Naked in a tree-less forest
Bush's shameless hypocrisy
June 20, 2003
The Iranian
The Bush Adminsitration's ultimate objective in Iran is to dismantle
Iran's nuclear infrastructure regardless of its orientation, peaceful
or not. It has dawned finally on this adminsitration that, in this
day and age of global connectivity and info-structures and black-markets
and bandits masquerading as governments, a nuclear infrastructure
for peaceful purposes can be weaponized on a short order and therefore
all this talk about the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT),
inspection protocols and chastisement of Iran by the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is irrelevant. The US is hellbent on
despatching Iran to the age of nuclear, scientific and technological
illiteracy. Period.
Even with a regime change in Tehran, the US
still will press for Iran's complete de-nuclearization, because
a regime change will not wipe away Iran's defensive
strategic necessity to acquire atomic weapons. In this, the US and Russia should
thank each other, for allowing countries like Israel, Pakistan and India to
acquire nuclear capabilities, and for doing precious little to
prevent Iraq and its allies,
including the US, from beating up on Iran during the Eight Years War. Every country has the inherent right of self-defense. The US
knows this only too well as it has promoted of late a perverse
form of it in the concept of pre-emptive
self-defense in the face of no imminent or clear and present danger! According
to the World Court's Advisory Opinion of 8 July 1996, when it comes to survival
and self-defense, no rule of international law prohibits the use of nuclear
weapons. If the use of the weapons is not forbidden, then its acquisition
cannot be per
se illegal either, unless a country has agreed not to acquire it.
Enter, the NPT treaty and all of the IAEA's protocols and inspection
requirements. Iran signed the treaty on July 1, 1968, and deposited
its instruments of ratification
in 1970; the treaty entered into force on March 5, 1970. The treaty recognized
Iran's "inalienable right" to develop research, production and use
of nuclear energy for peaceful proposes without discrimination, and acquire equipment,
materials, and scientific and technological information. I return Iran gave up
the right to develop nuclear weapons.
That was 1970 -- when the Shah was in power and Southwest Asia
was a relatively peaceful place: Israel was triumphant, and the
Palestinian nation as such was
not as yet an issue. China was isolated and not very nuclear. Pakistan and
India did not have the bomb. Israel did not either and the Libyan
Colonel Mu'amar Qaddafi's
efforts at obtaining the "Islamic Bomb" was thwarted by a vigilant
US. For a brief spell it looked like the promise of non-proliferation was actually
within reach. None of the conditions of yesteryear obtain today though. The neighborhood
is no longer safe. War rages all around. The theocratic kingship in Tehran feels
constantly under pressure of annihilation. The Israeli tail now wags the dog
in Washington with craft and smug self-righteousness. Nuclear weapons have proliferated
apace. The US and Iran are no longer friends, and the US administers a stringent
embargo on the sale and transfer of any technology to Iran.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful uses, a
concept which in the civilian world translates into such endeavors
as producing electricity from
nuclear reactors; the fuel cycle for which requires uranium or plutonium processing
and disposal or recycling of the spent fuel. However, in a strategic sense,
a nuclear program which produces nuclear weapons, too, can be sold
as peaceful
endeavor, if it helps deter the adversary and therefore keep the peace. After
all, one also uses the term "peacekeeper" to describe a class of ballistic
missiles in the US arsenal. Iran is rich in oil, natural gas, and coal; so, it hardly needs
nuclear energy to power itself. Therefore, the argument goes, the
primary purpose of Iran's
nuclear program is to build nuclear weapons. This observation is not necessarily
valid. Other countries that are rich in hydrocarbon resources, including the
US, UK, and Russia, rely on nuclear power for a portion of their energy needs,
while countries like Germany, France and Japan, which have no oil or natural
gas, have not scrapped their nuclear power generators in favor of imported
fossil fuel. To paraphrase the late Shah, a barrel of oil is of
too great an economic
value to burn for electricity. A Stanford Research Institute study in the early
1970s had concluded that Iran needed by the year 1990 a 20,000-megawatt nuclear
powered generation capacity.
The US embargo of nuclear technology to Iran therefore has robbed
Iran of its right to acquire the necessary nuclear equipment
and technology for peaceful
purposes. The US starving of Iran's nuclear program therefore is in violation
of the letter and spirit of the NPT. Iran too is in violation of the
NPT. If Iran sees fit to develop nuclear weapons, then it should
follow
the procedure
laid out in the NPT treaty: she should give the appropriate notices and state
the reason for her withdrawal from the treaty and go its merry way. For Iran
to divert the technology, which is made available to it as a party to the
NPT, for military purposes violates her own commitment to the letter
and spirit
of the NPT. As long as Iran is a member of the NPT treaty system,
she is obligated
to play by the rules even if others like President Bush choose to flout
them.
The Bush Adminsitration's insistence that Iran play by the rules
amid exhortations for a regime change in Tehran is a hypocrite's
call. There are far more repressive
regimes in the world, including on the West Bank and Gaza, Tibet and elsewhere
in China, al-Hasa and other places in Saudi Arabia, in Syria, and Chechnia,
and all over Africa, and in Cuba, and yet this Administration speaks
of regime change
in Iran and openly encourages sedition and violence against its government,
while it will not lift a finger to help the emboldened naive who
will lose life and
limb if the authorities descend upon them, like it happened against the Solidarity
demonstrators in Poland under the Jeruwzalski regime in the early 1980's and
again in Iraq following the First Gulf War in 1991. If the Iranians seek to
overthrow their government by violent means, they should do it
when they think they can
do it and succeed in it and not because of the where and when established by
the US government.
Rightly, the Iranian government has condemned the US interference
in Iran's domestic affairs. But, in general international law there
is no prohibition against a
country, like the US, to interfere in the domestic affairs of another country,
like Iran. That is just the way it is and everybody does it, as President Ford
once remarked about the US overthrow of the elected Allende government in Chile.
Yet, the US is obligated by treaty to butt out of Iran's internal affairs.
In Article 1 of the General Principles of the Algiers Declaration
(19 January 1981),
which ended the Iran Hostage Crisis, the US "pledges that it is and from
now on will be the policy of the United States not to intervene, directly or
indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran's internal affairs." Period.
This Algiers Declaration has the force of law both in international
law and as a matter of the US Constitution, by which international
agreements are the law
of the land. President Bush may not be subject to the vagaries of international
law, but he should not be allowed to flaunt the Constitution.
Author
Guive Mirfendereski practices law in Massachusetts (JD, Boston
College Law School, 1988). His latest book is A
Diplomatic History of the Caspian Sea: Treaties, Diaries, and Other
Stories (New York and London: Palgrave 2001)
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