Nnpt @ MindSay

More nuclear hypocrisy

In today’s NY Times, op ed contributors George Perkovich, ‘director of the nonproliferation program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’, and Pierre Goldschmidt, ‘former deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency’, opine.

The vital security objective all along has been to prevent Iran from acquiring the capacity to make nuclear weapons fuel. ..Thus, Iran’s interlocutors should clarify now that the positive incentives the world wishes to negotiate with Iran will be withdrawn if it does not immediately accede to the binding Security Council demand for suspension.

It’s embarrassing for me even to have to make obvious points like this, but clearly the editors over at the NY Times need reminding.

1. So far, Iran’s reward for ratifying and complying with the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty has been baseless accusations and sabre rattling from the US.
2. The US is the one country that has actually used nuclear weapons.  It has used them on exclusively civilian targets.  Not once, but twice.
3. The US has articulated an intention to crush any country it perceives as threatening its military ‘full spectrum dominance’.
4. The US is itself in violation of its NNPT commitments to reduce its arsenal and has not suffered so much as a harsh word as punishment.
5. The US has withdrawn from or violated other significant treaties intended (or at least purported to intend) to reduce threats from WMD.
6. Iran borders on a rogue nuclear armed state, Pakistan, that has not signed the NNPT.
7. Another non NNPT and nuclear armed state, Israel, is also explicitly threatening attacks on Iran.
8. Yet a third non NNPT and nuclear armed state, India, has recently entered into favourable nuclear cooperation arrangements with the US.
9. North Korea has enjoyed a significant reduction in threats from the US since it became clear that it was close to testing its own nuclear weapons.
10. With so many obvious benefits accruing to the world’s nuclear outlaws and so few to compliance with treaty commitments, it’d take a lot of carrots to convince me to go along with the US’s completely unreasonable demands, if I was Iran.

That said, fission is a dead end.  All the ordinary people in the world need to band together and get the nuclear bullies to disarm and safely dispose of their nuclear toys immediately and cooperate on developing the cold fusion and other sustainable energy technologies that can provide our energy without exacerbating global warming…

Meanwhile, back at the UN…

Danny Gillerman, ‘Israel's ambassador to the United Nations urged the Security Council to take tough measures against "demented" Iran for its nuclear program in the wake of North Korea's declared atomic test.’

Waxing poetic, Yahoo reports, ‘"The international community should learn the lessons of what occurred in North Korea," [he] told army radio. "North Korea was only the preview. Iran will be the feature film, which, if no one takes serious action, will be projected throughout the whole world."’

Furthermore, as if their ambassador to the IAEA hadn’t just said that nuclear proliferation wasn’t an issue, ‘Israeli leaders called for the North Korean test to serve as a wake up call to the international community on the risks of nuclear proliferation and prompt a zero-tolerance policy with Tehran.’

Ignoring Juan Cole’s critique of the translation of Ahmadinejad’s one remark (not ‘repeated threats’ for crying out loud!), Yahoo concludes, ‘Israel considers Iran its arch-enemy for President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's repeated threats to wipe the Jewish state "off the map" and for his comments questioning the Holocaust.’

Well Ahmadinejad may or may not have said anything about wiping Israel off the map, but I for one hope to live to see a map free of sectarian ethnocracies like Israel and hierocracies like Iran.

You learn something new every day. 

It never occurred to me that a state that is not party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty could manage to get a seat on the IAEA.  The Israeli ‘Ambassador’ to the IAEA, Israel Michaeli, in his profound wisdom, is reported to have opined, "The fundamental goal in the Middle East, as in other regions, is obtaining regional peace, security and stability, not arms control per se."  This is doubtless why Israel is threatening Iran.  Nothing to do with concerns about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons development at all.  What’s most likely to secure regional peace, security, and stability is undoubtedly a continuing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and utterly destroying neighbouring countries.  Oh, and two or three hundred nukes, of course.
 

Needless to say, the IAEA did not resolve that Israel’s nuclear program was a threat.