MB Civic

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/06/09/bushs_atomic_twostep.php
Bush’s Atomic Two-Step
Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung
June 09, 2006

Frida Berrigan and William D. Hartung are senior research associates at the World Policy Institute’s Arms Trade Resource Center.

The game of nuclear diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran continues, with the ball squarely in the Iran’s court. Last week, the United States abruptly shifted tactics and began to engage directly with European-led negotiation efforts aimed at convincing Iran to limit or end its nuclear activity. This week U.S. and European officials revealed  that the U.S. has even offered Iran nuclear technology. In what is being viewed as an upset for administration hawks, the U.S. promised that Iran will be allowed to continue its enrichment program, as long as it agrees to first suspend all activity, so that it can “prove”–presumably through AEA inspections–that its intentions are entirely civilian.

However, some observers have already pointed out that “proving” civilian intentions can be difficult–remember the conundrum Iraq was faced when asked to prove the destruction of WMDs that never existed in the first place? Similarly, the Bush administration’s demand that Iran suspend its enrichment activities before sitting down at the table–in other words, concede the goal of negotiations before negotiations even begin–is far from a new diplomatic strategy. The White House has used exactly the same strategy elsewhere–notably with Hamas–to avoid having to engage with those whom Bush views as enemies.

The United States is setting the bar pretty high for Iran. Is it impossibly high? One administration official has indicated that a rejection of the U.S. overture by Iran may in fact be the White House’s objective. Such a rebuff would allow the Bush administration to take forceful action without being seen as unreasonable unilateralists. Initially, President Bush said that the offer would be on the table for only two weeks before the U.S. moved on to U.N. Security Council-backed sanctions. The Bush administration hoped a dismissal of the offer would make Russia and China more willing to vote for sanctions against Tehran.

This cynical approach is similar to U.S. actions in the run-up to the Iraq war, when President Bush falsely claimed that a diplomatic solution was possible even after the decision to attack Saddam Hussein’s regime had been decided. Given all of the obstacles, it would be surprising if this new package would convince Iran to suspend its nuclear program.

What would the United States be doing if it were truly committed to a diplomatic resolution? In addition to pursuing a more gradual approach that would give the negotiating process months or years, not weeks, to bear fruit, non-aggression pledges by the United States and Israel might get things moving. Ultimately, negotiations should move towards a nuclear-free Middle East, with the elimination of Israel’s nuclear arsenal as part of those talks.

Nowhere is the Bush administration’s inconsistent, and at times hypocritical, position on nuclear weapons more evident than in its approaches to Indian and Iranian nuclear pursuits: aiding one and threatening the other, all the while denying that its own position as the world’s ultimate nuclear power is a catalyst for proliferation and an impediment to peace and security.

India, for example, stepped out of the international consensus on nuclear abolition in 1998 when it tested a nuclear device. Now a new nuclear deal that President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed in March–which still needs to approval by Congress–would shelve the moratorium barring U.S. sale of nuclear- related materials to India; allowing New Delhi to receive U.S. reactor components, nuclear fuel and expertise for its civilian nuclear power plants.

The deal undermines the already tattered Non-Proliferation Treaty, rewarding a country that has refused to abide by international non-proliferation norms. Effectively, India has charted a new course into the nuclear club. What is to stop other countries with nuclear ambitions from following in their footsteps?

The deal makes it extremely difficult for Washington to enter good faith negotiations aimed at thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. As an Indian opponent to the deal opined, “the U.S. has itself become the biggest proliferators of nuclear technology–the only difference is that what the U.S. is practicing is selective proliferation.” Iran concurs: a senior Iranian official, speaking soon after the outlines of the India-U.S. deal were released in July 2005, said: “India is looking after its own national interests. We cannot criticize them for this. But what the Americans are doing is a double standard. On the one hand they are depriving a NPT member from having peaceful technology but at the same time they are cooperating with India, which is not a member of the NPT, to their own advantage.”
None other than the chairman of the U.N.’s WMD Commission, Hans Blix, has faulted the White House. Speaking on Democracy Now on June 2, Blix (who was right about Iraq’s lack of WMDs), asserted that while it is “desirable that Iran refrain from going on with enrichment of uranium,” it is not just a matter of stopping them, but dealing with the reasons they seek nuclear capabilities. Considering the Iranian view, Blix ticked off the reasons for having nuclear options:

They see 130,000 American soldiers in Iraq and they see American bases in Pakistan and in Afghanistan and more American military activities to the north of them. They remember that Mossadegh, who was elected premier, was ousted with subversive methods from the outside.

Blix concludes: “It is not inconceivable that some groups in Iran may feel that their security is being threatened from the outside.”

The WMD Commission of the United Nations’ [http://www.wmdcommission.org/files/Weapons_of_Terror.pdf] latest report warns that we could see 10 new nuclear powers by 2013. “Over the last decade, there has been a serious and dangerous loss of momentum and direction in disarmament and non-proliferation efforts,” the report warns.

“Why should others not wish to emulate” the big nuclear powers, asks the report, when “they seem disinclined to give up nuclear weapons.” When President Bush declared on April 18 that “All options are on the table” in relationship to Iran, he was menacing the nascent power with weapons. But there is another nuclear option that he could put on the table–nuclear abolition.

Blix’s commission asserts that: “So long as any state has nuclear weapons, others will want them. So long as any such weapons remain, there is a risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. And any such use would be catastrophic.”

And as John Burroughs, executive director of the Lawyer’s Committee on Nuclear Policy, concludes, the solution embraced by the WMD Commission, “is that proliferation must be reversed where it began: in the United States.”
The clearest route to a nuclear-free Iran, is a nuclear-free Middle East. The clearest route to a nuclear-free Middle East is concrete steps towards nuclear disarmament by nuclear heavyweights. And that has to start with the heaviest heavy of all–the United States of America.

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“Our German forbearers in the 1930s sat around, blamed their rulers, said ‘maybe everything’s going to be alright.’ That is something we cannot do. I do not want my grandchildren asking me years from now, ‘why didn’t you do something to stop all this?” –Ray McGovern,  former CIA analyst of 27 years, referring to the actions and crimes of the Bush Administration