After trying for years to prevent having its nuclear program judged in the UN Security Council, Iran has shifted course and decided to confront the council head on.
Iran is gambling that the 15 members, who plan to take up the Iranian dossier this week for the first time, will be too divided to inflict meaningful punishment.
Sanctions against Iran, the second-largest oil producer in OPEC, could further destabilize the oil markets. Military force, at least for the moment, is unlikely, with US troops stretched thin in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So Iran's leaders have stopped trying to woo the world and now say they want the process to take its course.
"Let the Security Council review the dossier directly," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters in January, defending the reopening of the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz for what Iran describes as research.
"Since we have a clear logic and we act according to the law, we are not worried," he said.
In Tehran on Monday, Ahmadinejad portrayed Iran's position not as obstinate or rigid but as a reflection of strength.
"We know well that a country's backing down one iota on its undeniable rights is the same as losing everything," state television quoted him as saying.
"We will not bend to a few countries' threats, as their demands for giving up our nation's rights are unfair and cruel," he said.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader and the country's ultimate authority, who once stood before the UN and branded it "a paper factory for issuing worthless and ineffective orders," has also endorsed the strategy.
In remarks to leading clerics last Thursday, he vowed to "resist any pressure and threat," adding, "If Iran quits now, the case will not be over."
Avoiding action in the Security Council was at the heart of Iran's decision to open negotiations with France, Britain and Germany in 2003 and to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to its nuclear sites, according to Hassan Rowhani, who was replaced as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator after Ahmadinejad took office last year.
"At that time, the United States was at the height of its arrogance, and our country was not yet ready to go to the UN Security Council," Rowhani said at a closed-door session of Iran's ideological policy makers last September, as he was leaving his post.
Consideration of Iran's case by the council would give the US more power over Iran's fate, reduce the influence of the Europeans and expose Iran's missile program to new scrutiny, Row-hani said.
"The most important promise" the Europeans gave Iran, he said, "was that they would stand firm against attempts to take this case to the UN Security Council."
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
PAPAL RETORT: Pope Leo told reporters that he has ‘no fear, neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly about the message of the Gospel’ US President Donald Trump has feuded with Pope Leo XIV over the Iran conflict — setting off an unholy row that could have serious political implications for the Republican leader back in the US. Trump has drawn barbs even from some allies over the attacks on the US-born pontiff, who has criticized the Trump administration over its immigration crackdown, the intervention in Venezuela and the Iran war. The president risks alienating the religious right in November’s crucial US midterm elections. So far the unprecedented clash between the leader of the most powerful military on Earth and the head of the world’s 1.4 billion
A 16-year-old boy has been charged with murder and aggravated sexual abuse in Florida in the death of his 18-year-old stepsister on a Carnival Cruise ship, the US Department of Justice said on Monday. Timothy Hudson was initially charged in February and subsequently indicted on March 10, but the breadth of the case was not known until a seal was lifted on Friday last week, weeks after US District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami said that he would be prosecuted as an adult at the request of the government. Anna Kepner had been traveling on the Carnival Horizon ship in November last
RSS