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Iran Has an 'Inalienable Right' to Nuclear
Energy
Is Iran's plan for an oil exchange trading in Euros the real
issue? Or is it Israel?
By Enver Masud
01/17/06 "TWF"
-- -- 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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