For background, see:
Marjorie Cohn | Bush and the Bomb .
Marjorie Cohn | Bush & Bolton: The Bully Twins .
Nobel Prize Slaps Bush Nuke Policy
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Tuesday 11 October 2005
Last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency and its chief, Mohamed ElBaradei,
won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to stop the proliferation of
nuclear weapons. The award was a slap at George W. Bush, who had pressed for
ElBaradei's removal just months before. It was also a blow to Bush's policies
of dealing with nuclear issues unilaterally, and the US focus on non-proliferation
to the exclusion of disarmament - both of which are required by the Non-Proliferation
Treaty.
The Bush administration tried to engineer the ouster of ElBaradei after the
IAEA chief refused to endorse Bush's claims that Saddam Hussein had restarted
Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The US also perceived ElBaradei as too soft
on Iran, a charter member of Bush's axis-of-evil.
A month before George W. Bush invaded Iraq, ElBaradei told the United Nations,
"We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related
activities in Iraq." John Bolton, then Undersecretary of State for Disarmament,
now United States ambassador to the UN, responded that ElBaradei's statement
was "impossible to believe." Dick Cheney said, "I think Mr. ElBaradei
frankly is wrong."
But it turned out that ElBaradei was right about the absence of nukes in Iraq,
and his refutation of Bush's allegation that Iraq had bought tons of enriched
uranium from Niger has also been corroborated.
A few days before Bush launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom," ElBaradei
revealed that the US had relied on fabricated documents to support its Niger
claim. This revelation raised the ire of Bush, who had included the false Niger
assertion in his state of the union address in order to whip up support for
his impending illegal invasion of Iraq.
In the run-up to the war, ElBaradei said, "No, we are not finding any
evidence of weapons of mass destruction." He added courageously, "No,
we are not going to give the US the kind of report they wanted that would have
served as a legal justification for war against Iraq."
ElBaradei is the first UN official to call for Israel to eliminate its secret
nuclear weapons program. He advocated a nuclear-free Middle East, consistent
with Security Council Resolution 687 that ended the Gulf War in 1991. In Article
14, the resolution spells out the need to create a zone free of all weapons
of mass destruction across the Middle East. Ironically, this US-crafted resolution
created enhanced powers for the IAEA and arms inspection verification.
"We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible
for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction," ElBaradei said,
"yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security - and indeed
continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use."
ElBaradei was likely referring to the hypocrisy of the United States, which
continues to expand its nuclear arsenal and promulgate policies that would allow
it to pre-emptively use its nukes, all the while setting its sights on countries
like Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programs.
The Pentagon's March 15th "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations"
provides for the US to use nuclear weapons to counter potentially overwhelming
conventional adversaries, to secure a rapid end of a war on US terms, or simply
"to ensure success of US and multinational operations."
By standing up to the mighty United States, ElBaradei showed uncommon courage,
leading the Nobel Committee to describe him as "an unfraid advocate of
new measures to strengthen" the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
The US and ElBaradei are squaring off again, this time over Iran. ElBaradei
says there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. In an attempt
to discredit him, the US eavesdropped on dozens of phone calls between ElBaradei
and Iranian diplomats, according to the Washington Post.
But the United States' efforts to collect ammunition against ElBaradei were
unsuccessful. When his re-election was put up for a vote, 34 of the IAEA countries
voted for ElBaradei to continue as head of that organization. Only the US voted
no.
Although the IAEA recently passed a resolution that discusses the possibility
of sending the issue of Iran's nuclear capacity to the Security Council, the
Nobel Prize may embolden the IAEA to stand up to US pressure to refer Iran to
the Council, according to Phyllis Bennis from the Institute for Policy Studies
in Washington, DC.
"The fact that the United States government doesn't like the government
of Iran doesn't give them the right to impose their own version of what the
NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] requires and doesn't require," Bennis said
on Democracy Now!
The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, whose highly classified
findings were disclosed by the Washington Post, reported the intelligence community's
consensus judgment that Iran remains 6 to 10 years away from the threshold of
nuclear weapons capability.
Dr. Vojin Joksimovich, a nuclear engineer in San Diego, told me that Iran is
not violating the NPT by its civilian use of nuclear power. Although there is
no right to enrich uranium to 90 percent or more, which would be weapons grade
material, Iran is enriching to 3 to 5 percent for fuel for nuclear power plants,
according to Joksimovich. Brazil, he said, is also enriching uranium using the
centrifuge technique that Iran wants to use. But the US doesn't challenge Brazil;
Bush seeks to build a case for war with Iran.
In a dejá vu from the run-up to "Operation Iraqi
Freedom," Bush began rattling the sabers against Iran in August. He declared
on Israeli television that "all options are on the table" if Tehran
does not comply with international demands.
Bush might think that attacking Iran would bolster the Republican Party's showing
in the 2006 mid-term elections, by distracting attention from his failed Iraq
war. Ironically, the Bush administration is supporting Iraq's Shiite government,
which has close ties to Iran.
ElBaradei said in August that the only way to resolve the situation with Iran
"is through negotiation." German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder responded
to Bush's threatening comments by saying, "Let's take the military option
off the table. We have seen it doesn't work."
Russia agrees that diplomacy is the answer. A statement on the ministry's web
site said, "We favor further dialogue and consider the use of force in
Iran counter-productive and dangerous, something which can have grave and hardly
predictable consequences ... We consider that problems concerning Iraq's nuclear
activities should be solved through political and diplomatic means, on the basis
of international law and Tehran's close cooperation with the International Atomic
Energy Agency."
Bennis hopes the peace prize will encourage ElBaradei to call directly on the
five nuclear powers (who also happen to be the veto-bearing members of the Security
Council), and particularly the United States, to give up their nuclear arsenals,
as required by the NPT.
Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, countries that don't have nuclear weapons
agree not to acquire them, in exchange for the promise from nuclear states to
progressively disarm. Disarmament and non-proliferation are two sides of the
same coin or two contractual promises exchanged. Thus, when the Bush administration
unilaterally decides not to disarm, but instead to develop and even contemplate
using new nukes, it is in flagrant violation of the NPT. The US cannot "choose"
non-proliferation over disarmament.
Tragically, nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation were omitted from the
Outcome Document at last month's UN Summit that marked the 60th anniversary
of the founding of the United Nations. It was the Bush administration that insisted
on the omission.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.
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