The Times Herald October 05, 2009
Lines drawn in Iranian nuke talks
By Keith Phucas
COURTHOUSE — Direct diplomatic talks in Geneva this week with Iran about its nuclear ambitions was met with cautious optimism by Congressman Joe Sestak, D-7th Dist., who believes coalition-building with allies and other foreign countries to pressure the regime is a sound approach; however, he doesn’t rule out the use of military force.
Edward Turzanski, a senior fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, said the talks merely give Iran more time to delay halting its uranium enrichment program until diplomats meet again later this month.
In Geneva on Thursday, the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China and Germany took part in the talks. In recent years, some of these same countries negotiated with Iran without success.
“The Germans, French and the British have been talking for six years (with Iran), but the Iranians just get closer to (making) a bomb,” Turzanski said.
Critics of the Obama administration’s efforts point to the history of failed diplomacy with Iran that date back 30 years and the presidential administrations of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Though Sestak criticizes the recent Bush administration of “unilateralism and stonewalling” for its so-called refusal to negotiate with the rogue nation, “scores” of meetings took place and were reported on, including a “very secret series of negotiations,” according to Foundation for the Defense of Democracies scholar Michael Leeden, whose editorial, “We’ve Been Talking to Iran for 30 Years” appeared in the Wall Street Journal last Wednesday.
By September 2006, an agreement had been reached with Iran to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions. But when Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and top Middle East aid, Nicholas Burns, went to New York to meet with an Iranian delegation for the announcement, the Iranians never showed, Leeden wrote.
The congressman said Obama’s diplomatic strategy to build an international coalition using diplomatic and economic sanctions to induce Iran to give up its program is the right approach.
“That doesn’t take the military option off the table,” Sestak said.
Turzanski, a LaSalle University professor, characterized Thursday’s negotiations as having “no push back” on the regime that has deceived the West about its nuclear efforts, repressed its people and supplied explosives to use against U.S. troops.
“They’re killing more Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.
As for a request for unfettered access to a once-secret nuclear facility near Qom, Turzanski claimed the plant isn’t even operational.
“There’s no there there,” he said.
He wondered why diplomats aren’t asking to have the International Atomic Energy Agency tour Natanz, where Iran announced in 2003 it was enriching uranium using centrifuge equipment, according to globalsecurity.org. The country has a least six other sites.
The Geneva talks, which made no mention of the opposition uprising after Iran’s contested election, sends a clear signal to those opposing the regime that they can’t depend on support from world’s Democratic nations.
“The opposition knows it’s all by its lonesome,” Turzanski said.
The president also recently shifted U.S. missile defense strategy, which would forgo installing defensive systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia and instead increases deployment of the aegis ship-based missile defense system.
Sestak, a retired Navy admiral, said the new strategy would defend against short- and medium-range missile attacks from Iran, which does not yet have a long-range capability.
“By 2011, we’ll have scores of ships with defensive systems to guard against the more immediate threats,” he said. Over the next decade, 80 or more ships will be equipped, eventually having the capability to thwart long-range missile launches.
By reneging on the agreed-upon land-based systems in Poland and Czechoslovakia, two countries who lived for decades under Communist rule, Obama drew scathing criticism from Turzanski and others.
By agreeing not to put the planned missile defenses in Europe, which pleased the Russians, the administration hopes Russia will apply renewed pressure on Tehran to halt nuclear development. After Obama nixed the European defensive plan, Sestak said America’s former Cold War foe pledged support for “additional sanctions.”
“By moving (missile defenses), it takes a stick out of the eye of the Russians,” he said. “You have to give a little to get a lot.”
But Turzanski, who was at the Polish Embassy in Washington following the cancelling of the missile defenses, said the announcement coming on Sept. 17 — the 70th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland — cast a pall over the embassy gathering.
He’s uncertain if the Sept. 17 announcement was a mere coincidence, but said missiles launched recently in Iran on Yom Kippur were surely not coincidental.
“It’s astounding,” he said.
Though Obama called nuclear talks “a constructive beginning,” that must be matched with concrete actions, there was already debate a day later about what exactly was agreed upon, according to The Associated Press.
Iran reportedly accepted demands to allow U.N. inspectors into its secretly built Qom plant, which seemed to defuse tensions. Western diplomats claimed the country also agreed to let Russia take a portion of its enriched uranium and refine it further. Eventually, that uranium would be used to fuel Iran’s research reactor.
The process would use up most of the 3,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium, which Iran has reportedly stockpiled. That amount is enough to make a bomb.
But Iran’s ambassador to Britain told AP the issue had “not been discussed yet,” and when asked if Iran had agreed to Russia refining the uranium, the ambassador said “No, no!”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
© Copyright 2009, The Times Herald, a Journal Register Property
