My op-ed published last week in Canada's National Post, was picked up and published today in the Windsor Star. I feel my op-ed is even more prescient now, given that the U.S., UK, and Canada went ahead with unilateral sanctions against Iran's central bank, just as Israel has conspicuously gone silent about the threat posed by Iran. The unwillingness of Russia and China to further sanction Iran, or contemplate additional Security Council resolutions, may ultimately force Israel to act alone. If you haven't read the full version of my article, check it out below here. -R.O.
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/death+truth/5776603/story.html
"The Death of Truth"
By: Robert D. Onley
Published in the Windsor Star: November 28, 2011
Fallout from the misleading intelligence that led to the 2003 war in Iraq is now leading the international community into dangerous, reactive skepticism of the IAEA's damning report on Iran's now exposed nuclear weapons program.
Despite the wide-ranging report, Russia and China have already rejected the possibility of increasing sanctions against Iran, arguing on disingenuous grounds that the U.K., France and U.S. will use sanctions as an "instrument for regime change in Iran." Major news outlets are similarly casting complete doubt on IAEA claims that Iran is actively working on nukes.
While the IAEA report was indeed preceded by loud sabre-rattling from the American and Israeli political establishments, the supposed "leak" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's readiness to conduct unilateral airstrikes certainly was no accident.
Designed to spark global discourse on Iran prior to the report's release, the leaks underscored Netanyahu's long-standing fears about the truth of Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program.
Thus the sabre-rattling should not discredit the catastrophic implications of the report, which sets out in unprecedented detail the extent of Iran's nuke program.
Some skeptics dismissively claim that Iran's research into the design of nuclear weapons is not a breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Iran is a signatory state and internationally bound not to "manufacture" or otherwise "acquire" nuclear weapons. However, this suggestion completely misses the point, highlighting the dangerous naivety of reactive skepticism.
The indisputable facts about Iran's nuclear weapons research are as follows. Since 2003, Iran has:
. Conducted extensive research into bomb designs and detonators
. Continued development of intercontinental ballistic missiles
. Covertly constructed numerous weapons-related facilities, notably the Fordow uranium enrichment facility - built inside of a mountain, itself inside of a military base.
Iran did so while repeatedly claiming its nuclear program is "peaceful." This blatant stall tactic deliberately impeded progress during years of nuclear negotiations with the West.
Russia and China have dismissed the IAEA report as a manufactured casus belli to attack Iran, and have painted Yukiya Amano, the IAEA head, as a pro-western dupe. Russian FM Sergei Lavrov obliquely warned the West that attacking Iran would be "a very serious mistake."
The tragic casualty in all of this misguided skepticism is the truth itself. The fact that a 25-page report from the IAEA - the one global institution tasked with preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons - can so blithely be dismissed as a lie, emphasizes the abject depravity of the international community's moral core.
A country - the Islamic Republic of Iran - with a president who openly and callously denies that the Holocaust occurred, is now at the threshold of possessing the very weaponry that could cause the Second Holocaust.
In the face of this utterly malignant, horrifying historic juncture, the world's instinctive reaction is to render the IAEA's years of painstaking intelligence-gathering not as a terrifying truth, but rather as an unremitting lie.
Beset with widespread protests, a faltering global economy and a Middle East already in turmoil, hesitation to greenlight another conflict in the region is wholly understandable and with merit.
However, for these same nations to then simply ignore the threat of another country's obtaining nukes, out of fear of causing temporary instability in the Middle East, is to abandon the world's future to the enemies of peace, destroy the NPT and spark a nuclear arms race.
Israel, the one nation most directly threatened by the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, is today at its gravest geopolitical crossroads since coming into existence.
If Israel decides to undertake unilateral military action against Iran, Netanyahu must convene with the UN Security Council and reveal all of Israel's intelligence on Iranian nukes. Israel must irrefutably prove that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and thus represents a threat to the peace of the world under UNSC Article 39.
The truth on this matter cannot be left in any doubt, because the truth - about Iran's nuclear weapons program and the threat from Iran's theocratic Shia "Twelver" leadership - is Israel's only ally in the long-standing fight for its very survival as the world's sole, immovable, Jewish state.
Robert D. Onley is vice-chair of YouthCan for International Dialogue and president of the Students' Law Society at the University of Windsor's Law School.
© Copyright (c) The Windsor Star
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