Iran

Iran. That’s the news story which poor Mr Blair is trying to spin to the panel – but they don’t pick up on his hints. It would have all been all right in Basra – he’d like to say – if it hadn’t been for those pesky Iranians. As Prime Minister, if he blamed Iran in public then that would have had implications. He’d have had to follow up on it. But now he wants to tell us, or he would if those chaps on the panel would kindly probe him on it. When he was talking to Baroness Prashar he tried to start: “If what you’d ended up having

If you’re looking ahead to 2010, it’s a safe bet that Iran is going to be an even bigger issue than it was this year.  The violence currently rocking the country is an echo of June’s presidential election, and a reminder, too, of the continuing internal pressure that the Iranian regime faces.   The question now is whether that will be joined by external pressure of some form.  After provocation after procovation on Tehran’s part, it’s hard to envision the West keeping its “hand of friendship” outstretched much longer.  But it’s also unlikely that  Barack Obama – his eyes on the domestic polls – will want to talk too tough

When I visited Israel last year, various sources there were convinced – adamant, even – that Iran was within a year or two of creating an atomic bomb.  That may or may not have been the case, but it’s still ominous that that hypothetical timeline is nearly up.  We can all too easily forget that, in the background to all the column inches and comment pieces expended on Iran, there are genuine and pressing concerns that the country is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear power. Which is why the two latest news stories from the country are particularly worrying: the capture of a racing yacht by the Iranian

At the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency outside of Washington DC, there are no cardboard mockups of Iran’s nuclear sites that can be used for briefing the military on plans of attack. Instead, there is a very cool 3D map table that allows the viewer to fly into and through the many layers of the nuclear facilities. A movement of the hands can expand or contract the view from an image of an individual room to the perspective from an overhead satellite. On the basis of that briefing, an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites looks easy, right down to the dialing in of the depth at which a new

The strategic logic behind President Obama’s decision to alter US plans for a missile defence shield based in Eastern Europe was that this would persuade the Russians, who didn’t like the shield, to agree to the US’s push for tougher sanctions on Iran. But it appears that Moscow isn’t going to play ball.   The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared after a meeting with Hillary Clinton yesterday that, “Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive.” So, all that Obama’s concession has done is anger the Czechs and the Poles who weren’t told about the move until the last minute. Iran

The discovery that Iran’s regime has, yet again, deceived the international community and secretly built an additional nuclear facility has made world leaders re-focus on the issue. On Friday, the US, UK and France said the UN had to be given immediate access and urged tough new sanctions. Even Russia expressed concern. Today, the Iranian regime’s  response came. According to Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads the Atomic Energy Organisation, Iran will keep its uranium enrichment level at up to five percent – much lower than bomb-grade. “We don’t want to change the arrangement of five-percent enrichment merely to produce 150 to 300 kilos of 20-percent (enriched) fuel,” ILNA news agency

In most discussions about what would happen following a strike on Iran it is taken as a given that the Iranians would close the Straits of Hormuz, through which 90 percent of Persian Gulf oil exports pass. The thinking goes that this would lead to a huge spike in world oil prices. But an interesting article in the new issue of Foreign Policy argues that it would be far harder for Iran to close the Straits than is commonly assumed. It points out that oil tankers can travel through 20 miles of the Straits rather than just the 4 mile official channel, that oil tankers are actually not that vulnerable

Chuck Wald, a retired US Air Force General who was the air commander for the US response to the 9/11 attacks, has an important op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today about Iran. Wald argues that while no one wants to see the military options explored before all others have been exhausted, it would be a mistake to think that there are none. He argues that even the mere act of a military build up might persuade the Iranian regime that the cost of continuing with their nuclear programme would be being bombed and thus persuade them to give up. Alternatively, a naval blockade could deny Tehran the petrol imports