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2 Iran: A mountain that doesn't
move By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
NEW YORK - Even though Security Council
Resolution 1747 was passed this weekend to impose
tougher new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear
program, the mood at the United Nations was
anything but celebratory.
The latest
sanctions block Iranian arms exports and impose an
international freeze on the assets of 28 people
and organizations involved in Iran's nuclear and
missile programs. The measures were adopted in a
unanimous vote and give Iran another 60 days
to
comply with the UN's nuclear demands to stop
uranium-enrichment activities or, most likely,
face even harsher measures.
Yet with the
council's South African president expressing "deep
disappointment" about the disregard by the
permanent five (the United States, France, the
United Kingdom, China and Russia) plus Germany for
a call for a 90-day time-out, and other
non-permanent members criticizing the council's
"selectivity", the vote was cast under a growing
internal fissure at the UN.
This is a
divide between the nations with nuclear weapons
and developing nations in the Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM). The issue is further clouded by the Iranian
seizure on Friday of 15 British sailors and
British complaints of growing Iran-inspired
attacks by Iraqi militants against their forces in
southern Iraq.
The British ambassador to
the UN praised the Security Council vote as a
"unanimous and unambiguous signal" by the
international community regarding the
"unacceptable" Iranian path of proliferation. Yet
even the self-congratulatory European diplomats
had an air of unnatural circumspection about them
- and not to mention duplicity as they went on to
preach the need for Iran to respect its
"non-proliferation obligations" under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
It was
almost as if they had all been in another hall
when several Third World representatives called
for the need to respect the rights of all nations
and questioned the perverse logic that weapons of
mass destruction are safe in some hands and not in
others. But in reality, no one, not even the US,
can possibly ignore South Africa's warning that
the Iran nuclear issue "affects the whole
international community".
"Iran's behavior
reminds me of the Japanese movie
Kagemusha," a Third World delegate at the
UN told this author. "It [the film] shows a
warlord holding his ground against all odds and
his troops putting up a gallant fight, and when
they triumph, the warlord says 'a mountain doesn't
move'."
Certainly, many Iranians and
friends of Iran around the world hope so and
wonder if they have seen the last of the Third
World's caving in to the powers that be at the UN.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr
Mottaki, addressing the council after its approval
of Resolution 1747, repeatedly referred to the
NAM's support of Iran's "inalienable rights" and
expressed concern about double standards and
hypocrisy with regard to his country.
Some
good news as far as Iran is concerned is that the
resolution deals with the issue of a
nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. This
was after much resistance by the US and Britain to
Arab lobbying for its inclusion as a veiled
reference to Israel's nuclear arms, which have
hitherto gone unnoticed by the Security Council.
Calling the council's actions "illegal"
and "without basis", Mottaki drew comparison to
the council's disregard for Iran's rights when the
country was invaded by Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein in 1980. He pledged that just as Iran
fought for its rights then, when Saddam occupied
"38,000 square kilometers of Iranian territory"
without an iota of condemnation by the Security
Council, it would do the same now.
"This
resolution by establishing sanctions is punishing
a country that according to the IAEA
[International Atomic Energy Agency] has never
diverted its nuclear program ... with all its
nuclear facilities under the monitoring of the
IAEA's inspectors and their cameras," Mottaki
said. He added that Iran has "fulfilled all its
commitments to the IAEA and the NPT and demands
nothing more than its inalienable rights under the
NPT. Is there any better way to undermine an
important multilateral instrument that deals
directly with international peace and security?
Isn't this action by the Security Council in and
of itself a grave threat to international peace
and security?"
Indeed, Iran announced on
Sunday it was partially suspending cooperation
with the IAEA. Gholam Hossein Elham, a government
spokesman, was reported to have told state
television that the suspension will last until
Iran's nuclear case is referred back to the IAEA
from the Security Council.
Sailors high
and dry There is now good reason to be
concerned about possible military ramifications to
the sanctions, given that Iran's capturing of the
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