- Iran has an "inalienable right" to use nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes such as the production of electric energy,
and the enrichment of uranium for its nuclear reactors. Could it be that
Iran's plan for an oil exchange trading in Euros is the real issue? Or
is it Israel? Article IV of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), which entered into force on March 5, 1970, states:
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- 1. Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting
the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research,
production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination
and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.
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- 2. All the Parties to the Treaty undertake to facilitate,
and have the right to participate in, the fullest possible exchange of
equipment, materials and scientific and technological information for the
peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Parties to the Treaty in a position to
do so shall also cooperate in contributing alone or together with other
States or international organizations to the further development of the
applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, especially in the
territories of non-nuclear-weapon States Party to the Treaty, with due
consideration for the needs of the developing areas of the world. Thus,
not only does Iran have an "inalienable right" to use nuclear
energy for electricity, the NPT obligates the nuclear powers to "further
development of the applications of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes."
Iran has gone beyond its obligations under the NPT to assure others of
it's peaceful intentions.
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- According to Dr. Gordon Prather, a nuclear physicist
who was the top scientist for the army in the Reagan years, in December,
2003, Iran had signed an Additional Protocol to its Safeguards Agreement
and had volunteered to cooperate with the IAEA - pending ratification by
the Iranian Parliament - as if the Additional Protocol were actually "in
force." Iran also offered, says Dr. Prather, "to voluntarily
forego a complete fuel cycle . . . if the Europeans would get the United
States to reverse the campaign of denial, obstruction, intervention, and
misinformation." Iran had already offered on March 23, 2005 a package
of "objective guarantees" (developed by an international panel
of experts) that met most of the demands later made by the conservative,
Washington based Heritage foundation says Dr. Prather. The International
Atomic Energy Agency has found no "smoking gun" in Iran that
would indicate a nuclear weapons program, says Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the
director-general of the IAEA. Thirty years ago, Iran developing a nuclear
capacity "caused no problems for the Americans because, at that time,
the Shah was seen as a strong ally, and had indeed been put on the throne
with American help", says Tony Benn, Britain's secretary of state
for energy from 1975-79.
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- With world oil production approaching a peak it makes
sense for Iran to look toward alternative means for generating electricity,
and to reserve its oil supply for other purposes including increasing revenues
from the export of the additional oil not used for electricity production.
A major reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "to install a pro-U.S.
government in Iraq, establish multiple U.S. military bases before the onset
of global Peak Oil, and to reconvert Iraq back to petrodollars while hoping
to thwart further OPEC momentum towards the euro as an alternative oil
transaction currency." Iran is about to commit a far greater "offense"
than Saddam Hussein's conversion to the euro for Iraq's oil exports in
the fall of 2000. Beginning in March 2006, the Tehran government has plans
to begin competing with New York's NYMEX and London's IPE with respect
to international oil trades - using a euro-based international oil-trading
mechanism," writes William R. Clark the author Petrodollar Warfare:
Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar.
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- According to Toni Straka, a Vienna, Austria-based financial
analyst who runs a blog, The Prudent Investor, Iran's "proposal to
set up a petroleum bourse was first voiced in Iran's development plan for
2000-2005. . . . Cheaper nuclear energy and increases in oil exports from
the current level of roughly 2.5 million barrels a day will result in a
profitable equation for Iran. "Only one major actor stands to lose
from a change in the current status quo: the US" says Toni Straka,
"which with less than 5% of the global population, consumes roughly
one third of global oil production." "There could hardly be
a clearer example of double standards than this, and it fits in with the
arming of Saddam to attack Iran after the Shah had been toppled, and the
complete silence over Israel's huge nuclear armoury," says Tony Benn.
Yes, given the technology and knowledge Iran could develop a nuclear weapon.
But "under the current regime, there is nothing illicit for a non-nuclear
state to conduct uranium-enriching activities . . . or even to possess
military-grade nuclear material," says ElBaradei. Thirty-five to forty
countries possess this capability. Israel - not a signatory to the NPT
- has had this capability for years, is believed to have several hundred
nuclear bombs, the missiles to deliver them to Iran, and it is no secret
that it has been threatening strikes on Iran's Bushehr nuclear electric
power plant - just as it launched an unprovoked and illegal attack on Iraq's,
Osirak nuclear electric power plant in 1981.
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- U.S. news media's timidity was a significant factor in
the launching of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This invasion has claimed the
lives of over 2000 U.S. soldiers and over 180,000 Iraqis. It has left uncounted
others wounded and maimed, it has destroyed much of Iraq's - indeed the
world's - cultural heritage, and is likely to cost U.S. taxpayers "between
$1 trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought,"
according to a report written by Joseph Stiglitz - recipient of the 2001
Nobel Prize in economics. John Ward Anderson of the Washington Post wrote
on January 13: "The foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France
called Thursday for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for
violating its nuclear treaty obligations." Neither he nor the editors
or ombudsman at the Post have responded to our request to identify which
"nuclear treaty obligations" is Iran violating. Writing in the
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jack Boureston and Charles D. Ferguson
say, "In pursuing a civilian nuclear program, Iran has international
law on its side. . . . The best way to know the full extent of Iran's nuclear
doings is to offer it help."
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