Bluff and Bluster in Iran
Iran's triad: A framed Ayatollah Khomeini radiates over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as he delivers a speech in April at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, reasserting Iran's right to nuclear technology. Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images.
There's been a lot of vindicative gloating all over Iran since the American National Intelligence Council produced a report concluding that Iran quit its nuclear-weapons program in 2003--an about face from a 2005 National Intelligence Estimate that had been rather adamant, in a slam-dunk sort of way, about Iran pursuing offensive nukes.
Gloating aside, there was this, as reported by the English-language Iranian news agency Irna, on Dec. 5:
From the beginning Iranian nuclear program had been civilian and Iran honors religious prohibition of nuclear arms, Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Wednesday. [...] "The Supreme Leader has already made it clear that Iran respects the religious prohibition of nuclear arms and the international conventions consistent with the nuclear program," Hosseini said.Odd. Here's what, in 1988, then-President Hashemi Rafsanjani declared in a speech to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards: “We should fully equip ourselves both in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, bacteriological and radiological weapons. From now on you should make use of the opportunity and perform the task.” Admittedly, Rafsanjani wasn't the Supreme Leader. That would be 67-year-old Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But Khamenei has been the country's head cheerleader when it comes to asserting Iranian independence in all things nuclear.
So which is it? That's what keeps beguiling the West, and why Valerie Lincy, editor of Iranwatch.org, and Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, wrote in the Times today: "We should be suspicious of any document that suddenly gives the Bush administration a pass on a big national security problem it won’t solve during its remaining year in office. Is the administration just washing its hands of the intractable Iranian nuclear issue by saying, “If we can’t fix it, it ain’t broke”?"
Here’s a complete history of Iran’s nuclear program.
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Comments
But why does “the West” get to enjoy being described as “beguiled” by Iran? Isn’t that — at best for “the West” — like saying Charles Manson is concerned about the Green River Murderer? Seriously.
If you believe in the rule of law, as leaders of “the West” never tire of claiming they do, the NNPT is the controlling legal context here. And WE, US, the West, and especially the Americans, are in completely blatant violation of it. It requires us to be devoting efforts to disarmament. That word hasn’t appeared in our system since 1986 — and even then it was forced upon “us” by the much-abused Gorbachev.
Meanwhile, Iran is _probably_ in full compliance, whatever it did in the past (which includes its US-endorsed nuclear ambitions under the mass-murdering Shah). And to the extent “we” don’t know what Iran is now doing, doesn’t much of the blame lie for that lie on “our” own doorstep? We have attacked and sanctioned them for doing something they are allowed to do by treaty rights granted in a treaty to which we are party, and which we are ignoring ourselves! What would “we” do if the roles were reversed?
And the USA also says nothing about Israel, which won’t even sign the NNPT.
Orwell is spinning in his grave here…