Reformers Blast Iranian Leaders’ Nuclear Rhetoric

Confrontational nuclear rhetoric by Iran’s leaders is damaging the country’s diplomatic ties and impairing its ability to pursue its nuclear program, top Iranian reformist and former parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karoubi said yesterday (see GSN, March 7).

“The source of our problems is not whether we accept the suspension (of uranium enrichment) or not,” Karoubi said during a press conference.

He was referring to the nuclear activity that Western powers suspect is aimed at producing a nuclear weapon ingredient, although Iran has insisted it would only be used to create nuclear power plant fuel, Reuters reported.

“Fiery speeches and stances have created many problems for Iran,” Karoubi added, seemingly taking aim at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  “We can insist on our rights without provocative speeches.”

“Our ties (with Washington) have been cut but it cannot last forever,” he added.  “If they respect our rights, we can start relations based on mutual respect.”

Ahmadinejad has set back diplomatic progress made by past administrations, said Mohammad Reza-Khatami, the brother of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami.

“Under the previous (Khatami) government, most Western countries had split away from the United States, but this government … has pushed all Western countries towards the United States,” Iran’s Fars News Agency quoted him as saying (Parisa Hafezi, Reuters, March 9).

Meanwhile, a senior Iranian official said yesterday that Tehran might resume nuclear negotiations with Western powers after they put an end to threats of new penalties against Iran, Agence France-Presse reported. 

“The time of using the policy of the carrot and the stick has ended,” Javad Vaidi, deputy head of Iran’s supreme national security council, told AFP at a security conference in Tehran.  “If they (the West) want to have serious negotiations, in fair conditions and taking into account the interests of the two parties, they must first stop threatening.”

Iranian officials indicated last week, following enactment of a third U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution, that they would restrict nuclear talks to the International Atomic Energy Agency.  Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki declined to say whether Iran might resume nuclear talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana (Agence France-Presse I/Yahoo!News, March 9).

In Kuwait, former government adviser Sami al-Faraj said an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would serve the interests of a Middle Eastern nuclear energy consortium and the wider region, the Associated Press reported.

“Honestly speaking, they would be achieving something of great strategic value for the [Gulf Cooperation Council] by stopping Iran’s tendency for hegemony over the area,” he said, adding that “nipping it in the bud by Israeli hands would be less embarrassing for us” than if the United States took military action against Iran.

Al-Faraj, head of the independent Kuwait Center for Strategy Studies, accused Iran of exacerbating tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and of meddling in the affairs of Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian region.

“The question is what would it do if it were a nuclear nation?  We have to call a spade a spade and say that burying the military nuclear Iranian project is in the interest of GCC states” and neighboring Gulf nations, he said (Associated Press I/International Herald Tribune, March 9).

Israeli President Shimon Peres yesterday said that an operational Iranian nuclear reactor would “make the world ungovernable,” but added that it was not Israel’s responsibility to handle the problem on its own, AP reported.

“Iran is a danger not just for Israel but for the rest of the world, the combination of being a center of terror and developing a nuclear option is the most dangerous you can think of,” Peres said. 

“Israel will not be forced (to act),” he added.  “Israel will do whatever she should do, but Israel doesn’t claim that she is the leader of the world” (Associated Press II/PR-inside, March 9).

Iranian parliamentary elections planned for March 14 are widely seen as a test of Washington’s strategy of gradually increasing economic penalties against Tehran in hopes of pressuring it to suspend its controversial nuclear activities, AFP reported Saturday.

According to Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst for the Carnegie Endowment, the aim of the new U.N. Security Council sanctions “was to send a signal to Iranian voters” to choose “more pragmatic and moderate officials” who would make ending the sanctions a priority.  “By and large, he (Ahmadinejad) hasn’t delivered on his economic promises,” Sadjadpour said.

Without addressing the upcoming elections directly, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said:  “I would hold to you that there are political consequences in that system for that failure, that fundamental failure of President Ahmadinejad and his (group) to live up to that basic commitment that they made to their people when they were elected.”

Diplomatic pressure rather than military action is the likely path with Iran for the time being, analysts said.

“No one has said that there are any magic bullets here, there's no silver bullet,” Casey said (Agence France-Presse II/Google News, March 9).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.