Below is an article on the Iran nuclear crisis, from the Iranian point of view. Iran might make a beautiful case for why they don't deserve what is being imposed upon them. The best approach is not to argue the fine points. The important point is that America needs oil, and needs more, and this crisis provides an opportunity to do that. Whether it makes sense or not is irrelevant. It helps if people believe that there is a case for invading the country. But America will find a way to do that whether they have good reason to, or not (as the Iraq paradigm shows).
What America is really doing, is playing a dangerous game. They have the power and are not shy to exert it, and will spin away dissenters and protesters with endless swagger and photo ops.
Why take risks like this? Because they don't have a choice. And right now, they hold almost all the cards.
But here's the rub. The very issue that America pretends is the issue, that another country is pursuing nuclear weapons, which gasp, it might possibly use against a power with more than 1000 times their own firepower....that a mere power could maybe threaten a superpower, gasp gasp, well that will soon become a real issue.
If I attack you on the grounds that you might be carrying a knife, and I tell everyone watching that you might be trying to kill me. Well, after you've attacked me, if you didn't manage to kill me, you better believe that if I have any life left in my body, or if my brother or cousin is watching, and there's a knife within the reach of bloody fingertips, someone is going to try to grab it and use it. That's the risk when you start a scuffle, even if the person who starts it is a gorilla with ten tentacles, and its prey is a porcupine. It's a risk.
If America continues this route, they will reap, eventually a nuclear whirlwind. It's just common sense. To believe otherwise is evidence of a superego, a disconnect with reality and ignorance of simple cause and effect.
When Iran becomes the next iraq (and it's clear that this is an abiding intention, and that this almost certainly will happen in the near term)whatever is spun. America will try to invade another country that doesn't like America, further inflaming tensions in the Muslim world. It should become a matter of logic and time before America finally bears the brunt of their own bluster. It is a matter of time before Muslim countries find a way to use the nuclear deterrant on the Great De-terror.
The Persian Puzzle: Iran and the invention of a nuclear crisis
By Siddharth Varadarajan: http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com
The world has forgotten everything and learned nothing from the charade over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
BARELY TWO years after the United States invaded Iraq in the name of weapons of mass destruction which never existed, the world is being pushed towards a confrontation with Iran on a similarly flawed premise.
On September 17, Iran's President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the United Nations General Assembly that his country would not give up its sovereign right to produce nuclear power using indigenously enriched uranium. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran signed in 1974, allows Iran to build facilities involving all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including enrichment, subject to international safeguards. Given the fact that the U.S. continues to impose sanctions on the development of Iran's oil and gas sector (under the extra-territorial `Iran Libya Sanctions Act'), it is only logical that the Iranians should seek a civilian nuclear energy industry in which they won't have to be dependent on the West for fuel like enriched uranium.
However, as a major concession to Britain, France and Germany � the so-called EU-3 which has sought to prevail upon Iran to abandon enrichment in exchange for guarantees of assured fuel supply � Mr. Ahmadinejad offered to run his country's enrichment plants as joint ventures with private and public sector firms from other countries. Britain and France have rejected this offer, which the Iranians say is a demonstration of their intent to be as transparent as possible.
The EU-3 and the U.S. insist Teheran must not work on enrichment because once the technology is mastered, the same facilities could be used to produce not just low enriched uranium (LEU) for energy reactors but highly enriched uranium (HEU) for bombs. Accordingly, they have circulated a resolution in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors meeting � which began Monday � calling for Iran's civilian nuclear programme to be referred to the U.N. Security Council as a potential threat to international peace and security.
It is not difficult for the U.S. and its European allies to get a majority of the 35-nation Board of Governors to recommend referral; however, the board has operated on the basis of consensus for the past 12 years � ever since the forced vote referring North Korea to the UNSC split the IAEA � and the non-aligned group of countries and China remain opposed to taking Iran to the Security Council. If the U.S. is convinced a consensus will elude it for the foreseeable future, it could push for a vote this week rather than wait any longer. Next month, following the annual IAEA General Conference, a new Board of Governors will take over. And with Cuba and Syria entering the Board in place of Peru and Pakistan, the ranks of those firmly opposed to an SC referral are likely to increase.
Although the immediate trigger for the European and American pressure is Teheran's decision last month to end its voluntary suspension of uranium conversion at its Esfahan facility, the Iranian case cannot be referred to the Security Council on this ground.
What Iran has yet to do is provide the IAEA sufficient information on the history of its centrifuge programme for it to satisfy itself that there are no "undeclared nuclear materials or activities." However, this alone can hardly constitute grounds for referring the country to the Security Council under Article III.B.4 of the Agency's Statute since the IAEA, in the past two years, has found discrepancies in the utilisation of nuclear material in as many as 15 countries. Among these are South Korea , Taiwan and Egypt.
In 2002 and 2003, for example, South Korea refused to let the IAEA visit facilities connected to its laser enrichment programme. Subsequently, though Seoul confessed to having secretly enriched uranium to a 77 per cent concentration of U-235 � a grade sufficient for fissile material � neither the U.S. nor EU suggested referring the matter to the UNSC.
In contrast, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran has produced weapon-grade uranium. Despite intrusive inspections, no facility or plan to produce weapon-grade uranium has been discovered, nor have any weapon designs surfaced.
Instead of falling in line with Washington's pressure on Iran, Europe and the rest of the world should also ask themselves whether the cause of international peace and security is served by selective concern about `proliferation.' The NPT allows enrichment but Iran is being told it cannot have a fuel cycle. The NPT mandates nuclear disarmament but the U.S. is conducting weapons research and formulating military doctrines that will weaponise space and increase the salience of nuclear weapons in its force posture.
Britain and France have no conceivable nuclear adversaries yet continue to deploy nuclear weapons. Countries in West Asia are being told they can never walk out of the NPT but nothing is done to denuclearise Israel. These issues too are very much part of the "nuclear crisis" and it is time something were done to address them.
No comments:
Post a Comment