UNSC: Sanctioning the next war of aggression

3/26/07

By Daniel M Pourkesali, Virginia

United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has once again voted to impose yet another sanction on

Iran for its failure to suspend a legal activity allowed by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty [1], to which Iran remains a signatory state, and that the IAEA itself has found no indication of any nuclear material being diverted to military purposes.

As in case of the UNSC resolution 1737 [2] approved in December 2006, the United States has played a key roll in draft of the language used and the push for its passage, in a continued effort to lay the ground for a planned military action against Iran.

In an op-ed [3] written days following the ratification of resolution 1737, this writer urged readers and all those outraged by the Iraqi deception to stand up and repeatedly make it known, over the deafening megaphones of the war-mongers that:

1) Iran is not in breach of any international conventions or agreements. Processing of uranium is entirely within the guidelines of the NPT, and according to the IAEA, all fissile material have been accounted for and confirmed as not diverted to prohibited activities.

Above remains true today as it has been since the inception of Iranian nuclear program in 1957 with the help of the United States. In that year a civil nuclear cooperation program was established under the U.S. 'Atoms for Peace' program [4]. In 1959, the Tehran Nuclear Research Center (TNRC) was established and run by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI). The TNRC was equipped with a U.S.-supplied 5-megawatt nuclear research reactor that became operational in 1967 fuelled with highly enriched uranium. Iran signed the NPT in 1968 and ratified it in 1970. With the establishment of Iran's atomic agency and the NPT in place, the Shah approved plans to construct, again with U.S. help, up to 23 nuclear power stations by the year 2000.

2) The UN Security Council is not the world and hence does not reflect the will of the 'international community' – it represents the views and positions of 15 nations five of which are undemocratically assigned as permanent members including the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia.

The 118 United Nations member states of the Nonaligned Movement [5] have repeatedly confirmed and recognized Iran's right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Yet a handful of powerful nations led by the U.S., continue to portray their own narrow and self-serving objectives as the will of the entire international community.

3) Any military action against Iran regardless of the Security Council approval would be ethically and morally void of any legitimacy.

The UNSC is the organ of the United Nations charged with maintaining peace and security among nations. Under Chapter Six of the UN Charter [6], "Pacific Settlement of Disputes", the Security Council "may investigate any dispute or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security."

The key phrase is endangering of 'international peace and security'. A simple question to ask here is this -- How can a legal activity allowed by the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty constitute a danger to world "peace and security" and prompt an international body charged with maintaining the same to impose such unwarranted sanctions that as witnessed in case of Iraq can be used as plain justification to invade and occupy a sovereign nation?

But the far grimmer question to ask is – Are we as world citizens going to idly stand by and allow yet another illegal act of treachery be carried out under the pretext of protecting 'international peace and security'?

[1] http://www.fas.org/nuke/control/npt/text/npt2.htm

[2] http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2006/sc8928.doc.htm \

[3] http://www.campaigniran.org/casmii/index.php?q=node/954

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atoms_for_Peace

[5] http://www.nam.gov.za/background/members.htm

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Our Mad Mad Mad Mad Vice President Speaks

by Karen Kwiatkowski

The Cheney speech to AIPAC – reassuring militant rightwingers in Israel and the US that America is leaning forward on Iran, and that we are never leaving Iraq – was filled with honesty and conviction, and gives us a clear window into the administration's thinking.

Cheney's description of terrorists is somewhat emotional and overblown. Calling them "freedom's enemies," he comes dangerously close to describing this administration's id. His emphasis on one-side’s victims in last summer's war with Lebanon, and his proud silence on the thousands killed, injured, made homeless and jobless by American weaponry is also understandable as he speaks to the AIPAC audience. His "three myths" on Iraq and the so-called war on terror are sermons to a choir that raises its voice demanding America be not a policeman in the Middle East, not an inspiration, but a blustering and imbecilic bodyguard.

But the real truth in Cheney's speech is found in his sense of urgency. Cheney exhorts Congress to remember 9-11 and damns it for failing to subsume its every decision to the maintenance of the administration's cultural mythology of that day. He rails at the idea of time limits in Iraq, and suggests that debate in Washington on the role, objectives and cost of our militarism in the Middle East is counterproductive and allows the "enemy" to "watch the clock and wait us out."

But it is Cheney – not al Qaeda – who is watching the clock now. This former Secretary of Defense understands only too well that the deployment of two battle groups in the Persian Gulf, and the onset of this year's "spring offensive" in Afghanistan both point to a ticking clock – second-generation shock and awe forces require many months of planning, and a massive logistics tail to support even a short-lived coordinated attack. The clock is indeed ticking, and nothing must get in the way of that. It is not ticking for the occupied Palestinian territories, nor the fractured and dazed Iraqis living out some kind of neo-colonial nightmare. Those efforts are perfectly on track, as hoped for, and AIPAC completely understands this.

It is all about Iran. The U.S. military, from the tone and content of Cheney's speech, is now ready, and the window is open. The administration may actually be a bit behind in building its public case – at least one as plausible as the false case made by this same administration less than five years ago regarding Iraq. Part of this case-making process entails boxing the Congress, and preventing that body from asserting its collective intellect, refreshing its own collective familiarity with truth, justice, reality and even the Constitution. Iran is back on the table, and the House warning language on Iran stricken.

70% of the American public, and most of the soldiers and Marines in Iraq understand the idiocy, the pointlessness and shoddy logic of this alter-ego "war" we are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, soon Iran and perhaps even Syria. This majority of Americans are beginning to hate Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for what they are doing to our own nation. But the 70% in this country have no important conferences for the political leadership, they have no lobbyists, they have no deep pockets, and they have no rabidly confident sense that they alone have all the answers to the world's problems. AIPAC, on the other hand, has all these things.

And soon, it is likely they'll have their desired attacks on Iran. We may soon hear of an accident, an incursion, or a purported attack on our forces. That provocation will force the President to bomb until our bombs run out, and will give the Democrats one more opportunity to prove their abject fealty to war. From what we are hearing of this year's AIPAC conference, it will be up to a few honest and courageous souls in the Senate, or a revolt of the generals, to stop America's next war.

March 19, 2007

LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, has written on defense issues with a libertarian perspective for MilitaryWeek.com, hosted the call-in radio show American Forum, and blogs occasionally for Huffingtonpost.com and Liberty and Power. Archives of her American Forum radio program can be accessed here and here. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here.

Copyright © 2007 Karen Kwiatkowski