Charles Duelfer | The Search For Truth In Iraq | Page 13

Politics in Washington and Beijing

Posted on November 5, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

With the United States self-absorbed in its own elections…staring at its navel…it is interesting to see other capitals focusing attention on the upcoming 18th Party Congress that begins two days after the US election. Leadership will change in China and their new team will be around for the next decade. Granted it is a process that is less amenable to the reality TV audiences in the US, but for long term international economic and political effect, it may be as more or more important than the US elections…especially in Africa and South America where emerging markets and resources are central. It is astonishing that there is virtually no coverage in the US press about the shift in leadership in Beijing. It is an opaque process, but one with major consequences. The world has become far more sensitive to Beijing. It has become less sensitive to Washington.
For example, you can bet that leaders in Tehran will be watching Beijing very carefully. Of course they will be attentive to Washington especially whether the next president will feel any more or less pressure to “deal” with Iran. But China will play a very large role and Tehran will be testing to see how the evolution of China’s leaders may affect their support of Iran and willingness to offset the US.

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Iran: The Crisis Grows and US Lacks Influence

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

The Iran nuclear problem is approaching crisis stage and the IAEA is in a critical position. They have done a remarkable job in being steadfast in working toward their larger objectives and in maintaining credibility in a highly charged political environment. They have a key report coming next week. One of the vital indicators of whether Iran has a nuclear weapons effort (as opposed to just nuclear energy as they claim) is the presence of sophisticated high explosive testing necessary for triggering a nuclear explosion. The military site at Parchin has been suspected of housing such necessary testing facilities. The IAEA has sought to inspect that site for a long time. Iran has refused permission. There have been reports that Iran has used this time to cleanse the site of any incriminating evidence. Recent satellite photography made public certainly shows activity consistent with such views. At a certain point, the IAEA will have to make a call whether it is still useful for verification purposes to visit that site. That will be a tough but necessary decision to make…and the time seems to have come, even though it will add tension to a tense situation. At this stage, a visit to Parchin is not likely to add to clarity, but rather add to ambiguity.

Israel would not believe any results that came out of such a visit. Others might be inclined to view such a visit as supporting Iran. The result would be increased political heat, and little new factual knowledge. Moreover, the IAEA would tend to lose credibility that is very valuable.

The levers over this crisis are now pretty much exclusively in Israel’s hands. Washington, by its silence, has pretty well indicated it is not going to be the first to strike. While there are lots of forces in the region, and more on the way, it seems they are headed out in response to the “risk” that Israel will act.

For Israel, the planning and preparation of public attitudes seems well underway. Among the host of responses Iran can conduct would be the seizure of hostages. This may be the most politically difficult for Israel.

Russia and China will play critical roles—especially the day after an Israeli attack. Iran will never be in higher regard than the day after an Israeli attack. If Tehran contains its response, it won’t lose this position. Russia and China may be able to influence Tehran in this direction.

The global economy may depend on Russian and Chinese success. While it is doubtful Iran can close the Straits of Hormuz even temporarily, an attack would likely produce a spike in Brent price on the order of 30-40 dollars. This may fall back, but Iran could take out the Iraqi exports at the head of the Gulf. That reduction could put real supply pressure in the markets. And any jump in prices will damage any progress toward global economic recovery. Even China is sensitive to that now.

The next few weeks will be critical indeed. And Washington is not the dominant player any more. We may want to fix this, but we can’t. We no longer have the influence.

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Syrian Ambassador on WMD Use

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

The Syrian ambassador to Iraq, Nawaf al-Fares, has declared his opposition to the Bashir al-Assad regime in Damascus. He has made strong public denunciations of the regime and declared that Bashir would use his chemical weapons capability against the opposition. In interviews (notably with BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner in Doha on July 17, 2012), he stated that this view was based on his knowledge of the “mentality of the regime.”
There is little question that Syria has substantial CW and BW capability. There is no question that such material is a concern in the presently growing chaos. However, the statement by Ambassador al-Fares may be seen as “motivated reasoning.” The ambassador seeks greater US involvement on the part of the opposition—to include military support. There is a model for this in the recent history of Iraq—where he was ambassador and would likely have spent much time with individuals like Ahmed Chalibi. Chalibi mustered support in Washington for deposing Saddam based on many things, but highlighted the argument that Iraq WMD could fall into the hands of terrorists including al Qaeda.
Ambassador al Fares is making exactly the same argument…even though al Qaeda has been opposed to the Bashir regime just as it was ideologically opposed to Saddam (and vice versa). Bashir, like Saddam, has plenty of faults, but al Qaeda connections are not likely one of them.
There are more serious concerns about Syrian CW and BW. They concern the presence of Iranians and particularly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps al Quds force.
Consider two simple points. One, there is a long history between the IRGC and Hezbollah. Second, Quds force was fingered as being behind the plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington. These two things alone indicate that they have capability to do dangerous things and what seems logical to us may be irrelevant to them it seemed crazy to try and kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington).
Logically, we might assess that Syrian military should be deterred from using CW due to the potential consequences of being charged post-Bashir with crimes against humanity, the same may not apply with Iran in the mix.
With the presence of the IRGC al Quds, they may be influencing some Syrian military to do things with offers of protection or funding. They may view Syrian CW and BW as a factor within the Iran Nuclear standoff. They may be making completely unpredictable calculations about Syrian CW and BW relative to Israel. It is a dangerous and unpredictable situation.
It is logical that many Syrian officers would be deterred from using such weapons because of the likelihood of subsequent penalties when Bashir is gone. (They will be sharply aware that the Iraqi general who was in back of Saddam’s CW use against his own population, Chemical Ali, was hanged in 2010.) However, the more overwhelming and unknowable risk comes from the Iranian presence. God only knows what drives their calculations.
So to argue that the US should be more directly involved militarily on the ground because of potential Bashir WMD sharing with al Qaeda is noise in the system. The real risk is what IRGC forces are up to. This is a far more complicated situation and the uncertainties in any assessment are huge. Simple statements by the former Syrian Ambassador to Iraq should be seen in this light.

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Spacex Innovation Isn’t Technical

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

The mission by the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station executed by Spacex Inc., is remarkable. However, it is not a technical innovation. It is an innovation in government contracting. Technically, what Spacex did is little different than what the United States has been doing for almost half a century. They built a liquid fuelled ground launched expendable rocket that delivered cargo to the Space Station and returned a capsule. This is no mean feat, but it is not new at all.

What is new is that NASA contracted for a service (and they paid for the development of the capability to conduct that service). The innovation is that NASA is now paying a private company a fee to deliver stuff to the Space Station. Bear in mind, that even when the Space Shuttle was flying, NASA had little to do with building and maintaining the Shuttle. NASA hasn’t built a rocket in ages. They fund contractors to build rockets. NASA trains astronauts and NASA has maintained senior-level management control of the contractors. The great leap forward in the Spacex launch is that the bureaucracy has taken another step backwards from the process of putting stuff in space. That is a good thing and difficult to achieve–government rarely lets go of anything it controls.

The other thing that NASA did in funding this particular effort was limit the role of traditional aerospace contractors. Boeing or Lockheed certainly could have done the same thing as Spacex but in all probability would have charged more. It remains to be seen if Spacex will keep its prices low or will simply charge what the market will bear once they get operating on a regular basis.

So far, there is little advance in the method of getting to space. Spacex built a new liquid fuelled launch vehicle not particularly different from past American, Russian, French, Chinese or other rockets. Other companies are pursuing more innovative approaches and even Spacex hopes to develop a reusable capability downstream. That would represent a greater advance and hopefully drive down costs to make commercial activities more viable. We’ll see.

In the meantime, it is appropriate to celebrate the huge step taken by government in getting out of the way of space activity. The leadership at NASA over two administrations sustained this step despite massive Congressional interests in sustaining the large bureaucratic workforce and contractor structures. This was a small step for man but a huge step for the bureaucracy.

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Picture Washington as seen by Tehran

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

Imagine you’re the intelligence analyst in Tehran who is charged with making an assessment of the leadership in Washington…and predicting what President Obama will do. Not an easy task. Even Washington can’t predict what Washington will do. Still, some in Tehran will be assessing the data they receive about Washington, evaluate it and make predictions. We know from post-war interviews with Iraqis—including Saddam—that they had a grossly simplified set of assumptions about the Bush Administration. Probably Tehran will not do much not better. Consider what they see.

President Obama ended the US military role in Iraq and is in the process of ending the US military role in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration nevertheless continues to kill enemies (by remote control) in Pakistan and other locations on an individual, by name, basis.

Most recently President Obama travelled all the way to Afghanistan to sign an agreement with President Karzai who won an election that was dubiously legitimate at best. Tehran would have to wonder why the leader of the last superpower flies on the massive Air Force One secretly to Afghanistan to give a speech in the middle of the night before some American troops (and lots of cameras) to celebrate the one year anniversary of killing one person—albeit Usama bin Laden. Why is that a Tehran analyst might ask?

Obviously, Tehran will be aware that there is debate about a possible military action by either Israel or the United States against Iranian nuclear facilities. They would also be aware that elections are pending in both Israel (September) and the United States (November).

Tehran may observe that Obama’s record is one that ends wars with countries, but is willing to kill individual enemies. And he and needs to appear strong to be re-elected.

An analysis from Tehran could conclude from this selection of data that their best option is to vigorously declare that an attack on their facilities will begin a full scale war with Iran…a nation of over 70 million. Tehran would dispute any hint that such a military attack could be a limited action—no matter what Obama may declare.

Tehran could be expected to sustain that position even if they may acknowledge internally that responding militarily to an attack might ultimately be against their interests.

Such a declared position by Iran might work. Based on recent public presentations, it seems pretty clear that the Administration seeks to retain an image of resoluteness by killing individuals while avoiding the less indiscriminate (and vastly more expensive) options of going to war with another nation.

In this light, Tehran may be expected to loudly and continuously proclaim that an attack on their state, whether limited to nuclear facilities or not, will be the start of a war whose end cannot be predicted.

Celebrating Washington’s ability to kill one person (after a decade of effort and billions of dollars) does not necessarily convey strength or even wisdom.

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The Last Iraqi WMD person released

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

One of the best known WMD technocrats to UN weapons inspectors, Mahmud Faraj Bilal Al Samarrai, was among 15 Iraqis released from prison a few days ago. A Justice Department official was quoted as saying that they were released by the Iraqi High Tribunal (whose members identities are secret for security reasons) “after finding no charges to bring against.” Bilal, like Amer Rasheed released a couple weeks ago, spent nine years in prison before the secret Iraqi High Tribunal concluded they could find no charges to bring against them.
Bilal was interviewed at length by UN inspectors and Iraq Survey Group inspectors. His statements have not been found to be in great error. Yet he spent 9 years in jail. His superior in the Iraq CW program, General Faiz Abdullah Shahine (head of the infamous CW research and production facility known as the al Muthanna State Establishment) was never even detained and has reportedly lived a very successful business life–as he did during the Saddam regime. Why? Bilal, must have been asking himself this question for a long time. I suspect “Why?” is a question many Iraqis ask themselves every day…

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Justice–Long Delayed In Iraq

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

The former oil minister of Iraq during the Saddam Regime, Amer Mohammed Rasheed al-Obeidi has just been released from prison after nine years. Amer Mohammed Rasheed turned himself in to US forces in late April 2003. He had been included on the so-called “Deck of Cards” as the six of spades, because of his previous involvement in the Iraq WMD programs. The same quality of intelligence that got the WMD question wrong, was also used to create the so-called “black-list” of Iraqis to be detained. Some of them turned out to be vigorous Saddam opponents. No matter…once captured they spent a long time in jail simply because the system was designed to detain people, not release them. Getting someone out was much harder than putting them in.

Rasheed had been one of the chief interlocutors with the UN inspectors. I knew him very well from my years as Deputy Chairman of the UN inspection team called UNSCOM. I also debriefed him after he was in US custody when I led the Iraq Survey Group which was charged with resolving what happened to Saddam’s WMD programs after the invasion. In my final report to Congress and the President (the so-called Duelfer Report) I included an annex on the detainees who had been captured–like Rasheed–because of past involvement with WMD. I emphasized there was no longer any need to incarcerate them. I made this point multiple times at the White House as well. Nevertheless, the US bureaucracy could not agree to release him even though the original reason for detaining him was no longer operative. There was especially strong resistance from civilian leaders at the Pentagon who were adamant about not releasing anyone who might have some connection to “regime crimes.” So, despite multiple attempts to have him released, there was always someone who voted “no,” frequently because they did not yet know about the case. And since no one wanted to be accused of erroneously releasing a Saddam thug, Rasheed lingered in prison. Compounding this was the influence of the new Iraqi leaders who were not keen to dismiss anyone from the previous regime, and especially someone who knew a great deal about the the oil transactions with the Saddam regime. Many of these new Iraqi leaders had strong financial stakes in the illicit oil trade under Saddam. Simply recall the great flow of oil through Kurdistan to Turkey during the 1990’s. Current leaders personally benefited from oil transactions with the likes of Udey Saddam Hussein. Rasheed would know this.

Rasheed, because he was a talented technocrat knew an enormous amount about the Iraqi oil dealings–and he knew when the system was being used by regime members such as Saddam’s son Udey in illicit ways. He was also aware of when oil allocations were made with the aim of influencing the Security Council–such as when top levels of the Russian government were given highly lucrative oil allocations (There is a complete list of the illicit oil allocations in the “Duelfer Report” which includes allocations to the Russian ambassador, Office of the President of Russian, and others.) An engineer by training (he studied in England) he was a technocrat and a very good one.

Ultimately, full authority for detention of Iraqis captured during the US occupation shifted to the government in Baghdad. “Justice” is at best a work in progress and at worse, a tool of the leadership. Rasheed continued to languish in prison on the weakest of rationales…they were continuing to “investigate” his case. I wrote about this August 9, 2010 in Foreign Policy (“The Iraqi Who Knew Too Much”)

Rasheed is in his 70’s and when I last saw him, not in good health. Finally he is out. While I suspect a condition of his release may be that he remain silent, the world could still learn a lot from him–about Iraq and about ourselves.

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Quiet on the Iran Front? Not for long…

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

After a lot of sound and fury in the press about military options concerning the Iran nuclear program (largely around the visit to Washington by Netanyahu for the annual AIPAC meeting and discussion with President Obama)…things have gone rather quiet. Behind the scenes there seems to be tough discussion on precisely what it is that “we” want Iran to do by way of compliance. There is a pretty tough series of UN resolutions including UNSCR 1929 which aim for Iran to not only stop enrichment activities but ballistic missile work that could delivery nuclear weapons. It will be mighty tough for President Obama to do anything that appears to walk back from them…he already is accused of doing the moonwalk out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet, there is an important meeting in Geneva coming up latter this month…possibly 13 April…between the so-called P-5+1 (namely the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) and Iran. This will ignite attention to this issue again.

Before this meeting there has to be some idea of what the six countries will agree as the goal for Iranian behavior. Secretary of State Clinton must will be having a tough time on this–to say the least. It will be damn hard to get China and Russia to agree to an up or down position demanding that Tehran must verifiably dismantle all its enrichment capacity, remove its stock of partially enriched uranium, shut down its successful ballistic missile program, etc. And yet, any less than this looks like “concessions” and will not likely satisfy Israel. In Washington, Iran will almost certainly be accused of trying to buy time.

Tehran, will know that there is not uniformity of views among the six nations across the table. They will certainly want to test the will of the very different countries facing them. And why not? What do they have to lose? They can agree to IAEA dismantling their nuclear capacity or they can string along negotiations and maybe Israel (or possibly the US) will blow up the capacity. In either case they lose it. But in the later case, they may in fact get more support domestically and even among some internationally. It may also be that they see this as a good test of whether China is going to fully step up and assert its place as the new ascending super-power. Tehran may have some unpredictable assessment of how these players will act. In Washington, we frankly have no clue what the real dynamics and motivations are behind Tehran’s decisons making–we can guess, we have to, but we really don’t know.

My guess is that the talks in Geneva will yield either a retreat on the part of Washington (no doubt characterized as tough) or some continuation of a negotiation process, or nothing substantive at all…followed by more sabre-rattling. And then…?

Don’t look for oil prices to drop any time soon. And American stock markets are going to be feeling the effects of continued uncertainty for some time now.

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Obama and Netanyahu

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

In the speech President Obama gave to AIPAC on 4 March, he made a few obvious points. First and foremost, he seemed to be rather defensively arguing that no President was more supportive of Israel than he. Clearly one major (perhaps the major) audience was a powerful domestic constituency–and it is a political year. The President clearly stated that he would not accept for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. He would not rely on a policy of containment or deterrence. Of course, he also emphasized that diplomacy must be given a chance to have an effect on Tehran, but if Tehran did not make the right decision he said could be forced to use force.

However, he also said that Israel could and would make its own decisions about their security. And, he said that “… there should not be a shred of doubt by now – when the chips are down, I have Israel’s back.” These two combined points are important. Ehud Barak has indicated that there are three concerns for Israel in considering a military option against Iran:
1. Can the military option have a material affect?
2. Will there be support (i.e. from the US)?
3. Can Israel accept the response?

The Obama statement would seem to strongly fulfill the last two points. Thus, in essence, Israel would appear to have a green light from the US, coupled with the strong advice to wait until sanctions play out further. I would note that Israel asked the White House in 2007 if the US would deal with the Syrian nuclear site at al Kibar. According to Dick Cheney in his book, “In My Time,” the president said no (rejecting VP Cheney’s recommendation on the matter) and Israel acted on its own–with good results it would appear and little negative fallout.

It is impossible to know what Tehran will think of the President’s speech. It is impossible to know how or what will affect Tehran’s decision making on this issue. We have almost no clue, but are taking actions making some assumptions about what will shape their decisions.

We can safely assume Iran has its own domestic constituencies to worry about, but we are massively ignorant about what’s going on there. (And vice versa, I would reiterate.) Iran just had parlimentary elections. Will toughness toward the US play well in Tehran? Can Tehran really accept the Israeli conditions that they stop all enrichment and disassemble their entire program so it is not just “suspended or mothballed”? From their perspective, maybe it would be better to have Israel hit the nuclear sites rather than destroy them voluntarily.
If Israel struck, Tehran would likely enjoy substantial international support the day after…probably more than they could obtain any other way with the possible exception of complete capitulation to the UN. And prospects for liftng the sanctions would be high, particularly with support from some key countries like Russia and China. Would Tehran then risk losing that support by lashing out in various ways that might in fact be self destructive? Why close the straits of Hormuz if you need to sell oil?

And there is pride and the feeling of unequal treatment. Tehran will likely note that Obama’s strong reference to the threat to the NPT was a bit ironic. Obama stated, “A nuclear-armed Iran would thoroughly undermine the non-proliferation regime that we have done so much to build.” Well the man that President Obama announced earlier in the speech would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Shimon Peres, was a strong player (according to most accounts) in the development of Israeli nuclear program in the 1960’s when President Johnson was struggling to get agreement on the NPT. Israel was a particular problem at that time. And of course today is not an NPT member. Tehran would certainly point to the fact that there are a lot more IAEA inspectors in Iran than Israel.

I am not equating Iran and Israel, just pointing to some points that could effect Tehran’s thinking about cooperating with the UN resolutions. It is only one line of speculation, but the pressures on Tehran would seem unlikely to cause the result desired. Indeed, it is not obvious why Iran would prefer to destroy its nuclear program itself rather than have Israel do it.

But to overall point is, we are making big decisions based on big ignorance. And so are the Iranians.

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Under Pressure–IAEA, Iran and the Rest of the World

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Charles Duelfer

IAEA Inspectors will be in a difficult position as the
international community will inevitably look to them for “truth” about Iran. This is similar to Iraq case, but the comparisons with Iraq are otherwise limited. The data on the Iran case is overwhelming. Where IAEA is now in a jam is investigating the specific question of weaponization activities that evidence suggests took place. This is going to be tough, and the recent IAEA trip to Tehran came up empty. Tehran, apparently has not even given them enough to sustain a “process” of investigation. This is surprising since an ongoing dialogue would buy time for Iran and tend to sustain ambiguity about their intentions regarding nuclear weapons.

IAEA Director General IAEA chief Yukio Amano has wisely stated that the burden of proof is on Iran. This is correct, but you can be sure some will try to pin it on IAEA…like Russia or China. Not that I am sympathetic to Iran, but it is worth noting that even if Iran is innocent, it may be tough for them to prove it…As my Iraqi counterparts told me in the 1990s and even after the fall of Saddam, they were tasked with proving a negative regarding WMD….they had an impossible task in a way…especially since no one was inclined to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt. Saddam himself was puzzled on this…but that is another matter.

Ultimately the question regarding Iran is one of their intentions. Israel (which has experience in developing clandestine nuclear capability) seems convinced Iran has already made a decision to acquire a weapon and ballistic missile delivery. The US, as expressed by Leon Panetta (on 60 minutes 29 January 2012) has a different take, i.e. that they have not taken steps to weaponize yet, but such steps (whatever they are) would constitute a redline. The US has said an Iran nuclear weapon was “unacceptable.” There is no dispute that as time goes on and the “civilian” Iran nuclear efforts proceed, the breakout time between the moment Iran does something which unambiguously demonstrates their intent to produce a nuclear weapon, and the moment it has the weapon, is getting shorter…probably now on the order of months rather than years. They have ballistic missiles. They are now enriching to 20% highly enriched uranium. They can go to 90%…they have the knowledge and infrastructure. They probably have a workable weapons design. (Recall Iran was a good customer of Pakistan weapons designer A.Q Khan.) And they have an incentive. From Tehran’s perspective, nuclear weapons would seem pretty useful. When did we get rid of Saddam? After he got rid of WMD. When did we get rid of Qadaffi? After he got rid of WMD. Pakistan and India skipped into the nuclear club and what price did they pay? North Korea, is a case that I doubt Tehran draws too much from, but they do share technology.

So looking at the clock, it certainly seems that 2012 will be a decision year for Iran and the international community. Israel, if it concludes it must stop (or delay substantially) the Iran program has relatively limited military capacity to do this and as time goes on, the target gets harder. Politically (and probably militarily), Israel would need some support from the US…getting strong US support is more likely before the November elections than after. An upcoming visit to Washington (March 5, 2012) by Prime Minister Netanyahu will give them a reading on this point. A key question for Israel will be whether the US will commit to military action if the sanctions do not force Iran to quit their enrichment program (which is what Israel requires as unmistakable evidence that Iran has stopped). The US has had strong anti-nuclear weapons policies before that it has allowed to lapse…e.g. Pakistan and North Korea. This will be noted by both Israel and Iran. Indeed, serious debate in Washington over the potential cost of acting militarily against the Iran program vice relying on deterrence to contain a nuclear Tehran is on-going.

One other major difference between the Iraq case and Iran….Saddam was far more impervious to effects of sanctions than Iran….Saddam was relatively immune to the pain of the people….Tehran is much less a cult of personality and is relatively more vulnerable to the population (which is switched on in ways Iraq was not–Iraqis had no internet or cell phones…was not). Sanctions will be far more potent in Iran…now whether they generate support for the leadership or cause them to bend to international will is another judgment….and there are arguments on both sides. It is worth considering that Tehran may think that they have leverage over the Obama administration via the increased price of gas–which could be an election issue.

Its possible that the consequences of a military strike may not be that large (though the uncertainty and risk is certainly high). Israel hit the Iraqi program in 1981 and Syrian reactor in 2007. Not much happened. If they hit Iran, what would Iran do? The day after, the sympathy of the world towards Tehran would probably be higher. The UN would likely consider lifting or relaxing sanctions. The domestic support for the regime might be bolstered. Would Tehran jeopardize this by lashing out in various ways? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe they would try to close the straits of Hormuz and that would force the US Navy to act. Maybe Hezbollah would rain rockets down on Israel. But would that really be in Iran’s interest? I suspect that Russia and China would strongly advise a measured response. Presumably Tehran would want to export oil and resume a revenue flow. That would be inhibited by a military response

These questions will be gamed out in Tel Aviv, Washington, Tehran, and other capitals during the months ahead and there will be a decision…even if it is to do nothing.

It would be nice if it were true that nuclear weapons did not matter. Some offer that nuclear weapons are only useful in the abstract, that it is their potential that matters because if you used them, it would be suicide. Therefore, if we just said we don’t care, or that we can simply deter another nuclear weapon state, it’s manageable. Unfortunately, it is very uncertain whether this logic applies in Tehran. That would be a very risky bet. Many things can go wrong. Even in the US-Soviet balance, there were moments (besides the Cuban Missile Crisis), when we came inadvertently close to disaster.

In the meantime the IAEA will remain in the crucible and many actors will seek to shift some burden of judgment upon them…I wish them luck in what will be a very difficult time ahead.

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