Broader UN Sanctions against Iran Agreed

The members of the UN Security Council and Germany announced yesterday that they have come up with more ways to pressure Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. The full text will reach the formal meeting of the UN in the coming weeks. Iran, not surprisingly has already rejected it.

As the American National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] made clear, Iran has not had a military nuclear program since 2003. Quite why it is necessary to continue nagging Iran into doing what it is already doing (that is nothing at all) is hard to determine. Under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran is perfectly entitled to use nuclear power to generate electricity. While the expense of nuclear plants makes absolutely no sense for a country sitting on an ocean of oil, the Iranians are entitled to screw up their finances and their environment if they wish.

The Busheviks lost any chance they had to attack Iran when the intelligence community put out the NIE. It made the White House look far too aggressive, and it reminded everyone that the Bush administration went to war in Iraq-Nam on the strength of a lie. The Center for Public Integrity produced a report on Tuesday in collaboration with the Fund for Independence in Journalism that showed the administration made no fewer than 935 false statements in the run up to the attack. They probably can’t use military force now against Iran at all.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t want to rattle sabers some more. Washington wanted more sanctions, but the reports say that the other 5 nations involved in pressuring Iran settled for no new sanctions, just a tightening of what existed. Sergei Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister said, “The measures in this draft do not have a tough sanctioning character.”

Fortunately for the White House, the President of Iran is as big a know-nothing as Mr. Bush. Rather than shrug off the sanctions as meaningless in light of the NIE, President Ahmadinejad complained “We continue our path in seeking our nation’s rights within the framework of international laws. Nobody except the International Atomic Energy Agency has the right to make decisions or impose anything on the Iranian nation.” If he would stop pouring gasoline on the fire with Mr. Bush, he might have a few gallons to spare for his people, or at least, he could get some financing to build a few oil refineries.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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