IAEA on Iran


It was without doubt a coincidence, but an extremely significant one. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in Vienna on Wednesday that Iran was not only continuing to defy calls by the United Nations to stop uranium enrichment but was accelerating the activity. The confidential report by Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the UN nuclear watchdog, was issued the same day as an American flotilla steamed through the narrowest point of the world's most sensitive waterway. Washington says the move was actually intended to reassure jittery allies in the Gulf region of constant US commitment to their security. But the two aircraft-carriers and seven other warships and the 17,000 navy personnel on board the vessels can only be seen in Tehran as a confrontational show of force off the Iranian coast.

"Iran has not suspended its enrichment-related activities," the report complained. Iran wouldn't be far wrong if, on the other hand, it perceived this largest daytime gathering of warships in the Gulf since the Iraq war as a provocation. According to the United States the measure had been planned well in advance, but that is little justification for the fact that it followed US-Iranian moves, exactly ten days previously, for a dialogue over Iraq. Washington had emphasised at the time that the dialogue was strictly confined to the situation in that war-torn country. But with Iraq situated at the head of the Gulf, the entry of the US warships is certain to have a strong negative impact on that situation. Since Iran is equally certain of being seen as the target of the American move, and not only by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it is not impossible for Tehran to have second thoughts about the usefulness of the dialogue. The simultaneous occurrence of the two events -- the US new challenge to Iran and the IAEA's "laundry list of Iran's continued defiance of the international community," as the White House national security spokesman described Dr AlBaradei's report -- has in a single day has further heightened the tension in the Gulf.

Britain reacted to the report by reaffirming its position on the Iranian nuclear programme. A Foreign Office spokesman said in London that "full suspension of Iran's enrichment activities is the only acceptable confidence-building measure to allow formal talks to begin." But for the first time since the assumption of the French presidency by Mr Nicolas Sarcozy this month, France plainly said it would support Washington on the question. This abandonment by France of its independent stance on Iran, despite its opposition to the Iranian nuclear programme, is yet another cause for regional and global consternation.

__________________
Time is like a river.
You cannot touch the same water twice,
because the flow that has passed will never pass again.
Enjoy every moment of life.

I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.