Pinches of nuclear salt

Brian Cloughley

The trouble is that when you penalise pariahs and try to make fools of them, and then you strike at them with military force, they might get back at you in ways that you never thought of

America's justification for its war on Iraq, announced to the UN Security Council in February 2003, was that "The facts, and Iraq's behaviour, show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction [WMD]. These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

Many of us who believed there was no Iraqi WMD programme of any sort were shocked and chastened. After all, the world's largest military and surveillance machine said it had "solid intelligence" concerning a massive arsenal of terrifying weaponry. All the information gathered by thousands of US spooks and amazingly sophisticated technical devices couldn't be wrong, could it? We couldn't take it with a pinch of salt.

The US spends countless billions on intelligence gathering. Given the exotic technical activity being devoted to discovering that Saddam's "efforts to reconstitute his nuclear programme have been focused on acquiring the third and last component - sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion," the world thought that all the pronouncements about cataclysmic weapons of mass destruction were factual.

But they weren't.

They were a farrago of baloney: they were tripe, twaddle, codswallop and claptrap from beginning to end. There were no nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programmes of any sort. And there have been no apologies from the demented barbarians in Washington who lied to the world and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and wrecked their country.

And now we are being told that Iran's nuclear programme is as dangerous as the one Saddam was supposed to have had.

On September 25, The Times reported that "The West warned Iran that it will face fresh sanctions unless it can persuade the world of a 'profound change' in its nuclear stance after the existence of its secret underground uranium enrichment plant was uncovered."

But the plant was not "uncovered" by the West. An International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman announced that "on September 21 Iran informed the IAEA that a new pilot fuel-enrichment plant is under construction in the country. The letter stated that the enrichment level would be up to 5 per cent."

So The Times tried to save face by claiming that "Reports from Washington (from some of these energetic and always nameless 'senior officials') indicate that Iran had learnt of the West's move and declared [the plant] formally to the IAEA." Then the New York Times spread a leak that "officials said they developed a detailed picture about work on the facility from multiple human intelligence sources, as well as satellite imagery."

(And Western leaders later claimed they had known all about it "for months". Pinch of salt?)

So Iran knows so much about America's surveillance of its nuclear facilities that just before omniscient US intelligence agencies revealed Iran's secrets to the world, they could be pre-empted by the equally all-knowing Iranians. Amazing.

In one of his few lucid moments, the unhinged Iranian President Ahmadinejad announced that the nuclear facility would not begin operating for another 18 months and that "It's not a secret site. If it was, why would we have informed the IAEA about it a year ahead of time?" Then he said that the Agency was welcome to inspect the facility.

If inspections find that enrichment capability is in fact 5 per cent, then there are going to be many stupid-looking people in the West, as that is nowhere near the 80+ percent needed for nuclear weapons.

But be assured that if this majestically hyped affair collapses into nothing because the "multiple human intelligence sources" (if they exist) are found to be fantasising liars, and if the IAEA inspections find no evidence of weapon-grade enrichment, then those responsible for the dramatic stories will never apologise for their spinning.

President Obama emphasised nuclear disarmament at the UN Security Council, and declared he had "a comprehensive agenda to seek the goal of a world without nuclear weapons."

Most gratifying. Majestically desirable. But the elephant in the UN room - the critical mass, as it were - which is slavishly ignored by the West, is the country that pays no attention to anything that is said in the UN Security Council regarding any of its machinations.

Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons. It has signed no treaty concerning their construction or control. Its uranium enrichment facilities have never been seen by any inspector, and never will be. It has no intention of moving towards nuclear disarmament, and Obama knows this perfectly well.

Iran is in the grip of a gang of foolish fanatics who are just as bigoted and blinkered as those of Israel. They are deliberately provocative and insulting to the western bloc, whose leaders, government figures and media pundits despise them as pariahs and lose no opportunity to reciprocate their vilification. It's juvenile tit-for-tat stuff.

But the trouble is that when you penalise pariahs and try to make fools of them, and then you strike at them with military force, they might get back at you in ways that you never thought of.

The Western move towards grossly punitive sanctions on Iran is strong, but if these do not come about, probably because Russia and China will not agree to them, then the military option will be even more attractive. That way lies utter disaster. The world will become an even more dangerous place if Israel and America attack Iran.

The leaked scare stories in the media about Iran's supposed nuclear posture were planted mainly by US and Israeli sources. Israel is intent on hyping the supposed threat because it draws attention away from its genocidal activities in Palestine and its continuing defiant construction of settlements on stolen Arab land.

There is no hard evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons' programme.

So remember what we were told last time about "facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." And think, this time round, about "multiple human intelligence sources."

Pinch of nuclear salt, anyone?