[News] World's Biggest Nuclear Bully Demands Disarmament from Iran

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/ruder05182006.html

May 18, 2006


World's Biggest Nuclear Bully Demands Disarmament from Iran


Nuclear Hypocrites

By ERIC RUDER

For weeks, the mainstream media have been filled 
with accusations that Iran's nuclear program 
presents an alarming threat to the U.S. and the 
world. And a string of U.S. officials are 
threatening military action against Iran for refusing to "cooperate."

Dick Cheney promised that Iran would suffer 
"meaningful consequences" if it refused to 
abandon its nuclear program--words slightly less 
stark but no less menacing than U.S. Ambassador 
to the United Nations (UN) John Bolton's threat 
of "tangible and painful consequences."

But the media have ignored some essential facts 
about the brewing "crisis" between the U.S. and Iran.

The U.S. is striving to get a UN Security Council 
resolution demanding that Iran stop its nuclear 
program. But the truth is that Iran hasn't 
violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty 
(NPT) or any other international obligations.

"Let me remind everybody that nothing Iran is 
accused of doing is illegal," said Scott Ritter, 
the former UN weapons inspector who challenged 
the Bush drive to war against Iraq, in an 
interview last month. "We're condemning Iran for 
doing that which is permitted under a treaty 
which it has signed and entered into in force, 
and has UN inspectors on the ground verifying Iranian compliance."

The NPT explicitly allows nations to enrich 
uranium to provide energy for civilian power 
plants. But the U.S. refuses to believe Iran's 
many pledges that its nuclear facilities are for 
this purpose and endlessly repeats the claim that 
Iran could field a nuclear weapon soon.

Iran's announcement in April that it had 
successfully set up 164 centrifuges to enrich 
uranium spurred U.S. officials to assert that 
Iran could produce a nuclear weapons in 16 
days--an absurd claim slavishly repeated by the U.S. media.

In reality, Iran would need 16,000 of these 
centrifuges to refine enough uranium for a 
weapon--and Iran doesn't have enough uranium for 
this purpose. Although Iran has indigenous 
uranium deposits, they are contaminated by the 
element molybdenum, which Iran does not have the technology to remove.

A more realistic approximation came in the 2005 
U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which stated 
that Iran is at least 10 years away from being 
able to produce a nuclear weapon. And this 
assessment depends on two key assumptions--that 
Iran already has an active nuclear weapons 
program, and that the "international atmosphere" 
were conducive to Iran obtaining the necessary 
raw materials and technical support--neither of which are true.

In an attempt to defuse the controversy around 
its nuclear program, Iran offered to limit itself 
to procuring no more than 3,000 centrifuges--an 
offer that the U.S. refused to accept.

* * *

While Iran hasn't violated the provisions of the 
NPT, the same can't be said of the U.S.

Kennedy-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara 
declared last year that the U.S. is nothing short 
of a "nuclear outlaw." "I would characterize 
current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, 
illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous," said McNamara.

Since 1999, when the Senate rejected the Nuclear 
Test Ban Treaty, the U.S. has developed a new 
generation of "mini-nukes," also called "bunker 
busters," which U.S. officials have openly 
threatened to use against Iran--a clear violation 
of international law and the NPT.

The U.S. is in flagrant violation of the NPT's 
provisions calling on nuclear powers "to 
facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of 
nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their 
existing stockpiles, and the elimination from 
national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery."

According to the media watchdog group Fairness 
and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), "Thirty-seven 
years after agreeing to these conditions, the 
U.S.--the only nation to have ever used nuclear 
weapons against human beings--spends $40 billion 
a year to field, maintain and modernize nuclear 
forces, including an arsenal of 10,000 warheads, 
2,000 of which are on hair-trigger alert."

Of that number, the U.S. has some 480 nuclear 
weapons based in Europe--making it the only 
nuclear power that still deploys nuclear warheads 
outside its borders. U.S. war plans include the 
strategic handover of 180 of these weapons to 
other non-nuclear countries, such as Germany, 
Italy and Turkey, for deployment by their 
militaries--another clear violation of NPT provisions.

And, according to FAIR, "When details of a secret 
White House planning document, called the Nuclear 
Posture Review, were leaked in 2002, they 
revealed that the Bush administration intended to 
create and test new nuclear weapons, and outlined 
a broad array of contingencies under which the U.S. might use nuclear weapons.

"Among these contingencies: Using nuclear weapons 
against countries with no nuclear weapons 
capacity, such as Iran, Iraq and Syria. (To be 
fair, Presidential Directive 60, signed by 
President Bill Clinton in 1997, had earlier added 
these countries to nuclear targeting lists, 
canceling assurances that went back to 1978 that 
the U.S. would not use nuclear force against a non-nuclear country.)"

* * *

The U.S. refusal to consider Iran's proposal to 
make the Middle East a nuclear-free zone exposes 
what all the U.S. hype about Iran's supposed 
nuclear weapons program is really about.

On the surface, Iran's proposal appears to fit 
U.S. aims. In fact, the U.S. used UN Security 
Council Resolution 687, passed in 1991, which for 
"establishing in the Middle East a zone free of 
weapons of mass destruction" as justification for its 2003 war on Iraq.

But Israel is currently the only nuclear power in 
the Middle East--with an arsenal of some 300 
nuclear weapons. The U.S. doesn't want to 
eliminate nuclear weapons in the Middle East--so 
long as they remain in the hands of an ally.

That's why the U.S. gave a green light to Iran's 
nuclear program back in the 1970s, before the 
U.S.-backed Shah of Iran, Muhammed Reza Pahlavi, 
was overthrown by a popular uprising in 1979.

"The White House staffers, who are trying to deny 
Iran the right to develop its own nuclear energy 
capacity, have conveniently forgotten that the 
United States was the midwife to the Iranian 
nuclear program 30 years ago," wrote nuclear 
weapons expert William Beeman in January. "Every 
aspect of Iran's current nuclear development was 
approved and encouraged by Washington in the 
1970s. President Gerald Ford offered Iran a full 
nuclear cycle in 1976, and the only reactor 
currently about to become operative, the reactor 
in Bushire, was started before the Iranian revolution with U.S. approval."

Today, the U.S. faces different circumstances--some of its own making.

The disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq not only 
failed to cement Washington's hold on the 
country's huge oil reserves and give it a 
strategic foothold of the Middle East, but it 
brought to power Shiite religious parties with 
ties to Iran's Shiite establishment. This 
inadvertently strengthened Iran's influence in 
Iraq and the region, creating fears in the U.S. 
and among its Arab allies of a "Shiite crescent," 
stretching from Iran through Iraq to Lebanon and Syria.

So when the U.S. raises alarms about Iran's 
nuclear program, it's the responsibility of the 
antiwar movement to raise even louder alarms about U.S. aggression.

"[B]e careful of falling into the trap of 
nonproliferation, disarmament, weapons of mass 
destruction; this is a smokescreen," said Ritter 
in an April interview with San Diego CityBeat. 
"The Bush administration does not have policy of 
disarmament vis-à-vis Iran. They do have a policy of regime change...

"It's the exact replay of the game plan used for 
Iraq, where we didn't care what Saddam did, what 
he said, what the weapons inspectors found. We 
created the perception of a noncompliant Iraq, 
and we stuck with that perception, selling that 
perception until we achieved our ultimate 
objective, which was invasion that got rid of Saddam."

The U.S. wants to sell its war in Iran by using 
the language of nuclear disarmament. But its 
threats to use nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive 
strike, its support for a nuclear-armed Israel 
and its own massive nuclear arsenal make the U.S. 
itself the biggest threat to peace and justice in 
the Middle East and around the world.

Eric Ruder writes for the <http://www.socialistworker.org/>Socialist Worker.


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