The Criminal U.S.-Saudi Air War on Yemen: This is What Perpetual War Looks Like

If there was anything close to accountability or reciprocity in international relations one would think that there would be sanctions leveled against Saudi Arabia and all (principally the United States) nations that are participating in the Saudi war on Yemen. Yesterday Kareem Fahim reported ("Hospital Aided by Doctors Without Borders Is Bombed in Yemen") that another hospital has been destroyed.

CAIRO — A hospital in northern Yemen supported by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders was struck by ordnance early Sunday, killing at least four people and causing several buildings to collapse, the organization said in a statement. 

It was the third time in three months that a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Yemen had been damaged or destroyed. At least 10 people were wounded in the latest attack, including three staff members. 

The medical charity said it could not confirm which party in Yemen’s civil war had fired what it called a “projectile,” but said that “planes were seen flying over the facility at the time.”

A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia controls the skies over Yemen, and has carried out thousands of bombing runs in the country since entering the war last March. At least one other projectile fell near the hospital, Doctors Without Borders said.

The hospital, called Shiara, is in the northern Saada Province, in the Razeh District, near the border with Saudi Arabia. Fierce fighting along the frontier between Saudi troops and Yemen’s Houthi rebels has devastated many border towns and displaced thousands of people, according to aid workers. Attacks on clinics and hospitals have left the province with only one major medical facility, forcing people to travel hours to receive even basic treatment.

In October, coalition warplanes destroyed a Doctors Without Borders clinic in Haydan District, near Razeh. Then, in early December, the coalition bombed one of the group’s mobile clinics in southern Taiz Province. The Shiara hospital was bombed previously, in September, before Doctors Without Borders became involved with it, the group said.

“All warring parties, including the Saudi-led coalition, are regularly informed of the GPS coordinates of the medical facilities where M.S.F. works,” said Raquel Ayora, the director of operations for Doctors Without Borders, in the statement referring to the group by its French abbreviation.

“We are in constant dialogue with them to ensure that they understand the severity of the humanitarian consequences of the conflict and the need to respect the provision of medical services,” she said. “There is no way that anyone with the capacity to carry out an airstrike or launch a rocket would not have known that the Shiara Hospital was a functioning health facility providing critical services and supported by M.S.F.”

The Saudi-led coalition is fighting to restore the Yemeni president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was driven from power last year by the Houthi rebels, a group from northern Yemen. More than 2,800 civilians have been killed in the fighting so far, with the majority of people killed by coalition bombing, according to the United Nations.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is backed by the United States and Britain, came under renewed criticism last week for dropping cluster munitions on Sana, the Yemeni capital, killing at least one person.

U.S. officials have been keeping silent because they are providing targeting information to the Saudi air coalition; furthermore, the U.S. has shown a willingness of its own to a blow apart a Doctors Without Borders hospital and murder those seeking care, as it did in Kunduz in early October.

The most serious repercussions so far was the spat that broke out at the end of last week between UN officials and officials of the Saudi-puppet Yemeni-government-in-exile of Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The top UN human rights official in Yemen, George Abu al-Zulof, was expelled from the country for criticizing the Saudis for using cluster bombs. Then Zulof's expulsion was quickly rescinded. Someone in the State Department probably got on the phone to Riyadh and said that this was a public relations fight the despotic monarchy could not behead their way out of. Colum Lynch reported on Friday in "U.N. Chief to U.S.-Backed Saudi Air Coalition: You May Be Committing War Crimes in Yemen" that

Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary-general, warned Friday that a Saudi-led air coalition that is supported by the United States may have committed war crimes by using cluster munitions in heavily populated neighborhoods in Yemen.

The U.N. chief has “received troubling reports of the use of cluster munitions” in several Jan. 6 attacks in Sanaa, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters at the world body’s headquarters in New York. “The use of cluster munitions in populated areas may amount to a war crime due to their indiscriminate nature.” [Of course this is a war crime. The use of "may" by Ban Ki-moon grants the U.S.-Saudi coalition permission to continue committing these crimes. The analogy here is to the Israeli "mowing the grass" in Gaza.]

The warning came one day after the exiled Yemeni human rights minister announced plans to expel the U.N.’s top human rights official in the country, George Abu al-Zulof, on charges that the mission had shown bias toward Houthi rebel forces. The move to expel Zulof — who was already outside Yemen when the announcement was made — came just days after the U.N. issued a tough statement criticizing the coalition’s recent use of cluster bombs.

But Yemen’s U.N. ambassador, Khaled Alyemany, reversed the minister’s decision, assuring the U.N. chief in a letter Friday that “there is no such decision from the government” to declare Zulof persona non grata, Alyemeny told Foreign Policy Friday evening.

In his letter to Ban, Alyemany said his government had only expressed “dissatisfaction” with Zulof’s performance in a January 6 letter to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, and asked that he be replaced, according to a copy of the letter reviewed by FP. But Alyemany insisted that his government had never demanded that Zulof be declared persona non grata.

“Because of the fuss created around the matter and caused by media reports…claiming that the Yemeni government government ordered the expulsion…,” he wrote. “The Yemeni government has decided to give more time to review the relationship with” the high commissioner’s office.

On Friday, Zeid had protested the Yemeni governments call for the removal of its U.N.’s senior rights advocate as “unwarranted” and called on Yemen to reverse the decision.

***

The latest crisis has proved particularly awkward for Washington, which has provided intelligence, targeting information, and logistical support to the air coalition. Dujarric said he could not confirm whether the munitions were American-made. But he said, “As a matter of principle, those who sell arms also bear some responsibility in how they are used.” 

The United States supplied the Saudi military with cluster bombs between 1970 and 1995. 

Dujarric said the U.N. “will not stop reporting” on Yemen’s human rights situation. To drive home the point, he read a statement from Ban describing deepening concern about the plight of Yemeni civilians.

The secretary-general, Dujarric said, “is deeply concerned about the intensification of coalition airstrikes and ground fighting and shelling in Yemen, despite repeated calls for a renewed cessation of hostilities.”

He said Ban is particularly worried about intense airstrikes, including those that reportedly hit the capital’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a wedding hall, and a center for the blind among residential and civilian targets in Sanaa.

The Obama administration has encouraged its coalition partners “to avoid civilians’ casualties” and stressed the importance of “precise targeting,” a State Department official told FP.

In a Jan. 7 report, Human Rights Watch again accused Saudi Arabia of dropping cluster bombs on Sanaa, including photographs of the munitions’ remnants. The State Department official said Foggy Bottom is reviewing the findings — though previous reports detailing Riyadh’s use of cluster munitions have failed to change U.S. policy.

The U.S. official declined to directly comment when asked whether the United States is at all culpable for Saudi Arabia’s use of cluster munitions, given the American arms shipments and political support for the bombing campaign. However, the official said, Washington has “encouraged coalition forces to investigate all credible accounts of civilian casualties as a result of coalition strikes” — and to publicly release those findings.

Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies intervened in Yemen last March to restore power to the country’s deposed leader, President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was driven from power by Shiite Houthi separatists in January 2015 and placed under house arrest. On March 25, Hadi fled to Saudi Arabia, one day after asking Gulf countries and the Arab League for military intervention in Yemen. The next day, a coalition of Gulf states — led by Saudi Arabia and with help from the United States — opened an air war against the Houthis.

U.N. officials have described intense suffering by Yemeni civilians who have either been killed or injured during airstrikes. The coalition also imposed a naval blockade on ports in Aden and Hudaydah, cutting off vital imports of food, fuel, medicine, and other essential supplies into the country.

“Conditions of life have become untenable for the vast majority of people in Yemen,” Zeid told the Security Council last month, detailing the needs of an estimated 21 million people — 80% of the population — that rely on humanitarian assistance. About half of Yemenis suffer from malnutrition, Zeid said, adding: “The combined impact of violence and artificial impediments to the delivery of humanitarian assistance has proved disastrous.”

Clearly the Saudis are out of control and the Obama administration has proven unwilling to confront them and unable to rein them in. Rebecca Gordon at the end of November wrote a story, "Home, Sweet Kleptocracy: Kabul in America," that goes some distance in explaining why:

. . . [A]ccording to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International (TI), our country [the United States] comes in only 17th in the least-corrupt sweepstakes, trailing European and Scandinavian countries as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In fact, TI considers us on a par with Caribbean island nations like Barbados and the Bahamas. In the U.S., TI says, “from fraud and embezzlement charges to the failure to uphold ethical standards, there are multiple cases of corruption at the federal, state and local level.” 

And here’s a reasonable bet: it’s not going to get better any time soon and it could get a lot worse. When it comes to the growth of American corruption, one of TI’s key concerns is the how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the pay-to-play floodgates of the political system, allowing Super PACs to pour billions of private and corporate money into it, sometimes in complete secrecy. Citizens United undammed the wealth of the super-rich and their enablers, allowing big donors like casino capitalist -- a description that couldn’t be more literal -- Sheldon Adelson to use their millions to influence government policy.

Right now there is an unholy alliance between Zionist neocons and the Gulf sheikhs to destroy Iran. Between the two camps there is so much wealth and influence it is hard to imagine a scenario where war doesn't continue to spiral out of control. Certainly there are plenty of people in government who can see what is going on and know that it is wrong. The problem is that all the rules on "pay to play" have been rewritten. We are in an era of "no limits" to concentrated wealth.

With that in mind it is worth reading Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif's interpretation, "Saudi Arabia’s Reckless Extremism" of al-Saud's recent bellicosity:

Let us not forget that the perpetrators of many acts of terror, from the horrors of Sept. 11 to the shooting in San Bernardino and other episodes of extremist carnage in between, as well as nearly all members of extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Nusra Front, have been either Saudi nationals or brainwashed by petrodollar-financed demagogues who have promoted anti-Islamic messages of hatred and sectarianism for decades.

The Saudi strategy to derail the nuclear agreement and perpetuate — and even exacerbate — tension in the region has three components: pressuring the West; promoting regional instability through waging war in Yemen and sponsoring extremism; and directly provoking Iran. Riyadh’s military campaign in Yemen and its support for extremists are well known. Provocations against Iran have not grabbed international headlines, primarily thanks to our prudent restraint. 

The Iranian government at the highest level unequivocally condemned the assault against the Saudi embassy and consulate in Tehran on Jan. 2, and ensured the safety of Saudi diplomats. We took immediate measures to help restore order to the Saudi diplomatic compound and declared our determination to bring perpetrators to justice. We also took disciplinary action against those who failed to protect the embassy and have initiated an internal investigation to prevent any similar event.

By contrast, the Saudi government or its surrogates have over the past three years directly targeted Iranian diplomatic facilities in Yemen, Lebanon and Pakistan — killing Iranian diplomats and locals. There have been other provocations, too. Iranian pilgrims in Saudi Arabia have endured systematic harassment — in one case, Saudi airport officers molested two Iranian boys in Jeddah, fueling public outrage. Also, Saudi negligence was to blame for the stampede during the recent hajj, which left 464 Iranian pilgrims dead. Moreover, for days, Saudi authorities refused to respond to requests from grieving families and the Iranian government to access and repatriate the bodies.

This is not to mention the routine practice of hate speech not only against Iran but against all Shiite Muslims by Saudi Arabia’s government-appointed preachers. The outrageous beheading recently of Sheikh Nimr was immediately preceded by a sermon of hatred toward Shiites by a Grand Mosque preacher in Mecca, who last year said that “our disagreement with Shiites will not be removed, nor our suicide to fight them” as long as Shiites remained on the earth.

I think most Westerners, minus Zionists and those FOX viewers who cannot distinguish between a Sunni Salafist and a Hezbollah fighter, agree with Zarif. The problem is the U.S. government is controlled by concentrated wealth. So the 99% don't really have a say about the Saudis.

Conclusion? Whether a global war of Armageddon or several simultaneous but smaller theaters of conflict, there is nothing but war for as far as the eye can see.

U.S. Duplicity and World War in Syria

Duplicity and publicity are all the United States is capable of, so much so that one dismisses the top-of-the-fold story yesterday by Eric Schmitt and Michael Gordon ("U.S. Aims to Put More Pressure on ISIS in Syria"), two reporters who are usually tasked with the big propaganda roll-outs, as more of the same and awaits a quote from either Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov or some Iranian official to at least get a semblance of the truth.

Those quotes arrive today in "Russian Soldiers Join Syria Fight" by Andrew Kramer and Anne Barnard:

Russian officials say they are targeting the Islamic State, though their bombs have mainly hit territories held by other insurgents who oppose Mr. Assad, Russia’s ally. The strikes have hit the Army of Conquest, an Islamist faction that includes the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, as well as more-secular groups that often fight alongside it, including some that have received covert American aid. 

The Obama administration, by contrast, says its own airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria can succeed only with a political transition that ends with Mr. Assad’s removal. 

The administration’s position was ridiculed Monday by Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, who said the American airstrikes, which began more than a year ago, had done little militarily. In comments carried by Russia’s official Tass news agency, Mr. Lavrov said that even the Americans had acknowledged their faltering efforts to create a force of so-called moderate insurgents in Syria.

“Nobody knows about these people,” he said. “Nobody’s really heard about the moderate opposition.”

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif of Iran, Mr. Assad’s regional ally, was also dismissive of the American efforts in Syria, both to unseat Mr. Assad and to combat the Islamic State. Sounding emboldened by the Russian airstrikes, Mr. Zarif said at a talk in New York that there was a difference between Russia — which was invited by Mr. Assad to help — and the American-led coalition that has been bombing Syria. “Why are you there?” he said. “Who gave you the right to be there?”

The lies and the omissions of the official U.S. position are too layered and numerous to conveniently recite. But let's give it a shot. First, the big one that is being leaned on heavily by the press, which should and no doubt does know better, that Russian airstrikes are targeting the "moderate" Syrian opposition and driving otherwise secular fighters into the arms of the jihadists of Al Qaeda and ISIS. This is a lie, plain and simple, the main fabrication the U.S. relies on to justify its actions in Syria. The actuality is that the U.S. is working with the Salafis to destroy Syria and Iraq and pressure Iran, as the U.S. worked with the mujahideen to destroy Afghanistan.

The big omission in this context is the revolt of the Centcom analysts, a story which confirms the Russian and Iranian positions that the U.S. is engaged in a phony war against ISIS while the jihadists of the Army of Conquest (the Pepsi to Islamic State's Coke) roll along destroying the Syrian state.

Now with Turkey's keening over a Russian incursion into its air space, followed by a NATO reprimand, we're getting closer to World War III or World War IV, whichever one it is by now. According to Kramer and Bernard,

The potential combination of Russian ground forces and aerial attacks particularly threatens to undermine Turkey’s Syria policy, which aims for the establishment of a “safe zone” along the Turkish border where some Syrian refugees could return in the future. 

The Russian air incursion happened on Saturday, when Turkish fighter jets scrambled to intercept a warplane that trespassed into Turkish airspace. On Monday, NATO issued a warning to Russia, as the United States began urgent consultations with Turkey over what they called “next steps.” 

Russia’s actions were “an unacceptable violation” of Turkish airspace, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said after meeting with the Turkish foreign minister, Feridun Sinirlioglu. Mr. Stoltenberg added, “Russia’s actions are not contributing to the security and stability of the region.”

The United States is completely out of whack with the will of its people, passing trade deals, which are  overwhelming rejected by voters on both the left and the right, with the goal of a future conlict with China. It is a vision of the future which offers nothing but poverty and war. No wonder most works of popular fiction seem to be dystopian. This system of war and poverty calls for a rebellion. We need to be thinking about wise, efficient ways this rebellion can be brought about.

P5+1 Talks to Continue but Future Still Clouded by War

The charade has been played out. Though it was a foregone conclusion that the P5+1 talks on Iran's nuclear program would be extended again, the canard had to be maintained that negotiators were making a hard charge to finalize a comprehensive agreement by today's deadline. Now, thankfully, that is behind us.

Michael Gordon and David Sanger report this morning, "Negotiators Plan to Extend Talks on Iran’s Nuclear Program," that

Hours away from a Monday deadline for completing a new accord to curb Iran’s nuclear program, negotiators planned to extend negotiations and expected to reconvene next month, a Western diplomat said. 

A location for the December talks has yet to be chosen, but over the past month, Secretary of State John Kerry has met with his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, in Muscat, Oman, and in Vienna. 

American officials and their negotiating partners have yet to explain if any substantial progress was made in the latest round of talks here and what gaps remain. President Obama had said in a television interview on Sunday that there were still “significant” differences between the two sides. 

It was also unclear how long the talks would be prolonged, as negotiators try to resolve crucial issues, including how much nuclear fuel Iran could produce, how long the accord would last and how intrusive inspections would be. 

“Given progress made this weekend, talks headed to likely extension with experts and negotiating teams reconvening in December at a yet to be determined location,” said a Western diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions related to internal planning.

The reason why the P5+1 negotiations have to be maintained is the alternative is either more sanctions emanating from the U.S. Congress or an Israeli attack. As Sasan Fayamanesh noted in
"Is Israel Losing the Battle to Wage War on Iran? On the Long-Term Agreement Between Iran and the P5+1," which appeared on the Counterpunch online weekend edition, Israel has been trying mightily to derail the P5+1 process:

Failing to stop the JPA [last November's breakthrough Joint Plan of Action], Israel then tried to nullify it by passing a new and severe set of sanctions through the US Congress. The move was led by Kirk and Menendez, two senators who often appear on the list of the biggest recipients of campaign cash from pro-Israel public actions committees. The Kirk-Menendez bill, titled “Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act,” was introduced on December 19, 2013, with the sole purpose of ending the agreement between Iran and the P5+1. The bill gained momentum as various Israeli lobby groups, particularly AIPAC, exerted pressure in the Senate. On January 4, 2014, AIPAC had a summary of Kirk-Menendez bill on its website and was instructing its members to “act now.”

The number of senators signing the Kirk-Menendez bill rose from 33 in early January to 59 in mid-January, 2014. This was despite the fact that some officials in the Obama Administration, including Secretary Kerry, referred to the bill as an attempt to push the US into a war with Iran. This was also in spite of Obama’s threats to veto the bill. On January 28, 2014, in his State of the Union Address, Obama reiterated his stance on any congressional bill intended to impose a new set of sanctions on Iran and stated that “if this Congress sends me a new sanctions bill now that threatens to derail these talks, I will veto it. ”

Israel, its lobby groups and its conduits in Congress, nevertheless, pushed for passing the resolution. However, they could not muster the strength to get the two-thirds majority in the Senate to make the bill veto-proof. They threw in the towel and AIPAC declared on February 6, 2014: “We agree with the Chairman [Menendez] that stopping the Iranian nuclear program should rest on bipartisan support . . . and that there should not be a vote at this time on the measure.” As many observed, this was the biggest loss for Israel, its lobby groups and its conduits in the US Congress, since Ronald Reagan agreed, contrary to Israel’s demand, to sell AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia. Subsequent attempts to nullify the JPA also failed. This included an attempt by some Senators, a few days before March 2014 AIPAC policy conference, to include elements of “Nuclear Weapons Free Iran Act” in a veterans’ bill.

In the end, Israeli lobby groups had to settle for a few letters written by US law makers to President Obama, telling him what the final deal must look like. The AIPAC-approved letter in the House of Representative on March 3, 2014, was circulated by Eric Cantor and Steny Hoyer. The Senate letter was posted on AIPAC website, dated March 18, 2014, and, as many Israeli affiliated news sources joyously reported, the letter gained 82 signatures. Finally, 23 Senators also signed the Cantor-Hoyer letter, as Senator Carl Levin’s website posted it on March 22, 2014. If some of the harsh measures proposed in these letters were to be adopted by the Obama Administrations, no final deal could be reached with Iran.

The JPA was supposed to lead to a final settlement in six months, and, consequently, there were many rounds of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 before the deadline. The final and the most intense negotiations that took place behind closed doors in July 2014 lasted for more than two weeks. However, in the end there were “significant gaps on some core issues,” as a statement by EU Representative Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif read on July 19, 2014. It was therefore decided to close the so-called gaps by November 24, 2014.

We are now approaching the 2nd deadline for reaching a long-term agreement between Iran and the P5+1. It is unclear whether the gaps can be bridged. It is also unclear how much of these gaps are due to the relentless Israeli pressure that is still being exerted even on the Obama Administration and its team of negotiators. We know that these negotiators, as they have readily admitted, consult Israel before and after every meeting with Iran. Indeed, even after the latest round of meetings between Iran and the US in Muscat, Oman, Kerry called Netanyahu to “update” him on the negotiations. Yet, we also know that Israel does not have the clout that it once had in the White House. The most influential Israeli lobbyists have left the Obama Administration and their policy of tough diplomacy is in tatters. Israel has also been unable to stop the short-term P5+1 agreement with Iran, it has failed to nullify the agreement after it passed, and it has not even been able to garner the two-thirds majority in the Senate to make veto-proof a Congressional bill designed to start a war with Iran. In other words, in the past two years Israel has been losing the battle to engage the US in another military adventure in the Middle East. But has Israel lost the war to wage war on Iran? The newly configured US Senate is already seeking a vote on another Israeli sponsored war bill called “Iran Nuclear Negotiations Act of 2014.”

As long as negotiations are underway Obama can easily veto any war bill coming out of the Republican-controlled Congress and expect that the veto will not be overridden. A veto becomes more difficult to maintain if the P5+1 process breaks down.

There is something unsavory about Kerry racing to the airport in Geneva to personally fellate the Saudi foreign minister. Gordon and Sanger reported yesterday, "Iran Nuclear Negotiators, Facing Key Differences, Weigh Extending Deadline" that

Mr. Kerry also rode to the airport here Sunday to talk with Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister. While Saudi Arabia is not involved in the talks, it has long been worried that an agreement might allow Iran to keep more of its nuclear infrastructure than Saudi Arabia is comfortable with. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, also flew here to join the talks.

The reality is that U.S. foreign policy is dominated by the Saudis and Israelis. This isn't to say that they get every single thing they want; rather, they wield enormous influence and, because of their pull with a pay-to-play Congress, can effectively block any administration initiative.

This is prominently displayed with regards to Syria. Obama cannot cut a deal with Assad to roll up the jihadis because Israel and the Gulf monarchies won't allow it.

So what you get is a dissociative identity disorder where the United States is at war with itself. One part of USG is at war with another. The covert campaign run by the CIA to oust Assad metastasizes into region-wide war that requires a Department of Defense intervention.

It is the Al Qaeda formula that goes back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The U.S. and Israel support Al Qaeda in southern Syria, while the U.S. battles its epigones elsewhere. It is a formula for perpetual war.

As Obama green-lights a combat mission for U.S. forces in Afghanistan through the end of next year, reneging on his pledge to end fighting there by December, it should be apparent to even the laziest of observers that the U.S. is first and foremost a warfare state.

How to sell this to the voting public?

I don't think it can. That's why you will see continuing efforts to disenfranchise the poor while exacerbating the impact of dark money.

Eventually there is going to be some sort of reaction, whether in the form of a popular democratic uprising or a Thai military-type coup.

****

I'm out of town for the rest of the week; back Friday.

Iran Nuclear Talks: The Real Goal is to Keep Talking

A safe bet is that some sort of partial agreement or outline of principles is going to emerge from Geneva before the Monday deadline for the P5+1 talks with Iran on its nuclear program. 

A working framework will allow talks to continue. I believe this the raison d'etre of the P5+1 process. It is not to arrive at a final agreement because once that happens the U.S. Congress, serving at the behest of neocons and the state of Israel, will plunge in its tusked snout and tear apart any accord; and the same can be said for Iran. As Thomas Erdbrink notes  in "A Nuclear Deal Is Likely to Hit Hurdles in Iran":

In Iran, the final decision on a nuclear deal lies with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader. And if history is an accurate guide, the real debate over an accord, should one be reached, will not begin to unfold until after it is announced. When that debate gets underway, the voices of the hard-liners — the clerics, Revolutionary Guards commanders, conservative lawmakers and others who are by and large closest to the supreme leader — will be raised against any compromise on Iran’s right to enrich uranium.

There is no terra firma here. That becomes clear after reading Michael Gordon's excellent recapitulation, "U.S. Lays Out Limits It Seeks in Iran Nuclear Talks," of the salient details of the ongoing negotiations in Geneva. What one comes away with is a strong sense that the deal being hammered out is an elaborate ruse, a classic Hitchcockian MacGuffin, whose purpose is to keep the narrative moving and nations bargaining.

There are too many variables and arbitrary imperatives and artificial benchmarks. The key measurement appears to be an one-year minimum for nuclear "breakout" for Iran. The U.S. assumes, I guess, that Iran has already secretly solved all the difficult technical issues of fashioning a trigger for a nuclear device. So the U.S. bargaining position is predicated on limiting that which it thinks it can measure -- the amount of fissile uranium in Iran's possession and Iran's ability to produce that uranium.

Negotiations therefore revolve around how to reduce Iran's stockpile of fissile uranium and its centrifuges. As Gordon compactly explains:

The United States long ago dropped the goal of eliminating Iran’s enrichment ability, a demand that Israel has long insisted was the surest way to guarantee Iran did not maintain an option to pursue the development of nuclear arms.

So the negotiations have been focused on measures that would constrain Iran’s ability to quickly produce a nuclear bomb but allow it the ability to maintain what Iran insists is a peaceful program of nuclear power and research. Shortly after arriving here Thursday night to join the talks, Mr. Kerry met for more than two hours with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, and Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s envoy to the Iran talks. But there was no word on whether they had made any headway. 

One critical question is how many and what type of centrifuges Iran will be allowed to keep to continue enriching uranium. Another question is what happens to the nuclear material Iran already possesses, which could be used in making a bomb. A third question is what kind of measures can be taken to limit Iran’s ability to produce plutonium, which can also be used in producing a nuclear weapon. Affecting all of these issues is the length of time an accord would be in effect. 

At the same time, the Western and Iranian negotiators must agree on a schedule for suspending or lifting sanctions, Iran’s goal in the talks, while preserving the West’s leverage in case the accord begins to fray. 

Iran has nearly 10,000 operational centrifuges, which Iran insists will be used to make fuel for civilian reactors. But given Iran’s current abilities, Mr. Kerry has said that it would not take Iran long to produce enough enriched material for a bomb if it abandoned the temporary freeze it had been observing while talks are underway.

“I think it’s public knowledge today that we’re operating with a time period for a so-called ‘breakout’ of about two months,” Mr. Kerry told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April. 

It would take far longer for Iran to take a bomb’s worth of fissile material, which can sustain a chain reaction, and fashion it into a weapon that could be delivered by a plane or missile. But since such work might be hard to detect and would be beyond the scope of an agreement, the breakout time to produce fissile material for a weapon has become an important indicator of Iran’s intentions.

“Enrichment time needs to be pushed to a year,” said Gary Samore, a former senior National Security Council official and president of an advocacy group called United Against Nuclear Iran. “This is what they need to have in order to sell the deal to Congress and U.S. allies.” 

To achieve an adequate breakout time, American and other international negotiators initially proposed establishing a 1,500 limit on the number of basic centrifuges Iran would be allowed to operate while banning the use of more advanced centrifuges.

Iran, however, has steadfastly refused to agree to a major reduction in centrifuges, although recently some Iranians have hinted that the number could be set at 8,000. 

More recently, negotiators have been exploring a formula in which Iran could have as many as 4,500 first-generation centrifuges if it also agreed to ship much of its low-enriched uranium to Russia or take other offsetting steps. For a considerable fee, Russia would convert the fuel into rods that would be burned in Iran’s lone operating commercial power reactor. 

Some combination of moving Iranian stockpiles of fissile uranium to Russia for reprocessing and reducing the number of Iranian centrifuges, but not so steeply as the U.S. wants, is seen as a credible foundation for a working agreement.

But knottier problems lie with the kind of inspection regimen Iran will countenance and the timeline of any agreement:

A major stumbling block is the question of how long an agreement should last. Iran has argued that it could be seven years or even less. That, Iranian officials say, would enable Iran to install tens of thousands of new centrifuges to enrich its own uranium after a Russian contract to supply nuclear fuel for the reactor at Bushehr, Iran, expires in 2021. 

But an agreement that would shrink Iran’s network of centrifuges only to see it expand exponentially within a decade is a nonstarter for the United States. 

“I would say about 15 years,” said Robert J. Einhorn, a former senior State Department official. “There has to be a sustained track record of scrupulous Iranian implementation of a deal before the international community will have confidence that the program is strictly peaceful.”

Kerry stopped off in Paris on his way to Geneva; he compared notes with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius, who has played the role of bad cop in the P5+1 talks, as well as Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal.

The larger reality is that if talks were to end without any agreement, the Saudis and Israelis would feel compelled to mount an assault on Iran, which, given the war with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, would likely prove to be catastrophically destabilizing. Kerry is lining up his ducks to make sure the P5+1 process doesn't crater. He can sell the fact that maintaining the Geneva talks keeps Iranian centrifuges from spinning,

The Saudis and Israelis can live with this knowing in two years it will either be a warhawk neocon Hillary in the White House or some even more bellicose Republican. Iran can be smashed then.