Nuclear Hypocrites

counterpunch: For weeks, the mainstream media have been filled with accusations that Iran's nuclear program presents an alarming threat to the U.S. and the world. And a string of U.S. officials are threatening military action against Iran for refusing to "cooperate."

Dick Cheney promised that Iran would suffer "meaningful consequences" if it refused to abandon its nuclear program--words slightly less stark but no less menacing than U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) John Bolton's threat of "tangible and painful consequences."

But the media have ignored some essential facts about the brewing "crisis" between the U.S. and Iran.

The U.S. is striving to get a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Iran stop its nuclear program. But the truth is that Iran hasn't violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or any other international obligations.

"Let me remind everybody that nothing Iran is accused of doing is illegal," said Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector who challenged the Bush drive to war against Iraq, in an interview last month. "We're condemning Iran for doing that which is permitted under a treaty which it has signed and entered into in force, and has UN inspectors on the ground verifying Iranian compliance."

The NPT explicitly allows nations to enrich uranium to provide energy for civilian power plants. But the U.S. refuses to believe Iran's many pledges that its nuclear facilities are for this purpose and endlessly repeats the claim that Iran could field a nuclear weapon soon.

Iran's announcement in April that it had successfully set up 164 centrifuges to enrich uranium spurred U.S. officials to assert that Iran could produce a nuclear weapons in 16 days--an absurd claim slavishly repeated by the U.S. media.

In reality, Iran would need 16,000 of these centrifuges to refine enough uranium for a weapon--and Iran doesn't have enough uranium for this purpose. Although Iran has indigenous uranium deposits, they are contaminated by the element molybdenum, which Iran does not have the technology to remove.

A more realistic approximation came in the 2005 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which stated that Iran is at least 10 years away from being able to produce a nuclear weapon. And this assessment depends on two key assumptions--that Iran already has an active nuclear weapons program, and that the "international atmosphere" were conducive to Iran obtaining the necessary raw materials and technical support--neither of which are true.

In an attempt to defuse the controversy around its nuclear program, Iran offered to limit itself to procuring no more than 3,000 centrifuges--an offer that the U.S. refused to accept.

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While Iran hasn't violated the provisions of the NPT, the same can't be said of the U.S.

Kennedy-era Defense Secretary Robert McNamara declared last year that the U.S. is nothing short of a "nuclear outlaw." "I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary and dreadfully dangerous," said McNamara.

Since 1999, when the Senate rejected the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the U.S. has developed a new generation of "mini-nukes," also called "bunker busters," which U.S. officials have openly threatened to use against Iran--a clear violation of international law and the NPT.

The U.S. is in flagrant violation of the NPT's provisions calling on nuclear powers "to facilitate the cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery."

According to the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), "Thirty-seven years after agreeing to these conditions, the U.S.--the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons against human beings--spends $40 billion a year to field, maintain and modernize nuclear forces, including an arsenal of 10,000 warheads, 2,000 of which are on hair-trigger alert." Read more