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Nuclear Hypocrisy and Iran
munaeem | 02 March, 2007 13:09
Via www.fpif.org :
The Bush administration is very focused these days on Iran’s nuclear program.
“A nuclear-armed Iran is not a very pleasant prospect for anybody to think about,” Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl in Australia.
The new round of hand-wringing and saber-rattling about Iran’s nascent but worrisome nuclear program comes just a few weeks after the Bush administration announced its new budget, which included billions for nuclear weapons development.
The Department of Energy’s “weapons activities” budget request totals $6.4 billion, a drop in the bucket compared to the Pentagon’s $481.4 billion proposed budget. But the budget for new nukes is large and growing -- even in comparison to Cold War figures.
During the Cold War, spending on nuclear weapons averaged $4.2 billion a year (in current dollars). Almost two decades after the nuclear animosity between the two great superpowers ended, the United States is spending one-and-a-half times the Cold War average on nuclear weapons.
In 2001, the weapons-activities budget of the Department of Energy (DOE), which oversees the nuclear weapons complex through the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), totaled $5.19 billion.
There has been more than a billion-dollar jump in nuclear spending. Included in the $6.4 billion 2008 request is money for “design concept testing” of two new nuclear warhead designs that officials hope will be deployed on submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles-- even as U.S. warships set their helms towards the Strait of Hormuz to menace Iran back from the nuclear brink.
Key to revitalizing nuclear weapons is Complex 2030, the NNSA’a “infrastructure planning scenario for a nuclear weapons complex able to meet the threats of the 21st century.” It is a costly, illegal, and dangerous program aimed at rebuilding the 50-year-old nuclear facilities where the weapons are both assembled and disassembled.
How Costly? The DOE estimates that Complex 2030 would require a capital investment of $150 billion. But the Government Accountability Office says that is way too low to fund even the basic maintenance of the eight nuclear facilities currently operational throughout the country.
Why Illegal? Complex 2030 promises a return to the Cold War cycle of design, development, and production of nuclear weapons, runs the risk of a return to underground nuclear testing, and could require the annual manufacture of hundreds of new plutonium pits -- the fissile “heart” of a nuclear weapon. These plans directly contradict U.S. treaty promises in 1968 “to negotiate toward general and complete disarmament.”
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