Stop Iran's Nukes! Nuke Iran! posted by Richard Seymour

The democratic revolution is spreading. Soon, Iran will join the list of nations gratefully liberated by the American Jacobins . Christoper Hitchens will be delighted .

Why? Because freedom is God's gift to humanity, stupid! Iran is a prong on that trident of evil jabbing America's lardy ass. It says bad things about America. And shut up! But the occasion for this warning shot is that Colin Powell has let it be known that Iran is pursuing a delivery system for nuclear weapons. A series of documents provided to the American government by the National Council for Resistance in Iran has generated a series of accusations from the Bush administration.

Mohammad Mohaddessin of the NCRI even went to the trouble of displaying sattelite imagery to a credulous press corps. BBC Newsnight reported this fact last night without the slightest smirk, raised eyebrow or Paxo-style "ye-e-e-eeeesss".

Two points, then:

1) The Bush administration does not care about nuclear proliferation. It is such a minor concern for them that one of their first acts was to cut back a programme designed to help Russia contain and secure the 40,000 poorly stored nuclear weapons that exist at various places in the territory of the former Soviet Union. Among these are weapons small enough to be smuggled into any country without much trouble, causing the Department of Energy to consider it "the most urgent unmet national security threat to the United States today" . It took considerable pressure, following the 9/11 attacks, to get the funding restored.

2) The US' own nuclear strategy is a known factor in contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. US intelligence says that the new American programmes for creating 'mini-nukes' and such will encourage China to pursue its own programmes, amplifying its arsenal ten-fold. India and Pakistan would also respond with their own build-ups, and the Middle East would not be untouched by this. The Bulletin of Atomic Sciencists describes how Bush's policies encourage potential adversaries to continue to seek deterrence through their own mass-casualty weapons and novel means to deliver them". According to the Centre for Defense Information, the Bush administration has been lowering the bar for the use of nuclear weapons so that a cause less urgent than national survival (preemptive strikes) may suffice to justify their use. In order to facilitate the dismantling of international agreements designed to curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the Bush administration told China that it had no objection to its plans to build up a small fleet of nuclear weapons. In fact, this strategy did not begin with Bush. It was the Clinton administration that accepted the advice of STRATCOM that it should have a strategy of appearing to be slightly out of control, and should have a launch-on-warning posture for its nuclear arsenal. Clinton's administration also encouraged Russia to adopt a launch-on-warning posture despite its knowledge that Russia's deteriorating warning systems were "full of holes" as Russian experts put it.

The absurdity of a debate about nuclear weapons proliferation that does not include any discussion of the largest and most dangerous nuclear power in the world is hard to miss. Yet news stories continue to abound about the alleged dangers posed by Iran, the agreements reached to alleviate them and whether the clerics "really mean it", with no discussion of other nuclear powers in the world, or even in the locality . I am all for the dismantling of the thermonuclear state but, like all benign works, this one must begin at home. The hypocrisy of the US issuing shrill accusations against the petty theocracy in Iran is enough to set off a small mushroom cloud in my head.

Incidentally, a few observations about the source of this story. The National Council for Resistance in Iran is officially designated a 'terrorist' organisation by the US State Department , for its links with the Mujahideen e-Khalq. Yet, the MEK and their various affiliates enjoy the most flattering attention of US neoconservatives. They can give press conferences and organise demonstrations in Washington without challenge or arrest. In fact, if you pursue the link supplied near the top of this post, you will find that their rhetoric closely matches the fantasies of certain members of the Bush administration ("Stop Iranian Terror, WMDs!" - yesterday's demonstration was not about the fate of oppressed Iranian women or arrested student protesters). Therefore, I have a question for those who are avidly lapping up this story: Where did those amazing sattelite images come from?