Iran was on everyone’s mind at Cornell last spring. Members of the Student Assembly joined the leaders of Cornell Israel Public Affairs Committee to introduce what became perhaps the most controversial resolution of the year: Resolution 29. The majority of two S.A. meetings were spent discussing and finally passing the resolution, which urged the government to pressure “Iran [and] any other state sponsor of terror to stop their support of international terror organizations [and] the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
The resolution was hotly debated; the meetings were packed with those who supported it and those who opposed it. Many groups spoke out against the resolution for several reasons; members of the Iranian Student Organization, such as Mandana Arabi grad, said at the time, “with this resolution [Iranian students] are feeling marginalized and alienated from the Cornell community.” Although the S.A. eventually passed the resolution by a majority vote, the opinion expressed by it — both within the S.A. and in the Cornell community as a whole — was by no means unanimously agreed upon.
Now, Iran is on everyone’s minds again — and not just at Cornell. The rhetoric between U.S. and Iranian officials has escalated over the past several months. The surface issue remains the same: Iran’s development of nuclear technology.
The program in question is their uranium enrichment program, which Iranian officials say will provide nuclear power for the country. Many question the need for an energy program in a country with such vast natural resources. It is true that Iran has the second largest oil reserves in the world — behind Saudi Arabia but ahead of Iraq — along with the second largest natural gas reserves behind Russia. Nevertheless, economists have pointed out that, if Iran can develop an alternative energy source, it can sell all of its oil and natural gas on the world market, netting huge profits for the country.
Despite Iran’s stated reason for its uranium enrichment program, some, including the Bush administration, have accused Iran and its president Mahmoud Ahmandinejad, with using the guise of developing nuclear energy to develop nuclear weapons. This comes despite the most recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which recently declared that Iran had defied the international deadline to end their uranium enrichment program. The agency found that Iran was operating almost 1,000 centrifuges, but experts report that it would take 3,000 centrifuges running for a year in order to produced “weapons-grade fuel.” Obviously, Iran does not have nuclear weapons at this point and they may not even be developing them.
Thus, the question is why all this attention is being paid to nuclear development in one particular country: Iran.
It is certainly not because Iran is the only country that is working with nuclear technology. Five states are designated as “nuclear weapons states” by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China. In addition, three other states have successfully detonated nuclear weapons since the establishment of the NPT: India, Pakistan and North Korea. Thus, if Iran were seeking to develop nuclear weapons, they would be joining a well-established group of nuclear powers.
Although Israel has long been presumed to have nuclear weapons — with reports that it has over 200 of these weapons — the Israeli government had never officially confirmed or denied that it has nuclear weapons technology. That is until this past December, when Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert slipped up on a television interview in Germany while discussing Iran’s nuclear ambitions, saying, “Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly, threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?”
Here is a country that has admitted they have nuclear weapons, in violation of the NPT. The response from the U.S. government? Not a word. Obviously, the U.S.’s concern with Iran’s nuclear program does not stem from the fact that it is in violation of an international treaty.
In addition, the U.S. government recently reached a deal with North Korea, brokered by China, about their nuclear program. The deal requires North Korea to dismantle its Yongbyon nuclear reactor within 60 days, in exchange for 1 million tons of fuel oil. However, the agreement did not mention the nuclear weapons already developed in the country or the supposed existence of a secret program to enrich uranium.
This is the same North Korea that the Bush administration placed in the “axis of evil” alongside Iran and Iraq, after September 11. What is the difference between this agreement with North Korea and the threats against Iran? North Korea already has the ability to produce between six and 10 nuclear warheads, qualifying it as an actual threat to U.S. security. Sparking a conflict with North Korea would require huge military resources that we simply don’t have right now.
It is clear that the U.S. is not so much concerned about the development of nuclear weapons within Iran, but the development of Iran as a regional power outside of the control of the U.S. government.
Finally, we cannot forget that the country dishing out the harshest rhetoric to Iran is the U.S., the only county in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons. A country that dropped two atomic bombs on civilian targets, which has had long-term devastating consequences for the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is threatening sanctions and military action on a nation that does not even have nuclear weapons capability. Talk about hypocrisy.