The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 70/No. 35           September 18, 2006  
 
 
U.S. rulers: ‘Iran must pay’
for defying UN Security Council
(front page)
 
BY BRIAN WILLIAMS  
On August 31, the deadline set by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to halt all uranium enrichment activities, U.S. president George Bush gave a speech to the American Legion’s national convention in Salt Lake City reiterating Washington’s perspective of fighting a “long war” against “terrorism.”

“It’s time for Iran to make a choice,” Bush said, responding to Tehran’s refusal to submit to the UN Security Council demand. “We’ve made our choice. We will continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution, but there must be consequences for Iran’s defiance, and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”

In his talk, billed as one in a series Bush will present in coming weeks to get support for the U.S.-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, the president declared, “This summer’s crisis in Lebanon has made it clearer than ever that the world now faces a grave threat from the radical regime in Iran.” The Iranian government provides “arms, funds, and advises Hezbollah, which has killed more Americans than any terrorist network except al Qaeda,” he said, referring to the Lebanese group that recently fought Israeli troops invading that country.

“The Iranian regime interferes in Iraq by sponsoring terrorists and insurgents, empowering unlawful militias, and supplying components for improvised explosive devices,” Bush added.

Referring to a series of attacks on U.S. officials and military personnel from the 1970s through the 1990s under the Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton administrations, the president said that Washington’s “primary goal in the Middle East was stability.” But the U.S. rulers recently “realized that years of pursuing stability to promote peace have left us with neither,” he said. “[S]o we’re pursuing a new strategy.”

The new approach includes ending “the days of treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter” and taking the offensive to “fight terrorists overseas so we do not have to face them here at home,” Bush said. It also includes making “it clear to all nations, if you harbor terrorists, you’re as guilty as the terrorists, you’re an enemy of the United States and you will be held into account,” he said.

A month earlier, Washington succeeded in winning backing from its imperialist allies in Europe—London, Paris, and Berlin—along with support from the governments of Russia and China to pass a UN Security Council resolution warning Tehran that if uranium enrichment activities for the country’s nuclear energy industry were not suspended by the end of August it could face “economic and diplomatic sanctions.”

Enriched uranium is an essential component of fuel for atomic energy. If processed at a higher grade, it can also be used in the production of nuclear weapons. The right to produce nuclear fuel for atomic energy is codified in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signer. The imperialist powers, however, are pushing to make Iran dependent on imported nuclear fuel while the country has substantial uranium ore deposits. Tehran insists it needs to develop atomic power for peaceful purposes to meet the country’s growing energy needs.

“Iranians will not surrender to forceful talk, aggression, and deprivation of their rights,” said Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a September 2 speech carried live on Iranian state television, according to the Iranian Student News Agency. “Our nation is a supporter of peace but it will not retreat an iota from its right to nuclear technology.”

A report the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) submitted to the UN Security Council August 31 noted that Tehran is “complying with basic, mandatory inspections that allow the agency to monitor all of its work with uranium,” reported the Washington Post. It also said that Iran had “not suspended its enrichment related activities.”

“Since April, when Iran began enriching uranium in a string of centrifuges, it has produced about six kilograms of uranium to levels consistent with an energy program. The material cannot be used for a weapon,” the Post noted.

In response to the IAEA report, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Resa Asefi told IranMania News that his government “has acted within the framework of the international safeguards and Non-Proliferation Treaty and is ready to answer the remaining issues through talks with the IAEA.” Over the past three years Tehran has permitted the IAEA to conduct “more than 2,000 inspector-days of scrutiny” of its nuclear sites, Javad Zarif, Iran’s UN representative, told the UN Security Council July 31.

According to an article in the August 31 New York Times, however, IAEA inspectors also said in their report that day that they found new traces of highly enriched uranium “of unknown origins” at one of the country’s nuclear facilities, “deepening suspicions” of Tehran’s intentions, as the Times put it.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton urged the Security Council on August 31 to move ahead and impose sanctions on Iran. He told the media that the IAEA report is “ample evidence of Iran’s defiance.” Foreign ministers of European Union member states agreed September 2 to take two more weeks before announcing their response.
 
 
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Imperialist hands off Iran!  
 
 
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