iran's nukes: for peaceful purposes

Iran's Nukes: For Peaceful Purposes
by Shalom Freedman
Jun 10, '04

On June 2, 2004 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had been lying about its nuclear program. Iran had claimed that it was not employing Pakistani-designed P-2 centrifuges to enrich uranium. The P-2 centrifuges with traces of such enriched uranium were found by IAEA inspectors in the nuclear facility at Natanz. Iran had also promised the IAEA that it would stop work on the heavy water (a deuterium plant) to manufacture plutonium that it had been operating. IAEA discovered that the plant at Arak was up and running still.

In response to these clear violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in response to the broken promises of Iran, the best IAEA director Mohammed El-Baradei could muster was that he was not certain whether Iran was in fact developing a nuclear weapons program. Iranian President Mohammed Khatemi had assured him that their nuclear program was for "peaceful purposes". This is the best El-Baradei could do, though Iran has been lying to the IAEA and the world community about its nuclear program since 1991. It has repeatedly broken promises about halting various activities, continuing to build new plants despite the clear violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of Iran's major lies was about a two-thousand ton shipment of uranium that it received from China and denied knowing anything about, until confronted with clear evidence by IAEA inspectors.

The "peaceful purposes" of Iran are, of course, well understood by any amateur inspector of world affairs. Since the Ayotallah Khomeini takeover in 1979, the Iranians have made no secret of their desire to export the Islamic revolution.. In a 2003 Commentary article, Gabriel Schoenfeld gave a brief and telling picture of Iranian motivations and past actions. "Iran is an oil-rich country. It has no need for an ambitious civilian nuclear-energy industry. That it has been vigorously developing one was a red flag that the ayatollahs did not deign to conceal."

To augment the menace, Iran is "the most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world, according to the U.S. State Department. Tehran has carried out a series of kidnappings and assassinations in Europe. It has funded and provided training and arms to a variety of Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and factions within Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. It was almost certainly behind the bombings in Argentina of the Israeli Embassy in March 1992, killing 29, and the Jewish community center in July 1994, killing 86. It is thought to have had a hand in the June 1996 bombing of the Al-Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia that took the lives of 19 U.S. soldiers. It has ties with Al-Qaeda and, in the wake of September 11, it may have given shelter to some of its leading operatives. The list goes on and on.

To augment the menace even more, Iran has also been building missiles at a feverish pace. In July it successfully tested the Shehab-3 (a variant of the No Dong missile first provided to it by North Korea), with a range of 930 miles and capable of carrying a small nuclear warhead. Iranian engineers are similarly moving forward with the Shehab-4 and Shehab-5, with ranges of 1,240 and 3,100 miles respectively. Brig. Gen. Rahim Safavi, who heads Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, declared not long ago that "Iranian missiles can cause irreparable damage to either Israel or the United States." This is partly bluster. Israel indeed lies within range of Iranian missiles; The United States does not -- not yet.

The peaceful intentions of Iran were, however, most tellingly revealed in an interview given by two-term former President of Iran Hashemi Rafsanjani on June 14, 2002. In this article, he suggested that the purpose of Iranian nuclear weapons would be to erase the "Zionist appendix" from the map of the Middle East. He said, "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate, because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel, but the same thing would just [cause] damage in the Islamic world." He went on to say that the Islamic world could suffer any blow Israel would give and still survive, while one nuclear weapon would put an end to Israel.

Iran has, with the chutzpah typical of fundamentalist fanatics, already demanded that the UN and the IAEA end its inspections. In any case, all past experience shows that it has no intention whatsoever of complying with the IAEA or anyone else. This is, after all, the same IAEA that did not stop India or Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons. And Iran, too, might look with encouragement at the way several US administrations turned their heads and allowed Pakistan to develop the Islamic bomb - the same Pakistan that, of course, provided the centrifuge technology to Iran.

As it is now, no sanctions have been taken against Iran by the international community, and none are likely. And if they are placed in effect, learned observers are certain that Iran will simply, and with much popular approval at home, defy them. Iran has made it clear that it is going ahead with its programs and that no sanctions or peaceful means of persuasion are going to stop it.

As to the military option, this seems unlikely at the moment. The US Administration has the more difficult case of North Korea, which already possesses nuclear weapons, to deal with . The Bush administration is struggling in Afghanistan and Iraq and is under increasing international and domestic criticism as to its aggressive pursuit of the war of terror. It seems highly unlikely that it will act now, and certainly not before the elections, which may bring the Kerry-Clinton line into power.

As for the country most immediately threatened, Prime Minister Sharon seems at present more interested in evacuating Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria than in focusing on a problem whose successful management is vital to the existence of Israel.