The progress of that resolution however is unclear and US intelligence assessments about Iran's nuclear capabilities are being questioned, with good cause. While an anonymous US official has told Reuters that things are moving full-steam ahead with the resolution, a European diplomat disputed that assertion.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Major powers on Thursday made progress toward agreeing on new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear program and hope to have their U.N. ambassadors begin drafting a formal Security Council resolution next week, a senior U.S. official said.
The official told Reuters senior officials representing the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany "were able to resolve most of the issues" in a two-hour conference call on Thursday and hoped to complete their deliberations in another conference call on Saturday.
[...]
Earlier, however, a European Union diplomat said, "A wish list of incrementally increased sanctions has been circulated but the discussion is nowhere near mature and this will not go to the Security Council for 2-3 more weeks."
That timing runs right up to the March 10th date of the Iraq war talks and risks having the Iranian government pulling out at the last minute.
The international community will not be fooled again by a US administration that fixed the intelligence around the policy as it did with Iraq and it needs to be cognizant of the two fronts the US is trying to manage. It seems one hand doesn't really care what the other hand is doing. Why should Iran talk to the US about helping the Iraqi government if it faces a second round of tougher sanctions? Or, maybe that's the point. Any belligerence shown by Iran would be a score in the win column for the US administration in its propaganda campaign.
Meanwhile, General Odierno had a few words about the so-called surge in Iraq:
The plan, which calls for 17,000 additional troops in Baghdad, will continue until at least this fall, the second-ranking commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, told CNN on Wednesday.
“I don’t want to put an exact time on it, but a minimum of six to nine months,” General Odierno said. He also said that Sunni militants were responsible for about 70 percent of the attacks on American troops.
That sounds suspiciously like a timetable to me. Apparently, the "Baghdad Brains Trust" agrees that the clock is ticking. Shades of Vietnam.
And while the administration has been beating the war drums against Iran and trying to tie its government to attacks in Iraq, it's quite obvious once again that the Iranians would not be backing the Sunnis which, as Odierno stated, are the real threat to US troops. To add insult to those real troop injuries, Sy Hersh recently reported that US government cash is ending up in the hands of Sunni extremist groups in the region but the administration is still bound and determined to keep pointing the finger at Iran, regardless:
Two weeks ago, Pentagon officials discussed a strategy to escalate U.S. pressure on Iran with the intention of creating the impression that the U.S. is ready to go to war, according to an account by one of the participants.
A meeting at the Pentagon in mid-February was said by the participant to have revolved around a plan to ratchet up U.S. rhetoric about an Iranian threat and make further military preparations for war in a way that would be reminiscent of what happened prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The account was described by a source outside the Pentagon who obtained it directly from the participant.
This description of Pentagon thinking suggests a strategy that is much more aggressive than the line represented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's announcement Tuesday that the United States would participate in direct talks with Iran in the context of a conference to be convened by the Iraqi government.
According to the account provided by the participant, the administration's decision last month to increase U.S. military strength in Iraq by at least 22,000 troops is related more to a strategy of increased pressure on Iran than to stabilizing the situation in Baghdad. The troop decision was described as putting the U.S. military in a better position to respond to attacks by Shi’ite forces on U.S troops in retaliation against a possible U.S. strike against Iran.
Do the soldiers know how they're being used? Probably not. This is all about freedom being on the march for the Iraqis, supposedly.
Not exactly.
And how will the new Iraq oil law affect the war?
WASHINGTON - The US-backed Iraqi cabinet approved a new oil law on Monday that is set to give foreign companies the long-term contracts and safe legal framework they have been waiting for, but which has rattled labor unions and international campaigners who say oil production should remain in the hands of Iraqis.
Independent analysts and labor groups have also criticized the process of drafting the law and warned that that the bill is so skewed in favor of foreign firms that it could end up heightening political tensions in the Arab nation and spreading instability.
For example, it specifies that up to two-thirds of Iraq's known reserves would be developed by multinationals, under contracts lasting for 15-20 years.
This policy represents a U-turn for Iraq's oil industry, which has been in the public sector for more than three decades, and would deviate from normal practice in the Middle East.
According to local labor leaders, transferring ownership to the foreign companies would give the United States a further pretext to continue its occupation - on the grounds that those companies will need protection.
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What's going on with Iran is just one big sideshow and it's not about Iraq at all. It's about Israel. But that's another tale for another day...
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