Who's Against a Ban on Fissile Material?

In 2005, Mohamed ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding work in the international control of nuclear weapons. In 2003, ElBaradei had proposed a verifiable ban on the production of weapons-grade fissile material – a positive move that would severely limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

In a vote of the Disarmament Committee of the United Nations (UN), one and only one nation voted against ElBaradei's proposal – George Bush's America. In that same vote, Israel abstained, apparently fearing international interference with their own outlaw nuclear weapons program, and Britain abstained in an act of diplomatic fealty to the "special relationship" between Tony Blair and George Bush. The final tally was 147 nations to one with the two abstentions. In a later vote of the entire UN General Assembly, Israel and Britain abstained, while America and Palau voted against ElBaradei's verifiable ban on fission, and 179 nations voted in favor of his proposal. The final vote on that occasion was 179 in favor, two opposed (U.S. and Palau), and two abstentions (Israel and Britain).

ElBaradei's proposal would monitor all nuclear fission and guarantee that non-nuclear weapons states would be able to obtain adequate supplies for their nonmilitary usage of enriched plutonium.

One nation has publicly accepted ElBaradei's proposal: Iran.

In light of this important backstory, it is now perfectly obvious that the so-called "negotiations" among America, its intermediaries, and Iran have been designed to camouflage, distort, and erase the historical record. America and Israel are opposed to ElBaradei's proposal for a verifiable ban on nuclear fission (Fissban) apparently to prevent the intrusion of international inspectors into the Israeli nuclear industry.

Given the facts of the highly publicized "Iran Plans" for a massive American military intervention against the Iranian nuclear industry and the constant threat of bombing Iran leveled by American authorities from George Bush and Condoleezza Rice to Richard Perle and John Bolton, it is equally clear that American policy is being driven by a Machiavellian political calculus.

Over the past two weeks, there has been a chain of interlocked events: the execution of Zarqawi; the Camp David summit on Iraq; Bush's secret flight to Baghdad; and the narrow escape of Karl Rove from federal indictment in the Valerie Plame case. These events are fitting into a discernible pattern designed to resuscitate the dying political corpse of the Bush administration in time for the midterm elections this November.

The continuing weakness of the Bush administration, as measured by the president's approval rating, will embolden those proponents of the unilateral bombardment of Iran as a measure that could precipitate the president's resurgence. With so little left to lose, Bush may press the button for war in hopes of gaining approval in red-state America, where his political fate will be decided on the Nov. 6.

Darker plans may even be afoot, or so we are led to believe by scholars of the U.S. intelligence industry. The former CIA official Ray McGovern has warned of "staged" atrocities as part of a covert U.S. program for the manufacture of "'synthetic terror." Robert Woodward warned an academic audience in Texas that the next major atrocity on U.S. soil would reduce 9/11 to a footnote in world history. There are persistent back-channel rumors of Republican Party officials circulating memoranda longing for a return to the heady days after 9/11 to revive the ailing Bush presidency – even at the cost of a new 9/11.

Neither America's people nor the peoples of other nations are being adequately informed about the history of international planning for the control of fissionable materials, which are the essential ingredients for nuclear weapons. The global media is complicit in the increasing threats to peace by a deeply unpopular American president and his loyal cadre of neoconservative apparatchiks, who now threaten the future of the planet with a holocaust of gigantic proportions.