Former United Nations Chief Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter spoke at Washingon University on Friday in an informal lecture and discussion titled “Is Iran a Nuclear Threat to the World?”
Although he is a Republican who voted for George W. Bush in 2000, since 2002 Ritter has become a well-known critic of the current Bush administration, particularly of its claims and decisions made throughout the war in Iraq.
Ritter argued that the threat of Iran as described by the Bush administration is nothing more than a front, a political tactic to rouse American citizens in support of opposition against Iran. He claimed that the administration is operating on the superficial basis of a potential nuclear threat posed by Iran, while its actual reason for opposition is the threat of a difference in ideology.
“Maybe the driving force for American policy has nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program, per se, but rather with how the U.S. ideologically positions itself vis-…-vis to the current regime in Iran,” Ritter said. “But [the administration] can’t inflame the American public with talking about the theocracy. [The administration] has to talk about the mushroom cloud, the potential of global catastrophe, regional Holocaust.”
Ritter served as the chief weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 until 1998 as a part of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). The commission had been assigned to seek out and destroy all weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq as well as any WMD production efforts.
Before his tenure as weapons inspector, Ritter had served as a U.S. Army private and later an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps. He graduated in 1984 from Franklin and Marshall College, where he concentrated on the history of the Soviet Union and received departmental honors in history, which helped earn his position as lead analyst for the Rapid Deployment Force in the Marine Corps during the Soviet Union’s war of Afghanistan.
Ritter resigned from his post in UNSCOM following a 1998 ordeal in which Iraqi officials denied the weapon inspection team access to certain sites. He claimed that the failure of the U.N. Security Council to respond effectively to the officials’ lack of cooperation, along with other inconsistencies of the council, gave him proper cause for resignation.
Ritter’s lecture on Friday ended with an appeal to diplomacy in dealing with the issue at hand with Iran, instead of maintaining the current policy of opposition.
“If we don’t sit down and actively negotiate with the Iranians, I am a firm believer that the Iranians won’t give up their enrichment program,” he said. “We can continue the policies which we embrace today, which speak inevitably to conflict with Iran, or we can seek to change the policy direction we’re having, which will manifest itself in substantial reductions of war potential.”
Ritter’s appearance was made possible by the combined efforts from the departments of International and Area Studies, Jewish and Islamic Studies and Asian and Near Eastern Studies as well as student groups, including the College Democrats, Muslim Students Association and the Washington University Peace Coalition.