Russia To Host Talks On Iran

[Brian Baldwin]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlates...755709,00.html

Russia to Host New Round of Iran Talks


Friday April 14, 2006 4:16 PM

AP Photo XHS104
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
Associated Press Writer
MOSCOW (AP) - Efforts to defuse the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions continued Friday as Russia said it would host fresh international talks and a top Chinese diplomat headed to Tehran.
China urged other governments to remain calm during the standoff over Iran's progress toward what it says will be peaceful energy generation and other countries suspect is a covert weapons program.
``We hope all parties will adopt a cool-headed approach,'' Vice Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said at a news conference Friday. ``Dialogue is better than confrontation. We should work together toward this end.''
Assistant Chinese Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai was scheduled to arrive in Iran on Friday. He then is slated to head to Russia, which will host another round of talks next week with Beijing, the United States and the European Union.
The talks will be held in Moscow on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Krivtsov said Friday.
Russia and China, which have strong economic ties with Iran, have opposed the U.S. push for international sanctions against Iran.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Tehran on Thursday and pushed Iranian officials to suspend uranium enrichment, which can be used to produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or material for a bomb, until questions about the nuclear program have been resolved. But Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will not retreat ``one iota'' on its uranium enrichment.
Iran insists on its right to enrich uranium as part of a civilian power generation program, but the United States and others accuse Tehran of covertly pursuing a nuclear weapons bid and demand a halt to all enrichment activities.
Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko said that ``there is still a chance for a diplomatic settlement of the Iranian nuclear program.''
``Iran has the right to peaceful development of atomic energy, but this right must be combined with guarantees of the fulfillment of nuclear nonproliferation demands,'' Kiriyenko said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency.
Kiriyenko said that a Russian proposal to host the Iranian uranium enrichment program remains on the table.
He said that Iran's capacity to enrich uranium is still on an experimental scale and is far from what is needed to build nuclear weapons.
The Russian proposal seeks to reassure Western countries by guaranteeing that Iranian uranium would not be diverted to a weapons program.
In a speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry's Diplomatic Academy Friday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mohammadi reiterated his government's position that Iran is not seeking atomic weapons.
``Nuclear weapons are ineffective, and Iran is not going to make them and does not even set this goal,'' Mohammadi said, according to ITAR-Tass. Mohammadi also said that Tehran wants to strike an oil and gas alliance with Russia and is pondering pipelines to deliver natural gas to China and India via Pakistan, ITAR-Tass said.

[Sean Osborne]

This title just struck my funny bone. "Russia To Host Talks On Iran"

Akin to Dillenger, Capone or the Soprano's hosting talks about organized crime.

[Brian Baldwin]

Exactly. I wonder if Russia can stir them up enough to actually attack Israel?

[Sean Osborne]

Exactly. I wonder if Russia can stir them up enough to actually attack Israel?

Well... If Ezekiel 38-39 is correct, and I believe it is, the answer is yes, but with a twist.

Russia is the one who goes to war against Israel with "hooks in its jaws" alongside her Iranian and Arab allies. Not exactly the image of an instigating war partner is it?

There is the very high probability that within the next few days Iran will fully accept and adopt all aspects of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and will announce yet another unilateral suspension of the current enrichment processes.

This a brilliant chess move and one entirely expected by some observers.

The President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, announced to the world last week that Iran has successfully enriched its own uranium. CHECK MATE. The cat is out of the bag and the genie is out of the bottle in Iran. Iran has the technological capability to indigenously produce nuclear weapons. Again, in case you missed it the first time, CHECK MATE.

Allow me to explain.


During the course of the diplomacy game which has been afoot for the past couple of years in the wrangling over Iranian nuclear activities and ultimate ambitions, the result of such an announcement by Ahmadi-Nejad does three things:

1. It places the burden on the United States to promptly back down from “rumors of war” threats. The public perception created by mass-media reporting is that Iran bought the technological know-how for nuclear capability and the means of delivery; with this announcement Iran is at the minimum a regional nuclear power. So are Pakistan, India and Israel. This is the new, existing paradigm of the Middle East. In the court of world opinion any US attack on these working Iranian facilities will be seen by the world as blatant aggression, one nuclear-armed state attempting to reverse the de-facto status of another nuclear-armed state. The US will continue to contingency plan like crazy. However, ultimately the U.S. will do nothing but accept this new reality. Furthermore, the U.S. will not risk any further drama to the prices consumers are paying for petroleum products. Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad are counting on it.

2. The UN will back-off voting for sanctions. What else would you expect from such a feckless group? Maybe there’s an Iranian Oil-for-Food and Nuclear Kick-back somewhere in their future?

3. The EU-3 (UK, France and Germany) will also be forced to accept Iranian nuclear club membership as fait accompli. They’ll go as the US goes. Large Islamic populations in their homelands (Eurabia) pretty much clinched the fact that they’d do nothing concrete regarding Iranian nuclear ambition. They understood going in that their capital cities would be at risk from Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles before the US would. The European’s got what they bargained for.


From my perspective, the big winners here are obviously the Iranian’s. They have their nuclear capability intact, and the technology to deliver warheads to boot. If Armageddon occurs as they envision it – it will occur on their terms, which was what they wanted to begin with. The other winners are the Russian's, who have their Iranian nuclear client and rich military contracts to boot. Iran will purchase more and more sophisticated Russian weaponry with the billions in cash they receive from the other winners in this whole affair - the Red Chinese. The Chicom’s have their primary oil source and technology trading partner intact and a little more powerful than before. Not a bad outcome from a standard chess gambit they all played to the hilt.

So, what’s next? What comes from the success of this blatant military-technological expansion in Iran? Look west towards the frontiers of Lebanon, Syria and Israel. That’s where the board pieces will now commence the next round of the game.