Iran and their Rights

02.02.2012 08:04

by Anna Malm *

... "Iran is enriching uranium, it will continue to enrich uranium and has every right to do so in accordance with international law." [1]

With the words of these authors, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, it is stressed that the nuclear issue of Iran will never be resolved if Israel, the United States and their European partners do not understand the above stated clearly and unambiguously. To illuminate this point from different perspectives, the authors pointed to arguments of some analysts who also came to similar conclusions. These considerations are intertwined, say Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett and Peter Jenkins that we present below.

They point to the fact that the Non-Proliferation Treaty prohibits the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons, but it allows the enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes. This enrichment is at the core of the dispute in the West against Iran ". [1] - [2]

As clearly stated above, the enrichment of uranium for civilian purposes is a right that is provided to Iran by the prerogatives of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Evidence of military activity by Iran has never been presented by Western representatives

They note then that a military strike against Iran, under these circumstances, could only logically be based on the peaceful activities of uranium enrichment by Iran. This enrichment as the treaty states, assures Iran's rights as a subscriber to the nuclear non-proliferation agreement.

Evidence to the contrary has never been presented, despite all efforts. This has always been correctly and accurately argued by Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leveret said Peter Jenkins ..

What we see is that the perspective adopted by western countries involved in the dispute with Iran is aimed at the preservation of Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. [1] - [2]

It was also argued that recent measures taken by Tehran to change its modern and sophisticated centrifuges for the Fordo site in Qom, as well as to announce the opening of a new nuclear site, followed by their statement in regard to their production of fuel and combustion plates for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR in acronym) had been taken with the intention of creating a situation of "political equality" in nuclear negotiations with the West. [1] - [2]

It was then said to be exactly equal politics, or something similar to it, that London, Paris and Washington do not want Iran to get. That is in order to secure the advantage for the West. [1] and [2].

It was also argued that even if Washington would look ​​for ways to modify its rigid stance on Iran, one could still observe the following:

a) - that both London and Paris are chronically concerned about the development of a nuclear capability (same threshold) of the important powers in the region (such as Iran) in relation to the relatively small nuclear arsenals of Britain and France. [1] [2]

b) - and what a continuous rise of Iran would represent in relation to the possibilities of the West continuing to dominate the Middle East, as it had been doing until now. [1] [2]

One cannot help but ask what can really be expected from the discussions with the so-called P5 +1, despite many good intentions that Iran and possibly Russia and China might have about reaching a fair and equitable agreement on the issue.

P5 +1 refers to the group discussions about the "nuclear standoff" - the United States, England, France, Germany, Russia and China. The part of the name +1 relates to Germany.

Personally I cannot get rid of the desire to emphasize that it is Germany that offered nuclear submarines to Israel. These submarines Israel used, not many months ago, demonstratively in the waters of the Middle East and well in the vicinity of Iran. These nuclear submarines can be comfortably loaded with nuclear weapons, according to what was reported.

Turning the analysis presented here: The intentions supposedly were to contain the dangers associated with nuclear proliferation. If these intentions were really sincere, the appropriate remedy would be to try to establish a Non-Nuclear Zone for the entire region. [1] [2]

It may be added that making Iran a helpless target does not in any way contribute to global security, quite the contrary. The preservation of Israel's nuclear monopoly in the region does not allow anybody to sleep quietly.

As I am no part of the group of people who have knowledge (de-facto) of the situation, I have to settle for having to say that for my part, I have never seen this monopoly confirmed or denied. So from my perspective, the remedy is to demand that Israel's cards be put on the table. And that's just to begin the negotiations.

Peter Jenkins, [2] as an analyst and expert on the intimate nature of the cause in question, emphasizes the simultaneous increase in two risks in the current situation.

1) the risk of military action
2) great instability for the international economy

All requirements are a result of the disproportionate western demands that Iran give up its rights established by international law-that as a participant in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that permits Iran to enrich uranium for civilian use.

Of the "new suspicions" of the IAEA, one can safely say that they are not "new" and they do not have anything at all. Such suspicions were discarded years ago in regard to not complying with the requirements of relevance and specificity.

A new report by the IAEA, recently welcomed by the West, resurrected some dubious data which was never accepted by the former director of the IAEA, Mohamed El-Baradei, for being just that, dubious. This data was dismissed by El-Baradei for not having inherent credibility. The new director welcomed it and dressed it in new clothes.

More specifically what was said by the new representative is that the idea that such activities had not continued could not be dismissed. Well, ideas based on dubious data, smelling of dubious foundation that have never been proven and accepted are now "new directions" causing "new outrage" followed by a crescendo of economic sanctions against Iran by the leadership of western states (read as the U.S., France, England) leading us to where we are today.

We have no concrete evidence, it is not a shadow. However, the sharp pointed guns are ready to be put into action. Again-in the Middle East. God forbid.

　

REFERENCES AND NOTES:

[1], Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett in "westerners AND HIGHLY Informed Iranians KNOW THE WAY OUT OF THE NUCLEAR IMPASSE ... BUT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION WILL NOT TAKE IT." - The RACE is on for IRAN www.raceforiran.com on January 28, 2012

[2] Peter Jenkins, Britain's former representative to the IAEA-International Atomic Energy Agency - in "The West Could Strike a Deal With Iran" published in The Telegraph. Source: www.raceforiran.com - The Race for Iran. on January 28, 2012

* Anna Malm is an international correspondent for Patria Latina and Iran News in Stockholm

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Afghanistan-The NATO stratagem

The NATO stratagem

The Frontier Post

February 3, 2012 The NATO command in Afghanistan could be excused. After all, over all these years it has fought the Afghan war not on the battlefield but mostly on the airwaves of the embedded western corporate media. And now that the pay time has come, it has nothing spectacular on its slate to show its peoples back home for the enormous treasures they have spent on its upkeep. Throughout, it in fact has only fiddled with its war in Afghanistan, not fought it in reality. As the US-led invaders, hardly a little over 6,000 under the ISAF command and barely 12,000 under the American command, descended on the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, the Soviet Afghan war veterans were mirthfully amused at this puny force for as difficult a country as their invaded land and were no lesser stunned by the attackers’ hubris that it reflected so pungently. The Soviet invaders, some 200,000-strong had come riding on a formidable war machine backed up by powerful air support. As an ally, they had an equally strong Afghan army and air force, both trained and equipped by them lethally. And yet the Soviet invaders had to kiss humiliation of defeat at the end at an indomitable Afghan resistance’s hands. No different was it going to be for the US-led invaders of Afghanistan, had the Soviet veterans predicted then. And their prediction of years ago is now imminently coming true palpably. The Soviet invaders had at least the control of major cities. The US-led NATO occupiers cannot lay claim even to this much credibly after ten years of their invasion. Lately, they are making so much of the Kandahar "triumph". But the American intelligence community itself in its latest Afghan war assessment terms this "victory" as at best "tenuous". And their once-shrilly-touted Mirjah showcase success of the troop surge has turned out to be such a damp squib that none of them now even talks of it.It is not just that Afghanistan’s south and east are restive, out of the US-led occupiers’ control and under the Taliban’s and other insurgent groups’ sway. Even the rest of the country is under the thumb of former mujahideen commanders, on whose sweet will are dependent both the occupiers and Kabul regime alike, not vice versa. While Ustad Atta Mohammad Noor is a jealous overlord of the northern Balkh province, its capital city Mazar-i-Sharif and its periphery are held by Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum who had fought along the Soviet invaders against the Afghan resistance and now brooks no meddling with his fiefdom. And whereas the western province of Herat is largely Tajik-origin warlord Ismail Khan’s sultanate, the central highlands region of Hazarajat stands parceled out between ethnic Hazara strongmen. By every reckoning, the US-led invaders’ occupation of Afghanistan has been such a huge collapse in every manner that their commanders will have no face to show their peoples if the reality is told in all truthfulness. The NATO’s Afghan war is no tale of heroic deeds and impressive soldiering, as been brought home by the embedded media to the western publics. It has been a shameful story of its trepidation and spinelessness. And it has been a narrative of the most devious kind of deceit and deception right from the outset. As the ISAF knights were cooling their heels in their Kabul redoubt and the American warriors in their Bagram nestle immovably for years, fattening their bellies with endless pints of beer and rolls of hamburgers, they kept crying that Taliban had fled and settled in safe havens in Pakistan from where they launched attacks on them and Afghan territories. Neither they themselves explained nor their bosses back home or media or even their people asked them critically why had they not corralled and nabbed the fleeing Taliban rumps in the first place, and if at all they were coming from Pakistan to attack them and the Afghans what were they doing in their nestling places and not moving out to intercept them and decimate them. No questions were they asked and their fictional stories of heroic deeds and brave fighting were lapped up pridefully by their folks back home just like that. It was years later, in late 2005, that they condescended to move out of their redoubts, amid a lot of reluctance, and wrangling and bickering among themselves, to take on the Taliban and other insurgent groups who had lethally regrouped in their erstwhile strongholds in the Pakhtun-dominated southern and eastern Afghanistan unshakably. Yet so delusional were they all, both the pamper-wearing Tarzans and their folks, that when the British army moved out to the Helmand region, a puffed-up British defence secretary squawked blithely that his men would capture the restive province without firing a shot. Over six years down the road, the British army is nowhere nearer even distantly that objective. The leaked NATO report of the ISI’s collusion may give some leeway to the NATO armies to delude and beguile their own peoples, greatly perturbed over their disgraceful fall in Afghanistan. But the pulsating ground realities it too would not be able to change, as couldn’t earlier the similarly misleading BBC documentary. For, up against the US-led occupiers are not just Taliban. It is the Pakhtun nationalism that is pitted against them. And this formidable force has now come to be joined in by disgruntled elements of the Afghan minorities.

Anti-Semitism and Israel's Inherent Contradictions

Anti-Semitism and Israel's Inherent Contradictions

By Ramzy Baroud

February 3, 2012 In a recent article, columnist Yaniv Halili described British author Ben White as 'anti-Semitic'. He also denounced Arab Knesset member Hanin Zoabi for writing a forward to White's latest book, Palestinians in Israel: Segregation, Discrimination and Democracy. Those of us who can see through such distorted thinking know that White is a principled writer who has never displayed a shred of racism in his work. Zoabi is very well-known civil rights leader with a long-standing reputation of courage and poise. How could anti-racist endeavors themselves become the subject of accusation by Halili and others like him? It goes without saying there should be no room for any racist discourse - Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, or any other - in the Palestine solidarity movement, which aims at achieving long-denied justice and rights for the Palestinian people. A racist discourse is predicated on racial supremacy, which is exactly what Palestinians are resisting in Israel and the occupied territories. But the "Jewish and democratic state" of Israel is riddled with so many contradictions, the kind that no straightforward narrative can possibly capture. Many scholars and rights groups have discussed the way in which irreconcilable values defined the very character of Israel from the onset. According to Adalah (meaning "justice" in Arabic), the legal center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, "Israel's Declaration of Independence (1948) states two principles important for understanding the legal status of Palestinian citizens of Israel. First, the Declaration refers specifically to Israel as a 'Jewish state’ committed to the 'ingathering of the exiles.’ (Second)…it contains only one reference to the maintenance of complete equality of political and social rights for all its citizens, irrespective of race, religion, or sex." Adalah further asserts that there is a 'tension’ between the two principles. Perhaps this is the case, intellectually, but in practice the Israeli political establishment has resolved the seeming quandary whereby the Jewishness of the state prevails above every other humanitarian, democratic or legal consideration. Racially discriminating legislation is being churned out in the Israeli Knesset at an alarming speed, and new laws are constantly being proposed. These include "one that would end the status of Arabic as one of Israel's official languages and another that would punish Israeli citizens, including Arab Israelis, for refusing to pledge their allegiance to 'Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,’" according to columnist Linda Heard (Arab News, Jan 24). As for Palestinians living in the occupied territories, their legally enshrined political inferiority has been felt in much harsher and often bloodier ways than their brethren living in Israel. For nearly four and a half decades, the Palestinians living in these territories have been losing their land, livelihood, freedom of movement and even their very lives in the name of the racial superiority of their occupiers. Jewish settlements are illegally constructed on Palestinian land to host Jewish settlers, who use Jewish-only roads to travel between their heavily fortified colonies and the "Jewish state." While numerous intellectuals, activists and ordinary members of Jewish communities around the world have strongly protested Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, as well as Israel’s misuse of the Jewish religion to attain political goals, Israel relies greatly on the support of Jewish communities, organizations and individuals for vital funds, political support and lobbying. While many Jews identify with Israel as a 'Jewish state’, "younger American Jews are more likely than their parents to be acquainted with the Palestinians and their story," reported TIME magazine on September 29. The TIME story references one such youth, Benjamin Resnick, 27, who decries the fact that Jewish state and American liberal democracy represent two views that are 'irreconcilable’. On the other hand, he "continues to consider himself a Zionist," who "quotes the Torah in support of his view that American Jews should press Israel to end settlement expansion and help facilitate a Palestinian state." Even Resnick’s political dissent is riddled with inconsistencies, where national identity (as an American) clashes with ideology (Zionism) and religion (the Torah) is referenced as a means to resolve the discord. The Torah is put to good use repeatedly among mainstream and ardent Israeli rabbis, whose edicts to kill Arabs are commonplace in Israeli media (although rarely discussed in US media). The so-called King’s Torah – which is endorsed by some prominent Israeli rabbis – has made it permissible to kill Palestinians of all ages, including those who don’t pose a threat. "You can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews," it states in the fifth chapter, entitled "Murder of non-Jews in a time of war." The BBC elaborates: "At one point it suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat" (July 19). This becomes particularly problematic when the lines between politics, ideology and religion become so conveniently blurred. Israeli and Jewish leaders borrow from the corresponding text as they find suitable to achieve policies to further occupation, war and illegal settlement. Alan Dershowitz, a professor at Harvard Law School, came to represent the latter model. His style lacks diplomacy and logic; however, it is effective in some circles because it centers around the idea of smearing anyone who dares to criticize Israel. The greater tragedy is that Dershowitz is provided with platforms in mainstream and rightwing Israeli media, thus giving his smear campaign the means to turn any genuine discussion of Israel into a controversial hate speech. While critical non-Jews are often smeared as 'anti-Semites’, jurist Richard Goldstone, who lead the UN investigation into the Israeli war on Gaza., was not a mere anti-Semite for concluding that Israel and Hamas had both potentially committed war crimes and crimes against humanity. Dershowitz told Israeli Army Radio that Goldstone is a 'traitor to the Jewish people’. 'The Goldstone report is a defamation written by an evil, evil man,’ Dershowitz said (Haaretz, October 31). While the case for Palestinian rights and statehood can be clear-cut – not many true-to-self intellectuals could justify ethnic cleansing, defend Apartheid and rationalize murder – delving into the political identity of Israel and its ideological and religious supporters becomes immediately 'controversial’. The controversy is embedded in the purposeful intellectual and political elasticity by which Israel defines, or refuses to define itself. It claims to be Jewish as well as democratic. It claims to embody religious ideals but also to be secular. It claims to be liberal, while it is militarily oppressive. It claims to uphold 'equality’ for all, while it is racially exclusive. And if you dare to challenge these irreconcilable contradictions, you are termed an anti-Semite or a traitor - or both. - Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London). -------------------------------------------