The US, Iran and Nuclear Terror

It would not be surprising if the Iranian regime decided at some point - perhaps in the near future - that it needed to develop nuclear weapons to protect itself from the belligerent rhetoric and threats of the US and Israel

By Anthony DiMaggio
First Published 2009-09-29,
Last Updated 2009-09-29 11:21:01
Courtesy Of Middle-East-Online

Iran's admission that it is enriching uranium at a second nuclear site was greeted with alarm in the halls of Washington and in American newsrooms on Friday. Obama has long warned about the "existential threat" that Iran poses to the US and its allies. Concern over a nuclear Iran is understandable for those who are committed to the abolition of nuclear weapons, and for those who worry about the danger that nuclear proliferation poses for human survival. It should be noted, however, that the Obama administration does not share those concerns. US officials have always been preoccupied with how to prohibit enemy states from developing these weapons, while ensuring maximum US and allied maneuverability in keeping such weapons, and even in using them when deemed necessary.

I consistently stress that US national intelligence and international intelligence provide no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. While I stand by this conclusion, it is worth noting that Iran's declaration this week that it was quietly developing nuclear fuel (fuel that it had not reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency) is troubling for those committed to transparency in the development and use of nuclear fuel. Indeed, it would not be surprising if the Iranian regime decided at some point - perhaps in the near future - that it needed to develop nuclear weapons to protect itself from the belligerent rhetoric and threats of the US and Israel. It is also at least theoretically possible that Iran already decided to proceed with a weapons program, although the uranium disclosed at Iran's two nuclear plants is clearly unfit to be used in developing such weapons. All of the uranium currently used in Iran - at least the uranium that has been reported to or found by the IAEA - is not of a weapons grade quality. The BBC reports that legally, Iran "does not need to inform the IAEA of any new [nuclear] site until 180 days before any nuclear material is placed in the facility." For the record, the second plant reported in the news this week is not yet operational. Hence it is not evidence - contrary to the claims of Obama - of an Iranian violation of the inspection process or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The major point that needs to be understood is that, as of today, there is still no hard evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

There is certainly good reason, however, for Iranians to be concerned with US aggression. Although the Obama administration indicates that it would sit down and negotiate with Iran without preconditions, it also refuses to take the military option off the table. The threat of a US attack (or an attack itself) threatens to throw an already volatile region into complete chaos. A review of the US foreign policy record is also a cause for concern when evaluating US threats against Iran. The review below is illuminating:

The number of major US invasions since World War II: 13

By conservative estimates, the US led over a dozen invasions of sovereign countries in the last 65 years - including attacks on North Korea (1950 and 1951), Cuba (1961), South Vietnam (1962), The Dominican Republic (1965), Cambodia (1970), Lebanon (1982-1983), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Haiti (1994), Afghanistan (2001), and Iraq again (2003). US covert operations designed to overthrow foreign governments are about three times more common than invasions. As William Blum explains in his classic book Rogue State, "From 1945 to the end of the century, the US attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes." To that list of attempted overthrows in the post-2000 period one could add Venezuela, Iraq, Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Iran - just to name the cases we know about.

The number of nuclear weapons that the US and allies possess, in violation of the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: 22,965

While Iran is a non-nuclear state, the number of nuclear weapons possessed by powers that either support sanctions or an attack on Iran is staggering (this list includes Russia, the US, UK, Israel, the UK, and France). The US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against civilians, despite its claims that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a responsible act intended to reduce American lives lost and force an early end to the war.

The number of times the IAEA has successfully inspected the US and its allies' nuclear arsenals in order to force them to disarm: 0

This point remains absolutely vital. Nuclear states retain their "right" to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely, while forcing other countries into inspections with the threat of sanctions and war. In the case of Iran and Iraq, both countries were forced into inspections by the UN Security Council - a body the US has long used as a weapon against weaker non-nuclear states. Furthermore, the US does not even pretend to secretly reconstitute its nuclear weapons stockpile. US leaders contemptuously flaunt their disregard of the NPT's disarmament requirement by publicly announcing their intent to redevelop nuclear weapons. The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program is a case in point, which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates supported as a means of "modernizing" the US nuclear stockpile. The program's funding was eventually cut off by Congress in 2008, although that has not stopped the US from developing and using other radioactive weapons such as Depleted Uranium shells in the battlefield. While Depleted Uranium is clearly not the same as a nuclear weapon, we would do well to remember that the danger of radioactive weapons is cited as a major reason for detaining alleged terrorists such as Jose Padilla - the infamous Chicago "dirty bomber."

The number of times Iran has threatened another country with nuclear annihilation: 0

Much has been made of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's alleged claim that he will "wipe Israel off the map." Scholarly analysis of this incident reveals that this is likely an inaccurate reading of Ahmadinejad's statement. As Middle East expert Juan Cole explains, the statement was originally drawn from a speech from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which promised that the "[Israeli] regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time." As those familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict understand, there is a great difference between demanding that an illegal occupation come to an end and a threat to wipe the state of Israel off the face of the earth. Ahmadinejad is rightly condemned throughout the world as an anti-Semite, but denying the Holocaust is not the equivalent of supporting the nuclear annihilation of Israel. Even if Ahmadinejad does believe that Israel should be destroyed, US pundits and officials are hard pressed to explain how he would accomplish this task without the possession of nuclear weapons, and in light of the fact that Ahmadinejad does not hold the power to make decisions regarding Iranian foreign policy. As the supreme leader in Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has final say over foreign policy. Furthermore, the Iranian leadership indicated as recently as 2003 that it was willing to negotiate an easing of tensions with the US, in exchange for recognizing Israel within the pre-1967 Israeli-Palestinian borders. This fact rarely makes it into journalistic and political screeds framing Iran as an "existential threat" to Israel.

The number of countries the US has explicitly threatened with nuclear annihilation: 8

I am aware of at least eight instances in which the US threatened countries with nuclear weapons. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2002, the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review included within it "contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, namely not only Russia and the "axis of evil" - Iraq, Iran, and North Korea - but also China, Libya, and Syria. In addition, the US Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis. And it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as ‘surprising military developments' of an unspecified nature." The Bush administration's National Security Presidential Directive 17 reaffirmed the US commitment to using nuclear weapons against any country that might use weapons of mass destruction against the US and its allies. Some might discount these two documents as merely defensive posturing or as simple contingency plans that are not likely to be implemented by the US It is worth reflecting for a moment, however, on how US leaders would react to similar documents threatening nuclear war against the US if they were issued by Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Iran, or any other national enemy.

US plans for nuking other countries go beyond vague hypotheticals. The Nixon administration famously popularized the "madman theory," whereby the US might nuke countries that oppose capitalist interests. As Nixon explained to his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, "I call it the madman theory. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the [Vietnam] war. We'll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry - and he has his hand on the nuclear button' - and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace."

Nixon's contemplation of nuclear blackmail was not an isolated incident. In 1995, the Strategic Command under the Clinton administration released a study speculating over the use of nuclear weapons for strategic purposes. Titled "Essentials of Post-Cold War Deterrence," the document concluded that the goal of US foreign policy should center on creating fear in the heart of adversaries: "Because of the value that comes from the ambiguity of what the US may do to an adversary if the acts we seek to deter are carried out. It hurts to portray ourselves as too fully rational or cool-headed. The fact that some elements may appear to be potentially ‘out of control' can be beneficial to creating and reinforcing fears and doubts in the minds of an adversary's decision makers. This essential sense of fear is the working force of deterrence. That the US may become irrational and vindictive if its vital interests are attacked should be part of the national persona we project to all adversaries...nuclear weapons always cast a shadow over any crisis in which the US is engaged. Thus, deterrence through the threat of nuclear weapons will continue to be our top military strategy." While some might again point out that the document states that the US is "not likely to use [nuclear weapons] in less than matters of the greatest national importance," one can imagine how US leaders would react if they read a document from Iraqi or Iranian officials making similar claims about their "responsible" possession and use of nuclear weapons.

American political elites and journalists will predictably cast stones at Iran for the alleged danger the regime poses to world order. Those with a critical knowledge of US history and policy will be more hesitant to accept this hypocritical "defensive" posturing. We should not discount the danger that the spread of nuclear weapons poses to human survival; but at the same time, we should never exaggerate threats when there is little to no evidence of an immediate danger. Anti-proliferation efforts need to be driven by a sincere, even-handed effort to disarm all nuclear and potentially nuclear powers, whether they are big or small, and regardless of whether they're powerful or weak.

Anthony DiMaggio teaches American and Global Politics at Illinois State University. He is the author of Mass Media, Mass Propaganda (2008) and the forthcoming When Media Goes to War (2010). He can be reached at adimagg@ilstu.edu.This article appeared in CounterPunch.org.

Don't Israel's Nuclear Weapons Count?

Netanyahu Has What He Wants To Keep Up The Idea Of His Plucky, Vulnerable Little State

By Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Monday, 28 September 2009
Courtesy Of The Independent

Influential Europeans – including many Muslims – recently debated freedom of expression with the Danish editor who commissioned the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed which led to riots. Held in Berlin, it was a good, at times blazing, debate.

Freedom of expression, we were given to understand, is one of the valves in Europe's heart that must remain open to keep our continent alive and healthy. In good faith I exercise that freedom in this column. Let us see if readers and interest groups will support my right to write what follows even if they violently disagree with my observations.

From past experience I bet many will find that impossibly hard. They will denounce me as an enemy within, a rule-breaker of unspoken rules, bringing up stuff that must be left buried in the name of peace and justice. I see no reason to comply. This week shows us how such doublethink and doublespeak pulls the world towards Armageddon.

Leaders of the rich nations have turned their fire on Iran, quite rightly. On Friday came news that the Islamic Republic had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant near Qom. Then the junta fired test missiles, to prove that the bearded ones have really big willies. Unlike Iraq under Saddam, there are, in Iran, nuclear developments that could lead to weapons of mass destruction. It is not an immediate but a future danger, say credible intelligence experts and indeed Barack Obama himself.

Suddenly the president has got uncharacteristically belligerent, instructing Iran to open up all its nuclear facilities for inspection if it wants to avoid "a path that is going to lead us to confrontation". In May, Obama stood in Washington with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu, who we were told was there to seek assurances that there would be no shift from the conventional US position of total and unconditional support for Israel's policies right or wrong, known and clandestine.

On Thursday the US, China, Britain, France, Russia and Germany meet in Geneva and, by that time, Iran will be expected to submit to international scrutiny. As a supporter of the now crushed and broken reformers in Iran, I back the ultimatum to the fanatic and bellicose Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But what about that camel in the room? The one we all see but can't point out? What about the only power in the Middle East, also fanatic and aggressive, which has a vast stockpile of weapons enough to obliterate the region? Listen people, we need to talk about Israel. And soon. Like now.

I have been in contact with a young Iranian woman who wore a green scarf and lipstick on the streets of Tehran, whose uncle is currently being tortured in prison there for demonstrating against the results of the election. Somehow she escaped from the country and is in Britain briefly before going on to the US to make a new life. Let us call her M.

Nobody could hate Ahmadinejad more than M; she hates the whole regime, the treacherous leaders who betrayed the people. When she speaks she often gets asthmatic. But yet, but yet, she finds her passions rising for her country this week because of fears of military strikes by Israel and the manifestly unfair way that Israel is indulged. "I will go back if they attack my country, even if they put me to jail," M says. "That is my duty. Israel is the enemy of peace and America gives them money to get more arms. I don't want Iran to have these terrible weapons, but Israel must also be stopped."

The big powers are moving tentatively towards global de-nuclearisation, taking small but significant steps to show they do want everyone to pitch in. Obama's decision to shelve the European defence missile programme shows serious intent, so too Gordon Brown's announcement that Britain would cut down from four to three its Trident missile-carrying submarines. There was a moment this spring, albeit fleeting, when Rose Gottemoeller, an assistant secretary of state and Washington's chief nuclear arms negotiator, asked Israel to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus breaking the 40-year-old silence and US complicity in its accumulated, un-inspected arsenal. Her reasonable appeal provoked apoplexy in a nation that assumes special, indeed exceptional, treatment.

In the 1960s, Israel successfully hid its weapons from US inspectors. In 1986, Israeli nuclear technical assistant Mordechai Vanunu revealed information about the concealed stockpiles and has been punished ever since. Hubristic Israel no longer cares to deny that it has hundreds of atom and hydrogen bombs and devastating biological "tools". Netanyahu has been warning he will destroy the Iranian sites if his country feels the danger is real. Now he has just what he wanted – another crisis in the Middle East, to keep up the idea of plucky, vulnerable, endangered little Israel.

Alarmingly, even the liberal Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz is on side. History has made too many Israelis fear all humanity in perpetuity and that fear brings out the worst in that nation. It has predictably rejected the long, sober, unbiased UN report on the last assault on Gaza chaired by Richard Goldstone. He accused Hamas of crimes against Jewish civilians and charged Israel with grave crimes, the breaking of the Geneva convention, punishing and terrorising unarmed civilians.

I have some images of these victims sent to me by a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist. Children turned to ash, blistered mothers weeping, and on and on. There still is no respite for the hungry and dying in Gaza. If Israel can mete out such treatment and not be called to account, just think what the state feels entitled to do to Iran.

The Israeli human rights activist Gideon Spiro bravely asks that his country be subject to the same rules as Iran and all others in the Middle East: "Rein in Israel, compel it to accept a regime of nuclear disarmament and oblige it to open all nuclear, biological and chemical facilities and missile sites to international inspection." The US has leverage because it maintains and funds Israel. If Obama shies away from this, there can be no moral justification to go for Iran or North Korea or any other rogue state. And the leader whose election and dreams gave hope to millions thereby hastens the end of the world.

y.alibhaibrown@independent.co.uk

More from Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Pakistanis Want US Declared ‘Hostile State’

By Atif F Qureshi
Source: PKKH
Monday, Sep 14, 2009
Courtesy Of Axis Of Logic

Can Pakistan resist Pax Pox Americana?

When it is said to them: “Make not mischief on the Earth,” they say: “Why, we only want to make peace!”

Holy Qur’an 2:11

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Wherever the Americans go, their policies spread poison. Under the pretext of ‘freedom and democracy’ US policy-makers trample over weaker nations, placing and replacing puppet rulers on a whim and propagandising against all aspirations for true independence. (Stephen Kinzer’s Overthrown is a must book to read in this context).

With total control of global media, and their weapons of mass distraction, they are able to crush resistance at the very root – before it even forms in the mind. Just as Noam Chomsky said, “If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged”.

Yet in spite of the ‘fasad-fil-ardh’ that America has unleashed around the world, we still see an unseemly obsession with all things American. Suffering from a mass psychosis akin to Stockholm-syndrome, even nations traumatised and brutalised by America see only America as possible salvation. Clearly, American propagandists have done their work well.

Not in Pakistan. In what can only be described as a clear and hopeful sign that this nation is awakening, recent polls have revealed that the Pakistani public categorically denounces American policies. A recently conducted poll by PakistanKaKhudaHafiz.com revealed that 89% of over 1,000 participants were of the opinion that the United States should be declared as a hostile state.

This only reinforces another scientifically conducted poll conducted by the Al-Jazeera network that found that over 70% of Pakistanis held America to be the greatest threat to the sovereignty and independence of Pakistan – even greater than arch-rival and eternal enemy India.

So great is this a problem for the Americans that when their Generals in the region are quizzed by journalists, they are more likely to be asked about the ‘battle for hearts and minds’ rather than actual battles. But in spite of the feigned concern in Washington, the widespread anti-Americanism is not too great a concern for US policymakers. After all, as far as the US is concerned, only Pakistan’s puppet leaders need be pro-US – the rest of Pakistan can go to hell. But in this lies the problem for the US. As the farcical reality of Pakistan’s democracy is becoming increasingly clear to the public at large, they are turning their ire not just on their puppet leaders, but on their foreign puppet-masters. And this does not bode well for US’s future plans for the region.

This anti-US mood in Pakistan is nothing new. It is a mode of thought that is familiar to most Pakistanis – and with good reason. US-Pak relations have always been fractious – not based on mutual trust and respect but on mutual suspicion and necessity. Every Pakistani, from street sweeper to industrialist, knows of the infamous incident in the early 1990’s when the US failed to deliver to Pakistan dozens of F16 fighter jets that Pakistan had already paid for – and not content with humiliating a proud nation enough, in a final salvo, they instead delivered of all things – wheat. The Pakistani public were not impressed to say the least.

But that is old hat. More recently, America has committed a litany of errors that can only lead an objective person to conclude that not only does the US not have Pakistan’s interest to heart, but they are only interested in marginalising and destabilising Pakistan through any means possible. The Pakistani people are not blind. They see the chicanery clearly:

• The ’surge’ in American troops in Afghanistan accompanied a ’surge’ in terrorism in Pakistan. While the Afghan Taliban never threatened Pakistani sovereignty, since 2001 thousands of innocents have been killed in a wave of suicide bombings in Pakistan that ‘coincidently’, only began after the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 2001.
  
  
• The deliberate spread of the Afghan occupation into Pakistan and the treatment of both nations as a single theatre or ‘battlefield’ called AfPak. The notion that both nations are to be treated the same even though one is war-torn and primitive while the other has a sophisticated civic society is laughable, but the idea that American forces can strike into Pakistan with impunity is enough to make the average Pakistani’s blood boil.
  
  
• Wave after wave of callous and imprecise drone attacks. These achieve practically nothing while only murdering innocent civilians and riling up the Pakistani public who despair at their feckless government for being complicit in continual violations of the nations sovereignty and dignity.
  
  
• Since 2001 the US has turned a blind eye towards Indian Intelligence operations from inside Afghanistan designed to destabilize Pakistan. According to a report published in September 2008 by Brig (R) Asif Haroon Raja, India has 14 consulates in Afghanistan from which RAW is operating. In Wakhan, Badakshan province, RAW is operating a madarssah, where clerics from India are brainwashing local Afghans, Uzbeks and Tajiks. Their students are then infiltrated into Pakistan where they readily carry out suicide missions and other operations.This blatant infiltration into Afghanistan by the Indian intelligence apparatus has provided safe haven from which Indian agents attack and destabilize Pakistan’s tribal areas and NWFP.In another recent report from Foreign Affairs magazine, by Christine Fair of RAND Corporation gives us the inside:

“Having visited the Indian mission in Zahedan, Iran, I can assure you they are not issuing visas as the main activity! Moreover, India has run operations from its mission in Mazar, Afghanistan (through which it supported the Northern Alliance) and is likely doing so from the other consulates it has reopened in Jalalabad and Qandahar along the border. Indian officials have told me privately that they are pumping money into Baluchistan. Kabul has encouraged India to engage in provocative activities such as using the Border Roads Organization to build sensitive parts of the Ring Road and use the Indo-Tibetan police force for security. It is also building schools on a sensitive part of the border in Kunar–across from Bajaur." (Pakistan’s Tribal Area where Pakistan Army had to carry out a major operation to eliminate TTP militants).

• The continual barking by American officials for Pakistan to “DO MORE!” in spite of the fact that no nation has done or sacrificed more to combat terrorism in its own self-interest. The number of soldiers martyred, treasure spent and tears of widows and orphans shed is testimony to the truth that those who claim that Pakistan is half-hearted in this effort are liars.
  
  
• The CIA-sponsored democratic farce whereby American engineered its puppets to sieze the reigns in Pakistan’s recent elections. For those who still deny that the Pakistani elections were engineered, think for a moment how is it possible that the most corrupt and despised man in Pakistan’s entire history, Asif Zardari would become the president of Pakistan if the elections were truly and fairly democratic?
  
  
• Even though our ‘popularly elected’ politicians are in the pocket of the Americans, they remain frustrated that certain institutions in Pakistan remain out of their reach. The black propaganda targeting Pakistan’s patriotic armed forces, intelligence services and nuclear weapons arsenal reveals their obvious intent. Well-aware that these are the only institutions that truly have Pakistan’s interests to heart, the public do not appreciate the Am-Brit campaign to malign them.
  
  
• The so-called Indo-US civilian nuclear deal that makes a blatant mockery of the non-proliferation accords, rewarding Indian intransigence and arrogance at the expense of Pakistan’s national security.
  
  
• The exposure of blatant double-standards is evident as America turns on the weapons tap for India, whom it wishes to turn into its 21st century ’slave soldier’ in order to counter China, while Pakistani officials are left dangling and must debase and humiliate themselves in order to ensure the delivery of a trifling number of F-16’s and helicopters to fight the same enemies that America is sponsoring.
  
  
• The shielding, protection and nurturing of anti-Pakistan insurgent groups on Pakistani soil by the CIA. The so-called ‘Baluchistan Liberation Army’ (Read: Finding Clarity in the Baluchistan Conundrum, by Talha Mujaddidi ) and ‘Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan’ are only a few of many. All these groups base their insidious operations from inside Afghanistan – which is occupied by the US.

In spite of their indirect control over our media, America will never win the ‘battle of hearts and minds’ in Pakistan. Even though the rise of the so-called ‘free media’ in Pakistan has brought to the fore a variety rentashills and rentagobs, self proclaimed pseudo-intellectuals who solemnly insist that Pakistan cannot resist Pax Americana (Pox Americana would be more appropriate), the people are not so gullible as to believe it. They see the example of Iran and Venezuala, which although not ideal states by any means, at least demonstrate that those who resist American hegemony can still survive and even prosper.

Where there are pockets of resistance, this only demonstrates the existence of an honourable people who are not prepared to compromise on their dignity. The recent polling is cause for great hope. It proves what was never in doubt – the Pakistani population will not stand for these US violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty and national interest for much longer.

We know that we fear Allah more than we fear America, but the nation must now realise another profound truth – salvation does not lie in continued cooperation and debasement in front of America, but only in faith in Allah and is His Messenger (SAW). It is time for this nation to throw off its shackles and re-declare its independence.

Atif F Qureshi is part of the PKKH Editorial Team and also writes for PakDestiny.net