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Iran, terrorism and fundamentalism and the global crisisThe nuclear weapons crisis and today’s elections in Iraq are dominating perceptions of the Tehran regime and the concern of democratic forces in Iran. I acknowledge the elders and ancestors of the traditional owners of the land on which we meet. In July this year [2005], Iraq's Defence and Foreign Affairs Minister and Prime Minister, reiterated that the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran members at Camp Ashraf, near Baghdad, had a right to stay in Iraq and protection under the Fourth Geneva Convention. However, the party likely to win most seats in today's elections in Iraq, the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution of Iraq is heavily aligned to Tehran. One of its leaders, now a Vice-President of Iraq, Adel Abdel Mahdi was reported on November 30 while in Iran saying, "This group will not remain in Iraq. We will take them out of Iraq and those who are found guilty will face justice". (ISNA news agency) A similar statement was made in Iran on November 16 by Iraq's National Security Advisor, Muwafeq al-Rubaie: food and fuel rations to Camp Ashraf have been cancelled by the government and if an Iranian court issues a verdict against any PMOI member, Iraq may send that person to Iran. Please note carefully that all people residing in Camp Ashraf were interrogated and investigated by the US State Department and FBI and US Military Intelligence for over a year in 2003-04, and it was found that none of these people could be charged with a terrorist offence. That is why they now have the protection of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The PMOI in Iraq enjoy huge support from Iraqi people. In April this year [2005], a petition signed by 2.8 million Iraqi people stated that the PMOI is the "antithesis to Islamic fundamentalism and as an important political and cultural bulwark against its infiltration into Iraq, providing an effective counterbalance to the expansionist ambitions of the Iranian regime"... They also called for the "reaffirmation of the PMOI's status as a legitimate Resistance movement and political asylum rights of its members in Iraq." The uncertainty about the fate of the PMOI in Camp Ashraf after today's elections underlines the need for Australia, the United States and the European Union to de-list the PMOI as a terrorist organisation. By this action, these countries would end a shameful phase where they have used a courageous liberation movement as a political pawn in a nuclear weapons and oil supply poker game, and they would strengthen the role of the international community in confronting the barbaric policies of the Tehran regime, before a worse catastrophe unfolds. In Vienna in late November, the Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency debated whether to refer the case of Iran's nuclear program to the United Nations Security Council, but stopped short, instead allowing Russia one last effort to persuade the Tehran regime to allow Russia to enrich its uranium for use as a nuclear power station fuel. It was in September that the IAEA decided that this grave issue should go to the UN Security Council, and the time until the November meeting enabled Iran to take serious action to avoid this step. Unfortunately, during these weeks and in the month since then, the new government of President Ahmadinajad made unusually inflammatory verbal attacks on Israel and defiantly told the United Nations General Assembly that Iran had every right to create nuclear weapons. Moreover, the process of uranium gasification and subsequent centrifuge enrichment, a key technical process in producing weapons-grade uranium, has continued at Isfahan. Already in September, the IAEA had heard the statement of Hosein Musavian, chairman of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, made on Iranian television on August 4, that "Thanks to the negotiations with Europe we gained another year in which we completed the (gasification) program in Isfahan.... We needed six to twelve months to complete the work on the centrifuges". If that isn't bad enough, President Ahmadinajad has been busy purging his cabinet and diplomatic service, and senior advisors, installing Revolutionary Guard commanders everywhere, and thus creating internal uproar within his ultra-conservative regime. For a long time there have been voices saying that nothing would happen about the nuclear danger in Iran or about the shocking human rights situation there. However, the situation meant that real choices by powerful forces would be required. We have to be steadfast in speaking out for peace and democracy in this rapidly unfolding situation. So when the IAEA rather dramatically see-sawed in September and then by a majority vote stated that the Tehran regime had deceived them and had not fulfilled its obligations to pursue a verifiable peaceful nuclear program, the stakes were raised all round. Now in this new climate of heightened tension, there are several voices raised saying that the nuclear weapons allegations against Tehran are only a continuation of the WMD lies from Washington, London and Canberra in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. My response to these voices is to urge them to look at the evidence, and not to fall into the error of knee-jerk rejection of anything said by the Bush Administration. First let me point out that the Bush Administration is coming late to the issue. The first people to blow the whistle on the Mullah's drive to get the bomb were the National Council of Resistance of Iran, way back in 1991. Then they exposed uranium enrichment work at Qazvin, west of Tehran. The NCRI radically escalated the issue in March 2002 with the exposure of a secret nuclear site at Shian - Lavizan in northeast Tehran, and in August 2002 at Natanz and Arak. This was followed in February 2003 with the exposure of the watchmaking company at Ab-e Ali in northern Tehran as a producer of centrifuges for enriching uranium. Nuclear weapons can be made using two fuels - enriched uranium and plutonium. Uranium has to be enriched to about 95% in a very expensive process, to achieve weapons-grade. Plutonium is a by-product of a nuclear reactor using uranium fuel enriched to about 35%. The evidence is there in the IAEA reports that the Tehran regime has been working hard on both tracks, as well as work on how to magnify the yield of a uranium bomb, how to trigger a nuclear chain reaction in a bomb, how to build a bomb casing. When confronted with data about its enrichment program, the Tehran regime first tells one story, then another, leaving the IAEA with grave doubts about its statements. For example, it first claimed that the centrifuges at Natanz were manufactured in Iran. When the weapons-grade uranium traces were found on these centrifuges, the regime said that they were imported and that the traces were imported with them. This evidence stands out as qualitatively different from that advanced against Saddam Hussein in 2002-03. In that case, the fraudulent claims about both the uranium from Niger and the centrifuge tubes from China - via Australia - had been exposed in 2002; and the IAEA was unable to verify any claim advanced by the Bush Administration; and the internal Iraqi sources of the WMD claims were dubious paid CIA informants of long standing whereas the NCRI has suffered hostility from Washington through its entire history. So what should a peace movement conclude about this data? The conclusion must be that Tehran has been working to make nuclear weapons for a long time, that it must be very close to having nuclear weapons. This Tehran regime is a notorious theocratic dictatorship which ruthlessly represses women and all internal political opposition, and mounts bombings and assassinations outside its borders on a large scale. Combine this with an assessment that the Bush Administration and Israel will not tolerate a regime so belligerent having nuclear weapons. What is the best way to respond to this extremely dangerous situation? It is to demand a peaceful process to defuse the crisis, based on the removal of nuclear weapons and programs to produce them from both Iran and Israel. This process can only be delivered through the United Nations, with strong consensus from the Permanent Members of the Security Council. This will involve economic sanctions against the regime in Tehran, and probably sanctions against the regime in Tel Aviv. I expect that the Russian proposal will not be agreed by Tehran and that the IAEA must delay no more and refer the Iran file to the UN Security Council. A vital part of this peaceful process has to be the empowerment of a democratic coalition in Iran to change the regime, which is now extremely isolated and can only survive by a combination of heavy internal repression and the threat of external attack. In other words, the US, the EU and Australia must drop the ludicrous terrorist listing of the democratic opposition, the Peoples Mojahedin Organisation of Iran and the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Thank you very much. A forum in the QLD parliament, December 15, 2005 A speech by Peter Murphy, SEARCH Foundation |
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© Walk Against the War Coalition 2003. |
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