AN Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday that the Iranian government hopes that the International Atomic Energy Agency will produce an unbiased report on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear programme and protect its right to nuclear energy.
Currently, Iran is under all out attack from the US, UK and Israel. These states are demanding that Iran gives up its nuclear programme and are threatening military action if it doesn’t.
They say that they fear Iran using its nuclear programme to acquire the capacity to produce nuclear bombs.
The US has thousands of such weapons, while the UK has hundreds along with Israel.
The reason that the UK and the US are opposed to all countries in the Middle East signing a nuclear free treaty for the region is that Israel would have to give up its nuclear bombs.
They are comfortable with a situation where Israel is able to terrorise its neighbours with the threat of nuclear annihilation.
The Iranian government has made it clear on hundreds of occasions that it does not seek a nuclear weapon. However, the imperialist powers aim to prevent it having any access to nuclear power.
Yesterday its foreign ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, told the FARS news agency: ‘We hope the director general of the agency, heeding Iran’s right to utilise nuclear energy . . . will take measures to ensure our needs and rights’.
He said the UN nuclear watchdog should defend the right of ‘IAEA member-states to use nuclear energy for civilian needs and refrain from resorting to double standards and discrimination’ against Iran.’
The IAEA is expected to issue a new report on Iran’s nuclear programme, ahead of a regular session of its 35-member board of governors in early March.
The report comes just a week after Tehran informed the IAEA that it was enriching uranium to 20%.
The chief of Russia’s General Staff, Nikolai Makarov, has warned the US against striking Iran over the country’s nuclear programme.
‘The consequences, I believe, would be dreadful for Iran, as well as Russia, and the entire Asia-Pacific community,’ Makarov said on Wednesday.
The Russian military chief further said he thought that the United States might turn its military attention on the Islamic Republic once its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have been completed.
Amid a US campaign to drum up support for new anti-Iran sanctions, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Tuesday that world powers would ‘regret’ any moves against the country.
‘If anybody seeks to create problems for Iran, our response will not be like before,’ Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Tehran.
‘Something will be done in response that will make the world powers regret their action,’ the Iranian chief executive added: ‘However, we prefer they should steer a course towards cooperation with Iran.’
President Ahmadinejad made the remarks as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was wrapping up her visit to the Middle East, where she stopped in Qatar and Saudi Arabia to seek the backing of the Arab world’s heavyweights against Tehran’s nuclear drive and threatened massive new sanctions and even military action to stop the ‘military taking over Iran’, and producing a nuclear weapon.
Tehran says its nuclear programme is directed at the civilian applications of the technology and has called for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction around the globe as well as a nuclear bomb-free Middle East.
The US has now moved the most powerful military forces into the Gulf region, while Israel is threatening a strike against Iran on almost a daily basis.
The imperialists lied their way to war with Iraq, killing a million Iraqis, and creating four million refugees. Workers must tell the UK government that if it is a party to any attempt to repeat the operation against Iran, it will be brought down by a general strike.
