UN Security Council Resolution 1696, passed on July 31, is specific. It is a Chapter 7 resolution, which names a member state for being at odds with the UN, cites the state’s failure to comply with the resolution, then raises the stakes over its enforcement.
Resolution 1696 was passed in response to—as noted in its text—“the many reports of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Director General and resolutions of the IAEA Board of Governors related to Iran’s nuclear programme.”
The IAEA’s concerns—as the UN watchdog of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of July 1968—over the past several years have been with the Islamic Republic of Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capability by abandoning the IAEA safeguards and repudiating its commitment to the NPT.
Iran became a signatory of the NPT in 1970, and under its agreement was provided nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
The disclosure of Iran’s illegal nuclear program came through the IAEA inspections of February 2003.
The recently published book by Gordon Corera, Shopping For Bombs, meticulously documents the sinister underworld of illegal nuclear proliferation built by A.Q. Khan—a Pakistani metallurgist who stole the design for the centrifuge required for uranium enrichment when working for the Dutch partner of Urenco, a European consortium in the business of providing nuclear technology for civilian use—during the years Pakistan pursued its goal of acquiring a nuclear weapon. (Pakistan conducted five nuclear tests in May 1998, disclosing its nuclear weapons capability to the world.)
In February 2003, Iran relented after months of delays and disputations, and permitted IAEA inspection of its nuclear site at Natanz—surrounded by mountains and constructed deep underground. The inspection was headed by, as Corera describes, a “tough, tenacious IAEA inspector from Finland, Olli Heinonen.”
Heinonen and his team recognized immediately what was taking place there, and where the equipment for enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels originated.
The centrifuges on display were of Urenco design, stolen by A.Q. Khan and proliferated in the nuclear black market.
Resolution 1696 demands Iran immediately cease uranium enrichment activities as required by the IAEA and the NPT. It requests “by 31 August a report from the Director General of the IAEA primarily on whether Iran has established full and sustained suspension of all activities mentioned in this resolution, as well as on the process of Iranian compliance with the IAEA Board and with the above provisions of this resolution.”
Iran’s response has been to insist on its rights as a sovereign nation to acquire nuclear technology while denying, despite evidence, efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
On Aug. 31, as the hours ticked away on the deadline stipulated in the resolution, U.S. President George Bush gave a major speech to the American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Mentioning Iran and the UN resolution, he declared, “We will continue to work closely with our allies to find a diplomatic solution—but there must be consequences for Iran’s defiance, and we must not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”
The world has been at this crossroads before. It had to do with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the tyrant’s refusal to comply with repeated Chapter 7 Security Council resolutions.
Speaking to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 12, 2002—one year after the terrorists attacked New York and Washington—Bush stated in reference to Iraq’s non-compliance, “The Security Council resolutions will be enforced—the just demands of peace and security will be met—or action will be unavoidable.”
The world will not be surprised if the UN fails to enforce Iran’s compliance on this matter.
But then the world must not be surprised if the U.S. under Bush proceeds to check Iran’s nuclear ambitions before the clock runs out.
He is a member of the Board of Directors for the Center for Islamic Pluralism based in Washington, D.C., a Senior Fellow with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies, and an academic-consultant with the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C. He has been a consultant with CIDA on development issues and has published widely in academic journals on foreign policy matters and area studies of the Middle East and South Asia.
Mansur is featured on the documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West produced by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He also unsuccessfully ran for the Canadian Alliance party in 2000.
Mansur has been accused by Canadian Islamic Congress of using "provocative, self-serving rhetoric", and for "promoting an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim agenda".
He is an Ismaili Muslim.
At a press conference on October 2, 2008, Mansur stated that "Islam is my private life, my conscience...[but] my faith does not take precedence over my duties...to Canada and its constitution, which I embrace freely;" "I am first and most importantly a Canadian;" "only in a free society will you find Islam as a faith and not a political religion." Mansur also criticized New Democratic Party Leader Jack Layton, whom Mansur said "has gone to bed with Islamists", because he is running candidates in Ontario and Quebec who are closely identified with the push for Sharia law.
- Israel: Decades-old conflict not about to cease - Saturday November 24, 2012 at 1:56 pm
- The better man lost the U.S. election - Saturday November 10, 2012 at 9:16 am
- The puzzle in U.S. presidential elections - Saturday November 3, 2012 at 8:43 am
