The nuclear danger

In the same week Iran announced that it would be resuming uranium enrichment, that country’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, promoted a conference that will discuss whether the Holocaust really happened. The international media have linked these two issues for obvious reasons — to highlight that a man and a society which do not believe in rational standards may soon possess the most destructive power on the planet. But the very power of rationality is shown by the language Ahmadinejad used to describe the agenda of the planned conference —an examination of the “scientific aspect of the issue”. That choice of words is supposed to give a specious legitimacy to the exercise. But such a conference, if it engages only Holocaust deniers, can have no scientific merit.

Indeed, the obsessive record-keeping of the Nazi bureaucracy itself provides the strongest evidence that the Holocaust happened and that, in Germany alone, five to six million Jews were systematically murdered (as well as homosexuals, gypsies, and the physically and mentally handicapped). Apart from these written documents, there is also eyewitness testimony, photographs, and the physical evidence of the camps to prove the Holocaust was an actual historical event. This is why denial of the Holocaust belongs to the same class of delusion which asserts that classical Greek civilisation got all their philosophy from ancient Egypt, or that ancient India was more advanced technologically than Western civilisation today, or that evolutionary theory is scientifically groundless.

But there is one crucial difference with Holocaust deniers — they are usually impelled by a virulent bigotry against Jews. Ahmadinejad’s description of the Holocaust as a “myth” is therefore being interpreted as a sign that, once Iran has nuclear bombs, it will be targeting Israel. Iran has argued that it merely wants to build a nuclear plant to generate electricity and develop a biotechnology industry. But few world leaders believe this. Last August, Iran resumed uranium conversion at its Isfahan plant. The decision was taken after Iran rejected an European Union offer of political and economic incentives in return for abandoning its nuclear programme. Iran has started developing a heavy water reactor, which can be used to make plutonium for a nuclear bomb. And its resumption of nuclear enrichment can produce fuel for atomic bombs.

Ahmadinejad is playing a dangerous political game here. Despite its immense oil wealth, Iran remains underdeveloped economically and socially. Its leaders since the Ayatollah Khomeini have been able to remain in power only by pushing the extremist ideology of militant Islam and by focusing on supposedly monolithic enemies — Israel and, by extension, the “great Satan” of the United States. And, although some of their arguments have merit, the Arab leaders’ core purpose is to distract the population from their failure to provide the basic goods and services that are taken for granted in many parts of the world.

Indeed, the Middle East countries (except for Israel itself) score lower in all the key indicators of civilisation — the only worse-off region in the world is sub-Saharan Africa. And the only reason that the Arab nations aren’t on par with Africa is because of their oil wealth. That oil wealth is what allows Iran to finance nuclear development. But the oil is also what makes the US concerned about what happens in the Middle East, and president George W Bush has not ruled out invading Iran. Indeed, it is only America’s vast expenditure on the Iraqi occupation, and the growing unpopularity of that exercise back at home, which may have prevented the Bush administration from targeting Iran. But, if that country becomes a nuclear threat — a possibility that may become reality in three to ten years — then the political calculations of the various players may add up to a most dangerous nuclear equation.