Iran informed the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a letter last Monday that it has a second uranium enrichment plant under construction.
This means that Obama was aware of the situation well before he made his UN speech about nuclear disarmament, well into the future for the US, UK, France, Israel, Pakistan and India, but immediate, as far as any nuclear energy is concerned, for Iran.
Obama, Brown and Sarkozy have manufactured a crisis, just before they meet with Iran on October 1 and with Russia already knocked into line to support severe sanctions on Iran – if it does not allow the US control over its nuclear programme, a huge encroachment on its national sovereignty.
Yesterday, President Obama and Brown and Sarkozy, opened the G20 summit of industrialized nations in Pittsburgh with an attack on the Iranian government.
Obama stated that Iran must allow an immediate IAEA inspection of the plant.
Iran is already under UN sanctions for refusing to suspend enrichment and denying access to the IAEA.
Speaking alongside the UK’s Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Obama told the G20 ‘there’s a sense of urgency about the upcoming meeting on October 1 between Iran, the permanent members of the UN Security Council, and Germany. . . .
‘To put it simply: Iran must comply with UN Security Council resolutions . . . or be held accountable to international standards and international law.’
Obama’s puppets Brown and Sarkozy further put the boot in. Brown said: ‘The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what, we believe, is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve.
‘Confronted by the serial deception of many years, the international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand. On October 1, Iran must now engage with the international community and join the international community as a partner. If it does not do so, it will be further isolated. . . . And we are prepared to implement further and more stringent sanctions.’
Sarkozy continued: ‘We are now faced with a challenge, a challenge made to the entire international community. . . . If by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken.’
Not a word was said about Israel’s 200 nuclear bombs and the means of delivery, all acquired with the assistance of the US.
Not a word was said about Pakistani and Indian nuclear weaponry and delivery systems.
The emphasis is that an anti-imperialist nation, Iran, must not be allowed to have its own independent nuclear programme.
News Line urges the workers of the world to say ‘Hands off Iran’, and ‘No more sanctions’. They must insist that Iran has the right to have its own independent nuclear programme. It is, after all, the US and UK that invaded Iraq and Afghanistan next door to Iran.
If Obama and Brown want the issue of nuclear disarmament to be taken seriously, they must open up their own nuclear programmes for international inspection, and start destroying their nuclear arms and means of delivery under international supervision, since they are the only nations that have actually used these weapons.
The US and UK will say that such an approach is out of the question.
Workers must reply that it is out of the question for Iran to allow itself to be put once again under the control of the imperialist powers.
Iran must retain control over its nuclear programme. It is its right.