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The nuclear weapons program of the Mullah's regimeThe main dynamic of world political interaction with the clerical regime in Tehran is around the nuclear weapons program being pursued there, and not around the shocking human rights and economic situation of the people. This dynamic is being played out in the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, and may yet be transferred to the United Nations Security Council. In October 1988, the regime's number two, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, declared to a Revolutionary Guards Corps that the regime "should fully equip ourselves both in the offensive and defensive use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. From now on you should make use of the opportunity and perform this task". The Revolutionary Guards manage the program to produce nuclear weapons. This was at the point when the regime, having exhausted the country, finally broke off the war with Iraq. Today, the Mullah's regime is perhaps six to nine months away from producing a nuclear weapon, and it has an operational missile with a range of 1,500 kilometres, capable of striking Israel. Back in 1981, Israel decided to close down Iraq's nuclear program by bombing the reactor site at Tammuz. Iraq responded with a covert nuclear weapons program that was only unmasked after the Gulf War in 1991, and destroyed by the IAEA by 1996. Iran has not made the same mistake, but dispersed its nuclear weapons program over many sites, perhaps 40. However, Israel is surely planning how to strike all these targets, and the missile plants, before the first nuclear weapon becomes available. And surely the US will encourage Israel to make the strike at an agreed time. In our nuclear world, we cannot afford for this to happen, and nor can the people of Iran and its neighboring countries. Under the Shah, Iran had a nuclear power program. It was discontinued after the 1979 revolution, but Rafsanjani revived it. In the first half of the 1980s, he started secret talks with China, Pakistan, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Argentina, India and South Africa. It was Rafsanjani who persuaded China to build a nuclear research centre outside Isfahan, and to equip it with a 'training reactor' and a unit for experimental uranium isotope separation, by the mid-1980s. As the newly elected President in 1989, Rafsanjani went to Moscow and secured Soviet support for the nuclear program. Last year [2003], as the IAEA demanded greater nuclear safeguards from Iran, Rafsanjani was again leading the effort to manage the crisis. At the time, he said, "We must prepare ourselves to confront the enemy's new aggression. We shall respond to this aggression by striking at their heartland". In August 2002, the National Council of Resistance of Iran exposed two hitherto secret nuclear program sites, surprising both the IAEA and the clerical regime. They were a hexaflouride gas uranium enrichment centrifuge facility at Natanz and a heavy water facility at Arak. Both were heavily camouflaged. In Tehran, the response was to rapidly accelerate the nuclear weapons effort. In the IAEA, it was to achieve inspections and to impose a regime which would stop any nuclear weapons program. These inspections finally took place in February 2003. They found about 100 centrifuges at Natanz, with equipment to build 5,000 more. At full capacity, this plant could produce enough enriched uranium for two nuclear weapons per year. In Europe, it triggered an effort to bargain with Tehran, while in the USA, the Bush Administration started to apply the same preemptive strike language to Iran as it had to Iraq. The NCRI had obtained top secret documents from the Peoples Mojahedin inside Iran, who had a source inside the regime. Later the NCRI revealed that a supposed watch factory outside Tehran was a nuclear facility operated by a front company Kalaye Electric. Again, the exposure was verified. In September 2002 the Supreme National Security Council held a series of meetings to devise a new military doctrine to cope with the new threats, and this was the strategy of 'asymmetric warfare' - the use of non-conventional methods of terror attacks against US forces in Iraq and other Western countries, and use of weapons of mass destruction delivered by missiles. Therefore the nuclear program had to be completed at all costs. This kind of thinking had been demonstrated on April 18, 2001, when the regime fired 75 surface-to-surface missiles at seven Iranian Resistance camps in Iraq. Brigadier General Ali Larijani told a Friday prayers in Tehran that this was a warning to the region's 'small countries not to step on the lion's tail'. In February 2003, the NCRI revealed two more secret facilities associated with Natanz. The clerical regime responded by admitting that it had all these facilities, but claimed they were for peaceful purposes. Meanwhile it pressed ahead with the weapons program. In July 2003, IAEA inspectors found traces of weapons-grade uranium at Natanz. In August 2003, traces of weapons-grade uranium were found at the Kalaye Electric plant outside Tehran. The regime had to admit that the plant was part of the uranium enrichment program. It stalled on signing the Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty until December 2003. The NCRI first revealed information about the regime's nuclear ambitions in 1991 and 1992, and always argued that the regime would threaten its neighbours and its own people with nuclear weapons. However, the three European powers - Britain, France and Germany - have taken the view that they can persuade the regime to give up the weapons program in exchange for trade, for 'peaceful' nuclear reactors, and for continued listing of the Resistance as a 'terrorist' organisation. The latest European offer to Tehran came on November 15, 2004. However, the NCRI revealed two more secret nuclear facilities on November 17 at media briefings in Paris and Vienna. By November 29, Tehran had agreed to voluntarily freeze all enrichment activity and to place all its centrifuges under IAEA surveillance. This way, it can continue to operate its secret facilities, while stopping the IAEA from referring the nuclear weapons program to the UN Security Council. Nuclear weapons need a delivery system, and in parallel with the uranium mining and enrichment and heavy water programs, Tehran has been modifying Korean and Soviet rocket technology. In February 2003, its Navy announced a capacity to construct missiles with a range of 1,500 kilometres. The regime is also testing a Shahab-4 missile with a range of 2,000 kilometres, which could reach targets in Germany and western China. This is a modified SS-4 missile. The Shahab-3 missile has a range of 1,300 kilometres, and is a modified North Korean Nodong 1 missile. Development on the Shahab-5 missile, with a range of 4,000 kilometres, and Shahab-6 Inter-continental missile is now underway. What can we do? One major contribution urged on us by the NCRI is to get the Australian terrorism listing removed from PMOI and NCRI, to allow the Iranian Opposition to work more freely to develop a popular uprising to overthrow the regime as soon as possible. And we must educate the Australian public about this situation. Peter Murphy, SEARCH Foundation Source: Enemies of the Ayatollahs, the Iranian Opposition's War on Islamic Fundamentalism, Mohammad Mohaddessin, Zed Books, London, New York, 2004, Ch 2, Mullahs and the Bomb. |
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© Walk Against the War Coalition 2003. |
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