Philip Weiss and Juan Cole both comment on the revelations in The Guardian about Israel's offer to supply apartheid South Africa with nuclear warheads. Prof. Cole makes the point that the timing of this news is awkward, in view of the Israeli/U.S. campaign against the nuclear enrichment program currently underway in Iran, which Israel claims "does not care about the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N.".
Israel's concern that Iran should conform to "the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N." is ironic not only because of its own undeclared nuclear arsenal, but also because of who else collaborated with apartheid South Africa's nuclear program in the 1970's. The attempt at that time to establish a rogue nuclear cooperation network, free of all those pesky international safeguards against nuclear proliferation, was apparently not solely a South African and Israeli endeavor:
If only it didn't involve Israel, and if only Iran wasn't led at that time by one of "our" dictators, we could have called it an Axis of Evil.
Israel's concern that Iran should conform to "the demands of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the U.N." is ironic not only because of its own undeclared nuclear arsenal, but also because of who else collaborated with apartheid South Africa's nuclear program in the 1970's. The attempt at that time to establish a rogue nuclear cooperation network, free of all those pesky international safeguards against nuclear proliferation, was apparently not solely a South African and Israeli endeavor:
Since 1970, we have seen the formation of a Paris-Tehran-Pretoria-Tel Aviv axis in the nuclear field. In this four-way relationship, France and Israel provide the technology, Iran the oil (5), and the Republic of South Africa the uranium. The Shah might even have been tempted to help fund an expensive uranium enrichment plant on South African territory, in exchange for which his nuclear plants would receive uranium oxide (and later, enriched uranium) without having to submit to the international safeguards currently in force. Similarly, in Israel's case, its need for uranium complements South Africa's need for nuclear technology. The U.S. magazine Newsweek reported last year that U.S. intelligence services suspected that the bomb that South Africans were about to explode might have been of Israeli manufacture...
(5) Despite the UN petroleum embargo against the Republic of South Africa, Iran continues to supply 90% of South African needs.
-- Comment l’Afrique du Sud a pu mettre au point « sa » bombe nucléaire (How South Africa was able to develop "its" nuclear bomb; para 10, translation mine). By Howard Schissel, Le Monde diplomatique, Sept 1978.
If only it didn't involve Israel, and if only Iran wasn't led at that time by one of "our" dictators, we could have called it an Axis of Evil.
