Helen's support for Bush's wars

NoRightTurn notes yesterdays announcement by Helen Clark and Phil Goff to "extend" New Zealand's military commitment in Afghanistan. In particular he criticises the decision to continue to operate a New Zealand frigate in the region at the same time US President George Bush is making noises about bombing Iran.

The Government Press Release today says "New Zealand will also again deploy a frigate to join the Maritime Interdiction Operation (MIO) in the Arabian Gulf. The frigate will join the MIO for just over a month in mid 2008 as an extension of a planned deployment to the South/South East Asia region."

There is actually a more fundamental reason why New Zealand should not have a frigate in the Gulf at present. A New Zealand frigate on non-combat duties gives the US and the UK the opportunities to deploy more of their frigates on more active roles, in other words helping to kill the population in Iraq, Afghanistan and (possibly) Iran. So, to the people of the Middle East New Zealand sending a frigate for non-combat duties is as good as dropping the bombs ourselves.

We sent the Te Mana frigate at around the time of the Iraq invasion - perhaps an indication that while NZ publicly opposed the invasion of Iraq, Helen still felt she had to give penance to our so called 'allies' who were bullying all in sundry for "support" for their illegal invasion.

Helen Clark's announcement would not have anything to do with meeting with George Bush next week would it?

PS: Tried to post this last night, but Woosh Internet slowed down to a crawl. Not at all impressed with the speed or reliability of their service, and phone calls to customer service can be left waiting for 30 minutes with no answer. I have no qualms calling from a cellphone!

PPS: The new blogger spellcheck is a big improvement and much easier to use.

Why does Iran want nuclear weapons?

With all the recent talk about Iran resuming its nuclear programme it is a shame the West continues to undermine its own position with selective morality and obvious hypocrisy.

I find it amazing the Press can have so many articles about this issue yet fail to address the obvious question - 'for what reasons could Iran want nuclear weapons?'

As Simon Jenkins points out, the answer is as simple as looking at a map.
"I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb but a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it. Iran is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its west. Adjacent Afghanistan and Iraq are occupied at will by a nuclear America, which backed Saddam Hussein in his 1980 invasion of Iran. How can we say such a country has "no right" to nuclear defence?"

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the BBC that the West is partly to blame for the Iran nuclear crisis for allowing Israel to develop a nuclear arsenal. He said nuclear weapons benefited no-one, and called for a nuclear-free zone in the Gulf. It would be good to see al-Faisal get some strong support for this idea, as a WMD free Middle East ought to be the goal of any sane policy. Better still, no Security Council Resolution would be required to put such a ban in place, as it is already provided for under existing resolutions.

In 2003 George Bush and Tony Blair attempted to use Security Council resolution 687 as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. While 687 provided no such authorisation, it did call for the elimination of Iraqi WMD and delivery systems as a step towards "the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all other missiles for their delivery and the objective of a global ban on chemical weapons." (Article 14). So if 687 is really to be upheld, then pressure must be put on Israel to disarm.

A good start would be for the US and the UK to publicly recognise Israel's possession of nuclear weapons (as far as I know they have never officially recognised this) and ask Israel to agree to arms reduction talks. This would have the advantage of greatly increasing the diplomatic pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear programme, as it would be much more difficult for Tehran to claim they need nukes for defensive purposes. Many Arab states feel threatened by Israel's nuclear status, especially as Israeli nuclear armed submarines have been known to patrol the coasts of Iran and Pakistan.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims Iran 'does not need nuclear arms' and that his country is only asserting its right to peaceful nuclear technology, as allowed under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Unfortunately, countries such as Israel made similar denials in the mid-1960s when they were developing nuclear weapons, so any such denials ought to be taken with a grain of salt, unless said country is happy for the IAEA to make unhinded inspection visits.

In Iran's case, Ahmadinejad needs to be asked why it is so essential for Iran to gain nuclear power stations when the country is sitting on one of the most plentiful gas supplies in the world.

If Iran is successful in developing nuclear arms - this will be yet another dismal failure for the foreign policy of George W Bush. North Korea is named in the 'axis of evil' speech, continues its nuclear weapons programme and withdraws from the NPT. Iran is named in the 'axis of evil' speech, and is now 'breaking the seals' on its three nuclear facilities. It worried U.N chief inspector Hans Blix that in invading Iraq, Bush may have sent precisely the wrong message - the US only attacks countries that cannot defend themselves.

And like most policy questions - it all comes down to who we want to help. Simon Jenkins again.
"All the following statements about Iran are true. There are powerful Iranians who want to build a nuclear bomb. There are powerful ones who do not. There are people in Iran who would like Israel to disappear. There are people who would not. There are people who would like Islamist rule. There are people who would not. There are people who long for some idiot western politician to declare war on them. There are people appalled at the prospect. The only question for western strategists is which of these people they want to help."
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Edit 14/9/09: Despite this post being over three years old it continues to generate quite a few hits. It is pleasing to know so many people are asking the same basic question that motivated my post. I turned this post into a longer article for Peace Researcher, where I also looked at some of the arguments related to nuclear power. This was published in December 2007.

Iran and nuclear weapons

With a tip of the hat to Empire Notes, I found an interesting article on Middle East Report Online that includes very relevant background to the current ‘Iranian nukes’ debate.

In going to war with Iraq, Joost R. Hiltermann says the Bush administration sought to prove that Clinton’s policy of dual containment – a decade of sanctions, threats, military action, and UN-led disarmament had failed to stop Iraq from developing WMD. But Iraq, it turned out, had no WMD in March 2003, and probably did not have any for most of the preceding decade. Hiltermann points out “Iraq, of course, was not the only target of dual containment. So was neighbouring Iran, which likewise was suspected of having secret programs for building weapons of mass destruction and was seen as a destabilizing force hostile to US interests.” As the Bush Administration failed to find their proof of the failure of dual containment in Iraq, will they force a similar method of ’proof’ onto neighbouring Iran?

According to Hilterman, Iran sued for peace from the Iran/Iraq war at the end of the 1980s because Iraq’s escalating use of chemical weapons made Iranian “human wave” assaults ineffective. Human wave assaults are barbaric, but using chemical weapons against them is one step worse. Following Iraq use of chemical weapons in 1983 Iran asked the international community for assistance.

"Tehran’s repeated remonstrations with the United Nations fell virtually on deaf ears. For six years, Iranian diplomats wrought ever more sophisticated legal arguments to persuade the UN that it should have an institutional interest in upholding the relevant precepts of international humanitarian law. In particular, the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices,” was directly on point. The UN’s failure to uphold such precepts, the Iranians said, would undermine its credibility and impartiality, while giving rise to a regional arms race.”

Washington also conducted a disinformation campaign that sought to equally blame Iran and Iraq for the use of chemical weapons, a campaign that helpfully took the pressure off Iraq, then a US ally. Faced with journalists asking questions about Iraq’s use of chemical weapons the US slapped on a ban on the export of chemical precursors to both Iran and Iraq in the spring of 1984, despite internal documents showing US officials had been aware of Iraq’s conduct for at least six months.

“It is generally accepted that toward the end of the war Iran had gained the capability to field its own chemical weapons. Parliamentary speaker (and future president) Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani declared two months after war’s end that “chemical bombs and biological weapons are poor man’s atomic bombs and can easily be produced. We should at least consider them for our defense…. Although the use of such weapons is inhuman, the war taught us that international laws are only drops of ink on paper.”

Hilterman concludes

“[T]he world’s ability to challenge Iran on any programs it may have today is reduced dramatically by the Iranian perception that it has nothing to protect it from WMD in the hands of a regional power, such as Israel, but its own WMD deterrent. The current standoff over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program is a graphic illustration of the problem.”

In any discussion of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, the significance of the country starting ‘I’ should be obvious. As the only country with nuclear weapons in the region, the lack of ‘mutually assured destruction’ (MAD) is just plain dangerous, as it can only encourage a regional arms race, as countries like Iran fear that Israel could use nuclear weapons without the disincentive implicit in MAD. Remove the fear of a nuclear cloud from Iran and any moral rationale (if there is any) to develop its own weapons would disappear. This is likely to be the key reason why Iran refuses to permanently suspend its (low-level) uranium enrichment program, even though such processing is not prohibited under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Iran is a signatory to the NPT, making it subject to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) while Israel remains as a rogue state outside of the NPT. Even if it is shown that Iran is disregarding the crucial tenants of the NPT, this does demonstrate the advantage of potentially nuclear capable countries being inside the NPT tent. Of course, signatories with nuclear weapons disregard crucial tenants of the NPT by making no moves to disarm, but that’s another story.

US attempts to dissuade Iran from developing nuclear weapons would have far more force and credibility if they applied the same standards to Israel. In the case of the Middle East it was ‘I’ who cast the first stone. If calls for Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons were combined with a genuine call for a nuclear free Middle East and an unequivocal call on Israel to disarm, the US message would have far more moral force and credibility. Otherwise, it just looks like more US hypocrisy.