Iran, Geopolitics and the Bomb

It was only a matter of time before they came after Iran.

I remember when the infamous speech about the ‘Axis of Evil’ was first made, the Iranians made it clear that they understood that Iran was the real intended target. Indeed, ever since Ayatollah Khomeini shocked the powers that be in Washington (and the now deceased powers in Moscow) with his popular, Islamic Revolution, and overthrew the hated (by the vast majority of Iranians) , American-stooge and puppet, Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Western powers, with the US at the forefront, have been itching to rid the Islamic Republic of Iran of its ‘Islamic’ tag and re-install a puppet regime as exists virtually everywhere else in the Third World in general and the Islamic world in particular. A particularly loyal breed of canine is found in the Subcontinent. Anyway, I digress.

The so-called ‘mad mullahs’ of Iran—a proud and intelligent people with a great history and civilisation dating far back into antiquity to the days of Cyrus the Great and earlier and via the Sassanids, Zoroastrianism, past the glorious millennium when Iran became Islamicised and provided the Muslim world with most of its greatest poets, sufi saints, scholars and philosophers (from al-Ghazali, Peeran-i-Peer Dastgir Shaykh Abdul Qadir Jilani, Khwaja Gharib Nawaz, Data Sahib Ali Hujviri, Rumi, Hafiz, Sa’di, Jami, to Ibn Sina and al-Razi, not to mention Ferdowsi, Umar Khayyam and a thousand others)—have committed the big crime of refusing to tow the American line and thus become an object of ridicule by the Western media and hate by the great unwashed masses who agree like Orwellian sheep to the media’s mind controlling propaganda—save a few who are immediately tagged as being extremists (e.g. Chomsky, Fisk, Pilger and the like).

The excuse which the US (and its EU allies) has used is that Iran is about to embark again on the process of enriching uranium and this must mean that they are about to build a nuclear weapon! The reality is that Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and under that treaty all signatories are explicitly permitted to do research for civil nuclear energy and enrich uranium. So, what is the problem? Well, the Americans seem to think that Iran is not trustworthy and therefore, well err, you know, those crazy Moslems, they might use this enrichment (which the NPT says they can!), to build a bomb!

The question has to be asked, if Iran is a signatory to the NPT and it has the right under that treaty to do such research why all this commotion? Iran has not got a bomb, CIA estimates are that it is a decade away at least from acquiring one should it wish to do so (which the President Ahmadinijad explicitly stated they do not) and they are a rapidly growing nation with legitimate energy needs and yet another Middle Eastern country has got at least 200 thermonuclear bombs (according to the Federation of American Scientists website (www. FAS.org), and it refuses to sign the NPT, yet it is never mentioned by the mainstream media in this discussion! Which country is this? Israel.

Getting back for a moment to the legalities of the NPT treat and the IAEA and Iran, following excerpt from Siddharth Varadarajan’s article in The Hindu is instructive:

“Moreover, these activities are in no way prohibited under either the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) or Iran’s Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA, published by the Agency as Infcirc 214.

Article 4 of Infcirc 214 states: "The safeguards provided for in this Agreement shall be implemented in a manner designed: (a) To avoid hampering the economic and technological development of Iran or international co-operation in the field of peaceful nuclear activities, including international exchange of nuclear material; (b) To avoid undue interference in Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities, and in particular in the operation of facilities; ... "

It is worth noting that Infcirc 214 — the primary legal covenant governing relations between Iran and the IAEA — explicitly rules out the Agency doing anything that might hamper Iran’s technological development in the field of peaceful nuclear activities. Conducting research and experiments on the nuclear fuel cycle clearly falls under this category. Over the years, Iran (like South Korea, Taiwan, Egypt and a few other countries) had failed to report to the IAEA — and hence ensure safeguards upon — a number of nuclear-related transactions and activities. These instances were thoroughly investigated by the Agency’s inspectors and the relevant files on these closed. Thus in his report to the IAEA Board of Governors on September 2, 2005, Director General Mohammed el-Baradei noted that "all the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities.

Despite this finding, the Board of Governors — acting under the pressure of the U.S. and the E-3 — voted on September 24 last year to find Iran in non-compliance with its safeguards agreement in the context of article XIIC of the IAEA Statute. Conveniently overlooked was the fact that article XIIC, as well as articles 18 and 19 of Infcirc 214, define non-compliance essentially as diversion of safeguarded material for prohibited purposes, something Dr. el-Baradei had explicitly ruled out. “ (http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?itemid=9538)


Nothing more needs to be said. This is an excuse to target Iran, and replace the current, self-respecting, independent Islamic regime with a spineless one of puppets and turn Iran into another pseudo-colony like the ones to Iran’s east.

So, what will happen? Inevitably Iran’s case will be sent to the UN Security Council where she will be found guilty of non-compliance and a resolution passed against her wherein she will be given a short time-period to meet impossible demands (i.e. do everything we say) after which period, say 6 months, she will have been deemed to have been in breach of UN resolution X and be subject to sanctions and, some time after that, air strikes on its nuclear power plants (by Israel or the US under a likely UN umbrella) when it is found (obviously!) that sanctions don’t have much effect on Iran.

It has been under US sanctions since 1979 and doesn’t seem to be doing too badly—it has a flourishing middle class, the people are well-fed and intelligent and highly literate (more female doctors per head than any other country in the world!) and attached to their nation and to their brand of Islam and most countries will not abide by the sanctions for pragmatic economical and political reasons—and China especially will continue to buy Iranian oil. In addition, Iran is a flourishing democracy, the Iranian President is chosen by popular vote—free and fair elections in which up to 60% of people participate! This is an example of a nation being modern and yet keeping its own Islamic ethos and culture and it is this which is unpalatable to the neo-imperialists. Iran is a working example of the combination of democracy with Islam. After all, as many thinkers from Iqbal to Ali Shar’iati have said, Muslim countries must find a model of democracy which works for them within their own cultural paradigm; forcing an alien European or American model on them won’t work.

Nuclear weapons are evil and in an ideal world no country should have them but whilst they do exist, it is totally hypocritical of any nation which has them (the US—biggest stockpiler in the world and working on new weapons!; Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel (the only Middle Eastern country)) to argue against another country having them unless they are first willing to give up their own weapons of mass destruction. And since no country will do that, it follows that every country has the right to have them, however frightening or unpalatable that may be.

The end result of this could be another conflagration in the Middle East between Israel and the Islamic World and further turmoil in Iraq for the Americans because Iraq’s majority Shia population are close to their Iranian brethren and the clerics of Iraq and Iran are very close and this is one arena in which the Iranians can cause real trouble for the Americans and their plans of domination of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian oilfields. If the ayatollahs in Iraq give the call for jihad against the occupiers than the current ‘insurgency’ in Iraq—which is almost entirely Sunni-led—will seem like a picnic. An attack on Iran for enriching Uranium whilst leaving Israel alone despite it having a deadly arsenal of 200 plus thermonuclear bombs will further alienate the Muslim world and create more sympathy for al-Qaeda and other such groups. Indeed, an attack on Iran and the subsequent fall-out would be an ideal recruiting platform for them.

Is that what the Americans, or the world, really want?