I'm glad to see the U.N. putting further sanctions against Iran on hold for now, insisting that the IAEA report in November be heard first.
Six key nations and the European Union agreed Friday to delay until November a new U.N. resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran, waiting to see if Tehran answers questions about its disputed nuclear program.
A joint statement from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany with E.U. support said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the chief U.N. nuclear official and the European Union's foreign policy chief "show a positive outcome of their efforts."
The United States, Britain and France had been pushing for new sanctions now to pressure Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but Russia and China wanted to give Tehran more time to comply with U.N. inspectors.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied, however, that the agreement was tantamount to a cave-in by the United States, which has been pushing for new sanctions for months.
I continue to hope that we can tone down the rhetoric on Iran, and actually engage in dialogue, as we really don't need any more enemies in the area.
Of course, there are questions about Iran's nuclear program as to whether they are seeking weapons or energy. The right-wing seem certain that it is a weapons program, but I have yet to see any actual evidence (Sweaterman, please feel free to post the technical info if you get a chance; I bow to your expertise). Nuclear power for electricity makes sense for Iran, as they are growing more modern and generating electricity by burning oil is very inefficient and pollution intense (note the poster: we were happy to give the Shah nuclear power).
In the end, I trust El-Baradei and the IAEA a hell of a lot more than the neo-con war-whores.
Oh, and I liked this:
6 comments:
But the neo-cons have such a brilliant track record, shouldn't we just let them take over the world already?
Oh, wait.
Nuclear power makes economic sense? What about the waste problem?
Nuclear power doesn't make much sense to me, but I'm not convinced Iran is after weapons. And so what if they are? Jesus, I'm more worried about W using nukes than about Iran using them.
Also, I don't think this UN stuff means that an attack on Iran has been delayed. I think that if the UN has any role here, it's to possibly fool Iran into complacency (as in, "at least we know they won't attack us until November"). Iran has real air defenses and missle capabilities far beyond Iraq's weak scuds. Israel and the US will want the element of surprise, so I expect no warning, no ultimatums, and no concern about UN process. The UN will NEVER ok an attack on Iran anyway, so the eventual attack (which I regard as simply a matter of timing) has nothing to do with UN deliberations.
If anything stands in the way right now, it's probably Admiral Fallon.
py:
I continue to hope that we can tone down the rhetoric on Iran, and actually engage in dialogue, as we really don't need any more enemies in the area.
all the other diversions from the "success" in Iraq arent working too well......Chimpy and his crack PR team will keep this one going as long as necessary.
Whig, you're quite right that the problem of waste skews the cost of nuclear power, but if you choose to ignore it, then nuclear power is cheap. We've done a pretty good job of ignoring it here.
And DCap, if the rhetoric remains only a diversion, OK. But these idiots seem to be trying to escalate it into a war, which would be a total disaster.
It's not only that we ignore the waste, some of that waste is very valuable to us as weaponized material.
Our objections to Iran having nuclear power is that they would as a byproduct have weapons capacity.
Of course they will, and of course North Korea already does, and Pakistan, and there is no keeping that genie in the bottle.
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