...Part two...
12/22/04
Iran's Nuclear Energy Program. Part V: From the United States Offering Iran Uranium Enrichment Technology to Suggestions for Creating Catastrophic Industrial Failure
By Muhammad Sahimi
The Neoconservatives' Fantasies for Dealing with Iran's Nuclear Program
We now move the clock forward for about 30 years to the present times to see what the neocons and their sympathizers are saying about Iran's nuclear energy program. We begin with a quote about the neocons [22] :
"The neocons hate two things: To be wrong and to be ignored."
It is now an indisputable fact that Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. But, that never stopped the neocons and their sympathizers from advocating invasion of Iraq, which ultimately succeeded when the invasion began in March 2003. The disaster in Iraq has not, however, discouraged the necons and their sympathizers. They now have fantasies about Iran as if Iranians are not already suffering enough in the hands of Tehran's right wing. Too many articles are being published by the necons and their sympathizers describing their fantasies about Iran. All one has to do is taking a look at what such publications as the Weekly Standard, the National Review, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, the Washington Times, and many other publications and websites contain about Iran, or do a Google search on Messrs Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Reuel Marc Gerecht, and others. The goal of this part of the article is not to review what they write about Iran - it will take books to do so - but only to provide clues to neocons' and their sympathizers' thinking and their "action plans" for Iran's nuclear energy facilities, and compare them with the US policy towards Iran's nuclear program in the 1970s.
Before doing so, however, the author would like to point out that, having been a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists for nearly two decades - an organization dedicated to educating the public about the dangers of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons - he is only too aware of the danger that such weapons pose against the world, if they are in the hands of extremists. Therefore, the question is NOT whether Iran, under its present political conditions, should or should not have nuclear weapons. Rather, the point of this part of the article is to give wider public exposure to the neocons' and their sympathizers' fantasies about Iran, particularly among Iranians. Since they know very well that Iran is not Iraq to be overrun, and because they were bitten by "allies" such as Ahmad Chalabi and are well-aware that their Iranian allies - the monarchists and cultists - have no base of support inside Iran, they have begun having fantasies!
Exposing the neocons' and their sympathizers' fantasies is also important from another perspective: When it comes to opposing the spread of nuclear weapons (and it is not even certain yet whether Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons), the US has a double standard. Aside from Israel's arsenal (which includes biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons) which no US politician dares to question or even officially acknowledge, the US does not oppose Pakistan's nuclear arsenal - an immense threat to the stability of that part of the world, because Pakistan is an essentially failed State in a chaotic state. Its nuclear-armed military, populated by Islamic extremists, created the Taliban and still shields many of its leaders. Osama bin Laden could not have hidden for so long without the support of at least some elements of Pakistan's military. Pakistan has a sectarian war in which its majority sunni population has been murdering the shiite minority, and its schools teach Islamic radicalism. Abdul Ghadeer Khan, the founder and owner of Pakistan's nuclear supermarket, could not have operated freely for so long without the support of at least some elements of Pakistan's military. Even now, Pakistan does not allow any foreigners, including experts and inspectors of the IAEA, to interview Mr. Khan. However, instead of trying to alleviate this dangerous situation, the US has granted Pakistan "special friend" status.
But, the US double standards do not end with Israel and Pakistan. The US has exported nuclear technology to China; has offered a non-aggresion pact and economic incentives to North Korea, and never objected to Argentine and South Africa (which developed 16 nuclear bombs in the 1980s) acquiring nuclear technology and know-how. It was recently announced that South Korea and Taiwan both have been involved with enriching uranium, producing plutonium, and even nuclear bomb making, yet the revelation did not provoke any reaction by the US. Brazil, a signatory to the NPT, had until very recently refused to allow the IAEA full inspection of its uranium enrichment facilities that are under construction, yet, although Brazil provided nuclear materials to Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell declared on October 5, 2004, that Brazil's behavior "does not concern the US."
Here, we review the positions of two pundits regarding Iran's nuclear energy program. They are not at the American Enterprise Institute, the hotbed of neoconservatism, and may not consider themselves as neoconservative pundits. However, as we show below, their positions resonate nicely with those of the neocons.
The first pundit whose "positions" regarding Iran's nuclear energy facilities we would like to discuss is Mr. Michael Eisenstadt, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute. In a recent book chapter [23] entitled, "The Challenges of U.S. Preventive Military Action," Mr. Eisenstadt suggested the following covert actions, among others, against Iran's nuclear facilities (see pages 121 and 122 of Ref. 23 ) (the emphasis with capital letters is mine):
"harassment or MURDER of key Iranian SCIENTISTS or technicians;"
"introduction of FATAL DESIGN FLAWS into critical reactor, centrifuge, or weapons components during their production, to ensure CATASTROPHIC FAILURE DURING USE;"
introduction of destructive viruses into Iranian computer systems controlling the production of components or the operation of facilities;"
"damage or destruction of critical facilities through SABOTAGE..."
There are at least three important aspects of the above covert options to consider:
(a) One wonders whether Mr. Eisenstadt's suggestion for murdering Iranian scientists or technicians is not tantamount to state-sponsored terrorism. If so, it appears that in Mr. Eisenstadt's view terrorism is committed only by weaker countries or groups against powerful nations!
(b) Likewise, it appears that Mr. Eisenstadt does not consider sabotage as either state-sponsored terrorism, or against international laws. It appears that in his view, international laws are good only so long as they advance the interests of powerful nations!
(c) It is completely clear that Mr. Eisenstadt has no notion of what constitutes a catastrophic failure in an industrial complex. We are talking about a system which includes nuclear reactors and nuclear materials. Any catastrophic accident or system failure in any large-scale industrial complex, let alone a nuclear complex, is one that has immense consequences in terms of loss of lives, long-term health problems, human suffering, and economic and environmental damage. We only need to recall what happened in Bhopal, India - a non-nuclear accident - and in Chernobyl, Ukraine - a nuclear accident - to see the consequences of a catastrophic industrial failure. The people of those areas are still paying with their lives the cost of those accidents, with Chernobyl's total casualty reaching over 30,000.
To further boost his case for the type of covert actions he was proposing, Mr. Eisenstadt stated that [23] ,
"it might not be possible for Iranian authorities to determine, for instance, whether the death of a scientist was due to natural or un-natural causes, or whether damage to a critical facility was due to an industrial accident or sabotage."
Consider the reasoning: Mr. Eisenstadt seems to be of the opinion that the people who run Iran's nuclear program know nothing about anything. He appears to have forgotten that the same Iranian authorities managed to set up the complete cycle for enriching uranium over a period of 18 years and hide it from the world.
It came to the author's attention that Mr. Eisenstadt, in an e-mail that he sent to the panelists of the panel, "Assessing the Iranian Nuclear Program: Technical Capabilities and Intent," which was part of a workshop entitled, "Iran's Nuclear Program" (held on Tuesday November 9, 2004, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.), tried to put a spin on what he had stated in his article quoted above. In that panel Mr. Eisenstadt's proposal for creating a catastrophic failure was questioned and criticized by Professor Najmedin Meshkati of the University of Southern California, an internationally-recognized authority on safety of nuclear reactors. In response to Professor Meshkati's criticism, Mr. Eisenstadt stated the following [24] in his e-mail:
"Had I been there [in the panel] I would have pointed out that the term 'catastrophic failure' is used in industry to describe 'failure, often sudden and without warning, that jeopardizes the acceptable performance of an entire system or assembly.' (This definition is from the ChemIndustry.com website, which describes itself as the worldwide search engine of the chemical industry). "Catastrophic" refers to how the failure affects the operation of the system, not its impact on the people operating the facility or living in its vicinity. There are no doubt ways to sabotage a nuclear power plant (if one were inclined to do so and had appropriate access) to prevent reactor start-up or to force it to shut-down without creating a hazard to the work force or the peoples of the region."
The author has been involved with the chemical and petroleum industry for thirty years. In addition to being a professor of chemical engineering, carrying out research (funded by leading funding agencies in the US) and publishing extensively (over 220 papers and 4 books) in these areas, the author has also been, and currently is, a consultant to many industrial corporations. Mr. Eisenstadt's "clarification" is, in the author's opinion, nothing but hair spiting and distorting what is widely known, and does nothing but adding insult to the injury of his original suggestions. The suggestion that one can cause catastrophic failure in a nuclear facility "without creating a hazard to the work force or to the peoples of the region" is absolutely outrageous.
Perhaps one of the best responses to the "clarification" of Mr. Eisenstadt, and his claim that he was only discussing some possibilities, was given by Dr. Guive Mirfendereski, an international laws expert and a frequent commentator on Iran and the Middle East. In an e-mail to Mr. Eisenstadt, Dr. Mirfendereski wrote [25] :
"You are not in a scientific conference where all manner of theories are proposed, or in a sci-fi convention. Since the conditions of flawlessness of execution are never met, a catastrophic failure will produce catastrophic consequences. To even suggest such a thing in theory is reckless and without regard to the human toll that it will engender. Assume that the catastrophic failure occurs in Bushehr and before you know it the Iranians [who work there] fail to manage the failure properly - the Bhopal or Chernobyl style cloud or waterborne contamination then begins to waft over into the Persian Gulf and the neighboring countries, which include Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq, where we [the US] have troops and will have for a foreseeable future. Will you then stand up and say, oops we goofed, the intel was faulty? Instead of coming up with Agent-Orange type solutions inspired by an over-exaggerated sense of Bond-esque machismo, maybe the time has come for you and your cohorts to talk about befriending a country without whose friendship in the past twenty-odd years we [the US] have managed to screw up everything we touched in the Middle East - ironically to the ultimate detriment of the welfare of the citizens of a certain country that wags our [the US'] national policy."
The depth of Mr. Eisenstadt's lack of understanding of what is happening in the Middle East and what his proposals might do to that region can be seen where he states in his article that [23] :
"Successful U.S. prevention would require exceptionally complete intelligence; near flawless military execution; and deft post-strike diplomacy to mitigate an anti-American nationalist backlash, deter retaliation, and, most importantly, ensure that military action does not poison pro-American sentiment or derail the movement for political change in Iran. The complex, daunting, and somewhat contradictory nature of these challenges (e.g., successful prevention could harm short-term prospects for political change and complicate long-term prospects for rapprochement with a new Iran) only underscores the importance of exhausting diplomatic options before giving serious consideration to military action."
In other words, Mr. Eisenstadt believes that the US can cause a catastrophic failure in Iran's nuclear energy facilities, with unforeseen human, economic, and environmental consequences, but if the US only has "deft post-strike diplomacy" it can prevent a backlash and poisoning of pro-American sentiment, or derailment of the movement for political change in Iran. What Mr. Eisenstadt is saying is, in fact, rehashing of what all the neocons have been saying: That the reason for the anti-US feelings in the Middle East is just bad public relations, and has nothing to do with what the US has actually been doing there. In other words, as a Bush Administration official recently stated, the US should "create reality" as it goes ahead with its policies in the Middle East.
The second pundit whose position regarding Iran's nuclear energy facilities we discuss is Mr. Patrick Clawson. He is deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank. Similar to Mr. Eisenstadt, Mr. Clawson has been advocating sabotage, and creating industrial accidents in Iran's nuclear energy facilities. In a recent article Mr. Clawson stated that [26] :
"In an ideal world, the United States could disrupt Iran's nuclear program through covert means, such as corrupting software programs."
In another recent article [27] Mr. Clawson was quoted as going further, stating that:
"The idea that the only contingency plan available is to use U.S. air raids is not true. Given the shoddy design of the Russian nuclear plants whose blueprints Iran is using for its facilities, one could well imagine that there could be catastrophic industrial accidents."
However, it was in the Workshop in Washington (mentioned above) that Mr. Clawson stated his position most "eloquently." His remarks followed up Mr. Henry Sokolski's response to Professor Najmedin Meshkati's inquiry about suggestion for sabotaging Iran's nuclear system and Mr. Eisenstadt's written statements quoted above. The following remarks were transcribed verbatim from the C-SPAN live and then re-broadcast of the Workshop on Iran's Nuclear Program. Mr. Clawson said (the emphasis with capital letters are the author's) [28] :
"Look, if we could find a way in which we could introduce computer viruses which caused the complete shutdown of the Bushehr system before it became operational, that would be DELIGHTFUL."
"If we could find ways in which these very complicated centrifuges, which are spinning at such high speeds, could develop stability problems and fly apart, and the cascade [of the centrifuges] could be DESTROYED, I think that would be DELIGHTFUL."
The readers surely note that empty centrifuges do not spin! They only spin at high speeds when they contain uranium hexafluoride which is in gaseous state. So, destroying the cascade of the centrifuges only implies rapidly spreading the uranium compound everywhere, from which Mr. Clawson would derive delight. He continued:
"And, indeed, if we could find a way to create an industrial accident of the scale of the Three Mile Island which did not cause a single fatality, which would prevent Bushehr from becoming operational, I think that would also be very HELPFUL."
So, the contention is that a nuclear accident of the type and scale of the Three Mile Island would not cause any fatality! Clearly, Mr. Clawson has not done his homework. The author invites Mr. Clawson and the interested readers to watch the award-winning video, "Three Mile Island Revisited" [29] . To quote, the video
"directly challenges the claim of the nuclear industry and government that 'no one died' from the core meltdown of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in 1979, America's worst nuclear disaster. Through the testimony of area residents and scientific experts, the documentary presents compelling evidence that cancer deaths and birth defects increased in the area surrounding the Pennsylvania plant."
The author also suggests that Mr. Clawson and the interested readers read, "People Died at Three Mile Island," chapter 14 of a seminal book [30] to learn about the chilling facts about this nuclear accident, from birth defects and increased rate of child mortality, to increased cancer deaths in that area.
Mr. Clawson then continued,
"So, there are a whole variety of mechanisms that could be used to stop Iran's nuclear program, that would be much less dangerous than some of the other methods that we are talking about. We are talking about military strikes. I hate to tell you this, but military strikes kill people, and that fact we have to take into consideration."
So, Mr. Clawson was apparently worried about loss of human lives as a result of military strikes. But he immediately revealed his true colour (if he already had not by making the statement about a Three Mile Island-type of accident):
"If we could find ways to bring about industrial accidents, that offer good prospects of not endangering human life, but may UNFORTUNATELY CAUSE SOME COLLATERAL DAMAGE, then that's a plan that we have to consider."
Therefore, Mr. Clawson immediately contradicted himself and conceded that industrial accidents of the type he is talking about do cause some (how much?) collateral damage.
After the 1995 agreement was signed by Iran and Russia for completing the Bushehr reactor, the Clinton administration began charging that the plutonium that one can extract from the nuclear waste that the reactor would produce could be used by Iran for making nuclear weapons. However, this issue was addressed by Iran and Russia, when they negotiated an agreement by which the nuclear wastes from the Bushehr reactor would be returned to Russia. In fact, the Bushehr reactor, at which most of Messrs Eisenstadt and Clawson fury and covert plans are aimed, is believed by many experts to be incapable of producing plutonium suitable for making a nuclear bomb. For example, according to Thomas Stauffer [31] ,
"The reactor at Bushehr is the wrong kind of nuclear reactor for producing weapons-grade fissile material. It will produce the wrong kind of plutonium.... It can be operated only in the wrong way with regard to yielding plutonium, and it is the wrong kind of reactor as well, in the sense that a facility such as Iran's is easily amenable to close surveillance, not lending itself at all to any covert diversion - of even the wrong kind of plutonium."
However, the neocons and their sympathizers would have none of these. The only thing that would satisfy this group is the complete destruction of Iran's nuclear energy facility, regardless of its human, environmental and economic consequences. Thus, having "successfully" completed their "Project for the New Iraqi Century," the neocons and their sympathizers have begun having fantasies about Iran. We already have neocons among Iran's right wing in Tehran who have been trying to suppress Iran's democratic movement. We should look forward to seeing Iranian neo-monarchists and neo-cultists as well, the US neocons' natural allies.
...continues in Part three...