Bloomberg

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he intends to pursue the Islamic Republic's nuclear program under the supervision of the United Nations atomic agency.

"All our nuclear activities are in keeping with the generally recognized rules of international law, and are under full and unprecedented inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency,'' Ahmadinejad said.

"We are willing to continue our activities under the supervision of the agency,'' he told regional leaders at an economic forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, according to an official English translation of his speech obtained by Bloomberg News.

The U.S., U.K. and France proposed a resolution in the UN Security Council on May 3 demanding Iran cease uranium enrichment, and said they would seek sanctions should the government in Tehran fail to comply. The U.S. suspects Iran plans to build a nuclear bomb, while Iran says its program is for generating electricity.

The Daily Star

As the international community wrestles with Iran's nuclear ambitions, a longstanding debate on the nuclear issue rages in Tehran, and Western policymakers and analysts should not ignore it.

Though Iranian officials publicly project a unified mindset, in reality the country's ruling elites are divided into three broad categories: those who favor pursuit of the nuclear fuel cycle at all costs; those who wish to pursue it without sacrificing diplomatic interests; and those who argue for a suspension of activities to build trust and allow for a full fuel cycle down the road. Understanding and exploiting these differences should be a key component of any diplomatic approach.

The first group, supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, comprises confrontationists who romanticize the defiance of the revolution's early days. Believing that former President Mohammad Khatami's "detente" foreign policy earned Tehran nothing but entry into the "Axis of Evil," they argue that Iran should withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), unequivocally pursue its nuclear ambitions, and dare the international community to react. They advocate measures such as withholding oil exports and cutting diplomatic ties with countries that side against Iran, confident that "the West needs Iran more than we need them."

Financial Times

US efforts to form a new "coalition of the willing" that would impose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear programme are running into objections from European and Asian allies who say the Bush administration must first exhaust all diplomatic options, including the United Nations process and direct talks with Tehran.

A senior US official said President George W. Bush would reaffirm US opposition to direct negotiations with Iran should Angela Merkel, German chancellor, raise the issue at their White House meeting today.

"We are very clear that we need to see some change in Iranian behaviour," the senior US official said just days after a 30-day UN Security Council deadline for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment expired. "They are moving in the opposite direction. This does not provide an incentive for talks."

A call for US-Iran dialogue was first raised in public last month by Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister. Mr Bush is also under pressure from some Republicans and Democrats in Congress to stop outsourcing negotiations on Iran's nuclear programme to Europe.

The Independent

Sy Hersh is an ornery, cussed sort of guy, not one to suffer fools gladly. As the man who broke the My Lai story and the atrocities at Abu Ghraib, I reckon he has a right to be ornery from time to time – and cussed.

He’s dealing with powerful folk in Washington, including one – George W Bush – who would like to cut him down. And when Hersh wrote – as he did in The New Yorker this month – that “current and former American military and intelligence officials” have said Bush has a target list to prevent Iran obtaining nuclear weapons and that Bush’s “ultimate goal” in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change – again! – you can see why Bush was worried. “Wild,” he called the Hersh story. Which must mean it has some claim to veracity.

So when I cornered Hersh at Columbia University in New York and dropped him a note during a Charles Glass presentation asking for an interview, I expected a stiff reply. “Anything you ask,” he scribbled obligingly on a piece of paper.

Human Events

Shah of Iran's Heir Plans Overthrow of Regime

Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran, told the editors of HUMAN EVENTS last week that in the next two to three months he hopes to finalize the organization of a movement aimed at overthrowing the Islamic regime in Tehran and replacing it with a democratic government.

He believes the cause is urgent because of the prospect that Iran may soon develop a nuclear weapon or the U.S. may use military force to preempt that. He hopes to offer a way out of this dilemma: a revolution sparked by massive civil disobedience in which the masses in the streets are backed by elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Pahlavi, who lives in exile in the United States, said he has been in contact with elements of the Revolutionary Guard that would be willing to play such a role, and activists who could help spark the civil disobedience.

The Guardian

Ringed by nuclear states, Iran's atomic programme is scarcely unreasonable. So why has Washington manufactured this crisis?

Till now, what has prevented the crisis in Iraq from becoming a total debacle for the United States has been the open collaboration of the Iranian clerics. Iranian foreign policy - fragmentary and opportunist - has always been determined by the needs and interests of the clerical state rather than any principled anti-imperialist strategy. In the past, this has led to a de facto collaboration with Washington in Afghanistan and Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war, the clerics had no hesitation in buying arms from the Israeli regime to fight Iraq, then backed by Britain and the US. In the wake of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq - hoping, no doubt, that clearing the path for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar might have won them a respite - the regime took a tougher stance on the nuclear question.

The Bush administration appears to be psyching itself up for a safe strike against Iran either by itself or via the Israelis, whose new leaders have referred to the Iranian president as a psychopath and a new Hitler. Why has Washington manufactured this crisis? The hypocrisy of Bush, Blair, Chirac or Olmert - their own states armed with thousands of nuclear weapons - making a casus belli of what are, by all accounts, primitive gropings on Iran's part towards the technology necessary for the lowest grade of nuclear self-defence, hardly needs to be spelled out. So long as these powers are allowed to enlarge their nuclear armouries unimpeded, why should Tehran not?

The New York Times

The United States, Britain and France have drafted a binding Security Council resolution requiring Iran to stop key nuclear activities, but Russia and China are already resisting, officials involved in the negotiations said today.

The Americans and the Europeans want to move swiftly against Iran, and to that end, the resolution will be introduced in New York on Wednesday or Thursday, according to R. Nicolas Burns, the under secretary of state who has led American diplomatic efforts concerning Iran.

"The Security Council has no option now but to proceed under Chapter 7," Mr. Burns told reporters in Paris, referring to the article in the United Nations Charter that makes resolutions mandatory under international law and opens the way to sanctions or even military action.

Information Clearing House

Under a Safeguards Agreement concluded with the International Atomic Energy Agency – as required by the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – Iran agreed to allow IAEA inspectors to "verify" that no "source or special nuclear materials" are being used in furtherance of a nuclear weapons program.

During the past three years, every report Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has made to the IAEA Board concluded that – as best he can determine – no proscribed materials have been so used.

The NPT and the IAEA Statute and the Iranian Safeguards Agreement all guarantee Iran's "inalienable" right to conduct research into – and to enjoy all the benefits of the peaceful use of – nuclear energy.

The IAEA Statute ensures – insofar as the IAEA is able – that "source or special nuclear materials" are not used in furtherance of a military purpose as a secondary mission.

International Herald Tribune

The undersigned, a group of former foreign ministers from Europe and North America, find disturbing the reports that the Bush administration may be actively planning to launch military strikes soon against possible nuclear weapons facilities in Iran.

Such reports, though denied by the administration, raise alarms nevertheless. Similar reports, and similar denials, preceded the administration's decision in 2003 to invade Iraq.

We accept Iran's legitimate right to pursue civilian nuclear power with appropriate international safeguards.

European leaders have made strenuous efforts to negotiate a solution that met Iran's energy development needs while ensuring respect for nonproliferation norms. Unfortunately, Iran's government continues to resist accepting verifiable constraints on its development of all elements of the nuclear fuel cycle, including large-scale uranium enrichment facilities that could be used to manufacture fuel for nuclear weapons.

By Dr. Jorge E. Hirsch
Information Clearing House

The US has drawn up plans to level a massive aerial assault against Iran.

Thirteen of the nation’s most prominent physicists have written a letter to President Bush, calling U.S. plans to reportedly use nuclear weapons against Iran “gravely irresponsible” and warning that such action would have “disastrous consequences for the security of the United States and the world.”

The physicists include five Nobel laureates, a recipient of the National Medal of Science and three past presidents of the American Physical Society, the nation’s preeminent professional society for physicists.

The letter echoes a petition signed by over 1800 physicists and scientists across the US and the world

Join Dr. Jorge E. Hirsch, Professor of Physics, UCSD To deliver the letter to President Bush Wednesday April 26, 5 PM, Lafayette Park, opposite the White House, Washington, DC