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Iran's Nuclear Program Never Existed |
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Written by William O Beeman
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Thursday, 03 January 2008 |
Iran has never had a proven nuclear weapons program. Ever. This inconvenient
fact stands as an indictment of the Bush administration’s stance on Iran.
The recently released 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran “suspended
its nuclear weapons program in 2003” caught the Bush administration flat-footed.
In his panic, Bush grasped desperately at the idea that the weapons program may
have once existed. However, the report does not offer a scintilla of evidence
that the weapons program was ever an established fact.
Designating 2003 as the date that Iran “stopped” its program is telling: this is
the year the Bush administration first decided to create a case for attacking
Iran based on the purported danger of its nuclear program.
In February 2003, the U.S. government-designated terrorist group Mujahedin-e
Khalq, better known as the MEK (or MKO) “revealed” the existence of Iran’s
nuclear facilities to Washington. The MEK, which had been purged from Iran
during the period following the 1979 revolution, took up residence in Iraq under
the protection of Saddam Hussein. The MEK, sometimes identified as an “Islamic
Marxist” organization, is dedicated to the overthrow of the current Iranian
government. It has been assiduous in courting American lawmakers to recruit U.S.
support for its cause. Legislators such as Kansas Senator Sam Brownback and
Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen have championed this cause, and
neoconservatives Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes lobbied for its removal from
the U.S. list of terrorist organizations in order to use the MEK in the Bush
White House drive for regime change in Iran.
Subsequently, the Bush administration claimed that Iran had “concealed” its
weapons program for decades, and began a campaign to shut down all nuclear
development.
In fact, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) grants all nations the
“inalienable right” to peaceful nuclear development. Further, it does not
require any nation to report its facilities to the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) until fissile material, such as uranium, is actually introduced
into the facility.
Iran did indeed have a brief reporting lapse. It revealed the start of its
nuclear enrichment experiments at the time they began, rather than announcing
this to the IAEA 180 days before experimentation as was required. This was in
2003, and it was the only serious breech of protocol.
The National Intelligence Estimate now identifies 2003 as the date when the
weapons program stopped — literally at the point when the Bush administration
first became aware of it.
2003 was two years before the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It was
more than a year before the United States began to lobby for U.N. economic
sanctions against Iran. Claiming that “international pressure” had caused Iran
to modify its behavior, the Bush administration tried desperately to justify its
exaggerated characterizations of the danger Iran posed to the world. The only
event that the Bush administration can now claim as constituting “international
pressure” is the May 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
If the international community understands that Iran never had a weapons
program, President George W. Bush’s statement that Iran could start the program
up “again” is clearly absurd.
It is now clear that the Bush administration’s campaign to convince the world of
the danger of Iran’s purported immanent nuclear weapons was a sham. The campaign
was one in a series of public pretexts to effect regime change in the Islamic
Republic. No amount of equivocation, or bluster about Iran’s “continuing” danger
can mask the fact that American credibility on this issue has been irrevocably
damaged.
The only positive outcome of this debacle may be that the Bush administration
may finally accept that differences with Iran can only be solved by actually
talking to the leaders of the Islamic Republic. Restoration of diplomatic
relations, even at a low level, will begin the process of reducing the hostile
atmosphere that has been created, and will start the long, slow process toward
the restoration of productive and peaceful relations.
Source: New American Media
Comments posted are the sole opinion of the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of AIM. |
