Dear Trump (and the US media): Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program

Juan Cole

Islam forbids the killing of the innocents, and in accordance with Divine teachings the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, has issued a religious edict (fatwa) prohibiting manufacture of weapons of mass destruction including atomic bombs.

A fact confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and even by Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinoza during his visit to Tehran earlier this month, yet the Godless American administration which has stockpiled a doomsday arsenal falsely says Iran has nuclear weapons ambitions.

Here we present you an article from the ‘Informed Comment’ site, titled: “Dear Trump (and the US Media): Iran Doesn’t Have a Nuclear Weapons Program”.

The writer is Juan Cole who teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan, and is the author of 14 books and at least 60 research articles.

Julian Borger at The Guardian reports that Trump said recently to reporters: “They’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. We’re not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon. When they agree to that, they’re going to have a wealthy country. They’re going to be so happy, and I’m going to be their best friend. I hope that happens.”

Trump can’t get the conservative script right to save his life. The argument warmongers made for breaching the 2015 international nuclear deal (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) was that it did not address a range of other issues beyond nuclear matters – such as Iran’s principled backing of the popular Lebanese Muslim force, the Hezbollah, Iran’s help upon request to Syria against terrorism, and Iran’s right to develop the non-nuclear ballistic missile defence system for protection of its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Although UN inspectors continue to monitor Iran’s inalienable right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purpose, Trump is now citing Iran’s non-existent bomb-making as the reason for his breach of the treaty and not mentioning any of the things the hawks mind.

Iran isn’t making a bomb and gave up 80% of its civilian nuclear enrichment program in the JCPOA.

In fact, there have been no US intelligence assessments that Iran has decided to try to make a bomb as it is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Uranium comes in nature in two isotopes, U-238 (very common and relatively inert) and U-235 (rarer and much more volatile). In order to use uranium to fuel a nuclear reactor, it has to be enriched to roughly 3.5% of U-235. If it is enriched to 95% U-235, it can be made to blow up in a thermonuclear explosion, as the US did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – when it bombed the two Japanese cities, mass massacring the whole populations.

Iran knows how to enrich uranium, but has never enriched to levels above what is considered “Low Enriched Uranium.” The cut-off is above 20% U-235. It has a medical reactor that uses 19.5% enriched uranium.

Although the CIA has not assessed that Iran has during the past decade and a half had a nuclear weapons program, its civilian enrichment capacities – without the least evidence – have constantly been blamed by the US as potentially of dual use, with a chance to militarize.

I can’t get anybody to believe me on this, but Iran is a Shi’ite Muslim country with a religious system of government led by an Ayatollah, and Seyyed Ali Khamenei has given several fatwas (fatwas or considered legal rulings) in which he has forbidden the making, stockpiling or use of nuclear weapons. He rules according to Islamic law, which disallows the deliberate infliction of mass casualties on civilian noncombatants in war. Nuclear weapons obviously target the populations of whole cities and so the Shi’ite maraje’ (sources of emulation) consider them tools of Satan.

On the other hand, having the world know that you could whip up a nuclear bomb in short order is a form of deterrence against invasion. Japan has that capability.

The 2015 agreement attempted to forestall any move by Iran to develop a nuclear weapons enrichment program (again, it has never done so and says it never would).

Still, for the suspicious, the JCPOA took away the option of quick militarization with four steps:

1. Regular UN inspections of sites for signatures of high-enriched uranium or for plutonium

2. Reduction of number of centrifuges to 6,000, which would take a year to make bomb-grade uranium even if they were turned to that purpose

3. The bricking in and abandonment of a proposed heavy water nuclear reactor at Arak. Heavy water reactors can accumulate fissile material for a bomb faster and easier than light water reactors, so Obama and the UN team insisted on this step for Iran.

4. The stockpiles of low-enriched-Uranium (LEU) built up for the medical reactor (and which had come to much exceed the actual needs of that reactor) were cast in a form that prevented further enrichment, and much of it was exported.

Under these circumstances, there is no way Iran can make a bomb without everybody knowing it is trying. It would have to kick out the UN inspectors, build thousands more centrifuges under the gaze of US satellites, etc., etc.

So if what Trump wanted was no Iranian nuclear weapon, he had that when he was sworn into office in 2017. By breaching the treaty and refusing to reward Iran’s good behavior by ceasing sanctions, Trump put the US on a war footing with Iran.

He has stopped Iran from selling its oil, a form of blockade that probably amounts to an act of war. He is also stopping European concerns from investing in Iran.

It is frustrating that Trump is dancing on the brink of a war for a purpose that had already been attained. This is why it is bad to elect people to high office who have mental health problems.