The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 9           March 24, 2003  
 
 
Washington targets Iran
as ‘nuclear threat’
(front page)
 
BY SAM MANUEL  
As part of justifying its increasingly aggressive campaign against Iran, Washington has charged that the Iranian government is developing a secret nuclear weapons program under the cover of construction of nuclear power-generating plants.

Washington has made similar charges against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, targeting those two countries, along with Iraq, as a supposed "axis of evil."

Iran has for decades had a program to build nuclear power plants as part of industrializing the country and meeting the country’s rapidly increasing electrical consumption needs.

Last December State Department spokesman Richard Boucher alleged that "satellite imagery" showed some structures at one of the nuclear plants were being covered with earth, claiming that Tehran was building "a secret underground site" where it could produce weapons-grade material.

At the end of February, Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), took time out from his "weapons inspections" snooping in Iraq to lead a team to nuclear plants and facilities under construction in Iran. Unable to find any violations to report, ElBaradei tried to put the onus on Iran to disprove the allegations by the imperialist powers.

The IAEA chief said Iran could only dispel concerns about its nuclear "ambitions" by signing on to the agency’s "Additional Protocol," requiring Tehran to give IAEA representatives broader and freer access to the country’s nuclear facilities and territory, including with no prior notice. It would also require Iran to give the agency "early notification" about the design of a nuclear facility as soon as a decision is made to build it. Current agency rules only require such notification at least 180 days before nuclear material is installed in the facility.

U.S. officials had the gall to advise Iran that its vast oil and gas deposits make a nuclear power program "unnecessary."

Boucher argued that Iran’s production of enriched uranium only made sense if it was in support of a nuclear weapons program. Tehran responded that it needs to generate 6,000 Megawatts of electricity from nuclear power plants by 2022 to meet the growing energy demands of a country of 65 million.  
 
Obstacle to imperialist aims
The war drive by the various imperialist powers against Iraq is not only aimed at Baghdad. It also sets the stage for the drive against Iran, a bigger target of the imperialist offensive. Iran remains an obstacle to the efforts by Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and other imperialist powers to control the Mideast and its resources.

Washington’s hostility to Tehran dates back to the popular revolution of 1979, when an upheaval by millions of workers and farmers overthrew the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the shah. The revolution toppled one of imperialism’s strongest and most reliable henchmen in the region--the other one being Israel. The Iranian revolution marked a historic shift in the relationship of forces in the region in favor of working people, from Tehran to Palestine--and beyond.

Because of the living legacy of the revolution and the identification of millions of working people in Iran with it, Washington and the other imperialist powers know they face much bigger prospects of popular resistance to any assault on Iran than from other countries in the region.

During the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq war, Washington, while feigning neutrality, backed the assault by the Saddam Hussein regime in the hope of dealing a blow to the Iranian revolution. Many of Iran’s power generators were destroyed by Iraqi air strikes.  
 
Long-standing nuclear program
Washington’s accusations notwithstanding, Iran’s intentions to develop its nuclear resources have been no secret over the years.

Iran’s nuclear power program began in the 1970s, under the regime of the U.S.-backed shah, which had planned to build as many as 20 nuclear power reactors. Work on the Bushire nuclear power project--an object of imperialist scrutiny today--was begun in 1974 by the German company Siemens. The reactors were viewed as necessary for industrialization of the country. The project was left unfinished after the revolution, and resumed with Russian aid in the 1990s.

More than a decade ago, Iran declared its intention to develop uranium mines, and invited the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect them in 1992. In September, Iran told the agency of its plans to enrich uranium for use in a nuclear power plant.

Iran ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1970 and since 1992 has allowed the IAEA to inspect any of its nuclear facilities. None of the agency’s inspections have ever revealed a single violation of the terms of the treaty.

To Washington, Iran’s technical and military strength represents an obstacle to its war aims in the region. In the early 1990s Iran made modest but important improvements in its airforce with the purchase of new Russian planes and added several hundred tanks to its armored units. It has purchased T-72 tanks, Kilo-class submarines, and ballistic missiles from Russia, China, and north Korea.

The submarines and modern missile patrol boats, combined with reinforcement of the southern Arabian Gulf islands, strengthen Tehran’s capability to cut off strategic sea-lines-of-communication and impose its control over these critical shipping passages in the region.

Last month Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani announced that Iran had developed the capacity to produce composite solid fuels used to power missiles. Following the inauguration of a solid fuel manufacturing plant, Shamkhani noted that the fuel could be used for "any kind of missile." Iran currently has the capability to produce medium-range missiles, antitank missiles, air-to surface and surface-to-surface guided missiles.

Washington is also alarmed at Iran’s deepening economic relations with Russia and other workers states. Iranian and Russian cooperation is motivated both by economic needs and by a shared concern for Washington’s expanding political and military presence in the region.

For years Washington has sought to prevent Iran from developing a 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor at the port city of Bushire. It has pressed Russia, which is helping to build the facility, to end its cooperation with Tehran.

In a visit to Iran, Russian atomic energy minister Alexander Rumyantsev refuted Washington’s charges that the plant is a possible ruse for developing nuclear arms. "Iran is using nuclear energy exclusively for peaceful purposes," he said. He added that Moscow was "extremely interested" in Iran’s nuclear power plants. The Bushire plant will provide much-needed income for Russia, which has agreed to provide fuel and expertise for repair and maintenance. Moscow is willing to build up to six more reactors in Iran.

As a condition of its assistance Moscow has required Tehran to return all spent nuclear fuel rods. But in early February Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said that Iran would begin mining uranium for use in nuclear power plants and would reprocess the spent fuel itself.  
 
War on Iraq
As it masses its troops to invade Iraq, Washington has objected to the deployment in northern Iraq of an Iranian-backed brigade of Iraqi fighters opposed to the Saddam Hussein regime. Iran has provided the Badr Brigade, as the unit is known, with training, weapons, and logistical intelligence according to a March 2 New York Times report. Advanced elements of the estimated 15,000-member brigade began setting up a base camp 11 miles inside Iraq from the Iranian border in an area controlled by Iraqi Kurds.

Representatives of the Bush administration have held private talks with Iranian officials in Europe in hopes of preventing Tehran from intervening militarily in Iraq or to giving safe haven to Iraqis who might oppose a U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad In February State Department spokesman Boucher said, "We think any Iranian presence or Iranian-supported presence in that region is destabilizing and not positive."

A spokesman for the brigade said they are also prepared to join with Kurds to resist deployment of Turkish troops in the Kurdish-administered regions of northern Iraq. Ankara fears the Kurds may seize on the anticipated fall of the Baghdad government in an imperialist invasion to declare an independent Kurdish state. The Turkish regime plans to deploy up to 70,000 troops in northern Iraq as part of a U.S.-led war against Baghdad.

Ironically, the Badr Brigade is the military wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a member of the Iraqi National Council. The council is an umbrella group of fractious Iraqi opponents of the Hussein government that has been propped up by Washington.
 
 
Related articles:
Iraq: British, U.S. forces move toward invasion
North Korea: U.S. mounts military provocations
Bring the troops home now!  
 
 
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