Iran will not give up "a single iota of its nuclear rights,"

Iran will not give up "a single iota of its nuclear rights,"

an will not give up "a single iota of its nuclear rights," the country's president said Saturday, rebuffing an informal deadline to stop expanding uranium enrichment or face more sanctions.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the remarks during discussions with Syrian President Bashar Assad,...

Ahmadinejad's stance signaled both a failure of Assad's mission and a rejection of the deadline.

(visit the link for the full news article)

news.yahoo.com

[edit on 8/3/2008 by pstrron]

Bush is probably beside himself with joy at Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remark. We all know he is chomping at the bit for the chance to attack Iran and it seems that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is giving him every opportunity to do so.

Now with the elections coming up, Iran might be his parting shot and then dump a three front war in the lap of the incoming POTUS. There is a possibility that he might use it to stay in office via a national emergency. Lets hear your views.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The concept of 'nuclear rights' is interesting. Iran is a sovereign nation, and that implies that it, by default, retains any and all definable rights, including 'nuclear rights'. Iran, however, has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), relinquishing some of its rights, especially with regard to undeclared nuclear activities. From Wikipedia:

In its February 2008 report, the IAEA reported that most of the remaining safeguards issues in Iran had been resolved, except for "alleged studies" related to weaponization. The IAEA also reported that all declared nuclear material remained accounted for, but it was unable to make progress in determining whether Iran was engaged in undeclared nuclear activities.

The role of the US, especially in unilateral or slightly multilateral diplomacy, is also a hot-button topic. Here's an interesting (and fairly well-balanced) editorial, note that it's from 2005:

The West has legitimate cause to be concerned. Whatever the purely political arguments about a country's right to determine its own energy mix, any nation with such a wealth of oil and gas reserves will have a difficult task persuading the international community that its desire to develop a nuclear capacity is based primarily on its projected energy needs.

But this is not in itself an excuse for justifying the strong-arm tactics that some Western countries, particularly those on record as being opposed to the current regime in Iran, are now advocating. Reporting the country to the United Nations Security Council, for example, is unlikely to be particularly effective (and would probably be vetoed by at least one member of the council). While the consequences of another US invasion in the Middle East, as reported to be under consideration in some parts of Washington, are too distressing to contemplate.

Furthermore, the Iranian authorities have a powerful political argument when they point to the contradictions between the attitude of the United States administration towards themselves and towards India. In the Indian case, the administration has recently indicated it would drop a previous ban on the export of nuclear technology for civilian purposes — despite the fact that India has still not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, while Iran itself has.
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