Chomsky on the Iranian Crisis

The following is an article written by Noam Chomsky about the Iranain nuclear crisis. The original article was posted on ZNET.

The urgency of halting the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and moving toward their elimination, could hardly be greater. Failure to do so is almost certain to lead to grim consequences, even the end of biology's only experiment with higher intelligence. As threatening as the crisis is, the means exist to defuse it.

A near-meltdown seems to be imminent over Iran and its nuclear programmes. Before 1979, when the Shah was in power, Washington strongly supported these programmes. Today the standard claim is that Iran has no need for nuclear power, and therefore must be pursuing a secret weapons programme. "For a major oil producer such as Iran, nuclear energy is a wasteful use of resources," Henry Kissinger wrote in the Washington Post last year.

Thirty years ago, however, when Kissinger was secretary of state for President Gerald Ford, he held that "introduction of nuclear power will both provide for the growing needs of Iran's economy and free remaining oil reserves for export or conversion to petrochemicals".

Last year Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post asked Kissinger about his reversal of opinion. Kissinger responded with his usual engaging frankness: "They were an allied country."

In 1976 the Ford administration "endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium - the two pathways to a nuclear bomb", Linzer wrote. The top planners of the Bush administration, who are now denouncing these programmes, were then in key national security posts: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz.

Iranians are surely not as willing as the west to discard history to the rubbish heap. They know that the United States, along with its allies, has been tormenting Iranians for more than 50 years, ever since a US-UK military coup overthrew the parliamentary government and installed the Shah, who ruled with an iron hand until a popular uprising expelled him in 1979.

The Reagan administration then supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Iran, providing him with military and other aid that helped him slaughter hundreds of thousands of Iranians (along with Iraqi Kurds). Then came President Clinton's harsh sanctions, followed by Bush's threats to attack Iran - themselves a serious breach of the UN charter.

Last month the Bush administration conditionally agreed to join its European allies in direct talks with Iran, but refused to withdraw the threat of attack, rendering virtually meaningless any negotiations offer that comes, in effect, at gunpoint. Recent history provides further reason for skepticism about Washington's intentions.

In May 2003, according to Flynt Leverett, then a senior official in Bush's National Security Council, the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami proposed "an agenda for a diplomatic process that was intended to resolve on a comprehensive basis all of the bilateral differences between the United States and Iran".

Included were "weapons of mass destruction, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the future of Lebanon's Hizbullah organisation and cooperation with the UN nuclear safeguards agency", the Financial Times reported last month. The Bush administration refused, and reprimanded the Swiss diplomat who conveyed the offer.

A year later the European Union and Iran struck a bargain: Iran would temporarily suspend uranium enrichment, and in return Europe would provide assurances that the United States and Israel would not attack Iran. Under US pressure, Europe backed off, and Iran renewed its enrichment processes.

Iran's nuclear programmes, as far as is known, fall within its rights under article four of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), which grants non-nuclear states the right to produce fuel for nuclear energy. The Bush administration argues that article four should be strengthened, and I think that makes sense.

When the NPT came into force in 1970 there was a considerable gap between producing fuel for energy and for nuclear weapons. But advances in technology have narrowed the gap. However, any such revision of article four would have to ensure unimpeded access for non-military use, in accord with the initial NPT bargain between declared nuclear powers and the non-nuclear states.

In 2003 a reasonable proposal to this end was put forward by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency: that all production and processing of weapon-usable material be under international control, with "assurance that legitimate would-be users could get their supplies". That should be the first step, he proposed, toward fully implementing the 1993 UN resolution for a fissile material cutoff treaty (or Fissban).

ElBaradei's proposal has to date been accepted by only one state, to my knowledge: Iran, in February, in an interview with Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator. The Bush administration rejects a verifiable Fissban - and stands nearly alone. In November 2004 the UN committee on disarmament voted in favour of a verifiable Fissban. The vote was 147 to one (United States), with two abstentions: Israel and Britain. Last year a vote in the full general assembly was 179 to two, Israel and Britain again abstaining. The United States was joined by Palau.

There are ways to mitigate and probably end these crises. The first is to call off the very credible US and Israeli threats that virtually urge Iran to develop nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

A second step would be to join the rest of the world in accepting a verifiable Fissban treaty, as well as ElBaradei's proposal, or something similar.

A third step would be to live up to article six of the NPT, which obligates the nuclear states to take "good-faith" efforts to eliminate nuclear weapons, a binding legal obligation, as the world court determined. None of the nuclear states has lived up to that obligation, but the United States is far in the lead in violating it.

Even steps in these directions would mitigate the upcoming crisis with Iran. Above all, it is important to heed the words of Mohamed ElBaradei: "There is no military solution to this situation. It is inconceivable. The only durable solution is a negotiated solution." And it is within reach.

Human Trafficking

When I finally managed to get out of Iran in 1998, the first place that I ended up in was Larnaca, Cyprus. Larnaca is a small city on the southern coast of Cyprus Island, with beaches of white sand that shine in the Mediterranean sun. Before northern Cyprus was taken over by Turkey, and the island was brutally divided along ethnic lines, Famagusta was the most thriving Mediterranean resort town, but alas, Famagusta is now turned into a ghost town and can no longer be the destination for the British tourists who long for the white sand, azure waters, lots of sunshine, and young, plump, voluptuous Ukrainian, Belarusan, Hungarian, Romanian, or Albanian girls.

At the customs in Larnaca airport, there were at least ten gates were new arrivals were processed. Eight of these had signs that said “EU Arrivals.” The other two said “International Arrivals.” Tourists from European Union countries were quickly processed and allowed entry through the “EU Arrivals” gates. Everyone else, including me, had to wait their turns in the “International Arrival” lines.

On that particular day there were the passengers from my flight, mostly richer Iranian families, who could afford to spend their vacation in Cyprus, far from the harsh access of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards who seem to have nothing better to do than to make sure that not a single strand of hair can be seen from under the headscarf of a woman in the streets; there were simultaneously two British Airway arrivals, and a Russian Aero Float landing.

As I was waiting my turn in the line, I could not help but notice that most of the British Airway passengers were middle-aged men while the Aero Float seemed to have been an all female flight of young girls.

On my way to my hotel, I expressed my astonishment to the cab driver who spoke some English – everyone in Cyprus speaks some English. He told me that quite a few British men actually move to Cyprus after retirement. With their retirement pension they can enjoy a high standard of living in Larnaca, and get to have as much fun as they will with the East European girl that flood into the Island every day. Later through a restaurant owner, who took me out to a nightclub one evening, I found out that these girls are flown in through visas sent out on their behalf by Cypriot entertainment industry owners. Just as the article by Goodwin reveals “commonly the passports of these ‘guest workers’ are confiscated on arrival and the salaries [are] withheld.” The customs officers know that these young girls are not tourists. They know why they are in Cyprus. The police know too. They simply condone. The Russian Mafia has a strong presence in Cyprus, and bribing government officials is a very common practice.

Between sex entertainment, prostitution, forced marriages, domestic work, and forced labor in sweetshops, women and children seem to be the prime victims of human trafficking and the number one targets of the new wave of slavery around the world. Feminization of immigration appears to be another way of perpetuation of patriarchy. What with the upper-middle class males in the developed countries who, faced with the increasing expectation of egalitarianism on their wives’ part, seek to use the domestic labor of trafficked women from third world countries, and with the morally corrupt men from the wealthier countries, who want to gratify their sick desires by objectifying helpless women and children of poorer nations, it appears that the interplay of gender, race, and class simply works against the women.

The governments of the developing countries usually find the sex trade a lucrative source of hard currency, and despite the illegality of prostitution, they not only turn a blind eye on it, but at times cooperate with the owners of such businesses as brothels, and night clubs. “The government periodically promises to crack down on the industry, but because of the amount of money it generates, invariably looks the other way.”

These Boots Are Made for...

The corporation-controlled media would like people to believe that the Cold War era was a period of tension and hostilities between the good and the evil, good being the free market block led by the United States and evil being communism represented by the USSR and its satellites. What a lot of people fail to realize, however, is that the very existence of the Eastern Block was the underlying reason for all the welfare programs that were put into place to benefit the poor and to afford them a minimal standard of living so that any fermentation of uprising in the face of dire living circumstances could be prevented. It is not coincidental that immediately after the demise of the USSR and the Eastern Block, a lot of the welfare programs in this country were either completely stopped or substantially cut down. There was no longer a model to look up to; the inspiration had been removed; the evil empire, which could instigate the workers in the so-called free nations to raise their voices in demand for a fairer share of the outcome of their labor, had been obliterated. Although the Republicans started the downsizing of welfare programs, Democrats were also quick to follow through realizing that they no longer needed to bribe the poor into remaining calm.

Interestingly the call for democracy also started with the collapse of the evil empire of communism. During the Cold War, all over the world, the United States found dictators very efficient in curbing and containing movements of the working people who, every now and then, rose in pursuit of fairer wages and better working conditions. It was immediately after the fall of communism that the call for US-style democracy was placed at the top of the US foreign policy agenda.

It is no coincidence that both Reebok and Nike went into South Korea during the death throes of communism, when dictators were still very congenial with the US, and Human Rights were a commodity that the free market economy was not very interested in.

Reebok and Nike, correctly assessing the situation in host countries such as South Korea, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, or Thailand, refused to capitalize on building factories in these countries, but instead just subcontracted local entrepreneurs to take over the manufacturing aspect of their enterprise. “Let them be responsible for workers’ health and safety. Let them negotiate with newly emergent unions. Nike [Reebok, and others] would retain control over those parts of sneaker production that gave its officials the greatest professional satisfaction and the ultimate word on the product: design and marketing.”

Interestingly, American men running companies such as Reebok and Nike, whose business practices align them with the structural-functional frame of reference, and as such should support an expressive role for women and should, in principle, be against the participation of women in the paid labor force, have no qualms when the women in question are from some developing or underdeveloped country. Do these corporate men think of South Asian or South American women as something less than human beings? Isn’t this the new type of slavery?

The outsourcing of footwear production started in South Korea and Taiwan, but as women in South Korea organized against the injustice of their wages and working conditions despite the fact that “at the first signs of trouble, factory managers called in government riot police to break up employees’ meetings,” US-based companies decided to move the factories to totalitarian countries where labor unions were against the law and labor strikes could be punished severely. The exodus out of South Korea left quite a number of women unemployed. These women who had initially moved to cities to work in sneakers factories were now absorbed in the “entertainment industry, the kinds of bars and massage parlors offering sexual services that had mushroomed around US military bases during the Cold War.”

In a competition to bring foreign investment into their countries, South Asian countries made all sorts of concessions to foreign capitalists. These concessions included low wages, long working hours, no health benefits, few regulations, and a tacit pledge of suppression of any labor strikes or attempts to form unions. With governments propagating that women who worked in these factories were in effect carrying out their patriotic duty towards their country, any attempt by women to organize for better wages and working conditions could be punished as treason. Thus the race to the bottom assumed unprecedented proportions.

As accounts of inhumanities and unfair working conditions were reflected in reports that appeared in Western media, US-based footwear-producing companies refused to acknowledge any responsibility by rationalizing that these factories did not belong to them and they were run according to the laws and labor regulations of the host countries. Reebok presented human rights awards to Chinese dissidents while hypocritically turning a blind eye on the atrocities that were perpetrated in factories that in had subcontracted to foreign investors.

Despite all the ongoing injustice, there is hope. Women in all the host countries are gradually becoming aware of their plight. Feminist activist groups are helping to organize them and raising their consciousness.

Women Living under Muslim Laws

A sociologist and activist, Farida Shaheed, who lives in Lahore of Pakistan, works with Women Living Under Muslim Laws (WLUML), an international solidarity network that attempts to provide legal help to muslim women who get caught in the midst of the relentlessly patriarchal Islamic and Quranic codes. Quoting Deniz Kandiyoti, she says “most Muslim states have failed to generate ideologies capable of coping realistically with social changes.” This has resulted in Muslim countries adherence to Islam not just as a “coherent ideology” but also as “a symbol of their cultural identity.” Shaheed believes that the patriarchal structure of Muslim societies is not much different from that of any other society and “like elsewhere, women’s subordination occurs at multiple levels (kinship structures, state-building projects, etc.). She also correctly maintains, “The idea of one homogeneous Muslim world is an illusion.” She argues that simply because a country is made up of a Muslim population does not necessarily make it an Islamic country. Absence of homogeneousness, lack of laws to properly cope with modernization, the urge for identity, and diversity of political structures demand a legal network that can provide support to suffering women throughout the Muslim world.

Women living in Islamic countries – regardless of whether their political systems allege secularity, as in Turkey, or whether their government is inspired by Quranic laws, as in Saudi Arabia – are helplessly fettered by reactionary customs and traditions that adversely affect their lives every day. The existence of a solidarity network that can provide them with support is an imperative.