Iran does have a Nuclear Program and Saddam Did have weapons of mass destruction. You wasn't proof that Saddam had weapons ask the kurds. As for weather Iran is developing nuclear weapons I can't say for certain but they certianly don't cooperate with inspectors and they did say they wanted to drive Isreal into the sea.
All nations which signed the NPT including Iran have a right to peaceful nuclear technology. The NPT should only be used to justify sanctions against nations which violate the NPT or nations that have not signed the NPT and possess nukes (Israel, Pakistan and India). But in the case of Iran, the NPT has been used to punish Iran for activities which are within Iran's legal rights according to the NPT.
Iran's nuclear program
appears peaceful. Iran lets the IAEA inspect their facilities and interview their scientists in compliance with
voluntary NPT protocols. The IAEA has never found any evidence that Iran ever violated the NPT. Iran did keep their nuclear research secret until recently, in violation of the
voluntary protocols. Peaceful nuclear research and research on nuclear weapons have common elements. The IAEA has found no evidence that Iran has ever actively researched or attempted to create nuclear weapons. Iran claims to have refined fissionable material to the point where it could be used as fuel in a nuclear reactor. The IAEA has found no evidence that Iran has refined this material to the point where it could be used in a nuclear bomb or attempted to do so.
Disclosure to the IAEA and allowing the IAEA to inspect nuclear facilities and conduct interviews is
voluntary, as in not required by the NPT. Anti-Iranian propaganda (our news) has tried to twist Iran's past secrecy into a perception that Iran violated the NPT. For several years now, Iran
appears to complies with all NPT protocols including
voluntary ones.
An example of an
NPT treaty requirement is for nuclear bomb producing nations to stop making nukes, halt research on new types of nukes and a reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons. Hypocritically, many of the nations condemning Iran for not complying voluntary NPT protocols from the start and accusing Iran of secretly violating the NPT are the biggest violators of the NPT.
I am bolding certain words, because if you understand the concept of voluntary and the contents of the NPT, its obvious Iran has been the focus of a demonization campaign.
If Iran has plans which would allow it to build a nuclear weapon, the US might be to blame:
January 5 2006
George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?
In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular intelligence fiasco
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/jan/05/energy.g2
If true, then the US violated the NPT by transferring information about nuclear weapon designs to Iran.
Ahmadinejad never said "drive Isreal into the sea". You are mixing up your pro-Israeli/anti-Islam propaganda. What Ahmadinejad said was: " بايد از صفحه روزگار محو شود ". That can be translated several ways:
The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e eshghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad).
or it can loosely translated as:
Israel must be wiped off the map.
Coincidentally Ahmadinejad used a similar phrase (different verb tense) in another speech in reference to the USSR having been "wiped off the map" or "vanishing from the page of time." No one interpreted that same phrase in that speech as a threat to Russia or a call for genocide.
reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmou...#.22Wiped_off_the_page_of_time.22_translation
The above misquote out of context is yet another example of misinformation regarding Iran. When Iran's leader makes inflammatory remarks about Israel (or remarks which could be interpretted as inflammatory), its seized upon by those who wish to demonize Iran, rather than understand Iran.
The trouble with our news is that it often tells us what powerful people want us to think, rather than presenting information objectively and allowing us to think for ourselves.
Why not take the time to read what Ahmadinejad says in his own words and make up your mind for yourself???
Here is a link to a transcript of his speech at Columbia University on September 24, 2007
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6889
Here is his response to a direct question about Israel:
...The first question is: Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state?
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: We love all nations. We are friends with the Jewish people. There are many Jews in Iran living peacefully with security. You must understand that in our constitution, in our laws, in the parliamentary elections, for every 150,000 people we get one representative in the parliament. For the Jewish community, one-fifth of this number they still get one independent representative in the parliament. So our proposal to the Palestinian plight is a humanitarian and democratic proposal.
What we say is that to solve the 60-year problem we must allow the Palestinian people to decide about its future for itself. This is compatible with the spirit of the Charter of the United Nations and the fundamental principles enshrined in it. We must allow Jewish Palestinians, Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians to determine their own fate themselves through a free referendum. Whatever they choose as a nation everybody should accept and respect. Nobody should interfere in the affairs of the Palestinian nation. Nobody should sow the seeds of discord. Nobody should spend tens of billions of dollars equipping and arming one group there.
We say allow the Palestinian nation to decide its own future, to have the right to self-determination for itself. This is what we are saying as the Iranian nation. (Applause.)
MR. COATSWORTH: Mr. President, I think many members of our audience would be -- would like to hear a clearer answer to that question, that is -- (interrupted by cheers, applause).
The question is: Do you or your government seek the destruction of the state of Israel as a Jewish state? And I think you could answer that question with a single word, either yes or no. (Cheers, applause.)
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: And then you want the answer the way you want to hear it. Well, this isn't really a free flow of information. I'm just telling you where I -- what my position is. (Applause.)
I'm asking you, is the Palestinian issue not an international issue of prominence or not? Please tell me, yes or no. (Laughter, applause.)
There's a plight of a people.
MR. COATSWORTH: The answer to your question is yes. (Laughter.)
PRESIDENT AHMADINEJAD: Well, thank you for your cooperation.
It is -- we recognize there is a problem there that's been going on for 60 years. Everybody provides a solution, and our solution is a free referendum. Let this referendum happen, and then you'll see what the results are. Let the people of Palestine freely choose what they want for their future. And then what you want in your mind to happen, it will happen and will be realized. (Applause.)...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6889
I've come to the conclusion that Ahmadinejad is in favor of ending the Zionist state of Israel in the same way people wanted to end South Africa's Apartheid. I see no call for genocide here. If Iran was genocidally anti-Jewish as portrayed by Zionist propaganda, there wouldn't be any Jews in Iran. What Ahmadinejad wants is an end to Zionism, not genocide.
If you want to understand more about Zionism and its effect on Palestinians, I suggest reading "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe"
Here is a review if you have no intention of buying the book:
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
by Stephen Lendman
A Review of Ilan Pappe
Ilan Pappe is an Israeli historian and senior lecturer at Haifa University. He's also Academic Director of the Research Institute for Peace at Givat Haviva and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies. Pappe is an expert on Israel and Zionism and the Palestinians' Right of Return to their homeland, is considered "an honourable academic with integrity and conscience," and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Council for Palestinian Restitution and Repatriation (CPRR), an organization declaring that "every Palestinian has a legitimate, individual right to return to his or her original home and to absolute restitution of his or her property."
Pappe is also one of Israel's "new historians" whose scholarship and writings are based on access to material now available from British Mandate period and Israeli archives that provide the most accurate and authentic documented history of Israel before and after it became a state and which now serve to debunk the myths about the years leading up to the Jewish State's founding and those following it to this day.
Pappe has also authored, contributed to or edited nine books. His latest is the one this review covers in detail so readers will know about its powerful and shocking content, unknown to most in the West and in Israel, that hopefully will arouse them enough to get the book and learn in full detail what Pappe documented. He proves from official records how the Israeli state came into being with blood on its hands from lands forcibly seized from its Palestinian inhabitants who'd lived on it for hundreds of years previously. Since the 1940s, they were ethnically cleansed and slaughtered without mercy so their homeland would become one for Jews alone....
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=LEN20070207&articleId=4715
Zionism is a movement to ethnically cleanse Palestine of non-Jewish Palestinians and populate the area with Jewish immigrants. Ahmadinejad is clearly against Zionism and ethnic cleansing. Therefore Ahmadinejad is threat to the Zionist state of Israel, not Jews. Unlike American and Israeli leaders, I see no evidence that Ahmadinejad prefers war over peace.
