Iran's nukes: Jack's straw man

http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAD65.htm

Why did the British foreign secretary get so hot under the collar over Iran's desire for nuclear technology?

by Brendan O'Neill


For third world countries, the humiliation of being lectured to by the West must increase tenfold when the person doing the lecturing is Jack Straw. Britain's usually invisible foreign secretary, best known in this country for his occasional bumbling performance on BBC Radio 4's Today programme and for having a son who once protested against his dad's government's proposed tuition fees for students, has given a stern telling off to Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for giving a 'disappointing and unhelpful' speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on Saturday.


Ahmadinejad defended Iran's 'inalienable right' to enrich uranium and attacked the 'nuclear apartheid' that allowed 'powerful states' to access materials for nuclear technology, while denying access to less powerful states (1). Straw was outraged. He accused Iran of inflaming tensions with the West and said the issue would have to be 'resolved by all facilities available to the international community' (2). This is code for sanctions: US and EU officials will now debate whether sanctions should be enforced against these 'disappointing' Iranians. The US State Department, meanwhile, said Ahmadinejad's speech was 'very aggressive' and accused him of 'crossing the line', and some Bush officials - the cranky ones who fantasise about 'full spectrum dominance' etc - have hinted that military action might be required to put the Iranians in their place (3).


Reading the coverage and watching Straw get hot under the collar on the BBC, you could be forgiven for thinking that Ahmadinejad had declared his country's intention to build a nuke, aim it at London or Washington, and make all of our worst fantasies about an 'Islamic Bomb' - long the stuff of James Bond-style fiction - a gruesome reality. In fact, his speech was a defence of Iran's right to use nuclear technology for 'peaceful purposes'. He said Iran has no interest in building nuclear WMDs but rather is keen to develop a 'nuclear fuel cycle', and intends to do so 'within the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, international regulations and cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)' (4). It hardly sounds like a return to a world organised around MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).