Engaging Today's Global Citizens

A Lack of Sincerity on Both Sides

Iran and its nuclear program are in the news more than ever, but no single news story can be relied upon to catch the entire picture. There is a decided lack of sincerity in the approaches of both Iran and the United States to the problem.

Iran claims that inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have given a clean bill of health to Tehran. But Iran fails to mention that IAEA inspectors found a blueprint for an "uranium hemisphere" in a pile of documents—and this product is only useful in an atomic warhead. Director General ElBaradei has also repeatedly stated that his agency cannot guarantee that other, more secret military facilities don't exist outside the realm of inspections of known sites.

Meanwhile, the United States has threatened Iran with preemptive nuclear strikes—an action that is expressly forbidden by the same Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that the United States claims it is upholding in its pressure on Iran. Second, the US claims it has tried to talk with Iran, but this is utterly false. It has passively let Europeans and Russians carry the load, for one simple reason: the US still refuses to recognize the Islamic Republic of Iran. And given this very hostile diplomatic stance, Iran is rightly suspicious of diplomatic forays that involve Europe and Russia, but not America, across the table. Finally, the US says Iran is violating international norms. In actuality, the NPT allows nuclear energy programs (Article IV), as long as those programs involve close inspections.

—Michael Kraig