President defies UN by declaring nuclear debate closed

Iran's President Ahmadinejad has declared that the debate over Iran's nuclear programme is over - which is surely a case of wishful thinking on his part - and said that the UN has been hijacked by major powers to pursue their own interests.

"In the last two years, abusing the security council, the arrogant powers have repeatedly accused Iran and even made military threats and imposed illegal sanctions against it," the Iranian leader said.

He praised the IAEA, with which Iran agreed last month to answer unresolved questions about its past nuclear activities. He said that attempts to politicise the issue had failed in the face of Iranian resistance, adding: "I officially announce that in our opinion the nuclear issue of Iran is now closed and has turned into an ordinary agency matter."

Ahmadinejad is, of course, correct. The Bush regime's threats to act outside of international law has forced many country's to go along with American sanctions against Iran as they regard this as preferable to the alternative. In this way, Bush's tactics have actually been successful, in much the same way as his threats to attack Iraq without a "permission slip" led to the UN passing of 1441.

The security council is to consider further sanctions against Iran this Friday, although the Germans are already accusing France and the USA of hypocrisy over the subject of Iranian sanctions.

According to information obtained by SPIEGEL, the economics department of the German Foreign Ministry has collected revealing data which Steinmeier will use to back up his argument against EU sanctions.

Several French companies in the automobile, energy and financial sectors - including Peugeot, Renault, Total, BNP Paribas and Societé Générale - have hardly reduced the level of business they do with Iran, according to the Foreign Ministry data. German exports to Iran, in contrast, have dramatically declined.

Even more explosive is the data that reveals US hypocrisy over sanctions. The German Foreign Ministry accuses American firms of bypassing the boycott against Iran, which has been in place since 1979, by creating front companies in Dubai to carry out their business. German politicians have long internally accused the United States of knowingly tolerating the practice.

Ahmadinejad is making his case in New York at the very time that it is being revealed that Dick Cheney had urged Israel to attack Iran in the hope that an Iranian response would give the US the excuse it needed to launch an attack of it's own against Tehran's suspected nuclear sites.

And, of course, the new French President is continuing to make himself the new Tony Blair by making Bush's case for him:

President Sarkozy said that allowing Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons would be an "unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world". "There will not be peace in the world if the international community falters in the face of the proliferation of nuclear arms," he said.

Sarkozy says all this with no proof whatsoever that Iran are even pursuing a nuclear weapon programme and with Iranian President Ahmadinejad going as far as labeling those who pursue such weapons as "retarded".

So, Ahmadinejad is being provocative when he declares concern about this matter to be "over". The Israelis and the US still want his head and the new French President is anxious to prove his loyalty to the lame duck Bush administration, so we can expect further sanctions against Iran come Friday, especially as many US and French companies have already found a way around those sanctions.

After all, the point of the sanctions isn't to harm the profits of US multinationals, it is to prepare the American public for a possible attack on Iran.

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Tags: Ahmadinejad, Iran, United States, United Nations, uranium enrichment, Sarkozy, Bush, Israel