Iran nuclear response leak reveals demands

The Guardian reported The US would have to lift decades-old sanctions against Iran and probably give assurances that it has no policy of regime change towards the Islamic republic to settle Iran's nuclear dispute with the west, according to leaks of the Iranian response.

And what would happen if we were foolish enough to do that? Listen to even more demands.

Iran is demanding firmer guarantees on trade and nuclear supplies, a tighter timetable for implementing agreements and clearer security pledges from the west before it decides whether to freeze its uranium enrichment programme and explore an offer of a new relationship.

Stop first. Then we will talk.

Details of its response delivered this week to diplomats, disclosed yesterday by two well-connected Iranian political scientists, claimed moderates in Tehran had won an important power struggle and were offering a negotiated settlement of the nuclear row.

Let those "moderates" show us that the nutcase president that wants to destroy Israel is no longer in power. Bring me the head of Ahmadinejad on a silver platter.

If the US spurns the Iranian olive branch and forces through sanctions from the UN security council, "the stage will be set for a full-scale international crisis", the response's authors stated.

They don't sound that moderate to me.

Under the terms of a UN resolution the Iranians have until Thursday to freeze all uranium enrichment activities or face the prospect of sanctions. The same day the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei, is to tell the security council that Iran has not suspended uranium enrichment. He is also likely to report additional frustrations in the agency's effort to penetrate the details of Iran's nuclear programmes.

CQ blogged For those who have studied the coordinated diplomacy of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the late 1930s, this sounds depressingly familiar. Some people compared UNSCR 1701 to Munich, but this is much closer to that infamous Western collapse. In 1938, Britain and France rushed to dismember Czechoslovakia -- a democracy with highly defendable borders -- in order to assist the "moderate" Mussolini in appeasing the radical Hitler and keep him from waging war. Italy got what it wanted by appearing to be a rational actor, while Hitler got the Sudetenland and the most formidable natural defensive barrier in central Europe.

This sounds almost exactly the same, even playing on the West's analysis of Iran as two separate entities. The mullahs and the hard-line Islamists comprise one portion of the Iranian ruling class, while men like Mohammed Khatami supposedly offer a more reasonable partner for negotiations. It's hogwash. The ruling class in Teheran all share the same goals: an Islamist Caliphate in Southwest Asia with its seat in Teheran. Some of them just happen to have a better sense of Western public relations than Ali Khameini and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but that does not make them more rational or less supportive of Islamist triumphalism.

The Iranian leak is part of a calculated strategy to force the UN Security Council into retreat on its demands and into negotiations on Iranian terms. They use media outlets like The Guardian to "warn" of betraying these supposed moderates by not surrendering to their oh-so-reasonable demands. Hitler made this an art form, and Ahmadinejad has learned well from his example.

Allah Pundit blogged A pair of Iranian political scientists apparently leaked details of the regime’s counterproposal on the nuclear program today. I remember when Condi Rice first announced that we were going to negotiate with them, but only on the limited issue of nukes; there would be no “grand bargain.” Well, according to the good professors, what Iran wants is … a grand bargain. And even so, only as a precondition for talks. European diplomats think it’s yet another stalling tactic; Merkel has already responded. Goldstein cites an Iranian report via MEMRI that Ahmadinejad will be announcing Iran’s “nuclear birth” within the next few days, which could be the “surprise” they were promising yesterday.

A former Israeli NSA says that if Ahmadinejad succeeds Khamenei as Supreme Leader, he’ll go Greg Stillson on Israel. Hard to believe the mullahs would elect a non-cleric to the top spot, particularly one whose unpopular at home and liable to threaten their own position of power by initiating a nuclear exchange. But then, I was never NSA of Israel.