Days later, U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice publicized some details of how Washington is using the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), under which the U.S. military and its allies conduct piracy on the high seas using the mantra of “nuclear non-proliferation,” with Iran as a particular target.

At the same time, many reports in the media indicate that Tehran’s effort to diversify energy sources by developing nuclear power is a matter of national pride in Iran, and is backed even by opponents of the Iranian government.

Signaling the limits of what it could achieve at the UN conference, the White House decided not to send Rice to the meeting, leaving advocacy of U.S. policy to midlevel diplomats. The meeting, which ended May 27, failed to reach any agreement on changing the NPT.

In opening remarks at the conference, the head of the U.S. delegation, Stephen Rademaker, emphasized the PSI’s importance in preventing the transportation of “weapons of mass destruction (WMD),” or materials that could allegedly be used to build such weapons.

To highlight the second anniversary of launching the Proliferation Security Initiative, Rice invited foreign diplomats to the State Department May 31. She said some 60 governments now support PSI with about 40 participating in interceptions. She welcomed the newest member states—Argentina, Iraq, and Georgia—and asked other diplomats to urge their governments to join. “In the last nine months alone, the United States and 10 of our PSI partners have quietly cooperated on 11 successful efforts,” Rice said. “For example, PSI cooperation stopped the transshipment of material and equipment bound for ballistic missile programs in countries of concern, including Iran. PSI partners, working at times with others, have prevented Iran from procuring goods to support its missile and WMD programs, including its nuclear program.” The Iranian government was the only one Rice identified specifically as a target of PSI operations.

In other steps to put pressure on Tehran, the U.S. government has expanded aid to Iranian “pro-democracy” groups. Through the National Endowment for Democracy, the State Department has channeled $500,000 to aid such groups. The endowment was set up in 1983 and receives funding from the U.S. Congress. Washington has also increased Voice of America broadcasts into Iran.

U.S. officials arrogantly assert that Iran does not need nuclear power because of its vast oil and gas reserves. For this reason they claim Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear technology can only have a military purpose. But the same imperialist powers, Washington and London in particular, went out of their way for nearly a century to prevent Iran from taking control of its oil reserves. When the government of Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil in the 1950s, Washington engineered its overthrow with a 1953 coup and restored the rule of the shah. It took another 26 years for the Iranian people to bring an end to that brutal, U.S.-backed monarchy through the 1979 revolutionary upheaval, during which oil workers played a central role.  
 
Iran’s growing energy needs
The Iranian government says it needs to develop nuclear power to meet the country’s growing energy needs. Even opponents of the Iranian regime agree with this assessment. In a column in the June 25, 2004, Wall Street Journal, Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran’s foreign minister under the shah between 1967 and 1971, wrote that as early as 1970 projections showed Iran might need all of its oil production for domestic consumption by 2010. Zahedi said Iran cannot be denied “the right to develop and use nuclear energy,” a project that began in the 1950s.

“As its economy grows, so does Iran’s demand for electricity,” wrote Power Engineering International, an industry magazine in its online edition. Iran has the biggest power market in the Middle East, constituting a quarter of the region’s electrical capacity. By 2020 Iran will need to spend $96 billion to meet expanded energy needs, a figure “beyond Iran’s budgetary capacity,” the magazine noted.

In addition, petroleum is becoming more difficult and expensive to extract. Oil fields do not produce evenly until the last drop is gone. After the first half of reserves have been sucked from the ground, the second half becomes harder and more costly to extract. Many oil companies then abandon these fields and move on. University of Houston professor Kishore Mohanty, for example, estimates that as much as two-thirds of the oil in mainland U.S. reservoirs has been left untouched because it is too costly to extract.

Developing nuclear energy would also allow Iran to slash the costs of power production by tapping into another of its natural resources—reserves of uranium ore. Tehran’s opposition to demands by Washington and its allies in Europe to forego uranium enrichment—which is necessary for producing fuel for nuclear reactors—and instead import nuclear fuel from abroad makes sense to millions in Iran and elsewhere because doing so would impose another financial burden on the country and allow other governments to cut off supplies at any time.

Recent reports in the U.S. media show that broad cross sections of Iranians view the country’s right to develop nuclear technology as a matter of national pride. “Achieving the peaceful use of technology is really a matter of pride and we will not stop this for anything,” Ehsan Motagi, a seminary student in Isfahan, told the New York Times. A phone survey of some 2,000 Iranians by the Washington-based InterMedia said 55 percent of respondents backed the country’s pursuit of nuclear technology and 46 percent strongly supported it.

On May 25 Tehran agreed to extend an agreement with Berlin, London, and Paris to temporarily suspend enrichment of uranium in exchange for economic incentives.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home