World press on Iran’s nuclear program (April 28 - 30, 2012)

The New York Times published an extensive essay on the history of the Iranian nuclear program. Iran’s nuclear program is one of the most polarizing issues in one of the world’s most volatile regions. Whilst American and European officials believe Tehran is planning to build nuclear weapons, Iran’s leadership says that its goal in developing a nuclear program is to generate electricity without dipping into the oil supply it prefers to sell abroad, and to provide fuel for medical reactors. Iran and the West have been at odds over its nuclear program for years. But the dispute has picked up steam since November 2011, with new findings by international inspectors, tougher sanctions by the United States and Europe, threats by Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments and Israel signalling an increasing readiness to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Fears of an attack on Iran have driven up oil prices and pose a threat to the already fragile state of a global economy still reeling from a sovereign debt crisis in Europe. At the same time, the Iranians have acutely felt the squeeze from a round of sanctions aimed at getting Iran to freeze its uranium-enrichment program. In March 2012, the global powers dealing with the program announced that they had accepted an Iranian offer to resume negotiations that broke off in stalemate more than a year before. In mid-April, diplomats from Iran, the United States and other world powers met in Istanbul, Turkey, to discuss Iran’s nuclear program. The talks went surprisingly well and were something of a turning point in the current American thinking about Iran.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Iranian officials expressed scepticism on Saturday about possible Obama administration support for allowing the country to continue enriching some uranium, but said it could be a good start for further negotiations on its disputed nuclear program. Senior U.S. officials have said they might agree to let Iran enrich uranium up to 5% purity if its government agreed to the unrestricted inspections, strict oversight and numerous safeguards that the United Nations has long demanded. "Iran has lost a lot by voluntarily accepting the additional protocol for snap visits to nuclear sites before," said Hamid Reza Taraghi of the Islamic Coalition Party, who has close ties to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. "The inspectors of the IAEA turned out to be spies and our nuclear scientists were exposed and some of them assassinated."

In the meantime, a stinging attack on Israel's political leadership by a former head of Shin Bet, the security agency, continued to reverberate on Sunday, despite high-level efforts to discredit the former spy chief's motives, The Guardian reports. Yuval Diskin said the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and defence minister, Ehud Barak – the principal advocates of military action against Iran's nuclear programme – were unfit to lead the country and could not be trusted to conduct a war. The "messianic" pair were misleading the public on the merits of an attack. According to Yuval Diskin, the country was becoming more aggressive and racist: "The youth in Israel has become over the past 10 to 15 years more and more racist. Racism against Arabs and against foreigners, against those who are different."