Secret Prison on Diego Garcia ConfirmedUKWatch.net - 1 Aug 2008Six ?High-Value? Guantnamo Prisoners Held, Plus ?Ghost Prisoner? Mustafa Setmariam Nasar The existence of a secret, CIA-run prison on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean has long been a leaky secret in the ?War on Terror,? and yesterday?s revelations in TIME —based on disclosures by a ?senior American official? (now retired), who was ?a frequent participant in White House Situation Room meetings? after the 9/11 attacks, and who reported that ?a CIA counter-terrorism official twice said that a high-value prisoner or prisoners were being interrogated on the island?—will come as no surprise to those who have been studying the story closely ( http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1828469,00.html). The news will, however, be an embarrassment to the US government, which has persistently denied claims that it operated a secret ?War on Terror? prison on Diego Garcia, and will be a source of even more consternation to the British government, which is more closely bound than its law-shredding Transatlantic neighbor to international laws and treaties preventing any kind of involvement whatsoever in kidnapping, ?extraordinary rendition? and the practice of torture. This is not the first time that TIME has exposed the existence of a secret prison on Diego Garcia. In 2003, the magazine broke the story that Hambali, one of 14 ?high-value detainees? transferred to Guantnamo in September 2006, was being held there, and in the years since confirmation has also come from other sources. Twice, in 2004 and 2006, Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general, who is now professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, revealed the prison?s existence. In May 2004, he blithely declared on MSNBC?s ‘Deborah Norville Tonight,’ ?We?re probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram air field, Diego Garcia, Guantnamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq,? and in December 2006 he spoke out again, saying, in an NPR interview with Robert Siegel, ?They?re behind bars ? we?ve got them on Diego Garcia, in Bagram air field, in Guantnamo.? The prison?s existence was also confirmed by Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who produced a detailed report on ?extraordinary rendition? for the Council of Europe in June 2007 and by Manfred Novak, the UN?s Special Rapporteur on Torture, in March this year. Having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, Marty told the European Parliament, ?We have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ?processing? of high-value detainees,? and Manfred Novak explained to the Observer that ?he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003.? The penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle came in May, when El Pais broke the story that ?ghost prisoner? Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, whose current whereabouts are unknown, was imprisoned on the island in 2005, shortly after his capture in Pakistan—although the English-speaking press failed to notice. Despite these previous disclosures, yesterday?s article, by Adam Zagorin, is particularly striking because of the high-level nature of the source, and his admission that ?the CIA officer surprised attendees by volunteering the information, apparently to demonstrate that the agency was doing its best to obtain valuable intelligence.? In addition, the source noted that ?the US may also have kept prisoners on ships within Diego Garcia’s territorial waters, a contention the US has long denied.? Zagorin also spoke to Richard Clarke (at the time the National Security Council?s Special Advisor to President Bush regarding counter-terrorism), who explained, ?In my presence, in the White House, the possibility of using Diego Garcia for detaining high value targets was discussed.? Although Clarke ?did not witness a final resolution of the issue,? he added, ?Given everything that we know about the administration’s approach to the law on these matters, I find the report that the US did use the island for detention or interrogation entirely credible,? and he also pointed out that using the island for interrogations or detentions without British permission ?is a violation of UK law, as well as of the bi-lateral agreement governing the island.? Zagorin?s source did not name the prisoners, but it seems clear that the period he was referring to (?2002 and possibly 2003?) was when three particular ?high-value detainees?—Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh—are reported to have been held on the island, and it seems entirely plausible, therefore, that after these three were transferred to another secret CIA facility in Poland, the prison was used not only to hold Hambali, but also to hold the two other ?high-value detainees? captured with him—Mohammed bin Lep (aka Lillie) and Mohd Farik bin Amin (aka Zubair). The addition of Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, who, it seems, may have been held into 2006, not only confirms that a secret prison existed, but that it was possibly in use for four years straight. These damaging revelations seal Diego Garcia?s reputation as a quagmire of injustice. A British sovereign territory—albeit one that was leased to the United States nearly 40 years ago, when the islanders were shamefully discarded by the British government and exiled to face destitution and death by misery in Mauritius—Diego Garcia has long been a source of shame to opponents of modern colonial activity ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/384112.html). Until now, however, the only admission that any activities connected with the ?War on Terror? had taken place on the island came in February, when, after years of denials on the part of the British government, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, finally conceded that requests for information from his US counterparts had revealed that, in 2002, two rendition flights had refuelled on the island. ?In both cases,? Miliband stated with confidence, ?a US plane with a single detainee on board refuelled at the US facility in Diego Garcia. The detainees did not leave the plane, and the US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia? ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392068.html). The British government had been provoked to action by critics within the UK, in particular the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, led by the Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, and the legal action charity Reprieve ( http://www.reprieve.org.uk/), which represents 30 prisoners in Guantnamo, but the story appeared to grind to a halt when Michael Hayden, the CIA?s director, stepped forward to deny that Diego Garcia had ever been used as a ?War on Terror? prison. ?That is false,? Gen. Hayden said when asked if a secret prison had existed on Diego Garcia, adding, as the New York Times put it, that ?neither of the two detainees carried aboard the rendition flights that refuelled at Diego Garcia ?was ever part of the CIA?s high-value terrorist interrogation program.?? He also explained that one of the detainees ?was ultimately transferred to Guantnamo,? while the other ?was returned to his home country,? which was identified by State Department officials as Morocco. ?These were rendition operations,? he added, ?nothing more.? Four weeks ago, however, the story resurfaced once more, as David Miliband reported the results of his latest request for information from his US counterparts. This concerned a list of rendition flights, which, in the opinion of Reprieve and the All-Party Parliamentary Group, may also have passed through British territory, but the Foreign Secretary was confident that there was no further evidence to be mined, stating, ?The United States Government confirmed that, with the exception of two cases related to Diego Garcia in 2002, there have been no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the United Kingdom, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee on board since 11 September 2001? ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/07/403006.html). Yet again, the assurances of his US colleagues did nothing to assuage the critics. Reprieve noted that the British government ?intentionally failed to ask the right questions of the US, and accepted implausible US assurances at face value,? and added, presciently, ?This remains a transatlantic cover-up of epic proportions. While the British government seems content to accept whatever nonsense it is fed by its US allies, the sordid truth about Diego Garcia?s central role in the unjust rendition and detention of prisoners in the so-called ?War on Terror? cannot be hidden forever.? Just three days after David Miliband?s last attempt to draw a line under the story, the British Foreign Affairs Select Committee published its latest report on the British Overseas Territories, and was scathing about Diego Garcia, declaring that ?it is deplorable that previous US assurances about rendition flights have turned out to be false. The failure of the United States Administration to tell the truth resulted in the UK Government inadvertently misleading our Select Committee and the House of Commons. We intend to examine further the extent of UK supervision of US activities on Diego Garcia, including all flights and ships serviced from Diego Garcia.? Yesterday?s revelations, of course, leave the US administration looking like bald-faced liars and the British government looking like myopic dupes. Whether Michael Hayden was also duped is not known, but his strenuous denial, just five months ago, that a secret prison existed, which was manned by his own employees, will do nothing for the credibility of the US administration, which likes to pretend that it does not torture and has nothing to conceal, but is persistently discovered not only being economical with the truth, but also behaving exactly as though it has guilty secrets to hide. Whether this scandal will awaken much indignation in the American public remains to be seen, but it is hugely damaging to the British government, which is legally responsible for the activities that take place on its territory, however much it likes to hide behind ?assurances? from its leaseholders that they have done nothing wrong. It scarcely seems possible, but Diego Garcia?s dark history has suddenly grown even darker. The prisoners held on Diego Garcia 1. Abu Zubaydah (Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn). Saudi, b. 1971. Seized in Faisalabad, Pakistan in a joint operation by Pakistani forces and the FBI on 28 March 2002, he is regarded by the administration as a senior al-Qaeda operative and training camp facilitator, although this has been disputed by former FBI interrogator Dan Coleman, who has described him as a minor logistician with a split personality ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/04/26/the-insignificance-and-insan…). In February 2008, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the CIA, admitted that Abu Zubaydah was one of three prisoners who had been subjected to waterboarding (an ancient torture technique that involves controlled drowning) in CIA custody ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2008/02/06/waterboarding-two-questions-...). Held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland, he is one of 14 ?high-value detainees? transferred to Guantnamo in September 2006. At his tribunal in 2007, he denied being a member of al-Qaeda, and made a point of mentioning that he had been tortured. He has not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission. 2. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Kuwaiti/Pakistani, b. 1964 or 1965. The supposed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Mohammed (commonly known as KSM) was seized in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003. Like Abu Zubaydah, he was subjected to waterboarding, and is also presumed to have been held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland. Transferred to Guantnamo in September 2006, he confessed to being ?responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z? at his tribunal in 2007, but also made a point of mentioning that he had been tortured. He was put forward for trial by Military Commission in February, and will face the death penalty if convicted. Rumours that KSM was held on Diego Garcia have surfaced sporadically over the years, one example being an article in the Toronto Star on July 2, 2005, in which Lynda Hurst spoke to John Pike, a US defense analyst. Pike, who told Hurst that he believed that KSM had been held on Diego Garcia, explained, ?Diego Garcia is an obvious place for a secret facility. They want somewhere that’s difficult to escape from, difficult to attack, not visible to prying eyes and where a lot of other activity is going on. Diego Garcia is ideal.? 3. Ramzi bin al-Shibh. Yemeni, b. 1972. A friend of the Hamburg cell that led the 9/11 attacks, bin al-Shibh was seized in a raid in Karachi, Pakistan on September 11, 2002. He was reportedly intended as the 20th hijacker, but was unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States, and subsequently worked closely with KSM in planning the attacks. Transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006, he is also presumed to have been held initially in Thailand, and later in Poland, but his presence on Diego Garcia has long been suspected, because analyses of flight records have revealed that a plane flew from Pakistan to Diego Garcia immediately after his capture. He refused to take part in his tribunal in 2007, but was put forward for trial by Military Commission in February, and will face the death penalty if convicted. 4. Hambali (Riduan Isamuddin). Indonesian, b. 1966. Seized in Ayutthaya, Thailand in a joint operation by Thai forces and the CIA on 11 August 2003, he is regarded as the main link between al-Qaeda and its Indonesian counterpart, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI). He is alleged to have been one of the planners of the Bali bombings in October 2002, which killed over 200 people, and was transferred to Guantnamo in September 2006. At his tribunal in 2007, he said that he resigned from JI in 2000, and was not involved with al-Qaeda or with any bombings or plots. He has not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission. 5 and 6. Lillie (Mohammed Nazir bin Lep) and Zubair (Mohd Farik bin Amin). Malaysians, seized with Hambali, little is known of these two men, beyond claims by the administration that they worked closely with Hambali, although they were both discussed in another TIME article, in October 2003, which examined Hambali?s interrogation logs. They were transferred to Guantnamo in September 2006, but have not yet been put forward for trial by Military Commission. 7. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri). Syrian/Spanish, b. 1958. Seized in Quetta, Pakistan in October 2005 and handed over to US forces a month later, he is not accused of being involved in direct attacks on US forces, but is wanted in Spain as a witness in connection with the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Regarded as one of the most significant proponents of universal jihad, his writings include a 1600-page book, The Global Islamic Resistance Call, which was published on the internet in 2004. A critic of al-Qaeda, he reportedly fell out with Osama bin Laden in 1998, and has stated that the 9/11 attacks were catastrophic for the jihadi cause. Unlike the six prisoners mentioned above, he was not transferred to Guantnamo in September 2006, and it is not known, therefore, whether he is being held in a secret CIA prison or if he has been rendered to a third country. Andy Worthington is the author of ?The Guantnamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America?s Illegal Prison? (published by Pluto Press/the University of Michigan Press), which includes a detailed chapter on rendition and secret prisons ( http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/the-guantanamo-files/).
The climate change clock is tickingUKWatch.net - 1 Aug 2008The UK is in denial about its real carbon emissions, suggests a report from the Stockholm Environment Institute. The academics conclude that if ?outsourced? emissions produced in countries like China on goods which are imported into the UK are included in our total carbon footprint, this country?s total greenhouse gas emissions are 49% higher than currently reported. So we should think twice when blaming the Chinese for emitting the CO2 that is required in the manufacture of our fridges and televisions. The report illustrates once again ? as if we had forgotten ? that global warming is an, er, global issue. A tonne of CO2 is a tonne of CO2, wherever it is emitted. How you do the counting is more a matter of politics than mathematics. A much greater concern is that all the politics is in danger of obscuring the increasingly drastic nature of the climate change threat. According to Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation, the world has only got 100 months left if we are to have a reasonably high chance of staving off runaway global warming. This is a pretty dramatic claim, and the associated onehundredmonths.org website has an equally dramatic ticking clock counting down until runaway warming begins. ?When the clock stops ticking,? it states ominously, ?we?ll be beyond the climate?s tipping point, the point of no return.? Yikes. So how valid is this claim? Luckily, NEF?s website provides a 100 Months technical note (pdf) explaining the calculations behind the new campaign. The first thing I noticed is that there isn?t any new modelling work underlying the claim: it is based on existing science, in particular on an analysis (pdf) by a researcher called Malte Meinshausen which was published in 2006. Meinshausen was the first scientist to quantify with percentage figures the probability of exceeding certain climatic thresholds: in his 2006 paper he concluded that only by stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at 400 part per million (ppm) would it be ?likely? (defined as 66-90% chance) that the world would stay below an eventual warming of two degrees. The NEF analysis has performed a fairly simple calculation, simply counting the time left before this 400ppm level is reached. The deadline, it turns out, is 1 December 2016. There are several complicating factors, however. The 400ppm figure in question is not for CO2 only, but for a basket of atmosphere-altering gases ? some of which have a positive ?forcing? effect (like CO2 itself) whereas others have a negative (cooling) effect, like sulphate aerosols released by industry. Add the sum of these forcings together and you can arrive at a ?CO2-equivalence? figure, which is the one that both NEF and Meinshausen use. The timescales need to be borne in mind, however: CO2 resides in the atmosphere for a century on average, whereas aerosols are washed out by rain in just a week or so. There are other caveats too. Meinshausen is not saying that two degrees of warming will be reached with certainty when we cross the 400ppm threshold, but that the risk of seeing two degrees increases steadily thereafter. (Even at 400ppm there is still a risk of overshooting 2C, of somewhere between 2% and 57%.) At 450ppm the risk of crossing the 2C line rises to between 26 and 78%, whereas at 550ppm the risk of overshooting is between 68 and 99%. Indeed, for 550ppm the risk of overshooting even 3C ranges from 21% to 69%. So what do all these numbers mean? Reading the small print, sceptics might complain about the false precision implied by the 100 months clock, which seems to suggest that the minute, indeed the second, we pass 400ppm we are certain to see two degrees of warming. The truth is that no one knows where any of the relevant climatic tipping points ? from the disappearance of the Arctic ice cap to the release of methane from melting permafrost ? actually lie. There are uncertainties regarding both what level of carbon emissions equals what temperature rise, and what temperature rise equals which climatic impacts. All we can say with near-certainty is that the warmer it gets, the further into dangerous territory we stray. And again, there is the question of timescales. Meinshausen?s two degrees calculations referred to two degrees of warming, not the minute the 400ppm line is crossed in December 2016, but when the atmosphere reaches ?equilibrium? ? in other words when all the warming processes have had a chance to feed through the system. Like a boiling kettle, the planet has a substantial thermal timelag ? it takes a long time for ice sheets to rebalance themselves and for warmer waters to penetrate to the bottom of the deepest oceans. So even at this ?tipping point? we still wouldn?t see the expected two degrees of warming until the end of the century at least, if today?s climate models are to be believed. Reassuring, perhaps ? but no cause for complacency. The earth?s thermal timelag also means that today?s emissions will keep on causing warming for decades to come, and that decisions made today on emissions cuts are essential if we are to rebalance the climate in the second half of the century. The great danger of climate change is that it is a long-term systemic process. Self-evidently urgent threats ? like wars or economic collapse ? are easy to put at the top of our list of priorities. But climate change is a very slow process (note the current sceptic line of decrying the lack of year-on-year warming as hoped-for proof that it?s all been a big mistake), and one where cause and effect (CO2=climate disasters) are not at all obvious at any intuitive level, hence the continuing predominance of wishful thinking, conspiracy-theorising and outright denial. Climate change clearly does not engage our natural psychological self-defence mechanisms. This is the value of the 100 months campaign, which injects a sense of urgency into what is in reality a very slow process of cooking ourselves. We need to frame this issue as an urgent one to generate anything like an appropriate response, and indeed NEF explicitly uses the wartime analogy. But the drawback is also clear: in January 2017, after the deadline passes, people might either become fatalistic (?we?ve passed the tipping point, so let?s give up?) or might turn increasingly sceptical (?things don?t look any different ? I thought you said the world was going to end??). In reality, this is a matter of risk analysis: how much risk of destroying our planetary habitat are we prepared to bear in order to keep on burning fossil fuels? Quite a lot, it would seem.
George Monbiot on a Nuclear IranUKWatch.net - 1 Aug 2008George Monbiot had a good article on the Iran nuclear issue in the Guardian earlier this week, wherein he identified the bottom line: that if Iran does want nuclear weapons, the reasons will most likely have to do with the clear security threats that it faces. Aside from the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons and those of the UNSC P5, who are obliged to disarm under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (the same treaty they wave at Iran) but refuse to do so, Monbiot could also have mentioned that Iran has Pakistan and India’s weapons in its neighbourhood as well, plus US bases/allies in practically every neighbouring country and US warships in the Persian Gulf. Plus the US has invaded and occupied two of Iran’s neighbours, justifying those actions with similar accusations to those now made against Tehran. And Israeli and US politicians continue to implicitly or explicitly threaten to attack Iran militarily (threats of force being illegal under the UN charter). But I appreciate that newspaper columnists have to work within the constraints of space, and Monbiot?s article was focused on upholding the international mechanisms for non-proliferation and reminding us of Britain’s own flaunted obligations in that regard. So the above isn’t a criticism, more an addition to the point he was making in the article. While I wholly agree with the main thrust of the article, I?d respectfully take issue with a couple of points Monbiot makes within his argument. He tries to portray his position as being on a sensible middle ground between Western governments who say Iran definitely does and ?some anti-war campaigners? who say it definitely does not have a nuclear weapons program. But in fact he offers no challenge to the position of the former group; only to the latter. He actually seems pretty certain such a program exists, and that’s a highly problematic stance. Personally, I don?t say unequivocally that Iran does not want the bomb. I note for example Israeli historian Martin van Creveld’s statement that, given the security threats mentioned above, Iran would be “crazy” not to build a nuclear weapon. But nor do I think we can state unequivocally that Iran does have a nuclear program, or even say (as Monbiot seems to) that we can pretty much assume that it does. It’s important (a) to acknowledge that we don’t know one way or the other, and (b) to also note the evidence that and reasons why Iran might not have such a program. These remain just as significant as the evidence that and reasons why Iran would have a weapons program. And one can’t overstate the importance of looking at this particular topic in as balanced and accurate a way as possible, given what’s at stake. Monbiot accuses some anti-war folk of ?clutching? at the recent US National Intelligence Estimate’s (the consensus opinion of all US intelligence agencies) conclusion that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. He points out that the NIE also said that Iran?s uranium enrichment activities are such that if it decided to start a weapons program it could do so quite swiftly. Fair enough. But it’s hardly valid to skip lightly over the difference between having a weapons program and not having one (but being able to start one quickly) as though the difference between the two doesn’t exist at all. Moreover, Monbiot is failing to join the dots between this and his overall argument (that Iran wants the bomb as a deterrent). Whether the difference between Iran having a peaceful nuclear program and having a weapons program is a substantial one or not depends on the security environment. To the extent that the West continues to start wars all over the Middle East, fill the region with troops, military bases and aircraft carriers, arms its allies to the teeth and threaten war on anyone who challenges its hegemony, then yes, it becomes increasingly likely that the difference between a peaceful and a non-peaceful Iranian nuclear program will be an academic one. Monbiot could have drawn this into his overall argument if he’d seen what appears to me to be a fairly obvious connection. Monbiot says that the International Atomic Energy Agency has many questions outstanding in relation to Iran’s activities. But he should also have mentioned ? because (as I point out above) it is not exactly irrelevant – that the IAEA has also said there is no evidence of a weapons program existing. What we cannot do is, to use Hans Blix’s memorable phrase, turn question marks into exclamation marks in respect of this issue. That takes us into the same territory of false logic as the pre-Iraq war US and UK governments and the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. People are not convicted on suspicion; there?s a very good reason why the burden of proof is on the party making the accusation and not on the party being accused. (It is also, I regret to say, a little cheap of Monbiot to declare ? with an adjective substituting for a properly functioning argument – that people citing a strong source of evidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons program ? the NIE - are in some way desperately ?clutching? at something flimsy. When the IAEA and the NIE both tell us that Iran is not making nukes, that has a good deal of authority, and for Monbiot to challenge this he needs to offer better arguments than these). Monbiot says, rightly in my view, that “those of us who oppose an attack on Iran are under no obligation to accept [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad’s claims of peaceful intent”. However, as Juan Cole has pointed out, “the [Iranian] Supreme Jurisprudent has given a fatwa against having or using nuclear weapons as illicit in Islamic law. You can’t acknowledge that Iran is a dictatorial theocracy and then turn around and say that his fatwa is irrelevant.” Recall that it is the Supreme Jurisprudent, not Ahmedinejad, who in ultimate charge of Iranian government policy. Note also that Khamenei’s power is not simply material; it also rests on his credibility as an Islamic cleric. To flagrantly breach his own explicit ruling would clearly diminish his clerical and therefore his political standing, and that’s something he’d have to take into account if he decided that Iran should have the bomb. That’s not to say he would never do it, but it’s a non-trivial barrier for him to overcome, which may mitigate against it happening. Again, this is not something we can simply ignore. Monbiot asks, “Why would a country with such reserves of natural gas and so great a potential for solar power suffer sanctions and the threat of bombing to make fuel it could buy from other states, if it accepted the UN’s terms?” There are three answers to this. First, it would clearly make far more economic sense for Iran to maximise the amount of oil and gas that it can sell on the international markets rather than hand out at subsidised rates to its own people. That should be fairly plain. Yes, it could (and should) address this via renewable energy. But Iran’s hardly the only nation on the planet that’s woefully behind the curve on that issue. Second, Iran may want to assume the position of “nuclear ambiguity”: not having the weapons, but being in the position where its enemies are aware that it could assemble them in short order, and are deterred from attacking it as a result. But third, and perhaps most importantly of all, the Iranian ruling class are highly ambitious; aspiring to the status of regional power in accordance with their nation’s historic role. Iran’s willingness to stare down the West and insist on nothing less than its entitlements under the NPT needs to be seen in that context. If you look at the rhetoric, you see a recurring theme of Iran insisting on its “rights”. This subtext is key, in my view. What Tehran is really insisting on is its desired status as a serious player on the international stage. Using solar power does not offer Iran the opportunity to make this sort of a stand. The NPT does. So I would caution against ascribing a very high degree of probability to the idea that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Absent any certain knowledge, and with evidence pointing in both directions, Monbiot?s approach needs to be more circumspect. Those best placed to judge say there is no evidence of such a program, and much of the Iranian behaviour which Monbiot cites as indicating the existence of that program can be plausibly explained in another way. I should neither be surprised nor unsurprised to learn for certain that Iran is trying to build a bomb. The fact is that we don’t know, and in my view we can’t call this in either direction with any serious level of confidence. Given the dangerous nature of the current stand-off between Iran and the West, a high degree of circumspection is essential to keep the temperature of this issue at a non-threatening level. I should conclude by saying that I acknowledge Monbiot?s sound intentions to prevent a war with Iran (which would make the bloodbath in Iraq look like a tea party) and to hold our own governments to account for their role in nuclear proliferation. But I feel that his speculation on current Iranian activities leaves a little bit to be desired. He may actually be undermining his own aims by propagating the myth that Iran definitely or almost certainly does have a nuclear weapons program. It is important to fully acknowledge the fact that this accusation is a long way from being proven; not least because many thousands of lives may depend on how that question is answered.
