Our World: The second-worst option
By CAROLINE GLICK
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A week before the US Congressional elections The New York Times
published a front-page story which all but admitted that Iraq's nuclear
program had been active until March 2003, when the US-led coalition
deposed Saddam Hussein. The Times report relayed concerns of officials
from the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding captured Iraqi
documents which the administration had posted on the Internet.
The documents in question contained Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that
could be useful to rogue states like Iran which are currently working
to build a nuclear arsenal. The Times article also reported that, in
the past, the same Web site had published Iraqi documents relating to
nerve agents tabun and sarin. They were removed after their content
elicited similar concerns from UN arms control officials.
In response to the Times story an international security Web site run
by Ray Robinson published a translation of a story that ran on the
Kuwaiti newspaper Al Seyassah's Web site on September 25. Citing
European intelligence sources, the Al-Seyyassah report claims that in
late 2004 Syria began developing a nuclear program near its border with
Turkey. According to the report, Syria's program, which is being run by
President Bashar Assad's brother Maher and defended by a Revolutionary
Guards brigade, "has reached the stage of medium activity."
The Kuwaiti report maintains that the Syrian nuclear program relies "on
equipment and materials that the sons of the deposed Iraqi leader, Uday
and Qusai... transfer[red] to Syria by using dozens of civilian trucks
and trains, before and after the US-British invasion in March 2003."
The report also asserts that the Syrian nuclear program is supported by
the Iranians who are running the program, together with Iraqi nuclear
scientists and Muslim nuclear specialists from Muslim republics of the
former Soviet Union.
The program "was originally built on the remains of the Iraqi program
after it was wholly transferred to Syria."
This report echoes warnings expressed by then-prime minister Ariel
Sharon in the months leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq that
suspicious convoys of trucks were traveling from Iraq to Syria.
Sharon's warnings were later supported by statements from former IDF
chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon, who said last year that Iraq had
moved its unconventional arsenals to Syria in the lead-up to the
invasion.
ACCORDING TO the US Senate's Prewar Intelligence Review Phase II, which
studied the prewar intelligence on Iraq's nuclear weapons program, in
2002, the US had learned from the Iraqi foreign minister that while
Iraq had not yet acquired a nuclear arsenal, "Iraq was aggressively and
covertly developing" nuclear weapons. The Senate report concluded that
Saddam was told by his own weapons specialists that Iraq would achieve
nuclear weapons capabilities "within 18-24 months of acquiring fissile
material."
In the weeks and months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US,
President George W. Bush repeatedly stated that America's primary
security challenge was to prevent the world's most dangerous regimes
from acquiring nonconventional, and particularly nuclear weapons. When
Bush's statements are assessed against the backdrop of the apparently
advanced Iraqi nuclear bomb designs that were placed on the Web in
recent weeks, it becomes clear that the US-led invasion successfully
prevented Saddam Hussein from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In his State of the Union Address in 2002, Bush placed Iraq in the same
category of threat to US national security as Iran and North Korea. The
three rogues states, Bush argued constituted an "axis of evil" that
must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons.
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The post-Saddam insurgency in Iraq - an insurgency largely facilitated
and sponsored by Iran - has caused the US and its coalition partners no
end of grief. Some 3,000 coalition servicemen have been killed since
the invasion; the overwhelming majority of casualties have been
American. Frustration with the continued bloodletting in Iraq was
undoubtedly the most significant factor that caused the Republican
Party to lose control of both houses of Congress in last Tuesday's
elections.
And yet, for all the difficulties, pain and frustration the post-Saddam
insurgency has caused the US, the toppling of Saddam's regime
successfully prevented Iraq from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Iraq is a war zone today. But it does not have, and likely will not
acquire nuclear weapons - nor chemical or biological weapons, for that
matter. To that degree, Bush was neither wrong nor premature when he
made it known in the months following the invasion that the US had
accomplished its mission in Iraq.
IN THE summer of 2003, assessing future trends on the basis of the
US-led invasion of Iraq, Libya's dictator Mu'ammar Gaddafi decided to
forgo his nuclear weapons program. Libya's decision to give up its
nuclear weapons program was a direct consequence of Gaddafi's analysis
of US intentions after the invasion. Quite simply, he believed that the
best way to ensure the survival of his regime was to relinquish his
aspirations to become a nuclear power.
But as the months and years have progressed it has become clear that
far from being a warning to other would-be nuclear armed dictatorships,
the US-led invasion of Iraq was a one-shot deal. As Saddam was captured
in his hole, Teheran and Pyongyang marched forward, unchallenged in
their campaign to become nuclear powers.
The ascent of the most dangerous regimes in the world to the status of
nuclear powers reached a new climax last month. First was North Korea's
nuclear bomb test on Columbus Day. Two weeks later Iran announced it
was doubling its uranium enrichment by utilizing a second network of
centrifuges.
For their part, most of the nations of the world have looked on with
indifference to these developments. South Korean Foreign Minister and
incoming UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appears far more concerned
with the Japanese debate over whether North Korea's nuclear test should
or should not cause Japan to develop its own nuclear arsenal than with
the fact that Pyongyang now has nuclear bombs.
Ban's apparent moral and strategic dementia is of a piece with the
international community's apathy. Europe has responded to Iran's sprint
toward nuclear arms by offering its usual mix of toothless sanctions,
emotional appeals and diplomatic pageantry, all aimed at marking time
until Iran announces its entr e into the nuclear club.
Russia and China have responded to both Pyongyang and Teheran's nuclear
machinations by increasing their collaboration with both regimes.
AS FOR the US, Iran, North Korea and al-Qaida have all been quick to
interpret the Democratic victory in last Tuesday's Congressional
elections as a sign that the US has chosen to turn its back on the
threat they pose to America. By firing Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and replacing him with Robert Gates, who supports appeasing
the mullahs in Teheran and finding a fig-leaf excuse to vacate Iraq,
Bush has done everything to prove America's enemies right. Moreover,
Bush administration officials' statements ahead of the president's trip
to Asia this week indicate that Bush will seek to contend with North
Korea by ratcheting up US engagement with Pyongyang in the six-party
talks.
(Continued from page 2 of 3)
Reasonably, the world is now assessing the US through the prism of its
non-action against Iran and North Korea rather than through the prism
of Iraq. And the consequence of the view that Iraq was a deviation from
a norm of US passivity is nothing less than the complete breakdown of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.
Last week the Sunday New York Times reported that Algeria, Egypt,
Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and the UAE have all announced their
intention to build civilian nuclear reactors. Last Tuesday, in an
official visit to China, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak reportedly
signed an agreement with Chinese leader Hu Jintao for China to build
nuclear reactors in Egypt.
It is not hard to see the lesson of these developments. As the Iraq
campaign shows clearly, while the price of taking action to prevent
rogue regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons is high, the price of not
acting is far higher.
Relating this wisdom to Iran earlier this year, Senator John McCain
said, "There is only one thing worse than the United States exercising
a military option [to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons], and
that is a nuclear-armed Iran."
The US and its allies are paying a high price for having successfully
prevented Saddam from getting nuclear bombs. The price that Israel or
the US, or both, will pay to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear bombs
is liable to be even higher. Yet the alternative to paying that price
will be suffering, destruction and death on an unimaginable scale.
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