Pakistan's PM Shaukat Aziz and IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei say a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear sites would be "catastrophic" for the region and the world. Engagement, dialogue, and negotiation are the only solution. Besides, the recent round of sabre rattling and escalating rhetoric being traded between Washington and Tehran is premature, their thinking goes. After all, Iran is four to six years away from having a nuclear bomb. There's plenty of time to solve the impasse through diplomacy.
Or is there?
It all depends on how fast Iran's multi-centrifuge cascading is advancing.
There was a report last week that Tehran's uranium enrichment suffered a serious setback when dozens of centrifuges exploded. That now appears to be incorrect.
Now comes this.
Gary Sick, the principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and currently Senior Research Scholar and adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University makes a disturbing claim about Iran's uranium enrichment in a Council on Foreign Relations interview. However, because he's a foreign policy realist (like Aziz and ElBaradei) he thinks it's a good thing, a "very small achievement" that would open the door to US-Iranian talks.
GS: I do believe, for instance, that Iran in the next five or six weeks is probably going to celebrate the completion of a series of linked cascades of centrifuges as part of their uranium enrichment program. This is a very small achievement actually, but they will make a big thing of it and have a national celebration that they have become, in effect, a nuclear power.
At that point, I do believe that the Europeans, in particular, have an opening that if they wanted to say, "Okay, let's go back now to the bargaining table. You've proved your point. Now let's stop and talk about this," Iran would probably be in a situation where it could possibly make concessions. I hope that opportunity isn’t lost, because I do believe that if a reasonable offer is put on the table and raised with Iran under those circumstances, there’s a very real chance that the political elite in Iran will in fact use that as a rallying point and try to outflank Mr. Ahmadinejad.
CFR: You think there’s a possibility at that point that Iran might agree to a temporary suspension of its enrichment?
GS: I think that is a very real possibility. And I’ve been hearing this from some Iranians who are quite well-plugged-in to their nation’s policies.
CFR: That would open the door to U.S.-Iranian talks.
GS: That’s right. And I think that after the celebration is going to be the moment when that idea can be tested. And my guess is that Iran will actually be willing to consider a suspension of testing at that point.
Linked cascades may be a small step in a uranium enrichment programme but it is not unimportant.
On the other hand, it would throw off some of the more conservative timelines U.S. officials have given to Iran's nuclear program. Even if Iran halts its uranium-enrichment process, CFR Senior Fellow Charles D. Ferguson says the three thousand P1 centrifuges would be "a starter kit to get enough nuclear material to make a bomb within a year."
If you think Turki al-Faisal, Riyadh's envoy to Washington, was reading from the same talking points as Aziz and ElBaradei when he recently said a strike on Iran would be "catastrophic," you would be wrong. Unlike the Pakistani PM, the IAEA chief and the adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University, the Saudis and the five other Gulf Arab states that constitute the Gulf Cooperation Council will not tolerate a nuclear Iran.
"Teheran has to finally realize that if push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a U.S. military strike, then the Arab Gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the U.S."
Update: It's a surprise no more. AP reports that ElBaradei has been informed by Tehran that the mullah regime will "start installing thousands of centrifuges in an underground facility next month."
On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Mohamed ElBaradei said: "I understand that they are going to announce that they are going to build up their 3,000 centrifuge facility ... sometime next month."
He did not elaborate. But U.N. officials, who demanded anonymity because the information was confidential, emphasized that Iran had not officially said it would embark on the assembly of what will initially be 3,000 centrifuges at Natanz. But they said senior officials have informally told the International Atomic Energy Agency the work would begin next month.
Iran ultimately plans to expand its enrichment program to 54,000 centrifuges, which spin uranium gas into enriched material to produce nuclear fuel. That would give it the capacity to produce dozens of nuclear warheads a year, if it chose to develop weapons.
So, if we take Tehran at its word, it looks like the regime will not announce the completion of centrifuge installation in March but, instead, will begin installation in February. How long will it take before the centrifuges are linked? No idea. I'll hand it off to the experts at this point. It doesn't take an expert, however, to understand that the White House is responding aggressively to the latest development in Natanz.
Update: Former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright says two years.
