The New Nation - Internet Edition

George Monidot

What is the Iranian government up to? For once the imperial coalition, overstretched in Iraq and unpopular at home, is proposing law, not war. The UN Security Council's offer was a good one. If Iran suspended its uranium enrichment programme, it would be entitled to legally guaranteed supplies of fuel for nuclear power, assistance in building a light water reactor, foreign aid, technology transfer and the beginning of the end of economic sanctions. The US seems prepared, for the first time since the revolution, to open a diplomatic office in Teheran. But in Geneva, two weeks ago, the Iranians filibustered until the negotiations ended. Last Saturday President Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has now doubled the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium. More sanctions look inevitable.

Those who maintain that Iran's purposes are peaceful clutch at the National Intelligence Estimate published by the US government in November. While it judged that Iran had belied its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, it saw the country's civilian uranium programme as a means of developing "technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so." The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile material has been diverted from Iran's stocks, but raises grave questions about the documents it has found, which suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran do not have to accept Ahmadinejad's claims of peaceful intent.

Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own representatives. The Security Council's offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a "Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction". But like every other such document, it made no mention at all of the principal owner of weapons in the region, Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 or more nuclear bombs.

But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn't yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it has.

The subject is the great political taboo. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but never Israel. If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so only for one reason: that there is already a nuclear armed state in the Middle East, by which it is threatened.

But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation treaty(NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which the UK is one, to work towards "general and complete disarmament". Last Friday The Guardian published the notes for a speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested that the decision to replace the UK's nuclear missiles had already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny. Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made. They appear to have misled the House.

At the Geneval conference on disarmament in February, one delegate pointed out that the "chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably" if non-nuclear states can see "planning, commitment and action toward multilateral, nuclear disarmament by nuclear weapon states' like the UK. If the nuclear states "are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations", other nations would use this as an excuse for maintaining their weapons. Who was this firebrand? Des Browne, the secretary of state for defence.

But this same Des Browne now claims that Britain must maintain its arsenal because of proliferation elsewhere, just as those proliferating elsewhere say that they must develop their arsenals because the official nuclear nations aren't disarming. But the UK keeps preparing for the last war. The permanent members of the UN security council draw a distinction between their "responsible" ownership of nuclear weapons and that of the aspirant powers. But over the past six years, the UK, US, France and Russia have all maintained.that they are prepared to use their nukes pre-emptively against a presumed threat, even from states that do not possess nuclear weapons. In some ways the current nuclear stand-off is more dangerous than the tetchy detente of the cold war.

The danger has been heightened by the US government's current offensive. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is demanding that other counties accept her plans to destroy the last remaining incentive for states to abide by the NPT. The treaty grants countries that conform to it materials for nuclear power on favourable terms. But now Rice insists that India should have special access to US nuclear materials despite the fact that it has not signed the NTP and has illegally developed nuclear weapons.

If she is successful, this effort and the concomitant US demand that India is recognised as an official nuclear power will blow the NPT to kingdom come. The treaty that survived the cold war, and that remains the most important guarantee against global manipulation, is being nuked for the sake of a few billion dollars of exports.

Here's where it gets really depressing. The Bush administration's proposal has been supported by both John McCain and Barack Obama. The contrast between Obama's position on India and his statements on Iran could not be greater, or more destructive of the inflated hopes now vested in him.

Mahmood Ahmadinejad's insistence that Iran enriches its own fissile material, and the guessing game he is playing with Israel, the Atomic Energy Agency and the US Security Council is irresponsible and staggeringly dangerous. But if I were in his position I might be tempted to do the same.

-The Guardian Weekly