Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Javad Zarif told the UN Security Council on Saturday, as it adopted a resolution starting sanctions against Iran for refusing to abandon its uranium enrichment program, that “The sponsors tell you that they do not trust our ‘intentions.’ But the problem is that their ‘intention-o-meter’ has a rather abysmal record of chronic malfunction. Suffice it to say that the former US Director of Central Intelligence, Robert Gates, in a testimony before Congress in March 1992 claimed that Iran was trying to acquire a nuclear weapons capability, and added that this goal was unlikely to be achieved before the year 2000. Later, in November of the same year, a draft National Intelligence Estimate by the same CIA, concluded that Iran was making progress on a nuclear arms program and could develop a nuclear weapon by 2000. Now the same intelligence establishment is saying not before 2015. Accusing Iran of having ‘the intention’ of acquiring nuclear weapons has, since the early 1980s, been a tool used to deprive Iran of any nuclear technology, even a light water reactor or fuel for the American-built research reactor. I wonder which ‘Iranian intention’ or which ‘proliferation concern’ has prompted the main proponents of today’s resolution to prevent Iran, throughout the past 27 years, from buying civilian aircrafts or even their spare parts, thereby jeopardizing the lives and safety of Iranian civilians whom they hypostatically try to court these days. And I might add, to no avail.
As the IAEA Director-General recently said ‘a lot of what you see about Iran right now is assessment of intentions…But one of the lessons we learned from Iraq is that we really need to be very, very careful coming to conclusions because these issues make the difference between war and peace’…We believe that the days of bullying, pressure and intimidation by some nuclear-weapon holders are gone. We are told we need to build confidence. Indeed. We all do, in this tumultuous world. But confidence could only be built through respect for and non-discriminatory application of the law. That is the only objective criteria; anything else would be to accept the whim of the powerful. And, international law and international treaties cannot be the subject of arbitrary, fluctuating and self-serving re-interpretations, adjustments or red lines even if they are onnivingly imposed through resolutions. Such a precedent is dangerous for every one.†http://www.un.int/iran/statements/securitycouncil/articles/Dr.%20Zarif%20Statement%20befor%20the%20Security%20Council.%20Dec.%2023.2006.pdf