Doug Lorimer
On March 11 the US government announced it would back the diplomatic efforts of Britain, France and Germany — the "EU-3" — in offering Iran economic incentives to abandon its plans to carry out uranium enrichment for its nuclear power program.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Washington would drop its objection to Iran's admission to the World Trade Organisation and consider selling Iran commercial aircraft parts if it "lives up to its international commitments".
"I am pleased that we are speaking with one voice with our European friends", US President George Bush told a crowd in Shreveport, Louisiana. "I look forward to working with our European friends to make it abundantly clear to the Iranian regime that the free world will not tolerate them having a nuclear weapon."
Since January 2002, when Bush declared that Iraq, Iran and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil", Washington has repeatedly alleged that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program.
With Russia's assistance, Iran is building a nuclear power plant and is also developing the capability to enrich the plant's uranium fuel, an activity that is perfectly legal under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran has signed.
Washington, however, cites Iran's desire to enrich uranium as the most visible sign that it is seeking to build a nuclear bomb — even though inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's NPT watchdog, have reported there is no evidence of such a secret nuclear bomb program.
Like pre-invasion Iraq, Iran has a nationalised oil and gas industry that US corporations are unable to control and exploit. And like pre-invasion Iraq, Iran is now being unjustly accused of developing weapons of mass destruction.
In January, highly respected US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine, "Strategists at the headquarters of the US Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military's war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran" using US bases in Iraq and Central Asia as staging posts.
Hersh reported that in interviews with past and present US intelligence and military officials, "I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran".
Washington has sought to get the EU-3 to join it in getting the UN Security Council to cite Iran for alleged violations of its treaty obligations. This would be a major propaganda coup in Washington's drive to demonise Iran, as it did Iraq.
On the eve of last November's IAEA board of governors meeting, however, Iran and the EU-3 came to an agreement that Tehran would temporarily suspend its uranium enrichment program if the EU-3 agreed not to back Washington's push to refer Iran to the Security Council. However, under pressure from Washington, the EU-3 have demanded that Iran permanently give up its legal right to enrich uranium.
It appears, however, that Washington may get it wants in return for backing the EU-3 push. Immediately before Washington's announcement, a joint statement by the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany threatened that if Iran did not commit to permanently abandon attempts to enrich uranium, the EU-3 would "support referring Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council".
From Green Left Weekly, March 23, 2005.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.