Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

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The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Nuclear Weapons (Take a DEEP Breath)

COMMENT: In the wake of the Egypt­ian upris­ing, the rise of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Egypt is more or less inevitable. It remains unclear just what role they will play, but they  will cer­tain­ly be among the major play­ers in that coun­try, and pos­si­bly else­where through­out the Arab world.

The U.S. has a long his­to­ry of dal­liance with the Broth­er­hood, all of it coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

Read the fol­low­ing arti­cle care­ful­ly and con­sid­er the impli­ca­tions:

“Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Press­es Gov­ern­ment for Nuclear Weapons”; WMD Insights; Novem­ber 2006.

EXCERPT: In the sum­mer of 2006, after press­ing the Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment for more than a year to restart the country’s nuclear pow­er pro­gram, the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Egypt’s fore­most polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion force, esca­lat­ed its nuclear goals and open­ly called for Egypt to devel­op nuclear weapons as a counter to Israel’s nuclear capa­bil­i­ties. Against this back­ground, the group react­ed with lit­tle enthu­si­asm to the mid-sep­tem­ber announce­ment by Jamal Mubarak, son of Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Hos­ni Mubarak, that Egypt would revive its peace­ful nuclear pow­er – with­out declar­ing that Egypt would build a nuclear deter­rent. (See “Renewed Egypt­ian Ambi­tions for a Peace­ful Nuclear Pro­gram” in this issue of WMD Insights.)

In 2005, revival of the Egypt­ian nuclear pow­er pro­gram had been a ral­ly­ing cry for the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In its 2005 par­lia­men­tary elec­tion plat­form, for exam­ple, it had declared that under its lead­er­ship, Egypt would devel­op “spe­cial nation­al pro­grams, such as the nuclear pro­gram, the space and avi­a­tion pro­gram, arma­ments pro­gram, and the bio-tech­nol­o­gy pro­gram.” [1] The par­ty, which cur­rent­ly holds rough­ly one fifth of the seats in the Egypt­ian Nation­al Assem­bly (the low­er house of the Egypt­ian par­lia­ment), used the nuclear issue to chal­lenge the cur­rent Egypt­ian gov­ern­ment, which had shown lit­tle inter­est in nuclear ener­gy, unlike a num­ber of states in the region, includ­ing Iran and Turkey.

By May 17, 2006, Broth­er­hood deputies were open­ly attack­ing the Mubarak gov­ern­ment for not pur­su­ing an active nuclear pro­gram. Ikhwanon­line, the offi­cial web­site of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, stat­ed that Broth­er­hood “deputies accuse the gov­ern­ment of aban­don­ing the nuclear pro­gram and [being con­tent with not] build­ing atom­ic pow­er plants for peace­ful pur­pos­es and elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion at the same time many oth­er coun­tries such as India advanced in this field.” [2] (India has not only devel­oped nuclear pow­er for elec­tric­i­ty pro­duc­tion, but used its peace­ful nuclear pro­gram as a step­ping stone to devel­op nuclear weapons.) . . .

Discussion

2 comments for “The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Nuclear Weapons (Take a DEEP Breath)”

  1. First of all, let me say that I am hap­py to see that I am no longer the only one now who posts com­ments on this site. There is some traf­fic final­ly and it is good for you! If I helped to stim­u­late it, I am proud of it! Shy­ness is cer­tain­ly not pro­duc­tive at this time of his­to­ry.

    The con­nec­tion pre­sent­ed here is ter­rif­ic. Now we see the real deep-root moti­va­tion for the “upris­ing”. A pat­tern is unfold­ing: Mid­dle East nations devel­op nuclear ‘clean’ capa­bil­i­ties in order to get nuclear weapons. India is giv­en here as an exam­ple. But there is also the exam­ple of Iran...which presents the same rhetoric. Sup­pos­ed­ly, they are devel­op­ing nuclear capa­bil­i­ties for ‘elec­tric­i­ty’ and oth­er pur­pos­es in a coun­try where oil is abun­dant...

    A film has been made, titled “Ira­ni­um”. It fea­tures main­ly con­ser­v­a­tive peo­ple. We may debate whether it is biased or not (they pass quick­ly on the Iran­ian Rev­o­lu­tion and oth­er sub­jects) but nev­er­the­less, this movie remains a good tool to raise peo­ple’s aware­ness about Iran and coun­ter­act anti-amer­i­can­ism pro­pa­gan­da.

    What is real­ly inter­est­ing though is not the con­tent of the movie but the his­to­ry of the movie itself. On this side of the bor­der, in Cana­da, the movie was sched­uled for screen­ing in Ottawa at the Library and Archives of Cana­da some­where in Jan­u­ary but the Iran­ian Embassy made a com­plaint. The bureau­crats at the Library behave like cow­ards, as it was expect­ed, and pulled off the movie. The Min­is­ter in charge, James Moore, retort­ed to the Iran­ian Embassy that Cana­da won’t be told what to do by anoth­er nation. He ordered the Library to screen the movie, and final­ly it was last sun­day. You see, that’s the spir­it of the Resis­tance!

    By the way, Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harp­er offi­cial­ly sup­ports Israel...I think the Ira­ni­ans don’t like him very much.

    Here is the adress of the movie’s web­site for those who want to see it. It is avail­able free for a lim­it­ed time.

    http://www.iraniumthemovie.com/

    Have a great day and keep fight­ing back.

    Posted by Claude | February 10, 2011, 8:31 am
  2. Dave, as usu­al — your insights and intel­li­gence reign supreme. I’m would take a deep breath except I’m breath­less at this obser­va­tion.

    Posted by Alan | February 12, 2011, 6:51 pm

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