The Good, The Bad, and the Presidential

Just about halfway into President Obama’s term, and we’ve had one of the most lopsided elections in American history- all based on misconceptions about what has or hasn’t been accomplished.  The media, politicians, their parties, and blogs far less sane than the one you’re currently reading, have spun a lot of things and just not highlighted a lot of things that have gotten done over the past two years despite a Congress that became infamous for not being able to get things done.

At the end of the day, everything goes by the President, and are often labeled as his accomplishments, or pieces of his agenda that have gotten through.  I’m sure some of you have heard about the site that has sprang up in recent days called “WTF Has President Obama Done So Far”; it’s great for listing his accomplishments, but there’s zero analysis to it whatsoever.

That’s where I come in: Each installment of this regular section, while I haven’t decided on a frequency yet, will have a short statement of something that has been accomplished over the last two years.  Of course, there’ll be the analysis of the accomplishment that you’ve come to expect from me, as well as where it stands now- what it looks like going into the 112th Congress and the broader future.  Without further ado, here’s the inaugural edition:

Israel’s Quandary

Well this is a mess for anyone who was hoping for the latest attempt at peace between Israel and the Palestinians.  In case you haven’t heard about it by now, early this morning, Israel intercepted the “Freedom Flotilla”, an attempt by human-rights activists to get past Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.  In short, it was bloody, it looks bad, and it is certainly a big smear on the peace prospects.  On the surface, it looks bad no matter how you slice it; the loss of life and the declared intentions of the convoy as an aid mission make this an absolute public-relations nightmare for the Israeli Defense Forces. As with all events of this magnitude, the devil is in the details; in this case, the original source of the violence, whether it was the activists or the Israeli commandos who stormed the flotilla, is critical in determining who is ultimately responsible.

Despite the competing claims, with countries around the world condemning the raid and Israel being called before the UN Security Council over the incident, the public relations momentum is clearly on the side of the human rights activists.  Naturally, Israeli officials are all claiming the troops acted in self-defense, but at the very least the evidence points to excessive force being used against the flotilla.  After all, why would they need to drop commandos on the flotilla as the first attempt to get them to stop?  Apparently, the Israeli navy did try to convince the flotilla to divert to an Israeli port, but seriously, a commando strike first?  It seems to me that someone in command was convinced that the unarmed activists were terrorists trying to reinforce Hamas, because a preemptive commando strike against the aid convoy only makes sense when viewed as a counter-terrorist operation.

In addition to that, the flotilla was allegedly attacked in international waters, which by treaty among most nations are open for the safe passage of anyone and everyone.  It would have been one thing if the flotilla was stopped inside Israel’s territorial waters, but to be stopped in open ocean is a flagrant violation of several major international treaties.  Oh, and Israeli officials are justifying the seizure outside its territory on national security reasons.  What security reasons?  This flotilla was well-publicized, and included among its passengers a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and several high-ranking European officials.  I could understand Israel’s concerns if it were just organizations that were tied to the Hamas government in Gaza, but with such high publicity and the presence of people who could only stand for peace, any concerns of terrorism are baseless.

Is Mideast Peace Finally About to Happen?

Peace in the Middle East; it has been a dream shared by millions throughout the last several decades, and it may finally be time for it to be achieved.  Of course, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about this possibility, but this is the first time that I can remember when there has been a significant step toward realizing this goal.  Of course, I know about the Camp David Accords, the Roadmap, and other efforts throughout history, but this is the first major attempt during the time I have actually been seriously aware of things happening in the world.  Looking back, the convergence of events on a couple of separate fronts make this seem like a very realistic chance to achieve it.

Today, the Obama Administration is pushing its plan for working toward this goal.  According to the Washington Post, the President is said to be “seriously considering” a deal based largely on what has already been agreed to in past negotiations.  Apparently, and quite logically, I might add, the impetus behind an American proposal would be that the Israel-Palestine issue has gone on for far too long, and that we need to instead focus on Iran and terrorism issues.  In proposing a new plan, President Obama is expected to ideologically part ways with his special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell and instead embrace an approach favored by people including Colin Powell, and the national security advisers for Presidents George H.W. Bush, Ford, and Carter.  This plan, which is still only being discussed in the vaguest of terms, would attempt to resolve the questions surrounding the status of Jerusalem, the right of refugees to return to their homeland, and a focus on stabilizing Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors.  To me, this sounds very plausible, though we will have to wait and see what the actual proposals turn out to be.

On the other hand, the Palestinians don’t seem to want to wait much longer.  The New York Times reported this week that Palestinians are changing their strategy of resistance to Israel to one that has been tried and found to be successful in India, South Africa, and the U.S.  Yes, the Palestinians have begun to embrace nonviolence in a limited form as a product of exasperation with the lack of results produced by terrorism and diplomacy.  With the burning of Israeli goods among other things, the new protests echo more of the Vietnam War protesters than the Civil Rights movement.  However, it is certainly a start, and at least the “official” Palestinian leadership appears serious.

Can We Please Stop Comparing the Haiti Disaster to Katrina?

By now, this particular event should need no introduction.  However, here is a quick recap just in case.  Earlier this week, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the nation of Haiti.  A humanitarian crisis occurred in its wake, of course, but that is not all.  The quake pretty much leveled parts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, and while nobody can even guess at a death toll from the tragedy, it is pretty much common knowledge that it will be high.  While foreign aid is pouring into the region as fast as it can be sent, there are some delays getting it, in some cases literally, on the ground in Haiti.

The primary issue is that in addition to blocking many of the roads, the quake only left one of Port-au-Prince’s runways open and made the port almost inoperable.  With the amount of aid flights going to Haiti, what was a relatively sleepy airport before the quake now has the incoming volume of a major international airport, and the “control tower” as it were is a couple of US Air Force personnel with a radio, according to the New York Times.  Compounding the issue, there is almost no fuel left on the ground to refuel the planes that do land, much less anywhere to put the offloaded aid packages.  Many aid flights are now going through Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, instead, as it was relatively untouched by the actual quake.

In addition to the flood of aid organizations sending food, medical supplies, and personnel to the country, the U.S. military is going to play a large role in the relief effort.  They are starting to arrive or on the way, but naturally it will take some time.  For many Americans, the closest major disaster anyone can compare this to is Hurricane Katrina back in the summer of 2005.  This is a very poor comparison at best.  For one, in Haiti there is not a fully functional major airport an hour up the interstate from Port-au-Prince.  Santo Domingo is close, but the roads from there to Haiti’s capital are nowhere near as equipped to handle a large volume of traffic as an American interstate, which was built for the purpose of quickly moving the army around.  While FEMA’s mismanagement led Hurricane Katrina to be one of the signature failures of the Bush administration, the military’s response, specifically that of the National Guard, was done right, once Louisiana’s Governor sent them in, of course.  However, this is less about the lessons of Katrina than it is about how those lessons will not necessarily work in Haiti.

Simple geography renders the comparison to be weak; New Orleans, after all, is on the North American mainland, and transportation of a large amount of goods overland is actually possible.  Haiti, on the other hand, is on an island, and a relatively small one at that.  By necessity, all relief must either be flown in directly, or sent in by sea.  According to the New York Times article linked above, one representative of the World Food Programme, Mr. Greg Barrow, observed that “Realistically, for us to bring in food, the priority is by sea.”  Thus, repairing the port is a priority before the bulk of relief supplies can start arriving.  A further difference to Katrina is that while there were warnings in advance of the hurricane, the people of Haiti had no such warning.  Even if they had, there was really nowhere they could have gone. As such, even if all else were equal in this case, if New Orleans were suddenly hit with a disaster on this scale without warning, the death toll would be much higher and relief efforts that much more complex.

The more appropriate comparison would be to the tsunami in Indonesia a little over five years ago.  Indonesia is a nation of over 17,000 islands, and aside from being much farther away from the United States and other sources of aid than Haiti, their situation five years ago was quite similar.  A major disaster without warning, and a massive relief effort that was hampered by the lack of decent access to the disaster zone are but two of the similarities.  In Haiti, as in Indonesia five years ago, the situation is just the opposite; the conditions on the ground hinder the response.  While it is a race against time to get supplies moving to those who need them, that itself is only a matter of time, and the relief effort has only really just begun.

Was the Copenhagen Summit a Failure, or a Modest Success?

For the past two weeks, delegates from most nations have been meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark to try and come up with a new treaty to address the problem of Global Climate Change.  Going into the summit, hopes were high for a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which is due to expire in 2012.  However, there was so much infighting among the delegates that the document that emerged tonight from the summit is far from what was originally envisioned.

According to the New York Times, a draft form of the agreement that came out of the summit had firm numbers and commitments in it, but those were removed in order to help get the accord passed.  In fact, the final document that came out of Copenhagen has no firm commitments in it at all.  Instead the agreement simply stuck to the normal diplomatic nonsense about the necessity of tackling the problem.  Why?  They had a draft agreement this morning that would’ve worked, after all.

The main reason, it turns out, is a series of disagreements between the EU, US, and the Group of 77, neither really an organized group nor containing 77 nations.  While the G-77 is not well-organized, it has had almost an outsize influence on the talks, especially China.  In fact, the Chinese delegation was the source of much of the delays that contributed to the lack of a firm agreement at the end of the summit.  According to the BBC, China’s repeated use of the “national sovereignty” card was a main factor in the stalling.  Now, if this was done in a similar manner to when I have used it myself at Model UN conferences, then China did one of the most annoying plays in international diplomacy.  The national sovereignty issue is a legitimate concern, especially for developing nations who look at UN and American intervention around the world and wish to preserve their own rule over their territory.

It is a standard tactic used by developing nations, and what makes it surprising is that when President Obama arrived at Copenhagen today, it certainly appeared that in the meeting he interrupted between officials from China and Brazil, among others, that the two regional powers were conspiring to grind the progress to a halt.  It looked even more like a smoking gun when it was revealed in various news accounts of the proceedings that after this interruption, a great amount of progress was made.  However, President Obama and other leaders are calling this limited progress “meaningful”.  I certainly saw that coming; with every trip overseas this fall, President Obama has taken heat from some part of America, thus spinning Copenhagen in a positive light is a necessity.  It is true that in the deal, nations agreed to take unspecified measures to limit greenhouse gasses and limit the rise in temperature to approximately 2 degrees Celsius.  Unfortunately, this agreement is not legally binding; it is possible that nothing will really happen as a result.

Perhaps more significant is the change in U.S. attitudes toward climate change.  The U.S. was a major player in getting even this modest accord through; remember, we did not even sign the Kyoto Protocol at the beginning of this decade.  According to CNN, the agreement called for nations to submit their specific proposals as an appendix and it calls for a binding treaty to be negotiated some time before 2016.  Unfortunately, that may be the only thing that happens.  You know, more I look at it, the more this climate treaty looks strikingly similar to what may be the end result of the Senate’s healthcare reform push: a very broad program, with few specifics that may end up not actually end up doing much.

North Korean Economics

Editor’s Note:  This is the first post by one of the candidates for the second writer position. If you would rate the post at the bottom, it would greatly help with the search process. Mr. Cameron Moubray is also a Freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, and aside from routine editorial corrections, the post below is entirely his work.  He may be reached directly at cameron.moubray@gmail.com

Everyone’s favorite dystopia is at it once again, but this time the Dear Leader has taken a break from playing games of nuclear brinkmanship and fallen back upon the Democratic People’s Republic’s perennial pastime – making North Koreans’ lives yet more miserable.

On November 30th, the North Korean government announced the surprising decision to revalue its currency, the Won, resulting in a sudden nationwide freeze of all cash transactions.  The revaluation entails the issuance of entirely new currency, rendering all old bills completely useless. Old Won notes may be exchanged for the new notes, but with two caveats – firstly, the rate of exchange between old and new Won is 100-to-1.  This means that an old 1,000-Won note can be exchanged for just 10 Won. Also, the government has imposed a cap allowing only 100,000 Won to be exchanged per family.

At official exchange rates, this works out to approximately 475 Pounds Sterling, which would be meager enough, but the Wall Street Journal reports that the unofficial rate of exchange effectively puts the cap at something closer to a mere 40 US Dollars.  If a family happens to have more than that amount saved, their excess savings are now completely worthless.

Although the move seems to have been predicated, economically, upon a desire to curb inflation, the end result is that the cash reserves of much of the North Korean population – those lucky enough to have cash reserves, at any rate – have been wiped out. This was likely intentional – a calculated move to destroy the DPRK’s nascent middle class, which began to emerge following the 2002 market reforms that introduced limited free markets as alternatives to state-run shops. These markets, at which people can buy a range of imported foodstuffs and other goods, have become important parts of life for wealthier North Koreans, as state stores offer ever-fewer goods.

By all accounts, the popular reaction to the government’s decision has been decidedly unenthusiastic. Although open dissent is exceedingly rare under Kim Jong Il’s brutal regime, there are reports of unrest in some parts of the country, as in the city of Hamhung, where, according to the Wall Street Journal, protesters burned old Won notes and vandalized government buildings. Reports indicate widespread desolation among the population – the BBC quotes a North Korean defector speaking of general “despair,” while the Times Online cites the suicide of a couple in the north of the country following the revaluation. Possibly as a reaction to these sentiments, on December 4^th the DPRK issued “Shoot to Kill” orders to its border guards with regards to anyone attempting to escape the country illegally.

The ultimate result of this abrupt and striking development is as yet unclear. For such a clearly dysfunctional regime, the DPRK has proven surprisingly resilient in the course of its sixty-one-year history. It is unlikely that this will provoke such a degree of civil unrest as to topple Kim’s government, but there is always the hope that, in heaping one more inequity upon its long-suffering people, the abominable North Korean regime has weakened itself just a little bit more. The market reforms of 2002 allowed the North Korean people to experience a very limited degree of free-market prosperity. Having glimpsed that, they now have something of a point of reference with which to compare Juche socialism. The Dear Leader cannot change the laws of economics, and if his regime is unable to provide the people with the goods they are now to be denied for lack of funds – if people see once again that all the Great Economist can offer them as a replacement is austerity – then perhaps it will constitute one more chink in the armor of his monstrous regime.

Afghanistan Gets A Surge

Tonight came the news that most of us have been anxiously waiting for over the past three months.  Today, President Obama traveled to the Army’s college at West Point to deliver a speech outlining his new strategy for the War in Afghanistan.  It seems to make sense overall, but of course, it is going to be almost as contentious as the healthcare debate.

The plan is, like just about everything else, a compromise between what the military wants and what the public can stand.  The new surge will, according to the New York Times, have a bit less than the original number of troops requested by General McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan.  In the speech, President Obama also called on America’s allies in the War on Terror to fill at least part of the gap between the new American commitment and what the General requested.  The plan is clearly focused on an exit strategy, which is to hopefully begin a drawdown of American forces in Afghanistan in mid-2011.  Of course, this depends on the Afghanis taking a larger role in their own security.  This is the right thing to say, but there is a high likelihood that this will all come crashing down before it gets off the ground.

Ahead of the speech, President Obama had conversations with allied leaders, and that part of the equation is weaker than he would have liked.  Already, President Sarkozy of France has stated that France would not send any more troops, and the British have only mentioned sending about 500 more, according to this article.  With a weak international interest in sending more troops, more pressure will be on the Americans to perform, and the Army leadership in the region has quite clearly stated that less than 40,000 will work.  Another issue is the timetable.  I like the idea of a set withdrawal time for the conflict; we do not want to be there forever in an open-ended conflict, like we were in Vietnam.  Nonetheless, if our objective is to rout the Taliban so that the Afghan government can have a chance, why would we want to broadcast that we will not be there for much longer to the enemy?

Despite this, I can see how making this exact information widely available could be a good thing.  While there is a legitimate concern that the Taliban would use our withdrawal timetable to their advantage, the announcement also makes President Hamid Karzai and Afghan citizens aware of the reality that we will not be around forever.  Also, there are questions of whether we are cutting ourselves short.  According to the new timetable, the first drawdown is about 18 months away.  Is that really enough time to effect change?  I tend to think not, given the fact that we are dealing with a resilient insurgency in the form of the Taliban, and trying to turn around a government seen by many Afghans as corrupt and untrustworthy.

A further concern comes from the cost of this whole adventure.  According to the Washington Post, the wars are becoming increasingly more expensive.  For example, assuming this year’s defense appropriations bill is passed by Congress, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq will have cost officially over $1 trillion.  Oh, and that does not include the impact of the new strategy and troop surge, which is estimated at around $30 billion dollars.  To cover the new costs, some members of Congress are talking about a war tax, among other things.  Raising taxes is always contentious, add in an unpopular war, and you have a real mess.  While I see the surge is necessary, there are too many things that could go wrong with it, and knowing Murphy’s Law…

New Developments in Iran

Coming off a holiday week, there is not much to write about as far as American politics goes.  Fortunately, Thanksgiving is largely an American holiday, and there are plenty of events around the world to write about.  Now that I am over the whole “eat as much turkey as humanly possible” part of my holiday season, I might as well start with Iran.  Now that I have caught up on the literally thousands of news articles that came down my RSS reader over the holiday, there are a couple of interesting stories from Iran that have broader implications for our relationship with that nation.

The first, and perhaps most important as far as our direct relationship with Iran is concerned, is their formal response to the IAEA.  As the New York Times is reporting today, instead of complying with the IAEA’s demand to stop work on the secret facility revealed in the past couple of months, Iran announced their desire to build ten more plants, a step that is quite the opposite of what pretty much the rest of the world wants them to take.  While this escalation is certainly unwelcome, it is actually the least of the West’s concerns relating to Iran’s nuclear program.

In the article linked above, there are suggestions within the Iranian government that they should withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  This treaty is the cornerstone for all nuclear negotiations in our time, and several influential figures in Iranian politics want to withdraw that nation from it, including Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran’s parliament.  In addition to the obvious signal withdrawing from the Non-Proliferation Treaty would send, there are fears that the withdrawal will signal an all-out push by Iran to get the bomb.  After all, North Korea took a similar action earlier this decade, and while we do not know for certain that North Korea has nuclear weapons, there is a general consensus that they likely do.

The withdrawal would also, as the article states, give more strength to Israel’s desire to take military action against Iranian nuclear facilities.  This is the worst possible situation, given the regional influence Iran already has; don’t forget, Iran at the very least funds Hezbollah and similar extremist groups.  If Israel were to take military action against Iran, the world would almost certainly see a spike in terrorist attacks perpetrated by one or more of these groups.  On the other hand, if we simply lay on more sanctions, Iran will likely end up the same way as North Korea: isolated, armed to the teeth, and a humanitarian disaster zone.  After all, look at where the six-party talks and other attempts to engage North Korea on the nuclear issue have gotten us.  Unfortunately, the world is quickly running out of options to deal with this; the best option may be to hope for internal change.  Though this too is somewhat unlikely, it is more likely now than it was before the election controversy.

For instance, and this brings us to the other main issue that caught my attention today, the New York Times is reporting that one of Iran’s most senior clerics, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, is speaking out in condemnation of Iran’s now-infamous Basij militia force as being against Islam.  As you may recall, this force is the one responsible for many of the abuses during the election protests.  Normally, government institutions are respected within Iran, and you almost never see a cleric speaking out against such an institution.  This is another example of the growing divide between government hardliners and those in positions of some authority or influence who recognize that the country needs to go in a different direction.  This is also a sign that there may be some radical change in Iran’s future, and it may come sooner rather than later.  Radical changes are usually brought about in reaction to a major event, or the population finally deciding enough is enough.  A withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty could be exactly the kind of event that triggers this.  It will be very messy, of course, but a revolution against the 1979 revolutionaries and their heirs is probably the best hope for any meaningful progress with Iran on nuclear issues.

President Obama Commits to Copenhagen

I apologize for the lack of posts up until tonight, things have been hectic as I’ve made my way home for the Thanksgiving holiday, as I am sure it has for many of you.  Today, we were greeted with the news that President Obama has decided to travel to Copenhagen to formally introduce America’s proposal for addressing global climate change during the conference in Copenhagen next month.  This is the first time America has committed to a definite proposal about fixing the climate in the last decade, but is there something else behind the trip?

First, here are the details of the proposal, as discussed in the New York Times today.  According to the article, President Obama’s goals are in line with the bill that passed the House of Representatives earlier this year but languishes in the Senate.  Specifically, the President is calling for  emissions reductions to approximately 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 and up to 83% by 2050.  Obviously, the President wants to agree with the legislation already making its way through Congress, in order to avoid another conflict with Congress and have something to put on the table at Copenhagen.  However, one fun fact is that this is the second instance, at least that I can remember off-hand, that President Obama is deferring to Congressional opinion on a legislative priority.  In this case, I find it acceptable in the name of making everything work faster, but let us recall the last major priority that President Obama left up to Congress: healthcare.

That being said, with the consensus that is forming around the need to address climate change, this bill may not run into the same problems that healthcare reform has.  On the other hand, the bill passed the House in June; you would think the Senate could have gotten its act together to debate and vote on it by now.  At the very least, President Obama has something to put on the table at the beginning of the conference.

There is no doubt that the U.S. proposal is a game-changer.  As one of the largest contributors to global climate change, nothing meaningful will be done on climate change without an American commitment.  However, Senate leaders want to see firm commitments from large developing nations such as China and India before they will approve the climate bill, as they recognize any unilateral action by the U.S. will not work.  In addition, the timing of President Obama’s visit is  something that should raise a few questions.  The fact is, President Obama happens to be visiting the summit on December 9th, a day before his appearance in Oslo to accept the Nobel Prize that has drawn criticism from many in the U.S.

It could be seen that President Obama is trying to counter the critics by appearing at this summit, instead of going in order to promote climate change.  It is possible, after all, to view this as President Obama trying to counter the hit he took by making his speech to promote Chicago’s unsuccessful Olympic bid, or the criticism of his winning the Nobel in the first place.  While I approve of the trip to Copenhagen and the Nobel decision several weeks ago, the Copenhagen trip would have been better-positioned if it had been at the end of the conference, when many other world leaders plan to arrive.

UPDATED: What is Iran Hiding?

A couple of months ago, as you may recall, the world learned about a secret nuclear facility in Iran, buried into the mountain at Qom, one of Iran’s holiest cities.  Surprisingly, Iran was very open about it.  As soon as Western powers demanded it, Iran allowed UN inspectors to visit the site, and negotiated a possible deal to ship their enriched uranium to other countries to be refined for use in a medical reactor.  Now that the inspection has been completed, there are more questions than answers.

According to the New York Times, the inspectors who went into the new facility found it to potentially serve as a backup in case the main facilities at Natanz and elsewhere were destroyed or otherwise sabotaged.  This begs the question, why would Iran have only one backup facility, especially since this one is so small?  The only logical explanation is, of course, that there are other secret facilities spread around Iran.  This would be game-changing in our policy of engagement with Iran.    If Iran has a whole secret network of backup facilities, agreeing to send their declared enriched uranium away is therefore completely worthless.

By some estimates, the amount of enriched uranium Iran proposed to send to other countries could be easily remade within the space of a year.  This is just in the facilities we know about.  Given that Iran is not that small of a country in terms of land area, as well as their varied terrain, secret nuclear facilities could be hidden just about anywhere.  For all we know, there could be dozens, if not hundreds of them hidden throughout the country.  If that is the case, not only will Iran be capable of replenishing their stockpile of enriched uranium very quickly, but they may have already acquired nuclear weapons unbeknownst to us.

In addition to all of this, Iran’s diplomatic tactics leave little hope for the deal proposed in September.  A few days ago, President Obama met with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in China to discuss Iran during the Asia-Pacific conference that was the primary purpose of the Shanghai stop, according to this article.  Within the Obama administration, Iran has until the end of the year to get serious about the proposal; otherwise, the U.S. will likely pursue greater sanctions against the regime.  I am still not convinced that sanctions are the best route to take, but we have given diplomacy a shot, and it appears to have failed.  Now we must simply choose between the lesser of two evils: increased sanctions, or yet another war in the Middle East.  If it does come down to this, I would choose the sanctions.

UPDATE 11/18, 11:02 PM CST: Today, Iran’s government gave its answer to the IAEA in the form of a statement to the press.  Unfortunately, it is not the statement we all hoped for.  Iran essentially rejected the main part of the agreement that had been negotiated back in October by saying that they would rather not ship their enriched uranium out of the country.  They offered instead to reprocess it in Iran, but we all know how that is going to fare in Washington, Paris, and Moscow.  The fact of the matter is, the West does not trust Iran to be telling the truth regarding their intentions, and it does indeed seem suspicious when one looks at the matter.  While Western diplomats have stated they will wait until the formal written response from Iran is delivered to the IAEA, it is pretty clear to me that we are headed for another round of sanctions.