The latest foreign affairs crisis is the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran. The country broke seals on uranium enrichment facilities this week, making it clear it intends to build nukes. Iran’s mullahcrats sometimes make Kim Jong-Il sound like Mr. Rogers:
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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, gets fresh with a supporter |
One of Iran’s most influential ruling clerics [Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani] called Friday on the Muslim states to use nuclear weapon against Israel, assuring them that while such an attack would annihilate Israel, it would cost them “damages only”. [Link]Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has described the Holocaust as “a myth” and suggested that Israel be moved to Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska… Ahmadinejad sparked widespread international condemnation in October when he called for Israel to be “wiped off the map…”
“There is a perception, based on past experience that only when Iran threatens and pushes does the West back off,” he told Reuters. [Link]
Which responsible, nuclear-armed military put nukes in the hands of nutty madrassa grads? Do you even have to ask?
The Iranians turned over the names of their suppliers and international inspectors quickly identified the Iranian centrifuges as Pak-1s, the model developed by Khan in the early 1980s. [Link]The CIA report is the first to assert that the designs provided to Iran also included those for weapons “components.” [Link]
Nature has given it all the raw uranium it needs. With help from the rogue Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, it has acquired uranium enrichment centrifuges and possibly a workable bomb design. And thanks to its ample oil reserves, it has the means to withstand all but the most sweeping and universally enforced sanctions. [Link]
Khan was hardly ‘rogue’:
“One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation… How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels.” The intelligence officer went on, “We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago…” “This is not a few scientists pocketing money and getting rich. It’s a state policy.”
“It’s a quid pro quo: we’re going to get our troops inside Pakistan in return for not forcing Musharraf to deal with Khan…”“… [Musharraf] doesn’t know how to be on the American side. The same guys in the I.S.I. who have done this in the last twenty years he expects to be his partners. These are people who’ve done nothing but covert operations: One, screw India. Two, deceive America. Three, expand Pakistan’s influence in the Islamic community. And, four, continue to spread nuclear technology.” He paused. “Musharraf is trying to put out the fire with the help of the people who started the fire,” he said…
“Americans need to know that your government is not only downplaying this but covering it up. You go to bed with our I.S.I. They know how to suck up to you. You let us get away with everything… You have to nip some of these things in the bud…”
“Khan was willing to sell blueprints, centrifuges, and the latest in weaponry. He was the worst nuclear-arms proliferator in the world and he’s pardoned—with not a squeak from the White House…”
A nonproliferation official based in Vienna later explained that Iran has bored two holes near a uranium-mining operation that are “deep enough to do a test”—as deep as two hundred metres. The design of the bomb that could be tested… came from Libya, via Pakistan and A. Q. Khan…
I.A.E.A. inspectors, to their dismay, even found in Libya precise blueprints for the design and construction of a half-ton nuclear weapon. “It’s a sweet little bomb, put together by engineers who know how to assemble a weapon,” an official in Vienna told me. “No question it’ll work. Just dig a hole and test it. It’s too big and too heavy for a Scud, but it’ll go into a family car. It’s a terrorist’s dream…”
“Iraq is laughable in comparison with this issue. The Bush Administration was hunting the shadows instead of the prey…”
“Why hasn’t A. Q. Khan been taken out by Israel or the United States?”…
“Bad as it is with Iran, North Korea, and Libya having nuclear-weapons material, the worst part is that they could transfer it to a non-state group. That’s the biggest concern, and the scariest thing about all this—that Pakistan could work with the worst terrorist groups on earth to build nuclear weapons. There’s nothing more important than stopping terrorist groups from getting nuclear weapons. The most dangerous country for the United States now is Pakistan, and second is Iran.” Gallucci went on, “We haven’t been this vulnerable since the British burned Washington in 1814.” [Link]
Thank you, A.Q. Khan, and thank you, shortsighted U.S. South Asia policy. A.Q. Khan also sold nuke tech to North Korea and Libya, a virtual who’s who of paranoid dictatorships. The one hope, and it’s a slim one, is for internal overthrow of Iran’s government, because the youth of Iran are pro-America.
Finally, I’ve found a pro-America country. Everywhere I’ve gone in Iran, with one exception, people have been exceptionally friendly and fulsome in their praise for the United States, and often for President Bush, as well… Then I stopped to chat with one of the Revolutionary Guards now based in the complex. He was a young man who quickly confessed that his favorite movie is “Titanic.” “If I could manage it, I’d go to America tomorrow,” he said wistfully. He paused and added, “To hell with the mullahs…”Partly because being pro-America is a way to take a swipe at the Iranian regime, anything American, from blue jeans to “Baywatch,” is revered. Young Iranians keep popping the question, “So how can I get to the U.S.?” I ask why they want to go to a nation denounced for its “disgustingly sick promiscuous behavior,” but that turns out to be a main attraction…
One opinion poll showed that 74 percent of Iranians want a dialogue with the United States - and the finding so irritated the authorities that they arrested the pollster. Iran is also the only Muslim country I know of where citizens responded to the 9/11 attacks with a spontaneous candlelight vigil.
Left to its own devices, the Islamic revolution is headed for collapse and there is a better chance of a strongly pro-American democratic government in Tehran in a decade than in Baghdad. [Link]
To prevent nuclear holocaust, the U.S.’ long-standing support for the Pakistani military, a small, dictator-run situation it was comfortable with, and tilt away from India was one of the most asinine foreign policy choices of a generation. And Dubya compounds that error to this very day by refusing to call A.Q. Khan to account and unearth the full scope of his nuke prolif activities.
