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In his memoir, Bush laments: "I don't know why the NIE was written the way it was. " Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact -- and not a good one."
Spelling out how the Estimate had tied his hands "on the military side," Bush included this (apparently unedited) kicker: "But after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?"
It seems worth repeating that the key judgments of the 2007 NIE have been reaffirmed every year since. As for the supposedly urgent need to impose sanctions to prevent Iran from doing what we are fairly certain it is not doing -- well, perhaps we could take some lessons from the White Queen, who bragged that in her youth she could believe "six impossible things before breakfast" and counseled Alice to practice the same skill.
Sanctions, Anyway, to the Rescue
Despite the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community, the United States and other countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions ostensibly to censure Iran for "illicit" nuclear activities while demanding the Iran prove the negative in addressing allegations, including "intelligence" provided via Israel and its surrogates, that prompt international community concerns about Iran's nuclear program.
And there's the rub. Most informed observers share historian/journalist Gareth Porter's conclusion that the main sticking point at this week's negotiations in Lausanne is the issue of how and when sanctions on Iran will be lifted. And, specifically, whether they will be lifted as soon as Iran has taken "irreversible" actions to implement core parts of the agreement.
In Lausanne, the six-nation group (permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) reportedly want the legal system behind the sanctions left in place, even after the sanctions have been suspended, until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officially concludes that Iran's nuclear activities are exclusively peaceful -- a process that could take many years.
Iran's experience with an IAEA highly influenced by the U.S. and Israel has been, well, not the best -- particularly since December 2009 under the tenure of Director-General Yukiya Amano, a Japanese diplomat whom State Department cables reveal to be in Washington's pocket.
Classified cables released by Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning and WikiLeaks show that Amano credited his success in becoming director-general largely to U.S. government support -- and promptly stuck his hand out for U.S. money.
Further, Amano left little doubt that he would side with the United States in the confrontation with Iran and that he would even meet secretly with Israeli officials regarding their purported evidence on Iran's hypothetical nuclear weapons program, while staying mum about Israel's actual nuclear weapons arsenal.
According to U.S. embassy cables from Vienna, Austria, the site of IAEA's headquarters, American diplomats in 2009 were cheering the prospect that Amano would advance U.S. interests in ways that outgoing IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei never did.
In a July 9, 2009, cable, American charge Geoffrey Pyatt -- yes, the same diplomat who helped Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland choose "Yats" (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) to be the post-coup prime minister of Ukraine -- said Amano was thankful for U.S. support for his election," noting that "U.S. intervention with Argentina was particularly decisive."
A grateful Amano told Pyatt that as IAEA director-general, he would take a different "approach on Iran from that of ElBaradei" and that he "saw his primary role as implementing" U.S.-driven sanctions and demands against Iran.
Pyatt also reported that Amano had consulted with Israeli Ambassador Israel Michaeli "immediately after his appointment" and that Michaeli "was fully confident of the priority Amano accords verification issues." Pyatt added that Amano privately agreed to "consultations" with the head of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission.
In other words, Amano has shown himself eager to bend in directions favored by the United States and Israel, especially regarding Iran's nuclear program. His behavior contrasts with that of the more independent-minded ElBaradei, who resisted some of Bush's key claims about Iraq's supposed nuclear weapons program, and even openly denounced forged documents about "yellowcake uranium" as "not authentic." [For more on Amano, see Consortiumnews.com's "America's Debt to Bradley Manning."]
It is a given that Iran misses ElBaradei; and it is equally clear that it knows precisely what to expect from Amano. If you were representing Iran at the negotiating table, would you want the IAEA to be the final word on whether or not the entire legal system authorizing sanctions should be left in place?
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