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July
1, 2003
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July
1, 2003
Nukes, Israel and
Iran
The Weapon of
Choice
By SASAN FAYAZMANESH
The accusation of possessing "weapons of
mass destruction" (WMD) has become the US government's weapon
of choice in its attempts to overthrow independent governments
in the Middle East. The occupation of Iraq was barely complete
when we were told that the Iraqi WMD, which could not be found
anywhere in Iraq, had been moved to Syria. Given the absurdity
of the accusation, the claim was quietly and quickly dropped
in favor of a more vulnerable pray, Iran.
The attempt to remove the Iranian government
from power is, of course, not new. At least since the early 1990s,
the neocons and their Israeli associates had tried to overthrow
the Iranian government for its support of the Palestinian resistance
movements and the Lebanese Hezbollah by accusing Iran, among
other things, of pursuing WMD. For example, when the former Secretary
of State Madeline Albright was pressured by the US corporations
to seek "a road map leading to normal relations" with
Iran, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) asked
its members to flood US Congressional leaders with tailor made
letters or email messages that read:
Representative and Senators:
I am writing to express my opposition
to making further unilateral gestures toward Iran before it ends
its support for international terrorism, opposition to the peace
process and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. (AIPAC, 2000)
The campaign of trying to overthrow the
Iranian government by accusing it of pursuing WMD, however, did
not go far until certain pieces fell into their proper places:
the neocons came to power, two hijacked planes on September 11,
2001, created that "catastrophic and catalyzing event"-which
the neocons had alluded to in their "Rebuilding America's
Defenses" manifesto-and Iraq was invaded and occupied. Now
the campaign against Iran could get fully underway.
On May 7, 2003, the New York Time
quoted an unnamed US Administration official as saying: "It's
not just that Iran is speeding up its nuclear plans. It's also
that we've only recently learned some things about their program
that have been going on for two years. There's also a lot of
hammering from the Israelis for us to take this problem seriously."
Indeed, according to Israel's top military intelligence official,
General Aharon Zeevi, the "main danger to the existence
of the state of Israel is the nuclear program Iran persists in
developing, because the country also has surface-to-surface missiles"
(Agence France Presse, April 26, 2003).
The Israeli hammering paid off. The US
government put pressure on the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) to declare Iran in "major violation" of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a treaty which Israel, a nuclear
power, has never signed (Reuters, May 15, 2003). At the same
time, one after another member of the Administration came forward
on a daily basis to talk about the Iranian nuclear program and
its alleged danger to the world. On May 15, 2003, for example,
Condoleezza Rice said, in her usual convoluted manner, that if
IAEA inspectors "find what preliminary suggestions say they
found in Iran and, knowing what we know about the programs, then
there has to be some consequence for that . . . Non-compliance
is pretty clear." She had, of course, repeated this line
earlier, particularly in her speech at the annual conference
of AIPAC (The Financial Times, April 1, 2003). At the
same conference, John Bolton, the Department of State undersecretary,
stated that the "estimate we have of how close the Iranians
are to production of nuclear weapons grows closer each day"
and that in "the aftermath of Iraq, dealing with the Iranian
nuclear weapons program will be of equal importance" (Daily
News, April 1, 2003). In a trip to Moscow to put pressure
on the Russian government to stop helping Iran in building a
power plant in Bushehr, Bolton repeated the same accusation and
stated that Iran is "in violation of the global nuclear
non-proliferation treaty," according to Reuters on May 5.
A day later, the same source reported that the Iranian atomic
energy agency chief, Gholamreza Aqazadeh, has denied the charge
and insisted that Iran's "nuclear program was purely peaceful
and that it was to make the country self-sufficient." The
neocons, however, did not take no for an answer and continued
the hammering. The pressure was so intense that by the end of
May the Iranian government, as well as the Russians, invited
the United States to join Moscow in building a nuclear power
plant in Iran" (Associate Press, May 30, 2003). But the
neocons did not take this invitation for an answer either and
kept on pushing.
The hammering became even stronger in
the month of June, when the IAEA was scheduled to publish its
report on Iran's implementation of NPT safeguards agreement.
Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said in an interview with
the Russian daily Izvestia on June 5 that "Iran will
possess weapons of mass destruction at the end of 2005 or early
in 2006" (Agence France Presse, June 5, 2003). Then a host
of usual suspects in the US government were paraded incessantly
to talk about Iran's impending development of nuclear weapons.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, for example, went so far
as to imply that the threat from Iran was eminent when he said
on June 11 that even though Iran does not yet have nuclear bombs,
"the assessment is that they do have a very active program
and are likely to have nuclear weapons in a relatively short
period of time" (Associated Press, June 5, 2003). The chief
neocon himself, Richard Perle, also used the opportunity to advocate
installing a US-Israel friendly government in Iran by saying
that "the best way to deal with the Iranian nuclear program
would be to 'liberate the Iranian people'" (Reuters, June
16, 2003). Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister and the US's
junior partner in manufacturing wars, also joined the chorus.
On June 13, according to The Times, an aid to the Blair
stated that the "prime minister believes this [Iran's WMD]
is a matter of huge concern." The pressure was now building
up for the IAEA to declare Iran to be in "major violation"
of NPT.
In order to put even greater pressure on the IAEA, there were
numerous "leaks" by the US government of the IAEA's
report prior to its release. For example, on June 18, Associate
Press stated that the U.S. Representative to the IAEA, Kenneth
Brill, has criticized Iran by saying that the "United States
finds the substance of the . . . report deeply troubling,"
and although the "investigations are continuing, the report
already confirms that Iran's nuclear program is cause for great
concern." The same article quoted President Bush as saying
that "he and other world leaders would not tolerate nuclear
weapons in Iran."
On June 19, 2003, the IAEA finally released
its report to the public. Despite massive pressure from the US
and its allies, the report did not mention any "major violation"
of NPT by Iran. Instead, it mentioned "failures" on
the part of Iran to declare some import of natural uranium in
1991, activities involving processing of and use of this material,
facilities where such material was received and stored, and failure
to provide in a timely manner information on waste storage. The
report went on to say that while "these failures are in
the process of being rectified by Iran, the process of verifying
the correctness and completeness of the Iranian declaration is
going on." In its summary statement, the IAEA Board of Governors
then stated that the "Board welcomed Iran's reaffirmed commitment
to full transparency and expected Iran to grant the Agency all
access deemed necessary by the Agency in order to create the
necessary confidence in the international community." The
summary concluded that the "Board welcomed Iran's readiness
to look positively at signing and ratifying an additional protocol,
and urged Iran to promptly and unconditionally conclude and implement
an additional protocol to its Safeguards Agreement."
This was not the damning report that
the neocons and their Israeli partners had pushed for. The additional
protocol would, of course, make it easier for the US and Israeli
intelligence agents, in the garb of IAEA experts, to collect
information on how to overthrow the Iranian government, as was
the case in Iraq in the 1990s. However, the report was not strong
enough to legitimize waging a military attack on Iran or forcing
the UN to institute economic sanctions against it. The neocons
and their Israeli partners were quite disappointed with the report.
But this did not mean that they would
give up using the accusation of possessing or developing "weapons
of mass destruction" as weapon of choice in overthrowing
another government in the Middle East. As long as the Iranian
government has not said "uncle" to the dynamic duo,
it is immaterial whether it does or does not sign the additional
and intrusive protocol, or whether the IAEA would give it a cleaner
bill of health next time. A day after the report, John Bolton
still said in an interview with the BBC that the "United
States reserves the right to take military action to stop Iran
developing nuclear weapons" (Reuters, June 20, 2003).
Sasan Fayazmanesh is Associate Professor of Economics Department
of Economics California State University, Fresno. Email: sasanf@csufresno.edu
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