Fifty years of Fidelismo

SPEAKING at a ceremony marking Cuba’s Day of National Rebellion at the weekend, President Fidel Castro took aim at an unusual foe. Describing the EU as the United States’ Trojan horse, he declared: “Cuba does not need the help of the European Union to survive.” In the past, although he has been caustic about characters such as Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar (whom he calls “the little Fuhrer”) and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, Castro has generally refrained from castigating Europe as a whole. The change in strategy does not, on the face of it, appear to be a particularly judicious move.

Much the same could also be said about the Cuban actions that prompted a reaction from the EU upon which the comandante felt compelled to heap scorn. A few months ago, the authorities in Havana arrested about 75 dissidents and sentenced many of them to long terms in prison. At roughly the same time, three men guilty of a botched attempt to hijack a ferry to Florida were put on trial, sentenced to death, and executed shortly afterwards.

The arrests, which constituted the broadest such swoop in decades, reversed a policy of increasing tolerance towards dissidence. And the executions ended an informal three-year moratorium on capital punishment. Inevitably, these developments provided ammunition to the Castro regime’s enemies. They also dismayed many of Cuba’s friends.

Although there can be no justification for violations of human rights, there is in this case a context. The executions followed a wave of hijackings, including at least one involving a passenger aircraft. In most cases such acts of piracy are attempted by desperadoes eager to flee Cuba for socio-economic reasons. If the attempts succeed, the authorities in Florida usually refuse to extradite the hijackers, who are seldom detained for more than a few days. At the same time the US claims that it faces a security threat from unauthorized incursions into its territory, and has warned Cuba that these could be construed as an act of war.

Combined with hints that Havana may well be a future candidate for regime change, the two-pronged US approach is apparently intended to serve a dual purpose: to encourage further acts of terror, and to rattle the Cuban government.

The US has also been encouraging the opponents of the regime through financial and logistical assistance. In marathon public interventions, Castro has gone to great lengths in his accusations against James Cason, the recently appointed head of the US Interests Section in Havana, whom he describes as “a bully with diplomatic immunity”. No one disputes the fact that George W. Bush’s point man in Cuba has been going out of his way to irritate the host nation, not least by regularly arranging propaganda-and-peanuts sessions for Castro’s opponents.

His efforts have ostensibly been directed at encouraging democratization, but everyone knows what that expression implies when it emanates from a neo-conservative source. Besides, as Wayne Smith, who from 1979 to 1982 served in the position Cason now occupies, puts it: “Let us imagine the reaction ... if the chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington was holding meetings with disgruntled Americans and announcing that the purpose was to bring about a new form of government — a socialist government — in the United States.”

For all that, the crackdown on dissent is not only reprehensible per se, but regrettable also because it plays into the hands of those who seek to portray Cuba as a communist tyranny — which it isn’t, and never has been. There can be little question that Castro, the world’s longest serving head of state, is a dictator. Yet comparisons with the likes of Saddam Hussein or North Koreas two Kims are not just unreasonable but grotesque.

Fidel’s charisma is often cited as a primary source of sustenance for his regime. There may be something in that, but the revolution, for all its flaws and missteps, has also survived because most Cubans continue to cherish (in some cases grudgingly) the gains it brought them. Despite the exceptional economic hardship ushered in by the loss of its main trading partners in the Eastern Bloc, the level of infant mortality in Cuba is among the lowest in the world, while life expectancy on the island is the highest in Latin America. And its literacy rate of over 95 per cent is unprecedented in the Third World. There are, no doubt, Cubans who would gladly relinquish such advantages in exchange for a McDonald’s on every street corner. but so far they appear to be in a minority.

Last Saturday, a few hours before Castro delivered his anti-EU diatribe at the site, hundreds of schoolchildren arrived at the building that once housed the Moncada barracks in Santiago. There, watched by at least a dozen veterans of the action, they re-enacted the audacious attack of July 26, 1953, that first thrust Fidel into the national consciousness.

Until then, Castro had been a little-known lawyer associated with the student wing of the Orthodox Party. The Moncada plan entailed capturing the barracks and other key installations in Santiago in the hope of inciting a nationwide rebellion against the corrupt and unpopular dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Although the attack had been meticulously planned, the Fidelistas (all of whom were in their twenties; Fidel himself was not yet 27) were ill-equipped and lacked military experience. At the outset of the operation, almost everything went wrong. Although no more than six rebels and a dozen or so soldiers died in the actual fighting, nearly half of Castro’s 130-strong contingent were captured, ruthlessly tortured (Abel Santamaria, Fidel’s second-in-command, had his eyes gouged out) and summarily executed.

Thereafter, however, the rebels’ luck turned. With national attention focused on them, those who escaped the initial wave of killings did not have to pay for their adventurism with their lives. They attracted a degree of sympathy not only from the public but also within the establishment. The officer in charge of the Rural Guard contingent that found Castro and two of his companions a few days later prevented his trigger-happy troops from opening fire, shouting: “You cannot kill ideas!”

When the surviving rebels appeared in court, the judges turned out to be less than hostile, and Fidel was able to transform their trial into a searing indictment of the Batista regime. It is during this trial that what has been described as Fidelismo was born. The Fidelistas may have failed to occupy the Moncada barracks, but they succeeded in capturing the nation’s imagination. The prosecutor was almost apologetic in demanding a long prison term for Castro, who was sentenced to 15 years. He served less than two: in 1955, popular pressure persuaded the regime to declare a general amnesty.

By the time Castro emerged with his companions from their jail on the Isle of Pines, he already had a clear-cut plan for the next phase of the struggle. Within months he exiled himself to Mexico. By December 1956, he returned to Cuba by boat with a revitalized and better trained bunch of Fidelistas. The rebels’ plans had, however, been betrayed to the regime, which launched air strikes against them as soon as they landed. There were only 12 survivors — among them a newly hirsute Fidel and his younger brother Raul, as well as an Argentinian physician by the name of Ernesto Guevara.

From such humble beginnings in the Sierra Maestra sprang the Rebel Army that rolled triumphantly into Havana little more than two years later. The rest is history — and it’s a history that’s by no means glorious all the way through. But if it’s worth wondering how Cuba would have turned out had Castro lived up to the liberal-democratic expectations many people around the world had of him in 1959, it’s surely also worth considering how the revolution would have panned out without the US embargo and the constant threat of subversion (and worse) from the north.

At his sentencing in 1953, Fidel concluded a two-hour, largely extemporaneous oration with the words: “Condemn me, it does not matter. History will absolve me!” Will it? As Zhou Enlai reportedly commented when asked to evaluate the French Revolution of 1789, “It’s too soon to tell.”

Of course, interim opinions are possible. And a cogent, albeit somewhat romantic one was offered in Postcards From Cuba, a song that the British folk musician Leon Rosselson produced after a visit to the island some years ago. After examining the pitfalls of a jaded revolutionary spirit and lamenting the supremacy of the dollar, he goes on to say: “But Cuba’s not a place, not just a poor Third World island/ It’s more than just a country and it’s more than its achievements/ It’s more than just its music and the laughter of its people/ It’s an idea in the mind, it’s a fragment of far-seeing/ It’s a hope we keep alive in the corner of our being/ It’s the spark that spreads the fire, it’s the freeing of desire/ And it’s sunlight out of shadow and it’s dancing out of sorrow/ It’s the spirit of defiance, it’s a vision of tomorrow./ It’s two fingers to the IMF, comeuppance for the bully/ It’s a story told to children so they’ve something to believe in/ It’s a brake on the machine of the New World Order/ It’s a refusal to submit to the rules of the marauder...”

mahirali@journalism.com

Pakistan’s nuclear deterrence

PRESIDENT Pervez Musharraf, while strongly refuting the allegations that during his recent visit to Washington he succumbed to the American pressure to roll back Pakistan’s nuclear programme and that the three-billion dollar military and economic aid to Pakistan was contingent on this condition, categorically stated that the country would retain its nuclear capability and follow a strategy of minimum deterrence. The president also elucidated that during his visit the Americans had not even broached the subject of Pakistan’s nuclearization.

He, however, conceded that the question of possible nuclear proliferation in Pakistan was raised by the Americans whom he informed that his government had already taken all necessary measures to prevent nuclear proliferation and to ensure that its strategic assets do not fall into wrong hands. He also made it clear to the Americans that Pakistan did not export nuclear technology to North Korea and that its relations with that country did not cover “conventional or non-conventional transactions”.

Paradoxically, however, a senior US administration official is reported to have said that the aid package to Pakistan was conditional. Moreover, soon after President Musharraf’s visit to Washington, the US House of Representatives voted to add a condition to the aid package to Pakistan requiring the US president to inform the Congress, each year, that Pakistan has cooperated in global anti-terrorism efforts, nuclear non-proliferation and restoration of democracy in the country. It follows from this that any aid flow to Pakistan, under the present US aid package, would require an annual US presidential certification, on the lines of the Pressler Amendment, a 1990 law that enjoined the US president to certify that Pakistan was not involved in nuclear proliferation.

The amendment adopted by the US House of Representatives reflects the United States declared policy on nuclear non-proliferation. However, this amendment was the outcome of the pro-Indian lobby by the US-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) and Eni Faleomavaga, a Democrat Congressman who is an important and influential member of the international relations committee.

The United States never accepted the nuclearization of South Asia, even by implication. It has all along been asking India and Pakistan, whom it considers self-declared nuclear states, to give up their nuclear programmes, accept safeguards on all their nuclear activities and sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), as non-nuclear members. Ironically, however, the United States, which is considered to be the most ardent exponent of global nuclear disarmament, has not given any serious consideration to fulfil its own solemn and legally binding commitment of complete nuclear disarmament, as required in Article VI of the NPT. Thus, it stands in material breach of the NPT, in the light of the landmark advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.

Pakistan has developed its nuclear capability, much against its will, at an exorbitant cost, only to meet its security concerns. It cannot now forgo it only to ingratiate itself with the United States for the sake of some financial and other benefits. The people of Pakistan will never accept such an action. Pakistan’s security is more sacrosanct and has to take precedence over everything else.

Since its inception, Pakistan has remained concerned about its security because of India’s continued bellicosity and hostile posture towards it. India imposed three wars on it and played an undesirable role in its dismemberment in 1971. Pakistan, however, remained committed to the goal of nuclear non-proliferation and did not exercise the nuclear option even after India’s nuclear explosions in 1974. However, when India carried out further nuclear tests in May 1998, followed by extremely provocative statements by its leaders, Pakistan had no choice but to test and demonstrate its nuclear capability in order to maintain strategic balance in the subcontinent. It had no intention to undermine the nuclear non-proliferation regime.

The growing large disparity in its conventional forces with India which Pakistan was unable to narrow down owing to its financial constraints, was yet another important factor which compelled it to exercise its nuclear option. Pakistan’s reliance on nuclear weapons is now a necessity not only to counter India’s nuclear power but also to offset its conventional superiority.

The nuclear deterrence was a dynamic concept and, under the changed circumstances, may necessitate review and re-assessment to ensure survivability and credibility of the deterrent. Moreover, in the course of time, the components of the existing nuclear weapons may become corroded rendering them ineffective and unreliable. Pakistan should, therefore, have the option to conduct tests which is the only way to verify that the stockpile weapons will perform as expected and also to suit the new requirements in order to maintain a sufficient, reliable and sustainable deterrence to safeguard its security, as otherwise the very purpose of its nuclearization would be defeated.

Pakistan firmly believes that nuclear weapons are not weapons of war but only a deterrent. The recourse to these weapons may be justifiable only in extraordinary circumstances in which the very survival of a nuclear state is at stake and not for any other purpose, however noble it might be. The use of nuclear weapons in any other conditions will be a crime against humanity and a violation of the UN charter and the international law.

A nuclear war between Pakistan and India was all but unthinkable and neither is so irresponsible as to go to that limit. So far as Pakistan is concerned, it has, time and again, reaffirmed its commitment to restraint and responsibility, despite India’s consistently unsavoury attitude towards it.

The writer is a former ambassador of Pakistan.

Sending children to jail

NGOs like the Society for the Protection of the Right of the Child (SPARC) should be happy that their long and laboured efforts have borne fruit with at least one legislation — the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance which invests the entire proceedings in the trial and conviction of youngsters with the basic principles laid down by international bodies, and accepted by Pakistan as binding on it.

It is another matter that our courts and prisons, the most concerned in these trials, have yet to be fully briefed about the contents of the ordinance which is now more than two years old. It was promulgated by the federal government of General Pervez Musharraf in July 2001. No wonder their officials are taken by surprise when told about its almost radical nature.

I have written a couple of times on this subject, so sensitive to the hearts and minds of the truly enlightened, but treated by successive governments with the same insensitivity as would a law related to cruelty to animals. In fact I want to reproduce for my readers a few excerpts from a column I wrote on October 14, 1998, just to show how I have felt about the matter, but first I must tell you how the new law is going to make a difference to youthful offenders.

First of all, the JJS Ordinance prescribes an age for the juvenile, the child caught in crime. He/she has to be below eighteen in order to benefit from its provisions. This age is also reflected in the revolutionary clause that no one below this age will suffer the sentence of death or ordered to labour during the time spent in confinement, or be handcuffed or fettered or given any corporal punishment in custody. Thankfully all the four provinces have notified the rules governing trial of a child offender, because it is the rules that lay down guidelines for the courts and prisons.

The guardian of the child and the probation officer must be informed as soon as possible of the arrest. Besides, the ordinance lays down criteria and the procedure to be followed at all stages of the juvenile trial and conviction. Bail and release on probation have been made easy, while bail may only be refused if it would put the child to any danger. The law also restricts to the barest minimum the number of persons who will be present in court during the trial. No child will be tried for an offence together with an adult, but by separate juvenile courts to be set up for the purpose. So it is an enlightened legislation, truly great for a country like Pakistan where successive governments — and elected governments at that — have been notoriously and shockingly unmindful of the rights of the child and have woken up to the horrors of child labour too only when obliged to do so by world opinion. Much of the high-faulutin’ talk that we hear about children being made to work themselves to the bone would never have seen the light of day if America had not decided to boycott any goods produced in Pakistan through child labour, including the expensive carpets that earn so much foreign exchange for us.

Now you must bear with me and go through a portion of my old column mentioned above. I wrote: “Who says that governments in Pakistan are not bothered about the universal law for the rights of children? And who is the mulk dushman who alleges that the ruling regime, with its unforgettable huge mandate, is insensitive to the light of the children of poor parents? Read this news item published in an Urdu daily of Islamabad.

“‘On the direction of the Deputy Commissioner, Islamabad, a ban has been imposed on begging by little children and on child labour. Children caught during the first week will be let off with a warning, but after that those defying the ban will be arrested and sent to jail. This was disclosed by the AC (City) before a gathering of NGOs and journalists.’

“The intention in the latter case probably was that the little boys and girls should get reformed in prison by living in the company of hardened criminals, rapists, child-lifters, dacoits and murderers, and be convinced by this breed to refrain from the heinous crime of begging and working to feed their families. The AC (a lady, by the way) did not tell the gathering whether the children netted by the administration would be sent to Rawalpindi Jail, or whether she and the DC ran a special borstal institution for little ones in Islamabad. Also, would their parents be imprisoned too for letting their kids indulge in the crime of earning a precarious living?

“I don’t know about the DC, but the young lady has a very fine reputation as an officer of integrity and intelligence. I don’t know if she is married, and with children, and whether the DC too has children or not. But if obsession with the DMG leaves the two any time for sensitivity, let them imagine how they would feel if they were to see their little ones begging on the streets and cleaning the cars of the rich to earn a few rupees. Times don’t take long to change.”

Admittedly written in anger, impotent anger, but what else can a commentator on public events do when words of advice seem to fall on deaf ears? Insensitive young officers who hold in their hands the destiny of the common man in this country deserve stronger admonishment. I wonder what the ancient Hindu raja and saint Bahartihari had in mind whose words were quoted by Allama Iqbal in a verse, “Mard-e-naadan par kalam-e-narm-o-nazuk be-asar;” sweet words are wasted on the ignorant. I had no means of knowing at that time if the DC and the AC had read my column, so I couldn’t revel in the vanity that I had created an impact. However, like all ad hoc official decisions in Pakistan nothing was later heard of the ban.

As for why boys (and girls) in their teens take to crime, it would be trite to say that it is more useful to look at society rather at those children to find out the reasons. But this much I would like to add before I close. When we talk of children and their welfare it is not necessarily our own children. As we are fond of pontificating, children are our collective responsibility — yours and mine and that of the state. This responsibility has to be consciously shared. Where children are concerned we cannot afford to be selfish and selective. And decidedly, no good can come out of sending little boys and girls to prison.

Co-joined with Kashmir

ONE would have to possess a heart of granite not to have been moved by the plight of the Iranian twin-sisters Ladan and Laleh Bajani. Co-joined at the head for all the twentynine years of their common life, they showed unbelievable determination in wanting to be separated.

They disregarded an insensitive fatwa denouncing such an operation, they defied their foster parents, they consciously took the risk of undergoing a lengthy, complicated operation knowing that it could result in their simultaneous deaths. And in the end, it did. What nature had fused together, the painstaking diligence of medical science could not rend asunder.

Their brief, brave lives though have not been a waste, for in their act of self-sacrifice, Ladan and Laleh have provided a parable for others to consider. The Pakistan government for one could learn from their example. For the past fifty-six years (coincidentally nearly the sum of the twins’ lives), Pakistan has chosen deliberately to remain co-joined at its head with Kashmir. To some observers, this diplomatic deformity is a case history in itself, but not unique in world history, no more than the Bajani sisters were the only co-joined twins in medical history.

A squabble for political custody similar to the argument over Kashmir occurred in northern Europe during the nineteenth century. It was known as the Schleswig-Holstein question, and consisted of a tussle between the small kingdom of Denmark and its larger and more powerful neighbour Prussia over the two contiguous Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein that lay in between.

From 1844 onwards, control of these inconsequential territories oscillated between Denmark and Prussia with such confusing frequency that Lord Palmerston (then the British foreign secretary) confessed that there were only three people who had ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein question: one was dead, the other had gone mad, and he the third had forgotten what the original issue was.

Eventually, after almost eighty years of argument, in 1920, a plebiscite was held. The north part of Schleswig voted to join Denmark, and the southern opted for union with Germany. Today, most of Schleswig-Holstein which has a population roughly half that of Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir is a part of the present Federal Republic of Germany, and no one except historians can be bothered to remember why it was ever such an inflammable casus belli. By that measure, the argument between India and Pakistan over Kashmir would appear to have many more years to go before a comparable solution can be found. During the past fiftysix years, though, ever since the Maharaja of Kashmir’s signature on the fateful instrument of accession on August 25, 1947, almost as much ink has been spilt over Kashmir as human bloodshed over it. Shelves of books have been published on it, reams of articles written on it, yards of speeches delivered on it, millions of grey cells have turned white over it, and yet it remains a bone of contention between two neighbours, a bone that is slowly petrifying into a fossil.

Is Kashmir such an intractable problem? Is it really the core issue preventing a modus vivendi between the two countries? This is a question that needs to be asked. It is a question that countless young men and women on both sides of the border, in the dying moments of their unnecessary martyrdom, have asked. It is the question that every surviving mourner — every grieving mother, widow or orphaned child — continues to ask every day that they are forced to live without their loved ones. It is a question that one billion Indians and 150 million Pakistanis are entitled to ask, of themselves and their governments, today and every day, until a definitive answer is forthcoming. Is Kashmir really the core issue?

To some, if it is indeed a core issue, it is the core that has been left after the surrounding body flesh has been eaten away by Time. Today, when the United Nations, half a century after its first intervention in the dispute, finds itself emasculated, its aged discoloured resolutions cannot be expected to have retained any of their relevance. In any case, the outside world beyond the subcontinent is suffering from Kashmir fatigue. It has heard the same refrain sung too often, it is over-familiar with the repetitive rhetoric, the same circular argument. Neither Pakistan nor India needs to play to the international gallery anymore. They have lost their audience; the gallery has emptied. Now, they have an audience of only one — each other.

If Kashmir was essentially a political problem, then three generations of politicians since 1947 should have been able to resolve it by now. They have met often enough over the years — Ayub Khan/Nehru in Murree, Ayub Khan/Shastri at Tashkent, Z.A. Bhutto/Mrs Indira Gandhi at Simla, Benazir Bhutto/Rajiv Gandhi in Islamabad, Nawaz Sharif/Vajpayee at Lahore, and the last time at Agra when Musharraf interacted with Vajpayee. On each occasion, though, something always prevented consummation.

Was it the force of public opinion on both sides? Definitely not. The Kashmir question has never been put to the litmus test of a public poll or a referendum by either side. What masquerades as ‘public opinion’ in Pakistan is, in all honesty, nothing more than the prejudices of right-wing editors of high circulation Urdu dailies. Because they believe they mould public opinion, periodically they take plaster casts from that mould and present them as fresh impressions of the public’s mind on any particular issue.

Why does Kashmir remain an issue then? Is there any other inhibiting factor? Perhaps the answer lies in the question itself. It may need to be re-framed: Is Kashmir a core issue, or simply a corps commanders’ issue?

One is aware that such a daring statement could be read in some barracks as a sinister play on words bandied by an uninformed, ununiformed civilian. It is not being proffered as a provocation. It is intended as a genuine, earnest attempt to use a pen to cauterize, even if only at the edges, and to let ink disinfect a wound that should not be allowed to suppurate for another generation.

Whatever the solution to the Kashmir question may be — a plebiscite, union with India, merger with Pakistan, independence, autonomy, acceptance of the Line of Control, continuation of the status quo — whatever may be the framework of a political or constitutional settlement, it can only be signed, sealed, and delivered for implementation after it has also been duly witnessed by the nine Pakistani corps commanders.

Had President Musharraf enjoyed the unequivocal mandate to decide Kashmir on his own, he would have done so when he was alone with Prime Minister Vajpayee at Agra. It is because as the Chief of Army Staff, he needs to take his corps commanders into this battle with him, he needs their unanimous support. He cannot afford to rely on a reluctant comrade, or lean on an impatient successor.

Is any government in Pakistan ever likely to fall should there be an agreement over Kashmir? One doubts it. Whenever governments have fallen as a result of public agitation as opposed to when they have been removed by the military, they have invariably been sent home over mundane issues like the price of sugar or the blatant rigging of elections. If the public has choked, it is over such gnats; it has swallowed elephants like the nuclear programme or constitutional violations without a hiccup.

There will be one school of thought that will advocate letting the sleeping dog of Kashmir lie. It has its uses, especially when awakened. There is a much larger number on both sides of the border which would want to see this ageing animal put to sleep. It would be an act of mercy, a merciful end to far too many merciless killings.

Pakistan, unlike the co-joined twins Ladan and Laleh Bajani, has a choice because its attachment to Kashmir is a deliberate, voluntary act of political co-junction. The solution is simple. It requires Bajani-like courage. Who knows? Both Pakistan and Kashmir may well survive the trauma, and actually thrive as a result. If asked their opinion, one billion Indians and 150 million Pakistanis would consider the risk worth taking.

On to Tehran

President George Bush, who assured Americans on March 17, 2003, there was ‘no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,’ now warns ‘axis of evil’ Iran is working on nuclear weapons.

Bush seems determined to press his Christian fundamentalist crusade against Muslim nations. But another important reason impels him on. He is running a political shell game: diverting the public from the monster Enron and stock market swindles by invading Afghanistan, then covering that mess by invading Iraq, and now trying to cover-up the growing Iraq disaster by fanning a new crisis with Iran.

Soon after Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon demanded the US Army march on Tehran, his American neo-conservative supporters launched a get-Iran campaign, featuring the identical propaganda they used to fan war fever against Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, threats to the US, terrorism and human rights violations. Some imaginative neo-cons even claim Saddam’s unfindable weapons were moved to Iran.

The Bush Administration, which makes no secret of trying to overthrow the Tehran regime and funding anti-government groups, applauded last week’s student protests in Iran. No mention, however, was made of students beaten and jailed in Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States for protesting the US invasion of Iraq. Nor why the anti-Tehran Iranian Marxist group, Mujahidin-i-Khalq, which is on the US terrorist list, is allowed to operate offices only blocks from the White House and maintain armed formations in occupied Iraq.

Just as the US was intensifying claims Iran was secretly developing nuclear capability, the UN’s nuclear control agency, IAEA, and Europe called on Tehran to allow more intrusive inspection of its facilities, which are under UN controls. Iran insists they are only for civilian use. But Iran’s nuclear programs and missile development have alarmed Israel. Threats of attacks on Iran’s reactors are coming from both the US and Israel. The latter’s US-supplied long-ranged F-15I strike aircraft are capable of hitting Iran - and, for that matter, Pakistan.

Though Iran denies nuclear weapons ambitions, Iran is probably developing covert weapons capability. In 1994, the head of West Asia’s most capable intelligence agency revealed to me Iran had offered to pay his cash-strapped nation’s total defense budget for ten years in exchange for nuclear know-how. The offer was refused.

Before his overthrow, the late Shah was secretly negotiating with the US for reactors, and with Israel for medium-ranged Jericho missiles armed with nuclear warheads. Any regime in Iran, clerical, royal, or otherwise, will seek nuclear weapons. A nation of 68 million with great oil wealth, which lost 500,000 men in the US-promoted 1980 invasion by Iraq, has as much right to nuclear weapons for self-defense as Britain, France, India, Pakistan, or the US.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions are aimed at countering Israel’s large nuclear arsenal - reportedly over 200 weapons. While Iran long accepted UN nuclear supervision, Israel flatly refused UN inspection, even creating in 1969 a fake control room at its main Dimona reactor, according to defector Mordechai Vanunu, to fool US specialists in the only inspection it ever allowed.

President Bush’s trumped-up war against Iraq, and now threats of war against Iran over its alleged nuclear projects, while turning a blind eye to Israel’s nuclear, chemical and biological arsenal, is hypocritical and assures a continuing strategic arms race in the region. Nuclear and biowarfare disarmament of the entire Mideast- including Israel - is the right answer, as the UN has long urged.

Last fall, pro-Israel neo-conservatives revealed plans for a US campaign against Iran: stirring student unrest, then inciting a broader revolution to overthrow its Islamic theocracy. Last week, as US pressure on Iran mounted, student riots erupted in Iran, sparked by CIA-staged pirate TV broadcasts using US-based Iranian royalists calling for rebellion.

The demonstrations were not solely the result of foreign machinations. Some Iranians find President Mohammed Khatami’s Islamic regime narrow-minded, too repressive, or ineffectual, though it is more representative of national interests.

Crushing US sanctions on Iran have inflicted severe economic woes, and high unemployment. More important, Iran is undergoing the same generational revolution that swept away the communist regimes of Eastern Europe. Seventy percent of Iranians are under 30, half under 18. They are rebelling against hidebound orthodoxy; many seek the ‘decadent’ western life the mullahs have struggled to fend off.

This ferment does not necessarily mean a counter-revolution will return Iran to the Shah’s days. Still, a major revolution cannot be totally discounted, particularly if fuelled by the US and perhaps supported by American forces in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Pakistan. Interestingly, many neo-conservatives are beginning to call for the ‘liberation’ of Pakistan.—Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2003