Iran: Hague claims mask new threats

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press Friday February 24, 2012 17:50 by pat c

British Foreign Secretary William Hague claims that the World is Facing a new Cold WAr unless Iran gives up its hopes of constructing nuclear weapons. Peter Manson thinks this is a load of codswallop and analyses whats really going on. Full text at link.

Foreign secretary William Hague’s absurd claim that the world faces a “new cold war” if Iran does not give up its aim of acquiring nuclear weapons might not stand up to examination, but Hague was undoubtedly given a boost on February 22 when a team from the United Nations-sponsored International Atomic Energy Agency returned from a two-day visit to Iran.

IAEA director-general Yukiya Amano said that no agreement had been reached on the holding of talks to “clarify unresolved issues”, although the previous day Iran’s “supreme leader”, ayatollah Ali Khamenei, insisted that Tehran’s nuclear programme was entirely peaceful: “There is no doubt that decision-making establishments in countries that stand against us are quite aware that Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, since the Islamic Republic of Iran regards the possession of nuclear weapons as a great sin, in terms of thought, theory and religious edict, and also believes that holding such weapons is useless, costly and dangerous.”[1]

Hague’s inane warning of a “new cold war” came in an interview with The Daily Telegraph last week.[2] He added to the absurdity by implying that this time things would be even worse - in Cold War II there would be no “safety mechanisms”, you see. The following day the foreign secretary told the Commons: “If Iran sets about the development of nuclear weapons, then other nations in the Middle East would do so as well.”

Let us examine Hague’s claim by comparing this “new cold war” with the genuine article. The post-World War II extended stand-off between the USA and the Soviet Union saw a massive arms race resulting in the accumulation of enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world several times over. Each side had hundreds of formidable intercontinental ballistic missiles pointing at the other and no-one doubted that they had the capacity to deliver them effectively. This produced a scenario known as MAD - ‘mutually assured destruction’ - where the state that launched a nuclear attack would have to be literally insane, since such an act would guarantee its own obliteration.