The one-year review: It's time to get a handle on Iran

If the US and Israel want Iranian nuclear transparency, then Israel better be just as transparent. Demonizing and warmongering Iran to protect Israel is wrong. The Iranian 'issue' is 100% Israeli.

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the Iranians have the right to a peaceful nuclear program in their country:

1) They are signatories to the NPT, a treaty respected by the United Nations, itself an organization the US must respect. The NPT gives the Iranians an internationally regarded right to a program.

2) It is completely unacceptable that the US or Israel attempt to dictate to Iran (or any nation) the basic parameters of Iran's energy program.

Iran has a basic right to decide its own domestic programs and to utilize natural resources found within its own boundaries. Or what's next, then? The Israelis are bothered that Iran processes iron ore into steel, from which it can fashion conventional weapons, so Iran cannot process iron upon threat of "crippling sanctions"?

Iran cannot utilize its own water resources, as the Israelis believe that Iranians with water might be a threat to them?

The US administration must clearly and openly respect Iran's right to a nuclear program as outlined by the NPT.

The concession that the Iranians made to process uranium outside of their boundaries is just that--a concession--and must be respected as the Iranians going out of their way to appease Israel and her US foil.

For the US administration to simply declare that the Iranians have no right to decide their own energy program and utilize their own natural resources would be for the US to declare that even the most serious international treaties, laws and conventions are irrelevant when we deem them politically inconvenient.

It is telling that President Ford, in 1976, encouraged Iran (then under the US-backed shah) to build both uranium enrichment as well as plutonium processing plants. How is it that what was permissible then under the 1970 NPT, has now become forbidden – under the very same treaty?

What the United States must do is respect Iranian rights, move forward with the external processing provision in place, and demand that Israel declare its nuclear arsenal, sign the NPT and disarm.

Israel's nuclear arsenal is one of the problems at the heart of the conflict, and the US will never be respected as an honest broker for peace if Israel is allowed to maintain a secret nuclear arsenal, while her neighbors are threatened with war if they so much as try to build a reactor.

Israel will not even deny or admit to its truly "clandestine" nuclear program. If you want to talk about nuclear ambiguity, look to Israel.

betz55; I like to congratulate you on a job well done. Your piece is right on the nose and you have articulated the core of this issue very professionally.
I would like to use your article and quote from it in other blogs.

Regards.