Why the U.S. is pressuring Iran

The U.S. and Iran are engaged in another round of chest-beating, said Pakistan’s Dawn in an editorial. Last week, President Barack Obama acted extremely upset at the news that Iran was building a second facility to enrich uranium—even though U.S. intelligence had surely informed him about it months ago. The U.S. is now threatening new sanctions against Iran unless international nuclear inspectors are allowed access to the site, to make sure that no weapons-grade uranium will be produced. Meanwhile, the Iranians responded by test-firing missiles that can reach both Israel and U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. It may look ominous, but don’t be fooled: What looks like increasing tension is mostly just posturing. The disclosure of the new plant was timed “so as to enable the two sides to flex their muscles before they enter into a serious dialogue.” The important thing is that “the U.S. under Barack Obama has extended the olive branch” and agreed to negotiate with Iran without preconditions.

The Americans have an ulterior motive, said Hamid Omidi in Tehran’s Keyhan. They know that in the negotiations, Iran has no intention of bargaining over our peaceful project to create nuclear power plants. For us, “the nuclear debate is over”—we have the right to pursue nuclear energy, we are going to pursue it, and there’s no point discussing it. But the Americans insisted on the talks anyway. That’s because the U.S. knows that Iran is “the role model for and the supporter of resistance movements” across the Middle East. “By trying to pull Iran to the negotiating table and disseminating the news to the world, America is sending a message to the resistance movements supported by Iran that the main stronghold has been conquered!” It hopes to demoralize the Middle East. Iran cannot allow that to happen. We must remember that in talking to America, we are talking to an “active enemy,” and we will have to be vigilant about controlling the discussion. “America is still the Great Satan.”

That kind of belligerence hardly helps the Iranian cause, said Lebanon’s Daily Star. Iran does have the right to build nuclear power plants to generate electricity—after all, it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which regulates how countries can use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. “The problem is that whenever legitimate questions have been raised about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s response “has been to let out a stream of invective.”

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Still, it’s understandable that the Iranians are so irritable, said Saudi Arabia’s Arab News. When it comes to nuclear issues, the U.S. applies a blatant double standard. Iran has at least admitted that it has a new uranium-enrichment facility, and it has been working with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency. We know that Iran has no nuclear weapons, and there is no proof that it is trying to build them. Israel, though, does has nuclear weapons—perhaps as many as 200 warheads—yet has never conceded the fact or admitted a single inspector. This arsenal is “an instrument of intimidation by means of which Israel seeks to terrorize its neighbors.” While the U.S. makes a fuss over a future possible Iranian threat, it ignores the real threat to Middle East peace: Israel.