Is that a Bunker-Buster in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

OK, Inmates. Weekend’s over. Back into Therapy with you!

The twists and turns of the Iranian nuclear “crisis” seem to read more interestingly with a bit of timely analysis:

We’ve heard a lot over the last week of the efforts of several countries, namely the US, UK, France, Germany and China to negotiate a freeze on Iran’s nuclear fuel enrichment program through the United Nations. The Chimp-In-Chief, as we all know, is showboating to all and sundry that he has “information” that Iran is conducting secret tests to enrich Uranium beyond the level needed for electricity production from nuclear facilities. He asserts that, just like Saddam Hussein, the Iranians are secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Hands up who’s stupid or corrupt enough to fall for THAT crap a second time? Stand up, Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac!

The Iranians flatly deny this accusation. They say that they only want to be able to generate electricity, as do many other countries:

Nuclear Power in the World Today

Seventeen countries depend on nuclear power for at least a quarter of their electricity. France and Lithuania get around three quarters of their power from nuclear energy, while Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovenia and Ukraine get one third or more. Japan, Germany and Finland get more than a quarter of their power from nuclear energy, while the USA gets one fifth.

…more information here

The Iranians say, quite rightly, that if nuclear power is so efficient, and almost everyone else who can afford it can have it, and since Iran is a co-signatory to the Non- Proliferation Treaty (unlike India and Pakistan), why shouldn’t THEY be allowed to have it?

International nuclear safeguards

Over more than 30 years the IAEA's safeguards system under the NPT has been a conspicuous international success. It has involved cooperation in developing nuclear energy for electricity generation, while ensuring that civil uranium, plutonium and associated plant did not allow weapons proliferation to occur as a result of this.

It is important to realise that international nuclear safeguards are focused on the control of fissile materials only. They have nothing to do with engineering or organisational safety aspects of reactors, waste disposal, or transport. These are covered by other international arrangements and conventions. It is also important to understand that nuclear safeguards are a prime means of reassurance whereby non-nuclear weapons states demonstrate to others that they are fulfilling their peaceful commitments. They prevent nuclear proliferation in the same way that auditing procedures build confidence in proper conduct and prevent embezzlement. . Their specific objective is to verify whether nuclear material remains within the civil nuclear fuel cycle and is being used solely for peaceful purposes or not.

…more detail here

Britain and France, I should remind you, are the only two European countries with nuclear weapons, and are in a position to join Bush in strutting, crowing and making the Ultimate Threat. Germany doesn’t have nuclear weapons, and is saying loud and clear that invading Iran would be a disaster, and the UN Security Council should be kept out of this debacle for the sake of us all. Germany wants to negotiate guarantees from Iran. We just want to demand with menaces.

India and Pakistan, who have both refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and who have both developed, tested and threatened each other with nuclear weapons, faced sanctions so mild and short-lived it was laughable. The US is now back in business trading nuclear fuel with India. Pakistan, as we now know, has been selling nuclear technology and fissile material through the back-door to anyone with a suitcase full of money for years, and has undoubtedly hastened the almost inevitable arrival of a screaming lunatic with a low-yield device making it past the security cordons and into history.

America, which signed the NPT, and is supposed to be drastically reducing its stockpile of nuclear warheads to reflect reductions made by Russia, is in fact INCREASING weapons production in the form of “Bunker Busters”, intended to penetrate underground facilities. These will be the first nuclear weapons to be deployed when they invade Iran on this flimsiest of excuses.

High Tide of the Neocons

The neocon plan as I understand it is to stand by while the EU-Iran talks collapse; hold France, Germany and Britain to an earlier promise to support UN sanctions against Iran in the wake of that collapse; push Mohamed El Baradei and the IAEA to find Iran in violation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (even though it's not); attempt, knowing the effort will fail, to acquire a Security Council resolution condemning Iran; have John Bolton as new U.S. ambassador to the UN declare the organization irresponsible if not useless; and then tell the American people the U.S. has tried to deal with Iran's nuclear weapons threat (and its support for international terrorism, and the prospect of nukes falling into the hands of Islamic Jihad or Hizbollah) through the international body, but failed due to China's obstructionism based on Chinese selfish demand for Iranian oil.

Soon thereafter (before a massive movement against an attack on Iran can form) they would like to conduct a horrific tactical-nuke operation against Iranian nuclear facilities as well as government offices. Scott Ritter suggests that they plan an actual invasion from Azerbaijan. They apparently plan to use Mujahadeen Khalq forces much as they used Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan. Europe might stay out this time, although Israel may have an important role, and France having generally reconciled with the U.S. and having worked with the U.S. to reconfigure Syria and Lebanon (and Haiti) may be assigned a major role in her former colonies in the Levant.

The neocons must anticipate resurgent resistance activity in Afghanistan (due both to the activities of one-time CIA favorite Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as well as to Taliban "remnants"), as well as intensified fighting in Iraq, where the Shiites and Sunnis alike will see the Iran attack as a U.S. war on Islam, on behalf of Israel. The American Empire in Southwest Asia will as it expands remain in a semi-chaotic state, with weak client regimes struggling alongside overstretched U.S. forces to contain insurgencies. But that is okay with the neocons, who delight in chaos and see glorious victory and progress in the disarray of Afghanistan and Iraq. They apparently think that their imperial goals can be achieved even in the context of ongoing low-intensity warfare, and that they can meet those goals (of controlling the flow of oil and gas and establishing permanent military bases throughout the region) without a Vietnam-like disaster, or a level of dissent in the U.S. that could actually lead to the fall of the Bush administration.

…more here

Iran sits atop some of the largest oil fields in the world, yet they have a conflict of needs; the oil provides virtually the entire Gross Domestic Product for Iran, but the oil’s not going to last forever (we may fast be approaching the ‘Hubbert Peak, AKA Peak Oil’, after which it’s downhill all the way…), and the least beneficial way of using the oil is to pump it out and use it themselves for generating electricity in inefficient oil-fired power stations. Iran is entitled to long-term energy security, whether George Bush hates their guts or not. It’s simply none of his business.

So… why is France suddenly jumping on the bandwagon? It seems that the Americans have offered the French a little sweetner in exchange for support at the UN – a hinted-at major role in her former colonies in the Levant – Syria, Lebanon and Damascus.

A little history in two links:

THE U. S. NOTE TO THE FRENCH PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT ON THE LEVANT STATES May 31, 1945

PRIME MINISTER CHURCHILL'S SPEECH IN COMMONS ON SYRIA AND LEBANON June 5, 1945

French and British 20^th century colonialisation and dominance of much of the Middle East is one of the issues which inflames Middle Eastern passions. When we were there we treated them worse than animals. Then, as now, an arab life is not even worth counting. We Brits have an inglorious past of murder and torture in other people’s countries, and if we want to ever truly understand why there is so much anger and hatred towards us, we forget that fact at our politically-correct peril. The French were every bit as brutal, make no mistake about it.

What of Blair’s position? As you probably know we’ve had a few differences with the French of late over the way the EU works. Britain currently holds the EU Presidency, and it is in Blair’s mind to trump the French card and sidle up to the Chimp-In-Chief again and romp off on another Imperialistic jaunt, thinking that maybe THIS time George will keep his word and let us get our noses in the Criminal Trough of Plunder. The problem with being Bush’s Bitch is that the primary qualification seems to be matchless stupidity.

Much as many of us loathe the idea of returning to nuclear power with all its massive problems, it’s a sad fact that at present nuclear power seems like our best medium-term hope for energy security. Renewable Energy technologies are still in their infancy, having been crippled over and over again over the past couple of decades by all those companies and governments who have colluded to make sure that Sustainable Energy Research consistently fails to get proper grant support, tax-breaks etc. Oil is King, the King has no clothes on, but he’ll destroy the Earth to make sure YOU don’t have any clothes either.

We all get the crystal clear picture, too, that the Republic of Iran isn’t a very user-friendly place to be if you’re not a friend. Several violent, extremist Jihadist organizations are based there, and it’s an almost definite that the Iranian government is financing them left, right and centre. The Iranian Military is highly-trained, pretty damn modern, massive and very, very focused. Attacking Iran wouldn’t bear any comparison to invading Iraq (recently described as “Mexico with oil”).

We know, also, what lies in the religious hearts of the Iranian Clerics, and it’s not a pleasant picture.

However: the cultural issue should be kept separate from the long-term needs of millions of Iranians. How can we ever claim to hold the moral high ground if we treat other nations with such astonishing duplicity, arrogance and murderous disdain? If we can’t accept that this is a time when we need to prove OUR intelligence and integrity by allowing the IAEA to continue its inspections, and offer the hand of trust (let alone technical assistance) to Iran, then the future looks very, very bleak.

Which is just the way George Bush seems to want it…