Four years after the Bush administration duped Americans into believing that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the al Qaeda terrorist attacks that rocked the United States on 9/11, Bush administration officials - prodded by Israel - are now asking Americans to believe that Iran either has the bomb or is vigorously pursuing it.
As former weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, put it in his recent book (Target Iran), "the last thing the Bush administration wanted was to have the U.S. public pondering the possibility that Iran might not, after all, be pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but rather only a peaceful nuclear energy program." [p. 145]
But, thanks to lies and deceit by Iran, as well as unsubstantiated allegations by the Bush administration and Israel, Iran's very attempt to exercise its legal rights to the nuclear fuel cycle under Article 4 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is now viewed as proof of intent to build the bomb. Thus, for both Israel and the U.S., Iran's exercise of its Article 4 rights - which has the overwhelming support of its citizens - has become a reason for war.
Recall that the Bush administration "took the lead in arguing that Iran, as a leading producer of oil, had no justifiable economic explanation for its nuclear program, further reinforcing the conclusion by Washington D.C. that the program was a cover for nuclear weapons acquisition." [p. 71] Strangely, the Bush administration seems to have forgotten that both the Nixon and Ford administrations "approved the Shah's plans for both uranium-enrichment facilities and plutonium reprocessing plants." [Joseph Cirincione, "The Clock's Ticking: Stopping Iran Before It's Too Late," Arms Control Today, Nov. 2006]
Strangely? Yes, because "the approval process then included several officials who have advised President George W. Bush on Iran" [Ibid], Messrs. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Kissinger.
And, as Ray McGovern has recently written: "In 1976, Ford reluctantly signed a directive offering Iran a deal that would have brought at least $5.4 billion for U.S. corporations like Westinghouse and General electric, had not the Shah been unceremoniously ousted three years later. The offer included a reprocessing facility for a complete nuclear-fuels cycle - essentially the same capability that the United States, Israel and other countries now insist Iran cannot be allowed to acquire." [Ray McGovern, "Wake Up! The Next War is Coming," TomPaine.com, Feb. 12, 2007]
In addition, John Bolton -- the obnoxious right-wing ideologue and anti-U.N. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., whose appointment Congress wisely refused to ratify - lied, when he asserted: "There's no doubt that for close to 20 years, the Iranians have been pursuing nuclear weapons through a clandestine program that we've uncovered." [Ritter p. 188] In fact, there is plenty of doubt.
In fact, we are still awaiting conclusive evidence that Shah Reza Pahlavi began a secret nuclear weapons program, which was then continued by the leaders of Iran's Islamic Republic during the years of the Iran-Iraq war and which continues to this day. Instead, we have the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which not only concludes that "Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon," but also that there is "no information linking" clandestine work by Iran's military "directly to a nuclear weapons program." [Dafna Linzer, "Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb," Washington Post.com, Aug. 2, 2005]
And, instead, on February 27, 2006, we found Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reasserting conclusions he had reached in November 2004: (1) "All the declared nuclear material in Iran has been accounted for, and therefore such material is not diverted to prohibited activities," and (2) "The Agency is, however, not yet in a position to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran." [Ritter, p. 158, p. 189]
Thus, when one considers that the IAEA's inspections in Iran constitute "some of the most intrusive inspections in the history of nuclear arms control," [Ibid, p. 102] there are plenty of reasons to doubt the assertions made by the Bush administration.
However, given the fact that Iran has frequently deceived and lied to the IAEA -- initially about the very existence of its nuclear program and subsequently about specific elements -- no prudent person would accept on faith Iranian claims about its peaceful nature. But neither does previous deceit prove U.S. assertions "that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons capability, one that operates outside the bounds of the IAEA weapons inspections." [p, 199]
Thus, we must reject as unproven, claims made by John Bolton, "echoing similar charges made by Israel...that Iran has already enriched enough uranium to make several nuclear weapons." [Ibid] Simply recall that it was Bolton, whom the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Dan Gillerman, called "the sixth Israeli diplomat assigned to the United Nations," [p. 208] He's joined at the hip with Israel.
Neither should we believe U.S. Under Secretary of State, Nicholas Burns, when he makes the unsupported assertion that "there is no doubt that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons."
Thus, lest the Bush administration dupe us into war yet again, Americans, the news media and the Congress must demand hard evidence. We must insist that the new NIE on Iran be completed expeditiously and critically examined. And, until it is, we should keep in mind that Senator Jay Rockefeller -- who now heads the Senate Intelligence Committee that will examine the anticipated NIE and who has access to classified intelligence - recently asserted that there "is little evidence corroborating the accusations that Iran is proliferating nuclear weapons." [Kaveh L. Afrasiabi, "Debunking Iran's nuclear myth makers," Asia Times Jan. 27, 2007]
Israel's role in attempting to prod the U.S. to attack Iran has been considerable and is a major theme of Ritter's book. Indeed, Israeli intelligence has provided both the United States and the IAEA with accurate intelligence about elements of Iran's nuclear program, but it has not found evidence to prove the existence of Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
I agree: Iran is no blushing bride. They'd like nuclear weapons, but apparently the bust-up of the grandfather of Pakistan's nuclear program, A.Q. Khan's, smuggling ring has set Iran back. It no longer has access to outside technology and knowledge.
