The US defence secretary yesterday tapped into deepening international concern about a clandestine nuclear programme in Iran, warning that Tehran was actively working to develop a bomb.
Donald Rumsfeld’s remarks, delivered during a visit to Germany, appeared aimed at exerting pressure on Tehran and the UN’s nuclear monitoring agency, which meets next week in Vienna to decide how to respond to Iran’s failure to honour nuclear safeguards.
His intervention also appeared to advance the next project of Pentagon hawks: regime change in Tehran.
There have been signs that Washington is stepping up international pressure on Tehran and feeding internal unrest. Several dozen protesters were arrested in the capital yesterday after thousands of people took to the streets in the biggest demonstrations against the government this year.
The protests began on Tuesday over plans to privatise some universities, but soon widened as some students carried banners calling for political prisoners to be freed and others demanded that the reformist president, Mohammed Khatami, resign.
Witnesses said the protests turned violent when riot police with batons tried to disperse the demonstrators, beating people who failed to move away quickly enough. Several motorcycles were set on fire and the windows of shops and a state bank were smashed.
High unemployment affecting graduates as well as other sectors of society, plus disappointment with the pace of the reforms Khatami originally promised six years ago, have led to widespread discontent.
The report of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, which is to be formally presented next week, faults Iran for failing to declare uranium imported from China in 1991. Although the quantity of nuclear material was relatively small, Iran has compounded the IAEA’s concerns by also failing to account for what happened to the uranium, or even where it was processed.
”The intelligence community in the United States and around the world currently assess that Iran does not have nuclear weapons,” Rumsfeld said during a visit to the southern German town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. ”The assessment is that they do have a very active programme and are likely to have nuclear weapons in a relatively short period of time.”
Rumsfeld also accused Tehran of seeking to infiltrate its clerics into Iraq and undermine the US occupation administration.
”We’re going to actively oppose any Iranian influence in that country that attempts to make Iraq an Iran-type model and we’ll do it with words to start with and we’ll do it ener getically,” Mr Rumsfeld said. The US backs a number of exile groups, including Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah, who uses a satellite TV station in Los Angeles to beam anti-regime views into Iran.
The US war on Iraq has undoubtedly unsettled Tehran’s leaders. President Khatami acknowledged this week there was a danger Iran could be next. Fundamentalism and terrorism would provide ”enemies” with an excuse for invasion, the newspaper Entekhab quoted him yesterday as saying in a veiled warning to the hardliners and to Washington.
Student demonstrations at various universities last autumn went on every day for several weeks. At that time the protests remained on campus and did not spill on to the streets.
Many students used the protests to call for power to be taken from Iran’s clergy and given to secular leaders. – Guardian Unlimited Â