Columbia.edu & Foreign Policy In Focus, July 25, 2005 By Stephen Zunes
The election of the hard-line Tehran mayor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, over former President Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani as the new head of Iran is undeniably a setback for those hoping to advance greater social and political freedom in that country. It should not necessarily be seen as a turn to the right by the Iranian electorate…
Category: Nuclear and Chemical Weapons
nuclear and chemical weapons
Bush Administration Stokes Dangerous Arms Race on Indian Subcontinent
Foreign Policy In Focus, July 20, 2005
By John Gershman, Stephen Zunes [source]
For more than two decades, arms control experts have argued that the most likely scenario for the hostile use of nuclear weapons was not between the former Cold War superpower rivals, an act of terrorism by an underground terrorist group, or the periodically threatened unilateral U.S. attack against a “rogue state,” but between India and Pakistan…
Undermining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—It Didn’t Start With the Bush Administration
Foreign Policy In Focus/IPS, June 1, 2005
Stephen Zunes [Source link is no longer available]
Most of the international community and arms control advocates here in the United States have correctly blamed the Bush administration for the failure of the recently completed review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the course of the four-week meeting of representatives of the 188 countries which have signed and ratified the treaty, the United States refused to uphold its previous arms control pledges, blocked consideration of the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, refused to rule out U.S. nuclear attacks against non-nuclear states…
Libyan Disarmament a Positive Step, but Threat of Proliferation Remains
January 15, 2004 by Stephen Zunes [source no longer available]
In a world seemingly gone mad, it is ironic that one of most sane and reasonable actions to come out of the Middle East recently has emanated from the government of Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator long recognized as an international outlaw. Libya’s stunning announcement that it is giving up its nascent biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs and accepting international assistance and verification of its disarmament efforts is a small but important positive step in the struggle to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). It would be a big mistake, however, to accept claims by the Bush administration and its supporters that it was the invasion of Iraq and other threatened uses of force against so-called “rogue states” which pursue WMD programs that led to Libya’s decision to end its WMD programs…