Brown to Iran: Give up your nuclear rights!

So that nasty Gordon Brown has demanded that Iran give up her right to nuclear energy and instead become permanently reliant on foreign-supplied reactor fuel, in exchange for empty and self-serving promises of "nuclear cooperation". In his speech, he sets up a strawman argument equating nuclear weapons proliferation with Iran nuclear enrichment program -- nevermind that we already have a treaty called the Non-Proliferation Treaty and an international monitoring body known as the IAEA whose very job is to address that concern and ensure that civilian nuclear technology is not secretly diverted to military use. And, after 7 years of intensive inspections the IAEA has stated that there is no evidence that IRan is proliferating nuclear weapons. ALso, nevermind that Iran has already offered to open its program to multilateral participation, an offer rejected and ignored by the US and UK.

Apparently Gordon Brown doesn't realize that Iran has the same absolute and inalienable right to develop the nuclear fuel cycle as Britain does, and is not "flouting" any rules by doing so, just as Japan and Argentina and Brazil perfectly entitled to develop their enrichment and plutonium reprocessing programs too. Security Councill resolutions which attempt to force Iran to give up this right are ultra vires and themselves illegal.

And, apparently Gordon Brown doesn't realize that under the terms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the UK and other nuclear-armed states are already OBLIGATED to cooperate with Iran's nuclear program. That was part of the NPT's nuclear bargain that the nuclear-armed states have consistently ignored.

And, while he's busy ranting on about peace and security and "hard commitments", Gordon Brown apparently doesn't realize that Britain has already violated another British obligation under the NPT, which is to work towards Britain's nuclear disarmament as specified in Article VI of the NPT, since Britain has instead announced unequivocally that it will not give up nuclear arms in the forseeable future.

See, what's really going on is this: There is an NPT review conference coming up in 2010 (It happens every 5 years.) During these review conferences, the nuclear-armed members of the NPT attempt to extract more concessions from the other non-nuclear armed signatories. To obtain these concessions, the nuclear-armed countries make a lot of noise about how they're really honestly truly ready this time to make "hard commitments" to finally meet their own NPT obligations on issues such as disarmament that they've ignored all along. Then, when the review conference is over, the same nuclear armed countries promptly forget about the "hard commitments" they promised.

Don't believe me? Here's an example: The United States agreed to "13 steps for disamement" during the 2000 NPT review conference in order to get the other members of the NPT to agree to an indefinite extension of the NPT treaty. And just as soon as that concession was extracted, the US announced that it was not really obligated to abide by any of those 13 steps towards disarmament. The US now claims that the 13 Steps were merely irrelevant suggestions:

During the last NPT review cycle, much controversy arose over the present day import of certain positions related to nuclear disarmament, i.e. the “Thirteen practical steps”, which were articulated in the Final Document of the NPT Review Conference held in 2000. The security environment has changed substantially since 2000, and we cannot assume that all suggestions made then necessarily remain relevant today.”

In fact, rather than working towards disarmament as Article VI of the NPT requires, the US has adopted a policy making the actual use of nuclear weapons -- even againt non-nuclear armed states, on a first-strike basis -- more likely, in violation of past US pledges called "Negative Security Assurances" or NSAs:

Since then, the backtracking by the NWS [Nuclear-Weapon States] on their existing unilateral nuclear security assurances, as well as the pledges made in 1995 and in 2000, have become a considerable concern. These concerns were triggered by statements made by senior U.S. and U.K. officials, the 2001 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), and the release of the U.S. National Defense Strategy, which included the possible use of nuclear weapons against NNWS [Non-Nuclear Weapon States] —in some cases preemptively. . . despite the solemn pledges and agreements reached in 1995 and 2000, the United States has clearly decided to walk away from the concept of NSAs [Negative Security Assurances] that have for more than 30 years been central to the deal embodied in the NPT. Less than two months after the release of the NPR, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security State John Bolton made it clear that the United States no longer felt bound by any NSAs...

So, contrary to the negative security assurance, not only has Bush explicitly threatened to nuke Iran, and not only has Senator Clinton parrotted the same threat, but the the first-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear armed states is now part of the official military doctrine of the United States.

The UK has adopted an even less restrictive position on the first-use of nuclear weapons, according to which nuclear weapons could be used to "deliver messages" or punish countries ...

"aimed at a non-critical, possibly [!] uninhabited area, with the message that if the country concerned pursued its present course of action, nuclear weapons will be aimed at a high-priority target. Finally, there is the punitive role, where a country has committed an act, despite specific warning that to do so would incur a nuclear strike."

France has recently stated that it too would use nuclear weapons on a first-strike basis under equally vaguely defined conditions.

Comments

[Jon Mozaffari]

Thanks for the piece.

The hollier than thou attitude of the west is getting tiring. Israel - the biggest threat, on could argue, in the middle - stockpiles in excess of 150+ nuclear weapons, destroys Palestinian civilzation, boldly defies more than 80 UN resolutions and there's no debate or "concern".

It's time for the US and UK to realize that their empire have expired. Iran has every right to perfect nuclear fuel cycle and there's NOTHING these hypocrites can do about it.

[mb]

Why this bastard does not say a word about Israel's nuclear weapons and the threat she poses to all the other countries in the region including Iran???? Good piece. Enjoyed it.