US
Nuclear Hypocrisy
By Doug Lorimer
23 March, 2006
Green
Left Weekly
While
pushing for international sanctions against Iran for pursuing its legal
right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to research the production
of nuclear fuel (low-enriched uranium), US President George Bush has
agreed to provide India with access to US civilian nuclear technology,
even though India has nuclear weapons and is not a signatory to the
NPT.
The US-India deal, which
was finalised by Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on March
2, demonstrates Washington’s nuclear double standard. Under the
deal, India will put only 14 of its 22 nuclear reactors under inspection
by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to ensure
that no nuclear material from them is used for military purposes. The
other eight reactors will continue to provide highly enriched uranium
and plutonium for the construction of nuclear weapons. India, regarded
by the Pentagon as a “strategic partner”, is estimated to
have about 100 nuclear bombs.
Since 2001, India and the
US have carried out 35 joint military exercises. While New Delhi was
willing, a massive public outcry in 2004 stopped India sending troops
to Iraq to help out the US occupation forces. Last June, India and the
US signed a 10-year military cooperation pact.
Under Article 1 of the NPT,
nuclear weapons states that are signatories to the treaty are forbidden
to transfer nuclear weapons technology to non-signatory countries. The
US-India deal means that the US will be in breach of the NPT. But, of
course, there will be no moves to have the IAEA governing board refer
the US to the UN Security Council for being in non-compliance with the
NPT.
After IAEA director-general
Mohammed ElBaradei sent his latest report on Iran’s nuclear program
to the UN Security Council on March 8, as directed by a US-backed resolution
adopted by the February 4 meeting of the IAEA’s governing board,
Washington and its allies have stepped up their campaign to have international
sanctions imposed on Iran.
ElBaradei’s report
notes that after a three-year intensive investigation by the IAEA —
including two years of “go-anywhere, see anything” inspections
of Iran’s nuclear facilities — the IAEA “has not seen
any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear
explosive devices”.
This means that Iran has
not violated its nuclear safeguards agreement with the IAEA and there
are therefore no legal grounds upon which the Security Council can take
punitive “action”, including sanctions, against Iran. But
this has not deterred US officials.
The March 9 London Financial
Times reported that Nicholas Burns, the US undersecretary of state for
political affairs, told a congressional committee that the Bush administration
wanted the Security Council to issue a statement — which would
not have the force of law — to “condemn” Iran for
refusing to abandon its legal right under the NPT to research and develop
the production of nuclear fuel.
Next, he said, the US would
move to have the Security Council adopt a binding resolution designed
to “isolate” Iran. Noting that the US already had unilateral
sanctions against Iran, Burns added: “But it’s going to
be incumbent upon our allies around the world, and interested countries,
to show that they are willing to act, should the words and resolutions
of the United Nations not suffice.”
The Financial Times reported
that “analysts in Washington” said Burns’s remarks
“reflected a broad expectation in the Bush administration that
it would not be able to persuade Russia and China on the Security Council
to back meaningful sanctions, and that the US would look to forming
an ad hoc alliance, as with the 'coalition of the willing’ for
Iraq.
“France might be persuaded
to join that coalition, along with east European allies and Japan and
Australia, but Germany was in doubt, the analysts said.”
As with Washington’s
drive to create a “coalition of the willing” to carry out
“regime change” in Iraq, so as to open the way for US corporations
to take over Iraq’s vast oil resources, Washington’s eventual
aim is to militarily topple Iran’s present rulers and install
a pro-US regime that will privatise Iran’s nationalised oil industry.
Iran is the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter.
As with its allegations that
Iraq had an arsenal of “weapons of mass destruction” and
was seeking to build a nuclear bomb, Washington is using the claim that
Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program to put together another “coalition
of the willing”.
Iran “is a country
that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance
of the international community that is determined that they should not
get one”, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a Senate
committee on March 10.
As with the US drive to war
against Iraq, the British Labour government of PM Tony Blair, while
publicly claiming it is opposed to military action against Iran, has
become Washington’s key ally in its anti-Iran WMD propaganda campaign.
The March 10 London Times
reported that an unnamed British official warned the Security Council
the previous day that it should move quickly against Iran as it was
“reasonable” to think that Iran could acquire the technology
to make nuclear weapons “within a year”. Such a claim is
wildly at odds with the most recent assessment made by US intelligence
agencies.
Last August, the Washington
Post reported that a combined US intelligence assessment had concluded
that Iran would be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of highly
enriched uranium, the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, before “early
to mid-next decade”.
This is because the process
of producing weapons-grade uranium — with a 90% concentration
of the fissionable uranium-235 isotope — requires putting large
amounts of uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas through at thousands of centrifuges
spinning at 50,000 to 70,000 revolutions per minute linked by a complicated
plumbing network that must operate flawlessly for months at a time.
To date, Iran only has a research facility with a 20-centrifuge enrichment
device.