Netanyahu’s Nuclear Deceptions
A Response to Netanyahu From Iran’s Ambassador to the UN
By GHOLAMALI KHOSHROOMARCH 3, 2015
UNITED NATIONS — In the address on Tuesday to the United States Congress by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, we witnessed a new peak in the long-running hype over Iran’s nuclear energy program. Yet all his predictions about how close Iran was to acquiring a nuclear bomb have proved baseless.
Despite that, alarmist rhetoric on the theme has been a staple of Mr. Netanyahu’s career. In an interview with the BBC in 1997,
he accused Iran of secretly “building a formidable arsenal of ballistic
missiles,” predicting that eventually Manhattan would be within range.
In 1996, he stood before Congress and urged other nations to join him to
prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capability, stressing that “time is
running out.” Earlier, as a member of Parliament, in 1992, he predicted that Iranwould be able to produce a nuclear weapon within three to five years.
In front of world leaders at the United Nations in September 2012,Mr. Netanyahu escalated his warnings by declaring that Irancould
acquire the bomb within a year. It is ironic that in doing so, he
apparently disregarded the assessment of his own secret service: A
recently revealed document showed that the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence
agency, had advised that Iran was “not performing the activity
necessary to produce weapons.” The United States intelligence community
had reached the same conclusion in itsNational Intelligence Estimate.
Despite
extensive inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, no
evidence has ever been presented to contradict the clear commitment by
Iran’s leaders that they would under no circumstances engage in
manufacturing, stockpiling and using nuclear weapons. In 2013, for example, only Japan, which has many more nuclear facilities than Iran, was subject to greater agency scrutiny.
Yet,
in his speech this week, Mr. Netanyahu claimed the agency had
determined that Iran had “a military nuclear program.” This is a gross
distortion of the agency’s position. The “possible military dimensions,”
which Mr. Netanyahu amplifies on every available occasion, are based
not on the agency’s findings but on referrals by other member states
with their own political agendas. In one case, in 2012, a former agency
director dismissed such a report “because
there was no chain of custody for the paper, no clear source, document
markings, date of issue or anything else that could establish its
authenticity.”
Iran
has also alerted the agency to many errors in the relevant documents,
and our position has been confirmed by independent nonproliferation
experts. We will nevertheless continue to work with the agency to
resolve this issue — despite our skepticism, which leads us to recall the notorious forged document about Niger’s “yellowcake” uranium that was used to coax the Security Council into authorizing the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
As
one side of the talks that continue in Geneva, Iran can also bear
testimony to the campaign of misinformation by Mr. Netanyahu to mislead
the global public about the details of those nuclear negotiations. When
the parties were finalizing the interim agreement in 2013, Mr. Netanyahu claimed that it would involve Iran’s receiving $50 billion in sanctions relief; the actual amount was about $7 billion.
And as for his prediction that Iran would never abide by the terms of
the accord, Iran has dutifully stood by every commitment — as the
International Atomic Energy Agency has reported.
In
our view, Mr. Netanyahu has consistently used these false alarms and
outlandish claims both to serve his domestic political maneuvering and
to create a smoke screen that relegates thePalestinian question
to the margins. We have noted how his rhetoric has intensified in
proportion to the international pressure on Israel to stop the
settlement activity and end the occupation of the Palestinian territory.
The
paradox of the situation is that a government that has built a
stockpile of nuclear weapons, rejected calls to establish a
nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East, made military incursions
into neighboring states and flouted international law by keeping the
lands of other nations under occupation, now makes such a big fuss over a
country, Iran, that has not invaded another country since America
became a sovereign nation.
Mr.
Netanyahu seems to be in a state of panic at the prospect of losing
this tool with which to attack Iran, as we do all in our power to
address the genuine concerns of the international community and arrive
at a settlement over our country’s nuclear energy program. Iran’s
efforts, epitomized by the 2013 interim agreement, aim to resolve the
issue with the P5-plus-1 group of countries (the five permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany). Since Israel’s
prime minister appears to be a person who thrives on chaos and conflict,
we fear that he may have further plans to poison the atmosphere and sow
discord among those involved in this historic effort.
There
are other great issues at hand in the Middle East. The violent
extremism we see in Syria and Iraq is one, and to fight it effectively,
we need to ease international tensions. We must all address the problem
of the breeding grounds that are delivering fresh recruits to the
terrorist cause. Israeli aggression and the occupation of Palestinian
territories have always been of major propaganda value for extremist
recruitment.
During
the quarter-century that Mr. Netanyahu and his allies have tried to
keep Iran’s nuclear program at the forefront of the global agenda, they
increased the number of illegal settlers in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem to more than 750,000 from
about 300,000. At the same time, Palestinians have continued to be
evicted from their homes and land. This historic wrong, coupled with the
blockade of Gaza, is the real ticking bomb in the Middle East. The
whole world should work to defuse it by rising above petty politics and
the lobbying of narrow-minded pressure groups.
Gholamali Khoshroo is Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/
No comments:
Post a Comment