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By Christopher King* 3 June 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 capablity 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 instal missile facilities in Poland and the Czech Repbulic, 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 nucular (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. Copyright © Redress Information & Analysis. All rights reserved. |
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