FPI Overnight Brief: February 22, 2010

Iran

Iran has earmarked potential sites for 10 new nuclear enrichment plants and construction of two of them could begin this year, a nuclear energy official said on Monday. "We have earmarked close to 20 sites and have passed the report on those to the president, however, these sites are only potential," Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Atomic Energy Organization, was quoted as saying on news agency ISNA. "We should begin the construction of two enrichment sites next year ... In the two new sites, we plan to use new centrifuges." The next Iranian year begins on March 21. Iran announced plans in November to build 10 new enrichment plants to match its existing Natanz complex. The announcement came as the United States and its allies hoped to reach an agreement for Iran to enrich uranium abroad.  – Reuters

Anne Bayefsky writes:  Last week's report did not see the light of day because the U.N. has turned over a significant new leaf. Rather, this is a desperate attempt by Amano to save the organization's hide. It is an indication that Iran's breakout as a nuclear power is so close at hand that the "watchdog" agency can no longer keep a lid on it.  – Forbes

Reuel Marc Gerecht and Mark Dubowitz write:  Gasoline and insurance sanctions are just about all we've really got left in the quiver. The Guard Corps elite, who oversee Iran's nuclear program, are too well protected to be seriously hurt by financial and industrial sanctions. Targeted sanctions have increased the cost of Iranians doing business, but there is little evidence to suggest that sanctions so far have ever moderated the behavior of Iran's rulers.  The administration's "smart-sanctions" approach perpetuates a myth about Iran's politics that has crippled our analysis for years. Mr. Khamenei isn't an economic rationalist. He wasn't waiting for George W. Bush to depart to make peace with the United States. Men who talk about crushing the "enemies of God" won't give up their enriched uranium because transaction costs have increased. The acquisition of the bomb is now probably inseparable from the ruling elite's religious identity.  For sanctions to be a game changer, they have to be crushing. Mr. Khamenei's commitment to developing nukes is probably as strong as was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's determination to destroy Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq War. The shock that stopped Khomeini—the realization that the conflict was threatening his regime's survival—ought to tell us what kind of shock we need now. Sanctions must complement the only thing that has so far rattled the regime: the pro-democracy Green Movement. – Wall Street Journal

ICYMI, FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly writes:  With the Iranian regime still in a precarious position and President Ahmadinejad successfully using advancements in the nuclear program to divert attention from internal politics, there is a real risk that the weak U.S. and international response to last week’s announcement could lead the hardliners now in control in Tehran – the “military dictatorship” referenced by Secretary Clinton on February 15 -- to feel that they can take another step toward a nuclear weapon without repercussions.  In essence, Iran may be implementing an incremental breakout strategy as the world watches and does nothing.  The Obama administration only furthers this by stating that it has no intention of taking military action against Iran.  “We are not planning anything other than going for sanctions,” Clinton told Al-Arabiya television on February 17.  The administration is correct to focus on sanctions, but with the president’s comment that the “door is still open” to a solution obtained through negotiation, and with anonymous administration officials hinting that they intend to use sanctions only as a way to force the Iranians back to negotiations, the regime in Tehran realizes it doesn’t have much to worry about in the near future, as long as it can maintain its grip on power. – The Weekly Standard Blog
http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/iran-reveals-its-real-intentions

Israel

Israel's air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and could fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range. The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel's military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads. – Associated Press

The War

A day after his government collapsed, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Sunday that he expected Dutch troops to come home from Afghanistan before the end of the year. A last-ditch effort by Mr. Balkenende to keep Dutch soldiers in the dangerous southern Afghan province of Oruzgan instead saw the Labor Party quit the government in the Netherlands early Saturday, immediately raising fears that the Western military coalition fighting the war was increasingly at risk. Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja continued, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well. “The moment the Netherlands says as sole and first country we will no longer have activities at the end of 2010, it will raise questions in other countries and this really pains me,” Mr. Balkenende told the Dutch television program “Buitenhof” in an interview on Sunday, according to Reuters. – New York Times

Marja is indeed a Taliban stronghold, and the resistance there is real. Nine U.S. troops have been reported killed from roadside bombs and sniper fire since the offensive began a week ago. Dozens have been injured.  But in purely military terms, sending 11,000 U.S. and Afghan troops to defeat a few hundred Taliban fighters in Marja won't change much in Afghanistan. The greater significance of the battle is in how it is perceived in the rest of Afghanistan and in America. The campaign's goals are to convince Americans that a new era has arrived in the eight-year-long war and to show Afghans that U.S. forces and the Afghan government can protect them from the Taliban. It allows Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander, who months earlier described conditions in the country as "grave and deteriorating," to make a clean break from past failures. – Washington Post

Philippine marines killed a top al Qaeda-linked militant commander and five other extremists early Sunday in an assault on a rebel encampment on a southern island, a senior military commander said.  A marine special operations platoon raided an Abu Sayyaf camp outside Maimbung township on Jolo island following intelligence reports that two wanted militant leaders, Umbra Jumdail and Albader Parad, were there, said Lt. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino, head of the military's Western Mindanao Command. Four civilians have independently identified the body of Parad at a military camp in Jolo town, Gen. Dolorfino said, adding that a younger brother of Jumdail, Abdulhaman Jumdail, also was among the slain rebels. "It's a very significant gain in our campaign against terrorism because we all know that Albader Parad is one of the influential leaders [of the Abu Sayyaf]," he said. "This will have a very big demoralizing effect on the other members and shows that they cannot hide forever from the arms of the law." – Associated Press

Outnumbered and outgunned, Taliban fighters are mounting a tougher fight than expected in Marjah, Afghan officials said Sunday, as U.S.-led forces converged on a pocket of militants in a western section of the town…With fighter jets, drones and attack helicopters roaring overhead, Marine and Afghan companies advanced Sunday on a 2-square-mile area where more than 40 insurgents were believed holed up… Teams of Taliban gunmen stayed in the town, delivering sometimes intense volleys of gunfire on Marine and Afghan units slogging through the rutted streets and poppy fields. Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Gen. Mohammad Zahir Azimi said the U.S. and its allies had expected the Taliban to leave behind thousands of hidden explosives, which they did. But they were surprised to find that so many militants stayed to fight.  "We predicted it would take many days. But our prediction was that the insurgency would not resist that way," Gen. Azimi said in Kabul. In a statement Sunday, NATO acknowledged that insurgents were putting up a "determined resistance" in various parts of Marjah, although the overall offensive is "on track." – Associated Press

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the United States Central Command, said Sunday that the battle being fought in the Taliban stronghold of Marja was the “initial salvo” in a military campaign that could last 12 to 18 months.  In an interview on NBC’s news program “Meet the Press,” the general, who oversees the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sought to put the Marja battle “into context” by explaining its part in the overall effort by American, Afghan and other forces to defeat the Taliban. He said that international forces had spent recent months mapping strategy, gathering resources and preparing the leadership of a “comprehensive civil-military campaign.”  Saying that 5,400 of the 30,000 additional troops President Obama has promised to deploy were already on the ground, General Petraeus added that Special Forces were playing a major role. “We have more of our Special Operations forces going in on the ground, and you’ve seen the results,” he said, “with more Afghan shadow governors, the Taliban shadow governors being captured, more of the high-value targets being taken down.” – New York Times

General Petraeus’s appearance on Meet the Press can be viewed here.

Ten days into the fight for Marjah, U.S. and Afghan troops continue to seize ground, often battling the Taliban from one mud-walled compound to the next. But progress has been slower in winning over local civilians, many of whom are unsure which side will make life safer for their families. The Marjah offensive—the biggest since the Taliban regime fell in 2001—is being conducted on fronts both military and social. It's a high-stakes operation. Kabul's international backers have ready tens of millions of dollars in aid for Marjah, and the Afghan authorities have promised to make the town of 75,000—which has been under Taliban rule for years—a model of good government once the fighting stops.  In essence, Marjah is the test case for U.S. President Barack Obama's argument that more troops and smarter counterinsurgency tactics can salvage the Afghan war. The town measures roughly six miles by 12 miles...A relatively small portion of that expanse is under military control, but U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers dominate the most densely populated areas already and are now pressing outwards, a few hundred yards at a time. Senior commanders are pushing field officers to pick up the pace and establish a sufficient security bubble to allow Afghan government officials and aid workers to get to work. – Wall Street Journal

The Taliban has reaped a recruiting bonanza the past two years, capitalizing on NATO's stagnant posture in southern Afghanistan by increasing fighter ranks by 35 percent, U.S. officials say. The increase is one reason NATO forces, in an ongoing offensive, are meeting strong resistance as they fight town by town to gain control of the Taliban stronghold in the city of Kandahar and in Marjah in neighboring Helmand province. It also shows the enemy's resilience in an eight-year insurgency. In the face of air strikes and NATO raids that kill scores of Taliban at a time, the former rulers of Afghanistan still have been able to pad their ranks. A military intelligence source, providing numbers confirmed by a senior U.S. official, told The Washington Times that Taliban strength now stands at 27,000 fighters in the Afghan-Pakistan theater, 7,000 more than in 2008. "The Taliban have expanded their ranks by recruiting militants in their traditional southern strongholds, and by extending their reach to other parts of Afghanistan," said the official, who asked not to be named because it was an intelligence matter. "The numbers of Taliban aren't as high in those other areas, but the group's footprint has clearly grown. There has been a steep increase." – Washington Times

Iraq

A popular Sunni party announced Saturday that it will boycott Iraq's parliamentary elections next month, but it stopped short of urging supporters not to vote. The decision by the National Dialogue Front to pull out of the March 7 elections could cement views here that Shiite religious parties have rigged the vote against secular and Sunni candidates. Saleh al-Mutlak, who leads the party, was among about 500 candidates disqualified from the elections because of their alleged ties to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. A panel of judges signed off on most of the disqualifications. But before the appeals process, all but 171 were replaced by their parties or withdrew. Only 25 prevailed upon appeal. "It's a bad environment for the election," said Haider al-Mullah, a spokesman for the National Dialogue Front, which has 11 seats in parliament. "They are preventing good leaders like Doctor al-Mutlak from running."  The disqualifications have caused widespread fear that the elections will be deemed illegitimate. - Washington Post.

Jackson Diehl writes:   During the years when Iraq was at the center of U.S. foreign policy, pundits and policymakers would regularly and prematurely proclaim that the following six months would be crucial to the war's outcome. Now, at last, that forecast is warranted: The next six months in Iraq could decide whether the country emerges as a democracy friendly to the United States, a cleric-dominated satellite of Iran or a cauldron of sectarian conflict -- and whether Barack Obama can pull off the "responsible withdrawal" he has promised. How odd, then, that Iraq -- where the United States has invested $700 billion and the lives of more than 4,300 soldiers over the past seven years -- is no longer a top priority for the White House, the State Department or nearly anyone in Congress. – Washington Post

Pakistan

Pakistan's main opposition leader reiterated on Monday a call for the transfer of presidential powers to the prime minister and parliament, highlighting an issue that could bring political turmoil…Former military leader and president Pervez Musharraf accumulated powers to the presidency during his rule, including the power to dismiss parliament. Musharraf stepped down months after a 2008 general election won by the Pakistan People's Party of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto, and the leader of Pakistan's other main party, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, had in 2006 agreed on a Charter of Democracy aimed at transferring powers back to the prime minister and restoring a parliamentary system. Sharif called again on Monday for the full implementation of the charter in talks with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, a close Zardari ally. – Reuters

North Korea

North Korea is getting bigger, older and less healthy, according to data from the country's latest census, and its fabled million-man army might have fewer than 700,000 people…The census reported that North Korea's population grew at an annual average rate of 0.85% for the 15-year period, a time that included a devastating multiyear famine that analysts and foreign aid agencies estimate killed between one million and two million people.  A separate U.N. report published last year found that North Korea's population has grown more slowly since 2005, at an annual rate of 0.4%. The global population has grown 1.2% annually since 2005, the U.N. report said. North Korea's census said the country's population has proportionately fewer children and more middle-aged people than it did in 1993. It also reported that people are less healthy. – Wall Street Journal

Democracy and Human Rights

Former U.N. nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei sharply criticized Egypt's ruling system Sunday, saying the country has stagnated under President Hosni Mubarak while corruption has thrived.  In his first televised appearance since he returned to his native Egypt, the 67-year-old ElBaradei said his ultimate goal is to set the country down the path of democratic reform. But he remained coy on the primary question on many Egyptians' minds — whether he'll challenge President Hosni Mubarak in elections slated for next year.  – Associated Press

Joshua Kurlantzick writes:  Touring Asia in November, Barack Obama hit all the usual presidential themes, including free trade, investment, and strategic alliances, except for one: human rights. During a scripted press conference in Beijing, Obama barely mentioned it. In Shanghai he offered only mild criticism of China's Internet blocks, saying he was a "big supporter of noncensorship." Obama's nonstatements amount to a clear break from nearly three decades of U.S. policy. From its engagement with the brutal Burmese junta to its decision to avoid the Dalai Lama when he first visited Washington during Obama's tenure to its silence over the initial outbreak of protests in Iran, Obama's administration has taken a much quieter approach to rights advocacy than his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. "Conceding to China upfront doesn't buy you better cooperation further down the track," says Sophie Richardson of Human Rights Watch. - Newsweek

ICYMI, FPI Director of Democracy and Human Rights Ellen Bork writes:  What do dissidents want?  With few exceptions, they welcome American support, moral but also material. Yet their views are not always represented in the often abstract debate over what priority should be given to democracy and human rights in foreign policy. – The Weekly Standard

Joshua Murvachik writes:  To say that the marked deficit of freedom and democracy in the Islamic world is rooted in historical and theological causes as well as socioeconomic ones is not to attribute to them any special fixity. Religious interpretations evolve as do historic ones, and historic experience accrues. Everywhere outside the Muslim world where democracy has grown, it is a relatively recent phenomenon. In gaining traction, democratic ideas necessarily displaced nondemocratic traditions. Moreover, the fact that the lands of Islam have proved less fertile soil for democracy than other parts of the world does not mean that Islam is incompatible with democracy. Only two of the 47 Muslim-majority countries are “free” by the reckoning of Freedom House, but eight or nine are considered by that organization to be “electoral democracies.” (The difference is that some newly democratic countries do not yet have all the attributes required for Freedom House to call them “free”; instead they are ranked “partly free.”) While this number is low compared to other groups or regions, still it is high enough to dispel any inference that Islam and democracy cannot go together. It tells us simply that the Muslim world’s democrats have their work cut out for them. This makes them all the more deserving of our support. - SAISphere

Defense

A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) assessment that points out weaknesses in Taiwan's air power and air defense capabilities seems to support Taiwan's case for new F-16s.  Delivered to the U.S. Congress on Feb. 16, the report, DIA-02-1001-028, says that while Taiwan has nearly 400 combat aircraft in service, "far fewer of these are operationally capable."  The report is mandated by Congress under the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. Since 2006, Taiwan has had a standing request for 66 F-16C/D Block 50/52 fighters, but the United States has repeatedly rejected a letter of request for price and availability for the aircraft. The most critical problem is aging F-5E/F Tiger squadrons now used for training. The F-5s have "reached the end of their operational service life," the report says. Taiwan claims it operates about 60 F-5s, but the report says "the number of operationally capable aircraft is likely much less, possibly in the low 30s." – Defense News

Each U.S. Navy strike fighter squadron will lose some of its 10 or 12 aircraft between deployments - one of several details emerging about the service's plans to ease an upcoming shortage of strike fighters.  The so-called fighter gap is coming as older F/A-18 A through D-model Hornet aircraft reach the end of their operational lives, not enough new E and F Strike Fighters are built to replace them and production of the later F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) lags. In a draft version of an upcoming statement to Congress obtained by Defense News, Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, writes that the reduction in squadron size to "the minimum required" will take place during "non-deployed phases."  Navy Hornet squadrons already have been reduced to 10 aircraft per squadron. Super Hornet squadrons flying E and F models generally have 12 aircraft each. The service will accelerate the transition of five F/A-18C squadrons to E or F models using available Super Hornets, the draft statement said, "and will transition two additional legacy squadrons using Super Horner attrition reserve aircraft." – Defense News

Tibet

Kelley Currie writes:  With the U.S.-China relationship hitting the skids in recent months, yesterday’s meeting between President Obama and the Dalai Lama became symbolic of the current tensions in the U.S.-China relationship and a focal point for speculation about whether the Obama administration is taking a tougher line on China.  Unfortunately, the White House tried to be too cute with the meeting—playing “hide the Dalai Lama” with the media and otherwise attempting to downplay the significance of the meeting, none of which blunted China’s outrage. With these results, it is little wonder that the Obama administration’s China policy is increasingly viewed as both disconnected from American values, and not very effective in protecting American interests—a deadly combination. To change this dynamic, President Obama should rethink his approach and elevate issues of human rights and democracy in China he has heretofore downplayed. If President Obama were interested in pursuing a more principled approach to China, Tibet would be as good a place as any to start.  – The Daily Caller

Niger

The military junta that deposed Niger’s longtime leader last week sought to assure visiting diplomatic delegations on Sunday that it would soon restore democracy, as more signs emerged that the violent overthrow had been widely welcomed in this impoverished West African desert nation.  Junta leaders met with representatives from the United Nations, the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States, telling them that the new government would “work with Nigériens of all political leanings,” said Mohamed Ibn Chambas of the economic community. “We received very clear assurances,” he told reporters.  – New York Times

Americas

Although the international response to the Jan. 12 earthquake was swift, the international role in reconstruction is still taking shape, slowed by the scale of the humanitarian crisis and freighted by the often prickly relationship between the Western hemisphere's poorest country and the foreign actors who have loomed so large in its history. The earthquake has spurred talk of remaking not only the capital and the country, but those complicated ties between Haiti and the rest of the world. Foreign governments, concerned about corruption, have long channeled much of their aid through nongovernmental organizations. That arrangement, some Haitians say, has stunted the Haitian government's own development and given the NGOs an outsize role that comes with little accountability for the country's persistent poverty. Since the earthquake, foreign government and international organizations have been trying to send a different message, noting, at almost every opportunity, the role that the Haitian government has played in the rescue and relief operations and the leading role that it will play in the reconstruction of the country. – Washington Post

The death toll from last month's devastating earthquake in Haiti could jump to 300,000 people, including the bodies buried under collapsed buildings in the capital, Haitian President Rene Preval said on Sunday."You have seen the images you are familiar with the pictures. More than 200,000 bodies were collected on the streets without counting those that are still under the rubble," Preval told a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Mexico. "We might reach 300,000 people." That would make Haiti's earthquake one of the most lethal natural disasters in modern history, more than the 200,000 people killed in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. The cost of rebuilding the impoverished country after the 7.0-magnitude quake could be as high as $14 billion, according to the Inter-American Development Bank. – Reuters

Ukraine

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called Viktor Yanukovych this weekend as soon as the Ukrainian president-elect's challenger dropped a legal battle to block his inauguration. According to the Kremlin, the two men agreed that Mr. Yanukovych would visit Moscow in early March. On Sunday, however, Mr. Yanukovych's aides declined to confirm or deny anything about a visit, though his Web site posted the Kremlin announcement. Hanna Herman, a legislator and a deputy leader of Mr. Yanukovych's Party of Regions, said the president-elect's first priority was to form a new government and deal with domestic problems. The call from the Kremlin on Saturday signals Russia's interest in reasserting a preferential relationship with its former Soviet neighbor. But the reaction in Kiev leaves it unclear in which direction Mr. Yanukovych will tilt Ukraine, a country of 46 million wedged between Russia and the West. – Wall Street Journal

Ideas

The government agency responsible for monitoring American reconstruction work in Iraq has proposed the creation of a single organization to oversee future rebuilding to avoid the fraud and waste that have marred this work in the past. The report, released Monday by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, said an organization with sole authority for reconstruction would eliminate much of the confusion and interagency rivalries that have hampered rebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan. The proposed organization, the United States Office for Contingency Operations, would oversee every aspect of rebuilding, including contracting and budgeting, according to the plan outlined in the report. The agency would be established by Congress, but would be independent.  By contrast, rebuilding efforts since the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 have involved some 62 different agencies, including the Defense Department, the State Department, and the Agency for International Development, according to the special inspector general. – New York Times

Obama Administration

James Traub writes:  Virtually all conversations with Obama administration foreign-policy officials, no matter where they begin, come to rest at "engagement" -- that vexing, mutable, all-purpose word. The U.S. president has "engaged" with rogue states, civil society, the United Nations, and citizens around the globe. Iran vindicates the policy of engagement -- or discredits it. China is a failure of engagement, Russia a success. Inside the Obama realm, engagement has come to mean "good diplomacy."  To critics on both the left and right, however, it has come to mean "bad diplomacy" -- cynical or naive, depending on which side you come from.  These days -- these shaky days -- the critics seem to be gaining the upper hand, making those Obama officials increasingly defensive about their policy toward autocratic states, whether in the Middle East or Eurasia, Iran or Sudan. Having spent years thinking hard thoughts in universities and think tanks, magazines and books, they cannot believe that they are losing the definitional war over their own policy. They are eager, and maybe a little desperate, to set things aright. – Foreign Policy