Will America's allies hold Iran to account?

WSJ ^ | Saturday, August 6, 2005

[F14 Pilot]

The Bush administration has justified its softly-softly approach to the Iranian nuclear program on grounds it has firm commitments from the Europeans to get tough should diplomacy fail. Those promises are about to be put to the test now that Iran has informed the International Atomic Energy Agency of its intention to resume uranium enrichment.

The suspension agreement was inked last November after what turns out to have been nearly 20 years of Iranian deception vis-à-vis the IAEA. And it can be argued that diplomacy has at least bought time, assuming--and it's a big assumption given how many times Iran has already been caught lying to inspectors--that there has been no clandestine program going on in the interim. But the desire of the EU-3 (Britain, France and Germany) to find a negotiated solution seems only to have encouraged Iranian intransigence on the central issue, which is its repeatedly claimed "right" under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for what it says is a civilian power program.

The existence of any such right is debatable, given that the NPT forbids using a civilian nuclear program as cover for a military one. But to the extent Iran is able to plausibly make this claim, it only highlights the problematic moral equivalence at the heart of the U.N. system, of which the IAEA and NPT are a part. Put simply, Iran is not a democratic country. And it is patently wrong to treat the ruling mullahs as if they were likely to observe international law.

This should be all the more clear after June's sham presidential elections, which were rigged to the extent that Hashemi Rafsanjani--who has said that Iran should have the bomb so it can destroy Israel--came off as the more moderate of the final two candidates.

[wildcatf4f3]

There must be a revolution in Iran NOW!

[EQAndyBuzz]

"Will America's allies hold Iran to account?"

NO.