Nukes For India;
Threats For Iran
By Norman Solomon
20 July, 2005
Counterpunch.org
The
silver-spooned cowboy in the Oval Office just presented a fine new saddle
to the nuclear horseman of the apocalypse.
It was a gift worthy
of hell. "President Bush agreed yesterday to share civilian nuclear
technology with India, reversing decades of U.S. policies designed to
discourage countries from developing nuclear weapons," the Washington
Post reported Tuesday. The lead was more understated in the New York
Times: "President Bush, bringing India a step closer to acceptance
in the club of nuclear-weapons states, reached an agreement on Monday
with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to let India secure international
help for its civilian nuclear reactors while retaining its nuclear arms."
No matter how the
story was spun, it could only be read in the world's capitals as further
proof that U.S. nuclear policies are grimly laughable -- thanks to policymakers
in Washington who simultaneously decry and promote nuclear proliferation.
And nowhere will the hypocrisy-laced ironies be more appreciated than
in Tehran.
More than 50 years
after the U.S. government launched its "atoms for peace" program,
faith in the peaceful atom is alive and well -- in Iran. While a large
proportion of the American public distrusts nuclear power, Iranians
routinely echo the positive themes that the industry and its supporters
have labored to promote ever since President Dwight Eisenhower pledged
"to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma" by showing that
"the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to
his death, but consecrated to his life."
Touting the use
of nuclear fission to generate electricity, American presidents have
strived to make sharp rhetorical distinctions between atomic power and
nuclear weapons technologies, despite their extensive overlap. Such
reassuring distinctions now have wide credibility in Iran, as I found
last month during conversations with Iranian political campaigners,
clerics, bazaar merchants, shoppers, teachers and students. Almost all
gave notably similar responses when asked whether their country should
acquire nuclear energy.
The replies -- often
tinged with indignation that the atomic prerogative would even be questioned
-- reflected why nuclear development was a non-issue in Iran's latest
presidential campaign. The Iranian public appears to believe what nuclear-power
boosters loudly proclaimed to the world for several decades -- that
nuclear energy can be safe and distinct from the capacity to build nuclear
weapons.
If nuclear power
plants are good enough for the United States, the prevailing logic goes,
then Iran is certainly good enough for nuclear power plants. Present-day
Iran, with its eagerness to use nuclear reactors to generate electricity,
is a success story for generations of pro-nuclear politicians in Washington.
A civil atomic pact,
signed in 1957, initiated nuclear assistance from the United States
to Iran. In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged the Shah to build nuclear
power plants. The Shah fell in 1979, but after many delays the Islamic
Republic resumed work on the nuclear plant near Bushehr, a project that
is currently being denounced in Washington.
In Tehran, no one
I talked with seemed to have any doubt that such projects should continue.
At the city's bazaar -- where I could not find any expression of support
for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons -- there appeared to be something
close to a consensus for building nuclear power plants.
"It should
be done," said a 26-year-old owner of a carpet shop who gave his
name as Nahdi. "If it's going to be dangerous, it's dangerous for
everyone in the world, not just for the Iranian people. How come they
all have access to that kind of energy and just talking about Iran and
Iranians?" In a baby supply shop, the man behind the counter said:
"It is Iran's right, like other countries."
Cleric Hassan Khomeini
-- the most prominent grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founding
leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran -- responded to my question in
much the same way. He pointed back at the country now pointing the finger
at Iran: "The same thing happened in the United States. You've
got access to lots of oil and gas resources, and what happened? The
United States is producing nuclear energy."
In a mid-June interview,
shortly before the first round of the presidential elections, Akbar
Hashemi Rafsanjani told me that nuclear weapons are antithetical to
Islamic law and that Iran should never try to acquire any. Yet, like
every one of his opponents, Rafsanjani (then seen as the frontrunner)
expressed strong support for nuclear power in Iran.
Given its vast untapped
reserves of oil and natural gas, Iran's claim of needing nuclear-generated
electricity might seem farfetched. But arguments about whether Iran
really "needs" nuclear power may be beside the point. For
the Iranian government, the issue is a matter of national sovereignty
and basic prerogatives. In a region where Israel, Pakistan, and India
have atomic bombs (made possible by nuclear technology exported from
the West), Iran appears to want to keep its nuclear options open.
Unwilling to forsake
the myth of the peaceful atom, the United States continues to proselytize
for nuclear power while practicing what it preaches. As long as that
continues, Washington is in no position to convincingly question the
merits of nuclear fundamentalism in Iran or anywhere else.
Norman Solomon
is the author of the new book War
Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,
published in July 2005. For more information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com