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Condoleezza Rice and Iran's nuclear weapons
By Christopher King
Redress, June 10, 2008
Christopher King argues that the USA and Britain will use the same
techniques they used to justify aggression against Iraq – falsehood,
deception and disinformation – in order to attack Iran and seize its
oil.
When the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) latest report
on Iran’s nuclear programme was released to the United Nations last
week, US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice was quick to
say: "I think right now the Iranians have a lot of explaining to
do about the IAEA report, which essentially sees them as not
cooperating on some very important dark questions...,” and more like
this.
I tried to check the IAEA website but the report hasn’t been
released to the public by the IAEA board. This gives a wonderful
time window within which the Bush administration can spin IAEA
reports however they wish. Condoleezza and other administration
officials will always be able to grab headlines with this sort of
alarmist rubbish which the media gleefully report verbatim. When the
report is eventually released and one can examine the facts, the
propaganda has had its effect. Those of us who are interested in
fact rather than invention can’t get the same audience and, to the
media, the story is dead anyway. That’s how Messrs Bush and Blair
took us to war against Afghanistan and Iraq. The same technique is
being used now to justify attacking Iran.
President Bush blamed the Iranians for killing Americans in Iraq by
supplying “sophisticated shaped charge weapons” which turned out to
be a lie – none of Iranian origin were ever found. Similarly, when
the display to newsmen of General Petraeus’s arms cache last May had
to be cancelled because experts could not tie the weapons to Iran,
with it went the lie that Iran was supplying conventional arms to
Iraqi fighters. Then Iranian “strategic advisers” were supposed to
have been coordinating the Mahdi resistance in Basra a few months
ago. No-one ever even claimed to have seen an Iranian strategist.
All lies and invention but it’s these that people remember.
So Iran’s nuclear programme is the only scare and blame story left.
Let’s have a look at it. We don’t have the latest IAEA report but we
do have the previous one of February 2008 which stated the
outstanding issues.
Check it out.
These are historic issues. They are not about current matters. They
relate to when and from whom Iran obtained information about
manufacturing nuclear weapons, as well as whether the evidence
supplied by the United States and others is genuine or not. It’s
about the involvement of Dr A.Q. Khan, the leading figure in
developing Pakistan’s nuclear programme, and his dissemination of
weapons technology and information to Libya, North Korea, Iraq and
Iran in the 1980s and 1990s. The IAEA’s outstanding queries are not
about the physical manufacture of weapons, nor current weapons
programmes.
The current position is being monitored by the IAEA, which reported
several years ago that Iran had no current weapons programme.
Despite this, the Bush administration insisted for years that Iran
had a current weapons programme. This was echoed by our UK
politicians who thought that they knew better than the IAEA if they
thought at all. Conceivably, the US security services realized that
disagreeing with IAEA inspectors on the ground would eventually make
them look as incompetent at they did over Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) and they contradicted their own president. So
another lie collapsed.
The central issue to these queries is whether Iran ever had a
nuclear weapons programme in the past. The Iranians say they have
never had one and in March 2008 made a
statement to the United Nations secretary-general of this
position and their right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Whether or not the Iranians began a
weapons programme in the 1980/90s, they don’t have one now. You
might wonder then what relevance these outstanding queries have to
the current security of the Middle East, Europe and the United
States. The answer is that they have no relevance or importance
whatever to it.
The known facts are that the Iranians secretly imported centrifuges
for uranium enrichment from Pakistan together with associated
technology. They also received a document describing means of
purifying uranium for weapons purposes, smelting, casting and
machining the metal into forms suitable for a weapon. The Iranians
say that it was given to them, unrequested, by Pakistan with the
centrifuges. Iran surrendered this voluntarily to the IAEA. The
centrifugal enrichment project is on-going and Iran claims this as
its right under the NPT. It is perfectly within its rights in doing
so.
Other documentation on weapons technology passed by the US and
others to the IAEA and purporting to have originated with Iran is
said by the Iranians to be forgeries. This includes diagrams of
rocket re-entry vehicles, material from a computer supplied by the
US and documents relating to weapons technology and procurement.
Forgeries or not, in terms of security these issues are irrelevant
while Iran cooperates with the IAEA in permitting inspections under
the NPT.
The IAEA is interested in these questions for purposes of mapping
the extent of Dr Khan’s dispersion of nuclear technology, but even
this is, in practice, unimportant. This technology cannot be kept
secret and, as the Iranians say, it’s all available on open sources
anyway. It is simply unnecessary to believe or disbelieve the
Iranians while the IAEA keeps up inspections and confirms that no
current weapons programme exists. Whether or not the Iranians know
how to make a weapon is also unimportant. Far more information on
nuclear weapons can now be found in any university library than was
allegedly given by the US spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the
Russians as the foundation of their weapons programme and for which
they were executed. Time and access to information have moved on. Of
course, the Iranians could design a nuclear weapon. That is a stupid
issue. Any good university physics department could research and put
together such a programme from open sources. The critical security
issue is whether Iran has the materials for weapons. These are
extremely difficult to obtain. We know that it does not have them,
because the IAEA inspectors say so.
It is true that Iran’s enrichment programme might potentially give
it the capability of making weapons-grade Uranium 235. The whole
point of IAEA inspections under the NPT is to ensure that this does
not occur. Iran has accepted a penalty for its secret enrichment
activities prior to 2003 in the form of an “additional protocol”
which requires an expanded declaration of its nuclear activities and
broader inspection rights for the IAEA. There doesn’t seem to be a
problem here.
Why does the US administration not adopt this view? For the same
reason it did not accept the UN weapons inspectors’ reports on Iraqi
WMD. It asserted falsely that Iraq was buying uranium from Africa,
had mobile chemical factories, a nuclear weapons programme and was
involved in the attack on the World Trade Centre. The US wanted
Iraqi oil and it wants the Iranians’ oil. Saddam Hussein told the
truth – he had no WMD and the weapons inspectors confirmed it. He
thought that because he told the truth and because of international
law he was safe. He thought that the issue was really about WMD; he
didn’t understand that it was about oil and that international law
means nothing to the US. Even as you read this the US is attempting
to
ram an agreement through the Iraqi parliament giving it control
over Iraqi oil, 13 permanent bases in Iraq and immunity for US
citizens from Iraqi law.
This is what Iranians need to understand. That they have no nuclear
weapons programme does not mean that they will not be attacked. The
US and the UK want their oil. Their mission is allegedly democracy.
The Mossadeq government was a fully democratic, model government –
precisely what the US claims it wants for the Middle East – but it
nationalized Iran’s oil interests. For doing that, the UK and US
brought it down and installed the Shah with his vicious secret
police, laying the foundation for the Islamic revolution. With its
present Middle Eastern policy the US is laying the foundations for
much greater upheavals both for itself and the rest of the world.
Does Iran have a concealed weapons programme? That is for the IAEA
to say, not President Bush or the US and UK security services, which
have a failed record on Iraq. Certainly not our UK politicians who
cannot manage simple issues such as public transport, among many
others. Iran’s best strategy is to accept the IAEA as its best
friend and give the inspectors every possible cooperation. If Iran
is suspicious of the IAEA inspectors, we should remember that the US
used the access given to the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq for
military spying purposes. Confidence-building is needed on both
sides.
Now, I have never been there and have no particular reason to like
or dislike Iran, although I understand that its people are friendly
and hospitable beyond our own reserved practice. The heart of the
matter is that we have a common humanity and the obligation to treat
each other well. To attack Iran would be profoundly wrong, both
ethically and in its practical effects. Respect for life together
with truth and all our standards of civilized behaviour have been
abandoned in this oil grab by the UK and US governments. They are
acting against the interests of their own citizens, much less with
respect for the lives and welfare of Iranians and Iraqis. Nor can I
imagine why the United Nations goes along with this.
Our security lies not in warfare but in treating each other well and
building confidence by cooperation. A naïve view? It is on this view
that Europe has built the European Union and has enjoyed
unprecedented peace and prosperity for over 60 years. Even here, at
a time when the EU is extending rapprochement with Russia, the US is
creating dissention by attempting to install missile facilities in
Poland and the Czech Republic, on Russia’s borders. It is the US
that has a naïve and dangerous view of its own interests.
Condoleezza’s boss, President Bush, constantly rambles
inarticulately about Iran’s nuclear (sic) weapons and this says
everything about him. I never normally criticize anyone’s
intelligence – we take what we get and do our best with it – but
this is the man who has devastated Iraq and Afghanistan and controls
the nuclear weapons of the most powerful military force in the
world. Condoleezza, on the other hand, is purportedly an intelligent
woman. I don’t see it in what she says and does – or is her career
more important to her than killing millions of people in Iraq and
Iran?
It’s only a job, Condoleezza. You’d do more good as a waitress in a
health food restaurant. Really.
Christopher King is a retired consultant and
lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.
http://www.redress.cc/global/cking20080603
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