A Chance for Change in Iran
October 08, 2003
FrontPageMag.com
Reza Torkzadeh
With its continued defiance of major international laws and world public opinion, is the international community prepared to confront the immediate threat that the clerical regime in Iran poses?
Unwilling to disclose its nuclear weapons program, the Islamic Republic of Iran has been given about three weeks by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (October 31) to come clean with all uranium enrichment related imports and all components which may have been exposed to the uranium.
Despite the IAEA's intentions to persuade the clerical regime to comply with its demands, the track record of the regime's behavior towards such resolutions almost guarantee's the regime's noncompliance.
The Islamic Republic has been found by the United States Department of State to be the "most active" state sponsor of terrorism for two years in a row. The United Nations has repeatedly demanded the clerical regime's immediate conformity of its resolutions and charters, but to no avail and without any cogency. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continuously condemn the regime's behaviors and methods of punishment yet, after two decades of complete disregard for human rights, unilateral sanctions and further diplomatic pressure, the regime continues to defy and violate the principles of progress and civilization.
What makes the IAEA think that the regime will listen to them?
It is no secret that the regime is working very closely with the local warlords in Afghanistan to destabilize the Karzai government. Since the fall of the Taliban, Iran has been sending Al Quds and Sepah-i-Mohammad forces into Afghanistan to support and supply weapons to independent warlords while simultaneously allowing members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to reside and cross into Iran.
Moreover, since the end of Saddam Hussein's regime, the clerical regime in Iran has been actively pursuing a policy of interference in Iraq. Military trained groups of both Iran's Badr Brigade and Iran's Revolutionary Guards were sent to Iraq to generate support for an Islamic style government similar to the Iranian regime.
What is even more interesting is that the IAEA is demanding "unrestricted access" to inspectors throughout the country and allow them to take environmental samples wherever and whenever they choose. Doesn't this sound familiar?
The international community must not allow inspectors to be led on another wild chase for weapons of mass destruction through a country whose ruling regime has proven to be a master of deception.
One thing is for sure: the regime in Tehran is the greatest threat to freedom, progress and peace in the world. The most serious threat that the clerical regime poses is not its development of nuclear weapons but instead, it is the regime's unequivocal and unwavering support of terrorism, it's meddling in the affairs of the region, its persistent interference in the Middle East peace process and the suffering and abuse of the Iranian people.
It is critical to remember that Iran is much different than Afghanistan and Iraq. Other than they're location and the fact that they were all once run by tyrannical regimes, these three countries have very few similarities.
So now the question remains: what to do? Military action is obviously not an option. And doing nothing is also not a choice. A budding and vibrant movement which already does exist in Iran must be supported openly and consistently.
Through the continued support of the will of the Iranian people and their already demonstrated strategy of non-violent political defiance, the U.S. and the free world can help bring about change in Iran within months rather than years. It can be done without using military forces and instead by empowering the Iranian people.
Today, Iran is surrounded by two potentially vigorous free and democratic states, and the regime in Iran is feeling the pressure.
Even if as Tehran insists its nuclear programs are only to generate electricity, the U.S has a chance to stay on course and confront the terrorist where they exist.
The U.S. has an opportunity to face the challenge with "focus and clarity and courage," and to bring about a change that is in the best long-term interests of all the people's in the world and one that will inevitably change the make-up of the Middle East.
Mr. Torkzadeh is a student at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, CA.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=102124 Nations Pose Biggest Deadly Weapons Risk
October 08, 2003
Gannett News Service
John Yaukey
WASHINGTON -- The regime-ending mistakes of Saddam Hussein were not lost on the ruling mullahs of Iran.
Instead of pursuing banned weapons underground as the ousted Iraqi leader did after the first gulf war, Iran -- by most accounts -- is pressing forward with a nuclear weapons initiative in full view of the world.
Only it's disguised as a civilian energy program.
The strategy, intelligence analysts say, is to get as close to weapons production as possible while abiding by international nonproliferation restrictions, then start making warheads when the United States is caught in a vulnerable position that discourages pre-emptive strikes.
Much like it is now.
If Iran succeeds, an anti-American theocracy that supports both terrorists and the eradication of Israel would be able to strike anywhere in the Middle East with nuclear weapons and draw the United States into a cataclysmic conflict.
"You just don't want to go there," said Miriam Rajkumar, a co-author of "Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction." "A nuclear Iran would exacerbate so many problems in the Middle East."
That's just one of the many nightmare scenarios the intelligence community is confronting as weapons of mass destruction seep from the thaw of the Cold War into a clandestine coven of hostile governments and terrorists that trade in murky black markets.
And it isn't just adversaries that threaten national security.
Russia, a U.S. ally against terrorism, sits atop the world's largest WMD arsenal with frighteningly inadequate security and legions of ambitious arms dealers. If Pakistan's shaky President Pervez Musharraf falls to Islamic extremists, so goes his nuclear arsenal.
Here are the four most dangerous places:
Russia
Sometime in the 1990s, according to recently declassified intelligence reports, authorities intercepted 3 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from a car in Prague, Czech Republic.
The material, stolen from an engineering institute southwest of Moscow, was about a third of the mass necessary to make a nuclear weapon. The seizure led to the capture of a Ukrainian and a Belorussian, both with nuclear backgrounds.
When the Soviet Union dissolved, so did its iron grip on the world's largest arsenal of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons scattered from Russia's Arctic coast to Kazakhstan.
Since 1993, the International Atomic Energy Agency has investigated 175 cases of attempted nuclear smuggling, many of them involving elements of the former communist regime.
According to congressional security estimates, 60 percent of Russia's 20,000 nuclear warheads and 600 tons of weapons-grade material is not under adequate security.
Much of Russia's 40,000 metric tons of nerve gas and other chemical agents have not been sufficiently safeguarded because Moscow will not allow U.S. experts to engineer security upgrades, according to a General Accounting Office report.
At the Shchuchye chemical weapons repository in the Ural Mountains southeast of Moscow, there are some 2 million shells filled with sarin, VX and other nerve agents.
"I was photographed fitting chemical shells into a suitcase to demonstrate how easy it is to just cart them away," said Indiana's Republican Sen. Richard Lugar, one of the leading advocates for helping the Russians secure their arsenals.
At Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea, the Russians dealt with 100 tons of biological agent simply by burying it, with minimal security.
The human element in the Russian equation is cause for equal concern: thousands of WMD scientists making less than $50 a month, some thought to be freelancing in Iran under cover as civilian energy experts.
Iran
For a country that claims it just wants nuclear energy, Iran is going about it in highly suspicious ways.
Iran is trying to build a uranium enrichment facility it claims is meant to produce fuel for the energy reactors it is constructing at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. The enrichment equipment could also be capable of producing weapons-grade nuclear material. Iran has no need to enrich uranium for fuel since Russia has agreed to supply the fuel it needs, but Iran is building the plant anyway.
Iran also wants to produce heavy water, a liquid containing a form of hydrogen that's useful in making bomb-grade plutonium, yet its energy reactors will use only ordinary water.
The United States and Europe recently challenged Iran to prove its nuclear program is intended to produce only energy by submitting to aggressive inspections, an option Tehran initially refused but is now weighing if only to buy time.
"The conclusion is inescapable that Iran is pursuing its 'civil' nuclear energy program not for peaceful and economic purposes, but as a front for developing the capability to produce nuclear materials for nuclear weapons, " said John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.
Iran is known already to have blister, blood and choking agents, according to the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California.
Combine all that with well-established connections to terrorists in Lebanon and the result is unacceptable to both Washington and Jerusalem.
Israel -- believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, although it will neither admit nor deny it has the weapons -- has said it considers nuclear weapons in Iran an "existential threat."
A pre-emptive attack by Israel would be seen by the Arab world as part of a collusion with the United States, further eroding America's already thin credibility among Muslims.
Iran has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but it can legally back out with 90 days notice. If Iran is allowed to use the treaty as cover for an illegal weapons program, it would set a dangerous precedent, igniting similar ambitions in Egypt, Turkey and even Saudi Arabia.
Pakistan
Third World countries eager to go nuclear or acquire chemical or biological weapons once needed help from a superpower.
Now they're approaching Pakistan, which has a nuclear arsenal and a well-documented record of selling deadly technology to some of the planet's most dangerous regimes, including North Korea.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, is known to have visited North Korea extensively during the early stages of its nuclear program. Meanwhile, Pakistan's Ghauri liquid-fuel ballistic missile is an identical copy of the North Korean Nodong missile, indicating some bartering.
Khan has been a frequent visitor to Iran as well, according to U.S. intelligence, while two retired Pakistani nuclear scientists have admitted to holding "academic" discussions with Osama bin Laden.
Pakistan's volatile politics and restive Islamic radicals are cause for further concern.
Sympathy for Afghanistan's ousted Islamic Taliban regime is rampant among Pakistan's cash-strapped military, which freely sells equipment without approval from the government, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Politically, Pakistan is secular -- but for how long?
The Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, an alliance of six fundamentalist Islamic parties, has established near autonomy in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province. A radical Islamic government in Islamabad in charge of nuclear weapons would pose a perilous threat to both U.S. and Indian security.
"Pakistan is now leaking dangerous technology," said Joseph Cirincione, director of Carnegie's Non-Proliferation Project. "If it destabilizes, it will hemorrhage the stuff."
Thus far, Pakistan's President Musharraf has been able to keep the conflict with India over disputed Kashmir restricted to occasional flare-ups. But radicals have advocated turning it into a jihad against Kashmir's Hindu occupiers.
An Indo-Pakistani nuclear war would kill millions and potentially plunge the world into an uncontrollable new arms race.
North Korea
There could scarcely be a more worrisome addition to the nuclear family than Pyongyang's wildly unpredictable Stalinist leader Kim Jong Il. Kim might already have one to three nuclear weapons and the capacity make more.
The evidence all indicates North Korea can launch missiles across most of East Asia and possibly to Hawaii and Alaska, and it has a record of selling advanced weapons technology to Iran, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Pakistan.
U.S. officials have accused Kim's cash-strapped regime of selling drugs and missiles and counterfeiting currency to raise money. But would Kim sell fissile material on the terrorist market?
Kim has not been linked to any known terrorists, but he has been caught peddling weapons to the governments that support them.
The Bush administration has thus far had little success in containing North Korea's weapons program as talks with the rogue nation continue to founder. The more immediate concern is whether Kim will test a nuclear weapon soon, as he has recently threatened. A successful test could easily kick off an Asian arms race, with security implications for Americans as the nuclear dominos fall.
Analysts predict Japan would bolster its conventional arms and reconsider its nuclear taboos if North Korea tested a nuclear weapon. South Korea would do the same.
The volatility would almost inevitably push China to expand its nuclear arsenal. India, a longtime foe of China, would follow suit, as would India's archenemy Pakistan.
North Korea recently announced it had finished processing 8,000 spent fuel rods from its Yongbyon nuclear plant into enough weapons-grade plutonium for up to a dozen warheads.
According to both American and Russian intelligence, North Korea possesses large stocks of the nerve agents sarin and VX that were made at as many as eight chemical weapons facilities. Russian intelligence has reported that North Korea is experimenting with anthrax, cholera, plague and smallpox, and might have weaponized some of these lethal pathogens.
"This is one of the most intractable problems in the world," said Choi Young-jin, chancellor of South Korea's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security.
http://www.delmarvanow.com/news/stories/20031008/localnews/410746.htmlIran Needs Modern Weapons to Deter Enemies, Says Conservative
October 08, 2003
Deepika Global
DPA
Teheran -- Iran needs modern weapons to deter the country's enemies from attacking, a leading member of the conservative Islamic Society was quoted as saying today by the news service Kar.
''If our enemies consider attacking our country, just possessing progressive weapons will at least deter them and make them think twice,'' said Mohsen Yahyavi, a former MP and member of the conservative faction.
While refraining to use the term nuclear weapons, Yahyavi said in a meeting with the Islamist group Ansar Hezbollah (The Followers of the Party of God) that possession of such weapons did not necessarily mean using them.
But even according to the Koran (the holy Islamic book), moving towards obtaining weapons which our enemies possess is an obligation, said Yahyavi, referring to the nuclear arsenal of Israel.
Iran's leading officials, including President Mohammad Khatami, have several times stressed that nuclear weapons were not part of the country's programmes and would even be contrary to Iran's religious beliefs.
Yahyavi rejected an unconditional acceptance of the additional protocol of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and harshly criticised those who were in favour of unlimited nuclear inspections.
While referring especially to remarks last month by moderate Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh that Iran should have signed the protocol before the IAEA ultimatum, Yahyavi said such officials could not appropriately represent Iran in international forums.
Under the terms of an IAEA ultimatum Teheran has until October 31 to accept all IAEA regulations on nuclear inspections, and it has been warned that the issue will go to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions if it does not comply by November 20.
Unlike the reformist wing, the conservatives and hardliners in Iran consider giving in to the IAEA ultimatum as a political humiliation with some of them even calling for withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
http://iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2003&m=10&d=08&a=8
