Is Iran’s ‘nuke’ another red herring?
By Tej Pattison Sapru
BANGALORE (Jan. 31)—The International Atomic Energy Agency in November released a report that declared that it had found “additional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
The statements and actions that followed up this announcement steadily ratcheted up the tension between Iran and the international community, specifically Israel and the United States.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently expressed certainty that Iran is trying to obtain nuclear weapons, saying there is “no other possible or conceivable explanation for what they [Iran] had been actually doing. And that should be stopped.”
Furthermore the United Nations, in an effort spearheaded by the United States, has declared economic sanctions on Iran, which completely isolates the country’s central bank. What’s more, any country that does trade with Iran will also face the threat of economic isolation.
As a result of these tactics, the value of Iran’s currency, the rial, has plummeted, and currently sells at a little less than 11,300 rial to the dollar.
When looking at the face-off between Iran and the United States and its ally Israel, it is important that we do not forget that Israel has a nuclear arsenal.
Though Israel’s public stance is that it does not desire to be the first country to introduce nuclear arms to the Middle East, the lie behind that statement was proven beyond doubt when Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, revealed details of the Israeli nuclear program to the British press in 1986.
Though it came at the price of 18 years in prison after he was convicted of treason, Vanunu’s actions ensured that everything Israel and its allies say about the prevention of nuclear proliferation rings hollow.
This fact adds an important dimension to panicked news articles about the nuclear threat that Iran poses or listening to U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney run an election campaign built around statements like “if we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon.”
Iran’s nuclear weapons program exaggerated
The truth of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is an interesting contrast to the much-talked-about nuclear weapons program in Iran, and the IAEA report.
Experts such as Robert Kelley, a retired IAEA director and nuclear engineer, who worked with the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons program for 30 years, told veteran U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh there is very little new information in the damning IAEA report.
The reason the public is so quick to believe that Iran is trying to build a nuclear bomb is because, like Iraq, it actively worked towards obtaining nuclear weapons capability in the recent past.
One could argue that with an aggressive, nuclear-armed neighbor like Israel, working toward obtaining an effective deterrent is sound foreign policy, but that is not relevant to the situation today. What is relevant is that since 2003 Iran publicly shut down its nuclear weapons program and carefully followed the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a signatory.
This means that all of its uranium enrichment plants are under constant surveillance, and so far there is no uranium in Iran that is not accounted for. Furthermore, U.S. and Israeli intelligence has been very active in Iran, under the presidency of George Bush, who declared that Iran was a member of “the axis of evil.” Dick Cheney maintained extremely high-tech surveillance of Iran’s suspected weapons program under the impressively named Joint Special Operations Force Command—and they never found anything.
Before we give too much credence to the current IAEA report, we should bear in mind, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that described newly installed director of the IAEA, Yukiya Amano , as being “solidly in the U.S. court on every strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments, to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”
The next Iraq?
The face-off between Iran and the international community has eerie parallels to the public outcry and extreme economic sanctions that came in reaction to a perceived nuclear weapons program in Iraq, a buildup that climaxed with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Iran got a firsthand view of what happened to Iraq when they went down this path and so has shown a remarkable willingness to cooperate, especially given its historically contentious relationship with the United States.
The admittance of IAEA investigators into the country is another indication of this cooperation. It remains to be seen, however, whether this openness leads to an easing of the pressure being placed on the country.
It stands to reason that, like in Iraq, the United States’ need to maintain hegemony in the Middle East plays as much a part in the current situation in Iran as any fear of nuclear weapons, and given the recent history of the world, from Iraq to Libya, there is good reason to fear for the future of Iran’s stable, democratically elected government.
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