Israel
& Iran: Double standards on nuclear weapons
Israel has nuclear weapons,
perhaps as many as 400 of them. The
Federation of American Scientists (see www.fas.org) puts the number at between
100 and 200.
The fissile material for these
weapons was mainly plutonium from a nuclear reactor supplied by France in the
late 50s and situated at Dimona in the Negev Desert.
However,
it is generally believed that nuclear material was stolen by Israeli agents
from the US, the UK and France in the 1960s and transported to Israel by covert
means (see Annex A). The most notorious
instance was the theft of 200 pounds of enriched uranium from the US nuclear
facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania, with the alleged help of its American
director, Zalman Shapiro.
Israel’s weapons stockpile today
includes warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, and probably for
submarine-launched cruise missiles, as well as nuclear bombs for delivery by
aircraft. The Jericho-1 is reckoned to
have a range of up to 750km, the Jericho-2 up to 1500km (though some estimates
put it as high as 4000km).
In the 1990s Israel took delivery
of three German-built diesel-electric submarines, two of which were a gift from
Germany. It is thought that they are
capable of launching nuclear-armed Popeye Turbo cruise missiles with a range of
up to 350km and that at any time, two of the vessels remain at sea – one in the
Red Sea and Persian Gulf, the other in the Mediterranean – and a third is on
standby.
There is little doubt therefore
that Israel is capable of striking any part of the Arab world and at Iran with
nuclear weapons. It may even be capable
of striking London and Washington.
Iran has no nuclear weapons. It’s not clear that it ever had plans to
develop nuclear weapons. But it is now
being threatened with dire consequences by the US and Europe for failing to
reveal precisely what it is doing in the nuclear area. By stark contrast, nobody says boo to
Israel, which has had nuclear weapons since the late 60s, and has now got a
fully functional arsenal pointing at its neighbours including Iran.
One might be forgiven for thinking
that the West is, yet again, applying a double standard, that the proliferation
of nuclear weapons is fine providing it’s to allies.
To be fair to the US, that is its publicly stated
position. John Bolton is deputy
secretary for arms control in the State Department, responsible for the
non-proliferation of nuclear (and other) weapons. At a press conference in London on 9 October 2003, he was asked
about Israel's nuclear weapons capability and replied: "The issue for the
US is what poses a threat to the US" (Guardian,
10 October). Proliferation of
nuclear weapons to allies is OK.
European states have not been as overt in saying that
proliferation to allies is OK. They
have stuck to the technicality that Iran must honour its obligations under the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, as interpreted by the International Atomic Energy
Authority (IAEA). But the basic policy
is the same: Israel is allowed to have as many nuclear weapons as it likes, but
Iran is not allowed to have any.
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which came into
force on 5 March 1970, divided the states of the world into nuclear sheep and
non-nuclear goats, and expressed the ambition of the nuclear sheep to keep it
that way. A state is defined to be a
nuclear-weapons state if it had “manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or
other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967” (Article IX(3)).
In the Treaty, nuclear states undertook not to
transfer nuclear weapons to non-nuclear states or to assist them in any way to
develop nuclear weapons (Article I).
Non-nuclear states undertook not to be the recipient of such largesse
and not to manufacture nuclear weapons themselves (Article II).
The International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) is
responsible for policing the Treaty.
Each non-nuclear signatory to the Treaty is required to negotiate a
“safeguards” agreement with the IAEA in respect of its civil nuclear
activities, the purpose of which is to allow the IAEA to confirm that it is not
engaging in weapons-related activity.
Clearly,
the Treaty is highly discriminatory in favour of nuclear states, since they are
not obliged to give up nuclear weapons, whereas non-nuclear states are obliged
not to acquire any of these weapons, which are the ultimate guarantee of a
state’s continued existence in the modern world. Iraq would not have been invaded and occupied by the US/UK if it
had had nuclear weapons. The lesson for
any state that wishes to avoid Iraq’s fate is to acquire nuclear weapons as
soon as possible.
It
is true that the Treaty pays lip service to the notion of nuclear disarmament
all round. Article VI says:
“Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to
pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation
of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”
But no nuclear-weapons state as
defined by the Treaty has ceased to be one since the Treaty came into force.
(It is also worth noting that the
policing body for the Treaty, the IAEA, is biased in favour of the nuclear
states, since they are always represented on its Board of Governors. The Board decides what action is to be taken
against states, which are supposed not to have met their obligations under the
Treaty. It is now considering what
action to take against Iran.)
The Treaty was opened for
signature on 1 July 1968, and was signed on that date by 62 states including
Iran (and Iraq). But only three nuclear
states – the US, the UK and the USSR – signed at that time. China and France did not sign until 1992.
Some non-nuclear states, notably
India, refused to sign, giving as a reason that the Traety was discriminatory
against non-nuclear states. Pakistan
also refused to sign. Neither were
nuclear states in 1967; both are nuclear states now. Since they never signed the Treaty, they didn’t break it by
becoming nuclear states, and were not subject to IAEA monitoring while they
were becoming nuclear states. South
Africa didn’t sign at the outset either, and successfully developed nuclear
weapons, but later abandoned development and signed the Treaty in 1991.
No state has withdrawn from the Treaty. No non-nuclear state has acquired nuclear
weapons while a signatory to the Treaty.
North Korea, which signed in 1985, is a possible exception to the
latter. Iraq also tried to acquire
nuclear weapons while a signatory, but was unsuccessful.
It is Iran’s misfortune that it
signed the Treaty in 1968 when the Shah was in power. As a consequence, it is now being indicted by the IAEA for
failing to honour its “safeguards” agreement.
If it had never been a party to the Treaty, it wouldn’t have a
“safeguards” agreement to fail to honour and wouldn’t have had the IAEA monitoring
its nuclear activities.
In recent months, Iran must have
contemplated withdrawing from the Treaty (as North Korea has threatened to
do). Article IX allows a state to
withdraw:
“Each Party shall in
exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the
Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter
of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall
give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the
United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall
include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having
jeopardized its supreme interests.”
By any objective standard, Iran (and other neighbours
of Israel) has good grounds for withdrawal, with the build up over the past 30
years of an Israeli nuclear arsenal directed at them. There could hardly be a better example of “extraordinary events,
related to the subject matter of this Treaty”, which “have jeopardized [their]
supreme interests”.
But for Iran to withdraw now, with the clear
implication that it intended to develop nuclear weapons as a counter to Israel,
would risk terrible havoc from the US and/or Israel. The only sensible course of action for Iran, or any other
non-nuclear state which may wish to develop nuclear weapons, is to do it
secretly and, like India and Pakistan, make an announcement about it only after
success has been achieved – and retribution by other nuclear states is
impossible.
In
present circumstances, Iran has no option but to continue to adhere to the
Treaty and to do what it is told by the IAEA – which may mean that plans for
developing nuclear weapons have to be put on hold for now.
Like India and Pakistan, Israel
didn’t sign the Treaty. By the time the
Treaty was available for signing in July 1968, its nuclear weapons programme
had achieved initial success. It is
generally believed that by the time of the Six-Day War in June 1967 Israel had
two deliverable nuclear devices (see Israel and the Bomb by Avner Cohen
published in 1998). It is a moot point
whether Israel qualified as a nuclear-weapons state within the terms of the
Treaty (that is, as having manufactured nuclear weapons by 1 January 1967), but
that didn’t matter since it had no intention of announcing to the world that it
had a nuclear weapons programme.
Israel
went to great lengths for many years to keep the existence of its programme
secret, even from the US, because it feared that it would be put under pressure
to terminate its programme. After the
US became aware of the existence of the nuclear facility at Dimona in 1960, the
Kennedy administration insisted on inspecting it to confirm Israel’s assertion
that it was for civil purposes only. US
inspectors visited the facility seven times in the 1960s, but never found
direct evidence of weapons related activities – because Israel went to
extraordinary lengths to hide them.
Israel insisted on knowing in advance when the inspectors were coming
and went so far as to install false control room panels and to brick over
elevators and hallways that accessed areas of the site where weapons related
activity was going on. So, although
inspectors suspected the wool was being pulled over their eyes, they were
unable to prove it.
When
the Non-Proliferation Treaty was available for signing in 1968, the Johnson
administration pressed Israel to sign and declare its programme, which by then
the US was certain existed, but Israel refused. Negotiations between Richard Nixon and Golda Meir led in 1970 to
a new understanding on the issue between the US and Israel, which persists to
this day. Under it, the US stopped
pressing Israel to sign the Treaty and ceased sending inspection teams to
Dimona. In return, Israel undertook to
maintain a low profile about its nuclear weapons: there was to be no
acknowledgment of their existence, and no testing which would reveal their
existence. That way, the US would not
be forced to take a public position for or against Israel’s possession of
nuclear weapons.
NPT extended
The
Non-Proliferation Treaty was initially scheduled to last for 25 years, at the
end of which a conference of the signatories was to be held to decide whether
to extend its operation. This Review
and Extension Conference took place in 1995 and extended the operation of the
Treaty indefinitely.
It
also passed a resolution, proposed by the US/UK and Russia, calling for a
nuclear free zone in the Middle East (as did Security Council resolution 687,
the Iraq disarmament resolution, passed in 1991). This resolution was a gesture by the major nuclear powers to the
many non-nuclear states which complained at the Conference that Israel’s
possession of nuclear weapons made a mockery of the non-proliferation
principles they were required to adhere to by the Treaty. The proposers of the resolution never
intended to do anything about Israel’s nuclear weapons, and they didn’t.
Who’s signed today?
Today, nearly every state in the
world has signed the Treaty. Cuba held
out for over 30 years but finally signed in November 2002, presumably because
of the increasingly threatening noises coming from the US. Five states – the US, the UK, Russia, France
and China, which just happen to be the five permanent members of the Security
Council – are signatories as official nuclear-weapons states, who are allowed
under the Treaty to retain their nuclear systems and expand them ad
infinitum. The other 185 or so signed
as non-nuclear-weapons states, which are forbidden under the Treaty to acquire any.
The only significant states which
have not signed are Israel, India and Pakistan, all of which acquired nuclear
weapons after the date for membership of the official nuclear club closed on 1
January 1967. Now, they cannot sign the
Treaty without giving up their nuclear weapons as South Africa did – unless the
Treaty is amended to extend the membership of the nuclear club to include
them. That is not going to happen since
the support of a majority of the existing signatories is required to amend the
Treaty.
The British exception
Eight
states now have nuclear weapons. All of
them made their own weapons, and can make more. All of them, apart from one, made their own delivery systems, and
can make more. All of them, apart from
one, can strike targets with their weapons without the permission of any other
state. In other words, all of them,
apart from one, have got what used to be referred to as an “independent nuclear
deterrent”.
The
exception is Britain. France has an
independent nuclear deterrent. So have
India and Pakistan. Britain hasn’t.
Since
1998 when it decommissioned its nuclear bombs, Britain has had only one nuclear
weapons system: the submarine-launched Trident missile system. The submarine platforms (four of them) were
made in Britain, as were the nuclear warheads for the missiles. But the missiles themselves were made in the
US, and are owned by the US: Britain merely leases them. They belong to a pool of missiles managed by
the US and stored at Kings Bay, Georgia.
On commissioning, the British submarines picked up their missiles from
Kings Bay, and they are exchanged at Kings Bay, when they need servicing. The warheads are fitted to the missiles
onboard the submarines at the Royal Naval Armament Depot at Coulport in the
west of Scotland.
Of
all the nuclear powers in this world, Britain relies on another state for its
delivery system. What is more, if Tony
Benn is to be believed, Britain cannot launch a Trident missile without the
specific permission of the US.
According to Benn (speaking on BBC1’s This Week on 19 November),
the launching submarine requires access to a US military satellite in order to
determine its precise location.
So,
Britain can’t use its nuclear weapons without permission of the US, permission
that will be given only if it is in the US interest to do so.
Permanent volunteer
In
conventional military matters, Britain is also increasingly subordinating
itself to the US. In a speech
to the Royal United Services Institute on 26 June, Geoff Hoon said:
“The multilateral nature of our future will therefore
set a premium on the capacity of our forces to inter-operate with those of
other countries. Most importantly, it is highly unlikely that the United
Kingdom would be engaged in large-scale combat operations without the United
States, a judgement born of past experience, shared interest and our assessment
of strategic trends.”
There,
it is assumed that it will never be in Britain’s interest to oppose the
US. Rather, Britain will always fight
alongside the US – in the words of Guardian journalist, Martin Kettle, Britain
will be America’s “permanent volunteer” – and the inter-operability necessary
to do that will be central to Britain’s military planning from now on.
This
begs the question as to why we want to maintain the pretence of independence
any more. Should we not seek to become
the 51st state of the US, and get 2 seats in the US Senate, so that
we can have some say in the foreign policy we are going to follow?
Britain’s
role as America’s “permanent volunteer” has serious implications for
Europe. It means that Europe cannot
have a role in the world independent of the US, as long as Britain has a veto
over its foreign and defence policy. If
France and others are serious about carving out an independent role for Europe,
then they will have to exclude Britain.
Britain
and America say that there must be no military arrangements in Europe that
undermine NATO. What they really mean
is that there should be no military arrangements in Europe independent of
them.
As
a war fighting alliance NATO doesn’t exist.
The US has decreed that it be so.
After the war on Yugoslavia when the US freedom of action was
constrained by other NATO states, the US determined that never again would it
fight a war under the banner of NATO.
In future, it was going to be its own master. If it could get a few servants to tag along behind, then well and
good, but they would have to do as they were told. That is what has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
NATO
is useful to the US now in two ways.
First, if a state is a NATO member, particularly if it is a recent
joiner, it is easier for the US to pressurise it into providing military
resources of one kind or another.
Second, it is a useful tool for resisting attempts to create independent
military arrangements in Europe: these are met with cries that nothing must be
done to harm NATO – and, unfortunately, no state has yet had the courage to
say: “Why not? NATO lost its role with
the break up of the Soviet bloc. It
should have been disbanded then. It
should be disbanded now, and Europe should make its own defence arrangements.”
Annex
A Israel’s nuclear programme
The following is extract from an
article entitled Israel’s Nuclear Development & Strategy: Future
Ramifications for the Middle East Regional Balance by Laura Drake, an
American academic.
“Material progress toward the achievement of a
nuclear option proceeded along two separate but complementary tracks. One track
was subterranean, travelled by agents of Israeli foreign intelligence. It
involved the systematic location and theft of nuclear materials from advanced
nuclear countries, including the United States. On at least four occasions,
nuclear materials were stolen and transported to Israel by covert means.
“The most notorious instance, fully uncovered by the
American intelligence in 1967, involved the Israeli theft of several hundred
pounds of enriched uranium from the U.S. Nuclear Material and Equipment
Corporation (NUMEC) facility in Apollo, Pennsylvania with the alleged help of
its American director, Zalman Shapiro. While the evidence was not sufficient to
convict the principal involved, there was a "clear consensus" within
the CIA that the nuclear materials in question had been diverted to Israel and
used by the Israelis for nuclear weapons manufacture. Indeed, Shapiro was known
to have maintained extraordinarily intimate relations with the Israeli
government and its nuclear scientific community during his tenure at NUMEC.
“Other known instances of Israeli theft of nuclear
materials include hit-and-run tear-gas attacks by the Israelis against
uranium-laden trucks belonging to the government of France, their former
nuclear benefactor.
“British nuclear cargo was similarly hijacked by
individuals suspected of working for Israeli intelligence. A fourth instance
involves the temporary seizure of a ship registered to what was then West
Germany, from which 200 tons of yellowcake (uranium used as nuclear fuel)
subsequently disappeared, an instance the U.S. intelligence has also attributed
to Israel.
“The second track to Israeli nuclearisation led
through the center of the French Defense Ministry. The initiative of none other
than Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, then director-general of the Israeli
Defense Ministry, was the critical element responsible for the forging of this
connection. Noting the convergence of interests in colonial Algeria and
therefore, in frustrating the overall pan-Arab ambitions of Egyptian President
Gamal Abdel Nasser, Israel saw in Paris a potentially crucial ally. This was
particularly important for Tel Aviv at a time when Washington, under the more
balanced Eisenhower Administration, was still keeping a respectable distance
from Israel. France and Israel thus began to work together on a massive scale.
“