?On the surface it seems as if Iran had been concealing its partially-built second uranium enrichment plant from the rest of the international community and only declared its hand last Monday to the International Atomic Energy Agency after the secret had become known to the nuclear club–the US, the UK, Russia, France and China.
The revelation highly incensed US President Obama, British PM Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the two other leaders reacting with less of the righteous indignation the West is known for in its dictates to the rest of the world, particularly the non-European world. The West, the US in particular, has been after Iran for some time now anxious to eliminate the possibility of that state or any of the Arab states in the Middle East acquiring a nuclear capacity. The reasons are many: fitted out with nuclear capacity the Arab/ Islamic oil-producing states of the ME are not likely to be as pliant as they are now; taming Islamic fundamentalism could become even more difficult when the "fundamentalists" have a nuclear capacity; and exposing Israel to a nuclear-armed Iran are three reasons for the zeal behind the "get Iran" preoccupation. Of course keeping Iran in check is not new, the USA having even nourished into being a madman called Saddam Hussein to pit against the Ayatollah Khomeini and this after the Islamic revolution got rid of the US intergenerational links with the Shah of Iran and his father before him. The nuclear club is seeking to indict Iran on the basis of one of the three pillars of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), that is to prevent the proliferation and spread of nuclear capacity and weapons to those outside of the club.
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser once said that "basically they did whatever they wanted to do before the introduction of NPT and then devised it to prevent others from doing what they had themselves been doing before".
British Prime Minister Brown spoke grimly about "drawing a line in the sand." In step with his ally, US President Obama advised Iran to "comply with the UN Security Council resolutions and make clear it is prepared to meet its responsibilities as a member of the community of nations." It is not that these admonitions and principles are without foundation, and it is not that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a saint who is not seeking to acquire nuclear capacity; it is that the West is seeking to make itself innocent of a history of dishonourable intentions and deeds in these matters of nuclear capacity. In addition to the five original nuclear possessors, India, Pakistan and Israel have nuclear weapons but have refused to sign the NPT. The first two have argued against the ethics of the old nuclear club and its unfairness. Israel has been playing hide and seek with its nuclear programme although the record is that it began searching for a nuclear capacity since 1958. One estimate is that the Government in Jerusalem has 100 to 200 nuclear warheads, which it has consistently refused to declare.
India is making sure that it could be armed not only against Pakistan, if the decades of conflict come to an intensified confrontation, but is also mindful of its border dispute with nuclear club member China.
But they are not alone. Outside of the club, South Africa in the apartheid era developed a nuclear capacity, but has subsequently eliminated its nuclear warheads. North Korea and Libya are also countries with some measure of nuclear capacity. What has the West, particularly the US, the UK and France, done about these countries and their nuclear capacity? Glib talk about obeying UN Security Council declarations clearly does not apply to Israel and its consistent violations of UN declarations. Only recently the UN released its report on the Gaza conflict, concluding that there is evidence indicating "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity." Sure enough, the report also found groups of Palestinians who were also guilty of firing rockets into southern Israel. But is the West agitating itself because of these findings? Further, the Non-Aligned Movement has consistently charged the US with violating the NPT on non-proliferation by sharing its nuclear weaponry with its allies in Europe (Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey) under the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, at the same time developing the capacity of these European countries to handle nuclear weapons.
The inconsistency of the principle of the NPT was very apparent during the apartheid period when the racist regime in South Africa developed nuclear weaponry to confront internal and external challenges to its brutal rule. What did the nuclear club do in that period to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons? On the second pillar of the NPT, disarmament, the NAM has been critical of what has been achieved by the very powers that demand, from the perch of high moral standards, that Iran observes the tenets of the agreement. The Non-Aligned countries point out that non-proliferation and disarmament are complimentary: "Without tangible progress in disarmament, the current emphasis on non-proliferation cannot be sustained." The US would respond by saying that it has eliminated close to 25 per cent of its nuclear missiles and other weaponry, but what it continues to hold–and its constant upgrading of its nuclear weaponry–still has the capacity to blow the planet into nothingness. The issue here is that while Iran is clearly playing a game of brinkmanship, seeing how far it can go to test the resolve of the West while it continues its nuclear research (all the while claiming it to be a search to apply nuclear power for energy and other peaceful purposes), the West has no moral authority on these matters. These are the same countries and civilisations which have plundered the resources of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In so doing they have devastated these lands and their peoples, perpetrated slavery, nourished and supported the most brutal of dictators. It is difficult for them to now adopt the holier than thou attitude to the likes of Iran and North Korea.
