Former UK IAEA envoy raps US deceit on Iran

Jenkins wrote in an analysis for IPS news’s foreign policy section LobeLog that the US diplomat Wendy Sherman started her Congress briefing on Wednesday without any reference to the US intelligence community’s “confidence” that Iran has made no decision to move toward a non-civilian nuclear program.
 
“Instead, it referred to ‘Iran’s nuclear weapon ambitions’ and to the need for Iran to ‘change course’, which the congressmen could be forgiven for taking as confirmation of their chairman’s opening assertion that Iran is trying to build a nuclear arsenal,” Jenkins wrote.
 
He added the US under secretary of state for political affairs claimed that Washington only wants Iran to live up to its “international obligations” but did not mention experts’ belief that “Iran is already fully compliant” with its obligations under the Non Proliferation Treaty and has done so voluntarily.
 
Jenkins then criticized Sherman for repeating the falsification that Iran is “isolated”, saying international facts show exactly the opposite.
 
“In reality, Iran maintains full diplomatic relations with some 100 states. Iran’s Foreign Minister is received courteously almost everywhere in Asia and Europe apart from the UK and Israel. Just this week Iran assumed the chair of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Currently Iran presides over the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement,” he wrote.
 
Jenkins who also said that the US lacks the “objectivity” needed to properly engage with Iran.
 
Jenkins, who was Britain’s permanent ambassador to the IAEA between 2001 and 2006, had previously dismissed the west’s demand that Iran suspends its right, as an NPT signatory, to uranium enrichment is “a great diplomatic over-bid”.
 
He said back in January 2012 that West is fully “isolated” in its insistence on refusing Iran its right to uranium enrichment saying “most non-Westerners would prefer to see Iran treated like other NPT parties”.
 
Iran has repeatedly declared that it is a committed signatory to the NPT, which gives it the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
 
Iran’s nuclear activities remain under close inspection of the IAEA, which has never found any diversion in the country’s nuclear program.