Is Iran next on Bush hitlist?

The Bush Doctrine authorizes pre-emptive strikes by U.S. armed forces on any sovereign state the president "determines" to be acquiring chem-bio weapons or nukes that could ultimately be used against us, our forces abroad, our friends or our allies.

The recent invasion and occupation of Iraq resulted from a presidential "determination" that Saddam Hussein had chem-bio warheads he could deliver by ballistic missile to Israel, and was also reconstituting the uranium enrichment program the International Atomic Energy Agency had destroyed in the early 1990s at the direction of the United Nations Security Council.

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Unfortunately, the IAEA reported to the Security Council only days before the invasion that Saddam had made no attempt to reconstitute his program.

Similarly, other U.N. inspectors reported that if Saddam had chem-bio weapons and ballistic missiles, they couldn't find them.

Bush brushed aside the Security Council reports and invaded Iraq anyway.

As the whole world now knows, the application – in defiance of the U.N. Charter – of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq was a terrible mistake.

Bush and his media sycophants refuse to admit it, of course.

You see, what the rest of the world thinks doesn't matter. The Bush Doctrine is intended to supersede the U.N. Charter and the U.N. regime for preventing nuke proliferation.

Almost every sovereign state is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Every signatory not having nukes pledges to not acquire them in return for gaining access to everything "nuclear" that is peaceful. However, everything peaceful that could be used in a nuke program – such as a uranium-enrichment facility – has to be "declared" and made subject to an IAEA Safeguards Agreement.

If the IAEA determines that a signatory is circumventing its Safeguards Agreement and is engaged in any non-peaceful activity, it may ask the U.N. Security Council to impose "sanctions," which could – under the U.N. Charter – include the use of force.

As a result of such an IAEA determination, the Security Council did impose economic sanctions on Iraq in 1991. However, once Iraq's nuke-oriented infrastructure was destroyed, all research and development programs ended, and a monitoring and verification regime established, insofar as the IAEA was concerned, sanctions could have been lifted.

Therefore, the application of the Bush Doctrine to "disarm" an Iraq the IAEA considered to be already disarmed was widely viewed by other NPT signatories as invalidating the IAEA-NPT Safeguards regime.

For example, North Korea had produced, before becoming subject to the IAEA-NPT Safeguards regime in 1992, enough weapons-grade plutonium to make a half-dozen nukes. For ten years, that plutonium was under IAEA lock and seal. Now, as a direct result of the application of the Bush Doctrine to Iraq, North Korea has withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and may have, by now, produced a half-dozen nukes, for sale to the highest bidder.

Now, even though this scary situation in Korea was created by an improper application of the Bush Doctrine, if ever there was a case for properly applying the Bush Doctrine, North Korea is it.

But, Bush isn't going to.

Why?

Because North Korea's weapons-grade plutonium-producing reactors are not a direct nuke threat to our friend Israel?

Well, Israel has long maintained that the nuclear power reactors being built by Russia for Iran at Bushehr constitute a direct nuke threat to them – Iran already having ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel. But that's silly; unlike the North Korean reactors, the Iranian reactors can't produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Of course, the Iraqi reactor the Israelis pre-emptively destroyed in 1981 with US-supplied bombers couldn't produce weapons-grade plutonium, either.

Come to think of it, the Israeli pre-emptive strike on Osiraq may have become the kernel for the Bush Doctrine.

Well, Bushehr is much too far away for a repeat of the Osiraq bombing. Besides, in 1981, Iraq was at war with Iran, so the Israelis could claim they were allied with the Iranians.

But, Iran is not at war now. So, how can the Israelis get Bushehr destroyed?

Well, how about this? The IAEA recently found trace amounts of highly enriched uranium on a piece of Iranian equipment. Bush could demand that the IAEA get the Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran for being in non-compliance with its IAEA Safeguards Agreement.

With a Security Council resolution on Iran – similar to the one he got on Iraq last year – he can improperly apply the Bush Doctrine to Iran next year, just as he did to Iraq this year.

The IAEA Board of Governors meets on Monday. Stay tuned.