With the opening of the five-yearly U.N. conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the world is once again poised to argue about Iran’s nuclear program. These two articles – one from Kuwait and another from Algeria – highlight the split within the Muslim world about what to do – and whether perceived U.S. nuclear double standards in regard to Israel and other states like India and Pakistan should bring a halt to pressure on Iran.
Fearful that Tehran has designs on Gulf Arab oil and Saudi Arabia’s control of Islam’s holiest places, this article by columnist Mohammad Egbal of Kuwait’s Al Seyassah argues that Iran’s nuclear summit was a knee-jerk reaction to the Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington, which, according to Egbal, has put Iran on the ropes.
In an article headlined Iranian Nuclear Summit a ‘Farcical Reaction’ to America’s, Al Seyassah columnist Mohammad Egbal writes on part:
Many observers of the situation in Iran were surprised that Iranian authorities decided to host their own “international” summit in Tehran under the slogan “Nuclear Power for All, Nuclear Weapons for None.”
The reason for the odd surprise is that such a summit wasn’t on the agenda of Iranian authorities, despite the regime’s false claim to have been preparing such a conference for the past two years. Tehran’s nuclear summit, coming immediately after the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington that saw the participation of 47 states, shows that the summit in Iran was just a reaction to Washington’s. The summit in the U.S. was considered by many a turning point in the international effort to isolate Iran’s ruling theocracy.
The Washington summit was a major turning point in the Iranian nuclear issue. The regime that rules Iran has hypocritically bitten the hand extended toward it, which offered a package of incentives for helping it create a peaceful nuclear program. The reason Iran continues this comedic drama is because of its ambition to obtain nuclear weapons. This in turn prevents it from coming to an acceptable agreement with the global community, which is now convinced that it is a state sponsor of terrorism. All agree that Iran must, by all possible means, be prevented from obtaining nuclear weapons, give the immediate threat it poses to the world and the independence of neighboring countries. This is particularly true since the mullahs in Tehran have an agenda and ambitions regarding its neighbors that are now all too clear.
Then from Algeria, this article by K. Selim of Le Quotidien d’Oran calls Western media and governments hypocrites for insisting on scrupulous nuclear compliance on the part of Iran, but letting Israel continue to maintain an ambitious nuclear weapons program with hardly a question asked.
Arguing that the Muslim street cannot accept lecturing from the West about Iran until Israel and other nuclear states not covered by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty are also forced to comply, K. Selim writs in part:
Western propaganda against Iran is strong and powerful, so don’t expect the media to properly cover the international conference organized by Iran. For many Western citizens, bombarded by an insidious onslaught of Newspeak, the only way to hear another side of the story would be to search the Internet for blogs that make fools of the guardians of “proper” thinking.
Why is it manipulative to ask the great powers – as is required under the NPT – to engage in disarmament? Why is it presumptuous to ask that Israel be bound by these international obligations? If you put such simple questions to the great communicators of the “axis of good,” the best you can hope for is to be considered dangerously naive. But, more prosaically, you would be seen as someone who hasn’t understood the order and reality of the world – an order that wants to see Iranian scientists forbidden from enriching uranium and mastering civilian nuclear energy, and Israel authorized to have a nuclear arsenal.
The communicators of civilization don’t like it much when things are expressed simply and clearly. When Israel’s nuclear arsenal is brought up, their response is invariably the same: “that has nothing to do with it!” For a Palestinian, an Iranian, an Egyptian or an Algerian, it has everything to do with it. Some of these brave communicators – whose job it is to make us believe, among other things, that cruise missiles bring democracy! – believe that Israel is a “democracy” and that its possession of nuclear weapons is “no problem.” This theory has often been heard.
Last but not least, for those intrepid enough to watch, this is a video link to the U.N. Web cast of the 35 minute speech delivered today by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on the opening day of the U.N. conference to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – and the 20 minute riposte by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
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