[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] Nuking the Treaty

[Bill Totten]

Iran is the least of the world's offenders against non-proliferation.

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (July 28 2008)


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 {1}. The United States seems prepared, for the
first time since the revolution, to open a diplomatic office in Tehran
{2}. But in Geneva ten days ago, the Iranians filibustered until the
negotiations ended {3}. On Saturday President Ahmadinejad announced that
Iran has now doubled the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium
{4}. 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
{5, 6}. 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 {7}. 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) {8}.
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" {9}. But like every other such document, it made no mention
of the principal owner of these weapons in the region: Israel. According
to a leaked briefing by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, Israel
possesses between sixty and eighty nuclear bombs {10}. 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 {11}. 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" {12}. 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 United
Kingdom is one, to work towards "general and complete disarmament" {13}.
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 {14, 15}. Since then defence ministers have told
the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made
{16, 17, 18, 19, 20}. 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 {21}. 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 {22}.

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 {23, 24, 25, 26}. In some ways the current
nuclear stand-off is more dangerous than the tetchy détente of the Cold War.

The danger has been heightened by the US government's current offensive.
Condoleeza 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 {27, 28}. 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 {29} - 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 {30}.
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

References:

1. UN Security Council, 12th June 2008. Letter to the Islamic Republic
of Iran.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2008/infcirc730.pdf

2. Ewen MacAskill, 18th July 2008. Iran: US will seek green light to
open base in Tehran. The Guardian.

3. Julian Borger, 20th July 2008. Iran given two-week deadline to end
the nuclear impasse. The Observer.

4. No author given, 27th July 2008. Iran: Nuclear centrifuge total has
doubled. The Observer.

5. Barack Obama, 23rd July 2008. Speech in Sderot.
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog#top

6. Gordon Brown, 21st July 2008. Speech to the Knesset.
http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page16003.asp

7. National Intelligence Council, November 2007. National Intelligence
Estimate. http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf

8. IAEA, 26th May 2008. Implementation of the NPT SafeguardsAgreement
and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006),
1747 (2007) and 1803 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2008/gov2008-15.pdf

9. UN Security Council, ibid.

10. US DIA, July 1999. The Decades Ahead, 1999-202. Extracted at:
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/index.html

11. Joseph Cirincione, 11th March 2005. Iran and Israel's Nuclear Weapons.
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=3217

12. Bob Ainsworth, 26th March 2008.
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080326/halltext/80326h0009.htm

13. Article VI. http://www.un.org/events/npt2005/npttreaty.html

14. Matthew Taylor, 25th July 2008. Britain plans to spend GBP 3 billion
on new nuclear warheads. The Guardian.

15. You can see the document here:
http://www.cnduk.org/index.php/press-releases/trident/secret-plan-to-replace-nuclear-warheads-parliament-misled.html

16. Bob Ainsworth, 26th March 2008.

17. Des Browne, 7th January 2008.

18. Des Browne, 28th November 2007.

19. Des Browne, 19th November 2007.

20. Des Browne, 12 September 2007.

21. Des Browne, 5th February 2008. 'Laying the Foundations for
Multilateral Disarmament'. Geneva Conference on Disarmament.
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/People/Speeches/SofS/20080205layingTheFoundationsForMultilateralDisarmament.htm

22. Matthew Taylor, ibid.

23. This was first mentioned by Geoff Hoon, 24th March 2002 on The
Jonathan Dimbleby Show, ITV 1, and has been reiterated several times since.

24.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/migrated/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/US-joint-nuclear-operations.pdf

25. No author given, 19th January 2008. Pre-Emptive Nuclear Threat
Issued By Russian General Yuri Baluyevsky. Sky News.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Sky-News-Archive/Article/20082851301432

26. Jacques Chirac, quoted by John Thornhill and Peter Spiegel, 20th
January 2006. The Financial Times.

27. No author give, 26th July 2008. Condoleezza Rice Paks a
proliferation punch. The Economic Times.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Condoleezza_Rice_Paks_a_proliferation_punch/articleshow/3281756.cms

28. Sue Pleming, 24th July 2008. Rice says will push Congress hard on
India deal. Reuters.

29. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/09/21/proliferation-treaty/

30. Elana Schor, 22nd July 2008. Q&A: India's stalled nuclear deal with
the US. The Guardian.

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/07/29/nuking-the-treaty/


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