The madness of bombing Iran
By Robert Skidelsky
04/24/06 "The
Times" -- -- As our leaders soften us up for a new
war, the arguments we can’t afford to ignore.
THERE IS no doubt that Western opinion is being softened up for
a US or Israeli strike against the Iranian centrifuges at Natanz.
“Can anyone within range of Iran’s missiles feel safe?”, screams
a full-page advertisement in the International Herald Tribune,
displaying a map of the Eurasian land mass with Iran at its
centre.
As part of the softening-up come the justifications, as false as
the ones that preceded the Iraq war, but more disgraceful second
time round. Here are the counter-arguments.
First, it needs to be trumpeted that a military strike now would
be illegal under international law. The UN Security Council
would never authorise it, since Iran has not breached the terms
of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that allows every
signatory to develop nuclear energy for peaceful use. However,
the hawks no longer even talk about the need to get Security
Council approval — this is the measure of the damage to
international law that Bush and Blair have inflicted.
The United States (or Israel) would claim it was acting in self-defence.
But by long-established customary law a pre-emptive strike is
justified only to defend against an “imminent and certain”
attack. True enough, what happens tomorrow is never certain, but
if another country’s troops start massing at one’s frontier that
would be pretty good evidence of hostile intention. To claim the
right of self-defence against a threat that may or may not
emerge in five years’ time is to claim the right to wage
aggressive war whenever one chooses. This was one of the two
grounds on which Nazi leaders were convicted and executed at
Nuremberg.
John Reid, the Defence Secretary, has recently been arguing that
the right of pre-emption should be turned into the right of
prevention, “rather than waiting for the next threat to come
along”. If one happened to “learn” that a threat was being
developed, would it not be one’s duty to zap it before it became
actual? The answer is “no”. The more “potential” the threat, the
less transparent it will be, the more flawed one's intelligence,
and the more scope leaders will have to manipulate public
opinion.
If Iraq taught us anything it should have been this. Tony Blair
at first stuck to the accepted justification for a pre-emptive
strike by claiming that Iraq was an immediate threat (the
notorious “45 minutes”). When that was revealed as phoney, he
fell back on the argument that Iraq “would have” acquired a WMD
capability had we not overthrown Saddam Hussein. Such arguments
allow unscrupulous leaders to make war on a whim.
To return from Mr Reid’s science fiction to earth: the
technology of making nuclear weapons is not obscure. The
Iranians claim to have enriched uranium to the “3.5 per cent
level”. This is enough to use as nuclear fuel, but nowhere near
enough for nuclear weapons. That requires up to 90 per cent
enrichment, with 50 to 100 kilograms of it to make a single
bomb. The Iranians say they have 164 centrifuges. But thousands
would be needed to get a significant amount of weapons grade
uranium. Experts say it would take five years or more to produce
an atomic bomb from domestic processes.
The biggest danger of nuclear proliferation is not that rogue
states will learn how to enrich uranium enough to build nuclear
weapons but that already enriched uranium stocks will leak out
to terrorist groups. A terrorist group that obtained 50kg of
highly enriched uranium would probably be able to make a nuclear
device. But it could make it anywhere — in a garage in London,
for instance. The answer to this is not to bomb Iraq, but to
reduce such stockpiles (mainly in Russia and the United States)
to a minimum, and make sure they are under iron control.
People who support military action ask: how do we know that Iran
isn't lying when it says that its uranium enrichment programme
is intended only for civilian use? Surely, this is a clear case
for invoking the precautionary principle: the risk may be slight
but the consequences of ignoring it may be catastrophic. But no
one is arguing that the risk should be ignored. The Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty now also allows for intrusive
inspections. Hans Blix has written: “If you want a control
system that gives a maximum of assurance, you can . . . require
that inspectors have the right to go almost anywhere, any time,
and demand any kind of documents.” Iran has accepted this
protocol and operating under it the International Atomic Energy
Agency has found no evidence that it is developing a weapons
programme. However, the protocol could be strengthened for
states such as Iran whose leaders make Hitlerian pronouncements.
Given that it is possible, though difficult, to put in place a
series of checks on Iran's nuclear ambitions, our leaders need
to weigh very carefully the equivocal comfort that a so-called
preventive strike may buy against the massive costs of mounting
one. It is as certain as it can be that a strike against Iran
would inflame Muslim hatred throughout the Middle East and
beyond. It would interrupt oil supplies and disorganise the
world economy. It would swell the insurgency in Iraq, multiply
the numbers of “terrorists” and strengthen their determination
to exact a terrible vengeance, especially on Israel. It would be
against every counsel of prudent statesmanship. The danger is
that we will drift into war because we lack the will and
imagination to create institutions to make peace safe.
“The threat posed by Iran has been grossly exaggerated” will be
debated tomorrow at the Royal Geographical Society in one of a
series of Times debates.
www.intelligencesquared.com
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