Don’t Bomb Iran

Scotsman newspaper opinion piece Feb 06 with many allegations says: Iran’s WMD a “real and looming menace”; it has weaponised biological weapons and chemical weapons production programs have produced thousands of tons; Western intelligence “is quite well informed on it military preparations” (preparations for what?); “Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East” (most of the Iranian missiles are on drawing board); the most imminent threat is Iran buying a weapon to put on missiles, or giving it to terrorists.

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http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=183962006
Original article

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=183962006
On the brink of battle against Iran’s weapons of mass destruction
GERALD WARNER

IRAN is the new Iraq, in terms of Western apprehension. In this case,
weapons of mass destruction are not a Blairite despatch-box fantasy but a
real and looming menace. The long, tortuous stand-off is now approaching
its dénouement, in the shape of formal referral of the Iranian nuclear
programme to the UN Security Council, with only Syria, Cuba and Venezuela
displaying any serious opposition to the measure.

How grave is the threat? Western intelligence agencies are quite well
informed about Iran’s military preparations, and the picture that has
emerged is alarming. The Islamic Republic is engaged in development of
biological and chemical weapons and has the strong potential to go
nuclear. It has special weapons facilities at 49 sites, of which five have
chemical weaponry capabilities, two biological and 17 could accommodate a
nuclear capability.

Iran’s biological weapons programme goes back to the Iran-Iraq War
and is now believed to be in the advanced research and development
phase. It requires little foreign assistance, although expertise from
Russia has apparently been imported. A biological warfare laboratory is
believed to exist near the chemical warfare production facility at
Damghan. The consensus is that Iran has researched both toxins and live
organisms, produced several agents and already weaponised a small amount
of what it has produced.

In the field of chemical warfare it is much more advanced. Its
production capacity is estimated at 1,000 tons a year, including nerve gas
and blister agents pioneered during the Iran-Iraq conflict. It is believed
to have stockpiled several thousand tons of sulphur mustard, phosgene and
cyanide agents. China is an important supplier. Chemical warheads may
already exist for Iran’s Scud missiles. It is also feared that Iran could
give such weaponry to other anti-Western forces, including terrorist
groups.

None of that poses a direct threat to the West, but the twin-track
menace is Iran’s sophisticated development of delivery systems and its
nuclear potential. Last Thursday, the US National Intelligence Director,
John Negroponte, told the Senate intelligence committee: “Iran already has
the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East.” That was
no exaggeration. As long ago as 2000, evidence given to the Senate’s
governmental affairs committee revealed a highly ambitious Iranian missile
development programme.

Although most of the Iranian missiles are categorised as “yet-to-fly”,
being only at the drawing-board stage, the scale of the development
programme is startling. Existing missiles such as the Shahab 1 and 2 are
adapted Scuds with limited ranges of around 300 miles. A later Shahab,
however, which corresponds to the North Korean No-dong and the Pakistani
Ghauri II, believed to be in development, has a range of 840 miles. The
fear is that supply of longer-range missiles by North Korea would bring
Israel within range.

Finally, there is the nuclear threat. Iran’s nuclear programme is actually
quite old, dating back to the days of the Shah, who planned 20 nuclear
power reactors but also began research on fissile material production. The
nuclear programme ostensibly focuses on uranium enrichment, but there have
been signs of a parallel programme on plutonium. The problem is, the fuel
cycle to develop a civilian energy programme is equally applicable to a
weapons programme.

The plain fact is, to believe that a totalitarian regime so far advanced
in developing biological and chemical weaponry, as well as missile
programmes, would be content to possess the raw material of nuclear
weapons without exploiting it is beyond naivety. The strident demands by
President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad to wipe Israel off the map provide a
chilling complement to this prospect.

How should we react? Negroponte told the Senate committee last
week that Iran “probably” does not have an atomic bomb or the fissile
material to make one. The most imminent threat is of the regime buying
such weaponry and mounting it on missiles or, worse, supplying it to its
terrorist client Hezbollah in Lebanon. An Israeli pre-emptive strike
against Iran would have worse consequences than a US/British intervention.

We must have no illusions. President Bush’s veiled appeal, in his State of
the Union address last Tuesday, to Iranian reformers to rise up against
the regime was totally deluded. The reformers, such as they were, had
their heyday in 1997-2003, when Iranian representatives even went to Davos
to participate in the World Economic Forum. That Tiananmen moment is over.
The regime is massively entrenched.

The notion that young Iranian women, eager for Gucci accessories,
would overthrow the mullahs was as naive as the belief that satellite
television would emasculate Afghanistan. The Middle East is no longer
impressed by Western materialism; it has its own satellite stations,
reflecting Islamic values. The icon of Middle Eastern modernity now is a
young, highly qualified woman doctor, multi-lingual and a reader of
Western broadsheets, who also wears the Islamic headdress, is faithful to
her husband and her creed and who despises Western decadence, including
idiotic cartoons that gratuitously offend her religion.

As the likely next US president, John McCain, has observed, there are no
good options in Iran. He is hawkish and he may well have to deal with the
problem. We must shrug off liberal drag-chains and historical reproaches
about US/British removal of Iranian prime minister Mossadegh (the
“democrat” who rejected his constitutional dismissal from office by the
Shah and supposedly secured a 99.9% referendum vote for the closure of
parliament) in 1953.

This is not about imperialism but about survival. If that ultimately means
sending in the bombers to destroy genuine weapons of mass destruction, so
be it.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=183962006