News Release

Is U.S. Already Violating Iran Deal?

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NuCThe UN Security Council resolution passed Monday on Iran’s nuclear program begins its second paragraph: “Reaffirming its commitment to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the need for all States Party to that Treaty to comply fully with their obligations…”

But nuclear analysts and activists — including former U.S. government officials who negotiated the treaty like Robert McNamara (see below) — have stated that the U.S. is constantly violating the NPT. That treaty — which the U.S. signed in 1968 — was based on the grand bargain that the non-nuclear weapons states, like Iran, would not acquire nuclear weapons and in return, the nuclear weapons states would move toward “cessation of the manufacture of nuclear weapons, the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles, and the elimination from national arsenals of nuclear weapons and the means of their delivery.”

On Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew will discuss the new Iran nuclear deal before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Also on Thursday, Adam Scheinman, U.S. Ambassador to the NPT Review Conference will speak about it at the National Defense University. See accuracy.org/calendar for critical upcoming events.

ALICE SLATER, aslater at rcn.com
Slater is with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and the Abolition 2000 coordinating committee. She said today: “The hypocrisy of the U.S. and other nuclear weapons states who are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, with the U.S. having actually tested in Nevada a new dummy nuke bunker buster bomb this month, is breathtaking as we single out Iran for special and more stringent rules for compliance with the NPT than we require of other countries such as Japan and Brazil who have huge uranium enrichment programs, for example.” See reports from earlier this month: “Air force drops dummy nuclear bomb in Nevada in first controversial test to update cold war arsenal” and “Russia Considers U.S. Nuclear Bomb Test ‘Open Provocation.'”

Slater added: “The Obama administration has announced that the U.S. government will be spending $1 trillion dollars over the next 30 years for two new bomb factories, planes, missiles and submarines to deliver new nuclear weapons. That’s totally inconsistent with its pledge under the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty to make ‘good faith efforts’ for nuclear disarmament, a pledge which the International Court of Justice ruled in 1996 requires the U.S. and other NPT nuclear weapons states to ‘bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.'” See IPA release: “As Anti Nuclear Weapons Activists Released, 91 Nations Pressing Abolition.”

Sr. MEGAN RICE, mrice12 at gmail.com
Rice, a nun, is one of the Transform Now Plowshares, a group of three activists who were convicted of allegedly intending to harm national security by entering into a Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear weapons plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. The activists spent two years in prison before their sentences were finally overturned in May. Their actions — which including pouring blood and painting “The Fruit of Justice is Peace” — sparked Congressional hearings on the vulnerability of major nuclear facilities.

She said today: “The facility we entered into at Oak Ridge is illegal — it’s producing weapons of mass destruction. The government calls it ‘modernizing’ — but they’re making some 80 bombs a year. It’s unconscionable that we know the effects of nuclear weapons and continue to build them, threatening all of life. And of course, some are profiteering on these weapons while poor people sleep on the street tonight.

“Instead, we need to all transform now into truly life-enhancing alternative socio-economics and eco-friendly alternatives — which could be disassembling weapons of mass destruction and cleaning up the assembly sites.”

See the Washington Post coverage of their trial, including a video interview of Sister Rice. Also: “The Prophets of Oak Ridge” and “3 Peace Activists Sentenced for Breaking into Nuclear Site.”

Background: The U.S. obligation to disarm under the NPT has been acknowledged by former Secretary of Defense McNamara (the U.S. signed the treaty during the Johnson administration, in which McNamara served). In 2005, he told the Institute for Public Accuracy: “The NPT was signed by a president. It was submitted to the Senate; it was ratified by the Senate. It is today the law of the land. The U.S. government is not adhering to Article VI of the NPT and we show no signs of planning to adhere to its requirements to move forward with the elimination — not reduction, but elimination — of nuclear weapons. That was the agreement, these other countries would not develop nuclear weapons and the nuclear powers would move to elimination. We are violating that.” In 2009, shortly before his death, McNamara wrote the piece “Apocalypse Soon.”