....The ingredients are well-known: sexed-up intelligence material which puts the target country in the worst possible light; moves to get the UN to declare it in "non- compliance", thereby claiming justification for going in unilaterally even if the UN gives no support for invasion; and at the back of the whole brouhaha, a clique of American neoconservatives whose real agenda is regime change.
The immediate focus for action against Iran is the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has produced five reports on Iran in the last 14 months. Part of the UN, with an international board which acts like a mini security council, the IAEA's reports have raised questions about Iran's professedly civilian nuclear programme and its desire to create its own fuel cycle which could eventually be used to produce bombs.
To satisfy its critics, Iran agreed last year to allow so-called intrusive inspections. As a confidence-building measure, it also stopped enriching uranium. In a few days' time the IAEA will issue a new report, and it is its wording which is causing the latest flurry. John Bolton, the Bush administration's point-man, has been rushing round Europe claiming the evidence of sinister Iranian behaviour is clear, even though the IAEA has consistently made no such judgment. It has called for more transparency, but prefers to keep probing and, like Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq in 2003, insists it needs more time.
...
Bolton is not, at this stage, claiming to have intelligence which the IAEA's inspectors don't. After the fiasco of the US's pre-war material on Iraq, he has not started to trumpet US sources. But he is choosing to interpret the available knowledge as harshly as possible. He is also close to the Washington hardliners in the
Project for the New American Century, who created the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against unfriendly states and who favour regime change to deal with Islamist fundamentalism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1291894,00.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
