December 24, 2006
BBC News

Ahmadinejad Rejects UN Sanctions

Iran's president has rejected UN Security Council sanctions against Tehran, insisting his country would press ahead with its nuclear programme. . . .

Iran has said it will begin installing 3,000 centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz on Sunday.

The sanctions ban nuclear trade with Iran, but the US wants tougher curbs.

Mr Ahmadinejad said the West had lost its chance to improve relations with Iran. . . .

The Security Council resolution demands that Tehran end all uranium enrichment work, which can produce fuel for nuclear plants as well as for bombs.

Traces of weapons-grade uranium were found at Natanz, in central Iran, during UN inspections in 2003, although this was later blamed on contaminated imported equipment. . . .

The resolution, under Chapter Seven of [sic] Article 41 of the UN Charter, makes enforcement obligatory but limits action to non-military measures. . . .

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"TREATY ON THE NON-PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS," Federation of American Scientists, July 1, 1968

[. . . a resolution endorsed the establishment of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.--"Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," Federation of American Scientists, May, 1995]

[ . . . the United States, United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union each declared in 1978 a policy against the use of nuclear weapons toward NPT non-nuclear-weapon states.--"A DECLARATION BY THE PRESIDENT ON SECURITY ASSURANCES FOR NON-NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES PARTIES TO THE TREATY ON THE NON-PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS," Federation of American Scientists, May 21, 1996]

Enver Masud, "Iran Has an 'Inalienable Right' to Nuclear Energy," The Wisdom Fund, January 16, 2006

Tony Benn, "U.S., Britain's 'Total Hypocrisy' on Nuclear Energy," Democracy Now!, March 10, 2006

James Bamford, "Iran: The Next War," Rolling Stone, July 27, 2006

[Iran will only cooperate with the United States, whether in Iraq or on the nuclear issue, as part of a broader rapprochement addressing its core security concerns. This requires extension of a United States security guarantee - effectively, an American commitment not to use force to change the borders or form of government of the Islamic Republic - bolstered by the prospect of lifting United States unilateral sanctions and normalizing bilateral relations. . . .

If President Bush does not move decisively toward strategic engagement with Tehran during his remaining two years in office, his successor will not have the same opportunities that he will have so blithely squandered.--Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann, "What We Wanted to Tell You about Iran," New York Times, December 22, 2006

Luke Harding and Duncan Campbell, "Israel PM Admits That Israel Has Nuclear Weapons," Guardian, December 13, 2006

[Members of Congress, particularly Democrats, are worried that decades of nonproliferation efforts are being undercut by the Republican administration and that a bad example is being set for countries like Iran--Brian Knowlton, "Democrats assail Bush over handling of India nuclear pact," International Herald Tribune, December 22, 2006]

[US diplomacy in Central Asia is seriously hobbled by Washington's alienation from Iran.--M K Bhadrakumar, "The Great Game on a razor's edge," Asia Times, December 23, 2006]

[Stern's analysis, which appears in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports U.S. and European suspicions that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of international understandings. But, Stern says, there could be merit to Iran's assertion that it needs nuclear power for civilian purposes.--"Iran Oil Revenue Quickly Drying Up, Analysis Says," Associated Press, December 26, 2006]

[ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.

Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters", according to several Israeli military sources.

The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.--Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter, "Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran," Sunday Times, January 7, 2007]

"Israelis denounce reports of plan to strike Iran," Telegraph, January 8, 2007

[A former senior intelligence official told Hersh that the White House refused to remove the nuclear option from the plans despite objections from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "Whenever anybody tries to get it out, they're shouted down," the ex-official said.

By late April 2006, however, the Joint Chiefs finally got the White House to agree that using nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz, less than 200 miles south of Tehran, was politically unacceptable, Hersh reported.

"Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning," one former senior intelligence official said.

But one way to get around the opposition of the Joint Chiefs would be to delegate the bombing operation to the Israelis. Given Israel's powerful lobbying operation in Washington and its strong ties to leading Democrats, an Israeli-led attack might be more politically palatable with the Congress.--Robert Parry, "Bush's Rush to Armageddon," consortiumnews.com, January 8, 2007]

Sam Gardiner, "Escalation Against Iran: The Pieces Are Being Put in Place," counterpunch.org, January 16, 2007

[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appears to be under pressure from the highest authorities in Iran to end his involvement in the country's nuclear program--Nazila Fathi and Michael Slackman, "Iran's President Criticized Over Nuclear Issue," New York Times, January 18, 2007]

"AIPAC is pushing us to war with Iran for Israel," Representative Press Blog, January 18, 2007

[VIDEO: In April 2003 Iran offered to withdraw military backing for Hezbollah and Hamas - but was rejected.--"The problem of the Mujahadeen," BBC Newsnight, January 19, 2007]

[Congress can pass a law that will have a real, immediate and historic effect: outlaw the US use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states. Article I, Sect. 8, Clause 14 of the US constitution empowers Congress to regulate the Armed Forces. Congress cannot micromanage the conduct of war, that is up to the President, the Commander in Chief. But Congress can outlaw broad war practices, such as torture, or the use of nuclear weapons in any or all circumstances, by regulating what US Armed Forces can and cannot do.--Jorge Hirsch, "How Congress Can Stop the Iran Attack or be Complicit in Nuclear War Crimes," Global Research, January 20, 2007]

James Hill, "Iran Bars Inspectors; Cleric Criticizes President," New York Times, January 23, 2007

[ . . . it's true that major Jewish organizations are trying to push the country into war.--Matthew Yglesias, "Smears for Fears," American Prospect, January 23, 2007]

[The Constitution made it clear in Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 that only both Houses of the United States Congress acting together had the power "To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make rules concerning Captures on Land and Water." This is popularly known as the War Powers Clause of the U.S. Constitution.--Francis A. Boyle, "IMPEACH to Prevent the "Guns of August" in Eurasia," email, January 25, 2007]

[The only known assembled cascades for now are above ground at Natanz, consisting of two linked chains of 164 machines each and two smaller setups.--George Jahn, "U.N. Says Iran Plans Nuclear Development," Associated Press, January 26, 2007]

[Talking to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Mohamed El Baradei appealed for all sides to take a 'time out' under which Iranian enrichment and UN sanctions would be suspended simultaneously, adding that the point at which Iran is able to produce a nuclear weapon is at least half a decade away.--Peter Beaumont, " Nuclear plans in chaos as Iran leader flounders," Observer, January 28, 2007]

Gareth Porter, "Israeli Internal Assessments of Iran Belie Threat Rhetoric," antiwar.com, January 31, 2007

[President Jacques Chirac said this week that if Iran had one or two nuclear weapons, it would not pose a big danger, and that if Iran were to launch a nuclear weapon against a country like Israel, it would lead to the immediate destruction of Tehran.--Elaine Sciolino and Katrin Bennhold, "Chirac Strays From Assailing a Nuclear Iran," New York Times, February 1, 2007]

[To enrich uranium on an industrial scale, the machines must spin at very high speeds for months on end. But the latest report of the atomic agency, issued in November, said the primitive machines of the IranŐs pilot plant ran only intermittently, to enrich small amounts of uranium.--William J. Broad and David E. SWanger, "Iranian Boast Is Put to Test," New York Times, February 4, 2007]

John Pilger, "Iran: The war begins," New Statesman, February 5, 2007

Images of Tehran, Iran you don't see every day