U.S. threatening nuke treaty?

By Gordon Prather

During the Cold War, we were understandably concerned that the Soviets might nuke 50 or 60 million of us in our jammies. Post-Cold War, there remains the concern that a terrorist group might somehow nuke a few thousand of us.

So, when President Bush needed a rationale for imposing regime-change on Iraq, he told Congress that Saddam Hussein posed “a continuing threat to the national security of the United States” by “actively seeking a nuclear-weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist organizations.”

Never mind that on March 7, 2003, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei had reported to the Security Council that “after three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear-weapons program in Iraq.”

The IAEA is an agency of the United Nations whose original mission was to facilitate the international transfer of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

Since 1972, the IAEA has also been responsible to the Security Council for verifying that those peaceful applications – once transferred – are not misused.

Article IV, Section (1) of the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty says “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”

So, the IAEA requires every NPT signatory to “declare” certain facilities and activities and subject them to the IAEA-NPT Safeguards regime.

In the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, the IAEA discovered that Iraq had “failed” to declare uranium-enrichment facilities and activities. Such “failures” are not necessarily violations of the NPT. But the IAEA eventually discovered that Iraq did have an illicit nuke-development program and that was an NPT “violation.”

Iraq had gotten most items that it failed to declare from individuals and private-sector firms located in nation-states that didn’t even have nukes. Only five of the 40-member Nuclear Suppliers Group are have-nuke states. All NSG members are supposed to closely scrutinize their exports. However, prior to post-war discoveries in Iraq, if NSG exporters said the importer’s intentions were peaceful, NSG members usually took the exporters at their word.

No longer. Since the Gulf War, NSG members have criminally prosecuted and imprisoned deceitful exporters. Furthermore, they now require the importing nation-state to subject most items to a full-scope IAEA Safeguards Agreement, whether they are NPT signatories or not.

The additional “full-scope” authority is provided the IAEA by an Additional Protocol to the NPT, which more than a hundred NPT signatories – including Iran and the United States – do not yet have in force.

In agreeing to sign the Additional Protocol, Iran recently admitted to the IAEA that it has also “failed” to “declare” numerous facilities and activities. The IAEA has confirmed the failures, but after months of searching, has yet to find any “evidence” of an illicit nuke program.

Nevertheless, Under Secretary of State John Bolton has characterized Iran’s “failures” to be NPT “violations” – which they are not – and has demanded that Iran be hauled before the U.N. Security Council for disciplinary action.

“The United States believes that the long-standing, massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities makes sense only as part of a nuclear-weapons program.”

So, what does the United States intend to do if the Security Council does nothing?

“Properly planned and executed, the interception of critical technologies can prevent hostile states and terrorists from acquiring these dangerous capabilities,” Bolton said. “At a minimum, interdiction can lengthen the time that proliferators will need to acquire new weapons capabilities.”

Well, there’s a problem with Bolton’s approach. It – like the invasion of Iraq on the pretense of enforcing the NPT – is a violation of international law. Not only does the NPT grant Iran the “inalienable right’ to acquire the peaceful “nuclear capabilities” that so frightens Bolton, but it also imposes on us and the French, Brits and Russians the responsibility of helping Iran acquire them.

Perhaps Bolton never read Secretary Powell’s statement to the PrepCom session held this spring for the 2005 NPT Review Conference.

“The NPT can only be as strong as our will to enforce it, in spirit and in deed. We share a collective responsibility to be ever vigilant and to take concerted action when the Treaty – our treaty – is threatened.”

The French, Brits and Russians believe they are strengthening the NPT by cooperating with Iran, keeping Iran subject to full-scope IAEA Safeguards. So who’s threatening the NPT?

Gordon Prather

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Physicist James Gordon Prather has served as a policy implementing official for national security-related technical matters in the Federal Energy Agency, the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Department of Energy, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Department of the Army. He also served as legislative assistant for national security affairs to U.S. Sen. Henry Bellmon, R-Okla. Dr. Prather had earlier worked as a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico. Read more of Gordon Prather's articles here.