We
Lie and Bluster About Our Nukes - And Then Wag Our Fingers At
Iran
By failing to disarm and breaking the rules when it suits,
nuclear states are driving proliferation as much as Ahmadinejad
By George Monbiot
02/08/08 "The
Guardian" -- - 29/07/08 -- What is
the Iranian government up to? For once the imperial coalition,
overstretched in Iraq and unpopular at home, is proposing jaw,
not war. The UN security council's offer was a good one: if Iran
suspended its uranium enrichment programme, it would be entitled
to legally guaranteed supplies of fuel for nuclear power,
assistance in building a light water reactor, foreign aid,
technology transfer and the beginning of the end of economic
sanctions. The US seems prepared, for the first time since the
revolution, to open a diplomatic office in Tehran. But in
Geneva, 10 days ago, the Iranians filibustered until the
negotiations ended. On Saturday President Ahmadinejad announced
that Iran has now doubled the number of centrifuges it uses to
enrich uranium. A fourth round of sanctions looks inevitable.
The unequivocal statements Barack Obama and Gordon Brown made in
Israel last week about Iran's nuclear weapons programme cannot
yet be justified. Nor can the unequivocal statements by some
anti-war campaigners that Iran does not intend to build the
bomb. Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and
so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the
threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states,
if it accepted the UN's terms?
Those who maintain that Iran's purposes are peaceful clutch at
the National Intelligence Estimate published by the US
government in November. While it judged that Iran had halted its
nuclear weapons programme in 2003, it saw the country's civilian
uranium programme as a means of developing "technical
capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons,
if a decision is made to do so". The latest report from the
International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile
material has been diverted from Iran's stocks, but raises grave
questions about some of the documents it has found, which
suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are
forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under
no obligation to accept Ahmadinejad's claims of peaceful intent.
Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own
representatives. The security council's offer to Iran claimed
that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a
"Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction". But like
every other such document, it made no mention of the principal
owner of weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked
briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses
between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries
demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn't yet possess
are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess.
This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor
Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies
provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass
destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran,
North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. During
a parliamentary debate in March the British defence minister Bob
Ainsworth was asked whether he thought that Israel's nuclear
weapons are "a destabilising factor" in the Middle East. "My
understanding," he replied, "is that Israel does not acknowledge
that it has nuclear weapons." Does Mr Ainsworth really buy this
nonsense? If so, can we have a new minister? If Iran builds a
bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a
nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels
threatened.
But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation
treaty (NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which
the UK is one, to work towards "general and complete
disarmament". On Friday, the Guardian published the notes for a
speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested
that the decision to replace the UK's nuclear missiles had
already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny.
Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five
occasions that the decision has not yet been made. They appear
to have misled the House.
At the Geneva conference on disarmament in February, one
delegate pointed out that the "chances of eliminating nuclear
weapons will be enhanced immeasurably" if non-nuclear states can
see "planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear
disarmament by nuclear weapon states" like the UK. If the
nuclear states "are failing to fulfil their disarmament
obligations", other nations would use this as an excuse for
maintaining their weapons. Who was this firebrand? Des Browne,
the secretary of state for defence. A man of the same name is
failing to fulfil our disarmament obligations.
Browne claims that Britain must maintain its arsenal because of
proliferation elsewhere, just as those proliferating elsewhere
say that they must develop their arsenals because the official
nuclear nations aren't disarming. With the exception of France,
none of the other European states feels the need to deploy
nukes. But the UK keeps preparing for the last war. Of course,
no one is refusing to disarm; it's just that the task keeps
getting pushed into the indefinite future. Opponents of British
nuclear weapons maintain that a new generation of warheads would
survive until 2055.
The permanent members of the UN security council draw a
distinction between their "responsible" ownership of nuclear
weapons and that of the aspirant powers. But over the past six
years, the UK, US, France and Russia have all announced that
they are prepared to use their nukes pre-emptively against a
presumed threat, even from states that do not possess nuclear
weapons. In some ways the current nuclear stand-off is more
dangerous than the tetchy detente of the cold war.
The danger has been heightened by the US government's current
offensive. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is
demanding that other countries accept her plans to destroy the
last remaining incentive for states to abide by the NPT. The
treaty grants countries which conform to it materials for
nuclear power on favourable terms. It's a flawed incentive - as
the spread of civil nuclear programmes makes the proliferation
of military material more likely - but an incentive nonetheless.
Now Rice insists that India should have special access to US
nuclear materials despite the fact that it has not signed the
NPT and has illegally developed nuclear weapons.
If she is successful, this effort - and the concomitant US
demand that India is recognised as an official nuclear power -
will blow the NPT to kingdom come. The treaty which survived the
cold war, and which remains the most important of the wilting
guarantees against global annihilation, is being nuked for the
sake of a few billion dollars of export orders.
Here's where it gets really depressing. The Bush
administration's proposal has been supported by both John McCain
and Barack Obama. The contrast between Obama's position on India
and his statements on Iran could not be greater, or more
destructive of the inflated hopes now vested in him.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's insistence that Iran enriches its own
fissile material, and the guessing game he is playing with
Israel, the atomic energy agency and the UN security council is
irresponsible and staggeringly dangerous. But if I were in his
position I might be tempted to do the same.
www.monbiot.com
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