THE imperialist powers are studying Iran’s offer of more talks to resolve the crisis that the US has created over Iran’s right to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. In fact, the US and its UK ally have refused to rule out military action against Iran on this issue.
Iran said its reply, to the US-EU ‘nuclear incentives’ offer, contained ideas that would allow serious talks about the crisis to take place.
It, however, has not agreed to the US demand that it freeze its uranium enrichment programme by August 31, or else face economic sanctions.
The five permanent Security Council members – the US, Britain, France, China, and Russia, plus Germany, a non-permanent member of the Security Council – who offered Iran the alleged ‘incentives’ to stop enrichment, have not yet given their response.
Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, commented that Iran’s answer was ‘extensive and therefore requires a detailed and careful analysis’.
Iran said its reply to the economic, security and nuclear ‘incentives’, provided it stopped its uranium enrichment programme, would be ‘multi-dimensional’, and not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
This tactic is calculated to split Russia and China away from the US, and the UK – which do require a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ – and therefore prevent the UN Security Council imposing economic sanctions onto Iran after August 31.
China and Russia have previously said that negotiations are the only way of easing tension over Iran’s nuclear programme. Iran meanwhile points out that, as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is entitled to a nuclear power programme and says it has broken no rule.
It has not agreed to halt its uranium enrichment programme, and will not agree to give up that programme, insisting that it, and every sovereign state, has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian purposes.
The prospect, therefore, is that the US will not agree to accept Iran’s ‘multi-dimensional offer’, and along with its allies on the Security Council will seek to pressure Russia and China to at least abstain on a Security Council motion to impose sanctions on Iran.
US policy is that only its allies can develop nuclear programmes, everyone else is barred from doing so, and risks military action if they do. The US is opposed to a nuclear free Middle East since its ally Israel has over 200 nuclear bombs – a nuclear monopoly – plus the means of delivering them. It has also refused to take action to stop its ally Pakistan, and also India, from developing nuclear programmes and nuclear bombs and the means of delivery.
Iran is in favour of a nuclear bomb-free Middle East and insists that it has no intention to develop nuclear weaponry, although it has every right to follow Israel’s lead and do so.
There is every indication that the US, along with its UK and Israeli allies, is preparing to strike at Iran, not just to take out its nuclear power plants which are under construction, but to attempt to cripple the government and engineer a regime change that would further its plans to control the oil and the gas resources of the Middle East and the Gulf.
US troop contingents in Iran’s neighbour Iraq are being reinforced, and not reduced as was being predicted. The US, far from quitting Iraq, is attempting to dig in, to threaten Iran and Syria, Iraq’s neighbours.
Capitalism in its imperialist stage is being driven forward by its ever growing crisis to greater and even more risky military adventures.
Everybody knows that British workers are opposed to Bush and Blair’s imperialist policy.
Now is the time for workers to demand that their trade unions take action to smash this imperialist alliance.
The trade unions must call a general strike to bring down the Blair government and bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies.