Bush doesn't want to hear about Iran's cooperation with the IAEA.

[seafan]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II01Ak02.html">A small break for Iran

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
September 1, 2007

In a new report bound to cause shivers among the Washington hawks applauding the White House's anti-Iran escalations, the United Nations' atomic agency has confirmed "significant progress" in Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since May.
Throwing cold water on the hot furnace brewing yet another war in the volatile region, the report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei raises hope that the Iran nuclear crisis may be resolved one step at a time, unless the United States and Israel somehow manage to derail the process, just as happened with Iraq five years ago.

Lest we forget, the current White House rhetoric on Iran bears strong resemblance to that used in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq; it was based on public deception as well as complete disregard for the findings of UN weapons inspectors, who after some 400 inspections of every conceivable site in Iraq had not found any evidence of weapons of mass destruction.

.....

The latest IAEA report on Iran should, logically speaking, give a healthy pause to right-wing European leaders such as French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who have bandwagoned with Bush's blistering anti-Iran campaign. The Associated Press has quoted ElBaradei's deputy, Olli Heinonen, who brokered the latest Iran-IAEA agreement, <1> as highlighting the importance of the agreement and noting that "Tehran's past refusal to answer the IAEA's questions triggered Security Council sanctions in the first place".

In other words, it is a sheer error on the part of US officials and media pundits who insist that Iran has completely disregarded the Security Council resolutions. Rather, it is more apt to say that Iran has partially complied, with the sections of those resolutions calling for transparency on Iran's part, thus raising hopes for a sequential resolution of the nuclear standoff, in light of the IAEA's hints of potential further breakthroughs with Iran.
Yet it is unclear whether the White House really welcomes any such breakthrough, given the utility of the nuclear crisis to press forward with the hegemonist policy of "divide and conquer" whereby the US leads an anti-Iran camp of "moderates" in the Middle East, as part and parcel of a "new cold war". This explains Bush's apocalyptic imagery of a "nuclear holocaust" and the need to act "before it is too late". Bush's rhetoric resonates fully with the Israeli "point of no return" statements on Iran, even though US intelligence estimates leaked to the press do not corroborate those statements.


.....

The issue for the US and its allies in the Security Council now is how to respond to ElBaradei's report, which dampens the momentum for another round of sanctions.

.....

This may well be unwelcome news to the hawks in Washington. The open-ended question is whether or not they and their army of influence in Washington (and Paris and London) will succeed in spoiling the progress cited by the IAEA and thus letting history repeat itself.
In conclusion, the only way to move forward on the tortuous path of US-Iran relations is to focus on areas of shared interests and to avoid contradictory steps that add to the "wall of mistrust" talked about by former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. Only then might it be possible to see the full color of new horizons opened by the US-Iran dialogue on Iraq, eg, a proactive Iranian role with respect to the Middle East peace process, no matter how readily this is dismissed by the United States' and Israel's hawks as wishful thinking.

[hobbit709]

1. The feeble mind inside the pointy head is made up.

Don't confuse it with the facts.

[sam sarrha]

5. he is a PSYCHOPATH he must KILL and Maim women and children.. must cause suffering, because Poppy

hates me.. and mommy thinks I'm a stupid fagot and she got drunk the whole time i was a Fetus.. so i don't really give a shit about the consequences of my actions.. i must have what i want or i will kill people... and as the Decider i decide who lives or dies, not you, and i will prove it

[NC_Nurse]

2. He didn't want to hear about Iraq's either.

[bemildred]

3. "Yellow cake! Yellow cake!". nt

[Rex]

4. Well, he didn't want to hear about it when he invaded Iraq

so why would he want to hear it now about Iran?

[seafan]

6. The message Bush is sending to Iran is: 'If you have nuclear weapons, I'll leave you alone.'

(Like North Korea....)


"But if you DON'T have nuclear weapons, I'm gonna bomb your country.'


We are through the Looking Glass.