TW3 … and the nuclear question

July 31st, 2008

T hat W as T he W eek T hat W as … pretty bloody; wingnuts of various political and religious stripes killed and maimed in the Middle East as well as here at home. Events of violence just seemed to spring up like mushrooms. I ever and always remember the warnings in the mid-90s that the “third wave” of spiritual wake-up would wreack havoc on the mental underpinnings of those unprepared to handle the incoming energy, resulting in an increase in emotionally disturbed folk — we’re seeing that now, in the headlines, in our communities and … you know … maybe next door. A little prayer for protection as you go out the door in the morning might be the better part of valor, dearhearts.

The bonus material is an extension of the article [posted first, below] featured on the Planet Waves front page. We’re coming up to another Hiroshima anniversary … and while global warming may be a threat to our continuance, it has a predecessor in nuclear proliferation. Both are as frightening to contemplate as the fire-snorting Horses of the Apocalypse.

I have a neighbor that retired early from the military [who I'm slowly turning towards Obama] — he suffers lupus, rare in men, as a result of being exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl incident. He told me that the majority of those who were with him during that period are already dead. I told him that my Dad was exposed to radiation during the first nuclear tests, and as a result I’m an only child; my mother was never able to carry another child to term. If we think nuclear issues aren’t “personal” … we need to think again.

And if we’re talking nukes, these days, we have to factor in Iran — this is the Big Stick issue; if you don’t want to get kicked around, you need one. As we ponder who gets a stick and who doesn’t, maybe it would be bright of us to note that the sticks, dropped by accident or on purpose, can eliminate us all!

And let’s just come down on the side of realism, shall we? If we can’t restore levies, rebuild New Orleans, fix a bridge in Minnesota or depend on contractors to ground electricity in Iraq … how confident can we be in the building of new nuclear reactors, or the safety of old ones?

Pffft!

Jude

HARPER’S WEEKLY REVIEW
July 29, 2008

Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade and awaits
imminent extradition to The Hague, where he will face
charges of genocide for his role in the Srebrenica
massacres and the siege of Sarajevo. The former Bosnian
Serb president, a psychiatrist and poet who in 1991
pledged to drive Bosnian Muslims down “the highway of hell
and suffering,” had been living in the Serbian capital as
a New Age guru, promoting alternative medicine and “Human
Quantum Energy” under the name “Dragan David Dabic.”
Serbia hoped the arrest would hasten its campaign to join
the European Union, and it was reported that Ratko Mladic,
the general who led Bosnian Serb forces during the war and
is believed to be in hiding in Serbia, is protected by two
bodyguards under orders to kill him in the event of his
arrest. Two bombs placed in trash cans exploded in
Istanbul, killing thirteen people, and a bombing in Gaza
killed five Hamas militants and an eight-year-old girl. In
Ahmadabad, India, shortly after television stations
received an email that read, “In the name of Allah, the
Indian Mujahidin strike again! Do whatever you can, within
five minutes from now, feel the terror of death!” 16 bombs
exploded across the city, killing 45 people. Iraqi
officials said that a suicide attack that killed eight
people in Baquba, Iraq, had been carried out by a woman,
as indicated by the pair of feminine legs found nearby,
and four female suicide bombers killed 57 people in
Baghdad and Kirkuk. NASA announced that the lights of the
auroras australis and borealis are caused by magnetic
explosions one-third of the way to the sun.

Congress passed a $300 billion bailout for the mortgage
lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the mortgage
crisis was causing suicides. Wall Street got drunk,
President George W. Bush told an audience at a
fund-raiser. “Now it’s got a hangover.” Oil prices were
dropping, and the United States Geological Survey
announced that there are 90 billion barrels of oil in the
Arctic. China was paying parents of victims of the recent
earthquake in Sichuan province to sign statements to the
effect that the Communist Party “mobilized society to help
us”; Chinese newspapers were ordered to stop reporting on
school collapses; and a poll ranked China as the most
optimistic of 24 nations surveyed. Barack Obama delivered
a speech to a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin, and John McCain
endorsed a ban on affirmative action in his home state of
Arizona. France abolished the 35-hour workweek. “It’s a
specter,” said engineer Michel Guyot, who expects to
forsake his weekday trips to the limestone cliffs of the
Calanque de Sugiton. “A cloud over my head.” Iran executed
29 drug smugglers, and Iraq was banned from competing in
the Olympics. A locust plague in Mongolia threatened to
spoil next month’s games in Beijing. The planet
CoRot-Exo-4b, a ringed gas giant resembling Jupiter and
larger than the sun, was discovered 3,000 light-years
away, in the Unicorn constellation. California Governor
Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill requiring that
students in the state’s public schools be taught about
global warming. Bloggers for the Los Angeles Times
received a memo instructing them not to write about a
National Enquirer story alleging that former Senator John
Edwards was meeting his mistress at an
L.A. hotel. Research showed that men lust for women
whether or not they find them attractive.

During a children’s production of “Annie, Jr.” at
Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in
Knoxville, 58-year-old unemployed truck driver Jim
J. Adkisson opened fire on a packed sanctuary with a
twelve-gauge shotgun. “We were just, ‘Oh, my God, that’s
not part of the play,’” said Amira Parkey, 16, who was
playing Miss Hannigan. After killing one man and wounding
seven others (one of whom later died from her wounds),
Adkisson was tackled by John Bohstedt, who was playing
Daddy Warbucks. Actor Christian Bale was arrested in
London for allegedly assaulting his mother and sister, and
actress Estelle Getty died. Seventy-six-year-old Marlene
Mackenzie of North Caldwell, New Jersey, was arrested for
killing her husband by throwing a cocktail glass at his
head. Hot rubber safety mats on New York City playgrounds
were burning children’s feet, and lightning struck ten
people in New York and New Jersey, killing one. Edward
“Eddie” Davidson, a 35-year-old “spam king” convicted of
tax evasion and fraud, escaped from a minimum-security
prison in Bennett, Colorado, and killed his wife, his
three-year-old daughter, and himself in the SUV they had
used in the escape. Davidson’s 16-year-old daughter
escaped from the vehicle with a neck wound, and a
seven-month-old boy was found, unharmed in a car seat,
with the victims. Two employees at a deli in Brooklyn used
machetes to defeat three armed thieves attempting to steal
$2,000 worth of cigarettes. One of the attackers, said
clerk Sammy Othman, “had a knife on him and he said, ‘I
will stab you,’ and I told him, ‘Don’t even think about
it. My knife is more bigger than yours.’”

– Christian Lorentzen
http://harpers.org/archive/2008/07/WeeklyReview2008-07-29

bonus

Even the Government’s Nuclear Agency Thinks an Atomic Renaissance Is a Bad Idea
Harvey Wasserman, CounterPunch via Alternet
July 28, 2008

A devastating blow to the much-hyped revival of atomic power has been delivered by an unlikely source — the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The NRC says the “standardized” designs on which the entire premise of returning nuclear power to center stage is based have massive holes in them, and may not be ready for approval for years to come.

Delivered by one of America’s most notoriously docile agencies, the NRC’s warning essentially says: that all cost estimates for new nuclear reactors — and all licensing and construction schedules — are completely up for grabs, and have no reliable basis in fact. Thus any comparisons between future atomic reactors and renewable technologies are moot at best. And any “hard number” basis for independent financing for future nukes may not be available for years to come, if ever.

These key points have been raised in searing testimony before state regulators by Jim Warren of the North Carolina Waste and Awareness Reduction Network and Tom Clements of the South Carolina Friends of the Earth, and by others now challenging proposed state-based financing for new Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors. The NRC gave conditional “certification” to this “standardized” design in 2004, allowing design work to continue. But as recently as June 27, the NRC has issued written warnings that hundreds of key design components remain without official approval. Indeed, Westinghouse has been forced to actually withdraw numerous key designs, throwing the entire permitting process into chaos.

The catastrophic outcome of similar problems has already become tangible. After two years under construction, the first “new generation” French reactor being built in Finland is already more than two years behind schedule, and more than $2.5 billion over budget. The scenario is reminiscent of the economic disaster that hit scores of “first generation” reactors, which came in massively over budget and, in many cases, decades behind promised completion dates.

In North and South Carolina, public interest groups are demanding the revocation of some $230 million in pre-construction costs already approved by state regulators for two proposed Duke Energy reactors. In both those states, as well as in Florida, Alabama and Georgia, Westinghouse AP-1000 reactors have been presented to regulatory commissions to be financed by ratepayers as they are being built.

This astounding pro-utility scheme forces electric consumers to pay billions of dollars for nuclear plants that may never operate, and whose costs are indeterminate. Sometimes called Construction Work in Progress, it lets utilities raise rates to pay for site clearing, project planning, and down payments on large equipment and heavy reactor components, such as pressure vessels, pumps and generators, that can involve hundreds of millions of dollars, even before the projects get final federal approval. The process in essence gives utilities an incentive to drive up construction costs as much as they can. It allows them to force ratepayers to cover legal fees incurred by the utilities to defend themselves against lawsuits by those very ratepayers. And the public is stuck with the bill for whatever is spent, even if the reactor never opens — or if it melts down before it recoups its construction costs, as did Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island Unit Two in 1979, which self-destructed after just three months of operation.

According to Warren and Clements, Duke Energy and its cohorts have “filed some 6,500 pages of Westinghouse’s technical design documents as the major component of applications” to build new reactors. “Of the 172 interconnected Westinghouse documents,” say NCWARN and FOE, “only 21 have been certified.”

And most of what has been certified, they add, rely on systems that are unapproved, and that are key to the guts of the reactor, including such major components as the “reactor building, control room, cooling system, engineering designs, plant-wide alarm systems, piping and conduit.”

In other words, despite millions of dollars of high-priced hype, the “new generation” of “standardized design” power plants actually does not exist. The plans for these reactors have not been finalized by the builders themselves, nor have they been approved by the regulators. There is no operating prototype of a Westinghouse AP-1000 from which to draw actual data about how safely these plants might actually operate, what their environmental impact might be, or what they might cost to build or run.

In fact, as the NRC’s June 27 letter notes, Westinghouse has been forced to withdraw key technical documents from the regulatory process. The NRC says this means design approval for the AP-1000 might not come until 2012.

The problem extends to other designs. According to Michael Mariotte of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, the “Evolutionary Power Reactor” proposed for Calvert Cliffs, Maryland, “is way behind in certification” causing delays in the licensing process. Similar problems have arisen with the “Economic Simplified Boiling War Reactor” design proposed for North Anna, Virginia and Fermi, Michigan.

“All of these utilities seem to want standardization for the other guy, not for themselves, so most of them are making changes to the ’standardized’ designs, says Mariotte. “Even the ABWR,” being planned for a site in south Texas, which has actually been built before, “has design issues” that have caused delays.

The problem, says Mariotte, “is that the NRC is still trying to go ahead and do licensing even with the designs not certified. This is going to lead to a big mess later on.”

But in the meantime, Public Service Commissions like the one in Florida, have given preliminary approval to reactor proposals whose projected costs have more than doubled in just one year. Florida Power & Light’s two proposed reactors at Turkey Point, on the border of the Everglades National Park, are listed as costing somewhere between $6 billion and $9 billion. FP&L refuses to commit to a firm price, and is demanding south Florida ratepayers foot an unknowable bill for gargantuan projects whose costs are virtually certain to skyrocket long before the NRC approves the actual reactor designs. By contrast, the “huge” preliminary deal just reached between Florida, environmentalists and U.S. Sugar to buy some 180,000 acres of land to save the Everglades is now estimated at less than $2 billion, less than one-sixth the minimum estimated cost of the two reactors proposed for Turkey Point.

In the larger picture, the depth of this scam is staggering. With no finalized design, and no firm price tag, a second generation of nuclear power plants is now being put on the tab of southeastern citizens whose rates have already begun to skyrocket. These reactor projects cannot get private financing, and cannot proceed without either massive federal subsidies and loan guarantees, or a flood of these state-based give-aways. They also cannot get private insurance against future melt-downs, and have no solution for their radioactive waste problem.

Current estimates for finishing the proposed Yucca Mountain national waste repository, also yet to be licensed, are soaring toward $100 billion, even though it, too, may never open.

By contrast, firm costs for proposed wind farms, solar panels, increased efficiency and other green sources are proven and reliable. These projects are easily financed by private investors lining up to become involved. Some $6 billion in new wind farms are under construction or on order in the United States alone. They are established and profitable, and can in many cases can be up and running in less than a year.

The high-profile campaign to paint atomic energy as some kind of answer to America’s energy problems has hit the iceberg of its economic impossibilities. The atomic “renaissance” has no tangible approved design, and no firm construction or operating costs to present. There are no reliable new reactor construction schedules, except to know that it will be at least ten years before the first one could conceivably come on line, and that its price tag is unknowable.

In short, the “nuclear renaissance” is perched atop a gigantic technical and economic chasm that looms larger every day, and that could soon swallow the entire idea of building more reactors.

Concerns Raised Over France Nuclear Leaks
Gavin D.J. Harper, HuffPo
July 29, 2008

Hot on the heels of last week’s news that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission have stated that the designs for the next-generation (fourth? whatever happened to third?) of nuclear reactors has massive holes in [metaphorical holes you understand -- not literal ones a la Davis-Besse]; news from France.

The Independent Commission on Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRAD) has released a report which condemns the French nuclear industry.

Within the space of 15 days, four nuclear plant malfunctions have been reported, resulting in the contamination of 126 workers. So much for clean, green power.
On July 7th, 165 pounds of water containing radioactive uranium leaked out of the plant into local creeks and rivers, prompting a ban on fishing and watersports in this areas. Subsequent investigation revealed that this contamination may have been taking place for years.

On July 18th, at another nuclear facility, a broken pipe led to a release of radioactivity but “no damage to the environment”. The plant’s director, Alain Peckre, described the incident as “inconsequential.”

“This is the first time I have seen so many people being contaminated in such a short period of time… This type of contamination is a recurring problem. But that many people in such a short period of time, this worries us.”

– CRIIRAD Director: Corinne Castanier

Furthermore, the French nuclear operator EDF comes in for a pasting, for saying that the latest nuclear blunders had no impact on “peoples health” or “the environment” because the doses emitted fell short of the maximum limits set by international standards.

“The regulatory limits for radiation… do not mean there is no risk but relate to a maximum risk level that can be permitted”

A representative from CGT [Confederation generale du travail], asserted that the increased use of sub-contractors and reduction in maintenance was putting workers [and by extension members of the public] at risk in exchange for profits.

The news is particularly cutting, as France is often held up as the poster-child of the nuclear industry. More dependent than any other nation on nuclear power (with 80% of its electricity coming from nukes) bar Lithuania; whose population of 3.3 million is dependent on the single, Chernobyl-style RBMK reactor at Ignalia [more here -- scroll down for the English!].

This all comes at a time when French nuclear giant AREVA posts a 14.8% rise in first-half sales.

At a time when the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy is talking up the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), this could not come at a worse time.

The Pickens Plan, an alternative energy vision for America, has come out and said that Nuclear power will not be ready in time to avoid energy poverty with the depletion of fossil fuels. The arguments that nuclear power is not an answer to climate change are fallacious, and well documented.

Neither Obama or McCain have come out against civil nuclear power; which is incestuously linked with the nuclear weapons industry. Unsurprising really, as Obama has accepted $275,000 over the course of his career from Exelon Corp , a major player in the nuclear industry $190,000 this campaign.

John McCain’s hands are also irradiated with money from the nuclear industry, having accepted $107,000 from the nuclear industry.

When France can’t make nuclear power safely, the question is how long will it be before public opinion in America turns against nuclear power?

We Lie and Bluster About Our Nukes — and Then Wag Our Fingers at Iran
By failing to disarm and breaking the rules when it suits, nuclear states are driving proliferation as much as Ahmadinejad
George Monbiot, The Guardian/UK via CommonDreams
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

What is the Iranian government up to? For once the imperial coalition, overstretched in Iraq and unpopular at home, is proposing jaw, not war. The UN security council’s offer was a good one: if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment programme, it would be entitled to legally guaranteed supplies of fuel for nuclear power, assistance in building a light water reactor, foreign aid, technology transfer and the beginning of the end of economic sanctions. The US seems prepared, for the first time since the revolution, to open a diplomatic office in Tehran. But in Geneva, 10 days ago, the Iranians filibustered until the negotiations ended. On Saturday President Ahmadinejad announced that Iran has now doubled the number of centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium. A fourth round of sanctions looks inevitable.

The unequivocal statements Barack Obama and Gordon Brown made in Israel last week about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme cannot yet be justified. Nor can the unequivocal statements by some anti-war campaigners that Iran does not intend to build the bomb. Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states, if it accepted the UN’s terms?

Those who maintain that Iran’s purposes are peaceful clutch at the National Intelligence Estimate published by the US government in November. While it judged that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, it saw the country’s civilian uranium programme as a means of developing “technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so”.

The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency notes that no fissile material has been diverted from Iran’s stocks, but raises grave questions about some of the documents it has found, which suggest research into bomb-making (Iran says the papers are forgeries). Those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept Ahmadinejad’s claims of peaceful intent.

Nor do we have to accept the fictions of our own representatives. The security council’s offer to Iran claimed that resolving this enrichment issue would help to bring about a “Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction”. But like every other such document, it made no mention of the principal owner of weapons in the region: Israel. According to a leaked briefing by the US Defence Intelligence Agency, Israel possesses between 60 and 80 nuclear bombs. But none of the countries demanding that Iran scraps the weapons it doesn’t yet possess are demanding that Israel destroys the weapons it does possess.

This subject is the great political taboo. Neither Brown nor Obama mentioned it last week. The US intelligence agencies provide a biannual report to Congress on the weapons of mass destruction developed by foreign states, which covers Iran, North Korea, India, Pakistan and others, but not Israel. During a parliamentary debate in March the British defence minister Bob Ainsworth was asked whether he thought that Israel’s nuclear weapons are “a destabilising factor” in the Middle East. “My understanding,” he replied, “is that Israel does not acknowledge that it has nuclear weapons.” Does Mr Ainsworth really buy this nonsense? If so, can we have a new minister? If Iran builds a bomb, it will do so for one reason: that there is already a nuclear-armed state in the Middle East, by which it feels threatened.

But we make the rules and we break them. The non-proliferation treaty (NPT) obliges the five official nuclear states, of which the UK is one, to work towards “general and complete disarmament”. On Friday, the Guardian published the notes for a speech made last year by a senior civil servant, which suggested that the decision to replace the UK’s nuclear missiles had already been made, in secret and without parliamentary scrutiny. Since then defence ministers have told the Commons on five occasions that the decision has not yet been made. They appear to have misled the House.

At the Geneva conference on disarmament in February, one delegate pointed out that the “chances of eliminating nuclear weapons will be enhanced immeasurably” if non-nuclear states can see “planning, commitment and action toward multilateral nuclear disarmament by nuclear weapon states” like the UK. If the nuclear states “are failing to fulfil their disarmament obligations”, other nations would use this as an excuse for maintaining their weapons. Who was this firebrand? Des Browne, the secretary of state for defence. A man of the same name is failing to fulfil our disarmament obligations.

Browne claims that Britain must maintain its arsenal because of proliferation elsewhere, just as those proliferating elsewhere say that they must develop their arsenals because the official nuclear nations aren’t disarming. With the exception of France, none of the other European states feels the need to deploy nukes. But the UK keeps preparing for the last war. Of course, no one is refusing to disarm; it’s just that the task keeps getting pushed into the indefinite future. Opponents of British nuclear weapons maintain that a new generation of warheads would survive until 2055.

The permanent members of the UN security council draw a distinction between their “responsible” ownership of nuclear weapons and that of the aspirant powers. But over the past six years, the UK, US, France and Russia have all announced that they are prepared to use their nukes pre-emptively against a presumed threat, even from states that do not possess nuclear weapons. In some ways the current nuclear stand-off is more dangerous than the tetchy detente of the cold war.

The danger has been heightened by the US government’s current offensive. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, is demanding that other countries accept her plans to destroy the last remaining incentive for states to abide by the NPT. The treaty grants countries which conform to it materials for nuclear power on favourable terms. It’s a flawed incentive - as the spread of civil nuclear programmes makes the proliferation of military material more likely - but an incentive nonetheless. Now Rice insists that India should have special access to US nuclear materials despite the fact that it has not signed the NPT and has illegally developed nuclear weapons.

If she is successful, this effort - and the concomitant US demand that India is recognised as an official nuclear power - will blow the NPT to kingdom come. The treaty which survived the cold war, and which remains the most important of the wilting guarantees against global annihilation, is being nuked for the sake of a few billion dollars of export orders.

Here’s where it gets really depressing. The Bush administration’s proposal has been supported by both John McCain and Barack Obama. The contrast between Obama’s position on India and his statements on Iran could not be greater, or more destructive of the inflated hopes now vested in him.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s insistence that Iran enriches its own fissile material, and the guessing game he is playing with Israel, the atomic energy agency and the UN security council is irresponsible and staggeringly dangerous. But if I were in his position I might be tempted to do the same.

Acts of War
Scott Ritter, TruthDig via CommonDreams
Tuesday, July 29, 2008

The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities which result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned and Americans were being subjected to Iranian-funded covert actions which took the lives of Americans, on American soil, and destroyed American property and livelihood. Many Americans remain unaware of what is transpiring abroad in their name. Many of those who are cognizant of these activities are supportive of them, an outgrowth of misguided sentiment which holds Iran accountable for a list of grievances used by the U.S. government to justify the ongoing global war on terror. Iran, we are told, is not just a nation pursuing nuclear weapons, but is the largest state sponsor of terror in the world today.

Much of the information behind this is being promulgated by Israel, which has a vested interest in seeing Iran neutralized as a potential threat. But Israel is joined by another source, even more puzzling in terms of its broad-based acceptance in the world of American journalism: the Mujahadeen-e Khalk, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group sworn to overthrow the theocracy in Tehran. The CIA today provides material support to the actions of the MEK inside Iran. The recent spate of explosions in Iran, including a particularly devastating “accident” involving a military convoy transporting ammunition in downtown Tehran, appears to be linked to an MEK operation; its agents working inside munitions manufacturing plants deliberately are committing acts of sabotage which lead to such explosions. If CIA money and planning support are behind these actions, the agency’s backing constitutes nothing less than an act of war on the part of the United States against Iran.

The MEK traces its roots back to the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeg. Formed among students and intellectuals, the MEK emerged in the 1960s as a serious threat to the reign of Reza Shah Pahlevi. Facing brutal repression from the Shah’s secret police, the SAVAK, the MEK became expert at blending into Iranian society, forming a cellular organizational structure which made it virtually impossible to eradicate. The MEK membership also became adept at gaining access to positions of sensitivity and authority. When the Shah was overthrown in 1978, the MEK played a major role and for a while worked hand in glove with the Islamic Revolution in crafting a post-Shah Iran. In 1979 the MEK had a central role in orchestrating the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and holding 55 Americans hostage for 444 days.

However, relations between the MEK and the Islamic regime in Tehran soured, and after the MEK staged a bloody coup attempt in 1981, all ties were severed and the two sides engaged in a violent civil war. Revolutionary Guard members who were active at that time have acknowledged how difficult it was to fight the MEK. In the end, massive acts of arbitrary arrest, torture and executions were required to break the back of mainstream MEK activity in Iran, although even the Revolutionary Guard today admits the MEK remains active and is virtually impossible to completely eradicate.

It is this stubborn ability to survive and operate inside Iran, at a time when no other intelligence service can establish and maintain a meaningful agent network there, which makes the MEK such an asset to nations such as the United States and Israel. The MEK is able to provide some useful intelligence; however, its overall value as an intelligence resource is negatively impacted by the fact that it is the sole source of human intelligence in Iran. As such, the group has taken to exaggerating and fabricating reports to serve its own political agenda. In this way, there is little to differentiate the MEK from another Middle Eastern expatriate opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, or INC, which infamously supplied inaccurate intelligence to the United States and other governments and helped influence the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein. Today, the MEK sees itself in a similar role, providing sole-sourced intelligence to the United States and Israel in an effort to facilitate American military operations against Iran and, eventually, to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva conventions. The MEK says that its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.

The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.

Now, I have a simple solution to the issue of the laptop computer: Give it the UNSCOM treatment. Assemble a team of CIA, FBI and Defense Department forensic computer analysts and probe the computer, byte by byte. Construct a chronological record of how and when the data on the computer were assembled.

Check the “logic” of the data, making sure everything fits together in a manner consistent with the computer’s stated function and use. Tell us when the computer was turned on and logged into and how it was used. Then, with this complex usage template constructed, overlay the various themes which have been derived from the computer’s contents, pertaining to projects, studies and other activities of interest. One should be able to rapidly ascertain whether or not the computer is truly a key piece of intelligence pertaining to Iran’s nuclear programs.

The fact that this computer is acknowledged as coming from the MEK and the fact that a proper forensic investigation would probably demonstrate the fabricated nature of the data contained are why the U.S. government will never agree to such an investigation being done. A prosecutor, when making a case of criminal action, must lay out evidence in a simple, direct manner, allowing not only the judge and jury to see it but also the accused. If the evidence is as strong as the prosecutor maintains, it is usually bad news for the defendant. However, if the defendant is able to demonstrate inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the data being presented, then the prosecution is the one in trouble. And if the defense is able to demonstrate that the entire case is built upon fabricated evidence, the case is generally thrown out. This, in short, is what should be done with the IAEA’s ongoing probe into allegations that Iran has pursued nuclear weapons. The evidence used by the IAEA is unable to withstand even the most rudimentary cross-examination. It is speculative at best, and most probably fabricated. Iran has done the right thing in refusing to legitimize this illegitimate source of information.

A key question that must be asked is why, then, does the IAEA continue to permit Olli Heinonen, the agency’s Finnish deputy director for safeguards and the IAEA official responsible for the ongoing technical inspections in Iran, to wage his one-man campaign on behalf of the United States, Britain and (indirectly) Israel regarding allegations derived from sources of such questionable veracity (the MEK-supplied laptop computer)? Moreover, why is such an official given free rein to discuss such sensitive data with the press, or with politically motivated outside agencies, in a manner which results in questionable allegations appearing in the public arena as unquestioned fact? Under normal circumstances, leaks of the sort which have occurred regarding the ongoing investigation into Iran’s alleged past studies on nuclear weapons would be subjected to a thorough investigation to determine the source and to ensure that appropriate measures are taken to end them. And yet, in Vienna, Heinonen’s repeated transgressions are treated as a giant “non-event,” the 800-pound gorilla in the room that everyone pretends isn’t really there.

Heinonen has become the pro-war yin to the anti-confrontation yang of his boss, IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. Every time ElBaradei releases the results of the IAEA probe of Iran, pointing out that the IAEA can find no evidence of any past or present nuclear weapons program, and that there is a full understanding of Iran’s controversial centrifuge-based enrichment program, Heinonen throws a monkey wrench into the works. Well-publicized briefings are given to IAEA-based diplomats. Mysteriously, leaks from undisclosed sources occur. Heinonen’s Finnish nationality serves as a flimsy cover for neutrality which long ago disappeared. He is no longer serving in the role as unbiased inspector, but rather a front for the active pursuit of an American- and Israeli-inspired disinformation campaign designed to keep alive the flimsy allegations of a nonexistent Iranian nuclear weapons program in order to justify the continued warlike stance taken by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

The fact that the IAEA is being used as a front to pursue this blatantly anti-Iranian propaganda is a disservice to an organization with a mission of vital world importance. The interjection of not only the unverified (and unverifiable) MEK laptop computer data, side by side with a newly placed emphasis on a document relating to the forming of uranium metal into hemispheres of the kind useful in a nuclear weapon, is an amateurish manipulation of data to achieve a preordained outcome. Calling the Iranian possession of the aforementioned document “alarming,” Heinonen (and the media) skipped past the history of the document, which of course has been well explained by Iran previously as something the Pakistani nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan inserted on his own volition to a delivery of documentation pertaining to centrifuges. Far from being a “top-secret” document protected by Iran’s security services, it was discarded in a file of old material that Iran provided to the IAEA inspectors. When the IAEA found the document, Iran allowed it to be fully examined by the inspectors, and answered every question posed by the IAEA about how the document came to be in Iran. For Heinonen to call the document “alarming,” at this late stage in the game, is not only irresponsible but factually inaccurate, given the definition of the word. The Iranian document in question is neither a cause for alarm, seeing as it is not a source for any “sudden fear brought on by the sense of danger,” nor does it provide any “warning of existing or approaching danger,” unless one is speaking of the danger of military action on the part of the United States derived from Heinonen’s unfortunate actions and choice of words.

Olli Heinonen might as well become a salaried member of the Bush administration, since he is operating in lock step with the U.S. government’s objective of painting Iran as a threat worthy of military action. Shortly after Heinonen’s alarmist briefing in March 2008, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, emerged to announce, “As today’s briefing showed us, there are strong reasons to suspect that Iran was working covertly and deceitfully, at least until recently, to build a bomb.” Heinonen’s briefing provided nothing of the sort, being derived from an irrelevant document and a laptop computer of questionable provenance. But that did not matter to Schulte, who noted that “Iran has refused to explain or even acknowledge past work on weaponization.” Schulte did not bother to note that it would be difficult for Iran to explain or acknowledge that which it has not done.

“This is particularly troubling,” Schulte went on, “when combined with Iran’s determined effort to master the technology to enrich uranium.” Why is this so troubling? Because, as Schulte noted, “Uranium enrichment is not necessary for Iran’s civil program but it is necessary to produce the fissile material that could be weaponized into a bomb.”

This, of course, is the crux of the issue: Iran’s ongoing enrichment program. Not because it is illegal; Iran is permitted to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Not again because Iran’s centrifuge program is operating in an undeclared, unmonitored fashion; the IAEA had stated it has a full understanding of the scope and work of the Iranian centrifuge enrichment program and that all associated nuclear material is accounted for and safeguarded. The problem has never been, and will never be, Iran’s enrichment program. The problem is American policy objectives of regime change in Iran, pushed by a combination of American desires for global hegemony and an activist Israeli agenda which seeks regional security, in perpetuity, through military and economic supremacy. The specter of nuclear enrichment is simply a vehicle for facilitating the larger policy objectives. Olli Heinonen, and those who support and sustain his work, must be aware of the larger geopolitical context of his actions, which makes them all the more puzzling and contemptible.

A major culprit in this entire sordid affair is the mainstream media. Displaying an almost uncanny inability to connect the dots, the editors who run America’s largest newspapers, and the producers who put together America’s biggest television news programs, have collectively facilitated the most simplistic, inane and factually unfounded story lines coming out of the Bush White House. The most recent fairy tale was one of “diplomacy,” on the part of one William Burns, the No. 3 diplomat in the State Department.

I have studied the minutes of meetings involving John McCloy, an American official who served numerous administrations, Democratic and Republican alike, in the decades following the end of the Second World War. His diplomacy with the Soviets, conducted with senior Soviet negotiator Valerein Zorin and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev himself, was real, genuine, direct and designed to resolve differences. The transcripts of the diplomacy conducted between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho to bring an end to the Vietnam conflict is likewise a study in the give and take required to achieve the status of real diplomacy.

Sending a relatively obscure official like Burns to “observe” a meeting between the European Union and Iran, with instructions not to interact, not to initiate, not to discuss, cannot under any circumstances be construed as diplomacy. Any student of diplomatic history could tell you this. And yet the esteemed editors and news producers used the term diplomacy, without challenge or clarification, to describe Burns’ mission to Geneva on July 19. The decision to send him there was hailed as a “significant concession” on the part of the Bush administration, a step away from war and an indication of a new desire within the White House to resolve the Iranian impasse through diplomacy. How this was going to happen with a diplomat hobbled and muzzled to the degree Burns was apparently skipped the attention of these writers and their bosses. Diplomacy, America was told, was the new policy option of choice for the Bush administration.

Of course, the Geneva talks produced nothing. The United States had made sure Europe, through its foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, had no maneuvering room when it came to the core issue of uranium enrichment: Iran must suspend all enrichment before any movement could be made on any other issue. Furthermore, the American-backed program of investigation concerning the MEK-supplied laptop computer further poisoned the diplomatic waters. Iran, predictably, refused to suspend its enrichment program, and rejected the Heinonen-led investigation into nuclear weaponization, refusing to cooperate further with the IAEA on that matter, noting that it fell outside the scope of the IAEA’s mandate in Iran.

Condoleezza Rice was quick to respond. After a debriefing from Burns, who flew to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where Rice was holding closed-door meetings with the foreign ministers of six Arab nations on the issue of Iran, Rice told the media that Iran “was not serious” about resolving the standoff. Having played the diplomacy card, Rice moved on with the real agenda: If Iran did not fully cooperate with the international community (i.e., suspend its enrichment program), then it would face a new round of economic sanctions and undisclosed punitive measures, both unilaterally on the part of the United States and Europe, as well as in the form of even broader sanctions from the United Nations Security Council (although it is doubtful that Russia and China would go along with such a plan).

The issue of unilateral U.S. sanctions is most worrisome. Both the House of Representatives, through HR 362, and the Senate, through SR 580, are preparing legislation which would call for an air, ground and sea blockade of Iran. Back in October 1962, President Kennedy, when considering the imposition of a naval blockade against Cuba in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in that nation, opined that “a blockade is a major military operation, too. It’s an act of war.” Which, of course, it is. The false diplomacy waged by the White House in Geneva simply pre-empted any congressional call for a diplomatic outreach. Now the president can move on with the mission of facilitating a larger war with Iran by legitimizing yet another act of aggression. One day, in the not-so-distant future, Americans will awake to the reality that American military forces are engaged in a shooting war with Iran. Many will scratch their heads and wonder, “How did that happen?” The answer is simple: We all let it happen. We are at war with Iran right now. We just don’t have the moral courage to admit it.

Scott Ritter is a former U.N. weapons inspector and marine intelligence officer who has written extensively about Iran.

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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