Category: Abolition

TFF PressInfo # 324 – The Friends of Nukes are losing

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By Gunnar Westberg

The 2015 Review conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) ended Friday May 22 in New York without a final document being accepted.

Up till the very end it seemed that the conference would produce a non-committal final document.

The outcome which a majority of the states desired, a plan for a total ban on nuclear weapons, as there is for chemical and bacteriological weapons, was unacceptable to the nuclear weapon states.

Consensus means in the NPT that the nuclear weapon states decide. They wish to keep their capacity to exterminate mankind for generations ahead.

The American government had told its allies, the NATO states, Japan and others, not to support a ban on nukes, and the allies obeyed.

However, the Friends of Nukes did not have to take the blame for blocking a final document. Instead the blame fell on Israel, a country which is not even a member of the NPT.

The proud United States of America choose once again to heed the instruction from Mr Netanyahu: No agreement on a nuclear weapons free Middle East!

Perhaps it was easier for the USA to take the blame for blocking a hopeful outcome of the NPT if it was for the sake of the pro-Israel lobby than for love of nukes?

In doing so, the USA relieved the other nuclear weapon addicted states from the responsibility of this defeat for the NPT.

Even France, the most hypocritical of the Friends of Nuclear Weapons, could pretend to be a Friend of Disarmament.

“The atom bomb mentality is immoral, unethical, addictive and only evil can come from it.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

This would all seem like a great disappointment. But the important outcome of the conference was just the opposite: There is more hope today for a ban on nuclear weapons than we have seen for twenty years.

No less than 159 states agreed that the humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons would be so catastrophic that they must be abolished.

Even more important, 107 countries asked for legal measures for a prohibition of nuclear weapons – use, threat, production, storage.

Read the speeches by South Africa, or Costa Rica, in Xanthe Hall’s exellent account, referring to the three humanitarian conferences held in the last two years, which offer hope where NPT fails:

“The humanitarian conferences demonstrate that democracy has come to nuclear disarmament, even if democracy is yet to come to the NPT…
Despite what has happened at this Review Conference, there is no force that can stop the steady march of those who believe in human security, democracy and international law.
History honors only the brave, those who have the courage to think differently and dream of a better future for all.
This is not the time to lament what has happened here, as lamentable as it may be. Now is the time to work for what is to come, the world we want and deserve. Let us all, boldly and finally, give peace a chance.”

Resources

The Nuclear Zero Lawsuit

Nuclear weapons and ethics

IPPNW – International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War

ICAN – International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

The International Committee of the Red Cross on Nuclear weapons

Bulletin of Atomic Scientist’s Interactive Nuclear Notebook

The United Nations – The NPT Review Conference 2015

Nuclear Threat Inititaive – Building a Safer world

Faiths against nuclear weapons

The NPT – Non-Proliferation Treaty

Bombs and more bombs

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By Jonathan Power

Just for five minutes while you read this column forget the supposed intention of Iran to build a nuclear bomb. Dwell on the less reported fact that there are already 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world of which 90% are held by the US and Russia.

During the Cold War barely a week went by without some reportage or debate on nuclear weapons. Not today. Yet most of the nuclear weapons around then are still around.

It would be alright if they were left to quietly rust in their silos. But they are not. When in 2010 President Barack Obama made a deal with Russian President Dimitri Medvedev to cut their respective arsenals of strategic missiles by one third the US Congress, as the price for its ratification of the deal, decreed that Obama and future presidents be held to spending 355 billion dollars on updating and modernizing America’s massive arsenal.

There is an organization called Global Zero that boasts among its supporters former US secretaries of state and a deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, with – off in the wings – support from Henry Kissinger. It has pushed to fast cut the level of nuclear weapons down to zero. But the rock won’t budge.

As soon as a deal is made over Iran’s nuclear industry, which could happen quite soon, let us return to putting things into perspective. Forget Iran’s supposed effort to build one bomb and focus on the other 16,000.

Recently, we have had wild talk Read More »

The “Possible Military Dimensions” Bomb That Could Blow Up the Iran Deal

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Gareth Porter

By Gareth Porter

The United States and Iran may have agreed on a vague framework for resolving remaining issues between them, including the lifting of sanctions, but the final stage of the negotiations will bring a diplomatic confrontation over the sequence and timing of lifting sanctions.

And the most difficult issue in the coming talks will be how the “Possible Military Dimensions” or “PMD” – the allegations of Iranian nuclear weapons work that have been at the center of the entire Iran nuclear crisis for several years – is to be linked to lifting certain UN Security Council sanctions.

On that linkage Iran will insist that its cooperation in providing access to the International Atomic Energy Agency must be reciprocated with the lifting of certain sanctions on an agreed-upon timetable, regardless of how long the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) takes to make up its mind and what judgment it renders, according to a source in close contact with the Iranian negotiating team.

The US “fact sheet” on the “parameters” of an agreement says, “All past United Nations Security Council resolutions on the Iran nuclear issue will be lifted simultaneously with the completion by Iran of nuclear related activities addressing all key concerns,” and the list that follows includes “PMD.”

However, nothing was officially agreed on in Lausanne on how Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the PMD issue would be linked to sanctions relief, according to the source close to the Iranian negotiators. But the source said that Read More »

Criminalizing war – 20 recommendations

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Johan Galtung

By Johan Galtung

Below 20 points that Johan Galtung now presents for discussion at his lectures and seminars:

1. Japanese Constitution Article 9 or something similar for all states: ‘__forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes’.

2. Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 28 criminalizing war: ‘a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized’

3. UD Article 3 “Everybody has the right to life, freedom and security of person” should also apply to cross-border aggression of any kind.Read More »

TFF PressInfo # 317 – Will Iran kill the nuclear bomb deal?

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By Jonathan Power

Iran will find it easier to kill the nuclear bomb deal than will the Republicans in Congress. Why? Because the Republicans need some Democratic senators on their side to override a veto by President Barack Obama of a vote to bury the accord, whereas in Iran all that is needed is the decision of one man, the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran is not a dictatorship – voters, parliament and president carry enormous weight but when it comes to the very big decisions it is Khamenei who decides. He has already said there is “no guarantee” of a final deal with the world powers, the US, the EU, Russia and China, who agreed the deal. President Hassan Rouhani, a liberally minded man, has also said that Iran would not sign up unless sanctions were lifted “on the first day” of implementation.

There is enough evidence around to suggest that Khamenei is unhappy with the Americans. Soon after the accord was publicized after the marathon negotiations in Lausanne, he tweeted, “Hours after the talks the Americans offered a fact sheet (of explanation of the terms of the agreement) – most of it was contrary to what was agreed. They always deceive and breach promises.”

To understand where Khamenei is coming from we have to separate the question Read More »

Iran won upfront sanctions relief, but with potential snags

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Gareth Porter

By Gareth Porter, TFF Associate*

The framework agreement reached on Thursday night clearly gives the P5+1 a combination of constraints on Iran’s nuclear programme that should reassure all but the most bellicose opponents of diplomacy. It also provides the basis for at least a minimum of sanctions relief in the early phase of its implementation that Iran required, but some of the conditions on that relief are likely create new issue between Iran and the Western powers over the process.

The agreement’s dependence on decisions by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the penchant of Israeli intelligence for discovering new evidence of illicit Iranian activities will encourage moves to delay or obstruct relief of sanctions.

US and European officials had been telling reporters that they would phase out their sanctions on oil and banking in return for Iranian actions to modify its programme only gradually over several years, and made it clear that the purpose of this strategy was to maintain “leverage” on Iran.

Iran, however, was demanding that those sanctions be lifted immediately upon delivering on their commitments under agreement. Read More »

TFF PressInfo 315: Happy Norooz – peace in the new year?

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Jan Oberg

By Jan Oberg

Today is New Year – Norooz – for 300 million people. It is Equinox. It is International Day of Happiness – and it is the 12th Anniversary of the US-led war on Iraq

The nuclear deal and Israel

One must hope that the new year brings a fair deal concerning the nuclear issues between Iran and the members of the UN Security Council + Germany.

If the U.S. will not sign because it insists that the counterproductive and unfair sanctions shall not be lifted completely and as soon as technically possible, the deal should be signed with the other parties. The US must have no monopoly on this.

One must also hope that Israel will not attack Iran – but with the re-election of PM Netanyahu that risk has increased.

He seems to be obsessed about a threat from Iran, a country that has not invaded any other country for more than 250 years, has no nuclear weapons and considers nuclear weapons “haram” – strictly forbidden.

With a 10 times larger population Iran has roughly the same military expenditures as Israel.Read More »

Iran’s nuclear program: Diplomacy, war, and (in)security in the Nuclear Age

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Richard Falk

By Richard Falk
March 18, 2015

Perhaps, Netanyahu deserves some words of appreciation, at least from the Israeli hard right, for the temporary erasure of the Palestinian ordeal from national, regional, and global policy agendas. Many are distracted by the Republican recriminations directed at Obama’s diplomatic initiative to close a deal that exchanges a loosening of sanctions imposed on Iran for an agreement by Tehran to accept intrusive inspections of their nuclear program and strict limits on the amount of enriched uranium of weapons grade that can be produced or retained.

We can only wonder about the stability and future prospects of the United States if 47 Republican senators can irresponsibly further jeopardize the peace of the Middle East and the world by writing an outrageous Open Letter to the leadership of Iran.

In this reckless political maneuver the government of Iran is provocatively reminded that whatever agreement may be reached by the two governments will in all likelihood be disowned if a Republican is elected president in 2016, or short of that, by nullifying actions taken by a Republican-controlled Congress.

Mr. Netanyahu must be smiling whenever he looks at a mirror, astonished by his own ability to get the better of reason and self-interest in America, by his pyrotechnic display of ill-informed belligerence in his March 2nd address to Congress. Surely, political theater of sorts, but unlike a performance artist, Netanyahu is a political player whose past antics have brought death and destruction and now mindlessly and bombastically risk far worse in the future.

What interests and disturbs me even more than the fallout from Netanyahu’s partisan speech, are several unexamined presuppositions that falsely and misleadingly frame the wider debate Read More »

The Iranian “bomb” and its questions

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By Jonathan Power

Where do Iran’s grand ideas about itself come from? From the history of its once great empire but also from the fact that the US encouraged Iran at the time of the Shah to both build up a nuclear industry and to become the regional power in the Gulf.

Where does all the misleading information about Iran’s apparent desire to build a nuclear weapon come from? Mainly from the politicians of Israel. (But not always from Israeli intelligence. Two of its former bosses have cast doubt on the views of the politicians.)

Where does the conviction of most of the US Congress that Iran is well on the way to building a bomb come from? US intelligence concluded in 2007 and has reaffirmed twice since that Iran abandoned its weapons program twelve years ago.

(Iran is, of course, enriching uranium, for use, it says, in its civilian power plans to enable it to use nuclear power when its oil reserves start to fall. It has also invested large amounts of money in wind and solar power.)

Why have negotiations never got off the ground until now? Initially, because President Bill Clinton was up to his eyes in negotiations with Israel and Palestine and also North Korea.

Why did his successor, George W. Bush, rule out cooperation with a country he regarded as part of “the axis of evil”, even refusing to respond to a conciliatory hand of friendship offered by Iran? Because at the back of his mind he thought if it became clear that Iran was set on building nuclear weapons the US could bomb to bits its nuclear research and development plants.Read More »