G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro on a Catch-22 Nuclear World
By Tom Engelhardt
Created Jun 11 2007 - 9:04am
Here's the strange thing: Since 2001, our media has been filled with
terrifying nuclear headlines. The Iraqi bomb (you remember those "mushroom
clouds" [1] about to rise over American cities), the North Korean bomb, and
the Iranian bomb have been almost obsessively in the news. Of course, the
Iraqi bomb turned out to be embarrassingly nonexistent; experts still
consider the Iranian bomb years away (if it happens); and the North Korean
bomb, while quite real, remains a less than impressive weapon, based on a
less than spectacular [2] nuclear test in October 2006.
And yet these are the nuclear weapons that have taken all our attention. How
many of you have ever heard of Complex 2030 or know that, as William Hartung
and Frida Berrigan pointed out [3] recently, the Bush administration is, on
average, putting more money into our nuclear arsenal (over $6 billion this
year) than went into it in the Cold War era? Or that, if all goes according
to administration projections, this figure should hit $7.4 billion a year by
2012? And Complex 2030 [4] -- aiming, as the name implies, at a thoroughly
updated, upgraded American arsenal 23 years from now -- involves producing,
among many other things, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, our first new
warhead in two decades. (The Energy Department just selected [5] its
design.) In addition, the Bush administration has worked hard to break down
the barrier between nuclear and conventional weapons, absorbing nuclear
weapons into its plans for its new Global Strike force [6], supposedly able
to hit any target on the planet "with a few hours' notice," and repeatedly
leaking the news that it might consider using the "nuclear option" [7]
against Iran's nuclear facilities.
As Dilip Hiro, Middle Eastern expert and author most recently of Blood of
the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources [8], makes
clear, there are not two nuclear worlds -- that of the nuclear "rogues" and
that of the "nuclear club"; there is only one. Our nuclear world and theirs
are intimately linked by an ever more volatile version of the old Cold War
doctrine of deterrence. The more we invest in, and maintain, a vast nuclear
arsenal, the more we slot those weapons into our strategic and tactical
planning, the more such weapons will proliferate elsewhere. The Bush
administration came into office ready to crush nuclear proliferators.
Instead, when its history is written, it will undoubtedly be seen as a
nuclear proliferation machine, threatening to bring its own nightmare
scenario -- such weaponry in the hands of a terrorist band for whom
"deterrence" would have no meaning whatsoever -- ever closer to reality.
-- Tom
Nuclear Weapons Programs Are about Regime Survival: The Iranian Bomb in a
MAD world
By Dilip Hiro
For countries -- small, middling, or great -- acquiring nuclear weapons is
all about the most basic requirement: the survival of the regime or nation.
Joining the "nuclear club" has proved an effective strategy for survival.
The possession of city-busting, potentially planet-ending weaponry threatens
to bring about a MAD -- the Cold War acronym for "Mutually Assured
Destruction" -- world. While the "madness" of this strategy is apparent, a
rarely mentioned aspect of today's geopolitics is that acquiring nuclear
arms has proven a logical step for a regime to take when its survival is at
stake.
The United States and the Soviet Union, the superpowers of the Cold War,
stacked up nuclear weapons by the thousands as "deterrents," well aware that
the use of even a tiny fraction of them would annihilate the planet many
times over. The doctrine worked, maintaining a precarious peace until the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
When Communist China acquired an atom bomb in 1964, it joined the four
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with veto power --
the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France -- which possessed
nuclear arms, thus gaining an entry to the "nuclear club."
The club's monopoly was broken by a minor power, Israel, in 1967 --
stealthily, because its leaders decided not to test the bomb they had built.
Even so, the Central Intelligence Agency got wind of it. What did
then-President Lyndon Johnson's administration do about it? Nothing. And
what about the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog
agency charged with administering the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT)? It was empowered to act, but only in cases where a UN member had
signed on to the Treaty. Israel did not.
In June 1981, when the UN Security Council's resolution 487 directed Israel
to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards anyway, Israel simply
ignored it. President Ronald Reagan's White House maintained a thunderous
silence on the matter.
Compare that with the Bush administration's present stance in the case of
Iran. Unlike Israel, Tehran initialed the Non-Proliferation Treaty early
on -- and that treaty allows a signatory non-nuclear power to enrich uranium
for civilian purposes. By not informing the IAEA when it started to do so in
2002, however, Tehran failed to meet its treaty obligations. That "original
sin," combined with the Bush administration's strong animus toward a hostile
regional power, has in its trail brought UN sanctions against Tehran, with
Washington acting as the prime mover.
The Lure of Deterrance
In 1998, four years before Iran's push for nuclear power, India officially
detonated an atomic bomb and, soon after, its arch rival Pakistan followed
suit. Like Israel, neither of them had signed on to the NPT. India exploded
a "nuclear device" in 1974, claiming it was for "peaceful purposes." U.S.
sanctions followed but did not impede Delhi's progress in this field.
India had embarked on this path after acquiring a bloody nose in its 1962
border war with China over disputed territories in the Himalayan region.
Following its defeat in a conventional war, its leaders concluded that only
possession of atomic weapons would deter Beijing from invading again. By so
doing, they underlined a growing belief in the deterrent power of nuclear
arms -- a route by which militarily inferior countries could hope to deter
their superior rivals or enemies.
Pakistan, engaged since 1947 in a bitter struggle with India over the status
of the disputed province of Kashmir, was a case in point. Well aware of
their country's inferiority to India in population and economic development,
Pakistan's leaders knew that it would be no match in conventional warfare.
The only way to achieve parity with their larger, more powerful neighbor was
by acquiring nuclear weapons.
So they started a clandestine nuclear-arms program in the late 1970s,
reaching their goal a decade later. They waited, however, to test their
first bomb until after India had officially admitted to doing so in May
1998. A year later, fighting between Indian and Pakistani troops in the
Kargil region of Indian-administered Kashmir did not escalate into an
all-out war because both sides were nuclear-armed, with their leaders
seemingly prepared to use their arsenals in extremis . The episode,
frightening as it was, reassured Pakistani officials that their country was
now secure from being overpowered by India.
In the mid-1950s, the same reasoning had led Israeli leaders to pursue the
nuclear path. Uncertain about how long they could maintain their edge over
the combined forces of their Arab neighbors in conventional weaponry and the
quality of their troops, they concluded that an effective deterrent for a
beleaguered country was the atomic bomb.
Indeed, during the early days of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when the
Israelis were caught off-guard and invading Arab armies made striking gains,
the government ordered its entire arsenal, then 25 atomic bombs, mounted on
specially adapted bombers. Those bombers never took off, in part, because
the swift airlifting of military hardware and ammunition from the U.S. soon
helped turn the tide in Israel's favor. In short, Israeli leaders equipped
their military with atomic arms to ensure the survival of the State of
Israel. Such a process, once started, never ceases. By now, Israel
reportedly has an arsenal of at least 200 nuclear bombs.
More recently, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il has acted in a similar
fashion. In January 2002, he noted with alarm the way his country was
included in an "Axis of Evil" -- along with Iraq and Iran -- by George W.
Bush in his State of the Union Address. "States like these, and their
terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace
of the world," the President said. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction,
these regimes pose a grave and growing danger."
Bush had already reversed the Clinton administration's policy of engagement
(launched in conjunction with the South Korean government) on the issue of
the North Korean nuclear program and had overseen the virtual termination of
the 1994 agreement to supply North Korea with two light-water nuclear
reactors at the cost of $4.6 billion in return for a nuclear freeze. North
Korea retaliated by expelling IAEA inspectors and withdrawing from the
nuclear NPT in 2003 -- the year the Bush administration launched its
invasion of Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime, claiming it had an
ongoing nuclear-weapons program that endangered the United States. (It
didn't.)
Kim Jong-Il then accelerated his country's nuclear program, testing a device
in October 2006. By so doing, he strengthened his hand to ensure the
survival of his regime. Thus did another minor state in search of survival
insurance join the nuclear club.
Iran Plays the Nuclear Card
With Saddam's regime destroyed and North Korea armed and dangerous, Iran was
the member of that "axis" left exposed to the prospect of regime change.
Partly to avoid Saddam's fate, Iranian leaders signed the IAEA's Additional
Protocol in October 2003, giving the watchdog body authority to conduct
constant on-site inspections. A series of reports by the agency followed.
In essence what these said was: While the IAEA inspectors had not found
evidence proving that Iran was pursuing a nuclear-weapons program, they
could not give it a clean bill of health either because Iran had not
answered all questions satisfactorily. In the words of an IAEA official in
Vienna, "The facts don't support an innocent or guilty verdict at this
point."
The starting point in the nuclear-fuel cycle is the enrichment of uranium,
allowed by the NPT. A low figure of 5% enrichment makes uranium suitable for
generating electricity; at the high end, 90% is needed to produce a nuclear
weapon. The same machine -- a centrifuge -- yields results at both ends of
the spectrum.
From the Iranian leaders' viewpoint, surrendering their right to enrich
uranium, as demanded by the Bush administration and its allies, means giving
up the path to a nuclear weapon in the future. Yet, the history of the past
half century indicates that the only effective way to deter Washington from
overthrowing their regime is by developing -- or, at least, threatening to
develop -- nuclear weaponry. Little wonder that they consider giving up the
right to enrich uranium tantamount to giving up the right to protect their
regime. (Anyone even suggesting that the U.S. give up this right would be
laughed off the premises. Indeed, the Bush administration continues to
update and upgrade its vast nuclear arsenal, attempting, for instance, to
develop bunker-busting atomic weapons for possible future use against Iran's
nuclear facilities.)
If the U.S. were to give Iran cast-iron guarantees of nonaggression as well
as of noninterference in its domestic affairs -- just as North Korea, armed
with atomic bombs, is demanding -- that would undoubtedly reassure Iran's
leaders and form a real basis for resolving the problem of that country's
nuclear activities.
After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2005, IAEA chief Muhammad
El Baradei said:
"Part of the negotiations should be providing Iran with security
assurances. I hope.. that the United States at a certain point will become
more engaged. We look at the United States to do the heavy lifting in the
area of security."
Now, Baradei is once more offering pragmatic advice. He has proposed that
the U.S. and its allies should consider allowing Iran limited enrichment
rights within its own boundaries. He argues that, since the Iranians have
already successfully enriched uranium, the Security Council's demand that it
stop doing so has become redundant. Instead, the world body should focus on
seeing that Iran conducts its enrichment activities under IAEA supervision
and that, unlike North Korea, it does not withdraw from the nuclear NPT.
As it is, U.S. credibility in Tehran is low. On the eve of the January 1981
release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in November 1979, the U.S.
agreed in the Algiers Accord not to interfere in Iran's internal affairs. In
December 1995, however, it began violating that agreement when, following
the passage of a directive by Congress sanctioning $18 million for a covert
action program against Iran, the Clinton White House announced that the sum
would be spent inter alia to cultivate new enemies of the Islamic regime.
Since then that annual sum has risen to $75 million and the Bush White House
has launched a series of covert operations to undermine the Iranian regime,
dispatched aircraft-carrier strike forces through the Straits of Hormuz in
classic gunboat-diplomacy fashion, and had its Vice President issue a series
of warnings to Iran from the deck of the USS John C. Stennis, floating
barely 150 miles off the Iranian coast.
The Iranian response, despite public denials, has been to play the single
card that history has stamped "effective" since 1949 -- raising the specter
of a nuclear-armed Iran. It is a classic act of self-defense guaranteed to
spread nuclear arms to other countries in a MAD world where Catch-22 is the
nuclear rule of the day.
Dilip Hiro is the author of many books on the Middle East, including The
Iranian Labyrinth (Nation Books). His latest book is Blood of the Earth: The
Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources [9] (Nation Books).
Copyright 2007 Dilip Hiro
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Tom Engelhardt
Created Jun 11 2007 - 9:04am
Here's the strange thing: Since 2001, our media has been filled with
terrifying nuclear headlines. The Iraqi bomb (you remember those "mushroom
clouds" [1] about to rise over American cities), the North Korean bomb, and
the Iranian bomb have been almost obsessively in the news. Of course, the
Iraqi bomb turned out to be embarrassingly nonexistent; experts still
consider the Iranian bomb years away (if it happens); and the North Korean
bomb, while quite real, remains a less than impressive weapon, based on a
less than spectacular [2] nuclear test in October 2006.
And yet these are the nuclear weapons that have taken all our attention. How
many of you have ever heard of Complex 2030 or know that, as William Hartung
and Frida Berrigan pointed out [3] recently, the Bush administration is, on
average, putting more money into our nuclear arsenal (over $6 billion this
year) than went into it in the Cold War era? Or that, if all goes according
to administration projections, this figure should hit $7.4 billion a year by
2012? And Complex 2030 [4] -- aiming, as the name implies, at a thoroughly
updated, upgraded American arsenal 23 years from now -- involves producing,
among many other things, the Reliable Replacement Warhead, our first new
warhead in two decades. (The Energy Department just selected [5] its
design.) In addition, the Bush administration has worked hard to break down
the barrier between nuclear and conventional weapons, absorbing nuclear
weapons into its plans for its new Global Strike force [6], supposedly able
to hit any target on the planet "with a few hours' notice," and repeatedly
leaking the news that it might consider using the "nuclear option" [7]
against Iran's nuclear facilities.
As Dilip Hiro, Middle Eastern expert and author most recently of Blood of
the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources [8], makes
clear, there are not two nuclear worlds -- that of the nuclear "rogues" and
that of the "nuclear club"; there is only one. Our nuclear world and theirs
are intimately linked by an ever more volatile version of the old Cold War
doctrine of deterrence. The more we invest in, and maintain, a vast nuclear
arsenal, the more we slot those weapons into our strategic and tactical
planning, the more such weapons will proliferate elsewhere. The Bush
administration came into office ready to crush nuclear proliferators.
Instead, when its history is written, it will undoubtedly be seen as a
nuclear proliferation machine, threatening to bring its own nightmare
scenario -- such weaponry in the hands of a terrorist band for whom
"deterrence" would have no meaning whatsoever -- ever closer to reality.
-- Tom
Nuclear Weapons Programs Are about Regime Survival: The Iranian Bomb in a
MAD world
By Dilip Hiro
For countries -- small, middling, or great -- acquiring nuclear weapons is
all about the most basic requirement: the survival of the regime or nation.
Joining the "nuclear club" has proved an effective strategy for survival.
The possession of city-busting, potentially planet-ending weaponry threatens
to bring about a MAD -- the Cold War acronym for "Mutually Assured
Destruction" -- world. While the "madness" of this strategy is apparent, a
rarely mentioned aspect of today's geopolitics is that acquiring nuclear
arms has proven a logical step for a regime to take when its survival is at
stake.
The United States and the Soviet Union, the superpowers of the Cold War,
stacked up nuclear weapons by the thousands as "deterrents," well aware that
the use of even a tiny fraction of them would annihilate the planet many
times over. The doctrine worked, maintaining a precarious peace until the
Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.
When Communist China acquired an atom bomb in 1964, it joined the four
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with veto power --
the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France -- which possessed
nuclear arms, thus gaining an entry to the "nuclear club."
The club's monopoly was broken by a minor power, Israel, in 1967 --
stealthily, because its leaders decided not to test the bomb they had built.
Even so, the Central Intelligence Agency got wind of it. What did
then-President Lyndon Johnson's administration do about it? Nothing. And
what about the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN watchdog
agency charged with administering the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT)? It was empowered to act, but only in cases where a UN member had
signed on to the Treaty. Israel did not.
In June 1981, when the UN Security Council's resolution 487 directed Israel
to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards anyway, Israel simply
ignored it. President Ronald Reagan's White House maintained a thunderous
silence on the matter.
Compare that with the Bush administration's present stance in the case of
Iran. Unlike Israel, Tehran initialed the Non-Proliferation Treaty early
on -- and that treaty allows a signatory non-nuclear power to enrich uranium
for civilian purposes. By not informing the IAEA when it started to do so in
2002, however, Tehran failed to meet its treaty obligations. That "original
sin," combined with the Bush administration's strong animus toward a hostile
regional power, has in its trail brought UN sanctions against Tehran, with
Washington acting as the prime mover.
The Lure of Deterrance
In 1998, four years before Iran's push for nuclear power, India officially
detonated an atomic bomb and, soon after, its arch rival Pakistan followed
suit. Like Israel, neither of them had signed on to the NPT. India exploded
a "nuclear device" in 1974, claiming it was for "peaceful purposes." U.S.
sanctions followed but did not impede Delhi's progress in this field.
India had embarked on this path after acquiring a bloody nose in its 1962
border war with China over disputed territories in the Himalayan region.
Following its defeat in a conventional war, its leaders concluded that only
possession of atomic weapons would deter Beijing from invading again. By so
doing, they underlined a growing belief in the deterrent power of nuclear
arms -- a route by which militarily inferior countries could hope to deter
their superior rivals or enemies.
Pakistan, engaged since 1947 in a bitter struggle with India over the status
of the disputed province of Kashmir, was a case in point. Well aware of
their country's inferiority to India in population and economic development,
Pakistan's leaders knew that it would be no match in conventional warfare.
The only way to achieve parity with their larger, more powerful neighbor was
by acquiring nuclear weapons.
So they started a clandestine nuclear-arms program in the late 1970s,
reaching their goal a decade later. They waited, however, to test their
first bomb until after India had officially admitted to doing so in May
1998. A year later, fighting between Indian and Pakistani troops in the
Kargil region of Indian-administered Kashmir did not escalate into an
all-out war because both sides were nuclear-armed, with their leaders
seemingly prepared to use their arsenals in extremis . The episode,
frightening as it was, reassured Pakistani officials that their country was
now secure from being overpowered by India.
In the mid-1950s, the same reasoning had led Israeli leaders to pursue the
nuclear path. Uncertain about how long they could maintain their edge over
the combined forces of their Arab neighbors in conventional weaponry and the
quality of their troops, they concluded that an effective deterrent for a
beleaguered country was the atomic bomb.
Indeed, during the early days of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, when the
Israelis were caught off-guard and invading Arab armies made striking gains,
the government ordered its entire arsenal, then 25 atomic bombs, mounted on
specially adapted bombers. Those bombers never took off, in part, because
the swift airlifting of military hardware and ammunition from the U.S. soon
helped turn the tide in Israel's favor. In short, Israeli leaders equipped
their military with atomic arms to ensure the survival of the State of
Israel. Such a process, once started, never ceases. By now, Israel
reportedly has an arsenal of at least 200 nuclear bombs.
More recently, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il has acted in a similar
fashion. In January 2002, he noted with alarm the way his country was
included in an "Axis of Evil" -- along with Iraq and Iran -- by George W.
Bush in his State of the Union Address. "States like these, and their
terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace
of the world," the President said. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction,
these regimes pose a grave and growing danger."
Bush had already reversed the Clinton administration's policy of engagement
(launched in conjunction with the South Korean government) on the issue of
the North Korean nuclear program and had overseen the virtual termination of
the 1994 agreement to supply North Korea with two light-water nuclear
reactors at the cost of $4.6 billion in return for a nuclear freeze. North
Korea retaliated by expelling IAEA inspectors and withdrawing from the
nuclear NPT in 2003 -- the year the Bush administration launched its
invasion of Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein's regime, claiming it had an
ongoing nuclear-weapons program that endangered the United States. (It
didn't.)
Kim Jong-Il then accelerated his country's nuclear program, testing a device
in October 2006. By so doing, he strengthened his hand to ensure the
survival of his regime. Thus did another minor state in search of survival
insurance join the nuclear club.
Iran Plays the Nuclear Card
With Saddam's regime destroyed and North Korea armed and dangerous, Iran was
the member of that "axis" left exposed to the prospect of regime change.
Partly to avoid Saddam's fate, Iranian leaders signed the IAEA's Additional
Protocol in October 2003, giving the watchdog body authority to conduct
constant on-site inspections. A series of reports by the agency followed.
In essence what these said was: While the IAEA inspectors had not found
evidence proving that Iran was pursuing a nuclear-weapons program, they
could not give it a clean bill of health either because Iran had not
answered all questions satisfactorily. In the words of an IAEA official in
Vienna, "The facts don't support an innocent or guilty verdict at this
point."
The starting point in the nuclear-fuel cycle is the enrichment of uranium,
allowed by the NPT. A low figure of 5% enrichment makes uranium suitable for
generating electricity; at the high end, 90% is needed to produce a nuclear
weapon. The same machine -- a centrifuge -- yields results at both ends of
the spectrum.
From the Iranian leaders' viewpoint, surrendering their right to enrich
uranium, as demanded by the Bush administration and its allies, means giving
up the path to a nuclear weapon in the future. Yet, the history of the past
half century indicates that the only effective way to deter Washington from
overthrowing their regime is by developing -- or, at least, threatening to
develop -- nuclear weaponry. Little wonder that they consider giving up the
right to enrich uranium tantamount to giving up the right to protect their
regime. (Anyone even suggesting that the U.S. give up this right would be
laughed off the premises. Indeed, the Bush administration continues to
update and upgrade its vast nuclear arsenal, attempting, for instance, to
develop bunker-busting atomic weapons for possible future use against Iran's
nuclear facilities.)
If the U.S. were to give Iran cast-iron guarantees of nonaggression as well
as of noninterference in its domestic affairs -- just as North Korea, armed
with atomic bombs, is demanding -- that would undoubtedly reassure Iran's
leaders and form a real basis for resolving the problem of that country's
nuclear activities.
After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2005, IAEA chief Muhammad
El Baradei said:
"Part of the negotiations should be providing Iran with security
assurances. I hope.. that the United States at a certain point will become
more engaged. We look at the United States to do the heavy lifting in the
area of security."
Now, Baradei is once more offering pragmatic advice. He has proposed that
the U.S. and its allies should consider allowing Iran limited enrichment
rights within its own boundaries. He argues that, since the Iranians have
already successfully enriched uranium, the Security Council's demand that it
stop doing so has become redundant. Instead, the world body should focus on
seeing that Iran conducts its enrichment activities under IAEA supervision
and that, unlike North Korea, it does not withdraw from the nuclear NPT.
As it is, U.S. credibility in Tehran is low. On the eve of the January 1981
release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in November 1979, the U.S.
agreed in the Algiers Accord not to interfere in Iran's internal affairs. In
December 1995, however, it began violating that agreement when, following
the passage of a directive by Congress sanctioning $18 million for a covert
action program against Iran, the Clinton White House announced that the sum
would be spent inter alia to cultivate new enemies of the Islamic regime.
Since then that annual sum has risen to $75 million and the Bush White House
has launched a series of covert operations to undermine the Iranian regime,
dispatched aircraft-carrier strike forces through the Straits of Hormuz in
classic gunboat-diplomacy fashion, and had its Vice President issue a series
of warnings to Iran from the deck of the USS John C. Stennis, floating
barely 150 miles off the Iranian coast.
The Iranian response, despite public denials, has been to play the single
card that history has stamped "effective" since 1949 -- raising the specter
of a nuclear-armed Iran. It is a classic act of self-defense guaranteed to
spread nuclear arms to other countries in a MAD world where Catch-22 is the
nuclear rule of the day.
Dilip Hiro is the author of many books on the Middle East, including The
Iranian Labyrinth (Nation Books). His latest book is Blood of the Earth: The
Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources [9] (Nation Books).
Copyright 2007 Dilip Hiro
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson