Tehran insists it has a right to enrich uranium as part of its development of a nuclear industry needed to meet the country’s energy needs. Washington says it can’t trust the Iranian government and claims Tehran will use the uranium to produce nuclear weapons.

During an interview in January on the MSNBC program “Imus In the Morning,” U.S. vice president Richard Cheney speculated that Tel Aviv “might well decide to act first” to destroy Iran’s nuclear research and development facilities.

Senior officials in the Bush administration said they will make their allegations against Tehran for violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) the focus of a monthlong UN-sponsored conference in May to review the treaty. The NPT subjects governments in semicolonial countries, in particular, to a range of requirements, including regular reports and inspections of their nuclear research and energy facilities. The treaty, and the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that was created to enforce it, have been increasingly used by Washington and its imperialist allies in the last decade to prevent semicolonial nations from developing nuclear energy.

“Today, the treaty is facing the most serious challenge in its history due to instances of noncompliance,” said Stephen Rademaker, Washington’s representative at the conference during its opening on May 3. Rademaker singled out Iran and north Korea as the top states that the U.S. government claims are violating the NPT. He said Washington demands that any solution regarding Iran “must include permanent cessation of Iran’s enrichment and reprocessing efforts, as well as dismantlement of equipment and facilities related to such activity.”

Washington has been pressing since 2003, when Iran revealed a two-decades-long program to develop nuclear energy, to bring the Iranian government before the UN Security Council where Tehran could face a variety of sanctions.

The GBU-28, a 5,000-pound bomb, was developed in the 1991 U.S.-led war against Iraq. It is capable of penetrating hardened underground bunkers. In an effort to protect its nuclear installations, Tehran has spread its nuclear facilities out across the country. Washington claims that many of the installations are located in deep underground bunkers.

The Israeli government has repeatedly said it has no plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Tel Aviv, however, does have a record of taking such actions. In 1981, Israeli bombers attacked the Osirak nuclear power plant in Iraq, just south of Baghdad, and destroyed its French-built reactors as the plant neared completion.

David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli embassy in Washington, said the GBU-28 was “one component in a basket of measures Israel is acquiring,” reported the Financial Times.

Last September the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz said the Israeli military could receive up to 5,000 of a variety of heavy bombs—among them 500 one-ton bunker busters, 2,500 regular one-ton bombs, 1,000 half-ton bombs, and 500 quarter-ton bombs. The Israeli Defense Force has used bombs of this type in assassinations of leaders of the Palestinian group Hamas.

Along with arming Tel Aviv to strengthen its capability for possible military strikes against Iran, Washington is using the NPT conference to pursue its “nonproliferation” campaign. The treaty provides cover for the imperialist powers in Washington, London, and Paris—as well as Moscow and Beijing—to maintain and develop nuclear weapons, but bars other nations from acquiring them. Rademaker said Washington will “promote its excellent record on nuclear disarmament, including the reductions of U.S. operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads.”

But delegates to the review conference, which takes place every five years, were unable to agree on an agenda just before it was scheduled to convene. While Washington wants to make Iran the focus of the meeting, other countries have raised concerns that the U.S. government, in particular, is really only interested in blocking their access to nuclear technology while continuing to develop its own, including perfecting its nuclear arms.

The Bush administration, for example, has asked Congress for funding to develop a nuclear bunker buster. The U.S. government also plans to conduct a review of its nuclear arsenal with an eye towards replacing it with nuclear weapons better suited for future threats. The Pentagon’s 2002 Nuclear Posture Review stressed the need for weapons with “lower explosive yields that were less likely to cause collateral damage and were more suited to destroying biological and chemical weapons,” according to the Financial Times.

According to the London big-business daily, Washington maintains a nuclear arsenal of an estimated 10,600 warheads, 7,650 of which are considered operational. The U.S. government is the only one with land-based nuclear weapons stationed outside its borders.

Paris has about 350 nuclear warheads stationed on bombers, nuclear submarines, and carrier-based aircraft. And the British government has 200 strategic and “sub-strategic” warheads stationed on nuclear submarines.  
 
 
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