Addressing the issues of the latest IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program, the UN Security Council resolution and the EU's position, Russian experts try to assess the situation around Iran and the true meaning of the protest action by Iranian students against the British embassy. According to the media, the students took 6 hostages but later let them go. The action was triggered by the UK's new sanctions against Iran following the IAEA report.
The Director General of the Contemporary Iranian Studies Center, Ridjab Sapharov, is convinced that the situation surrounding Iran has reached its climax. He is convinced that the US and Israel will soon follow in the UK’s steps and try to overthrow the current Iranian government by pressuring it with economic sanctions. Mr Sapharov is convinced that the IAEA is nothing but a political tool in the hands of Western powers and that there is some evidence that the latest report was compiled under a great deal of influence from Israeli and British special services. The current protest action, timed to coincide with the date of the death of a top Iranian nuclear physicist last year, whose murder is blamed by the Teheran authorities on the Israeli special services, is nothing but a reaction to this fraud. However, according to Sapharov, their aggressive actions later were coordinated by western special services in order to disrupt the Iranian government’s authority. Iran itself was ultimately not interested in such a violent outbreak.
Professor Vladimir Sajin, leading researcher of the RAS Eastern Studies Institute said that this critical situation has been lingering since the autumn of 2009, when Iran rejected the proposals of the ‘Vienna Four’. Sajin pointed out that it is because of Iran’s unappeasable position that no mediator has been able to resolve the conflict. As a result, the UN Security Council had to adopt resolution 1929 in 2006, introducing severe sanctions against Iran. However, due to Russia’s and China’s counter-action to the sanctions, countries such as the US, Japan, South Korea and some of the EU introduced their own sanctions against Iran. Sajin pointed out that these sanctions had the desired effect on Iran’s economy. Nevertheless, Iran still doesn’t want to comply with the IAEA’s demands, so the West simply doesn’t know how to normalize its relations with the IRI. "Now it is a real cold war. Both sides accuse each other of God knows what and threaten each other," Sajin concluded, adding that a new IAEA report won’t create any sensations, but it will certainly accumulate a critical mass of accessible negative information.
The Head of the Socio-Political Studies Center, Vladimir Yevseyev, said that despite the growing media pressure on Iran, its response can’t be deemed adequate and it only made things worse. He also expressed his concern about possible military developments, due to the fact that Iranian patrol boats often approach NATO vessels in the Persian Gulf. "Both sides have war plans, but one side is pushing the other to unleash the confrontation," Yevseyev said.
By VK
