on nuclear disarmament scheduled to take place Sep. 26.

Ambassador Peter Thomson of Fiji, the G77 chair, last week described the upcoming talks as “the first-ever high level meeting of the General Assembly on nuclear disarmament.”

He said the meeting is of importance to developing nations, and therefore, all efforts should be made to give it timely and wide publicity.

A G77 delegate told IPS the conference is not getting the advance publicity it should, probably because three of the big powers, the United States, UK and France, are not supportive of the meeting.

“We have not seen anything on the high level meeting so far,” he added.

The lack of coverage stands in contrast to the strong public stand taken by the secretary-general, who has consistently called for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Asked about the significance of the upcoming meeting, Dr. John Burroughs, executive director of the New York-based Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, told IPS the meeting is a chance for world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and others, to give direction to the nuclear disarmament enterprise, “which is now drifting aimlessly despite much rhetoric over the past five years.”

“Of course they should reassert that the global elimination of nuclear weapons is a shared aim of the international community,” he said.

But they can and should do more, he said, specifically to set in motion concrete, multilateral processes to achieve that objective.

“If there can be a Nuclear Security Summit process, focused on securing nuclear materials, why can there not be a Nuclear Disarmament Summit Process?” he asked.

Or definitive action could be taken to overcome the 16-year deadlock in the Conference on Disarmament, if necessary by establishing a separate process, Dr Burroughs said.

The resolution calling for the high-level meeting, which was sponsored by Indonesia and the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement, was adopted last December in the General Assembly by a vote of 179 to none against, with four abstentions (Israel, and three of the five permanent members of the Security Council, namely France, UK and the United States).

The other two permanent members, China and Russia, voted for the resolution.

All five permanent members are the world’s five declared nuclear powers, with India, Pakistan, Israel, and more recently North Korea, outside the P-5 nuclear club.

In an explanation of his country’s decision to abstain on the vote, Guy Pollard, deputy permanent representative of the UK, told delegates last December, “We question the value of holding a high-level meeting (HLM) of the General Assembly on nuclear disarmament when there are already sufficient venues for such discussion.”

He cited the General Assembly’s First Committee (on Disarmament), the U.N. Disarmament Commission, and the Conference on Disarmament.

“We are puzzled about how such a HLM will further the goals of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) Action Plan that was agreed by consensus in 2010,” Pollard said.

“In our view,” he said, “this roadmap of actions offers the best way of taking forward the multilateral nuclear disarmament agenda, along with related issues.”

“We continue to believe that nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament are mutually reinforcing and therefore regret that this high level meeting doesn’t treat both of these aspects in a balanced manner,” Pollard said.

Meanwhile, in a new study released last month, George Perkovich, director of the Nuclear Policy Programme at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, points out one of the few ways that President Obama could restore confidence in U.S. intentions would be to update the declaration of the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy, including in defence of its allies.

“In his searching Nobel Peace Prize speech (in December 2009), Obama recognised the occasional inescapability of war and the imperative of waging it justly,” Perkovich said.

So, too, Obama now could examine how the ongoing existence of nuclear arsenals, even if temporary, can be reconciled with the moral-strategic imperative to prevent their use, says the study titled “Do Unto Others: Toward a Defensible Nuclear Doctrine.”

“The president could articulate a limited framework for the legitimate use of nuclear weapons that the United States believes would be defensible for others to follow as long as nuclear weapons remain,” it says.

Such a nuclear policy, says Perkovich, could then be conveyed in the U.S. Defence Department’s Quadrennial Posture Review, which is due later this year.

Dr. Burroughs told IPS that non-nuclear weapon states have been doing their best to create opportunities to set a clear course on disarmament.

At the initiative of Austria, Mexico and Norway, the General Assembly in 2012 established an open-ended working group on taking forward proposals on multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations, scheduled to meet for three weeks this summer in Geneva.

Norway hosted a conference in Oslo in March on the humanitarian impact of nuclear explosions.

And Indonesia and the Non-Aligned Movement proposed the resolution last year that scheduled the September high-level meeting on nuclear disarmament.

“However, the P-5 in the Security Council have been recalcitrant. So far they have said they will not participate in the open-ended working group,” said Dr. Burroughs.

They also declined the invitation to participate in the Oslo meeting. And last year the UK, the United States, and France, along with Israel, abstained on the resolution scheduling the high-level meeting, expressing doubt as to its value, he added.

“So the personal engagement of heads of state/government and foreign ministers is clearly necessary,” Burroughs said.

At lower levels, the Permanent Five officials have been floundering, he added.

“Unless there is a change of tune coming from the very top, the September meeting will turn out to be a fruitless exercise,” he said.

The crisis on the Korean peninsula should be a wake-up call.

The nuclear threats exchanged by North Korea and the United States have once again laid bare an often underappreciated fact, the unacceptable risks arising from reliance on nuclear weapons.

In September, P-5 leaders and other governments possessing nuclear arsenals should seize the moment to signal clearly, to their own governments as well as to the world, that they will now engage constructively with non-nuclear weapon states on a process for the global elimination of nuclear weapons, he said.

Parliamentarians, mayors, and civil society groups working for a nuclear weapons-free world should also take advantage of this global platform, which surprisingly is the first time a General Assembly high-level meeting will be held on nuclear disarmament, Dr Burroughs said.

While Israel and Azerbaijan – like Iran, a majority Shi’a Muslim country – have maintained strong diplomatic, economic and military ties for years, Mammadyarov’s Apr. 21-24 trip was the first time an Azerbaijani cabinet member had made such a high-profile visit to Tel Aviv.

With one eye seemingly on Iran, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry avoided attaching the word “official” to the visit. Instead, it cast the ministerial mission as undertaken within the context of Azerbaijan’s status as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

Even so, the trip had all the markings of an official visit. No documents were signed, but Mammadyarov met with Israeli President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, among other senior officials. A statement that Baku would consider opening an embassy in Israel concluded the mission.

“It is a matter of time,” Mammadyarov said at an Apr. 26 news conference in Baku.

A few days later, it was time to offer explanations to Iran.

On Apr. 29, Azerbaijani National Security Council Secretary Ramiz Mehdiyev, who doubles as President Ilham Aliyev’s influential administration chief, flew to Tehran to meet with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and other senior Iranian officials. Although the government did not specify the agenda, many Azerbaijanis believe the trip was taken to soothe an angry Tehran.

“Mehdiyev went to assure Iran that Baku is not going to host Israeli military bases or provide its territory for attacks on Iran” in connection with the international campaign to stop Iranian development of a nuclear weapon, commented Baku-based political analyst Zardusht Alizade, a Middle East specialist.

Reports in U.S. news media outlets in 2012 made just that assertion, though they could not be confirmed.

Relations between Iran and Azerbaijan have never been rosy, but Baku previously has been careful not to push its powerful neighbour’s patience to the breaking point.

At least since the administration of the late President Heydar Aliyev (1993-2003), for instance, Tehran’s enmity toward the Israeli government fostered an unofficial taboo on Azerbaijani officials visiting Israel. Against that backdrop, Vafa Guladze, a former presidential foreign-policy adviser, deemed Mammadyarov’s excursion “revolutionary”, the Turan news agency reported.

A reason why Baku would want to take a “revolutionary” step at this time remains unclear. Some speculate that an Iranian call for the annexation of Azerbaijan, once under Persian control, raised Baku’s ire.

Alizade, though, believes that the visit to Israel has been in the works for a long time. “Relations in economic, military and diplomatic areas are so broad and have reached such a high level that it is time for actions,” he said.

Azerbaijan supplies up to 40 percent of Israel’s oil needs, or about 21.7 million barrels, according to official data; foreign trade turnover between the two countries stands at four billion dollars.

The countries also are actively cooperating on weaponry and in other military-equipment areas. In 2012, Azerbaijan bought 1.6 billion dollars worth of Israeli arms. Israeli defence firms also are advising the Azerbaijani defence-industry ministry on an Azerbaijani-made weapon.

Conceivably with those activities in mind, Mammadyarov emphasised during his talks with Israeli President Peres that Baku has no interest in the use of Azerbaijani territory “for military actions against Iran”, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Baku also subsequently announced that, in conjunction with the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, it will host in June an international donor conference for the Palestinian territories, whose statehood Iran aggressively supports.

Referring to Iran as “the greatest threat to the region,” Peres did not hide that the Islamic Republic had been among the topics on the table with Mammadyarov.

If Tehran had been looking for an opportunity to smack Azerbaijan down to size, it has not taken it yet: Iranian officials have not reacted publicly to Mammadyarov’s Israel trip.

How Mehdiyev described Mammadyarov’s trip to his Iranian hosts also is unknown, although Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported that Ahmadinejad blamed “Zionist and US intelligenc[e]” for “trying to weaken our relations.”

Playing to his Iranian audience, the Azerbaijani national security chief blamed the West for “taking some steps which violate peace and stability in Azerbaijan,” IRNA reported – an apparent reference to a series of unsanctioned anti-government protests earlier this year.

With the Azerbaijani courtesy call over, Baku analysts do not expect more to come from Tehran about Mammadyarov’s Israeli visit. Distracted by other concerns, Iran would gain little by pushing back against Azerbaijan, they believe.

“Relations between Baku and Tehran are already very bad. I do not think that visit to Israel will bring any real changes,” Rauf Mirkadirov, a political columnist for the Russian-language Zerkalo newspaper, commented to the Vesti.az news portal.

“They do not have any options,” agreed Alizade, in reference to Iran. “What can they do?”

*This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

“The NPT has its own process and business as usual,” said Rebecca Johnson, co-chair for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a Geneva-based global coalition of pressure groups working on disarmament and a ban on nuclear weapons.

The Geneva preparatory committee meeting will focus on a range of issues for the next two weeks to prepare the agenda for the 2015 Review Conference which will take place in Geneva.

More importantly, it is taking place against the backdrop of rising nuclear tensions in the Korean peninsula and Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme.  Also, several countries held an international conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear weapons in Oslo last month.

“My hope is that a large number of countries talk (at the Geneva meeting) about the importance of bringing the nuclear issue back to human level and understanding the humanitarian consequences because of nuclear weapons,” Johnson told IPS.

She expects that a large number of parties to the NPT will sign up to the South African statement on the human dimension of nuclear weapons which will be delivered at the meeting.

“We want a sustained dialogue on the humanitarian impact so that it changes the balance of power in the NPT,” Johnson argued.

The NPT came into force in 1970 with the avowed goal of stopping countries from building a nuclear bomb. So far, 189 countries have ratified the treaty while India, Israel, and Pakistan refused to become parties to it. All three countries possess a nuclear arsenal, with total estimates varying from 50 to 200 nuclear weapons.

The official nuclear weapon states – the United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China who are known as P5 – are required to implement measures under the treaty to “cessation” of the nuclear arms race, and complete nuclear “disarmament”.

The five nuclear weapon states held a meeting last week during which they discussed promoting dialogue and mutual confidence on nuclear issues. The P5 members exchanged views on various issues concerning “non-proliferation”, “the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”, and “disarmament” – known as the three pillars of the NPT.  The five nations, who are the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, reaffirmed their commitment to the goal of nuclear disarmament.

However, progress on nuclear disarmament is almost limited or negligible over the last 45 years.  “There is not much progress on nuclear disarmament and we need a new dynamic to break the paralysis, otherwise there will be new cold war,” said Martin Hinrichs, an ICAN activist. Representatives of ICAN from some 16 countries held a brainstorming session on how to go about their advocacy campaign during the NPT meeting this week.

“They (the P5) have got a vested interest and they constructed their industry, defence industries, and military to deploy, to possess, and to modernise nuclear weapons,” said Johnson.

The P5 members, says Johnson, “have a vested interest in keeping the status quo and stopping new countries entering the nuclear club.” Besides, they enjoy numerous privileges because of their status and it would be a mistake to think that they would implement substantive measures towards complete nuclear disarmament, she said.

So, the “game” for the elimination of nuclear weapons will not start from the P5 side who wield powerful nuclear weapons, Johnson said.

“What has to change is that the non-nuclear states have to start things to bring about nuclear disarmament,” the ICAN co-chair argued. “They (the non-nuclear weapon states) have the power and tools to change by becoming aware that nuclear weapons are a humanitarian problem even if they are set in the international legal and political rules.”

Therefore, it is important not to give exalted status to the nuclear arms states every time on the hope that they would carry out disarmament. “The non-nuclear weapon states are not supplicants, and they have to engage in politics and change international relations by joining forces with civil society,” Johnson asserted.

The international ban movement intends to delegitimise nuclear weapons for everybody so that countries are dissuaded from spending billions of dollars on nuclear weapons.

Endorsed by nearly three dozen former top U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence officials, the report calls for Washington to “rebalance” its dual-track policy toward Tehran by strengthening the diplomatic track to take advantage of the pressure it has exerted on Tehran through ever-stricter sanctions and threats of military action.

“Much has been accomplished through pressure, but the results have fallen short of expectations in several ways, and unintended consequences pose risks,” according to the report, the latest in a series by The Iran Project and the first to make specific policy reccomendations designed to both defuse persistent tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme and lay the groundwork for a broader dialogue between the two countries.

Previous reports have focused instead on the costs and benefits of sanctions and military action against Iran.

The pressure track, the new, 84-page report argues, may have weakened Iran’s economy and slowed the expansion of its nuclear programme, but it has not produced any breakthrough nor markedly reduced Tehran’s regional influence.

Moreover, the pressure track may also have hardened Tehran’s resistance to pressure, contributed to a rise in repression in Iran, and compounded sectarian tensions across the volatile Middle East, according to the report.

It was signed by, among other prominent foreign-policy figures, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski; the former Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar; and one of the most highly decorated diplomats of his generation, former Amb. Thomas Pickering, a core member of The Iran Project.

“A strengthened diplomatic track that includes the promise of sanctions relief in exchange for verifiable (Iranian) cooperation could help to end the standoff and produce a nuclear deal,” the report asserts.

The report comes amidst uncertainty about the future of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme between Tehran and the “P5+1”, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany. In the latest round of talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, earlier this month, it appears that neither side moved off its previous position, and no date for new high-level talks has been set.

Nonetheless, all parties said the discussions were more detailed and substantive than in past meetings and stressed that there had been no breakdown in the process. Most analysts believe that little or no progress can be expected until after the presidential elections in Iran Jun. 14.

The lack of apparent progress – coupled with the installation of more and more sophisticated centrifuges by Iran at uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo – has encouraged the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill, notably the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), to press Congress for new sanctions against Iran and foreign companies that do business with it that, if approved and fully enforced, would amount to a de facto trade embargo against the Islamic Republic.

A key Senate committee Tuesday approved a resolution calling on Obama to more strictly enforce existing sanctions and to provide military and other support to Israel if the Jewish state “is compelled to take military action in self-defense”.

The new report, “Strategic Options for Iran: Balancing Pressure With Diplomacy,” also comes amidst a spate of other studies by influential mainstream think tanks that have argued for greater flexibility by the administration in its dealings with Iran.

Just last week, an Atlantic Council task force, which Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel co-chaired until he was nominated to his new post, released a report that called for Washington to “make a more concerted effort to keep Iran from getting to keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, while lessening the chances for war through reinvigorated diplomacy that offers Iran a realistic and face-saving way out of the nuclear standoff.”

While it concluded that Washington should retain the option to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent it from acquiring a weapon, it also warned that ramifications of a “premature military strike …could also be dire.”

Similarly, a new book co-authored by a former top Gulf expert in the Reagan administration, Geoffrey Kemp of the Center for the National Interest, and based on months of consultations with elite national-security experts recommended a “more aggressive U.S. strategy. …(A)llowing very limited and closely monitored (uranium) enrichment within Iran is far preferable to war, and is less risky,” according to the book.

Meanwhile, another recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace warned that, “Economic pressure or military force cannot ‘end’ Iran’s nuclear program. …The only sustainable solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution.”

This emerging elite – if not Congressional – consensus will be bolstered by The Iran Project’s report which insists that “no change in U.S. policy will be possible unless President Obama makes the negotiation of a nuclear deal with Iran one of his top priorities.”

The report stresses that any direct talks – which the administration in recent months appears to have endorsed – should complement the efforts of the P5+1 and that emphasising the diplomatic track would not mean abandoning the pressure track, “including maintaining the option of using military force should the Iranians move quickly to build a bomb.”

“Yet the more the President threatens the use of force, the more difficult it will be for Iran’s defiant leadership to consider any offer, and the more the President will be under pressure to use military force,” it warned.

The report defines a minimum nuclear deal as including Iran’s agreement to produce only low-enriched uranium (3.5-5 percent); cease its production of 20-percent enriched uranium; reduce its existing stockpiles of enriched uranium; and forswear production of plutonium – all under a strict monitoring regime by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

In return, Washington and its P5+1 partners would offer some sanctions relief (although the report notes that Obama’s flexibility to roll back U.S. sanctions is limited by Congress); a commitment not to impose new sanctions for a period of time; and formal recognition of Iran’s limited enrichment programme.

If such a minimum agreement can be reached, according to the report, Washington should broaden talks with Tehran to explore opportunities for cooperation, notably on Afghanistan and Iraq, drug trafficking, and even Syria, although that would be substantially more ambitious.

While the administration has called for direct talks with Tehran’s to clarify its position on the nuclear programme, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has expressed strong scepticism about their usefulness so long as Washington is “holding a gun against Iran”.

At the same time, he has not ruled out such talks – previously a taboo subject in Tehran that has now become a major subject of public debate.

*Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.lobelog.com.

Indian Point is classified as a potential target for terrorist attacks, due to its proximity to New York City and to over 20 million residents. Credit: Daniel Case/cc by 3.0

Over one million kgs of nuclear waste sit in limbo on the banks of the Hudson River, in dry cask storage units and spent fuel pools just 60 kms north of New York City, according to environmental organisations.  

The original plan was to bury the nuclear waste in a national repository deep beneath Yucca Mountain, in the southwestern deserts of the U.S. But that plan fell through when President Barack Obama’s administration defunded the project.

Nuclear waste is known for its long-lasting qualities and is often associated with unpredictable health effects that metastasise over many years.

The waste along the Hudson River belongs to Indian Point Energy Center, a nuclear power plant run by Entergy Corporation. Indian Point has endured a series of incidents in its 52-year span, including radioactive leaks, transformer explosions and ensuing fires.

Indian Point is classified as a potential target for terrorist attacks, due to its proximity to New York City and to over 20 million residents. It is also located precariously on two fault lines, which led critics to dub it “Fukushima on the Hudson”, in reference to the March 2011 nuclear catastrophe in Japan following an earthquake and a tsunami.

Indian Point made local headlines last week when the U.S. Government Accountability Office produced a report warning residents within a 16 km radius of nuclear operations that in case of a nuclear emergency, those fleeing the area would likely jam evacuation routes.

Indian Point’s two functioning units are up for relicensing in 2014 and 2016, to operate for an additional 20 years.

“If that does go through, they’ll generate approximately an additional (one million kilogrammes) of waste,” said Deborah Brancato, a staff attorney at Riverkeeper, who has been engaged in an ongoing legal campaign to close Indian Point.

Brancato noted that dry cask storage units and spent fuel pools were meant to be temporary solutions to hold nuclear waste, and that they were untested for longtime use.

“The radioactivity in the pool is actually five times the radioactivity at the (plant’s) cores… The pools have a history of leaking radioactive water, so they’re already in a degraded condition,” she told IPS.

Asked how the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) – an independent agency established by Congress in 1974 to ensure the safe use of radioactive materials – has approached Indian Point, Brancato said, “They’ve been in lockstep with Entergy and have taken on the same positions.”

She noted that the NRC and the Entergy Corporation have largely ignored environmental concerns associated with Indian Point, even though such concerns were raised by the state and the environmental organisations in the area.

Manna Jo Greene, the environmental action director at the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, told IPS that Indian Point’s routine release of radioactive steam into the air and nuclear waste into the groundwater also pose serious health risks.

“That’s something that needs to be analysed by the NRC and a solution found, but they were punting. They either punt or they give out waivers (citing) existent laws, which are not protective enough,” she argued, explaining that the NRC has taken a “hear no evil, speak no evil” approach to Indian Point’s potential health effects.

“We know that when nuclear power plants shut down, certain cancer rates and thyroid problems decline fairly quickly over time,” she added.

Greene, who has been organising in the Hudson Valley since the civil rights movement, told IPS that the regulatory agencies she works with – such as the Environmental Protection Agency, New York State Department of Health and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation – are usually neutral and nonpartisan.

“But that’s not the case with the NRC,” she argued. “Their comments are sometimes more harsh on the interveners than the companies. They see their mission as to keep the (nuclear) industry going.”

The NRC – lauded internationally for its safety standards – has also been criticised for pandering to the interests of the commercial entities it is tasked to regulate.

Last month, Gregory Jaczko – a former chairman of the NRC – told Nuclear Intelligence Weekly (NIW) that the 103 nuclear plants currently operating across the U.S. should be phased out for health and safety reasons.

According to NIW, Jaczko – who regularly sparred with his four fellow commissioners while at the NRC – resigned from his post in 2012, claiming that he was a victim of a nuclear industry-backed effort to oust him from office.

Greene said, “These (nuclear) industries and NRC staff work on (legal) cases all over the country, and they get to know each other and develop a very cordial relationship.”

She added, “There’s a lot of familiarity… and somewhat of a revolving door between the industry and the oversight agency.”

Nuclear waste and river ecology

Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, told IPS that Indian Point’s nuclear waste –which seeps into the groundwater and drips into the Hudson River – also affects marine ecology.

“Indian Point is not only the most dangerous place in the New York metro area for people, it’s also the most dangerous place for our river creatures,” he noted.

“They suck (10 million kls) of water through that plant every day and destroy one billion fish and other river creatures each year. So that’s gone under the radar to a great extent.”

“The last rounds of talks in Almaty (in February) and in Turkey (in March) have increased hopes for more progress to be made in April,” Alex Vatanka, an Iranian-born analyst at The Middle East Institute in Washington D.C, told IPS by e-mail.

Both U.S. President Barack Obama and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have been readying their domestic audiences for some forward movement in the protracted negotiations.

“In recent weeks, both President Obama and (Ayatollah) Khamenei have in their own ways started to prepare their home audiences for a compromise. And neither side is at the moment pointing to any fundamental obstacles in the path of a deal,” Vatanka told IPS.

In February, the stalled talks between Iran and the P5+1 – the UN Security Council’s five permanent members (China, France, Russia, Britain and the U.S. plus Germany) – resumed after an eight-month hiatus. These talks saw new life breathed into the process which is attempting to reconcile differences over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The process had reached an impasse last June over what seemed like insurmountable differences between the two sides. Iran called for the immediate and unconditional end of sanctions, which have severely damaged its economy. The P5+1 group demanded Iran immediately stop medium-level enrichment and to close the Fordow underground enrichment facility before offering any easing of sanctions.

At the Almaty talks held on Feb. 26-27, the international group, chaired by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, put some new ideas on the table, believed to be related to Iran suspending 20 percent enrichment for six months and converting its existing enriched uranium into uranium oxide for medical use in exchange for some sanctions-relief, according to the Al-Monitor website.

Iran insists its ambitions are peaceful and in line with its rights as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, while international negotiators contend Iran’s aims are to obtain nuclear weapons.

“If there is a political will – and I see there is a considerable degree of that on both sides – then the technical details can be resolved,” Vatanka told IPS. “At the same time, a bad political atmosphere can kill an otherwise attainable nuclear agreement.”

The strained political atmosphere is not being helped by the situation in Syria, with Iran a strong ally of the Assad regime in its two-year conflict with armed opposition groups.

IPS reported on Apr. 1 that Javier Solana, a former North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) secretary-general who was Iran’s chief European interlocutor from 2003 to 2009, felt that the opposing positions held by Russia, China, the U.S. and Europe on Syria could weaken the unity of P5+1 and have a knock-on effect on the talks with Iran.

Solana, speaking at a forum at the Brookings Institute in Washington, suggested that Russia and China would most likely oppose any additional sanctions against Tehran if the Almaty talks fail to make much headway, weakening the chances of a diplomatic solution to the problem.

For Vatanka, creating some distance between Syria and the Iranian nuclear issue could be key to reaching an agreement “If the nuclear question can be separated from other issues, then there is a much higher chance for a deal,” he told IPS.

Solving the Iran nuclear question was high on the agenda at the meeting between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Mar. 20. While Netanyahu remained bullish about a military solution, Obama reiterated that time remained for a diplomatic solution, whilst not ruling out other options.

“We prefer to resolve this diplomatically, and there’s still time to do so. Iran’s leaders must understand, however, that they have to meet their international obligations,” Obama told reporters in Jerusalem. But he did not rule out military options, stating that “all options are on the table. We will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from getting the world’s worst weapons.”

Political machinations within Iran as it prepares to go to the polls in June to elect a new president are not necessarily seen as an obstacle to moving forward in the ongoing discussions. Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief negotiator for the P5+1 talks, is expected to be a candidate in the elections, but he is not felt to have too much influence, playing second fiddle to the Supreme Leader.

“Ayatollah Khamenei decides the fundamentals on Iran’s nuclear policy and he will be the Leader before and after the elections,” Vatanka told IPS. “Saeed Jalili is not a political heavy weight in his own right. His boss, Khamenei, will call the shots. Jalili does not have an ability to say or do anything different from the Leader.”

Ahead of the resumption of talks, Jalili sounded a challenging note saying on Apr. 4 that Iran’s right to enrichment should be recognised before any progress can be made with the discussions.

Khamenei’s position remains focussed on Iran’s right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes.

“If the Americans wanted to resolve the issue, this would be a very simple solution: they could recognise the Iranian nation’s right to enrichment and in order to address those concerns, they could enforce the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Khamenei said in a speech in Mashhad on marking Norouz, the Persian New Year on Mar. 21. “We were never opposed to the supervision and regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Vatanka is not anticipating any major breakthrough in U.S.-Iran relations as a result of the Almaty talks but sees the prospect of a nuclear deal of some sorts as “the catapult that could start a new era of Washington-Tehran relations.”

The Tehran Research Reactor where uranium enriched to 20 percent is used to produce medical isotopes. Credit: Jim Lobe/IPS

The U.S. should not only focus on the short-term goal of “suspending or delaying” Iran’s alleged quest for a nuclear weapons capability, but also on “curtailing Iran’s other worrisome activities in the region while encouraging – or at least, not derailing – a better relationship with the citizens of the pivotal state,” according to a report released Thursday by the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

“It may not be possible to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to increase people-to-people ties,” Barbara Slavin, an Iran specialist and Council senior fellow, told IPS.

“The fact that academic exchanges are actually rising – and that nearly 7,000 Iranian students came to the U.S. last year – suggests that Iranians and their government value these connections and do not want to lose them despite the regime’s fears of a ‘velvet revolution’,” she said.

The U.S. should engage Iranians through a variety of means including media outreach, cultural exchanges, internet freedom promotion and reducing the “negative effects” sanctions have on Iran’s citizenry, it says.

This can be done by “designating a small number of U.S. and private Iranian financial institutions as channels for payment for humanitarian, educational, and public diplomacy-related transactions carefully licensed by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control”, according to the report.

While “sanctions have had a severe impact on the Iranian economy,” they “have not yet had the intended political effect of bolstering moderates or shifting the positions of the regime’s leaders,” notes the report, echoing an observation that’s been heard throughout Washington lately.

Any lessening of the sanctions regime, however, ties in to a “dilemma” noted by the report: while eased economic sanctions “would help Iran’s government resume economic growth”, a rapprochement would “allow in more Westerners and could contribute to a potential ‘velvet revolution’ against the theocratic system led by the middle class.”

At the same time, the U.S. does not want to relieve economic pressure on the government while it continues its controversial nuclear activities, the report adds.

“Thus, while the long-term strategic objectives of the United States require it to try harder to build bridges to the Iranian people to prepare the ground for the eventual resumption of normal diplomatic ties, a normalization of relations is unlikely until the nuclear issue is resolved”, the report said.

Talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) during the last two months did not result in a breakthrough, but the Iranians agreed to consider suspending their 20-percent enrichment of uranium for a six-month period and to convert their existing 20-percent stockpile to uranium oxide for medical use in exchange for some relaxation of Western economic sanctions as a confidence-building agreement, according to Al-Monitor.

The next round of negotiations will take place Apr. 5-6 in Kazakhstan.

“There are a number of ways that Almaty II can play out, but we certainly hope that what the Iranians have characterised as positive will produce concrete results,” said a senior administration official in a Wednesday call with reporters.

“The bottom line is that we need to have them enter into a negotiation on the substance of the proposal that we have put in front of them…we’ll have to evaluate their response and then decide on what is the best way forward,” the official said.

“The Obama administration should lay out a step-by-step reciprocal and proportionate plan that ends with graduated relief of sanctions on oil, and eventually on the Iranian Central Bank, in return for verifiable curbs on Iranian uranium enrichment and stocks of enriched uranium, and assurances that Iran does not have undeclared nuclear materials and facilities,” recommends the Council’s report.

The report also recommends diminishing Iran’s ability to hurt U.S. interests in the region through means that include “efforts to shape and effectively support a coherent Syrian opposition that can provide a viable alternative to the Assad regime as well as reviving Arab-Israeli peace talks and shoring up the U.S. relationship with
Egypt, Turkey and the GCC states.”

Javier Solana, a former NATO secretary-general who was Iran’s chief European interlocutor from 2003 to 2009, stated this week that Syria was so important to Iran that he did not think it possible to reach a nuclear agreement without also addressing the conflict there.

“Remember that [on] Syria, China and Russia are not in the same place [as] the Americans and the Europeans, and that is an important issue…[For] Iran, Syria has an important relationship. If on that we are not together, it will be more difficult to solve [the problem],” he said.

“Iran understands well that the U.S. wants a political solution in Syria and not a continuation of bloodshed and chaos. Otherwise, the Obama administration would have intervened more forcefully before now,” Slavin told IPS.

“I personally think the U.S. should engage Iran on Syria because both the U.S. and Iran want to prevent Assad from being replaced by a fundamentalist Sunni regime. But I also think that, given what has happened in Syria over the past two years, the U.S. should be more proactive as that is the only thing that will convince Assad to step down,” she said.

While a majority of the Council’s Iran Task Force “supports retaining the option of military strikes as a last resort”, the report includes a list of the “ramifications of a premature military strike”.

The potentially “dire second- and third-order effects” include Iranian retaliation against Israel with “thousands of missiles and rockets”, “international condemnation” that could result in the dissolving of the U.S.-built multilateral coalition against Iran, and Iranian withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would seriously diminish the international community’s access to Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to a report released Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Federation of American Scientists, Iran’s nuclear programme has so far cost Tehran more than 100 billion dollars in lost oil revenue and foreign investments alone.

Authors Ali Vaez and Karim Sadjadpour conclude that given the extent of Iran’s investment in and expertise on its nuclear programme, the only way to ensure it remains peaceful is through a “mutually agreeable diplomatic solution”.