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War and Terror: Iran and nuclear energy
Posted on Wednesday, April 06 @ 23:39:14 UTC
Topic: Iran
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 By Stephen Gowans, gowans.blogspot.com
With no evidence that Iran is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons, the Bush administration is resorting to innuendo in place of facts (a replay of how it built a casus belli for war on Iraq) to claim Iran intends to pursue a civilian nuclear energy program to covertly build nuclear weapons. "They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas," observed US Vice President Dick Cheney. Why would they "need nuclear as well to generate energy"? [1]
Good question. Cheney's insinuation – that Iran's plans to build a civilian nuclear energy industry are motivated more by the aim of acquiring the capability of producing nuclear weapons than of providing for future energy needs – may be correct.
But if correct, Tehran's plans to build nuclear weapons are understandable. It's hardly a secret that Iran, prized for its oil wealth and strategic proximity to Russia and China, is a potential target for a future US take-over – and not because the Middle Eastern theocracy is a threat to non-proliferation, but because, after the ouster of the US-backed Shah in 1979, it has remained outside the US orbit.
That – and the sanctions the US has in place to punish Iran -- means a major source of oil remains walled off from US investment, while Russian and Chinese competitors skim the profits in the absence of US rivals. Russia, for example, is building an $800 million nuclear power plant in southern Iran. [2] And some of China's largest companies have made lucrative deals with Iran to improve the country's ballistic missiles. [3] That's money that isn't going to US corporations -- being used to buy equipment that could prove crucial in deterring a US military assault that, if successful, would put US corporations back in the picture.
It wasn't always this way
In the days of the Shah, the US's junior partner in abetting its imperialist aims in the region, the country was run for the benefit of US capital. Back then giant US corporations, led by Westinghouse, were poised to take a lead role in making over Iran into a major user of nuclear energy.
The Ford Administration -- which included Donald Rumsfeld, the current US Secretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, recently tapped to head the World Bank -- approved plans to allow US corporations to build a massive Iranian nuclear energy industry that would leave control of plutonium and enriched uranium – and therefore, the capability to build nuclear weapons -- in the hands of Tehran. US firms would net $7.4 billion from sales of six to eight nuclear reactors and a stake in a uranium enrichment facility in the US that would supply the reactors with fuel. [4]
According to then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the US investment was necessary to "prepare against the time – about 15 years in the future – when Iranian oil production [would be] expected to decline sharply." [5] Today, with US corporations locked out of Iran -- and Russian firms rather than Westinghouse profiting from the construction of Iranian nuclear reactors -- Kissinger sings a different tune. "For a major oil producer as Iran, nuclear energy," says the former Secretary of State "is a wasteful use of resources." [6]
At some point, war against Iran could put US oil companies and corporate titans back in the picture, and squeeze Russian, Chinese and European competitors out, a replay of what has happened, or at least, was intended to happen, in Iraq. That would be kind to corporate America, but not so kind to the US's strategic competitors who have tried to strike deals with US-sanctioned countries that are important sources of critical raw materials, oil highest among them.
However, the re-assertion of US imperialist imperatives in Iran, if it is to come by war, requires that Iran first be deprived of a capability to deploy nuclear weapons – one of the major reasons Washington is committed to denying the country the kind of civilian nuclear energy program that could be used as a gateway to the development of atomic warheads. Iraq was invaded after it (some might say, stupidly) disarmed. The lesson hasn't been lost on countries next in the queue.
What's really at issue
US foreign policy targets the legitimate defensive build up of independent states it intends to subjugate and exploit (Iraq, Iran and North Korea) while ignoring, and even encouraging, the proliferation efforts of its economic colonies and junior partners in imperialist expansion (Israel, Pakistan.)
For example, Washington voted not too long ago against a UN Resolution calling for Israel to renounce nuclear weapons. [7] The Zionist settler state, which acts as a proxy for the US in the Middle East, has stayed out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is suspected of having a nuclear arsenal of 200 warheads. North Korea, in contrast, which has opted out of the NPT only when it has been directly targeted and threatened by US nuclear weapons, may (or may not) have one or two crude nuclear devices, but is a target of hysterical rhetoric from Washington, reliably amplified by the US media, portraying the Communist country's nuclear program as aggressive and a menace to the life and health of billions of people in the Pacific region, including those as far away as the US.
Washington has also taken sides with Brazil against IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) demands for more intrusive inspections of Brazil's nuclear reactors. There's no need to worry about Brasilia's nuclear intentions, explained former US Secretary of State Colin Powel, noting that unlike Iran and North Korea, Brazil is following a pro-capitalist, pro-investment and fiscally conservative line. [8] A country's orientation to US investment, it would seem, is the fulcrum on which US alarm over possible proliferation activities balances.
Furthermore, while the US has threatened to take the matter of Iran secretly pursuing nuclear work to the UN for sanctions, it refuses to do the same to South Korea, whose scientists furtively enriched small amounts of bomb-grade uranium and conducted experiments with plutonium over the same period. [9] And as for nuclear equipped Pakistan test-firing rockets capable of delivering nuclear warheads – Pakistan isn't an NPT signatory -- Washington looks on placidly; alarm is not to be raised over the activities of the US's junior partners in imperialist expansion, but is reserved for recalcitrant acquisition targets alone.
Building nuclear deterrent understandable
If Tehran is indeed secretly committed to building a nuclear weapons capability, and is using a civilian nuclear energy program as a cover, the aim is entirely understandable. Whether Iran is innocent of the charge can be debated endlessly, but whether it is or isn't, is beside the point. The question is, have countries – no matter how backward and repellent their governments - the right to defend themselves against the raptorial aims of imperialist powers? Washington's designs on Iran, expressed in the declaration that the country is part of an axis of evil, and now an outpost of tyranny, whose regime must be changed -- and considering US ambassador nominee to the UN John Bolton's warning that the US would deal with Iran, Syria and North Korea after it dealt with Iraq [10] -- are amply clear. The imperatives of self-defense are clear, too. There is no middle ground here.
1. Washington Post, March 27, 2005
2. Washington Post, February 19, 2005
3. New York Times, January 18, 2005
4. Washington Post, March 27, 2005.
5. Ibid
6. Ibid
7. Toronto Star, December 7, 2004
8. New York Times, October 6, 2004
9. Washington Post, November 25, 2004
10. International Herald Tribune, March 8, 2005, cited in Workers World, March 23, 2005
Reprinted from:
gowans.blogspot.com/2005/03/iran-and-nuclear-energy.html
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