US Report Highlights Iran’s Manufacture and Transfer of Chemical Weapons

The United States has updated its latest State Department report on the use of chemical weapons around the world, identifying Iran as one of four countries that have used or produced these weapons and violated the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The other three countries are Russia, Myanmar and Syria.

The report was prepared in summer 2020, but its publication was delayed by several months, coinciding with the final days of Donald Trump administration.

According to the US State Department, the Islamic Republic, in the early years of its existence, and during the Libyan conflict with Chad in the 1970s and 1980s, provided chemical weapons to the government of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Documents relating to Iran supplying chemical weapons to Gaddafi's regime were found after his toppling in 2011, and following the examination of used chemical bullets.

Gaddafi joined the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2004, at a time when he dismantled his country's nuclear program. As officials assessed Libya's chemical weapons and examined their origins, it was revealed that some of them had been produced in Iran and officials suspected that Iran had supplied them. But now, 17 years on, the State Department has directly accused Iran of supplying Gaddafi with chemical weapons.

Furthermore, the report outlines that the Islamic Republic has continued to produce these weapons in recent years.

The State Department says the Islamic Republic has not notified the Secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which guarantees the implementation of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, of its ability to manufacture dual-use chemicals. This is in violation of its international obligations.

The United States has said companies affiliated with the Islamic Republic’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces are actively manufacturing riot gear including smoke grenades, incendiary sprays and disinfectant chemicals, but have not notified the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which is based in Netherlands.

The Shahid Meysamy Industrial Complex, recently placed on the US sanctions list and allegedly linked to Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a senior director at the Ministry of Defense who, before his murder in late November 2020, was involved in Iran's nuclear program, has been accused of the production of chemical materials with dual weapons use.

The report cites extensive research into work with chemicals used in military equipment at the Imam Hussein University of Officers and Guards and the Malek Ashtar University in Isfahan, both of which are affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The State Department says the two academic institutions have researched “a wide variety of compounds that have differing sedation, dissociation, and amnestic chemicals“ and in 2014 sought to purchase “a sedative it has researched as an incapacitant” from Chinese companies. There is no evidence that Imam Hussein University’s Chemistry Department had been using these compounds in medical or veterinary research, suggesting that they may have been used as part of military research.

The Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons prohibits the production, stockpiling, storage and use of such weapons. It was ratified by United Nations member states in January 1993, and became mandatory for members in May 1997.

The convention was established four years after the end of the Iran-Iraq war, following on from the widespread use of chemical weapons by the government of Saddam Hussein, who was president of Iraq during the eight-year war.

A State Department report says that Iran also used chemical weapons during the war in Iraq, based on statements made by Iraqi officials at the time.

Iran has been a member of the Geneva Convention against the Use of Toxic Bullets in Armed Conflict since November 1930 and was a pioneer in the drafting of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. In the past, it has had a good record in non-proliferation of chemical weapons.

Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's permanent representative to international organizations based in Austria, both rejected the findings of the US report.

Until a significant change was made to the OPCW’s authority in June 2018, the organization was only able to confirm that chemical weapons had been in use, but it could not determine which countries had used them. But on June 27, 2018,  the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention jointly decided that the OPCW should identify the “perpetrators, organisers, sponsors” of chemical attacks or use of chemical weapons and anyone else “otherwise involved,” with the aim of “facilitating universal attribution of all chemical weapons attacks”. The convention also called for its verification processes to be strengthened.

Chemical weapons were first used in World War I. They can cause skin blisters, paralyze the respiratory and digestive systems, cause blindness and infertility, and they are a major cause of cancer.

Because of their far-reaching detrimental implications for human health, countries, groups and individuals can be prosecuted in international courts for chemical weapons use. As the OPCW has been given greater authority, the possibility of trial and prosecution of those accused of using chemical weapons has grown, and legal mechanisms including the International Criminal Court in The Hague can now be engaged more easily. The use of lethal and unconventional chemical weapons can be now be legally classified as "crimes against humanity", "genocide" and "war crimes".