After two years of allowing the EU-3 to vacillate on Iranian defiance of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the US has decided to push the Internation Atomic Energy Agency to take Iranian violations to the UN Security Council, where serious economic and military sanctions could result:

Buoyed by growing European support, the United States lobbied the U.N. atomic watchdog agency Monday to send Iran before the U.N. Security Council for refusing to freeze work that can produce nuclear weapons.

A European diplomat said Washington had revised a resolution originally drafted by France, Germany and Britain, adding an Oct. 31 deadline and toughening language meant to force Iran to dispel all suspicions it is trying to make nuclear arms in violation of treaty commitments.

The draft, summarized by the diplomat for The Associated Press, demands "complete, immediate and unrestricted access" to all sites and information requested by the International Atomic Energy Agency in its probe into Iran's nearly 2-decade-long clandestine nuclear program.

This ultimatum is long overdue. The Iranians have been able to thumb their noses at the EU-3 (Britain, Germany, and France) for the past two years while they continue to produce uranium and build their program. Despite the discovery of thousands more centrifuges than would be needed for a civil nuclear-energy program -- in a country with huge oil reserves -- both the IAEA have demonstrated little more than empty threats and tepid appeasements to the Iranians. (They still offered more backbone than John Edwards, who offered to sell them nuclear fuel if they promised not to make weapons out of it.)

Such vacillation only encourages the enemies of freedom, the terrorists and the regimes that support them, most definitely and primarily including the Iranians. Why we have allowed the Europeans to present this weak defense of the West for as long as did mystifies me. We should have pushed the IAEA to move a year ago, and then again earlier this year when we found out about their continuing nuclear-fuel enrichment. Our reluctance to take the lead on disarmament of this radical mullahcracy gives an impression of weakness and fear, which is exactly the wrong impression to give the Islamofascists.

The EU-3 have done enough damage. It's time for them to join the US and start taking definitive steps towards concluding this problem. Only when that happens will the Iranian mullahs take the West seriously.

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» What To Do With Iran from Diggers Realm
With Iran seeming to thumb its nose at the IAEA, both the EU and the US have recently been circulating proposals with recommendations on how to handle the situation. It is also to set a deadline for compliance by Iran.... [Read More]

Tracked on September 16, 2004 4:19 AM