Saddam trial: Iran’s opening bid

So now, Teheran has started making a big push to have its many, very serious grievances against Saddam put onto the docket of the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST).
The report linked to there came from Iran’s Mehr News Agency. It quoted Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki as saying on Wednesday that his ministry would be presenting a formal complaint to the IST concerning Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iranian personnel during the eight-year war that followed Saddam’s September 1980 invasion of Iran.
Mottaki claimed that,

“During the war, Saddam used chemical weapons against Iran 200 times, which left 100,000 people chemically disabled,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said here on Wednesday.
… “The Islamic Republic was the main victim of chemical weapons. It is evident that Saddam carried out all the atrocities against Iran with the help of Western companies and countries,” he added.

Mottaki was speaking to reporters after he’d paid a visit to one of the two Teheran hospitals that still today, 20 years after the event, are needed to provide specialized treatment to CW-affected Iranians. The report continued:

“Western countries and companies that supplied Saddam with chemicals share the responsibility for this crime,” Mottaki said.
“Saddam acquired chemicals from more than 400 Western companies, including 25 American, 15 German, 10 British, 3 Dutch, 3 Swiss, and 2 French companies.”
Iran is deeply concerned about the influence of its archenemy, the United States, on the trial of Saddam, he added.
“We are concerned about the way the court is trying these war criminals, and America’s pressure on the court (to ignore Iran’s demand).
“Iran is closely observing the trial,” he said.

We should all understand that Iran’s claims about the Saddam regime’s large-scale use of CW against Iranians in the 1980s have been well authenticated by numerous well-informed sources, even if the “100,000” casualties may (or may not) be an exaggeration. For example, check this May 1984 report by SIPRI; or this November 1986 report from the CIA (as posted today on a Pentagon website); or this January 2003 article by an Armed Forces Press Service reporter, also posted on a Pentagon website.
Use of chemical weapons is a war crime. And do I need to note here that many hundreds as many Iranians died from Saddam’s use of CW as died in that outrageous and repressive (but actually, fairly “small”) incident in Dujail for which Saddam is now being tried?
Mottaki’s request to have Iran’s massive charges concerning the Saddam regime’s CW use heard by the court is significant– as its timing. Inasmuch as he is trying to have Iran accepted as complainant in the trial, he is probably trying to wrest some control of its proceedings away from the US authorities who have dominated it thus far (and who can confidently be expected to be extremely reluctant to have the details of Saddam’s 1980s dealings with US and other western chemical companies be aired in open court.) But at the same time, Mottaki is notably not challenging either the legitimacy of the court or even the details of the (largely US-designed) “statute” that guides its work.
For example, the Iranians could also have brought a fairly strong case against Saddam on the grounds that he initiated a quite unwarranted invasion of their country in 1980. But so far they haven’t sought to do that. Indeed, to do that would require a change in the court’s Statute, which gives it the right to try only war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and a very structly limited kind of “crime of aggression”– namely, aggression against a fellow Arab country, which Iran isn’t but which Kuwait is.
The timing of Mottaki’s announcement is significant for at least two reasons. First, it comes as Iraq is in quite a degree of post-election political turmoil– and at a time when Saddam’s trial has become a more important issue within internal Iraqi politics than ever before. Asserting Iran’s interest in the trial at this time therefore has many ramifications in terms of the increase Iran seeks in the already large amount of influence that it wields over Iraq’s politics.
And second, this announcement comes as the western powers are increasing their efforts to contain and roll back an Iranian nuclear program that may or may not be intended to produce an Iranian nuclear arsenal. At such a time, to remind the western powers that Iran is the only state in modern times to have actually suffered large-scale CW attacks from a belligerent neighbor is a not-subtle way of reminding them that Iran may indeed have a better “rationale” for acquiring a nuclear deterrent than any of the existing nuclear-weapons states has, since none of them has suffered such an attack on their personnel since WW-1. (Indeed, in that press conference linked to above, Mottaki segued effortlessly from talking about the Iranian CW casualties to talking about the nuclear issue.)
It remains to be seen, of course, whether Mottaki’s announcement will actually be followed up by Iran’s ambassador in Baghdad making the formal request to the court…