By Hassan Gimba
It is a new” word, huh? Hypocrisy. Well, it is not a word in usage. But come, you must have seen its closeness to hypocrisy. OK, hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have virtues, beliefs, or feelings that one does not possess, especially when those pretended beliefs contradict one’s actions. Now, interchange it with hypocrisy. You get it.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), established in 1957, is an autonomous international organisation within the United Nations system. It carries out programmes to maximise the contribution of nuclear technology to society while verifying its peaceful use.
Related to this is the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The NPT came into force in 1970 as an international agreement aiming to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and promote cooperation in the peaceful use of atomic energy. It has about 191 states currently adhering to its statutes.
Although the IAEA is not a party to the NPT, it operates under the NPT, fulfilling specific roles as the international safeguards inspectorate and as a multilateral channel for the transfer of peaceful nuclear technology applications. Article III administers international safeguards to verify that the non-nuclear-weapon states party to the NPT fulfil the non-proliferation commitment they have made “to prevent diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”
Article IV says the agency facilitates and provides a channel for endeavours aimed at “the further development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the territories of non-nuclear-weapon states party to the Treaty, with due consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world.”
Any nation that signs the NPT is expected to behave “responsibly” by being open to the world about its nuclear programmes through the IAEA. Refusal to do so can be subject to various interpretations. Not guided by any international obligation, being answerable to none could be an indicator that a nation has an intention of going rogue, producing nuclear armaments and using them at will.
Iran has been accused of desiring to produce the “bomb”, an allegation it has vehemently denied. To prove its sincerity, it falls back on a fatwa by its Spiritual Leader, Ali Khamene’i, banning the production of nuclear weapons. Their nuclear policy, according to the fatwa, is to pursue nuclear power for civilian purposes. But Iran was not believed because it was dealing with people whose word is not their bond, who think everyone is like them.
Now, this is where our story becomes interesting. Iran insists it has no nuclear weapons and is a party to the NPT, so it allows regular IAEA inspections. On the other hand, Iran’s accuser-in-chief, Israel, possesses a nuclear arsenal estimated to be between 80 and 200 warheads. Yet, it is not a party to the NPT and does not allow IAEA inspections. Despite all this, it is Iran that is under constant international pressure and sanctions because it is suspected that it wants to produce the bomb. Israel, whose officials have recently started talking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is, on the other hand, being pampered.
Perhaps this is why, confident of Western backing, Israel attacked Iran while the country was at the international negotiations table. Many consider the attack to be a violation of international law and international humanitarian law. Yet, Israel and its backers want the world to see them as advocates for peace and a rule-based world order.
However, this is far from the truth to any discerning mind. In the first place, Iran had agreed to limit its nuclear activities in a comprehensive agreement called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which placed significant restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief that was reached between Iran and the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—China, France, Russia, the U.K., and the US, plus Germany), along with the European Union, and signed in Vienna on 14 July 2015 after 20 months of negotiations.
President Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018, claiming it failed to curtail Iran’s missile programme and regional influence, only for him to come and “order” Iran to “negotiate” within a two-month ultimatum. Some observers of Middle East affairs opine that it is a ploy for Trump to fulfil Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan of “seven wars in five years.”
Professor Jeffrey David Sachs, an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University, said: “Israel, under Netanyahu, has planned seven wars in five years to overthrow foreign governments that oppose Israel’s domination and recreate the map of a ‘New Middle East’ without a Palestinian State. Rather than making peace, Netanyahu makes endless war.”
In a write-up in many international policy journals entitled Defending the US from the Israel Lobby, Sachs said, “The governments to be fought and dismantled are those of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”
Iran is the only one of the seven countries remaining to be fought. But Israel does not fight directly; it uses America. It’s like the case of the tail wagging the dog, with Israel being the tail and America the dog.
Little wonder Trump came out gloating when Israel attacked Iran in the wee hours of Friday, 13 June, an attack meant to instil fear in the Iranians, stop them from attending Friday prayers and topple the regime. Trump claimed to be aware of the attack that killed Iran’s military commanders and civilian nuclear scientists in their sleep. Trump, who claims he has stopped wars in the world, then gave Iranians hours to vacate the nation’s capital and surrender unconditionally. He did not care, nor did his European counterparts deem it necessary to condemn an attack carried out during an international negotiation.
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If the war on Iran is all about nuclear weapons, then it should not have happened.
Tulsi Gabbard, United States Director of National Intelligence, had in March this year testified before the US Congress that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear programme. Still, when told this by the press, Trump quipped, “I don’t care what she says.”
This buttresses why they must manufacture excuses, as done to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, with the bogus claim of the country possessing “Weapons of Mass Destruction”.
CNN’s Christian Amanpour got IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to admit the agency has “no proof of a systematic effort” by Iran to develop nuclear weapons.
“He acknowledged that ‘We did not have… any proof [of] a systematic effort to move into a nuclear weapon,’” Amanpour wrote on her X account. This was days after the IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution censuring Iran based on what many saw as a biased and politically driven report.
So, why are America and the Western nations actively encouraging Israel, which has attacked Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, the Coast of Malta and now Iran in the last 600 days, killing as it breathes? Is it, as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, that “this is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us (them)”?
To be continued.
Hassan Gimba, anipr, is the CEO/Publisher of Neptune Prime.
