Summary of April 15 Panel on Outlook for Iran & U.S.

By Andrew Cochran

At a panel on Capitol Hill on April 15, Contributing Experts Matthew Levitt and Walid Phares, along with Prof. Yonah Alexander and Dr. Milton Hoenig, discussed the range of options available to the U.S. and the West in dealing with Iran in a panel titled, "Iran and the United States: Outlook for the Next Decade?" The event was co-sponsored by the Counterterrorism Foundation; the Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, the International Center for Terrorism Studies at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, and the Inter-University Center for Legal Studies at the International Law Institute. The following is a summary of the presentations by the panelists at the event. We will jointly publish a detailed transcript, including the questions and ansswers by attendees. You can also review an article written about the event, which I posted on April 16.

Panel Introductions

Good afternoon and welcome to this panel on “Iran and the U.S.: Outlook for the Next Decade?” I am Andrew Cochran, Co-Chairman of the Counterterrorism Foundation and Founder & Site Editor of the Counterterrorism Blog, and I am the moderator for today’s panel. The Counterterrorism Blog (at Counterterrorismblog.Org) was the first multi-expert website dedicated solely to terrorism events and counterterrorism policies. I want to thank Don MacDonald, staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Terrorism & Nonproliferation Subcommittee, and David Adams, staff director of the House Foreign Affairs Middle East Subcommittee, for enabling our use of this room today. I also want to thank my colleagues at GAGE International, the consulting firm where I make my living representing and assisting clients with homeland security, high-tech, and counterterrorism interests.

Now, the standard disclaimer: None of the presentations here today represent the official views of the organizations represented; they are purely the personal views of the individuals making the presentations. So if you don’t like what you hear, blame the speaker, not the group.

Our panelists today are Prof. Yonah Alexander and Dr. Milton Hoenig, co-authors of the new book, “The New Iranian Leadership: Ahmadinejad, Terrorism, Nuclear Ambition and the Middle East”; Matthew Levitt, Director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute and one of our original Contributing Experts; and Dr. Walid Phares of the National Defense University and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and author of “The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad,” also just released, and another Contributing Expert to the Counterterrorism Blog.

Professor Yonah Alexander, one of the most respected experts on counterterrorism in the world, is currently Senior Fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies and Director of its International Center for Terrorism Studies. Concurrently, he is director of two consortia of universities and think tanks throughout the world. He lectures at numerous institutions and universities and has published over 90 books on the subjects of international affairs and terrorism. Professor Alexander has appeared on many television and radio programs in over 40 countries, and his numerous articles and interviews are published everywhere. We conducted a panel on February 12 with Prof. Alexander for his first new book of 2008, “The Evolution of U.S. Counterterrorism Policy,” which was co-edited with Counterterrorism Blog Contributing Expert Michael Kraft.

Dr. Milton Hoenig is a nuclear physicist and a Washington DC-based consultant. Formerly Professor at the University of Massachusetts in North Dartmouth, he worked at the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Nuclear Control Institute. He has published many studies, including “Super-Terrorism: Biological, Chemical, and Nuclear” (with Yonah Alexander) and “The Nuclear Weapons Data Book” (Vols. I-III).

Matthew Levitt is also an expert witness in numerous terrorism-related trials and a professorial lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. From 2005 to early 2007, he was a key official in the effort to combat terrorist financing as deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department. Matthew was previously the founding director of the Terrorism Research Program at the Washington Institute and a special analyst at the FBI supporting counterterrorism operations for events including the millennium bombing threat and the September 11 attacks.

Walid Phares is now the author of ten books on terrorism and the Middle East, including “The Confrontation.” He also serves as a Fox News Channel Middle East Contributor and is a frequent guest on numerous other TV and radio networks around the world. He writes frequently for academic publications and newspapers, has been called upon by the U.S. Congress, the European Parliament and legislatures throughout Europe to testify about these issues. Dr. Phares will give a presentation about his assessment of the grand strategies of the current regime in Tehran covering Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and the global terror war.

Each will have 10 minutes to discuss a particular angle and then we’ll go to questions.

-----------

Yonah Alexander:

Thank you for the generous introduction. I am delighted to see some of my colleagues here today. Those of you who follow the calendar, this month of April we mark two anniversaries. Twenty-five years ago the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut took place, killing 63 people and injuring 100. Islamic Jihad took responsibility for this action. The point I am making is that it all goes back to that act and the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Iran 28 years ago, as well as the failed U.S. mission to rescue those hostages. Twenty-five years ago I received a letter from a U.S. Senator discussing the issue of terrorism. The Senator told me that it was difficult to legislate against terrorism because so little was known. The Senator said that only through strong, almost terrorist-like measures, could he envision the United States actually countering the threat. Since this methodology was clearly not acceptable to the American people, twenty-five years later, we still grapple with the same threats. Forty years ago I visited Tehran, when I did academic work there it was very clear how Iranian thinking spread to the Middle East. Obviously today we know what’s going on on the ground. Iran’s strategic thinking from the point of the 1979 Revolution onward is very reliant on their relationship with Lebanon and Hezbollah. Milton Hoenig will assist with looking at the nuclear development in Iran and how this plays into the state-sponsored terrorism from Iran. This struggle will go on for decades. We are looking specifically at state-sponsored terrorism and nuclear ambitions. The bottom line is a long laundry list:

1) Theological and political radicalization
2) Propaganda and psychological warfare
3) Violation of individual and collective human rights
4) Political and economic dislocations
5) Organized criminal activity
6) State-sponsored terror
7) Maritime threats in the gulf
8) Development of weapons of mass destruction
9) Employment of these weapons
10) Regional destabilization

The bottom line with responses to Iran: we must look at diplomacy, the battle of ideas, economic sanctions/incentives, U.S. and European and Israeli missile defense, and military options.
-------------

Milton Hoenig:

We all know some truly profound first lines, such as, from Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” from John, “In the beginning was the word,” and from the Dhammapada, the Buddhist scripture, “All that we are is a result of what we have thought.” Now, the intelligence community brings us the unclassified version of its December National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, with the opening, “We judge with high confidence that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” For many people in Washington this statement was misleading and out of place --undermining the possibility of further strong sanctions against Iran for not bringing its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities to a halt as a pre-condition for negotiations.

However, for anyone who wanted to look, a footnote makes clear that the term “weapons program” refers only to Iran’s covert military program for designing a deliverable nuclear weapon, not the programs to manufacture fissile material and missile delivery systems. Nevertheless, some damage was done. For example, Swiss officials recently used the NIE lead as an excuse for a Swiss utility signing a 25-year contract with Iran to deliver 5.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, starting in 2011, in a deal worth an estimated 20 billion euros, despite strong objections from the U.S.

Also, Russia, which was holding back on supplying fuel loadings for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power reactor, quickly sent the full 82 tons needed, shortly after the NIE’s release. This action was greeted by the U.S., in a change of Bush administration policy from opposing to supporting Iran’s civil nuclear energy program, but with enrichment and fuel fabrication services coming from outside.

One of the Intelligence Estimate’s key insights is that Tehran indeed is responsive to increasing international scrutiny and pressure—that its “decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach.” Iran’s enrichment program at Natanz and heavy water program at Arak had been made public in August 2002, but it was in October 2003, only after the invasion of Iraq, that Iran finally made a full declaration to the International Atomic Energy Agency and signed the Additional Protocol to its safeguards agreement to allow environmental sampling and inspections at suspect sites.

Subsequent negotiations between the Khatami regime and the European Union actually slowed Iran’s uranium centrifuge construction and testing at Natanz and other nuclear related activities, and the halt was nearly complete between November 2004 and August 2005. After that, the suspension fell apart, and with Ahmadinejad’s ascension, the Additional Protocol was abandoned and centrifuge construction and operation restarted in earnest.

A strong point of the Intelligence Estimate is to highlight Iran’s separate military nuclear weaponization program, which, the NIE says, was suspended in late 2003 because of pressure and scrutiny from the revelations about its civil nuclear program. Iran is yet to admit to having such a weaponization program. The IAEA's investigations of Iran’s 18 years of undeclared nuclear activities prior to 2003 have left many unanswered questions, a significant number of which were related to this weaponization program. Last August, Iran finally agreed to reply in writing to some these questions, but the answers reported by the IAEA in February were mostly superficial and cast little light on Iran’s past nuclear history.

Totally left out of Iran’s answers to the IAEA’s questions was any explanation of the pages of documents found on a laptop computer stolen out of Iran and acquired by U.S. intelligence in 2004. The laptop documents were reported to detail Iranian experiments on uranium conversion, high explosives testing, and the design of a ballistic missile re-entry vehicle--all distinctly related to the design, testing and delivery of a nuclear warhead by a Shahab-3 ballistic missile, although, cleverly, the word “nuclear” is never mentioned. The U.S. eventually supplied some of the documents to Iran, which says they are fakes.

The IAEA deputy director of safeguards briefed diplomats of its member states in February on the laptop documents and on parallel ones from two other states. The leaked notes mention names and refer to studies for modifying the Shahab missile to accommodate a spherical warhead that would detonate at 2,000 feet—an altitude that makes sense only to maximize the blast effects of a nuclear weapon. Other laptop documents were said to be on the development of a the highly synchronized firing system that is a key component in detonating a nuclear weapon, as well as a detonator to be triggered deep in a 400 meter shaft from a distance of 10 kilometers, as in a nuclear test.

Iran, to clear up matters, needs first to admit that it had a nuclear weaponization program and then to give a detailed account of it that can be verified by the IAEA. It also needs to let the IAEA interview Moshen Fakrizadeh, the Ministry of Defense official identified in the stolen laptop documents as leader of the weaponization project. The Security Council sanctioned him in 2007. He is a professor at a university in Tehran, and former head of the Physics Research Laboratory at the Lavizan-Shian site, which was demolished in 2004, probably to erase any evidence of military nuclear activities, before IAEA inspectors could arrive.

The standoff between United States and Iran and the over suspending uranium enrichment as a condition for talks seems to be making no progress toward resolution. It is time for a new approach by the U.S. without pre-conditions. On several occasions, attempts by Iran to open negotiations with the U.S. have been rejected. In particular, an offer in May, 2003, approved at the very highest levels during the Khatami presidency and forwarded to the State Department through the Swiss Ambassador in Tehran proposed opening a broad dialogue with the U.S. on matters including nuclear safeguards, support of Hizballah and Hamas, and recognizing Israel. This came two months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when Iran probably feared it was in for regime change. The Bush administration, for various reasons, did not take up the offer.

Outside groups of U.S. scientists have held discussions with Iranian officials, such Iran’s former representative to the United Nations in New York, on arrangements for Iran to settle on operating, say, 100 or 300 centrifuges for experimental purposes, but Iran’s progress in constructing centrifuges and placing them at Natanz has outpaced these proposals. Between November 2006 and November 2007, Iran’s operating centrifuges at Natanz increased from 300 to 3,000, or about 200 new centrifuges a month.

Iran disavows any intention other than enriching uranium to about 4 percent for power reactor fuel. But 3,000 P-1 centrifuges, of the same model that Iran secretly bought form the A.Q. Khan network in the 1990’s, represents the magic number needed to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single nuclear bomb in one year of full time operation. As you know, Ahmadinejad announced the beginning of installation of yet another 6,000 centrifuges at Natanz. It is not clear, but some of these centrifuges may be of a more advanced model IR-2 model with 2 to 3 times the enrichment power of the P-1’s. Instead of 3,000 P-I centrifuges needed to produce a bomb’s worth of highly enriched uranium, only 1,200 IR-2’s would be needed to do the same job.

To be sure, the Iranians are having technical problems, and they are no way near the goal of getting even 3,000 centrifuge machines to spin continuously at the required speeds. IAEA inspectors report that the quantity of low-enriched uranium being produced at Natanz is only a fraction of what it would be in full operation. It will probably be some time before Iran acquires enough know-how to reach that goal. As the NIE judges, the centrifuge enrichment program at Natanz could produce enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, possibly as early as the end of 2009 or more likely not before 2013.

There are at least two proposals by outside groups to set up a multilateral enrichment enterprise in Iran, despite proliferation concerns, on the argument that we have lost the battle to deprive Iran of its uranium centrifuges. Actually, Ahmadinejad first suggested a multilateral effort in a UN speech in 2005, when Iran had only a few centrifuges. One proposal by Geoffrey Forden and John would use centrifuges rented from either Urenco or Russia to set up a commercial scale facility. State-of-the-art Urenco centrifuges have some 50 times greater enrichment power than the P-1’s. In this case, Iranian scientists would have no access to the closely guarded centrifuge designs, and black boxing, smart monitoring and self-destruct mechanisms would be used to prevent abuse by Iran.

Another proposal, by William Luers, Thomas Pickering and Jim Walsh, would turn Iran’s national enrichment program in to a multilateral one managed by a consortium including Iran and using Iranian centrifuge technology. Iranian technicians would be able to receive technical knowledge they might not have obtained otherwise, but cancellation of the multinational program would risk a military response via the United Nations.

Even though Iran would have to accept the Additional Protocol and extensive safeguards, it is difficult to see how such a multilateral arrangement could be implemented while Iran has hostile relations with its Middle East neighbors, does not disavow supporting terrorism, and does not give a full explanation of its previous nuclear weaponization activities. Also, a bulk processing facility like an enrichment plant has an inherent statistical uncertainty in material accounting that is proportional to the amount of uranium gas moving through. This accounting uncertainty would possibly create concerns that even low-enriched product was being stockpiled secretly in preparation for a breakout at a covert enrichment facility.

In conclusion, we should negotiate with Iran without first requiring the pre-condition for a suspension of its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities. The sanctions and the demand for suspension should continue while this is going on. Iran needs to give a complete account of its nuclear weapons development program, even if it was halted in 2003, allow inspection of suspect sites, and disavow continued support for Hezbollah and Hamas. The Iranians may be willing to sit down and talk, even if they are notable for a strategy of delay.
---------------

Matthew Levitt

I’m going to focus on the terrorism side. The question is whether to engage Iran or not. Engaging versus confrontation is the wrong way to describe this, they are not mutually exclusive. When analyzing what to engage and what to confront - analyze the behavior because it is aggressive. It is aggressive across a large swath of regions and activities. We all would love to be doing multilateral negotiations but the U.S. assessment of the region is that Iran is aggressive. Iran is meddling in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by providing training for rockets and operations to other Palestinian groups. Iran has a pay for performance type relationship with these terrorist organizations and Palestinian Islamic Jihad is an example. They had experienced pay cuts up until the Second Intifada. Also, Iran is providing weapons and training to Hamas, Iran is very active in the West Bank. The training that they have provided to Hamas has seriously hampered the peace process between Israel and Palestine. The Aqsa Martyr Brigades are mostly backed by Hezbollah. Iran is heavily committed to turn people against the two-state solution. Iran is ever-increasingly tied to Hezbollah. And according to French intelligence Iran has been providing more advanced rocketry to Hezbollah in order to reach Israel from the push-back location beyond the Litani River. These rockets have even been re-engineered to disassemble for easier smuggling operations. Since November 2006, 4,500 Lebanese Hezbollah operatives have gone through Iranian training. This, coupled with the stockpiling of long range Iranian rockets, has left Hezbollah in a heavily fortified position where they remain capable of carrying out attacks against Israel despite the presence of a UNIFIL peacekeeping force. Iran has also been very active in Iraq through Shia militias. Iran also continues to provide support to the Taliban as well as some members of Al Qaeda. There have been situations where Iran has allowed individuals providing financial and material aid to the Taliban and Al Qaeda to pass through their borders despite their tight control. Iranian border officials have also refrained from stamping the passports of these operatives. This is one way in which Iran engages in “Glocalism” or local Islamic movements turned global. It is in Iran’s interest to promote problems in Syria, Pakistan, Iraq, and Lebanon. In dealing with Iran sanctions have a large role but this is only one piece of the process. Sanctions are meant to levy diplomatic leverage. Like sanctions, neither diplomacy nor military force will work alone. A coherent combination of these strategies must be applied. We cannot simply engage Iran for the sake of engaging. It is important to engage Iran at a senior level and then hold these figures accountable.
----------------

Walid Phares

I intend to talk about the Iranian regime’s strategic goals. There can be understanding of their general direction if we look at behavior over the past twenty years of the regime. We will look at what it tried to do throughout the past twenty years despite statements. The statements made are laden with propaganda, not necessarily true intentions. Most of all, the same regime has been in power for a long time, therefore history can show us what their constant effort has been. The guiding principles remain unchanged; nuclear weapons have always been a goal. For instance, in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s they had a military nuclear weapons program even though they deny it now. Other principles of the regime include the “Khomeini-ization” of Iranian society and the exportation of this ideology to other regions such as the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Lebanon. Salafists, for example, have a much wider market within Sunni populations. However, while Khomeinism appeals largely to Shia, it is gaining some ground in Sunni areas. As a final facet the Iranian quest for nuclear armaments is to ensure that the international community does not mingle in Iran’s domestic operations.

There have been two faces of Iranian strategy - one from 1979 to 2003, the other from 2003 onward. The latter has been much of the same but since the United States’ invasion of Iraq Iran feels surrounded by American presence in Iraq on the one side and Afghanistan on the other. Between 1979 and 2003 these policies and their implications have always been there. Iran always had a policy on Iraq all along. It was to bring down Hussein and bring about an Islamic Republic, dominated by Shia doctrine, in southern Iraq. From 2003 to 2005 there has simply been an accelerated reaction to Iraq and other events in the region. In support of their use of Hezbollah as a proxy for their geopolitical goals in the region, Iran diverted 300 million in funding for the group between 1982 and 2000. Other such examples of their policies and influence in the region are the long-standing strategic alliance with the Syrian regime as well as their support for militants in the Palestinian territories.

TrackBack