Allegations of Iranian Use of Chemical Weapons in the 1980–88 Gulf War – Iran’s defensive preparations
In the 1980–88 Gulf War Iraq repeatedly attacked Iran with chemical weapons (CW). At the beginning of the war both countries were contracting parties to the Geneva Protocol. According to Iranian statements, the first Iraqi CW attack occurred in January 1981.[1] One of the first independent news reports appeared in August 1982.[2] Iraq gradually integrated CW into its defensive and offensive military operations. Initially Iran appears to have been totally unprepared for military operations in a chemical environment. Throughout the war Iranian troops remained poorly protected and, in the light of the missile war against cities, the country would have …
Allegations of Iranian Use of Chemical Weapons in the 1980–88 Gulf War – Introduction
Allegations that Iran is a chemical weapon (CW) proliferator originated in part with claims that it had used CW during the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq war. Iraq was the principal user of CW during the war. According to Iranian accounts, the first chemical attacks began in January 1981, but independent reports were not published until one and a half years later. Iraqi chemical attacks definitely escalated during the second half of 1983, which eventually led to the first of several investigatory missions organised by UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuellar in March 1984. Despite the overwhelming evidence of chemical warfare, confirmed by …
Allegations of Iranian Use of Chemical Weapons in the 1980–88 Gulf War – Preface
Whether Iran launched chemical weapon (CW) attacks against Iraq during the 1980-88 Gulf War has been the subject of a long-lasting controversy. Iraq was responsible for initiating chemical warfare in the early 1980s in blatant violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting CW use in war (since then, more broadly termed ‘armed conflict’). Negotiations for the Chemical Weapons Convention were ongoing and would not be concluded until September 1992. Nothing in the Geneva Protocol prevented Iran from developing, producing and stockpiling CW. Little stood in its way to retaliate in kind. The Gulf War also took place in the final …
Impunity through knowledge management: The legacy of South Africa’s CBW programme
Book review: Brian Rappert and Chandré Gould, The Dis-Eases of Secrecy: Tracing History, Memory & Justice (Jacana Media: Johannesburg, 2017), 261p. It took me almost a year to write this book review. There are reasons why. First, the book is not that easy to read. While one can read it linearly (that is one page after another, as one would normally do), it instead invites readers to follow the logic of the argument, which entails dashing back and forwards from one part in the book to another. Second, the insights are profound, and the reader needs to let them sink …
The Meaning of ‘Emergency Assistance’
Origins and negotiation of Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention – A new research report Article VII of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) belongs to the more obscure provisions. It reads as follows: Each State Party to this Convention undertakes to provide or support assistance, in accordance with the United Nations Charter, to any Party to the Convention which so requests, if the Security Council decides that such Party has been exposed to danger as a result of violation of the Convention. Since the treaty’s entry into force in 1975, states parties hardly looked at the …
Preparing the 4th CWC Review Conference: Civil Society – 1
Possible Priorities for the Fourth CWC Review Conference and for the OPCW in the Next Five Years Statement by Dr John Hart (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute – SIPRI)* Presented at: Open-Ended Working Group for the Preparation of the Fourth Review Conference (OEWG-RC), Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), The Hague, Netherlands, 16 April 2018 I would like to thank the OPCW and the Open-Ended Working Group for the Preparation of the Fourth Review Conference (OEWG-RC) for the opportunity to participate in today’s meeting. I would also like to thank all others who have been involved in …
Preparing the 4th CWC Review Conference: Education & Outreach
Role of education and outreach in the prevention of the re-emergence of chemical weapons For consideration by the Open-Ended Working Group preparing the Fourth Review Conference of the Chemical Weapons Convention at its ninth meeting Dr Jean Pascal Zanders Chairperson OPCW Advisory Board on Education and Outreach (ABEO) 30 May 2018 [PDF Version] The Advisory Board on Education and Outreach (ABEO) is a subsidiary organ of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). Its members, together and individually, represent a wide range of education and outreach (E&O) expertise and experience. Besides strategic and practical advice to the OPCW …
Promoting chemical knowledge
On 2 May the Technical Secretariat of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) organised a workshop relating to its programme to fully implement Article XI of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). I addressed the States Parties in the session on ‘Promoting chemical knowledge’ and focussed on the responsibilities of chemists, both as members of their scientific associations and as individuals, in preventing the misuse of their discipline. Consequences down the road The role of chemists in war is not a new thing. The role of chemists in chemical warfare is of more recent origin. Just over a …
Novichok between opinion and fact – Part 2: When alternative facts become blatant untruths
On 18 April 2018 the Executive Council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) held its 59th meeting, which was wholly dedicated to the assassination attempt with a nerve agent of the Novichok family. The Technical Secretariat presented its classified full ‘Report on Activities Carried out in Support of a Request for Technical Assistance by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (Technical Assistance Visit TAV/02/18)’. A summary released by the Technical Secretariat on 12 April, although lacking in detail, stated that: Two OPCW designated laboratories confirmed that the three hospitalised individuals had been exposed …
What is a chemical weapon? When is chlorine a chemical weapon?
A recurring question in the context of the investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into the use of chlorine in the attack against Douma on 7 April is whether chlorine is actually a chemical weapon (CW). The simple answer is ‘yes’ if the chemical element is released as method of warfare, an act of terrorism, or any other deliberate act intended to harm or kill a person or animal. There are two elements in the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) to bear in mind, namely the definition of a CW and the three Schedules (or lists …