Public Policy Examiner
Armen Gabrielian
Ahmadinejad speech at NPT Conference and strange behavior of US and its allies
Today, May 3, 2010, was the start of the UN conference reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
As the only head of state attending, President Ahmadinejad of Iran was the first regular speaker.
Ahmadinejad's arrival in New York earlier was the source of unnecessary controversy since the US delayed issuing visas to the Iranian delegation even though it is required to honor all requested visas for attending UN functions.
At the end, it provided visas to the officials attending but inexplicably denied visas to the Iranian press. Apparently, since the US press is so unbiased, they did not want to allow an alternative view to be represented.
As in a walkout in Geneva last year that was planned long in advance, the US, British and French delegations childishly walked out of Ahmadinejad's speech at the NPT conference when he mentioned the fact that all three are possessors of numerous nuclear weapons and they threaten to use them against other countries.
In particular, in his recent Nuclear Posture Review Report President Obama threatened to use nuclear weapons against Iran which does not itself have any nuclear weapons. This policy was formulated despite the fact that President Obama himself has essentially admitted that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
Following Ahmadinejad's speech, the current chief US propagandist, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, repeated the usual accusations against Iran.
Apparently Mrs. Clinton, is still totally unaware of the latest IAEA report or recent statements by President Obama about the Iranian nuclear program.
She also proposed '.. that the nonproliferation treaty be strengthened by introducing "automatic penalties" for noncompliance, rather than depend on such drawn-out council negotiations.' Thus, rather than looking at the facts and having the onus of proving facts, the US essentially would create a mechanism to automatically strangle other countries. Such a proposal has no chance of passing since acclamation is required for changes to the NPT.
Ironically, Hillary Clinton later announced that the US possesses 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and 'several thousand' more retired warheads that await dismantling.
It is amazing that with such a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons, the US is trying to impose a fourth round of sanctions on Iran when all the US officials now readily admit that Iran does not have any nuclear weapons and is not building any.
President Obama and Secretary of Defense Gates now only complain that Iran may be able to develop one or two nuclear weapons in 3-5 years, if it chose to do so. It is really hilarious to think that even if Iran did develop one or two such weapons it would be a threat to a country with more than 5,000 such weapons.
Also, note that the US defense budget is at least 80 times the size of the Iranian defense budget.
The following video reviews the Ahmadinejad NPT speech and related issues. At the end, it discusses a late report in the Guardian that the US and Russia 'have drafted an initiative to ban nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.'
As stated in the video, certainly Iran would welcome such an initiative. The problem is that it is very unlikely that Israel which has reportedly about 200 nuclear weapons would agree to such a ban.
Analysis of speech by President Ahmadinejad of Iran at the New York NPT Conference
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