[WCUSP] The Truth About Mideast Nukes

[KATHARLOW at aol.com]

Tell the Truth About Mideast Nukes

The Middle East has had a  secretive nuclear power in
its midst for years

When will the US and  the UK tell the truth about
Israeli weapons? Iran isn't starting an atomic  arms
race, it's joining one

By George Monbiot

The Guardian (UK)  -- November 20,  2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2213814,00.html  

George Bush and Gordon Brown are right: there should be
no nuclear  weapons in the Middle East. The risk of a
nuclear conflagration could be  greater there than
anywhere else. Any nation developing them should  expect
a firm diplomatic response. So when will they impose
sanctions on  Israel?

Like them, I believe that Iran is trying to acquire the
bomb.  I also believe it should be discouraged, by a
combination of economic  pressure and bribery, from
doing so (a military response would, of course,  be
disastrous). I believe that Bush and Brown - who
maintain their nuclear  arsenals in defiance of the non-
proliferation treaty - are in no position to  lecture
anyone else. But if, as Bush claims, the proliferation
of such  weapons "would be a dangerous threat to world
peace", why does neither man  mention the fact that
Israel, according to a secret briefing by the  US
Defence Intelligence Agency, possesses between 60 and
80 of  them?

Officially, the Israeli government maintains a position
of  "nuclear ambiguity": neither confirming nor denying
its possession of nuclear  weapons. But everyone who has
studied the issue knows that this is a formula  with a
simple purpose: to give the United States an excuse to
keep  breaking its own laws, which forbid it to grant
aid to a country with  unauthorised weapons of mass
destruction. The fiction of ambiguity is  fiercely
guarded. In 1986, when the nuclear technician Mordechai
Vanunu  handed photographs of Israel's bomb factory to
the Sunday Times, he was lured  from Britain to Rome,
drugged and kidnapped by Mossad agents, tried  in
secret, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. He served
12 of them in  solitary confinement and was banged up
again - for six months - soon after he  was released.

However, in December last year, the Israeli  prime
minister, Ehud Olmert, accidentally let slip that
Israel, like  "America, France and Russia", had nuclear
weapons. Opposition politicians  were furious. They
attacked Olmert for "a lack of caution bordering  on
irresponsibility". But US aid continues to flow  without
impediment.

As the fascinating papers released last year by  the
National Security Archive show, the US government was
aware in 1968  that Israel was developing a nuclear
device (what it didn't know is that the  first one had
already been built by then). The contrast to the
efforts now  being made to prevent Iran from acquiring
the bomb could scarcely be  starker.

At first, US diplomats urged Washington to make its
sale of  50 F4 Phantom jets conditional on Israel's
abandonment of its nuclear  programme. As a note sent
from the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs to  the
secretary of state in October 1968 reveals, the order
would make the  US "the principal supplier of Israel's
military needs" for the first time. In  return, it
should require "commitments that would make it more
difficult  for Israel to take the critical decision to
go nuclear". Such pressure, the  memo suggested, was
urgently required: France had just delivered the  first
of a consignment of medium range missiles, and Israel
intended to  equip them with nuclear warheads.

Twenty days later, on November 4 1968,  when the
assistant defence secretary met Yitzhak Rabin (then the
Israeli  ambassador to Washington), Rabin "did not
dispute in any way our information  on Israel's nuclear
or missile capability". He simply refused to  discuss
it. Four days after that, Rabin announced that the
proposal was  "completely unacceptable to us". On
November 27, Lyndon Johnson's  administration accepted
Israel's assurance that "it will not be the first  power
in the Middle East to introduce nuclear weapons".

As the memos  show, US officials knew that this
assurance had been broken even before it  was made. A
record of a phone conversation between Henry Kissinger
and  another official in July 1969 reveals that Richard
Nixon was "very leery of  cutting off the Phantoms",
despite Israel's blatant disregard of the  agreement.
The deal went ahead, and from then on the US
administration  sought to bamboozle its own officials in
order to defend Israel's lie. In  August 1969, US
officials were sent to "inspect" Israel's Dimona
nuclear  plant. But a memo from the state department
reveals that "the US government  is not prepared to
support a 'real' inspection effort in which the  team
members can feel authorised to ask directly pertinent
questions  and/or insist on being allowed to look at
records, logs, materials and the  like. The team has in
many subtle ways been cautioned to avoid  controversy,
'be gentlemen' and not take issue with the obvious will
of  the hosts".

Nixon refused to pass the minutes of the conversation
he'd  had with the Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir,
to the US ambassador to  Israel, Wally Barbour. Meir and
Nixon appear to have agreed that the Israeli  programme
could go ahead, as long as it was kept secret.

The US  government has continued to protect it. Every
six months, the intelligence  agencies provide Congress
with a report on technology acquired by foreign  states
that's "useful for the development or production of
weapons of mass  destruction". These reports discuss the
programmes in India, Pakistan, North  Korea, Iran and
other nations, but not in Israel. Whenever other  states
have tried to press Israel to join the nuclear non-
proliferation  treaty, the US and European governments
have blocked them. Israel has also  exempted itself from
the biological and chemical weapons  conventions.

By refusing to sign these treaties, Israel ensures  it
needs never be inspected. While the International
Atomic Energy  Agency's inspectors crawl round Iran's
factories, put seals on its uranium  tanks and blow the
whistle when it fails to cooperate, they have no  legal
authority to inspect facilities in Israel. So when the
Israeli  government complains, as it did last week, that
the head of the IAEA is  "sticking his head in the sand
over Iran's nuclear programme", you can only  gape at
its chutzpah. Israel is constantly racking up the
pressure for  action against Iran, aware that no
powerful state will press for action  against Israel.

Yes, Iran under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a dangerous  and
unpredictable state involved in acts of terror abroad.
The president  is a Holocaust denier opposed to the
existence of Israel. During the  Iran-Iraq war, Iran
responded to Saddam Hussein's toxic bombardments  with
chemical weapons of its own. But Israel under Olmert is
also a  dangerous and unpredictable state involved in
acts of terror abroad. Two  months ago it bombed a site
in Syria (whose function is fiercely disputed).  Last
year, it launched a war of aggression against Lebanon.
It remains in  occupation of Palestinian lands. In
February 2001, according to the BBC, it  used chemical
weapons in Gaza: 180 people were admitted to hospital
with  severe convulsions. Nuclear weapons in Israel's
hands are surely just as  dangerous as nuclear weapons
in Iran's.

So when will our governments  speak up? When will they
acknowledge that there is already a nuclear power  in
the Middle East, and that it presents an existential
threat to its  neighbours? When will they admit that
Iran is not starting a nuclear arms  race, but joining
one? When will they demand that the rules they impose
on  Iran should also apply to Israel?

[George Monbiot is the author of the  best selling books
Heat: how to stop the planet burning; The Age  of
Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive
State: the  corporate takeover of Britain; as well as
the investigative travel books  Poisoned Arrows, Amazon
Watershed and No Man's Land. He writes a weekly  column
for the Guardian newspaper.

During seven years of investigative  journeys in
Indonesia, Brazil and East Africa, he was shot at,
beaten up  by military police, shipwrecked and stung
into a poisoned coma by hornets. He  came back to work
in Britain after being pronounced clinically dead  in
Lodwar General Hospital in north-western Kenya, having
contracted  cerebral malaria.

He has held visiting fellowships or professorships  at
the universities of Oxford (environmental policy),
Bristol  (philosophy), Keele (politics) and East London
(environmental science). He is  currently visiting
professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University.  In
1995 Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations
Global 500  Award for outstanding environmental
achievement. He has also won the Lloyds  National
Screenwriting Prize for his screenplay The Norwegian, a
Sony  Award for radio production, the Sir Peter Kent
Award and the OneWorld  National Press Award.]





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