Israel: Impediment to a Nuclear-Free Middle East

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, 25 Jul 2011

Kourosh Ziabari – Foreign Policy Journal

You may have frequently heard of the Western mainstream media’s claims that Iran is pursuing a military nuclear program aimed at developing atomic weapons. Spreading falsehood and untruth about the nature of Iran’s peaceful nuclear program has been a constant, unchanging, and recurring theme of the Western corporate media’s coverage of Iran.

Over the past years, the world mainstream media, fueled by certain Western governments to derail Iran’s position in the international community through their unyielding propaganda, have laboriously and persistently attempted to pretend that Iran’s nuclear program poses a serious threat to global peace and security and that Tehran is taking steps to create atomic bombs to drop on Israel and European countries.

Unfortunately, the people who credulously believe such claims are unaware of the fact that those who accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons are themselves the largest possessors of state-of-the-art nuclear weapons and other types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

It should not be neglected that Iran was the victim of WMD during the 8-year imposed war with the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein, which claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iranians. It was the United States that helped Saddam acquire such weapons to use against the Iranian people in an unequal and unjustifiable war in which the brutal Iraqi dictator was unconditionally supported by a strong coalition of the United States and its European allies.

Since the U.S.-manufactured controversy over Iran’s nuclear program was ignited in 2002, the White House and its cronies have successfully distracted international attention from the, underground nuclear activities of the Israeli regime and helped Tel Aviv to secretively further its nuclear program and build atomic weapons.

According to the Federation of American Scientists, Israel now possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, and since it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), it cannot be held accountable over its military nuclear program.

The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment has recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program.

Since Israel started the development of nuclear weapons in the early 1950s, it adopted a so-called policy of “deliberate ambiguity” and concealed its nuclear activities under this counterfeit label to enjoy immunity and avoid responsibility over its nuclear program, meaning that it neither confirms nor denies the possession of nuclear weapons, while even the U.S.-based scientific and research organizations have assessed that it has a perilous nuclear arsenal which is potentially able to evaporate the whole Middle East in a matter of seconds.

On June 19, 1981, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution which urgently called upon Israel to put its nuclear facilities under the comprehensive safeguards of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); however, Israel never heeded the calls of the UNSC, and since that resolution, no significant decision was ever made to bring Israel’s dangerous nuclear facilities under control.

According to the Nuclear Weapon Archive website, “the most specific and detailed information to be made public about Israel’s nuclear program came from a former mid-level nuclear technician named Mordechai Vanunu. Vanunu had worked at the Machon 2 facility, where plutonium is produced and bomb components fabricated, for 9 years before his increasing involvement in left wing pro-Palestinian politics led to his dismissal in 1986. Due to lax internal security, prior to his departure he managed to take about 60 photographs covering nearly every part of Machon 2.”

He made contact with the London Sunday Times and began to write an exclusive story about the details of Israel’s nuclear program. Unfortunately for Vanunu, “the Israeli government had found out about his activities and the Mossad arranged to kidnap him and bring him back to Israel for trial,” the report added.

Now, Iran has hosted dozens of representatives and experts from over 40 countries in the Second International Nuclear Disarmament Conference in Tehran to discuss the most important nuclear threats which jeopardize the international peace and security.

Last year, Iran hosted the first Nuclear Disarmament Conference under the title of “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapon for None.”

According to the scholars and experts who took part in this year’s conference, the possession of nuclear weapons by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council along with Israel, which is the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, are among the main concerns of the international community. It not only thwarts the creation of a nuclear-free Middle East, but also portrays an unquestionable exercise of double standards by the Western powers.

The Tehran conference on nuclear disarmament has concluded that all of the non-NPT members should ratify this treaty and allow the inspection of their nuclear facilities. It has also proposed that Israel should be disarmed as soon as possible, because it’s the only owner of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Even as the U.S. intelligence services have confirmed that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program, Tehran is under the pressure of the United States and its European friends over its civilian nuclear program. This is while 9 countries in the world own more than 20,000 nuclear warheads, which leaves us with a basic question: who poses the real threat to international peace and security?

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Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist and media correspondent. He regularly writes for Press TV, Tehran Times, Media Monitors, Salem News, Opinion Maker, Intifada Palestine, Ramallah Online and Strategic Culture Foundation. He has received the National Medal of Superior Iranian Youth from the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Read more articles by Kourosh Ziabari.

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