It was such a pleasure to read the voice of reason when Jimmy Carter said the following.
“I hope and pray that Iran will be induced to permit international inspectors to come in and observe their entire nuclear program, because what they’re doing so far is completely illegal under the nonproliferation treaty,” the Carter said in an interview with CNN on Thursday.
“They have a right to purify uranium and plutonium to use for nuclear power. If Iran is on the borderline, the constant threats that we or the Israelis are going to attack Iran is the best thing to force them to say, ‘Let’s defend ourselves.’ I don’t think Iran has made up their mind what to do, and I think the best thing we can do is engage them and stop making these idle threats.”
(While it is true that Iran seems to be technically wrong for not disclosing the underground nuclear site, it does seem inherently unfair that the agreement they signed onto was changed “after” the signing date. The agreement was updated “after” they signed it and they specifically did not agree to the new changes which require them to disclose any new sites as soon as the plans are made. So I think the international community should cut them some slack. The main point is that they “did” disclose it themselves, and in fact ahead of schedule, in accordance with the document that they signed and originally agreed to. I should point out that while Iran has signed onto agreements with the IAEA…. Israel refuses to do the same.)
Anyway… Mr. Carter has it right when he points out that pushing them into a corner could force their hand to wanting to protect themselves. This has already started when Iran made the choice of going underground to protect it’s right to process uranium after receiving constant threats from Israel and the US that they would bomb their civilian nuclear facilities above ground.
Mr. Carter also makes the important point that Iran has every right to process it’s own uranium. This is something that gets completely missed by CNN and the BBC. It is these kinds of crucial omissions that allowed the world opinion to build against Iraq. Everyone was convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because the media did not ask the obvious questions and they are doing this again in Iran. I believe we end up in these dead end paths facing disaster because we are unable to link events. We compartmentalize. We see Iraq as one set of problems. And Afghanistan as another problem. And we also see Iran as another problem. In fact they are all linked. The war in Iraq is not over.
America is making a fatal mistake of thinking that it doesn’t have to give anything up. It want’s the whole pie or nothing. They want Iran to give up it’s rights. Jimmy Carter makes it very clear that Iran has every right to process it’s own nuclear fuel. This is something that Israel and the USA will not allow. So how can we possibly achieve peace with this attitude. America still thinks it can strong arm a country into submission.
The solution to this problem is for the world to allow Iran to have what it needs which is sovereignty over it’s fuel supply and to allow inspections to make sure it is not developing nuclear weapons on the side. This idea which I have been saying for years is supported by Jimmy Carter. No one will listen to me. I hope they will listen to Mr. Carter:)
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