Following a shameful display of appeasement to the Iranian regime, it is now time for the UN Security Council (UNSC) to redeem itself by confronting the mullahs over their nuclear program. After the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, was killed in a helicopter crash on May 19, the UNSC in New York offered their condolences and held a one-minute moment of silence. Raisi was known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran’ for his role as an executioner of tens of thousands of political prisoners. Nevertheless, the UN HQ in Geneva disgracefully flew their flag at half-mast in his honor and in an outrageous affront to the Butcher’s victims, the UN General Assembly held a memorial service on May 30.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA), told an agency Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, that IAEA inspectors have been denied access to Iran for over three years. He expressed grave fears about the regime’s violation of its commitments to the IAEA, under the terms of Article 18 of Iran’s Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Safeguards Agreement. He warned that the mullahs have continued to increase their stockpile of enriched uranium, much of which is now at 60 percent purity, a hair’s breadth away from weapons grade. Grossi said: “There has been no progress in resolving the outstanding safeguards issues. Iran has not provided the Agency with technically credible explanations for the presence of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at Varamin and Turquzabad, or informed the Agency of the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment.”
Based on Rafael Grossi’s evidence, France, the UK and Germany, as original signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, prepared a draft resolution demanding immediate action from the Iranian regime to restore access by the IAEA’s inspectors. The resolution was initially opposed by the Biden administration, although they finally agreed, with the American ambassador to the IAEA stating: “Given Iran’s lack of cooperation with the IAEA and our commitment to collective action in support of the Agency and the NPT, the United States supports this resolution.” The JCPOA was a defective brainchild of the Obama administration. It was signed in 2015 by China, Russia, France, the UK and US, the five permanent members of the UNSC, plus Germany and the European Union. President Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the JCPOA in 2018, describing it as “the worst deal ever,” following revelations that the mullahs had clandestinely continued to accelerate their efforts to produce a nuclear weapon. President Biden’s repeated attempts to renew the nuclear agreement foundered after widespread condemnation of his appeasement policy towards the repressive regime and clear evidence that they were accelerating their work on building a nuclear weapon.
Now, based on the latest frightening confirmations from the IAEA, several US senators have submitted a resolution to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calling for the referral of the regime’s nuclear case to the UN Security Council. Their resolution states: “all measures will be taken to prevent the regime in Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” The EU also issued a statement saying it was “gravely concerned that the Agency is still not in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively peaceful, due to Iran’s lack of cooperation.” The EU’s statement was typically ridiculous, given that only last month Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the head of the regime’s Strategic Council on Foreign Relations, spoke of changing the regime’s “nuclear doctrine” towards building a nuclear weapon, brazenly stating that the regime “has the capacity to produce a nuclear bomb.”
The EU has spent decades bending over backwards to appease the mullahs while they have sponsored conflict across the Middle East and terrorism worldwide, even almost certainly being behind the attempted assassination of a former Vice President of the European Parliament, Alejo Vidal Quadras, last November in Madrid. The time for diplomacy and dialogue with this gangster regime is surely over. The IAEA resolution was, in the words of Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) – the main democratic opposition movement - “inevitable and necessary but wholly inadequate.”
Rajavi urged the nuclear file on Iran to be referred to the UNSC. She said the UN had the opportunity to place the regime under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows the Council to “determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression” and to take military and non-military action to “restore international peace and security.” She also urged the UNSC to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – the regime’s Gestapo – as a terrorist organization and to recognize the right of the Iranian people to overthrow the mullahs’ tyrannical government. Rajavi concluded: “The policy of appeasement, endless negotiations, and undue concessions have allowed the regime to advance its nuclear ambitions without significant repercussions, providing it with ample opportunity.”
The Iranian Resistance was the first to stun Western intelligence agencies by revealing the presence of a secret nuclear project in Iran back in 1991. Supporters of the Resistance Units inside the regime have risked their lives to provide constant updates on the mullahs’ belligerent nuclear activities. After more than four decades of menaces and threats to wipe Israel off the map, the shadow war finally exploded into open conflict when the Iranian regime launched an unprecedented barrage on April 13, with more than 300 drones and missiles fired at their arch enemy. It is now clear that a nuclear armed Iran would be a terrifying threat to peace in the Middle East and worldwide. The UNSC must abandon its derisory attempts to appease the mullahs and take decisive action to prevent a nuclear war.