The European Union is Iran’s biggest trading partner at $8 billion a year (and pending deals that may increase it further) but do Britain, France, and Germany value that partnership over their supposed opposition to the Iranian Regime’s nuclear weapons programme?

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – the UN’s nuclear watchdog- recently released a report that Iran had secretly made highly-enriched uranium and plutonium- a clear violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty- and deliberately hid the evidence for almost 20 years.

The EU countries, however, are opposing a UN resolution to get tough on Iran’s nuclear programme that was discussed in Vienna last week.

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned that the Europeans were being too lenient on Iran. He said that Iran’s nuclear transgressions need to be referred to the UN Security Council and possibly placed under economic sanctions.

Unfortunately, the UN’s Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has a fatal loophole. Any state- even a rogue one- can openly develop most of what is needed for a nuclear-weapons programme by pretending that it is a civilian nuclear energy programme.

This is dangerous for a Regime that is the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism, violently opposed to the US and Israel, and hell-bent on regional domination, but Europe seems more concerned with business deals, like the $10.5 billion Europe has invested in Iranian oil- which goes directly into the Regime’s war chest.

This money only serves to create more domestic repression, regional warfare, and international terrorism.

Peter Brookes, a Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs for the Heritage Foundation, wrote: “Only a united international front can contain the mullah’s atomic efforts. If we don’t address Iran’s nuclear ambitions with vigour and verve, we’ll end up in the same situation we have today with North Korea, where a nasty regime possesses nasty weapons.”

Here’s are some short-term measures that the international community can adopt to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons:

• The IAEA can declare that the Iranian Regime is in violation of the NPT and forward the resolution to the UN Security Council (UNSC)

• The UNSC needs to set strong conditions for compliance, including no-notice inspections and heavy monitoring

• Any Iranian noncompliance should trigger immediate multilateral UN sanctions

• The EU must stop its trade pact with Iran until Tehran proves that it is no longer seeking to become a nuclear power

New talks on the proposed UN resolution will begin on Wednesday November 29. While the outcome is unclear, what we do know is that if the international community fails to rebuke Iran for its past actions, then the Regime will take this as a free pass to go nuclear.

Source » ncr-iran