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Iran's Nuclear Fairy Tale

(Institute for National Security Studies-Tel Aviv University) Shimon Stein and Emily B. Landau - Iran is engaged in a public campaign to persuade the media and public opinion of its narrative, which in essence is a nuclear fairy tale of Iranian victimization and mistreatment by a bullying hegemonic West. According to Iran's narrative, the IAEA is unfairly exposing Iran to unprecedented inquiries. In fact, since the release in late 2011 of the full annex of IAEA suspicions about Iran's illicit military activities in the nuclear realm, Iran has stonewalled the IAEA investigation. The latest IAEA report released in February clearly notes Iran's lack of cooperation. There is broad international consensus - as well as much evidence - that Iran has been working on a military nuclear program for years, and yet the P5+1 apparently prefer not to confront Iran on this. Yet it is dangerous to avoid confronting Iran on weaponization. In order to deal with future violations, it is important to know how a state has cheated in the past. As long as Iran is allowed to cling to its narrative unchallenged by the West, all of the P5+1 demands can be depicted as exaggerations. Undercutting the narrative would highlight the necessity of all the demands, in order to stop a dangerous proliferator that seeks regional hegemony and has been lying and cheating its way to the nuclear weapons threshold. Former Israeli ambassador Shimon Stein is a senior research fellow at INSS, where Emily Landau directs the Arms Control and Regional Security Project.
2015-03-11 00:00:00
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