The possibility of nuclear weapons
falling into the hands of non-state entities like Hezbollah and
Al-Qaeda is very real as most of the new nuclear powers are
either already under the control of such absolutist and
religious fascist regimes (North Korea and Iran) or are likely
to be run by religious fanatics in near future who have close
relationships with the terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda,
Japanese Red Army, Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam, the United Wa State Army and their ilk.
Being undemocratic, unstable, and poor they are usually
dependent on mechanisms that do not bode well for the regional
and global stability.
As these countries, Pakistan,
North Korea, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are inherently
incoherent and suffer from internal strife and contradictions.
Their civil and military institutions are always susceptible to
sabotage and subversive activities which makes it more likely
that one day their nuclear assets may fall into the hands of
such elements that are sympathetic to one or the other extremist
or terrorist network. These internal difficulties make it
impossible for these countries to have an adequate system to
safeguard their nuclear materials and weapons.
The ongoing insurgency in
Pakistan’s province of Baluchistan and the most recent coup
attempt by Islamists belonging to Pakistan Air force has
underlined these inherent weaknesses. Often it is only one man
that stands between false stability and a certain chaos in
countries like Pakistan and Egypt. And generally it is only a
matter of time before a Khomeini or a terrorist group like Hamas
succeeds in toppling the tin soldiers on which the free world
has historically been putting all of its bets.
Regimes that lack popular support
always maintain direct or indirect relations and contacts with
regional and international terrorist groups and networks like
Al-Qaeda and Japanese Red Army. These outfits are committed to
acquire nuclear weapons of one kind or the other for the
advancement of their terrorist goals.
Al-Qaeda,
according to an exhaustive review of
documents discovered in 2004 in Afghanistan, was
building a serious weapons program
with a heavy emphasis on developing a nuclear device. “I don’t
have any doubt that al Qaeda was pursuing nuclear, biological
and chemical warfare capabilities. It’s not our judgment at the
moment that they were that far along, but I have no doubt that
they were seeking to do so,” U.S. Undersecretary of State John
Bolton had told CNN. “It underlines just how serious the threat
of the use of these weapons of mass destruction could be, and
why it’s such an important part of the global campaign against
terrorism.” [Ref
1]
North Korea, Pakistan and Iran
all have been working with Al-Qaeda at different levels.
Al-Qaeda is known to have penetrated in all the branches of
Pakistan’s armed forces and enjoys an undisputed popularity
among the masses in the Islamic republic. That’s why many
experts believe that Al-Qaeda will one day have its hands on the
nuclear material. The fear is that Al-Qaeda may succeed in
acquiring discarded nuclear power plant fuel rods to make a
dirty bomb (Radiological dispersal weapon) much sooner than
expected. A dirty bomb, according to experts, would not create a
nuclear explosion, but instead would blow radioactive debris
over a wide area, rendering it uninhabitable. [Ref
2]
Pakistan, which has helped in
the creation of Al-Qaeda and Taliban, is the best example of how
an undemocratic and poor state can use it’s newly acquired
nuclear know how and armament industry to get funds and other
military technology. In 1990 when the United States of America
suspended it’s military and humanitarian assistance to Pakistan
after a decade long close economic and military relationship,
Islamabad felt cheated and deemed it justified to sell it’s
nuclear know how and other military hard and software to other
countries.
Quarters close to the
Pakistan’s military and civil establishment know for a fact that
it was not just the greedy scientists but country’s military
establishment itself that traded its nuclear know how and even
the equipment to make nuclear weapons for money, missiles and
missile technology to countries like North Korea, Iran and
Libya.
Being isolated, impoverished, and
hard pressed for cash, Pyongyang too has used its ballistic
missiles, conventional weapons, nuclear technology and even know
how as a cash crop. Since the early
1990s, when its economy collapsed, North Korea has pursued trade
with such states as Angola, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Pakistan, and Syria as its only means of earning hard currency.
Most of the trade involves arms, chemical and biological weapons
materials, and even ballistic missile technology.
More than a dozen countries in
Asia, Africa and the Middle East have bought the military goods
from Pyongyang. The communist regime has sold components that
could be part of biological or chemical weapons. And experts
have no doubt that it will sell its nuclear weapons also to any
interested party. “The North Korean
regime is willing to sell anything that makes money,” warns a
former high-ranking North Korean official who defected to South
Korea. “If they could produce enough plutonium and uranium to
sell, there is absolutely no doubt they would do it.” [
Ref
3]
North Korea has been
on the U.S. Department of State’s list of states supporting
international terrorism since 1988, following the 1987 bombing
of a South Korean airliner by North Korean agents that killed
over a hundred people. According to the U.S. State Department’s
annual
Pattern of Global Terrorism report for 2000,
North Korea has links with terror organizations, has sold arms
to these groups directly and indirectly, and continues to harbor
several Red Army hijackers of a Japanese Airlines flight en
route to North Korea in the 1970s.
The State
Department’s 1999 report stated that North Korea had links with
Osama bin Laden. North has sold weapons to such terrorist groups
as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the United Wa State
Army, a drug-trafficking group active in the Burmese sector of
the golden triangle (Laos, Burma, and Thailand).In addition to
supplying terrorist organizations, North Koreans have been seen
training in the terrorist camps in Afghanistan.http://www.heritage.org/Research/AsiaandthePacific/BG1503.cfm
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani
scientist who confessed in 2004 to running an illegal nuclear
market, had close connections with North Korea, trading in
equipment, facilitating international deals for components and
swapping nuclear know-how. Former CIA Director George Tenet
testified before Congress that North Korea had shown a
willingness “to sell complete systems and components” for
missile programs that have allowed other governments to acquire
longer-range missiles.
And then there is the question of
whether these countries are capable of putting in place a system
of adequate control over their nuclear assets. The
disintegration of the Soviet Empire has already brought the
world face to face with the specter of rampant nuclear
proliferation, fueled by leakages of fissile material from
increasingly insecure stockpiles. “Indeed, thefts of nuclear and
radioactive materials, propelled by deteriorating economic and
security conditions in the nuclear complex have surged in the
former Soviet Union since the early 1990s. Most incidents of
nuclear theft and smuggling have been militarily innocuous,
involving radioactive junk (such as low-grade uranium,
cesium-137 or cobalt-60) that is useless in making fissile
weapons. However, some 15 to 20 seizures of weapons-usable
plutonium and highly-enriched uranium (HEU) have been recorded
internationally in the past decade, and U.S. policymakers must
contemplate the possibility that—as with other illegally traded
commodities—what was seized is only a small fraction of what has
been circulated through smuggling channels.
http://www.bu.edu/globalbeat/nuclear/FPRI042701.html
In view of these developments the
world will have to devote its time and energies to come up with
some mechanism to prevent the falling of these nuclear weapons
into the hands of non-state entities like Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah
and Hamas. The new generation of nuclear powers, for sure,
neither do posses a sufficient knowledge or expertise to be able
to prevent an even a partial breakdown of command and control
systems that protect nuclear weapons and weapons-grade nuclear
materials. Some of these states like Pakistan, North Korea and
Iran will even have an interest in sharing their nuclear
resources with other states for short term monetary and
strategic gains.
Some of the nations that need to
be concerned about this development are Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan and Israel.
As far as Israel is concerned the
North Korean test has brought Iran - a country that has made no
secrets of its commitment to destroy the Jewish state – many
steps closer to have its own weapon of mass destruction. Iran
knows just like North Korea knew that the U.S. and its allies
cannot do anything to prevent it from crossing the nuclear
threshold except issuing threats. India and Pakistan had proved
before and North Korea has confirmed now that empty threats
cannot deter any outlaw state from obtaining the bomb.
In fact Iran has many more reasons
to be fearless in pursuing its agenda. It is not as isolated as
the communist regime in Pyongyang is and it has the resources to
carryout its agenda. It is financially strong, scientifically
advanced and politically much more ambitious than North Korea.
North Korea’s entry into the coveted nuclear club is in fact
manna from heaven for Tehran. And Iran’s entry into the nuclear
club will indirectly arm the terrorists like Hezbollah and Hamas
with the dreaded weapons of mass destruction.
Tehran desperately needs the
nuclear status. Its dream of becoming a regional super power and
an undisputed leader of the Muslim world is hinged on it. To
outmaneuver its Arab competitors like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, it
has to prove to the Muslim street that it has the means to wipe
the Jewish state off the world map - its declared plan.
Pakistan, along with North Korea,
will play a very critical role in helping Tehran acquire the
bomb. No body can deny that what has been detonated in North
Korea is based on the drawings provided by Pakistan and the new
gained experience will now reach Tehran. Pyongyang and Tehran
have already been working very closely on the building of a
nuclear delivery system and the construction of deep underground
concrete bunkers. It is a common knowledge that North Koreans
have supplied to Tehran launching platforms which could reach
Europe and certainly Israel.
According to an Associated Press
report, Israel’s cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the
North Korean test could indirectly increase the threat to
Israel. According to APP, Israel’s ambassador to the United
Nations, Dan Gillerman, said the widespread concern sparked by
the North Korean test could motivate the world body to take a
tougher stand on Iran. “My feeling is that this test and the
international climate of opinion may gives us some hope that
also on the Iranian issue we shall see more determined activity
by the Security Council,” he told Israel’s Channel 2 TV. “The
world to a large extent understands what is happening today with
North Korea and its nuclear activity; what Iran is about to do
could be much worse, much more frightening and much more
dangerous.”
Iran understands that in view of
the North Korean test, the world will be more determined to stop
it from reaching its nuclear goal. And it has planned its moves
accordingly. It has already launched a propaganda campaign in
the Muslim world to convince the Muslim masses that the U.S.
efforts to prevent it from gaining nuclear capability are driven
by its anti-Islam crusade and a policy of empowering Israel.
Mullahs in Tehran are also trying
to exploit the wide spread and growing anti Americanism in the
Muslim world to ward off the free world’s anti-nuclear moves by
casting them as a crusade against Islam. To cash on the Muslim
anti-Semitism, Iran is following a policy of projecting all U.S.
anti-proliferation actions as moves to strengthen Israel’s
position viz a viz its Arab neighbors. Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim
Dehghani, a top Revolutionary Guards commander said in May,
2006, that Israel would be Iran’s first retaliatory target if
attacked by the United States. “We have announced that whenever
America does make any mischief, the first place we target will
be Israel,” Dehghani said.
Addressing a wider audience of
world wide anti-Semites and traditional anti-Americans,
Gholam-Hossein Elham, an Iranian government spokesperson said
that “the dismantling of nuclear arms in the Middle East must
begin with the Zionist entity.” Elham said the ban to use
weapons of mass destruction should be imposed globally. “A just
balance would remove these (nuclear) threats, and the conquering
regime from Jerusalem should be the first in the region to
disarm,” he said.
Most of Iran’s military
preparations in the recent past have been directed at Israel
like for instance its Shahab-3 ballistic missile which is now
operational and can reach Israel. At the time of declaring the
missile operational, Iran’s Defense Minister Ali Shamkhrani had
claimed that Iran was now “ready to confront all regional
(Israeli) and extra-regional (American) threats.”
But the world will have to
realize, sooner or later that Iran is an existential threat to
the whole civilized world and not just to Israel. It will have
to act now before it is too late.
Source:
FamilySecurityMatters.org