A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West is Wrong About Nuclear Iran

by Peter Oborne, David Morrison

Overview

The definitive case against military action in Iran, passionately argued and meticulously researched

In 2013 it is possible that Israel, backed by the United States, will launch an attack on Iran. This would be a catastrophic event, risking war, bloodshed, and global economic collapse. In this passionate but rationally argued essay, the authors attempt to avert a potential global catastrophe by showing that the grounds for war do not exist, that there are no Iranian nuclear weapons, and that Iran would happily come to a table and strike a deal. They argue that the military threats aimed by the West against Iran contravene international law, and argue that Iran is a civilized country and legitimate power across the Middle East. For years Peter Oborne and David Morrison have, in their respective fields, examined the actions of our political classes and found them wanting. Now they have joined forces to make a powerful case against military action. In the wake of the Iraq war, will the politicians listen?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781908739896
Publisher:	Elliott & Thompson
Publication date:	09/01/2013
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	4.60(w) x 7.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Peter Oborne is the chief political commentator for the Daily Telegraph. David Morrison has written extensively on the deception perpetrated by the British government to induce the British public to support military action against Iraq.

Read an Excerpt

A Dangerous Delusion

Why the West is Wrong About Nuclear Iran

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By Peter Oborne, David Morrison

Elliott and Thompson Limited

Copyright © 2013 Peter Oborne and David Morrison
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-908739-89-6

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CHAPTER 1

THE OFFER THE WEST TURNED DOWN

It was the early spring of 2005 and a team of British, French and German diplomats were arriving at the magnificent French foreign ministry at the Quai d'Orsay on the left bank of the Seine.

But the splendour of the Second Empire building did not match their mood. The negotiating team, which included high-flying John Sawers (now head of the British Secret Intelligence Service), had been fruitlessly searching for a solution to the Iranian nuclear stand-off for more than a year.

There seemed no solution. The European negotiators, under massive pressure from the United States, were adamant that Iran must give up its uranium-enrichment programme.

For the Iranians these demands seemed an intolerable humiliation for a sovereign state, and a classic manifestation of the western imperialism that had humiliated their ancient country for centuries.

The meeting had been under way for approximately 20 minutes, with no progress, when suddenly the face of the leader of the Iranian negotiating team, Javad Zarif, was wreathed in smiles.

'We have a proposal to show you,' he said. 'It is an entirely unofficial idea. It has not been discussed or approved by our masters in Tehran. But perhaps it might be something we can talk about.'

After these preliminary words, the Iranians delivered a PowerPoint presentation which amazed the European negotiating team. It was the basis of a deal and one, moreover, that offered genuine benefits for both sides, though both sides would have to make compromises as well.

Briefly, in the gilded nineteenth-century Parisian salon, a resolution of the nuclear stand-off between Iran and the west felt entirely possible.

The Iranians explained that they were not prepared to abandon their plans to develop centrifuge enrichment technology on Iranian soil. But in return for carrying on with their enrichment programme they proposed unprecedented measures to provide guarantees that they would never divert peaceful nuclear technology for military use.

They offered a solemn pledge that Iran would remain bound by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) – which obliges member states to subject their nuclear facilities to external inspection – for as long as it existed.

They said that Iran's religious leaders would repudiate nuclear weapons.

They put on the negotiating table a series of voluntary restrictions on the size and output of the enrichment programme.

And they offered inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) improved oversight of all nuclear activities in Iran.

The European diplomats allowed not a trace of emotion to show on their faces. But one official recalls thinking that 'what we had just heard was a most interesting offer. We realised that what we had just heard was a valid and coherent proposal that was in full conformity with relevant international treaty provisions.'

This diplomat adds today that 'trust was not an issue, because over the preceding 18 months we had got to know our Iranian counterparts and had acquired confidence in the Iranians' ability to honour their commitments'.

When the Iranians had finished their presentation, the Europeans asked for a break so that they could discuss the proposal among themselves. Once on their own they agreed that there was no way that the Iranian offer would be acceptable to their political masters in Europe. One witness puts the problem like this: 'There was not the faintest chance that President George W. Bush's Republican advisers and Israeli allies would allow him to look benignly on such a deal. On the contrary, if the Europeans were to defy American wishes, they would be letting themselves in for a transatlantic row to end all rows.'

So when they came back to the negotiating table one hour later they were studiously non-committal. They spoke highly of the Iranian offer, but asked for time so that their governments could consider it.

And when John Sawers took the Iranian offer back to London it was very quickly forgotten. According to Foreign Office sources, Tony Blair intervened to make sure that it went no further. Later Sawers explained to Seyed Hossein Mousavian, spokesman of the Iranian nuclear negotiation team, why the offer could not be taken up. 'Washington would never tolerate the operation of even one centrifuge in Iran,' he said.

So the peace proposal from the Iranian negotiators was killed stone dead even though the European negotiating team realised that it was both very well judged and in full conformity with international law. 'This was an extraordinary sleight of hand by the EU,' says one European diplomat close to the negotiations today.

The purpose of this short book is to dispel some of the myths and falsehoods which have distorted the view of Iran in America and Europe. We will show how Iran has often been ready to deal reasonably with the rest of the world over its nuclear ambitions. Iran was one of the original signatories to the NPT on 1 July 1968, and has for the most part obediently respected its provisions, and continues to do so today. As required by the NPT, it has not acquired nuclear weapons and its nuclear facilities are subject to IAEA inspection.

By contrast, the United States (and its client states in Europe, including Britain) has stood in the way of a settlement by refusing to accept Iran's right to uranium enrichment under the NPT. Moreover, the west has repeatedly made unjust demands, and at crucial moments showed bad faith at the negotiating table.

Western politicians have nevertheless issued a barrage of partial and misleading statements about the Iranian position. These statements have very rarely been exposed in the western media, which as a whole shows little interest in finding out the truth about Iran. More commonly, western newspapers and television channels have disseminated fabrications which have fuelled hatred and suspicion, and sowed misunderstanding. We will supply examples of this malevolent public discourse, and seek to put the record straight.

As a result of these misrepresentations, most people in the west can be forgiven for believing that Iran is an aggressive and malevolent power hell-bent on the acquisition of nuclear weapons. We concede that it is indeed possible that the Iranians are secretly pursuing a nuclear bomb. However, we can show that there is at present no convincing evidence for this belief. Any western politician or propagandist who claims otherwise (and there are plenty of them) is either ignorant of the facts, or lying.

Nor is that all. The United States knows with reasonable certainty that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme, let alone a nuclear bomb. This also seems to be the position of the IAEA, which is responsible for monitoring the activities of the signatories of the NPT.

So what is going on? Why all the anger, the endless barrage of rhetoric and the ruthless drive to isolate Iran, which has led to the sanctions that are reportedly driving millions of Iranians to the brink of poverty and despair? We will suggest that a different agenda is at work, which has little or nothing to do with Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons. We will argue that the United States and its European clients are driven by a different compulsion: the humiliation and eventual destruction of Iran's Islamic regime.

The central purpose of this book, therefore, is to make the argument that confrontation with Iran is unnecessary. As the settlement proposed by the Iranians at the Quai d'Orsay suggests, Iran is prepared to deal with the west. It is the west that has repeatedly refused to accept the peace entreaties of the Iranians, that is refusing to deal with Iran on reasonable terms.

So we will make the urgent case that America and the west should return to the negotiating table to strike a deal with Iran. The alternative is yet more of the aggression and brinkmanship repeatedly shown by western negotiators: and ultimately the risk of an unnecessary and pointless war.

CHAPTER 2

THE UNITED STATES AND IRAN: A TRAGIC HISTORY

The best way to understand the nuclear stand-off between Iran and the west is to look back at the historical record, and in particular the long series of hostilities and tragic misunderstandings that have marred relations between America and Iran. This is a tale which starts in the aftermath of World War II, when the United States took over from Britain the role of superpower in the Middle East.

Until this moment, the United States had been much more popular in Iran than either Britain or France. Many educated Iranians believed that the United States was on the side of freedom, and therefore saw the American War of Independence as a prototype for their own struggles against imperialism.

This attitude changed once and for all in August 1953 when the CIA joined with Britain's overseas intelligence service, MI6, in masterminding a coup d'état in Tehran. The victim was the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq, who had been installed by an overwhelming majority in the Iranian parliament (Majlis) two years earlier. 'Hundreds of millions of Asian people,' Mossadeq told the United Nations in 1951, 'after centuries of colonial exploitation, have now gained their independence and freedom.'

Mossadeq's central grievance had been energy, and in particular the fact that the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company controlled Iran's oil. This company, antecedent of the modern BP, was considerably more Anglo than Iranian, and had been ever since Winston Churchill negotiated the purchase of its shares in 1914. In the words of Michael Axworthy, an historian of Iran, 'the British government garnered more profit from the Iranian oil industry than the Iranian government did (nearly double over the period 1932–1950).'

Once in power, Mossadeq nationalised oil, and British intelligence and the CIA set about extinguishing liberal democracy. After a period of devastating sanctions came the 1953 coup. The Shah (who had briefly fled the country) returned as puppet, but Iran's real rulers from this point on were the United States.

For the next quarter of a century, the USA had three fundamental objectives. First, it was determined to ensure a reliable and safe supply of energy. Second, it wanted unconditional support for the state of Israel (and until 1979 Iran was Israel's only ally in the region). Third, the United States, which claimed to celebrate democracy at home, wanted to squash freedom abroad.

For more than half a century the Americans have allied themselves with dictators and autocrats throughout the Middle East, and rarely has this suspicion of popular movements been more pronounced than in its dealings with Tehran.

Once the United States had reinstalled the Shah on his throne, it was determined to keep him there. The US supplied weapons to his armed forces, collaborated with his torturers and secret policemen, and helped him pursue his nuclear ambitions. In 1968 the Shah's Iran, as we have seen, became one of the founding signatories to the NPT, which remains the foundation text and legal basis for all nuclear discussions between Iran and the outside world. No analysis of Iran's nuclear ambitions can be conducted without an understanding of it, and we will deal with the subject fully in the next chapter.

So by 1979 Iran had acquired, with US complicity, the basis for a civil nuclear programme. Two German-built reactors at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf were expected to start generating electricity within a few years. Then came the revolution and its aftermath. Suddenly Iran was no longer one of the closest friends and allies of America, but one of its bitterest enemies.

One reason is that so many of the leaders of the new Iran had suffered persecution under the Shah, and resented deeply the diplomatic backing and material support provided to him by the west. To give just one example, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, today the Supreme Leader of Iran, was tortured and sent into internal exile under the Shah's CIA-backed regime.

More significantly, the overthrow of the Shah, and the emergence of the charismatic religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader, challenged the world system that had been established by the United States after 1945. One of the greatest theologians of all time, Khomeini's teaching contained insights which went far deeper than anything the rationalists and materialists of the United States could imagine.

But the Iranian revolution terrified the Americans for another reason. The Shi'a religious tradition which Khomeini articulated with brilliance was a powerful threat to its system of rule by proxy. The Americans had formed a series of arrangements with client dictators across the Persian Gulf. These dictators tended to govern in the interest of an elite, normally using brutal methods. Examples of this could be found in neighbouring Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States.

Suddenly there was a political philosophy, articulated with overpowering eloquence by Khomeini, which spoke directly to the hearts of the dictators' victims. Shi'a Islam has always been a powerful vehicle of expression for the underdog and the oppressed. No wonder that Khomeini's Iran was hated not just by the United States, but by Iraq's Saddam Hussein, the House of Saud and the other ruling families in the Gulf.

Nineteen months after the revolution Iraq invaded Iran. What followed was a calamity which bears comparison in the nature of its carnage to World War I. For the next eight years of this hideous war – characterised by trenches, human wave attacks and the use of poison gas – the west favoured Iraq. It supplied Iraq with weapons, including the wherewithal to make chemical weapons, which Saddam used against Iranian troops and the Iranian people. It is noteworthy that Iran refused to use weapons of mass destruction in return.

When one ponders on the role of the west in the Iran–Iraq war, the US embassy crisis of 1979–81 (which occupies such a prominent place in the American consciousness), in which some 52 US diplomats were held hostage for 444 days, seems less than a pinprick.

It is not surprising that the Iranian leadership should have concluded that the United States was an implacable and ruthless opponent bent on the destruction of the regime, and prepared to use any means to do so. The support by Iran for organisations such as Hizbollah in the Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, needs to be understood in this context.

The Americans love to present Iran as an aggressor, but this is at best a partial version of the truth. The Iranians have more than once sought to make peace with the US, most notably in the aftermath of the attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. This event brought thousands of Iranians onto the streets in candlelit vigils. Iran's religious leaders condemned the attack. In the aftermath Iran offered the United States assistance in the war against Al Qaeda. It provided intelligence briefings and help in the war against the Taliban, and offered to rescue US pilots shot down over Iranian territory. According to Barnett Rubin, now a senior adviser to the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, 'Iranian officials later offered to work under US command to assist in building the Afghan National Army.'

One eloquent witness to this courtship was Hillary Mann, the US representative at a series of secret meetings which took place at the UN in New York, beginning in early 2001. At one of these meetings her Iranian counterpart offered 'unconditional talks' with the US. This was very significant, because unconditional talks were what the US had been demanding as a precondition to any official diplomatic contact. The Bush administration didn't take it up. According to James Dobbins, the diplomat who led the US delegation at negotiations leading to the 2001 Bonn Agreement on Afghanistan, 'in 2002 and again in 2003, Washington actually spurned offers from Tehran to cooperate on Afghanistan and Iraq and negotiate out other US/Iranian differences, including over its nuclear programme.'

Iran's reward for its help after 9/11 was to be denounced in George W Bush's 2002 State of the Union address, linked to Iraq and North Korea with the famous line: 'States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.' This was an extraordinary remark from a US president, all the more so since Iran had been co-operating over Afghanistan.

Even so, Iran continued to engage with the United States. In May 2003, acting through the Swiss ambassador to Iran, Tim Guldimann, Iran made yet another offer of peace talks. There is little doubt that, had the United States wanted it, a wide-ranging peace settlement with Iran could have been discussed during this period.

CHAPTER 3

THE NON-PROLIFERATION TREATY

The NPT is the core text which provides the basis for all the arguments and disputes about Iran's nuclear ambitions. The negotiations between the west and Iran are conducted within the legal framework created by the Treaty.

Yet it is extremely poorly understood. This chapter explains in simple terms how it works, and the demands which it makes on signatories. At the heart of our argument is the assertion that if the United States and Europe were ready to adhere to the provisions of the NPT and accept that Iran has a right to uranium enrichment under the NPT, then a solution to the nuclear stand-off between Iran and the west could readily be found.

The NPT is a very strange, unbalanced and ultimately very unfair treaty, which places diametrically opposite obligations on states. It divided its signatories into two categories, those who possessed nuclear weapons prior to 1 January 1967 and those who didn't, and very different obligations were placed on states in each category.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from A Dangerous Delusion by Peter Oborne, David Morrison. Copyright © 2013 Peter Oborne and David Morrison. Excerpted by permission of Elliott and Thompson Limited.
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