Don't Bomb Iran

Category: US

  • Bolton suggests Israeli nuclear attack on Iran

    “So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.” So said  Bush’s former UN ambassador  John Bolton at the University of Chicago.

    “Bolton’s use of the n-word is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks” says Daniel Luban in this  IPS story.

    Bolton suggests nuclear attack on Iran

    By Daniel Luban

    This Friday, the American Enterprise Institute will host an event addressing the question “Should Israel attack Iran?” The event includes, among others, Iran uberhawk Michael Rubin and infamous “torture lawyer” John Yoo, but the real star is likely to be John Bolton, the former U.N. ambassador whose right-of-Attila views left him an outcast even within the second Bush administration. (Bolton was eventually forced out when it became clear that he would be unable to win Senate confirmation for the U.N. post.)

    If Bolton’s recent rhetoric is any indication, his AEI appearance may accomplish the formidable feat of making Michael Rubin sound like a dove. Discussing Iran during a Tuesday speech at the University of Chicago, Bolton appeared to call for nothing less than an Israeli nuclear first strike against the Islamic Republic. (The speech, sponsored by the University Young Republicans and Chicago Friends of Israel, was titled, apparently without a trace of irony, “Ensuring Peace.”)

    “Negotiations have failed, and so too have sanctions,” Bolton said, echoing his previously-stated belief that sanctions will prove ineffectual in changing Tehran’s behavior. “So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”

    Bolton made clear that the latter option is unacceptable. “There are some people in the administration who think that it’s not really a problem, we can contain and deter Iran, as we did the Soviet Union during the Cold War. I think this is a great, great mistake and a dangerously weak approach…Whatever else you want to say about them, at least the Soviets believed that they only went around once in this world, and they weren’t real eager to give that up — as compared to a theological regime in Tehran which yearns for life in the hereafter more than life on earth…I don’t think [deterrence] works that way with a country like Iran.”

    While Bolton coyly refused to spell out his conclusion, the implications of his argument were clear. If neither negotiations, nor sanctions, nor deterrence are options, then by his logic the only remaining option is for “Israel…to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program.”

    Of course, it is nothing new for Bolton and his neoconservative allies to threaten an Israeli strike against Iran. But Bolton’s use of the “n-word” is, I believe, new for him, and marks a significant rhetorical escalation from the hawks. An Israeli strike, nuclear or otherwise, without U.S. permission remains unlikely. But as it often the case, I suspect that Bolton’s intention is less to give an accurate description of reality than it is to stake out positions extreme enough to shift the boundaries of debate as a whole to the right.


  • US defense spending – $534 or $890 billion – up to $3000 per citizen

    Below is  an extract from a Motherjones article:

    Shock and Audit: The Hidden Defense Budget

    By Rachel Morris | Mon June 22, 2009 3:00 AM PST

    This year Obama asked Congress for $534 billion to fund the Department of Defense. That’s a lot of dough. But the real amount that the US spends on defense is actually much higher.

    The Office of Management and Budget calculates a total for defense spending throughout different parts of the government (it includes money allocated to the Pentagon, nuclear weapons activities at the Department of Energy and some security spending in the State Department and FBI). In the 2010 budget, that figure was $707 billion, more than half of the government’s discretionary spending for the year. (Discretionary spending is the money that’s appropriated every year by Congress, rather than entitlement programs like Medicare for which funding is mandatory).

    Source: Office of Management and Budget

    But the real number is even higher, because, among other things, the OMB doesn’t count supplemental spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve combed through this year’s budget documents to add up military-related spending throughout the entire government. Here’s what we found:

    Pentagon budget 534 billion
    Extra appropriations for military personnel 4.1 billion
    Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental funding (fiscal year 2010) 130 billion
    Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental funding (fiscal year 2009, yet to be signed into law) 82.2 billion
    Nuclear weapons and other atomic spending
    (Department of Energy)    		 16.4 billion
    Military and economic aid to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
    (State Department)    		 4.9 billion
    Security, counterterrorism assistance, and military aid to foreign countries, including the Middle East and Israel
    (State Department)    		 8.4 billion
    Coast Guard spending in the Department of Homeland Security 583 million
    Total defense spending throughout the government 780.4 billion

    As you’ll see, we leaned on the conservative side here by only counting money that’s directly related to military activities. We didn’t, for instance, add in money for the Department of Veterans Affairs ($55.9 billion), which would take the total to $836.3 billion; or the rest of the Department of Homeland Security ($54.5 billion), which would take it to $890.8. (The wider national security apparatus isn’t included either—budgets for the intelligence services are classified.) If we did include these extras, here’s what the difference between the official budget and the real one would look like:

  • Yankee Bombs Go Home: German Foreign minister

    Germany’s US-supplied  nuclear weapons should leave Gemany, says foreign minister Steinmeier in a major change of policy promted by Obama-itis.  He is the soft-left opposition candidate standing against Angela Merkel for Chancellor – she still thinks American  Cold War A-bombs should stay in Germany to secure its influence in NATO, says Der Spiegel.   The US also  ‘lends’ nukes to foreign air forces in non-nuclear countries like Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands for their use in times of touble under a bizarre ‘nuclear-sharing’ agreement from the Cold War.

    Spiegel story:  Yankee Bombs Go Home: Foreign Minister Wants US Nukes out of Germany – SPIEGEL ONLINE

    YANKEE BOMBS GO HOME

    Foreign Minister Wants US Nukes out of Germany

    Reacting to Obama’s vision of a nuclear-free world, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier has called for American nuclear weapons to be removed from Germany. His stance is in opposition to Chancellor Merkel, who wants to keep the bombs to secure Germany’s say in NATO.

    US President Barack Obama’s recent calls for “a world without nuclear weapons” may have been slammed by some critics as dangerously naive. But it has prompted German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier to come up with his own, more achievable goal: a Germany without American nuclear weapons.

    “These weapons are militarily obsolete today,” Steinmeier told SPIEGEL, explaining that he would take steps to ensure that the remaining US warheads “are removed from Germany.” Disarmament involving “weapons in this category” also needs to be an issue on the agenda at the disarmament conference which the US is planning, Steinmeier said.

    With his remarks, Steinmeier, who is the center-left Social Democratic Party’s official candidate for chancellor in September general elections, is taking the opposite stance from Chancellor Angela Merkel. The German leader told the German parliament, the Bundestag, shortly before the recent NATO summit, that the German government still fully supported the NATO doctrine of “nuclear sharing,” whereby non-nuclear states such as Germany host third-party nukes in order to get more say in decision-making. Hosting American nuclear weapons secures Berlin’s “influence in the defense alliance, including in this highly sensitive area,” said Merkel, who was already aware of Obama’s pending no-nukes initiative at the time.

    Sources in the Defense Ministry, which is under the control of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, also said that only countries which host US nuclear bombs could “have a serious say” within NATO.

    However opponents of nuclear sharing currently have a majority in the Bundestag. The far-left Left Party and the Greens want nuclear weapons out of Germany, as do the Social Democrats’ defense experts. After Obama’s speech, Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, also called for the warheads to be “removed.”

    During the Cold War, the then-West German government in Bonn managed to acquire a certain amount of decision-making power relating to American nuclear weapons. Thousands of US warheads were stored in West Germany at the time.

    After German reunification in 1990, however, the US withdrew almost all its warheads from Europe. Nowadays US bombs are still stored in Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey, as well as Germany, where they are kept in a Bundeswehr air base in Büchel in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Altogether around 100 American nukes are stored in Europe. However a commission of experts told US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last December that the warheads have “no military value” and that storing them safely consumes “enormous sums of money.”

    NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group, which in the past only included countries with nuclear weapons, now includes all the alliance’s member states except France. States such as Greece and Canada which abandoned nuclear sharing years ago, still participate in the group on equal terms.

  • US labs use British nuclear factory to build new bombs

    The US has been using Britain’s atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme, according to evidence seen by the Guardian. This has been suspected for some years.  The US weapons industry has long been prevented by Congress from researching a “replacement warhead”, and the UK denies it has such a programme. But the UK government has recently spent tens of billions mysteriously upgrading Britain’s factory at Aldermaston, and at Christmas it secretly sold it’s stake to US companies;  thus creating a Guantanamo for nukes, an offshore legal black hole where US companies can design the next generation of weapons without Congressional oversight and without sharing the technical secrets with foreign companies or parliaments.     US weapons labs last week unhappily revealed that Obama may end civilian control of bomb development after decades,  and move such work to the Pantagon –  a move seen to be an attempt to weaken the labs’ influence on policy.    Article 1 of the Non-Proliferation treaty prohibits ‘transfer’ of nuclear weapons between countries, but the US and UK have a secret agreement on nuclear technology sharing –  including recent warhead re-entry upgrades that gave British bombs the ability to destroy very hard targets in a first strike.  Koffi Annan describes such modernisation as a swindle incompatible with the NPT

    Guardian article below:

    US Using British atomic weapons factory for its nuclear programme

    Joint warhead research carried out at Aldermaston

    Work breaches nuclear treaty, campaigners warn

    Matthew Taylor and Richard Norton-Taylor

    The Guardian Monday 9 February 2009

    The US has been using Britain’s atomic weapons factory to carry out research into its own nuclear warhead programme, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.

    US defence officials said that “very valuable” warhead research has taken place at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston in Berkshire as part of an ongoing and secretive deal between the British and American governments.

    The Ministry of Defence admitted it is working with the US on the UK’s “existing nuclear warhead stockpile and the range of replacement options that might be available” but declined to give any further information.

    Last night, opposition MPs called for a full parliamentary inquiry into the extent of the collaboration at Aldermaston and campaign groups warned any such deal was in breach of international law. They added that it also undermined Britain’s claim to have an independent nuclear weapons programme and meant British taxpayers were effectively subsidising America’s nuclear programme.

    The US president, Barack Obama, while on the campaign trail said he wanted to eliminate nuclear weapons and that one of his first actions on taking office would be to “stop the development of new nuclear weapons”. But the Pentagon is at odds with the president. The defence secretary, Robert Gates, and other senior officials argue that the US’s existing arsenal needs to be upgraded and that would not constitute “new” weapons.

    Kate Hudson, of CND, said: “Any work preparing the way for new warheads cuts right across the UK’s commitment to disarm, which it signed up to in the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. That this work may be contributing to both future US and British warheads is nothing short of scandalous.”

    Nick Harvey, defence spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, said parliament and the country would react with “outrage” at the prospect of British taxpayers funding a new US nuclear weapon.

    “All this backroom dealing and smoke and mirrors policy is totally unacceptable, the government must open the Aldermaston accounts to full parliamentary scrutiny,” he added.

    The extent of US involvement at Aldermaston came to light in an interview with John Harvey, policy and planning director at the US National Nuclear Security Administration, carried out last year by the thinktanks Chatham House and the Centre for Strategic Studies.

    Referring to “dual axis hydrodynamic” experiments which, with the help of computer modelling, replicate the conditions inside a warhead at the moment it starts to explode, Harvey said: “There are some capabilities that the UK has that we don’t have and that we borrow… that I believe we have been able to exploit that’s been very valuable to us.”

    It is unclear whether the experiments are still being carried out but, in the same interview, Harvey admitted that the US and UK had struck a new deal over the level of cooperation, including work on US plans for a new generation of nuclear warhead known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW). He said: “We have recently, I can’t tell you when, taken steps to amend the MDA [Mutual Defence Agreement], not only to extend it but to amend it to allow for a broader extent of cooperation than in the past, and this has to do with the RRW effort.”

    Campaigners said the comments represent the first direct evidence that the US is using UK facilities to develop its nuclear programme. Lawyers acting on their behalf said the increasing levels of cooperation and the extension the MDA breach the non-proliferation treaty, which states: “Each nuclear weapon state party to the treaty undertakes not to transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices indirectly or indirectly.”

    The MoD admitted the two countries are working together, “examining both the optimum life of the UK’s existing nuclear warhead stockpile and the range of replacement options that might be available to inform decisions on whether and how we may need to refurbish or replace the existing warhead likely to be necessary in the next parliament”.

    Congress has stopped funding research into RRW but campaigners believe the US military may have used facilities in the UK to get around the restrictions at home.

    “Billions of pounds have been poured into the Atomic Weapons Establishment over recent years to build new research facilities,” said Hudson. “If these are being used to support US programmes outside Congress’s controls on spending, it raises even more serious questions about why the British taxpayer is paying for a so-called ‘independent deterrent’.”

  • Obama to end civilian control of nuclear weapons labs?

    Los Alamos Online News reports that Obama is considering giving the Pentagon control of the US weapons factories, ending over 50 years of civilian control at the Department of Energy.  A Democrat move to do this failed in 2000 but as a compromise the semi-autonomous NNSA within the DOE was set up – it has not been a great sucess.   Los Alamos is not happy, although the Pentagon chief must be keen – he wants to build a new generation of weapons or test old ones.


    Los Alamos Online News

    White House weighs moving labs under Pentagon

    By ROGER SNODGRASS, Monitor Editor
    New Mexico’s congressional delegation reacted strongly to hints that the Obama administration might be considering transferring pieces of the nuclear weapons laboratories to the Pentagon.

    A “passback” memo containing instructions from the White House Office of Management and Budget calls for the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to put their heads together with other stakeholders of the nuclear weapons labs to plan what could amount to a radical dismemberment of the National Nuclear Security Administration that oversees the nuclear weapons complex.

    The relevant page of the memo, obtained by the Monitor Wednesday, calls for the defense and energy departments to “assess the costs and benefits of transferring budget and management of NNSA or its components to DoD and elsewhere, as appropriate, beginning in FY 2011.”

    The assessment group is supposed to be identified and up and running by next month and deliver a final report by the end of September.

    Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s, D-N.M., chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, immediate reaction was he would “fight it tooth and nail if they intended to proceed with it.”

    Wednesday, he said he was in strong disagreement with the idea and was talking to other members of Congress and the departments to get their views of the idea.”

    “I expressed in no uncertain terms that this was something I would strongly object to,” he said. “This is something that would not be good for the country and it would be a major misstep.”

    Los Alamos National Laboratory and the NNSA site office officials said they were unable to comment on the internal memo.

    At least one policy analyst has seen something like this coming.

    Jack Jekowski, a weapons complex consultant in Albuquerque, began alerting his clients last month that history was beginning to repeat itself. He was seeing trend lines similar to the period in the late 1990s that led up to the attempted DOE Abolishment Act in 1999, sponsored by former Sen. Spencer Abraham.

    Abraham became the first Energy Secretary in the Bush Administration in 2001.

    The pressure to transfer or close laboratories was somewhat relieved briefly during a “honeymoon” period after the establishment of the NNSA, as a “quasi-independent” agency within DOE, but about nine months after 9/11, Jekowski observed, “the intensity and frequency of negative assessments against DOE/NNSA has increased seemingly taking the external perspective to a height of contempt for the Department by some members of Congress,” harking back to the previous period when the organizational surgery was proposed.

    “All the indicators were pointing to the possibility that this was about to happen again,” Jekowski said Wednesday.

    With the decision to open several additional weapons laboratories up for competition and a period of safety and security problems centered at LANL, concerns began to grow again, reflected in reports and audits by the DOE Inspector General, the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service.

    Efforts to resolve generally recognized needs for change and consolidation were greeted by a discordant variety of independent reviews and spirited opposition to weapons projects and investments.

    A major review by the Defense Science Board was released at the end of 2006, concluding that there was little hope for reform within the present DOE/NNSA structure.

    While weighing the idea of transferring the energy department’s nuclear weapons work to the Pentagon, the board decided that was beyond DOD’s management experience, but called for a new independent entity with a closer relationship to the Pentagon.

    The report agreed with other studies that a lack of a national consensus about the role and future needs of nuclear weapons hindered the search for a solution.

    In his analysis, Jekowski has noted some new studies that are now in the works within the short to medium term.

    Among them are recommendations by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the U.S., a report on nuclear policy, the Nuclear Posture Review and the DOD Quadrennial Defense Review.

    The coincidence of weighty evaluations offers an opportunity, as was the case during the early Bush administration, for another rare opening to realign the nation’s nuclear weapons regime.

    “My own take is that there is a new generation coming through,” Jekowski said. “They don’t have the ownership of these previous decision processes, or the wisdom. It’s a younger generation that wants to go forward with their own ideas. Let’s hope they don’t, in the process, make decisions that the world will come to regret.”

    Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., also sent out a statement Wednesday, saying he had worked in the House of Representatives to find ways that New Mexico’s laboratories could expand their mission in all areas of national security.

    “I will fight alongside Sen. Bingaman against any effort to limit the ability of these labs to expand their missions,” he said.

    Rep. Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., issued a statement regarding the reports .

    “I am concerned by recent reports regarding the prospect of moving Los Alamos National Laboratory out of the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy and solely under the control of the Department of Defense. Such a potential move would be extremely  problematic, endangering critical research and jobs. I will work with my colleagues to fight any such change. We must protect jobs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, promote research on renewable energy and encourage environmental cleanup.

    “Moreover, under the Department of Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory is uniquely positioned to address the energy and economy crises.”

  • Israel broke international law in Syrian attack: El Baradei

    The Israeli attack on Syria in September 2007 broke international law says the chief of  the UN’s nuclear agency,  in an interview with Newsweek.  He complained that instead of  giving the IAEA evidence of an alleged Syrian nuclear reactor,  Israel “violated the rules of international law on the use of unilateral force”, adding that the IAEA still does not have evidence of a Syrian reactor at the bombed site.  Reports have surfaced that the US helped Israel with the attack

    Newsweek:  ‘You Cannot Treat Iran Like a Donkey’

    Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the IAEA, says there is now a chance for real dialogue between Tehran and the West.

    Lally Weymouth

    NEWSWEEK

    From the magazine issue dated Feb 9, 2009

    Also in Davos, Mohamed ElBaradei, the controversial director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), sat down with NEWSWEEK’s Lally Weymouth to defend his record. Several Bush administration officials as well as some nonproliferation experts claim ElBaradei soft-pedaled criticisms of Iran’s nuclear program in order to avoid justifying a U.S. military attack on that country. ElBaradei disagrees. Excerpts:

    Weymouth: In retrospect, do you think you allowed Iran to push the limits?
    ElBaradei:     This is a complete misunderstanding. We have done as much as we can do in Iran to make sure that we understand the history and the present status of their [nuclear] program, to try to push them as far as we can, within our authority, to come clean. The idea people have that we are God, that we are able to cross borders, open doors … We don’t have that [kind of] authority.

    Iran has a technical aspect and a political aspect. The technical aspect is our part of the job. The political aspect is the dialogue to build confidence and trust. I have said for the past six years that the policy of building trust between the West—the United States in particular—and Iran has failed completely. We haven’t moved one iota.

    What do you mean exactly?
    You’re not going to have trust unless you have a direct dialogue. President Obama right now is saying he’s ready to have a direct dialogue without preconditions, based on mutual respect. I say this is absolutely overdue.

    You cannot … treat Iran like a donkey, with carrots and sticks. This is a competition for power in the Middle East.

    Iran versus the West?
    Well, it’s a competition between Iran and the West … Iran wants to have its role as a regional security power recognized

    … They see that if you have the technology that can allow you to develop a nuclear weapon in a short period of time, it gives you power, prestige and security … They heard from the previous administration talk about allocating funds for regime change, about an Axis of Evil, and if you were in their place, you would do everything you could to protect yourself.

    Do you think there’s a chance dialogue will work?
    You have to try. It might not work, but I know the majority of the Iranian people want to have a normal relationship with the U.S., particularly the young people. They want to be part of the international community. If you don’t talk, what do you get?

    You were elected IAEA director with the support of the United States, and later Washington treated you quite badly.
    It was during my third re-election when former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton initiated a campaign to block my re-election. They did not get one single country to stand against me, and in the end I was elected by consensus with U.S. support. You can disagree with the head of the international organization, but we are not there to implement the policies of one country. If an organization like IAEA is regarded as a broker for one country, it will be killed.

    Experts say you’ve been quite tough on Iran since the National Intelligence Estimatein 2007.
    We haven’t changed. We have always been tough. What they don’t like is, they say I speak outside of the box. In many cases, privately and in public, I have been telling them, you need to support me with your policy, and your policy is not working. Either you want a leader for an international institution or you want some technocrat. But if you have a technocrat, you will go nowhere.

    People say you weren’t tough enough on Syria for building a nuclear reactor.
    I have been very harsh on Israel because they violated the rules of international law on the use of unilateral force, and they did not provide us with the information before the bombing [with] which we could have established whether Syria was building a nuclear reactor … Now we are doing our best to try to see what Syria was doing, but it’s like Iran. I cannot jump the gun and say Syria was building a nuclear facility because what we are doing now is trying to verify what was there.

    Why don’t you criticize Syria and North Korea for building this facility?
    Because we don’t have the evidence. If I had had the evidence before the bombing, I could have done it in 24 hours.

    URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/182525

  • Bush offers Emirates nuclear power by 2017 – they say it’s a possible route to the bomb

    In the last days, Bush signed a deal with friendly Gulf state the UAE to “acquire nuclear technology if Iran pushes ahead”, possibly giving the Emirates a nuclear power programme by 2017.   The Emirates minister made clear this was  an arms race, and announced that  importing nuclear technology for electricity does potentially give the UAE a chance to seek nuclear weapons.  He added  “If Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is going to collapse and Iran gets a bomb, then it will open the door for an arms race in the region,” forgetting to mention that the Bush administration policy was  to make the NPT  collapse.  Congress has 90 days to reverse this offer says the AP story below

    US-UAE nuclear energy pact has messages for Iran

    By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

    Wednesday, January 21, 2009

    (01-21) 00:05 PST DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) —

    An atomic energy deal between the U.S. and the United Arab Emirates, signed in the waning days of the Bush administration, could give Mideast nations a significant boost toward acquiring nuclear technology if Iran pushes ahead with its own ambitions.

    The pact signed last week in Washington can help the UAE become the first Arab nation to develop a nuclear power-generating industry as early as 2017, according to U.S. officials.

    The Bush administration has championed the agreement as a model for promoting peaceful nuclear energy, while guarding against weapons proliferation. The deal sets the legal groundwork for U.S. commercial nuclear trade with the UAE, which sits just across the Persian Gulf from Iran.

    But it also allows Gulf nations worried about Iran’s nuclear program to send a signal to Tehran.

    “The clear message to Iran is: If Tehran insists on pursuing its nuclear program, we (Arab countries in the region) are going to have one, although without enrichment,” said Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center.

    “Arab states can no longer ignore nuclear technology. There is a huge nuclear technology gap between the Arab states and their neighbors such as Iran, Pakistan and Israel. We need to work to narrow this gap,” Alani said.

    It is unclear if the Obama administration will stick with the deal or abandon it. Congress will either block or ratify the deal within 90 days.

    Under the deal, the UAE renounces the option of enriching uranium and producing nuclear fuel itself and instead would buy fuel from abroad for a reactor.

    Uranium enrichment can be used to produce nuclear fuel but can also generate the material needed for a nuclear weapon — which is why the United States and its allies are trying to get Iran to suspend its enrichment program.

    In Iran, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hassan Qashqavi said the deal showed a U.S. double standard on nuclear technology, pointing to U.S. pressure on Tehran to limit its program.

    Iran says its program is aimed only at generating electricity and denies aiming to build a weapon.

    Currently, no Arab nation has a full-fledged nuclear energy program, though several — like Egypt — have small-scale research reactors. The U.S. signed a technology cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia last month that includes cooperation on a peaceful nuclear energy program. Egypt has also said it intends to develop a peaceful energy program and Washington has said it is willing to help.

    Alani said importing nuclear technology does potentially give the UAE a chance to seek nuclear weapons capability in the long term should Iran develop an atomic bomb. The UAE has foresworn nuclear arms as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

    “If Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is going to collapse and Iran gets a bomb, then it will open the door for an arms race in the region,” Alani said.

    The State Department says the United States would have grounds to scrap the agreement if the UAE reneges on its commitment not to engage in enrichment or reprocessing activities.

  • IAEA snow banner – “Yes we can”

    A giant “YES, WE CAN!” was carved in the snow outside the IAEA building on Tuesday.   Norbert Aschenbrenner came into work early for the job, and was probably not the only IAEA employee who expects more respect from the new White House than the trashing it got from the last one.  Picture  and AP story below

    IAEA employee happy that Bush is gone

    Obama inauguration scenes from around the world

    1 day ago

    VIENNA, Austria (AP) — It was just a scribble in the snow.

    But the giant “YES, WE CAN!” that Norbert Aschenbrenner carved in huge block letters at the U.N. complex in Vienna on Tuesday was a poignant expression of how many people in the international community are embracing Barack Obama.

    Aschenbrenner works for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which went up against President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Bush administration said Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction; the IAEA insisted its inspectors had found no evidence of any.

    Aschenbrenner said he felt compelled to do something to express his pleasure with the change of leadership in Washington. “So I came in early today, at 7 a.m., and felt a bit like a graffiti sprayer,” he said.

    U.N. workers peered down at the giant slogan from their office windows and snapped photos with their cell phones.

    By midafternoon, it had mostly melted away.

    “We trust this is not a metaphor for how quickly the vision of Obama will be dissipated!” said Neil Jarvis, an IAEA official from South Africa. “May it rather last for a long, long time.”

    _By William J. Kole.

  • Each US family spends about $800 on nukes each year

    The US spends much more on its nuclear bombs than it does on foreign aid and diplomacy combined, says a Carnegie report.   $52 billion a year is apparently a conservative estimate, so each American spends about $200 on weapons of mass destruction annually.  And remember, the Pentagon wants to throw away all their old ones and build a new fleet.

    The Rawstory story is below, the Carnegie Institute for Peace  study is posted on the Federation for American Scientists’ Secrecy News

    Revealed: US spends more than $52 billion a year on nukes

    from  Rawstory

    John Byrne
    Published: Monday January 12, 2009

    The United States spends more than $52 billion a year maintaining, upgrading and operating its nuclear weapons arsenal each year, a little-heralded study revealed Monday.

    Outside of the hefty price tag, equally significant is the way the money is spent. The US devoted just 1.3 percent — or $700 million — to preparing for the consequences of a nuclear attack.

    The amount of money spent on America’s nuclear programs dwarfs the amount spent on diplomacy and foreign assistance (combined), effectively leaving US diplomatic efforts abroad in the long shadow of America’s ballistic missiles.

    “Nuclear security consumes $13 billion more than international diplomacy and foreign assistance; nearly double what the United States allots for general science, space, and technology; and 14 times what the Department of Energy (DOE) budgets for all energy-related research and development,” the Carnegie Institute for Peace noted in a study posted to the Federation for American Scientists’ Secrecy News blog Monday.

    Nuclear weapons or related programs account for 67 percent of the Department of Energy’s Budget. They also account for 8.5 percent of the FBI budget, 7.1 percent of the Pentagon budget and 1.7 percent of the budget for the Department of Homeland Security.

    Most US spending on nuclear weapons programs is unclassified, Secrecy News editor Steven Afternood notes. But the amount spent is masked by the number of budgets that contain provisions for such programs, making a composite total difficult to ascertain.

    Speaking of the $52 billion figure, Carnegie author Stephen Schwartz was quoted as saying, “That’s a floor, not a ceiling,” noting that it doesn’t take into account classified nuclear weapons programs or nuclear related intelligence programs.

    Most of the money doled out to America’s nuclear weapons is spent on upgrading and maintaining the country’s aging arsenal. According to estimates, the United States has a stockpile of about 9,600 nuclear missiles, including those kept in non active service.

    “The disparity [in spending] suggests that preserving and enhancing nuclear forces is far more important than preventing nuclear proliferation,” Schwartz said.

    The Carnegie Institute offered a series of recommendations as a result of their study. Among them:

    * Require the executive branch to submit both an unclassified and a classified annual accounting of all nuclear weapons-related spending. Without an accurate understanding of the costs of nuclear spending, Congress and the executive branch cannot conduct essential oversight or devise the most effective policy.

    * Place greater emphasis on programs that secure and prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, weapons material, technology, and expertise.

    * Develop better measures to explain and quantify nuclear weapons-related intelligence expenditures. Greater transparency and insight could lead to a more effective allocation of intelligence assets.

    * Release an accurate accounting of the number of veterans who have received or been denied compensation and care for radiation exposure during atmospheric nuclear tests between the 1946 and 1962, along with the total cost of such compensation and care.

    To read the full report, “Nuclear Security Spending: Assessing Costs, Examining Priorities,” by Stephen I. Schwartz and Deepti Choubey, click here.

  • Britain sells its nuclear weapons factory to US in secret

    Britain no longer has any stake in the production of its nuclear warheads after the Government secretly sold off its shares in the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston reports The Independent.  US companies Lockheed Martin and Jacobs engineering will now build UK bombs on contract.  Many speculate that US companies are designing new nuclear warhead there, which Congress will not allow them to do in the USA, and which would be illegal under Article 1 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

    The Independent

    Secret nuclear sell-off storm

    Aldermaston bomb factory is sold to American company in bid to boost Treasury coffers provoking fury as Parliament is bypassed
    By Ben Russell, Home affairs correspondent

    Saturday, 20 December 2008

    Britain no longer has any stake in the production of its nuclear warheads after the Government secretly sold off its shares in the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston.

    Ministers agreed to sell the remaining one-third ownership to a Californian engineering company. The announcement, which means that Americans will now produce and maintain Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, was slipped out on the eve of the parliamentary Christmas holiday. Officials refused to say how much the deal raised.

    Opposition MPs last night expressed concern that the stake may have been sold off below market value to raise much-needed money for the Treasury. They accused the Government of trying to conceal the sale of the stake in AWE Management Limited by failing to make an announcement in Parliament.

    There was also anger that Britain would no longer directly control the site where Britain’s nuclear warheads are produced and maintained.

    A terse one-paragraph statement posted on the website of the state-owned nuclear firm BNFL confirmed that its one-third stake in the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) had been sold to the California-based Jacobs Engineering Group, a global engineering firm which already carries out work for the nuclear weapons and research establishment in Berkshire.

    Yesterday, the MoD insisted that it had retained a “special share” in the establishment which allows it to intervene in the site or sack the operators if necessary. A spokesman said the deal would protect the independence of the nuclear deterrent and ensure Britain’s strategic interests were maintained.

    The Ministry of Defence owns the site and equipment at the establishment, but contractors have carried out the work of the base since 1993.

    The AWE, based at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, employs 4,500 people and more than 2,000 contractors. It designs, assembles, maintains and decommissions nuclear warheads, but the organisation is also a major centre for nuclear weapons research with expertise in advanced physics, materials science and super-computing.

    The current contractors, a joint venture between BNFL, the business services group Serco and the American defence giant Lockheed Martin, were appointed in 2000 and will run the base until 2025.

    The successful bidder, Jacobs, is an $11bn-a-year engineering concern with interests ranging from aerospace to the oil and gas industries. Last year, it lost out in bidding to operate 10 Magnox nuclear power stations in Britain.

    MPs expressed anger that Parliament had not been informed of the sale of the AWE. The shadow Defence minister, Gerald Howarth, said: “The AWE is critical to Britain’s nuclear deterrent capability and we find it astonishing that the decision regarding the increase in US involvement in the company was not announced to Parliament. It is now imperative that the Government spells out its understanding of the implications of this move for the United Kingdom and our nuclear deterrent.”

    Richard Bacon, a Conservative member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the sale needed to be urgently scrutinised: “This is the type of thing we would raise with the National Audit Office. There are a number of economic questions, but there are national security questions.”

    Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, added: “It is staggering that the Government could do something of such strategic importance without informing Parliament.

    “The whole argument used for Britain having a separate weapons establishment is that this is required by the [nuclear] non-proliferation treaty, as technology-sharing is not allowed. We must therefore query the rationale of a US company having a majority shareholding in AWE … There has always seemed to be a lot of cloak and dagger around Aldermaston, and now it appears the Government has concealed something of huge significance from Parliament. If the company has declared the deal is going ahead to the New York Stock Exchange, they must be fairly sure this is the case.”

    Anti-nuclear campaigners claimed the sale would compromise the independence of Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour MP for Islington North, called it “astonishing”, adding: “It’s almost unbelievable that something as serious as the development of nuclear weapons should be privatised to an American company.” Kate Hudson, chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said: “It is outrageous that control of Britain’s so-called ‘independent’ nuclear weapons is being handed over to American corporations.”

    But a spokesman for the MoD said: “The safe operation of AWE will remain unaffected by the sale. MoD worked closely with colleagues in the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and BNFL, during the sale process to ensure British strategic interests were taken into account. UK sovereign interests remain protected at all times, as does the independence of the UK deterrent.”

    What’s for sale next?

    The Treasury is considering privatising other state assets in what critics have called a recession “fire sale”. These include:

    *Ordnance Survey

    *The Met Office

    *The Forestry Commission

    *The Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in W