Army Report Warns Against:
Mideast Nuclear "Death Bath"

Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Courtesy of: World Tribune

Washington--A report published by the US Army War College ruled out a US military or diplomatic option to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Instead, the report, entitled "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran," said the dismantling of Israel's purported nuclear weapons program could be the only way to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The report, entitled "Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran," was edited by Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, and Patrick Clawson, deputy director at the Washington Institute.

"You have a whole neighborhood of folks posed, at any time, to go nuclear," Sokolski said. "A Middle East with yet more nuclear powers could turn into a big, big death bath."

The report envisioned a nuclear Iran seeking to dominate the Middle East and intimidating neighboring Europe. The scenarios included skyrocketing oil prices, the reduction of US influence in the region and increased insurgency in Israel and Gulf Arab states.

The report financed by the Defense Department and to have been based on leading US experts in nuclear proliferation, Iran and the Middle East recommended that the United States encourage "Israel to set the pace of nuclear restraint in the region by freezing its large reactor at Dimona and calling on all other states that have large nuclear reactors to follow suit."

The report also called on Israel to agree to International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the Dimona nuclear reactor, said to house the nuclear weapons program of the Jewish state.

Israel has never confirmed or denied reports that it possessess nuclear weapons. But the Jewish state has pledged not to be the first to use nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

In July 2004, IAEA Director-General Mohammed El Baradei urged Israel to abandon nuclear weapons in proposed regional arms control negotiations. The United States has not formally joined this call.

The report said the dismantling of Israel's nuclear weapons could lead to similar moves by other countries in the Middle East, including Algeria and Egypt--But the report envisioned that Iran would not halt its nuclear program and could achieve weapons capability in 2006.

As a first step, Israel was urged to announce the cessation of operations at Dimona. The report said Israel should then be prepared to dismantle Dimona and transfer nuclear material to the United States.

"It should make clear, however, that Israel will only take this additional step when at least two of the three Middle Eastern nations--Algeria, Egypt, or Iran--follow Israel's lead by mothballing their own declared nuclear facilities that are capable of producing at least one bomb's worth of plutonium or highly enriched uranium in 1 to 3 years," the report said.

Under the proposal, all states in the Middle East would dismantle their large research and power reactors, hexafluoride, enrichment plants, and reprocessing capabilities. Pakistan and other nuclear weapons states must also agree not to redeploy nuclear weapons in the Middle East during peacetime.

"With a nuclear weapons option acting as a deterrent to the United States and allied action against it, Iran would likely lend greater support to terrorists operating against Israel, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and the United States," the report said.

The United States should work to contain and deter Iran from posing such threats, the report said. The report recommended increasing US-GCC naval cooperation, constructing pipelines in the Southern Gulf and isolating Iran.

"Would taking these steps eliminate the Iranian nuclear threat?" the report said. "No."
Given Iran's extensive nuclear know-how and capabilities, it is unlikely that the United States or its allies can deny Iran the technical ability to covertly make nuclear weapons."

The report warned that Iran could not be bribed into submission. Tehran could respond with a war against the United States, Israel and Arab allies.

"Any overt military attack would give Tehran a casus belli either to withdraw from the NPT, or to rally Islamic Jihadists to wage war against the United States and its allies more directly," the report said.

"Whatever might be gained in technically delaying Iran's completion of having a bomb option would have to be weighed against what might be lost in Washington's long-term efforts to encourage more moderate Islamic rule in Iran and the Middle East."

coutesy of:
http://worldtribune.com/worldtribune/05/front2453719.0569444443.html