Changing
course On Iran
By Abbas Edalat &
Mehrnaz Shahabi
11 September, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Ahead
of the crucial meeting of the board of governors of the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which starts today in Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei,
head of the IAEA, has greeted the recent accord between the IAEA and
Iran as "a
significant step forward".
Following the July visit
of the IAEA to Tehran, agreement was reached on an action plan with
defined modalities and timetable to address all outstanding ambiguities
in relation to Iran's nuclear programme within a strict timeframe until
November. As the first outcome of this agreement and a strong vindication
of its workability, the August 27 announcement of the IAEA cleared
Iran's plutonium experiments - labelled by the US as major
evidence of Iran's weaponisation programme. Furthermore, according to
a statement, "the Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion
of the declared nuclear material at the enrichment facilities in Iran
and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use."
Notwithstanding this very
promising development, the US government has described Iran's cooperation
with the IAEA as an attempt by the Iranian government to distract from
its alleged intention of developing nuclear weapons. This US description
prompted the following response from ElBaradei in an interview
with Spiegel: "I am familiar with these accusations.
They are completely untrue. It's not possible to manipulate us. We are
not naive and we do not take sides." Dismissive of the head of
IAEA, the US, with some supportive words from Gordon Brown, has recklessly
called for a
third round of sanctions against Iran by the UN security
council, which will no doubt jeopardise the Iran-IAEA agreement as Iran
has already warned.
In response to the US stance,
ElBaradei warned on Friday that some of the rhetoric against Iran is
a reminder of the prelude to the invasion
of Iraq and firmly supported the IAEA agreement with Iran.
In this context, and faced with the inevitable prospect of Russia vetoing
any new sanctions against Iran, the US then adopted a more diplomatic
veneer. The US Ambassador to Vienna, Gregory Schulte, while acknowledging
the potential of the work plan for resolving "historical questions",
reiterated the US persistence that Iran stops its uranium enrichment
programme or face sanctions, pressing to force Iran to open "manufacturing
and military facilities" to inspection.
In fact, the Bush-Cheney
leadership has shown no interest in the resolution of the outstanding
problems between the IAEA and Iran since its principal aim is to grossly
distort and exaggerate these issues in order to use them as a false
pretext for a military action against Iran, very much like the hysteria
it created over the alleged but non-existent weapons of mass destruction
in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Thus, in contradiction to
the recent findings of the IAEA and the agreed work plan with Iran,
George Bush, in his belligerent speech of August 28, raising the prospect
of US
war against Iran, falsely warned that Iran's nuclear programme
was spreading the "shadow of nuclear holocaust" over the Middle
East. Given the completely discredited WMD charges against Iraq such
accusations against Iran are hardly convincing, which is why the US
has, since early this year, launched a new propaganda campaign to make
Iran a scapegoat for its failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and create
a casus belli by trying to implicate the Iranian government in supporting
the Iraqi anti-occupation forces with roadside bombs that kill American
soldiers. In line with this strategy, Bush declared in his speech: "Iran's
leaders ... cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against
coalition forces ... The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And
until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.
I have authorised our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's
murderous activities."
However, the US allegations
of Iranian involvement in aiding attacks against the coalition forces
in Iraq have not been supported by any evidence and, as recently as
in the last few weeks, President Karsai and Prime Minister Maliki praised
Iran. The British foreign secretary, David Miliband, admitted in his
interview
with the Financial Times that there was no evidence of
Iran's complicity in violence and instability in Iraq.
Strikingly though, their
failure to produce a case to attack Iran has not deterred Bush and Cheney
to try to sell their new war of aggression to the US public thanks to
the massive demonisation of Iran by the western media. If unchallenged,
their bellicose statements and call for new sanctions will pave the
way for such an assault in what is eerily reminiscent of the prelude
to the invasion of Iraq. There are strong warnings from intelligence
sources that massive military strikes on Iran's nuclear, military, political
and economic infrastructure are ready for execution within the next
few months with its widely predicted catastrophic consequences for the
people of Iran, the region and the whole world.
Today, a delegation of Iranian
academics and MPs alarmed by the threat of an imminent US attack on
Iran are urging the Brown government to clearly distance itself from
the pursuit of aggressive US foreign policy, to denounce US war plans,
oppose another round of sanctions on Iran and persuade the EU as a whole
to do the same. The British government, and EU, must insist that the
IAEA-Iran agreement be allowed to work within the agreed timeline without
any act of sabotage by the US so that the remaining outstanding issues
over Iran's nuclear programme are resolved in a peaceful way. Otherwise,
if the EU again follows the US to support another round of sanctions
on Iran, then it will be complicit in preparing the ground for a new
neoconservative illegal war of aggression.
Abbas Edalat is professor of computer science and mathematics at Imperial
College London and founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military
Intervention in Iran; Mehrnaz Shahabi is the campaign's executive editor
www.campaigniran.org. This article was first published in The Guardian)
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