BY DOUG LORIMER
On June 16, the governing board of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) began discussing a report on Iran's nuclear program from the agency's director-general, Mohammad ElBaradei. Washington hopes to use the report to bolster its drive for an Iraq-style "regime change" in the oil-rich Persian Gulf country.
The report accuses Iran of failing to comply with the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty's safeguards agreement by not providing the IAEA with information on Iran's 1991 importation of 1.8 tonnes of natural uranium. The Iranian government claims it was not legally required to report it.
With Russian assistance, Iran is building a nuclear power plant at the port city of Bushehr. It is also building a research reactor at Arak and a small pilot nuclear-enrichment plant at Natanz.
Iran is the world's third largest exporter of petroleum and contains the second largest reserves of natural gas. It wants to develop a full nuclear power industry in order to maximise its export earnings from oil and gas.
US officials have accused Iran of using its nuclear power program to secretly develop nuclear weapons, an accusation denied by Tehran.
Washington pressed the IAEA board meeting in Vienna to demand that Iran unconditionally accept the NPT's 1991 "Additional Protocol" which allows the agency to conduct intrusive, short-notice inspections. Tehran has stated its willingness to sign the protocol if the IAEA lifts its ban on Iran's imports of Western nuclear power technology.
US officials also pushed the agency to declare Iran in "non-compliance" with the NPT. If the IAEA's board, consisting of representatives from 35 member states, ever decided Iran was in "non-compliance", it would have to refer the matter to the UN Security Council, which could impose economic sanctions. While Washington succeeded in getting the IAEA to call on Iran to sign the additional protocol, it failed to get support for a finding of "non-compliance".
In his speech to the IAEA board, US representative Kenneth Brill accused Iran of a "long-term pattern of safeguard violations and evasions". Similar accusations were made by the representatives of Britain and Australia junior partners in the US-led invasion of Iraq, which was justified with lies that Baghdad had a secret nuclear weapons program.
Ali Salehi, Tehran's representative to the IAEA, told the board that ElBaradei's report was tailored to meet Washington's hostility toward Iran.
The US accusations are largely based upon claims made by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a front group of the Baghdad-based Mujaheddin-e-Khalq. The MEK is an Iranian opposition group that has wide support in the US Congress and functions openly in the US, despite being on the US State Department's list of foreign terrorist organisations.
"[Iran has] a very sophisticated, advanced, serious and expensive nuclear weapons program", NCRI spokesperson Alireza Jafarzadeh, told a June 17 news conference in Vienna.
The same day, French police raided the offices of the NCRI on the outskirts of Paris and detained 159 MEK supporters, including Maryam Rajavi, head of the NCRI and wife of MEK founder Massoud Rajavi. The European Union also lists the MEK as a terrorist organisation.
"In the aftermath of its feud with the US over the Iraq war, France has been making overtures to Iran", the June 18 Australian reported. "The policy is seen by the Bush administration as part of French President Jacques Chirac's strategy of opposing the spread of US power."
The MEK, the Australian reported, "is seen by Washington as a possible instrument for regime change in Tehran" and "is known to have links with the CIA and other US agencies".
On June 17, US Secretary of State Colin Powell denied Washington was "fomenting" student protests in Iran, but said his government's "policy is to encourage people to demonstrate for their views".
On June 10, hundreds of students at Tehran University dormitories began staging public demonstrations to protest rumoured government plans to privatise some education services.
Despite a government disavowal of the rumour, the protests picked up momentum, expressing opposition to the rule of Iran's reactionary clerics. They also criticised President Mohammad Khatami, accusing him of failing to deliver promised democratic reforms after six years in office.
Cries of "Khatami, Khatami, resign, resign" were reported to be as frequent as the students' equally strident calls for the resignation of the regime's "Supreme Leader", Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Members of the Islamist vigilante group Ansar-e-Hezbollah (Supporters of the Party of God) attacked protesters in the early hours of June 14, "hauling women out of cars, beating young men with chains and firing volleys of automatic gunfire into the air while police stood by and watched", Reuters reported.
On the night of June 14, hundreds of Ansar-e-Hezbollah thugs, wielding knifes, chains and clubs, broke into the student domitories, beating students indiscriminately and setting their rooms on fire.
"Some lawless elements have taken advantage of the student protests and have caused trouble for the people and destroyed public property", police stated on June 15. That night, police put a cordon around the university.
"The police have tried to keep the Ansar-e-Hezbollah away from the students to prevent a confrontation and avert the recurrence of the group's violent raid into the dorm in 1999 that left one killed and several others badly wounded, thus sparking three days of unrest in Tehran", the official IRNA news agency reported on June 18.
While rounding up student leaders and detaining protesters, police launched a crackdown on the Muslim "hooligan" groups. On June 15, police arrested several members of the Ansar-e-Hezbollah, including its leader Saeed Askari, who, Reuters reported, "was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2000 for trying to kill reformist politician Saeed Hajjarian, but later freed under suspicious circumstances".
Clerics aligned with Khamenei claimed the student protests were being orchestrated by Washington. Khamenei himself said the police and courts should show no mercy for "mercenaries of the enemy".
In response, on June 15, some 500 student protesters chanted "This is a student movement, not an American movement", according to the Iranian Students News Agency.
US President George Bush described the protests as "the beginning of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran".
As it did with Iraq, Washington wants to present its drive for "regime change" in Iran as aimed at "liberating" the Iranian people from "tyranny", rather than at seizing control of the country's oil resources.
From Green Left Weekly, June 25, 2003.
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