How they see us: Why can’t Iran enrich uranium?

Talks between Iran and the West ended in stalemate, as the U.S. and other powers called for Iran to abandon all enrichment of uranium.

The West is once again flouting international law, said Reza Ramezani in Resalat (Iran). The latest round of talks between Iran and the West ended this month in stalemate. The U.S. and other powers want Iran to abandon all enrichment of uranium and buy power-plant reactor fuel from other countries instead, so we won’t have the ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade. But the Non-Proliferation Treaty explicitly grants us the right to control our own enrichment process, as long as we allow inspectors in. The West keeps trying to exploit that requirement, arguing that we must allow inspectors into all kinds of military facilities that have nothing to do with our nuclear programs. Apparently “Westerners not only do not abide by laws, but they see themselves as being above the law.”

The U.S. is simply unreasoningly hostile toward Iran, said Mohammad Kazem Anbarlui, also in Resalat. In an address last month for the Persian new year, President Obama quoted an Iranian poet and urged us to “plant the tree of friendship” and “uproot the sapling of enmity”—as if Iran were the one threatening the borders of the U.S. So are we supposed to believe that Americans traveled thousands of miles across the ocean and slaughtered thousands of Muslims with their “weapons of mass destruction” in order to surround us with an orchard of friendship in Afghanistan to our east and Iraq to our west? Warmth and affection, I suppose, are the reasons why they have “mobilized and equipped forces” in Turkey and Azerbaijan, to our north. The U.S. has a nuclear arsenal that can destroy the world many times over. Yet it claims to fear our peaceful nuclear program. Only blind hatred toward Iran can explain this paradox.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us