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Bush speaks in news conference (AP)
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| By israelinsider staff and partners January 14, 2006 |
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U.S. President George Bush, speaking at a Washington press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said that Iran was secretly working to acquire nuclear weapons, and warned that Teheran was moving to realize its stated goal of obliterating Israel.
"Iran armed with a nuclear weapon poses a great threat to the security of the world," said Bush, adding: "Countries such as ours have a great obligation to step up, working together to send a message to the Iranians that their behavior, trying to clandestinely develop a nuclear weapon, or using the guise of a civilian nuclear program to attain a nuclear weapon, is unacceptable."
Bush said that "a world without Zionism" was the goal of the Iranian regime. "The current president of Iran has announced that the destruction of Israel is an important part of their agenda. That is unacceptable. The development of a nuclear weapon is a step closer to that agenda."
"It is the world's interest that Iran not have a nuclear weapon," said Bush, insisting that Iran must not "have capacity to blackmail free societies."
Consensus grows, but questions remain on how to deal with Iran
A growing number of countries are backing moves to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. But with military action all but ruled out and the difficulty of imposing effective sanctions, their tools appear few and flawed.
The main threat for now is referral to the Security Council. But Iran was defiant Friday, vowing to further limit international monitoring of its nuclear activities if hauled before the United Nations.
It was left to some of Tehran's main critics to tone down the confrontation, with officials from France and Germany saying it was too early to speak of sanctions.
That stance appeared to be a recognition of the lack of unity among the Security Council's five veto-carrying members, as well as doubts about the effectiveness of economic sanctions, given the world's thirst for oil.
The United States -- the key backer of harsh sanctions against Iran, which it says wants to make nuclear arms -- can count on Britain's backing in the Security Council. France, too, may go along out of frustration with two years of trying -- and failing -- to persuade Tehran to give up uranium enrichment, a possible pathway to nuclear arms.
But Russia and China, who also have veto power, could prove hard to persuade.
Iran buys most of its weapons from Moscow and Beijing. Russia has nearly completed work on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor and is the key contractor for Tehran's plans to build more. China is making energy deals with Iran -- it owns a 50 percent stake in its Yadavaran oil fields and has contracted for 250 million tons of Iranian liquefied natural gas worth some $70 billion.
Moscow has toughened its tone since Iran resumed uranium conversion on Tuesday. Still, Alexei Malashenko, a researcher with the Carnegie Endowment's Moscow office, dismissed the new stance as a gesture to its Western allies.
"Russia will never give up its cooperation with Tehran," he told the daily Vremya Novostei.
China is considered likely to oppose tough sanctions. On Friday, its U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, questioned the wisdom of referral, saying that "might complicate the issue."
But even if all five agree on the need for sanctions, the question of how to punish Iran is difficult.
"Full economic sanctions almost work too well," said David Albright, a former U.N. nuclear inspector in Iraq who runs the Institute for Science and International Security. "They kill a lot of civilians, and nobody wants that."
The tough sanctions on Iraq resulted in civilian suffering and led to the U.N. oil for food program -- essentially an anti-sanction measure approved by the same powers that set the punishments in the first place.
Most experts say Iran would be hurt if its energy exports were targeted, since oil and gas sales amount to 69 percent of the country's annual budget.
But in an energy-hungry world, prohibiting OPEC's second-largest producer from doing international business would be a double-edged sword -- even a one-day disruption in natural gas deliveries from Russia this month sent the European Union into emergency mode.
"Even for nations that don't directly import from Iran, any disruption in imports affects prices," said Valerie Marcel, energy specialist at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. "And Asia, with its dependence on Iranian energy, would be directly hurt."
Friedemann Mueller of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin warned that pulling the daily 2.7 million barrels of Iranian oil off the market "would set off an enormous price movement."
And energy expert Ken Stern, managing director of the New York office of FTI Consulting, questioned how effective such sanctions would be if the goal is replacing the present leadership with one more willing to listen to international concerns.
"History has show us that political considerations can trump economic conditions," he said, alluding to the lack of effect the Iraq embargo had in unseating Saddam Hussein.
British politician Michael Ancram suggested Iran be expelled from soccer's World Cup over its nuclear program.
But Andreas Herren, a spokesman for FIFA, soccer's governing body, said any such move would have to be initiated by governments or international political organizations. "FIFA is a sporting organization, and not a political organization," he said from Zurich, Switzerland.
Military action remains as a last-resort means of "regime change."
Israel and the United States, the two nations Iran considers its most implacable enemies and the most likely to resort to such means, have refused to categorically rule out such action. But they say it's not in the cards anytime soon. And their reluctance is understandable.
Iran's nuclear installations are scattered and hidden, and intelligence on them is weak. That would rule out the success of a single devastating airstrike of the kind Israel carried out against Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981.
Only the United States would be capable of carrying out the other combat scenario -- a full scale invasion to topple the regime. But it has its hands full in Iraq.
And U.S. military strategists recognize that invading Iran -- large, rugged, and with forces led by battle-hardened veterans of the 1980-1988 war against Iraq -- would backfire.
"I think the people would unite behind their leadership -- even those critical of the leadership now," said Albright. "They would be willing to live under all kinds of hardship to battle an invader."
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