Nuclear states and Nuclear Lepers

Zafar Bangash

This month marks another grim anniversary in the long list of America’s crimes against humanity. In August 1945, US bombers dropped two, not one, atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a few days apart. Despite the fact that the first bomb had caused mass casualties, the Americans went ahead with the second. Tens of the thousands of Japanese civilians were instantly incinerated. They were the lucky ones. Others were horribly deformed and poisoned with nuclear radiation.

It was both an act of racism and a war crime. The American excuse was that the bombs hastened the end of the war and prevented more casualties. That is a lie. Japanese rulers were already negotiating the terms of surrender. And as for preventing more casualties, perhaps the Japanese were not human. How more racist can they get?

America’s use of nuclear weapons—the only country in the world to do so—needs recalling especially when it falsely accuses Iran of acquiring nuclear weapons. The Zionists have been even more brazen in telling lies about Iran. The just-ousted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear bomb in 1999. He even made a clownish display of a bomb with a fuse at the UN General Assembly in September 2012 claiming that Iran would have one soon. Netanyahu’s ludicrous claim was contradicted by his own intelligence agency, Mossad. He knew he was lying but for propaganda purposes, he was prepared to do so in front of the whole world. Shimon Peres, another Israeli prime minister and long-time foreign minister and known as the father of Israel’s bomb, claimed in 1996 that Iran was a year away from a bomb!

The brazen lies successive Israeli rulers tell about Iran’s peaceful nuclear program are meant to divert attention from the Zionist state’s own stockpile of nuclear weapons. It has between 80 to 400 nuclear weapons. It is the only state in the Middle East to possess such weapons of mass destruction. It refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and together with the US, it has repeatedly voted against making the Middle East a nuclear free zone. Yet it has the chutzpah to accuse Iran of making the bomb!

Nuclear weapons are not part of Iran’s defence doctrine. They are prohibited by the Rahbar (Iran’s leader), Imam Seyyed Ali Khamenei. He has even issued a fatwa (religious ruling) against acquiring nuclear weapons. In order to prove its sincerity, in July 2015 Iran signed an agreement with the P5+1 group of countries (the US was among them) to restrict nuclear enrichment as well as allow intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities. In May 2018, Donald Trump walked away from it.

The hypocrisy of Western powers is evident from the fact that five of the six countries demanding limitations on Iran’s nuclear program themselves possess nuclear weapons. They have signed the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) but continue to violate its terms. Unlike these nuclear lepers, Iran as signatory to the NPT has strictly adhered to its terms.

There are other treaties in place to control or eliminate these weapons. The nuclear weapons possessors, primarily the US, Britain and France, officially ignore, abrogate, or refuse to ratify the terms of these treaties.

Then there is the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). It is now in force but neither the five permanent members of the Security Council or any Nato member state have signed it. The NPT, as the name suggests, is meant to prohibit the proliferation of nuclear weapons. At the same time, it calls for nuclear weapon states to reduce and ultimately eliminate their stockpile of weapons.

They refuse to do so. Instead, the US has embarked on a program to modernize its nuclear arsenal. Former president Barack Obama committed more than $1 trillion over the next three decades to modernize nuclear weapons. Now Joe Biden has announced an additional $750 billion for America’s nuclear weapons modernization program. What exactly would this achieve when the US’ existing stockpile of weapons is more than enough to wipe out the entire world many times over? In the sixties and seventies, the term mutual assured destruction (MAD) was coined. This meant that the Soviets and Americans had enough nuclear weapons to wipe each country out. This was truly mad!

Such madness, however, has not been given up. It has been taken many degrees higher. The war criminals, strutting about the world stage in suits and ties, continue to threaten the world with annihilation.

The only sane solution to this madness would appear to be for all the countries of the world to acquire nuclear weapons. Then no state can threaten another without the risk of serious blowback.

Nuclear IssueHiroshima and Nagasaki