How a Computer Virus Bought Time for Engagement With Iran

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Tuesday January 18, 2011.

Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay - William Broad, John Markoff and David Sanger in The New York Times [link]

• The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.
• Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.
• “To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”
• In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years. Mrs. Clinton cited American-led sanctions, which have hurt Iran’s ability to buy components and do business around the world.
• The biggest single factor in putting time on the nuclear clock appears to be Stuxnet, the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever deployed.
• Many mysteries remain, chief among them, exactly who constructed a computer worm that appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence.

International Envoys Tour Key Iranian Nuclear Site - Ali Akbar Dareini in The Washington Times [link]

• Several international envoys — but crucially none from the world powers — got a look inside an Iranian nuclear site Saturday as part of a tour the Islamic Republic hopes will build support before a new round of talks on its disputed atomic activities.
• Iran is trying to sell the tour as a gesture of transparency ahead of the Jan. 20-22 talks in Istanbul, Turkey. In a blow to the effort, however, major powers Russia, China and the European Union refused the Iranian invitation. The EU said it should be up to inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency to verify whether Iran's program is entirely peaceful.
• Iran's offer pointedly did not include the United States, one of its biggest critics internationally, nor three other Western nations that have been critical of the Iranian program — Britain, France and Germany — and many saw the tour as an attempt to divide the nations conducting the nuclear talks.
• Ambassadors to the U.N. atomic energy agency from Egypt, Cuba, Syria, Algeria, Venezuela, Oman and the Arab League arrived in Tehran early Saturday and visited the unfinished heavy water reactor near Arak in central Iran, state TV reported.

Cold War Issues Still Part of U.S.-Russia Discussions - Walter Pincus in The Washington Post [link]

• At his annual news conference last week reviewing world affairs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed that his country's creation of a common missile shield with Europe was key to improving relations with the West. "I am convinced that creating a common missile shield is the real and more important test for the sincerity of statements that security is indivisible," he said.
• Behind this new talk of cooperation, the Russians have planted the threat of withdrawal if they are not treated as equal partners. Medvedev told the NATO-Russia Council: "Either we are fully involved, share information, are responsible for solving certain problems, or we do not participate at all."
• Lavrov suggested that talks on tactical nuclear weapons wouldn't happen quickly. "Before talking about any further steps in the sphere of nuclear disarmament," he cautioned, "it's necessary to fulfill the New START agreement."
• Gottemoeller agreed that tactical weapons as the next phase of nuclear arms control is going to be complicated "because we will be grappling with these smaller objects that are more difficult to address in terms of monitoring and verification [of their] elimination."
• Gottemoeller summed up: "It's little noticed, but, in fact, our relationship with Russia has undergone some great strengthening in the last couple of years."

Sanctions Hurt Iran, But Compromise Unlikely: Report - Jon Hemming for Reuters [link]

• President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's management of Iran's economy has been a "disaster" and sanctions are making matters worse, a report said on Monday, but Tehran is still unlikely to compromise on its nuclear program.
• Iran is due to hold a second round of talks with six major powers over its disputed nuclear activities in Istanbul on January 21-22 following U.N., U.S., and EU sanctions imposed last year that target oil and gas sectors vital to the Iranian economy.
• But Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the most powerful figure in Iran, are unlikely to be swayed, wrote Jonathan Paris in a report for the Legatum Institute, a London-based think-tank backed by the Legatum investment group.
• If Iran can survive the current wave of sanctions, imposed after eight years of wrangling over Tehran's nuclear ambitions, Iranian leaders may calculate the international community will not be able to maintain enough unity to keep up the measures.
• Resentment is growing inside Iran, the report said, against lack of investment in jobs at home by a government which nevertheless spends large sums to help Hezbollah in Lebanon, upgrade North Korean missiles and even develop a space program.
• But the opposition Green Movement that mobilized the large protests in 2009 is now fractured and split between those who want reform and those who want regime change, Paris wrote.

Why Defense Cuts Can Help America - Michael O’Hanlon in USA Today [link]

• As deficit reduction returns to the forefront of the American political agenda, the question of whether the Pentagon should contribute proportionately to any major budget-reduction exercise has rattled the cages of official Washington.
• The case for selective defense reductions is in fact strong — but not, as many defense critics argue, due to Pentagon waste or imperial overreach. Cutting defense will in fact add modest risk to our short-term security. But to shore up the economic foundations of our long-term security, such cuts deserve serious consideration for the simple reason that the alternatives are worse.
• Hawks, however, are already digging in. Several conservative scholars and some Republican members of Congress have responded to the recent deficit commissions by arguing that defense is among the federal government's prime constitutional responsibilities, and that any cuts to the military leaving us less secure would be false economies.
• No responsible person is suggesting that current overseas operations should be prematurely terminated, or the military budget raided, or the armed forces asked to provide the lion's share of deficit reduction. But 10% real cutbacks — roughly the military's proportionate share of any serious deficit reduction effort — should be within the realm of serious consideration.
• These cuts could be made, for example, by reducing our standing Army and Marine Corps back to 1990s levels once the Afghanistan operation begins to wind down, and by curbing weapons acquisition programs in areas such as fighter aircraft modernization, in which multiple programs overlap.
• To dismiss careful defense budget cutbacks categorically is false hawkishness, for it fails to address the economic challenge posed to the long-term foundations of U.S. national power.

Iran and the 112th Congress - Reid Pauly for The Prague Project [link]

• As this new year begins and the 112th Congress convenes with a new mandate, it may be helpful to look back at the record of the 111th Congress to get a sense of existing sentiments regarding U.S. foreign policy.
• At this point, most experts see military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran as more dangerous than beneficial. Yet the new leadership in the House of Representatives may bring with it a different outlook on how to deal with would-be nuclear proliferators.
• In October 2009, Rep. Trent Franks (AZ-2) introduced a bill (H.R. 3832) that would have acknowledged Iran’s record of misconduct relating to terrorism funding and human rights violations and directed the Secretary of Defense to develop military plans for striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Rep. Pete Sessions (TX-32) similarly advocated force by proposing legislation (H.R. 557) with 96 cosponsors that condemned Iran and recognized the right of Israel to defend itself against the imminent Iranian threat. While of course it is true that Israel has a right to defend itself and that it is a strong ally of the United States, advocating military force against Iran at this point is damaging for the region as a whole.
• Rep. Louie Gohmert (TX-1) took the most aggressive stance last year, when he introduced a resolution (H.RES. 1553) that provided implicit American support for Israeli military strikes on Iran and received 46 cosponsors. Such declarations, if made official by Congress, could hamper the administration’s ability to calm regional tensions and handle the issue diplomatically.
• Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-18), now the influential chair or the Foreign Affairs Committee, is noticeably absent from these lists of cosponsors, but her rhetoric during the 111th Congress was troubling. In a November 2009 op-ed for The Hill, Ros-Lehtinen complained about American appeasement of Iran, writing: “Chamberlain’s plea to talk over problems with Hitler in order to satisfy his ‘reasonable’ demands brought not peace but catastrophe. We must put away the begging bowl and pick up the stick.” Wow.
• While it is clear that Iranian nuclear progress has slowed, a healthy debate still reigns over what is causing the delay. The crucial goal during the course of the 112th Congress, therefore, is to avoid succumbing to the pressure of more hawkish representatives and continuing to marginalize calls for military actions that risk broader regional war. Of course the military option is always on the table, but for now the United States needs to pursue a dual-strategy of sanctions and engagement, without being undercut by a loud caucus of hawks in Congress.