Even as the West seeks to engage Iran in negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program, Iran continues to arm rogue regimes and terrorist groups in blatant violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1747. Such aggressive behavior on the part of Iran in support of terrorist groups and rogue regimes highlights a critical shortcoming of current international sanctions on Iran. In the latest case, last week, the Israeli Navy intercepted the Francop, a vessel carrying five hundred tons of weapons, including thousands of mortar shells and long range rockets believed to be bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israeli officials released photographs of Katyusha rockets seized last week by UNIFIL forces in Lebanon that are the same make as those seized on board the Francop. According to U.S. officials, the arms shipment was “clearly manifested from Iran to Syria” in violation of a March 2007 UN arms embargo and provides “unambiguous evidence of the destabilizing proliferation of arms in the region.”

It is high time to back up the tough talk with action. The good news is that there are ways to effectively disrupt Iran’s international weapons smuggling. The question is whether the Francop episode will provide the political impetus for the international community to take action. Previous cases of Iranian arms smuggling prompted no such action.

Indeed, the Francop is just the most recent Iranian violation of UNSCR 1747’s ban on Iranian weapons trafficking. In January, the U.S. Navy stopped another vessel, the Monchegorsk, while it was transiting the Red Sea en route to Syria with components for mortars and thousands of cases of powder, propellant, and shell casings for 125mm and 130mm guns. The Monchegorsk was chartered by Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) which, just four months earlier, the Treasury Department blacklisted for its proliferation activities, noting that IRISL “facilitates the transport of cargo for UN designated proliferators” and also “falsifies documents and uses deceptive schemes to shroud its involvement in illicit commerce.”

In recent years, a number of similar incidents exposed Iranian efforts to transport military materiel and arms by sea, land, and air to allies and surrogates. During the second Palestinian Intifada, Iran helped facilitate arms shipments to Gaza through Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to Gaza (by means of floating waterproof containers) by using two civilian vessels, the Santorini, seized by Israel in May 2001, and the Calypso 2. In January 2002, Iran attempted to deliver fifty tons of weapons to the Palestinian Authority aboard the Karine A, whose shipment was seized by the Israeli Navy in the Red Sea.

During the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, Israeli intelligence charged that Iran was resupplying the Shiite movement via Turkey. Such claims gained credibility in May 2007, when a train derailed by PKK terrorists in southeastern Turkey was found to be carrying undeclared Iranian rockets and small arms destined for Syria—possibly for transshipment to Hezbollah.

Existing UN and EU legal guidelines provide the authority to take action against Iran weapons smuggling, but on their own are insufficient. In February and April 2007, the EU imposed a number of sanctions on Iran in order to implement UN Security Council decisions, including a ban on Iranian transfers of military materiel, arms, and missile technology. Similarly, Resolution 1747, adopted in March 2007, prohibited the transfer of “any arms or related materiel” by Iran, and urged UN member states not to facilitate such efforts. In addition, Resolution 1803, passed in March 2008, calls upon all states, “in accordance with their national legal authorities and legislation and consistent with international law,” to inspect IRISL cargoes to and from Iran transiting their airports and seaports,” provided there are reasonable grounds to believe that the aircraft or vessel is transporting [prohibited] goods.”

Getting countries to act on these authorities, however, has been sketchy at best. As these cases indicate, serious gaps exist in the available policy tools to deal with Iranian arms transfers to its allies and surrogates. To close these gaps, the United States should work with its allies on multiple levels.

For example, the EU could expand its current policy banning the sale or transfer of arms to Iran to include a ban on the purchase or transfer of arms from Iran. Indeed, only the latter actually address the export of arms. Individual countries and regional organizations both—especially in South America and South and East Asia—should adopt legislation pertaining to Iranian arms and technology transfers, to enable them to fulfill their UN and EU obligations.

Government engagement with the private sector, drawing attention to the risk of doing business with IRISL, its subsidiaries, and other banned entities, could also have a significant impact. As the U.S. Treasury noted when it designated IRISL: “Countries and firms, including customers, business partners, and maritime insurers doing business with IRISL, may be unwittingly helping the shipping line facilitate Iran’s proliferation activities.” Since then, Dutch Customs automatically label merchandise shipped by IRISL or Iran Air at the highest risk category and inspect the cargo. Last month, the United Kingdom also sanctioned IRISL, banning British firms from doing business with the Iranian shipping line.

Given Iran’s history of deceptive financial and trade activity, extra scrutiny should be given to any ship that has recently paid a call to an Iranian port. Countries should be encouraged to require ports and/or authorities to collect detailed, accurate, and complete data regarding all cargo being shipped to or through their countries (especially from risk-prone jurisdictions like Iran), to conduct rigorous risk assessments, and to proceed with actual inspections as necessary. According to press reports, the Francop docked in Egypt before it was boarded some 180 kilometers of the coast of Cyprus.

Recent events show that even as the Obama administration seeks to engage Tehran, the Islamic Republic has continued to work to undermine Western interests and to support anti-Western elements around the world, as demonstrated by its ongoing efforts to resupply Hamas and Hezbollah and assist insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Disrupting Iran’s ability to arm allies and surrogates hostile to the interests of the United States and its allies would enhance Washington’s leverage in possible negotiations with Tehran, contain Iran should such diplomatic efforts fail, and prevent Iran from contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and beyond.

“It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.”

—President Barack Obama, statement on the 30th anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, November 4, 2009

The assumption represented by the fresh statement by President Obama on Iran is that all people and peoples are the same: at heart, all people and peoples basically want the same things, basically understand the world in the same way, basically are prepared to come to terms in the same way as everyone else. This is particularly clear in the assertion that what the people of Iran seek is “universal rights.” Such a culture-free world as envisioned in this statement would make communication and agreement a lot easier. The reality, however, is that cultures do differ, and that people and peoples do not see life and existence the same way, and may disagree on goals. Iranian regime goals of Islamic and Shia domination are not secret; these are the explicit raison d’etre of the regime, not to be negotiated away to build “confidence” and a “more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.”

Similarly this statement appears to assume that there are not real conflicts of interest between countries, or between the regimes running those countries. In this view, disagreements are basically misunderstandings, which, with good will and open communication, can be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. But power, control, and honor are gained and held only at the expense of other parties. There are winners and losers. Regimes wishing to improve their positions cannot do so by compromising with other parties. Furthermore, it is notoriously necessary in Middle Eastern despotic regimes to control the populace through confrontations with external enemies, real, imagined, or manufactured. Improving relationships with identified “enemies” is not in their interests and not on their agendas.

Finally, what good does it do to acknowledge the “powerful calls for justice” of the Iranian people when you are about to throw them under the bus by trying to make deals with the regime that is shooting them down in the street, torturing them in prisons, and executing them?

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

As President Obama decides how to proceed in the Afghan war, he needs to add one more variable that is rarely mentioned: Iranian determination to acquire nuclear weapons. An ongoing Afghanistan campaign means that resort to force against Iran would be tantamount to starting a second war. The politics being what they are, that will knock the military option against Iran off the table, with negative implications for an empowered diplomacy toward Iran.

Consider the timelines of the Afghan and Iranian policy portfolios, as President Obama must. Whether or not Iran parts with some of its fissile material in coming months in accord with the recent Geneva deal, it will still have enough nuclear “stuff” for one at least bomb within 18 months. (It may have more than that if, as looks increasingly likely, the recent Qom revelation displayed the tail end of a significant and protracted effort.) It will probably have overcome its weaponization and delivery-system challenges within 36-48 months. In 36-48 months U.S. and NATO forces will probably still be fighting in Afghanistan, whether Obama decides on a minimalist, counterterrorism-plus approach or General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency-minus one.

The logic and overlapping timetables of the Afghan-Iran linkage suggest a need to choose. How should we think about that choice?

Both problems are consequential, but an Iranian nuclear breakout poses more serious long-term security dangers to the region and to the United States than any likely fallout from the Afghan war. Losing in Afghanistan could boost the morale of Islamist extremists worldwide, harm NATO and possibly exacerbate the situation in Pakistan. But acquiescing to an Iranian nuclear capability would spell the collapse of the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime and likely set off a proliferation race in and around the region that could catalyze a regional nuclear war. Unlike the Cold War deterrence relationship many of us remember, which involved just two sides with mostly secure weapons and command-and-control systems, a multifaceted nuclear Middle East without stable second-strike arsenals would be extremely crisis unstable and accident-prone, and could “leak” dangerous materiel to terrorists, as well. It is facile to assert that a deterrence relationship which worked in one context will also work in others; that assumption with respect to Iran is a textbook example of the “lesser-included case” fallacy.

If American interests require the prevention of an Iranian bomb, then major combat operations in Afghanistan must end before the moment to decide on Iran is at hand. That’s not the track we’re now on. General McChrystal’s plan is a stop-loss effort that cannot achieve a level playing field upon which to drive a new Afghan diplomacy, let alone achieve anything remotely resembling victory in three years or less.

There are only two alternatives to preserve a credible military option, and hence a credible diplomacy, with regard to Iran: accept defeat in Afghanistan, whatever we may call it, and leave; or surge militarily to reverse the perception of Taliban ascendancy, and then drive a new political arrangement there to end the war within the next 18-24 months.

Either option is preferable to a protracted and inconclusive bloodletting, but the latter option—depending more on air power and avoiding the massive (and counterproductive) garrisoning of the country with foreign forces—is preferable. It would avoid the optic of defeat. A new Afghan coalition government, blessed by a Loya Jirga within and supported by high-level contact-group diplomacy from without, would have at least a chance of creating a stable environment over the longer run—something that cannot reliably be said about the current regime in Kabul.

A success in Afghanistan also would lift the admittedly modest prospects that diplomacy can persuade the Iranians to step back from the nuclear precipice, just as failure to turn the tide would likely tempt them forward. And if the Iranians do not step back, a success in Afghanistan will better undergird the diplomacy that must accompany any military operation directed toward them.

Clearly, however, no McChrystal-plus option is on the table. This suggests that, barring some major out-of-the-blue event, like the collapse of the Iranian regime, the administration will be unable to consider using force against Iran when the time comes to decide, even if it might wish to do so. And Tehran’s knowledge that all U.S. military options are off the table is not liable to be helpful.

If U.S. policy eventually founders in Afghanistan and fails to prevent an Iranian nuclear breakout, and Iraq’s relative stability begins to crumble—not a far-fetched possibility, regrettably—then we will face a trifecta of real trouble in the Muslim world and beyond. To avoid that debacle, the beginning of wisdom is to recognize that when President Obama finally decides on Afghanistan, he will be constraining or expanding his options on Iran.

One wonders whether this link is well appreciated.

The role of Iran in fueling insurgency in Iraq, particularly attacks against U.S. forces, has been well-documented and forms one front in Iran’s proxy war against the United States. Receiving much less attention than Iraq, is the role Iran has played in supporting anti-NATO insurgents in Afghanistan as a second front against U.S. and NATO forces.

At first blush, such support seems bizarre given the intense antagonism between radical Shiites in Tehran and the fringe Sunni Taliban movement, each of which sees the other as lying outside the bounds of true Islam. Indeed, the two were at odds throughout the 1990s, at times approaching what some considered a full-blow regional crisis. Late 1998 saw the Taliban murder of hundreds of Shiites in Mazar-e-Sharif and an Iranian buildup of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps troops along the border with Afghanistan.

By 2000, however, the Taliban had dispatched an emissary charged with reaching out to the Iranian regime, Khirullah Said Wali Khairkhwa. Cooperation, even with ideological enemies, fits with Tehran’s pattern of willingness to work with any ally to oppose the United States. (Iranian regime support for Al Qaeda in Iraq is part of this trend.)

During a January 2000 meeting in Iran, its representatives offered weapons assistance in light of the Taliban’s inability to procure weapons on the open market; and at a November 2001 meeting, Iranian diplomats offered anti-aircraft weaponry to the Taliban for use in impending action with the United States and NATO and offered safe passage of fighters, weapons, and money across the Iran-Afghanistan border.

Direct Iranian government assistance to the Taliban was first alleged by U.S. officials during 2007. In January of that year, Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns alleged that “There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it’s a pattern of activity.… It’s certainly coming from the government of Iran. It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.”

A 2007 Treasury Department Fact Sheet identifies the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Qods Force as Tehran’s main vehicle for providing the Taliban with financial and weapons support. Secretary Gates has argued that the quantity of materiel proffered to the Taliban from Iran requires senior Iranian government involvement. Such support, even if not directly ordered by senior political leadership in Tehran, is certainly known of and allowed to continue unabated.

The same Explosively-Formed Penetrator IEDs Iran ships to Iraq are turning up in western Afghanistan, a previously quiet area compared to the eastern border with Pakistan. There have been 15 U.S. deaths in western Afghanistan in the last five months. One Taliban commander told BBC News in mid-2008 that Iranian businessmen sell Explosively Formed Penetrators, called “Dragons,” at a premium price to select Taliban commanders. In addition to businessmen who sell the weapons, the Taliban commander added that “There are people inside the state in Iran who donate weapons.” The Afghan press is reporting in October 2009 that Afghan security forces confiscated 860 Iranian-made land mines in northern Afghanistan. Tehran is also escalating by sending shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to Afghanistan, which would greatly complicate NATO operations.

General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, alleges in his September report to the White House that in addition to supplying weapons, “The Iranian Quds Force is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups.”

As U.S. forces gradually shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, Tehran likely sees the opportunity to bog down the American military in a way it was unable to do in Iraq. Such an analysis accords with American assessments that see the U.S. position in Afghanistan as tenuous at best.

The Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council (P5+1) initiative to end Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and use maximum leverage to do so, diminishes the ability of NATO countries to use diplomacy to discourage Iranian support for the Taliban. Success against Iranian infiltration in Afghanistan will almost definitely require changing the security environment on the Afghanistan side of the border, rather than transforming the behavior of Tehran on the Iranian side of the border.

As President Obama weighs General McChrystal’s request for some 40,000 additional troops to execute a population protection counterinsurgency strategy, it is important to bear in mind that with external support from the likes of Tehran, the Taliban is unlikely to be defeated by anything less than rejection by the Afghan people themselves. To this end, the United States may be well-advised to seek support of members of Pashtun tribes that have formed alliances of convenience with the Taliban. A counterinsurgency strategy with enough U.S. forces to win the trust of locals by providing security will be essential to allow the American military to wean some of the Taliban’s tribal Pashtun allies away from the insurgency.

After months of seemingly fruitless effort, the Obama administration suddenly appears to have made progress both on improving Russian-American relations and on resolving the Iranian nuclear issue. After the Obama administration announced that it would not implement the Bush administration’s plan to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic aimed at protecting Europe from Iranian missiles—a plan strenuously opposed by Moscow—Russian President Medvedev recently suggested that Moscow might go along with tougher sanctions on Iran for not cooperating with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the UN Security Council on its nuclear program.

Further, at the P-5+1 talks with Iran in Geneva, Tehran has agreed to send “most” of the uranium that it has enriched to Russia in order to be converted into “desperately needed material for a medical research reactor in Tehran” (so reported the Washington Post). There have even been reports that Washington and Moscow are pushing Israel to cooperate with the IAEA, sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and give up its nuclear arsenal in order to create a Middle East nuclear-free zone that Iran would agree to be part of.

There may be far less here, though, than meets the eye. Instead of the advent of Russian and Iranian cooperation with the United States, what we may be witnessing instead is a limited convergence of Russian-American interests along with Iran making a show of cooperating with both Washington and Moscow in order to divide them.

Some in the West see Moscow’s willingness to consider increased sanctions against Iran now as a concession to Washington in return for canceling the BMD deployment plan for Poland and the Czech Republic. The Russian press, though, has claimed that Moscow’s agreement to allow the United States to transport lethal materiel to Afghanistan via Russian airspace was the Kremlin’s reward to Obama for canceling the East European BMD deployments, and that Russia is not altering its policy toward Iran at America’s behest.

Moscow would prefer that Tehran not acquire nuclear weapons, and could hardly ignore the American announcement that Iran has another enrichment facility in the vicinity of Qom that it had not declared to the IAEA (as it is bound to do). Moscow’s willingness to convert Iran’s enriched uranium, though, is not a break with past Russian policy. Indeed, Vladimir Putin has for several years offered to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through Russia providing all the uranium enrichment services that Iran needs for an atomic energy program (performing the enrichment through a “joint venture” either in Russia, Iran, or possibly somewhere else). If both America and Iran accepted this proposal, Russia’s importance to both would be greatly enhanced: America would be reliant upon Russia to make sure Iran did not acquire weapons-grade uranium, and Iran would be dependent on Russia for restraining America vis-a-vis Tehran.

But while the Bush administration appeared willing to accept such a solution in the past, Tehran always responded that while it was willing to acquire some enriched uranium from Russia, it also insisted on enriching some of its own—which is exactly what is unacceptable to Washington and others. It was partly Putin’s frustration with Tehran for not fully adopting his solution to the nuclear issue that appears to have triggered Russian support for previous UN Security Council sanctions against Iran.

Of course, when Moscow did vote in favor of sanctions, the Iranian press denounced Russia in the bitterest terms for—once again—being willing to betray Iran in order to curry favor with America. Russian officials and commentators would then attempt to appease Tehran by claiming that Moscow had actually helped Iran by watering down the much harsher penalties that America and Britain had wanted to impose on it.

Something similar could occur this time as well. Tehran’s uncertainty about whether Moscow really might seriously cooperate with America in imposing harsher Security Council sanctions against it this time may well have motivated Iran to let Russia convert “most” (but not all) of its enriched uranium, in the expectation that Moscow will point to this “increased” Iranian cooperation as reason to delay imposing new sanctions against Tehran as well as watering down those already in place. Unlike the United States, which does not do much business with Iran, Russia has important economic stakes there, which it hopes to increase. While Moscow doesn’t want Tehran to acquire nuclear weapons, it doesn’t want to impose sanctions that would damage Russian economic interests in Iran either. What Russia wants, then, is to cooperate just enough with the United States to convince Washington that it is working with it responsibly (and perhaps obtain some concession for doing so) while at the same time preserving its important relationship with Iran.

And as for Russia encouraging Israel to cooperate with the IAEA, sign the NPT, and give up its nuclear weapons: Moscow could hardly do otherwise at a time when the Obama administration has intensified the longstanding U.S. call for Israel to do all these things. But perhaps unlike some in the Obama administration, Moscow knows full well that Israel is highly unlikely to dismantle its nuclear arsenal. Israel’s position, then, allows Moscow to argue that Iran cannot be expected to make progress on nuclear disarmament unless Israel does. Israel’s likely refusal to do so, then, is a convenient excuse for Moscow not to seriously join with the United States to push Iran on this.

The Obama administration is trying to get Iran, Russia, and Israel to all change their policies. But while Iran, Russia, and Israel do not like one another’s policies, none of them is willing to change its own. Because of the way that these three governments interact with one another as well as with the United States, it is highly likely that Iran, Russia, and Israel will each continue to pursue its preferred policies and thus frustrate the Obama administration’s efforts to get them to change them. Despite press reports to the contrary, then, Russian-American relations—insofar as the Iranian nuclear issue is concerned—are not likely to improve, and the Iranian nuclear issue is not likely to be resolved as a result of the Obama administration’s current diplomatic initiatives.

Comments are limited to MESH members and invitees.

The New York Times has produced this interactive graphic about the no-longer-secret uranium enrichment facility at Qom in Iran. Click here if you cannot see it below.

As the Obama administration prepares for October 1 negotiations with Iran, Tehran steals a page from Pyongyang’s playbook: escalate confrontation in advance of engagement. Why not? Escalation to win concessions and backtracking on promises have worked for North Korea.

On September 27, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps conducted war games that included test launches of multiple short range Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles, and on September 28, the Iranian regime tested a Shahab-3 missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers, capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf.

Iran’s war games come on the heels of the revelation of a second, previously “unknown” uranium enrichment facility in Qom (shown above)—except the facility was not unknown to Western intelligence and wasn’t unknown to those who paid attention to the main Iranian opposition groups, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). In December 2005, the NCRI revealed that tunneling activity in the mountains outside of Qom was initiated in 2000 by an IRGC engineering unit, with the goal of constructing an underground nuclear facility.

On September 24, 2009, the NCRI revealed two additional sites in and near Tehran where the Iranian regime is working on detonators for nuclear weapons. The sites are part of METFAZ, a Farsi acronym for Research Center for Explosion and Impact; they undermine both the Iranian regime argument that its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes and the U.S. intelligence community judgment that Iran halted weaponization work in fall 2003, as reported in a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate.

In accord with the Iranian opposition group’s estimates (and undercutting that NIE) are the Israeli and German assessments of Iran’s clandestine efforts to design a nuclear warhead, as reported in the New York Times: “The Israelis, who have delivered veiled threats of a military strike, say they believe that Iran has restarted these ‘weaponization’ efforts, which would mark a final step in building a nuclear weapon. The Germans say they believe that the weapons work was never halted.”

Thanks to the Qom revelation, the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council + Germany (P5+1) should have the upper hand during the October 1 meeting. Through the war games, Tehran likely hoped to regain some lost leverage. Now the issue is what Iran hopes to achieve through meeting with the P5+1.

Based on past behavior, it is unlikely that Tehran genuinely intends to cut a deal with the international community. Instead, the regime uses negotiations as ploys to buy time to continue with uranium enrichment until nuclear weapons status becomes a fait accompli. At the top of Iran’s priorities for the October 1 meeting will be the avoidance of harsher sanctions without meaningfully curtailing its nuclear activities. To this end, the regime can be expected to make vague pronouncements about continuing to work with the international community and the desire for more follow-on negotiations. Such a posture makes rallying Russia and China around stronger sanctions more difficult.

In the past, Tehran has hid its serial deception with promises of additional talks. As far back as June 14, 2008, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said he would offer to European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana a “comprehensive” negotiation package of security, terrorism, narcotics, organized crime, and illegal migrants. In the subsequent Geneva meeting between Iran and the P5+1, talks deteriorated over the suspension of uranium enrichment; the P5+1 insisted on cessation, but Iran refused. In over a year’s time since this hint of a “comprehensive” offer, the Iranian regime has succeeded in expanding its stocks of enriched uranium and consolidating Revolutionary Guards control of the Iranian political system.

Former Revolutionary Guards General and now Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also got in on the game of using arms control rhetoric as a ploy. On April 15, 2009, during the presidential election campaign, the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) reported him to have stated that Iran would offer a new proposal package for nuclear talks. And Bloomberg reported on April 26 that his government was preparing to offer the United States and European nations an updated version of a one-year-old proposal for talks about its nuclear program. “We are reconsidering our proposed package,” Ahmadinejad said in an interview on American ABC television.

Such “reconsideration” came as Ahmadinejad was facing pressure from election rival Mousavi, who criticized Ahmadinejad’s hard line stance on the nuclear program. Claiming that an Iranian proposal to the United States was in the offing was a gambit to give the appearance of moderation, both domestically and abroad, while continuing apace with uranium enrichment.

Foreign Minister Mottaki said on May 13 of this year that Iran was preparing a package of proposals for the P5+1 on the regime’s nuclear activities and promised to deliver it as soon as it was finalized. Leading up to Mottaki’s May 13 statement, the Iranian regime had begun testing more advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges at a pilot plant within the Natanz enrichment complex, according to IAEA reports.

The ploy was repeated over the summer. The July 2009 G8 Summit called on Tehran to assist IAEA investigators to understand the complete nature of the nation’s nuclear history and future plans. The Iranian regime announced what it called a new proposal after the summit. On July 11, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that Tehran had begun work on new proposals that will be put forward as a basis of discussion with the West, according to state media. He didn’t detail the proposals, nor did he say whether any part of the package would deal specifically with Iran’s nuclear program.” The reporter interpreted Mottaki’s statement as “a tentative signal that Tehran may be willing to start rebuilding relations after weeks of drubbing the U.S., Britain and other Western power [sic] for alleged complicity in election unrest.” Rather, such empty offers are an effective distraction from unrest and are designed to give the regime an air of legitimacy through negotiation with the international community.

The Iranian regime likely judges that the most effective method of buying time to enrich uranium is to enter a vague and drawn out proposal-counterproposal cycle with the P5+1. As long as Tehran appears somewhat engaged on the Obama initiative, the regime seeks to delay Western military action against its nuclear infrastructure.

The P5+1 should be prepared for Tehran to use both threats and proposals to buy time, distract from unrest, and give the appearance of moderation, and as such should give engagement without sanctions a short leash. As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during the G20 meeting,

Confronted by the serial deception of many years, the international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand… On October the 1st, Iran must now engage with the international community and join the international community as a partner. If it does not do so, it will be further isolated.

Toward this end, the P5+1 should continue to demand progress from Tehran on halting its nuclear weapons program, while pursuing crippling international sanctions, political recognition of Iran’s opposition groups, and/or threat of military strikes.

While Tehran steals a page from Pyongyang’s playbook of escalation in advance of engagement, Tehran’s militant and expansive ideology makes it impossible for its neighbors to live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

While Washington is mulling over what to do next in order to weaken Iran economically, this summer the Islamic Republic has taught us a lesson in strategic maneuvering, taking major steps to bolster its economy and geopolitical posture by positioning itself as an indispensable energy supplier to hundreds of millions of people.

Last May, I described here how after 14 years of negotiations, Iran, which has the world’s second largest natural gas reserves, signed a deal to connect its economy with its eastern neighbor, Pakistan, via a 1,300-mile natural gas pipeline. Both Iran and Pakistan hope to extend the pipeline into India and perhaps even into China. This would not only give Iran a foothold in the Asian gas market and ensure that millions of Pakistanis, Indians and perhaps Chinese are beholden to Iran’s gas, but it would also provide Iran with an economic lifeline and the diplomatic protection energy-dependent economies typically grant their suppliers.

Not wasting any time, Iran is now implementing the second tenet of its pipeline strategy. In July, it announced that by the end of 2009 it will be connected with its northern neighbor, Turkmenistan, Central Asia’s largest gas producer, via a pipeline. Turkmenistan’s interest in pumping its gas to Iran stems from its desire to diversify its export market. Two-thirds of Turkmenistan’s gas flow to Russia, and the dependence on one major client allows Moscow to take advantage of its former republic. But why would energy-rich Iran want to import gas from its neighbor? The answer is the Nabucco pipeline.

For some years, a number of European governments and a consortium of energy companies have been lobbying for the construction of a pipeline from Central Asia via Turkey and the Balkan states to Austria, aimed to ease Europe’s dependence on Russian gas. Last July an intergovernmental accord on Nabucco was signed in Ankara. Scheduled to be completed by 2014 at a cost of over $11 billion, the 2,000-mile pipe is estimated to supply between 5-10 percent of the EU’s projected gas consumption in 2020.

The problem, though, is that it is far from certain where the gas for Nabucco would come from. To date, not a single gas-producing country has signed on to the project. The U.S. position toward Nabucco has been supportive, with the caveat that no Iranian gas should supply the pipeline. But this is an exercise in self-delusion. Even if the 10-15 billion cubic meters of gas per year projected to be tapped from Azeri fields were to become available, much gas would still be needed to meet the pipeline’s capacity of 31 billion cubic meters of gas a year. No doubt about it: Nabucco would have to access both Turkmen and Iranian reserves.

This inconvenient truth is well known to all those involved with the project. But in order to maintain U.S. support, European governments, Turkey—the main transit state—and the consortium of companies which have undertaken to build the pipeline have made sure to drop Iran’s name from any official document or statement related to Nabucco. Tehran, so it seems, does not believe in denial. Its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows well that making Europe beholden to his gas is the best insurance for his regime and that Iran is an appealing alternative to Russia for those for whom Vladimir Putin is a far bigger menace than him. Once Nabucco is constructed, it will be only a matter of short time before Iranian gas will be requested. Hence, the pipeline to Turkmenistan will also make Iran a conduit for Turkmen gas.

In Iran’s effort to bring its gas into the heart of Europe, it has another project: a 1,100-mile pipeline currently being constructed from Iran’s South Pars gas field through Turkey and onward to Greece, Italy and other European countries. This pipeline is expected to deliver 20.4 billion cubic meters per year.

Whether Iran’s natural gas ends up powering turbines in New Delhi, Karachi or Vienna, one thing is certain: Iran will be richer and more geopolitically indispensable. As in the case of U.S. dependence on Saudi Arabia, China’s on Sudan or Germany’s on Russia, energy dependency is a major driver of foreign policy. Once these new gas conduits are established, it will be far more difficult for the United States to gather international support for policies aimed to reign in Iran.

All of these developments have received little attention in Washington, where sanctions on imported gasoline are the only game in town when it comes to crippling the mullah’s regime. Unlike the Bush administration, which was vocally opposed to the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, the Obama Administration has been mute on the issue. Instead, it has pressured India to give more consideration to global warming, essentially pushing India to shift from coal-powered electricity to cleaner burning Iranian natural gas. In doing so, the Obama administration has demonstrated that environmental stewardship enjoys higher priority than nuclear proliferation. At a volatile time when the Taliban is at Islamabad’s gate, the Obama administration has also refrained from pressuring Pakistan to reconsider its decision to provide Iran with an umbilical cord. As a result, should the worst happen and a Taliban-style regime take over Pakistan, the economies of the world’s most radical Shiite state and that of what could be the world’s most radical Sunni state would be connected to each other for decades to come like conjoined twins.

But all’s not lost. The Obama administration should actively promote alternative energy corridors which will prevent Iranian gas from reaching major markets while addressing Asia’s and Europe’s energy needs. One potential gas-pipeline project is the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline. The project can supply Pakistan and India as much gas at a lower construction cost, while providing the impoverished Afghan government with a steady revenue stream in the form of transit fees. Most important, TAPI would allow Turkmenistan to sell its gas to India, enriching two U.S. allies (Afghanistan and Pakistan) rather than selling the same gas to Europe, enriching a U.S. enemy (Iran).

Washington should therefore impress upon Islamabad, recipient of $1 billion-plus yearly of U.S. aid, to adopt TAPI rather than the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline.

If the United States aims to stop Iran’s ambitions for regional hegemony, it is also in its interest to advance Europe’s and India’s use of renewable electricity and even coal rather than natural gas. And if those two markets insist on using gas, this gas should come in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG) which can be imported from any gas exporter rather than in the form of Iranian gas.

The United States should cooperate with India on the development of a thorium nuclear fuel cycle rather than the commonly used highly problematic uranium-based nuclear fuel cycle. Thorium cannot be used as bomb material in any way; its fuel cycle is inherently incapable of causing a meltdown; its waste material consists mostly of 233-uranium, which can be recycled as fuel; its waste material is radiotoxic for tens of years, as opposed to the thousands of years with today’s standard radioactive waste; and it exists in greater abundance than uranium.

Only this month India announced that it has designed a new version of its advanced heavy water atomic reactor which will use thorium and low-enriched uranium (instead of highly enriched uranium) as fuel. At a time when the entire Middle East is going nuclear, this is a major opportunity for the United States to cooperate with India—after Australia, India and the United States have the second- and third-largest reserves of thorium—on advancing a safe pathway to globally-used peaceful nuclear power.

Finally, the United States should curb its enthusiasm toward Nabucco, take a more sober look at it and see the project for what it is: an economic lifeline for Iran. While this ambitious pipeline project may serve the interests of some European countries it would inevitably undermine those of the United States. Here the United States will find commonality of interests with Russia, the main opponent of Nabucco.

Nabucco was Verdi’s opera about the difficult plight of Jews under the ancient Persian Gulf ruler, Nebuchadnezzar. What an historical irony it would be if this eponymous pipeline ended up emboldening a modern regional ruler, one with much more sinister plans.

Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s most recent statement that the Holocaust is a myth and denouncing Israel is an indication that he does not see U.S. President Obama’s call for dialogue and improved relations with Iran as desirable from his perspective.

While Moscow has applauded the Obama administration’s decision not to execute the Bush administration’s plan to deploy a ballistic missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic aimed at Iran, Tehran is undoubtedly focusing on the Obama administration’s plan to instead deploy sea-based ballistic missile defenses closer to Iran. Ahmadinejad is highly likely to see this not only as more threatening to Iran than the Poland/Czech Republic option, but also to see the Obama administration’s foregoing the latter as an attempt to curry favor with Moscow in the hope of enlisting its cooperation against Tehran.

Finally, with Ahmadinejad seeing the United States as somehow orchestrating the continued Iranian democratic opposition protests against his claimed re-election victory, it all must seem to him that the Obama administration is even more of a threat to him than the Bush administration ever was. Issuing strident statements about Israel, then, is a desperate attempt by Ahmadinejad to rally support both at home and in the Muslim world.

Moscow, though, is making it clear that the Obama administration’s abandoning the Poland/Czech Republic BMD deployment plan will not result in a quid pro quo from Russia vis-à-vis Tehran. While there really are forces that threaten Ahmadinejad and the Islamic Republic, Moscow is making clear that Russia is not one of them.

The opening of the UN General Assembly in New York provides advocates of human rights an additional forum to embarrass President Ahmadinejad of Iran for his serial violations of the rights of Iranians at home and abroad. A hunger strike by 36 Iranian dissidents, taken hostage by Iraqi forces, continues into its second month. Hundreds of hunger strikes continue by Iranian exiles in Washington, London, Ottawa, Berlin, The Hague, and Stockholm; an area near the UN could become a site of a hunger strike. Meanwhile, over a hundred strikers have been taken to hospitals worldwide.

As part of a book I am writing on Iran, I conducted interviews with Iranian dissidents, including hunger strikers in the area of the White House. Such interviews provide a glimpse of the nature of the protesters; what they seek and how their actions fit with the literature of social protest; and how sacrifice affects the policymaking process.

Among the many hunger strikers, I selected six who looked the most exhausted in the hot sun and high humidity of Washington. They were mainly entrepreneurs, U.S. citizens, fiercely pro-American, and gravely disappointed and puzzled that President Obama had neither responded to their presence nor to the plight of their colleagues. All had strongly supported presidential candidate Obama assuming that his call for “change” would mean recognition of their status as the main Iranian opposition group to counter the Iranian regime; protection of their hunger-striking counterparts who had been kidnapped in Iraq by Iraqi Security Forces acting on behalf of Tehran; and continuation of the “protected persons” status of the Iranian dissidents by U.S. military forces in Iraq or at least replacement of American forces with an international force.

Comparing their plight with the civil rights students in the American south, the hunger strikers often sing “We Shall Overcome,” the anthem of the civil rights movement. The counterpart of this song is the Persian chant of the Iranian dissidents: Mitavon va bayad, va hameh bayad, loosely translated into English as, “We shall overcome because we must overcome.”

One of the most articulate of the hunger strikers is Mehran Ebrahimi, a tall, handsome, entrepreneur from Reston Virginia, a bedroom suburb of Washington. He told me:

I was on my way to Disney World with my two grandchildren when I heard the news of the Iraqi attacks against our unarmed Iranian relatives in Iraq. I made it only to South Carolina and immediately returned to Washington to become a hunger striker. My sister is among those Iranians who were attacked in Iraqi forces. Just as our Iranian brothers and sisters sacrifice their bodies in Iraq, so too we shall sacrifice our bodies to protect theirs in Iraq.

Mehran Ebrahimi hit the nail on its head in his motivation to inflict suffering on himself to highlight a cause. When individuals impose such suffering, it is an act of supreme sacrifice and political protest to bring attention to their cause. Hunger strikers understand their message must get on the radar screen of the media to have any effect on policy makers. Indeed, partly as a result of the Iraqi assaults and hunger strikes in Iraq as well as at the White House, there has been increased media attention, e.g., by Mohammed Hussein of The New York Times; editorial page editors of The New York Times; Lara Logan of CBS Television and Mark Knoller of CBS Network Radio; and by Robert McCartney of the Washington Post.

With the opening of the UN, there is an additional forum for communicating self-sacrifice. Hunger strikes are weapons of the weak to communicate injustice to the strong. By passively inflicting self-damage, Iranian dissidents reinforce the effects of active forms of protest, such as demonstrations near the United Nations. While the UN ponders, Iranian dissidents turn up the heat by signaling willingness to suffer. Suffering can become a source of influence by educating the international community to a cause about which they know little, signaling a sense of injustice to those informed of the facts but unconcerned with the issue of justice, and winning the attention of bystanders who may be recruited to help.

At issue is whether enhanced attention is likely to change UN policy of not interfering with the Government of Iraq’s responsibility for the fate of Iranian dissidents who had been protected by the American military. U.S. protection lapsed with the Status of Forces Agreement of January 2009 and withdrawal of Americans from urban areas; meanwhile, the UN has not assumed any such responsibilities.

But now that the Iraq Security Forces attack unarmed Iranian dissidents rather than protect them, the international community is deliberating how to handle this new situation. Dispersal of the Iranian dissidents within Iraq, repatriation to Iran, and a post-American UN force to provide protection are three prominent options.

Without the hunger strikes, it is unlikely that the United States will even contemplate meeting its international legal obligations to ensure Iranian dissidents are not dispersed within Iraq, where they likely would be kidnapped and taken to Iran; repatriated to Iran, where they are likely to be tortured or executed; or attacked again. Such alternatives can only be avoided if there is post-American UN force to provide protection. As the UN General Assembly opens, now is the time to consider the relevance of an international force to protect Iranian dissidents in Iraq against attacks on them, inspired by Tehran.