Hedging For Time
"We are here to continue our dialogue with Iran in a positive spirit. It is important now that we can engage on the substance of these issues and that Iran let us have access to people, documents, information and sites." Hermann Nackaerts, International Atomic Energy Agency chief inspector
That old adage, if at first you don't succeed, try, try and try again has never been as true as when the IAEA, the United Nations and the Security Council has attempted time and again to entice, implore, demand, plead, command and demand the Islamic Republic of Iran co-operate in a search for answers to the considered apprehension that Iran is actively pursuing nuclear weapons technology.
Iran keeps teasing the international community with agreements that it will respond to all queries, it will permit inspectors to look at all compromising details and thereby prove that there is no hidden agenda, no wish whatever to command a nuclear arsenal, that all of its facilities related to nuclear production are meant for strictly peaceful purposes, to supply energy and medical isotopes.
The IAEA report produced in November states unequivocally that Iran has engaged in covert activities whose interpretation could only be conceived of as the development of a nuclear explosion device. In January and February, two visits by IAEA investigators hopeful that Iran would finally make good its promise to come clean, were declared failures.
On both occasions Tehran backtracked, denying Mr. Nackaerts access to sites of interest, in particular the Parchin military site where foreign intelligence has revealed that Iran had conducted explosives tests within a metal container. Despite that information and its reliable sourcing, Tehran airily dismissed the claims made in the report, stating them to be based on forgeries.
Yuikiya Amano, IAEA chief, has reiterated that access to the Parchin facility was considered to be a high-value priority issue. "Activities" spotted by satellite "makes us believe that going there sooner is better than later", he declared. The obvious reason being that the activities were interpreted as strenuous efforts to clear away any conceivable materials that would implicate the regime in matters they deny.
Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, spurns all allegations of "sanitization" of the site. That such suspicions were nothing more than "a childish [and] ridiculous story made out of nothing". Rest assured, then, because Iran tells us so, that there is nothing whatever amiss, and the IAEA is hot on the trail of nothing but hot air.
No nuclear activities whatever have taken place at Parchin, according to Tehran. Furthermore, the country is under no obligation to permit the IAEA entry. Access may be permitted to the site, but only as a minor, insignificant part of a much broader agreement on "modalities" to outline parameters for future co-operation.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is more than a little tight-lipped with indignation over the unjust charges levelled against himself and his regime. Admonishing the West of its obligation to "correct its manners". Never would the Islamic republic retreat from its "fundamental right" to ownership of a peaceful program for nuclear advancement.
The P5+1: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany agreed in the Istanbul talks to further, more intensive discussions to take place in Baghdad on May 23. In the meantime, Iran groans under the tighter sanctions that have frozen its tanker fleet to inactivity, with half its ships being used as floating storage for crude oil, because buyers are now scarce.
A French delegation was advised by Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi that he was "ready to take forward steps". This represents Iran's famous dance step of forward motion; two steps ahead, three back, to the tune of honourable relations with the international community of which Israel remains a pariah state awaiting annihilation which Iran has taken it upon itself to perform from the goodness of its conscience.
Labels: Iran, Political Realities, Science, Security, Technology, Traditions, United Nations
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, May 16, 2012
<< Home