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This is a truly amazing thing for a US official to say, especially one who worked in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution thirty years ago. At that time, the United States government supported, both vocally and materially, the brutal dictatorship of the Shah of Iran, referred to as "an island of stability" by President Carter in 1977. Under the Shah's tyrannical rule, a Time article from January 7, 1980, tells us, "Dissent was ruthlessly suppressed, in part by the use of torture in the dungeons of SAVAK, the [US and Israeli-trained] secret police." Furthermore, the Time article continues,
"The depth of its commitment to the Shah apparently blinded Washington to the growing discontent. U.S. policymakers wanted to believe that their investment was buying stability and friendship; they trusted what they heard from the monarch, who dismissed all opposition as 'the blah-blahs of armchair critics.' Even after the revolution began, U.S. officials were convinced that 'there is no alternative to the Shah.' Carter took time out from the Camp David summit in September 1978 to phone the Iranian monarch and assure him of Washington's continued support." [emphasis mine]Limbert, of all people, should know better than to claim that the US government cares about the rights and desires of the Iranian people. What it really cares about, and has always cared about, is fueling protests of anti-imperial governments and bolstering opposition to administrations that repel American hegemony, hubris, and dominance.
It may also be interesting to note that, whereas the US Department of Defense considers "protests" to be a type of "low-level terrorist activity," according to one of its 2009 training manuals, State Department official Limbert takes great pride in saluting the "brave people of Iran...who are going out on the street and demonstrating." One wonders if he also salutes anti-war protesters here in the United States.
But this is all just the tip of Mr. Kuperman's iceberg of deliberate disinformation.
Insisting multiple times during his piece that Iran is "violating international law" by not responding to UN Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate halt to its enrichment program, Mr. Kuperman again demonstrates his own lack of awareness of the fundamental principles of jus cogens, or peremptory norm, as it applies to the authority of UNSC resolutions and the NPT agreement. Again, this is surprising due to Mr. Kuperman's current role as director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin and his former stint as Senior Policy Analyst for the nongovernmental Nuclear Control Institute.
Mr. Kuperman might want to review the tenets of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty first. Article IV of the treaty states:
1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop, research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty [which prohibit the transfer or acquisition of nuclear weapons].As neither the IAEA nor the US intelligence community has found any evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, Iran not only has the legal right to develop and produce peaceful nuclear energy on its own soil, but it has the inalienable right to do so, under the terms of the NPT. Under these terms, no one and nothing - government, agency, council, resolution, draft agreement - can infringe upon Iran's right to operate power plants and enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear program.
2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate, and have the right to participate in the fullest possible exchange of equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to do so shall also co-operate in contributing alone or together with other States or international organizations to the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world. [emphasis mine]
Therefore, any resolutions calling for Iran's inalienable right to be relinquished are, in and of themselves, wholly illegal. Paranoid suspicions, demonizing propaganda, and allegations without evidence are totally insufficient to demonstrate any violations of the NPT by the Iran government.
Cyrus Safardi of IranAffairs, in addition to supplying supporting documentation from the UN's own International Law Commission and the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, explains,"
Article 103 of the UN Charter says that UNSC resolutions trump obligations under international treaties such as the NPT. However, Article 103 does not apply to sovereign rights and jus cogens. It is a general and well-recognized principle of international law that UNSC resolutions that are contrary to jus cogens are ultra vires and NOT binding."With this in mind, it is clear that all UNSC resolutions that "demand" Iran suspend enrichment and close its intrusively monitored and meticulously inspected nuclear facilities - UNSC resolutions 1696 (2006), 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), and 1803 (2008) - are contradictory, illegal and consequently non-binding.
Furthermore, Safardi writes that "Iran's safeguard agreement with the IAEA, and the IAEA statutes, only permit a referral to the UNSC when there has been a diversion of fissile material for non-peaceful use." Since the IAEA had previously confirmed that there had been no such diversion and without any evidence of a nuclear weapons program, its referral of the Iranian nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council was, as CASMII founder Abbas Edalat points out, "politically motivated and illegitimate." Edalat continues,
"On February 15th [2007], Stephen Rademaker, the former US Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-proliferation confessed that the two crucial votes by India against Iran in the Governors' Board of the IAEA which led to Iran's referral to the Security Council were indeed the result of US coercion. Incidentally India, like the other US allies Pakistan and Israel, is not a signatory to the NPT and has developed nuclear bombs which is tolerated and supported by the US.Because the IAEA's referral of Iran's file to the UNSC was unwarranted and because the UNSC resolutions are themselves illegal, Iran has no reason to abide by them and is therefore under no obligation to halt its nuclear program, as Mr. Kuperman keeps insisting.
In fact, the United States is currently in violation of the NPT itself, insofar as "the US has refused to negotiate for complete disarmament and verification per treaty terms and actively plans to use nuclear weapons, including first-strike use against 'enemies' who may only become threats in the future," according to Carl Herman of the Examiner. Even though Mr. Kuperman deems violations of international law cause enough to justify military campaigns, he doesn't seem to mind Israel's constant trespasses and consistent ignoring of numerous Security Council resolutions since 1967.
Continuing, Mr. Kuperman declares that "while Iran permits international inspections at its declared enrichment plant at Natanz, it ignores United Nations demands that it close the plant, where it gains the expertise needed to produce weapons-grade uranium at other secret facilities like the nascent one recently uncovered near Qom."
Isn't everything "secret" until it's announced? What Mr. Kuperman probably knows, but refuses to say since it would weaken his argument for illegally bombing another country and willfully murdering innocent people, is that the new Fordo nuclear facility was actually announced to the IAEA by Iran itself, in advance of the panicky press conference held on September 25 by President Obama, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and French President Nicholas Sarkozy. "I can confirm that on 21 September, Iran informed the IAEA in a letter that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction in the country," IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said.
Under its current safeguards agreement with the Agency, Iran is not obligated to inform the IAEA of any new facilities until six months before the introduction of nuclear material to the site. Since the Fordo enrichment plant is not yet operational, and won't be for another 18 months, Iran has broken no rules. In fact, the site was announced a full year before it needed to be. As Ali-Akbar Salehi, Iran's nuclear chief, remarked, "This installation is not a secret one, which is why we announced its existence to the IAEA."
Ahmadinejad even pointed out that the agreements and guidelines between Iran and the IAEA do not require approval by the United States. "We have no secrecy, we work within the framework of the IAEA," he said. "This does not mean we must inform Mr Obama's Administration of every facility that we have."
