By SCOTT RITTER*

Lecture at the 71st weekly meeting of the International Coalition for Peace

1.

Thank you very much for having me. Unfortunately, I think I will continue to put fear in the hearts of those who listen to me; in fact, they should be very afraid. Let me begin by saying that the world has not become a safer place since I last addressed this topic; in fact, it has become even more dangerous.

The situation in Ukraine continues to develop in a way that puts us on the brink of an immediate nuclear war; something, therefore, that cannot be analyzed and discussed in the future. A stroke of a pen authorizing long-range weapons built by NATO and the United States, intended for use by NATO and the United States, to be fired at Russia will trigger a Russian response and could lead to a war between Russia and NATO. And this will not be an ordinary war, but a nuclear one; a war that will kill us all.

If you haven't read it yet, I encourage everyone to pick up a copy of Annie Jacobsen's book, Nuclear war, a scenario. I bought it last Sunday. I myself read it twice that day, but I will read it again, because I want its message to penetrate every cell in my body: a message that says we will all die if there is a nuclear war. And if it is not possible to change the policies we have today, there will be a nuclear war. Therefore, our death will be inevitable. I speak here, therefore, to the almost dead.

This may seem like a pretty normal thing. After all, we will all die someday, none of us are immortal. But I am talking to people who are going to die unnaturally – collectively. Every single person listening to me here will die a sudden death if we allow these policies to continue.

But the moment is now even more dangerous. There is something that has not been announced in the press, but is very important: it is the fact that Iran is now a nuclear power. Iran has not explicitly admitted this, but consecutive statements by high-ranking Iranian officials have confirmed that the “fatwa” which has existed since the time of Ayatollah Khomeini and which excluded this possibility is subject to revocation in certain circumstances.

One of those circumstances is this: if the enemy tries to use a type of weapon, that same type of weapon can be used against the enemy. Israel has nuclear weapons. Israel is threatening to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. As mentioned, many of these facilities are not reachable by conventional strikes, so if there is a threat to attack these facilities and eliminate them, it is because there is a real threat that weapons capable of accomplishing that mission will be used. Now, that means there is a threat to attack Iran with nuclear weapons. That is a statement of fact; it is not subject to debate.

Ask Donald Trump why he changed the US nuclear deployment stance when he was president. The reason is that he had to incorporate two new categories of nuclear weapons capable of destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities.

One is the modified B-61 bomb. This is a gravity bomb delivered by certain American aircraft, including the B-2 bomber. This variant of the B-61 has been adapted to be a bunker-busting bomb; it therefore has a penetration capability that was specifically designed to destroy Iran's underground nuclear facilities.

The weapon has been built; it has been deployed; therefore, there are plans to use it. So when you hear Donald Trump say that Israel should attack Iran's nuclear facilities, what he is saying is that Israel should bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. Now, the only way to attack Iran's nuclear facilities is to use a nuclear weapon such as the one described here.

And this president cannot claim ignorance on the matter, because he personally signed off on the adaptation of the United States nuclear deployment plan to incorporate nuclear weapons, because they are the only weapons that can destroy and eliminate these facilities. He is therefore encouraging Israel to launch a nuclear attack against Iran.

Last May, Iran’s former foreign minister – who is now a key member of the Rapid Action Council, a decision-making body within the Iranian government structure tasked by the Iranian constitution with advising the Supreme Leader – said the following: although this “fatwa” exists, it is reversible, because under certain circumstances Iran could consider obtaining a nuclear weapon.

A senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard official echoed this assertion last summer when he said that if Israel attacks Iran with a nuclear weapon, Iran will develop the capability to make nuclear weapons. The Iranian parliament debated the issue and sent a recommendation to the supreme leader to withdraw from the Non-proliferation treaty and start building nuclear bombs. The Iranians have reiterated this again in case they receive a real threat from Israel; now, Israel has already threatened Iran with a nuclear attack.

Such a declaratory policy is not made in a vacuum. You see, the people who operate at the level I am talking about, who quote the fatwas issued by the Supreme Leader, do not make such comments casually. In fact, none of them could make such a comment unless the Supreme Leader authorized it. Now, the Supreme Leader, I think, does not engage in spreading contradictory information.

What is happening is the Iranian version of declaratory policy. Iran is warning the world that it has the capability to make nuclear weapons. If Israel comes to attack it, Iran will use that nuclear capability to retaliate against Israel. Three or five Iranian nuclear weapons aimed at Israel will destroy Israel forever. And we don't know where that will lead. We are very close to a nuclear war in the Middle East, very close.

Where will this lead? We don’t know. Vladimir Putin just met with the new president of Iran in Turkmenistan. Russia has been talking about signing security agreements with Iran. Iran is now a member of the BRICS community. I imagine they are talking about what would happen if Israel launched a nuclear attack on Iran. What will be Russia’s response? Given the cordial relationship, the handshake, the smiles, I don’t think it was a difficult conversation for either of them. This implies that Russia has given Iran certain assurances.

This means that if Israel attacks Iran, Russia will support Iran when it responds with a nuclear attack on Israel. What would the United States do in this case? We now see a scenario where the situation is spiraling out of control, from a regional nuclear conflict to the possibility of a global nuclear conflict.

2.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have never been closer to nuclear demise than we are today. We have this on two fronts now. And the United States has made it clear since the time of Barack Obama that if Iran develops a nuclear weapons capability, the United States will respond militarily. Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapons capability, what will the United States do? Donald Trump says that will never happen.

That happened. And one of the main reasons why that happened is that he pulled the United States out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA]. Now, that plan was a treaty-like vehicle that put certain restrictions on Iran's nuclear program. It allowed weapons inspectors to go to Iran to oversee its program to make sure that Iran didn't turn a civilian project into a military project.

But because the United States withdrew from that agreement, because the Europeans were never assiduous in implementing it, Iran was able to legally back out of its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Now that agreement no longer exists. So Iran is enriching uranium without restriction. They have enriched it to 60 percent in a quantity that can be justified; and then they use that 60 percent to make fuel plates that are used in a research reactor.

But the amount they have now is much larger than what they need to make fuel. What this means is that Iran could use this 60 percent enriched uranium hexafluoride as a feedstock in cascades of advanced centrifuges that they already have in underground facilities to rapidly convert 60 percent to 96 to 98 percent. This could happen in a matter of days. As I said, Iran already has the capacity to convert this uranium hexafluoride into metal; they produce metal plates for their existing research reactor in Tehran. They could produce uranium metal in quantities sufficient to create critical mass and drive fission.

That's all that's needed for a detonating device. Iran doesn't need a sophisticated, well-tested mechanism. In fact, the United States built two bombs that were used against Japan during World War II. One was called Fat man; the other of Little Boy. Fat man It was the version tested at Los Alamos on July 16, 1945. It was a plutonium-based weapon that used a sophisticated implosion device. It had to be tested, because until then everything was still at a theoretical level.

The uranium weapon design didn't need to be tested because it's very simple; it's not sophisticated. If you have enough highly enriched uranium, you can build a detonating design that will generate a 15- to 20-kiloton charge. That's what I think the Iranians are going to build, because it's a charge that is easily transported by the missiles that Iran has.

Iran has shown that its missiles can reach Israel without fear of interception. Iran will be able to launch nuclear-tipped missiles at Israel, and there is nothing Israel and the United States can do to stop it. It is a new paradigm that defies all red lines in all areas.

How will the United States respond? So far, we Americans have avoided saying that we would participate in an Israeli attack on Iran, because we understand the explosive nature of that. But if Iran’s declaratory policy seems to point to the existence of a nuclear weapons program, can’t the United States now say, “Yes, we will help Israel”?

All of this ensures the elimination of Israel as a modern nation-state, but it also endangers tens of thousands of American troops. Which means that if Iran threatens U.S. troops, in accordance with our nuclear doctrine, that would create sufficient justification for the U.S. to preemptively use nuclear weapons against Iran. If we use nuclear weapons against Iran, we may inadvertently or deliberately provoke a Russian response. That is the path to death for all of us.

See how it works. This is the world we live in. It is a world that can suppress our lives.

But is there a way to put this view before the world public? For example, by addressing the UN Security Council for a special session? Because I think we can alert the world, but if it comes to that, I think it would take some institution like the UN Security Council to alarm the world.

First, Iran has not formally declared the existence of a nuclear weapon. Iran’s nuclear material remains under the safeguards and inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). What I am saying is that once Iran makes declarations of this nature, its ability to turn those declarations from theory into reality is almost instantaneous.

It is not a huge technological leap to have a nuclear device ready, but without the fissile material, to be launched at the right time. I think Iran has that capability. Everything indicates, through its statements, that it is prepared to respond immediately. Before Iran can declare a nuclear capability, it would probably have to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]. That is something that the Iranian parliament is asking the Supreme Leader to do now.

Once this announcement is made, Iran can end IAEA surveillance; it would no longer be legally viable. Iran can then begin the immediate diversion of 60% of its low-enriched uranium to the uranium cascades. In literally a matter of a day or two, they would have enough fissile material to turn into metal and put into a warhead. So in less than a week, Iran can go from a political decision to a usable weapon.

If he has two weeks, they will have three to five usable weapons. That is what is being worked on now. But the UN Security Council cannot act on a theory, because it would call the IAEA and say there is no diversion of material. There is also the question of what is causing this threat – and the answer is Israel. The last thing the United States wants is for Israel’s nuclear weapons capability to be discussed in the Security Council.

So that's the problem. We have a state of Israel that maintains this ambiguity about its nuclear weapons capability. Everybody knows it has them. Everybody knows they're there in their silos, but nobody talks about it. The danger of this weapons capability has now become manifest.

Previously, there was only talk of the Samson option: that is, the one that would be used if Israel were invaded; in this extreme case, Israel would use these weapons to bring down the entire world along with itself. But now we have a situation where Israel is literally talking about an attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities, which of course does not involve an invasion of Israel.

Furthermore, it is a reaction to a problem that Israel created by assassinating a Hamas leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Tehran on the day of the Iranian president's inauguration. Israel also attacked the Iranian consulate in Damascus. These are problems created by the state of Israel itself. But now the problem manifests itself in a new way as Israel threatens an attack on Iran that can only be carried out with nuclear weapons. Using nuclear weapons that Israel has not yet officially declared that it possesses.

This is the real problem. To solve this problem, we need to not only talk about moving away from what could trigger the potential use of nuclear weapons by Israel, but we need to address the destabilizing reality of Israel’s nuclear weapons. Because these nuclear weapons now manifest themselves in a cause-and-effect relationship with Iran, which will lead to Iran withdrawing from the NPT and producing its own nuclear weapons. If Iran withdraws from the NPT, Saudi Arabia has indicated that it will seek its own independent nuclear deterrent. Turkey has said the same thing. We now have a region that is completely out of control, which makes the possibility of nuclear war even more likely.

So we have to start talking about disarmament. We have to start talking about bringing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action back to life. But the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action can no longer be called the Iran Nuclear Deal. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, to be viable, must involve Iran and Israel agreeing to reciprocal inspection regimes that lead to a guarantee that neither nation has the capability to build nuclear weapons. Israel’s nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to exist; they are an existential issue for the world, for the region, and for Israel. Because if Israel uses nuclear weapons against Iran, Israel will cease to exist. That is a 100 percent guaranteed outcome that will happen.

Even if they don’t attack nuclear facilities, if they limit themselves to attacking oil facilities or anything else, Iran has said that they will fire over 1.000 conventional missiles at critical infrastructure targets in Israel. That means they will destroy all of Israel’s power plants, all of its water purification plants, all of its power distribution plants, all of its critical energy production, oil and gas infrastructure. And Israel will be thrown back into the Stone Age. If Iran does that kind of attack, then the Samson option kicks in, and Israel will retaliate with nuclear weapons. That will push Iran to develop nuclear weapons and deploy them against Israel in a very short time.

We are in an extremely dangerous situation. And it was not made any better by the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu and Joe Biden got into a shouting match. Furthermore, Joe Biden is known to have had a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he basically told the Israeli leader that he had to stop his irresponsible stance toward Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is also known to have told him to shut up.

So now, for example, people are wondering why the US ambassador to the United Nations has suddenly come out in favor of two UN resolutions on Palestine. One is a ceasefire, the other is the immediate delivery of humanitarian aid. These are two resolutions that the United States has opposed in the past.

The US ambassador to the United Nations has spoken out strongly against these actions. But now, he is defending them. Why? Because Biden promised Benjamin Netanyahu that if he would stop attacking Iran, the US would not only provide him with unprecedented levels of military support, but we would also have Israel’s back diplomatically, as they will never fear anything from the United Nations. Benjamin Netanyahu ignored Joe Biden’s advice, so now Biden is making Benjamin Netanyahu pay a price.

I don't think this will do anything other than push the Israelis even closer to making a decision to attack Iran. We are in a very dangerous situation, because the United States seems to have lost the ability to pressure Israel to take actions that are good for the United States.

If Israel is not following the guidance, it does not mean something good for Israel, but something that is good only for Benjamin Netanyahu. And he is willing to sacrifice the entire people of Israel, as well as more than 100 million people in the region, because he wants to go down in history with a legacy of being a strong man who saved Israel. But in doing so, he could be the man who destroyed Israel and who, in addition, led the entire region to destruction.

Scott Knight, a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, he was UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991-98.

Translation: Eleutério FS Prado.

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