Kourosh Ziabari: Economic Sanctions - Duplicity on Iran

As Iran refuses to bow down to the illegitimate demands of the United States, Israel and their European allies to abandon its peaceful nuclear program, the inhumane economic sanctions against Tehran are being intensified, putting an excessive and unjustifiable pressure on the ordinary Iranian citizens who are unquestionably the victims of the West's hostility and antagonism toward the Islamic Republic. Since Iran ended its voluntary suspension of uranium enrichment in August 2005, the United States and its European allies have made several efforts to put huge economic and political pressure on Iran and force it into giving up its nuclear rights. Before August 2005, Iran for two years had temporarily suspended uranium enrichment as a confidence-building measure in return for assurances by the representatives of EU that it can keep up with its civilian nuclear program while the negotiations between the two sides were underway. But the EU three bloc members, consisting of France, Germany and the UK retreated from their commitments and demanded that Iran should halt its uranium enrichment program permanently. In this juncture, Iran found out that the European negotiators have been insincere in their stance, and that it should revise its cooperation with them. Now, it has been more than seven years that Iran is under lethal international pressure to discard its nuclear program, while no single page of evidence has been pot forward indicating that Iran is after producing atomic weapons as the United States and EU members claim. Ironically, Israel, the sole possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, has not been asked even once to open its doors to the inspectors of UN's nuclear watchdog and allow them to monitor its underground, illicit nuclear facilities.