Post #32 - Thinking about the Unthinkable

Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), a non-profit based in Washington, DC, has a long history of studying the medical impacts of the use of nuclear weapons. In 2006 study, using software developed by the Pentagon (the Hazard Prediction and Assessment Capability, or HPAC), PSR assessed the probable effects on human populations of use of nuclear “bunker-busters” against Iranian facilities alleged to be part of a weapons program.

Cemetery in the town of Natanz

Postulating that the first two targets would be a uranium enrichment facility near Natanz and the uranium conversion and materials storage facility at Isfahan, PSR inputted what is known about those installations, technical information about available DoD armaments, and relevant meteorological data. The Natanz plant, for example, is buried between 18 and 23 meters below the surface, so they considered that B61-11 earth-penetrating bombs would be the weapon of choice. Their conclusions were these:

"...within 48 hours, fallout would cover much of Iran, most of Afghanistan and spread on into Pakistan and India....In the immediate area of the two attacks...an estimated 2.6 million people would die...about two-thirds...from radiation-related causes, either prompt casualties from the immediate radiation effects of the bomb, or from localized fallout. Over 1,000,000 people would suffer immediate injuries including thermal and flash burns, radiation sickness, broken limbs, lacerations, blindness, crush injuries, burst eardrums and other traumas. In the wider region, over 10.5 million people would be exposed to significant radiation from fallout, leading to radiation sickness, future excess cancer deaths, genetic abnormalities in future generations, as well as high rates of stillbirths, miscarriages, malignancies and hypothyroidism. Most if not all medical facilities near the two attack sites would be destroyed, or located within the radiation ‘hot zone’ and thus unusable. Little or no medical care would be available to the injured in the aftermath of an attack, leading to many avoidable deaths."

PSR's position is that Iran should not be allowed have nuclear technology (even if purely civilian in nature); but, they say, “nuclear war is not the way to stop them. The use of nuclear weapons against Iran should be taken off the table...PSR urges the President to use diplomatic means to resolve this crisis in the months and years before Iran is likely to achieve nuclear weapons capability.”

Our Doomsday Addiction

Professor and author Dn. John Chryssavgis, representing Archbishop Demetrios (primate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America), testified at a hearing in Washington, DC on U.S. plans for the newest generation of U.S. nuclear weaponry, a modernization of the arsenal that still stands at over 10,500 nuclear weapons, 7,000 of them active strategic warheads, with 2,000 programmed to “launch on warning.” (Before reductions mandated in the new arms-control treaty.) He said:

"Not only is nuclear weaponry unsustainable; it is primarily destabilizing. With the increasing danger of international terrorism...the sheer vulnerability of nuclear facilities and weapons ought not simply to encourage the reduction, but also to oblige the elimination of nuclear arms. Nuclear dissuasion (based on the logic of fear) is no longer a valid policy or strategy...

"It is not only a matter of adhering to religious principles of peace, which is justifiably the primary focus of religious institutions. It is a matter of common sense....A “Reliable Replacement Warhead” program can be neither reliable nor responsible. What will it take for us to realize that it is not...”modernization” but a return to outdated politics of fear and power? It does not simply affect specific regions or states, but ultimately threatens the security of the nation as a whole and indeed the entire planet...U.S. action will invariably encourage and invite reaction from other nations. Perhaps it is time for self-reflection, for reconsideration of our grave political and moral responsibility on a global level.

"Progressive and concerted decommissioning is the only viable pledge for long-term, moral, and courageous leadership."

Similarly, at the same hearing, a Roman Catholic representative reminded us that the Review Conferences for the NPT (in 2000 and 2005) had produced re-commitments to the provisions of Article VI: “An unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament...” Rev. Joseph Nangle reaffirmed the position that a papal envoy had announced in 2002, saying, “Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the peace we seek in this 21st century...”

Lewis Mumford said back in 1946: "You cannot talk like sane men around a peace table while the atomic bomb itself is ticking beneath it. Do not treat the atomic bomb as a weapon of offense; do not treat it as an instrument of the police. Treat the bomb for what it is: the visible insanity of a civilization that has ceased...to obey the laws of life." The Reliable Replacement Warhead program failed in the Senate Appropriations Committee in early June of 2007. We shall see if it is really dead or will rise again. In the meantime, funds were inserted into an Iraq War spending bill for massive conventional "bunker-buster" bombs, which would have no utility in Iraq or Afghanistan, but which would be well-suited for "Iran War" plans.

Post #31 - First Strike Capability

Although many scientists, at the dawn of the nuclear age, claimed that the use of technologies such as nuclear weapons was not really their concern (that being a purely political question), an eminent group of physicists recently saw a clear ethical duty to speak out on the question of nuclear "first use." They stepped out of their ivory towers in April, 2006 to write a joint letter to President Bush in response to published reports that the use of tactical nuclear weapons by the United States was “on the table.” Signatories included five Nobel laureates, a winner of the National Medal of Science, a past-president of the American Physical Society and other luminaries. Their letter read, in part:

"Eighteen hundred of our fellow physicists have joined in a petition opposing new U.S. nuclear weapons policies that open the door to the use of nuclear weapons in situations such as Iran's. The policies represent a 'radical departure from the past,' in the words of Linton Brooks, National Nuclear Security Administration director. Indeed, since the end of World War II, U.S. policy has considered nuclear weapons 'weapons of last resort,' to be used only when the very survival of the nation or of an allied nation was at stake, or at most in cases of extreme military necessity...This is a major and dangerous shift...In the words of the late Joseph Rotblat, Nobel Peace Prize recipient for his efforts to prevent nuclear war, 'the danger of this policy can hardly be over-emphasized.'

"Nuclear weapons are unique among weapons of mass destruction:...[they] release an immense amount of blast energy and thermal and nuclear radiation, with deadly immediate and delayed effects on the human body. Over 100,000 human beings died in the Hiroshima blast, and nuclear weapons in today's arsenals have a total yield of over 200,000 Hiroshima bombs. The available earth-penetrating bomb of the type envisioned to be used against Iranian targets (the B61 mod 11) has almost 30 times the destructive capacity of the Hiroshima bomb (340 kilotons, versus 12 kilotons).

"There are no sharp lines between small 'tactical' nuclear weapons and large ones, nor between nuclear weapons targeting facilities and those targeting armies or cities. Nuclear weapons have not been used for 60 years. Once the U.S. uses a nuclear weapon again...there will be a greatly enhanced risk that regional conflicts could expand into global nuclear war, with the potential to destroy our civilization...It is gravely irresponsible for the U.S. as the greatest superpower to consider courses of action that could eventually lead to the widespread destruction of life on the planet."

I accompanied Professor Jorge E. Hirsch of the Department of Physics at the University of California-San Diego, when he and others held a press conference (at the National Press Club) and then attempted to deliver a copy of this letter to President Bush; after nearly 40 minutes negotiation, a White House spokesperson agreed to take the letter, but could not arrange a meeting with any member of the White House staff.

Poster from a rally against war with Iran

Another occupant of the White House, Dwight Eisenhower, was even more succinct than those scientists, when he said, "You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets." Yet, even with a new administration and a new arms control treaty, the United States still maintains 1,790 deployed nuclear warheads (Russia has 1,556), to be reduced to 1,550 each by the year 2018 -- each one of which is more powerful than any weapon that has ever been used in hostile action. Even the assistant secretary of state for arms control termed current initiatives in arms reduction by the five major nuclear powers as "baby steps." (per Washington Post article of October 27, 2011).

Post #30 - U.S. in Iran's Backyard

At a conference in Washington a few years ago, I was astounded to hear a member of the U.S. House of Representatives appear almost to be applauding terrorism. Rep. Jane Harman, a Democrat who left Congress this year, and who was then the ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, referred to news from that day's newspapers. She said:

"...let me point out that the bus bombing in Tehran this morning was not carried out by an external force. It was carried out – so we have learned – by Iran's own ethnic Baluch minority who see themselves as heirs of an ancient tradition distinct from ethnic Persians. They identify with a larger community in Afghanistan and Pakistan and with Sunni Islam. So there's plenty of evidence that ethnic groups inside the country and economic pressures inside the country are putting pressure on the government and if we augment that externally with economic and diplomatic pressure, we have a good chance to succeed."

This was an instance of terrorism, directed against civilians. If I were one of those who set a bomb in that crowded capital, I would certainly feel that Rep. Harman's remarks were approving and encouraging of my action. Never mind that the head of the group reputed to be responsible is (according to author Reese Elrich) a former Taliban leader, or that our ally, Turkey, is facing the very same kind of "minority who see themselves as heirs of an ancient tradition distinct from ethnic [Turks, who] “identify with a larger community” -- in that case being the Kurds. Often the pawns of larger entities – dispersed across parts of Turkey, Iraq and Iran, and splintered by sub-groupings of sect and clan, the Kurds have fought fiercely, on multiple fronts, enduring assaults and betrayals, to maintain their cultural and linguistic heritage.

Never mind, also, that the same kind of claims could be made by ethnic Chechens, who bombed a school full of children in 2004, killing 380; they too are fighting for their autonomy from a dominant nation state. Terrorism cannot be condoned when employed by one group, but condemned when it is committed by another. 

Former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and secretary of state Colin Powell, quoted in a letter to me from my US senator during that same period, said "the world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism." I doubt that new initiatives by the current administration have changed this perception very much.

As early as June 2005, Scott Ritter (former IAEA arms inspector) wrote:

"The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American overflights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.

"The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase. President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran."

U.S. positioning of forces around Iran

William Lowther and Colin Freeman reported, similarly (in “US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran,” Sunday Telegraph, February 25, 2007) : "In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials. Such incidents have been carried out by the Kurds in the west, the Azeris in the north-west, the Ahwazi Arabs in the south-west, and the Baluchis in the south-east.
"Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now 'no great secret', according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington who spoke anonymously to The Sunday Telegraph.
"His claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, who said: 'The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilize the Iranian regime.'
"The Baluchistan-based Brigade of God group, which last year kidnapped and killed eight Iranian soldiers, is a volatile Sunni organisation that many fear could easily turn against Washington after taking its money.
"A row has also broken out in Washington over whether to 'unleash' the military wing of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), an Iraq-based Iranian opposition group with a long and bloody history of armed opposition to the Iranian regime.
"The group is currently listed by the US state department as terrorist organisation, but Mr Pike said: 'A faction in the Defense Department wants to unleash them. They could never overthrow the current Iranian regime but they might cause a lot of damage.'"

Qashqai tribal sheepherders encamped near Persepolis

(The debate about the MEK continues; just this month, I saw last week the latest of a series of full-page ads in a major newspaper, asking that the State Department "de-list" them from its terrorism roster.)

An article on the ABC News blog April 3, 2007 ("The Secret War Against Iran") by Brian Ross and Christopher Isham, described destabilizing activities carried on against Iran from the Pakistani side with U.S. support:

"A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News. The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.
"It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials. Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states. The leader, Regi, claims to have personally executed some of the Iranians.
"'He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist,' said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members. 'Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera,' Debat said. Most recently, Jundullah took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zahedan. 

"Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February. A senior U.S. government official said groups such as Jundullah have been helpful in tracking al Qaeda figures and that it was appropriate for the U.S. to deal with such groups in that context. Some former CIA officers say the arrangement is reminiscent of how the U.S. government used proxy armies, funded by other countries including Saudi Arabia, to destabilize the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s."

A May 2007 article, “Pakistan Is Going Down the Road of the Shah's Iran,” by Ivan Eland also touched on this. (Eland was director of the Center on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute; he has been a principal defense analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, an evaluator for national security for the General Accounting Office and an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee):

"Like the U.S. policy toward the Shah’s Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, the Bush administration, despite a rhetorical commitment to spread democracy around the world, has put all of its eggs in the basket of an autocrat unlikely to survive... Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Although Musharraf has used the U.S. war on terror to play the United States like a fiddle, the Bush administration believes there is no better alternative...

"Unfortunately, Pakistan probably has already been “lost,” and U.S. policy has played an important role in its demise. U.S. policymakers have repeatedly underestimated the consequences of the deep unpopularity engendered by profligate U.S. government meddling in the affairs of other countries. In Iran, although the Shah’s government was brutal, the regime also became so identified with its unpopular U.S. benefactor that the United States became a major contributing factor in its collapse and replacement with a militant and enduring Islamist substitute.

"[Musharraf's] wink and nod policy has allowed both al Qaeda and the militant Taliban to recover and step up attacks from these safe havens [near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border]...keeping the Islamists around, but contained, has been good for the autocratic Musharraf regime. The problem is that the instability caused by this policy can no longer be contained. Like the Shah of Iran, Musharraf must use increased violence to put down popular protests, thus further fueling the spreading uprisings. The Shah’s Iran and Pakistan have one important difference, however: Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Tragically, the Bush administration may eventually give the world an Islamist bomb."

That year, for the first time, President Bush publicly acknowledged signing a finding that allows the CIA to conduct clandestine activities in relation to Iran. Does anyone know what is being done under the Obama administration in this regard? The mainstream media certainly have lost interest in the topic, though the stepped-up drone attacks in various countries would indicate that the Agency is quite active generally in the "war on terror."  All that has made the news has been an effort to subvert the Iranian nuclear program, using computer viruses, in which US and or Israeli involvement has been the subject of speculation.

We Americans need occasionally to be reminded of what people in many other countries find hard to forget: just since World War II, the United States has bombed, assaulted or invaded the following countries: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Cambodia, Congo, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Indonesia, Iraq, Kuwait, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Nicaragua, North Korea, Panama, Somalia, the Sudan, and Vietnam. It is far too easy and self-serving a rationale to maintain that our country is the major power in the world and called upon to be the world's policeman. The rest of the world may not accept our “jurisdiction” or trust our motives; there are they might not accept our public explanations and vaunted intentions as the whole story. Our “footprint” in the world is huge; if we get a notion to influence, to pressure, to intervene or to invade, we cause a great deal of nervousness, and sometimes become the target of rage.

Post #29 - Juggling with Nitroglycerine

Pentagon criticized British for allowing sailors to be seized

In late March of 2007, Iranian forces took 15 British Navy personnel off a small boat in the waters that separate Iran and Iraq and held them for two weeks. The Islamic Republic said they were in Iranian waters when the boat was seized, the British asserted they were in Iraqi waters. President Bush, predictably, called the seizure “inexcusable.” Former British Foreign Office official and Ambassador Craig Murray said, “No.10 [Downing Street] spin-doctors stepped in, seeing a propaganda opportunity to portray Blair as fighting evil Iranians.” Within 13 days, cooler heads prevailed and a brief series of direct talks led to the release of the British sailors and marines, apparently none the worse for wear. Although they related having been held under conditions that were psychologically difficult, they were not subjected to anything like “Abu Ghraib” treatment.

President Obama ran for office on a platform that included greater reliance on diplomacy and dialogue In the case of the British sailors, a diplomatic approach did yield results. The incidents also stimulated much-needed scrutiny of the history of British-Iranian relations, American seizure of Iranian nationals and the current rules-of-engagement environment in areas bordering on Iran -- an area that sees the trans-shipment of 30-40% of the world's oil.

Journalist Pepe Escobar wrote in The Asia Times in April of that year:

"The 15 British sailors and marines...were patrolling the Shatt-al-Arab - or Arvand Roud, as it is known in Iran...This correspondent has been to the Shatt-al-Arab. It's a busy and tricky waterway, to say the least. Iraqi fishing boats share the waters with Iranian patrol boats.

"From the Iraqi shore one can see the Iranian shore, flags aflutter. These remain extremely disputed waters. In 1975, a treaty was signed in Algiers between the shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein.

"The center of the river was supposed to be the border. Then Saddam invaded Iran in 1980. After the Iran-Iraq War that this sparked ended in 1988, and even after both Gulf wars, things remain perilously inconclusive: a new treaty still has not been signed."

In a Borzou Daragahi article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times three months later, we got a rare glimpse of life on the edge of the sword:

"ABOARD THE USS JOHN C. STENNIS — Iran and the United States remain so far apart on so many issues that they refuse to talk about them. But in the cramped sea routes of the Persian Gulf, U.S. and Iranian warship sailors and fighter pilots speak to each other daily.

"They have to. They're practically jostling one another in courteous games of surveillance, counter-surveillance and geopolitical posturing. 'We are operating very close to their territorial waters in a very confined space with a tremendous amount of traffic, be it the small dhows, be it the supertankers going up to the oil platforms,' said U.S. Navy Capt. Sterling Gilliam Jr., commander of air operations for this nuclear-powered supercarrier and its associated ships. 'The margin of error is smaller in that the space is more confined...'

"Even mundane changes of direction require chitchat with Iranian counterparts. When sedate gulf winds fade to a whisper, for example, this 100,000-ton carrier whips up to the 25 knots required to hurl jets into flight from the 1,092-foot flight deck. But first the vessel alerts nearby forces of Iran's Revolutionary Guard and the organization's navy. 'We would do the standard international maritime measures,' said Capt. Bradley Johanson, commanding officer of the aircraft carrier. 'We would call them on their radio and say, 'Sir, I just wanted to let you know that we're going to be turning to port and be coming to this course so that we're into the wind in support of our flight operation.'

"The Iranians respond professionally and courteously, Johanson said: 'Thank you very much for the information. We will move off to the starboard position. We very much appreciate the heads-up.'

...the aircraft carriers, each accompanied by four or five other ships, could become big targets for Iran in the event of a war. 'It's going to be very hard to defend U.S. ships against small ships and volleys of missiles in the confines of the Persian Gulf,' said Joseph Cirincione, a security analyst at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank. 'This is not an ideal situation for the Navy.'

"Tensions between Iran and the U.S. lie barely beneath the surface of the delicate maritime protocol...'We do worry about miscalculations,' [Vice Adm. Kevin J.] Cosgriff [commander of the Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet] said. 'That's one of the reasons we want to be transparent on the radio and be talking to them a lot.'"

The Iranian government claimed a total of six instances of British violations of Iranian waters during that period (two in 2004, one in 2006 and two incidents earlier in 2007). Many saw the Iranian action as a response to the apprehension of five Iranians in Irbil in the Kurdish region of Iraq on the eve of a U.N. Security Council vote on Iran sanctions. They were captured by U.S. Special Forces who stormed a building being used as an Iranian consulate. (Later the same day, U.S. Forces almost got into a firefight with their Kurdish allies when attempting to capture more Iranians at the city's airport.) While apparently not prepared to charge them with any offense, American officials were giving “no comment” replies to press queries about the Iranians status and welfare. Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University, said “nobody on the outside knows” whether they were taken into the “enemy combatant system” that the United States established after 9/11. Some international law experts questioned the legality of their detention. June 16, 2007 three other Iranian diplomats, returning to Iran from Iraq, were arrested and interrogated by U.S. forces. Although the Kurds have been solidly pro-American since the first Persian Gulf War, there was an immediate negative reaction to those U.S. moves, which apparently had been undertaken without coordination with the authorities in the Kurdish area or with the Government of Iraq. Hoshiyar Zebari, then Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs (and himself a Kurd) told reporters: “What happened...was very annoying because there has been an Iranian liaison office there for years and it provides services to [Iraqi] citizens” (reported by the National Iranian American Council, January 2007).

At just the same time as the naval incident, the U.S. was conducting war-game exercises in the area, involving two aircraft carrier groups. According to the Associated Press each group included a wing of fighter-bombers, electronic-warfare aircraft, anti-submarine craft, refuelers and command-and-control craft. In addition, six destroyers armed with guided missiles and three minesweepers took part in the exercise a stone's throw from Iranian national waters.

The British navy incident -- particularly as it preceded by only a few weeks the announcement of the UK's intention to withdraw its troops in southern Iraq altogether -- called to mind the Rudyard Kipling poem “Recessional," which celebrated British hegemony, while admitting the possibility of its eventual downfall due to hubris. Kipling wrote in 1897:

Far-called our navies melt away --

On dune and headland sink the fire --

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget – lest we forget!

Nineveh was the great Assyrian capital mentioned in the Bible (e.g. Book of Nahum, 2:1-3) as having been utterly destroyed as punishment for the sins of its inhabitants. It was situated in the area now known as the Iraqi province of Nineveh, and was destroyed by the Medes, an ancient people of what now is Iran. A Christian forefather, St. Isaac, was born on the Persian Gulf and later ordained Bishop of Nineveh in the 8th century. His poem "The Merciful Heart" reminds us of what Christianity at its most radical asks of us:

The heart's pulsing ache -- oh, to have

that same heart's burning

for persons, for birds, all manner

of animal, and even for demons.

At the remembrance

and at the sight of all such creatures,

the merciful man's eyes

fill with tears which rise with a great increasing

compassion that wells

and urges his heart,

so that it grows ever

more tender and cannot endure any

harm or slightest sorrow

for anything found

in creation. Such a man

is ceaseless in tear-attended prayer,

even now, and even for

irrational animals,

and for enemies of truth,

and for all who harm it, that they may be both

guarded and forgiven.

Most of may not expect to achieve St. Isaac's level of equanimity, but we can at least not act to move the doomsday clock closer to midnight.