Frustrated US rambles on Iran: Gary Sick

In an article recently published by the World Policy Institute, Sick highlighted the US 'dramatically dissonant signals' towards Iran.

The article, titled, 'A Stealth Engagement of Iran,' recalls a comment by the US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in December when the Pentagon chief warned against a war with Iran, sparking uproar in American media.

However, the defense secretary claimed in later comments that Tehran could hypothetically achieve a nuclear weapon in about a year. On January 8, he again contradicted himself by saying that Iran was not trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

The article further highlighted the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's January 10 attack on Iran over the Islamic Republic's boosting its enrichment activities and her simultaneous call for negotiations with Tehran.

Sick said the US concurrently dispatched Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns to Turkey. The visit was interpreted as an effort to rally support for the next round of sanctions against Iran.


The article asserts that the variously-worded messages emanate in part from the futility of the US-engineered sanctions in their goal of halting Iran's civilian nuclear program.

The US, Israel, and some of their allies accuse Iran of pursuing military objectives in its nuclear program and have used this pretext to push for the imposition of sanctions on Tehran as well as to call for the launch of a military attack against the country.

Iran, however, refutes such allegations as 'baseless' and maintains that, as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the IAEA, it has every right to acquire and develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

The agency has conducted numerous inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, but has never found any evidence of diversion in Tehran's civilian nuclear program.