The United Nations' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in its most recent report in February, declared for the first time that they have obtained extensive evidence that "raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile." The report indicated that Iran told inspectors it was preparing to make its uranium into a metallic form -- a step necessary for making the core of an atom bomb despite Tehran's categorical claim of general research.
In his introductory statement to the agency's Board of Governors today, the IAEA's new Director General, Yukiya Amano said that the UN nuclear watchdog cannot confirm that Iran has not turned some of its nuclear material toward weapons purposes. These alarmingly nefarious and clandestine activities belie the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei's preposterous claims on 19 February that "our religious principles and beliefs consider such weapons to be a symbol of destruction that is forbidden."
President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address, described the threat of nuclear weapons as "perhaps the greatest danger to the American people" and promised that Iran's leaders would face new consequences for their defiance of international obligations.
His appeal to Iran's rulers a year ago to "unclench their fists" clearly fell on deaf ears. It turns out Tehran's tyrants have been busy using their fists to brutally, albeit unsuccessfully, suppress the pro-democracy uprising at home, while defying their commitments internationally.
Thus it came as no surprise when they responded to the latest ultimatum to diplomatically resolve the longstanding nuclear standoff with a counter-ultimatum. In his speech at Freedom Square on the anniversary of Iranian Revolution, as chants of "Death to Dictator" were being heard, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Iran a nuclear state. He announced that Iran has mastered enriching to 20 percent--something the IAEA report confirmed--and has the ability to enrich to 80% which is a weapons usable grade. Tehran is clearly in breach of UN Security Council's several resolutions calling for suspension of Iran's enrichment program.
Washington is reportedly working on a set of economic sanctions to dissuade Iran from further enrichment, while acknowledging that, contrary to the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, Iran is still pushing ahead with nuclear weapons development.
Apparently it would take a diplomatic miracle to bring Russia and China on board with tough sanctions. Russia was among the few countries to endorse Ahmadinejad's disputed election grab in June; hence the chants of "down with Russia" in recent anti-government protests. And China recently rushed its delivery of advanced anti-riot armored trucks to the ayatollahs' embattled regime.
That being said, a true appreciation of the nationwide uprising in Iran would breathe new life into the power of sanctions. The David and Goliath battle raging in Iran, at its core, is a struggle for democracy, popular sovereignty and rule of law in place of theocracy, tyranny and rogue behavior. The outcome will definitively determine the future of Iran's nuclear weapons program, and that is the key element the West needs to comprehend.
The last three decades have shown that sanctions alone are not enough to compel the regime to abandon its nuclear weapons program. The regime's leadership rightly believes that it is in the midst of a do-or-die struggle against an increasingly empowered opposition. Backing down in any arena, particularly the very visible nuclear deadlock would be lethal.
Slogans chanted by the protesters across Iran, such as "Death to Khamenei," "Death to the Dictator," and "No to Gaza, No to Lebanon, I will die for Iran," make it clear that Iranians seek not just an end to the religious dictatorship; they also want an end to its rogue behavior abroad. Their chant "freedom is our inalienable right" is a direct jab at Ahmadinejad's favorite phrase, "nuclear energy is our inalienable right." Despite turning Tehran into a big garrison last Thursday, and despite the unprecedented wave of arrests, torture, and execution of dissidents in recent months, hundreds of thousands braved the massive clampdown and marched against the supreme leader all over the country, calling for an end to the clerical dictatorship.
It is further reassuring that the opposition movement People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) seeks a nuclear-free Iran. This group has repeatedly exposed Tehran's nuclear weapons secrets at great risk to its network in Iran. The group has "a pretty good record," according to Frank Pabian, Senior Nonproliferation Infrastructure Analyst at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. "They're right 90 percent of the time," he told the New York Times in January.
In this framework, the triumph of groups opposed to the regime is a much surer way to defuse the nuclear threat and end the Tehran-sponsored bloodshed in Iraq and the region. Indeed, it should be President Obama's Iran policy linchpin.
For example, the MEK, a long-exiled opposition movement, does not ask for money or arms, much less troops. It does demand, as do a large bi-partisan group of Members of Congress, that at this critical juncture it not be shut out of the Iran policy debate. To be sure, comprehensive sanctions meant to cripple the regime's economic, diplomatic, and above all security apparatus, would prove effective only when they are implemented within the framework of a new policy aimed at empowering the movement for change.
The wheels of change to end the reign of the clerics are rolling; it is only a matter of time. One protester recently described the regime's heightened show of force in the streets of Tehran as "the last efforts of a dying state in denial." The opposition's triumph will close Tehran's nuclear dossier and end its regional mischief-making once and for all. President Obama should accelerate his gradual shift away from Tehran's ruthless rulers and stand with the Iranian people. This would bring U.S. policy in line with his State of the Union promise that "America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity."
Alireza Jafarzadeh is the author of "The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis" (Palgrave MacMillan). Jafarzadeh exposed the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in 2002 which triggered the UN inspection of Iranian nuclear sites.
Follow Alireza Jafarzadeh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/A_Jafarzadeh
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Labor unrest and economic anxiety may not be among the headlines coming out of Iran since the controversial presidential election of June 2009, but they could turn out to be critical factors in the fate of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the regime is so sensitive about the country's well-being that it has been obfuscating economic statistics — or simply not reporting them.
Every week, unofficial sources of information in Iran (that is, blogs and social media) report labor problems. This week, there was a report about a privately owned industrial-parts company in Isfahan, Iran's third largest city, that has failed to pay 200 of its employees for the past seven months. About 80 angry workers forced their way into a board meeting, compelling company managers to hastily promise an initial payment within days and a settling of all debts by the end of the Iranian year in mid-March — with New Year bonuses as an added sweetener.
Similar promises were also reportedly made last week by the director of a large steel plant, also in Isfahan, after workers announced the beginning of a hunger strike to protest large discrepancies in pay.
You have to control your appetite for political power!
2. MEK never engaged “in violence within Iran against their own people”. MEK are freedom fighters targeted the “military apparatus of dictators” in the past. Furthermore, they renounced violence in 2001.
3. It is the Iranian government that use violence against the Iranian people in form daily execution, eliminating opposition by terror, mass execution of prisoners, firing on mass demonstration, war with its neighbors and being the “state sponsored terrorism”.
"Near the end of the war with Iran during 1980-88, Baghdad armed the MEK with military equipment and sent it into action against Iranian forces. In 1991, it assisted the Government of Iraq in suppressing the Shia and Kurdish uprisings in southern Iraq and the Kurdish uprisings in the north"
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Actually, what the report does is list already reported and investigated allegations by the US et al. (though it does omit all the ones that have been completely discredited) and say that they're continuing to look into those.
Google his "Read the IAEA Reports on Iran".
First of all IAEA interpret heavy water as nuclear material, this is a lie.
IAEA other argument that Iran cannot withdraw from some voluntary code 3.1 which is only applied to Iran is absurd.
Code 3.1 was imposed to Iran under treat of Bush. With this code in place Iran could not have peaceful nuclear program.
US should stop politicize an international body to wage war against Iran.
Iran threatening the world - really? With what? It's non-existant nuclear weapons? Having the lowest military expenditure even among all the Persian Gulf States both on a per capital basis and as a % of GDP let alone in comparison to Israel, the U.S., China, France, UK etc..!!!!
Being surrounded by the U.S. military on its Eastern, Western, and Southern borders. Being surrounded by nuclear weapons states, Pakistan, Russia, Israel and India!!
I know that the shameless "ministry of propaganda and disinformation" the MEK/PMOI would like to hype the Iranian threat, but lady don't take the rest as being ignorant into buying into these bellicose false accusations.
Ever since he revealed the two major nuclear sites, Natanz and Arak in 2002, the Europeans, and later on the US, have wasted invaluable time in futile negotiations with the cunning mullahs of Tehran, beating around the bush, instead of acting firmly.
One is reminded of Sir Winston Churchill's warnings to his contemporaries that they had chosen dishonor and would have the war.
Let's bring to a halt this monologue and embark on a real dialogue with the organized opposition. That's the only thing which makes the mullahs tick.
Alex
The fact that America, Israel and Britain have been caught lying time and time again over the past decade just seems to wash right off them.
That would be the "man bites dog" story of the year.
NEW YORK — Families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and a 1983 bombing of U.S. Marines in Lebanon are seeking to hold Iran accountable in separate legal actions.
A lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan seeks to enforce a $2.6 billion judgment against the Islamic Republic of Iran awarded by a federal court in Washington, D.C. That award stemmed from claims Iran was involved in an October 1983 bombing that killed 241 servicemen at a U.S. Marines facility in Beirut.
Lawyers for families of victims of the 2001 terror attacks are seeking to force the government of Iran to pay damages for supporting terrorism.
No lawyers have represented Iran in the actions
I bet they have stong links to Al-CIAda as well.
Are you really going to fall for the same schtick all over again?
Mr. Jafarzadeh,thank you for enlightening us with your articles.Indeed Iranian brutal fundamentalist regime is seeking to acquire Atomic bomb and on to top it, it exports terrorism and fundamentalism.The appeasement policy has failed and the World must boycot this regime as it did with the apartheid South African Regime. Iranian people deserve freedom and democracy and nothing less.
USAF Brig. Gen. Harold Price was wounded in a May 1972 ass assination attempt.
The first success in the assa ssination campaign was the murder of Lt. Col. Louis Lee Hawkins, a U.S. Army comptroller. He was shot to death in front of his home in Tehran by two terrorists on a motorcycle on 1973-06-02.
A car carrying U.S. Air Force officers Col. Paul Shaffer and Lt. Col. Jack Turner was trapped between two cars carrying terr orists. They told the Iranian driver to lie down and then shot and killed the Americans. Six hours later a woman called reporters to claim the PMOI carried out the attack as retaliation for the recent death of prisoners at the hands of Iranian authorities.
A car carrying three American employees of Rockwell International was attacked in May 1976. William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard were killed. They had been working on the Ibex system for gathering intelligence on the neighboring USSR.
I have references for all these and thousands more of Iranians.
Additionally any support of this group in the US is punishable by 15 years prison.
See the thing with Muslims is - they're honest! And if they wanted them they would just say "yeah, we're building them, what are you gonna do about it?"
On the other hand, how many times have western governments been caught lying over the past decade?
Let their supporters speak amoung themselves.
There is no evidence that MEK (under Rajavi leadership) were involved in any military action against Americans. This is bogus.
Do you really want another Iraq x 100?