IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS
When the IAEA announced that its tests vindicated Iran's claims that traces of enriched uranium found two years earlier by its inspectors at the Iranian nuclear facilities were from the imported equipment, believed to be of Pakistani origin, Washington dismissed the IAEA findings as meaningless.
Among those who remained coolly cognizant of the facts on the ground were fifteen IAEA governors belonging to the Non-Aligned Movement. The NAM includes such heavyweights as Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa. At the IAEA's emergency session, Rajmah Hussein of Malaysia, the current NAM chairman, reiterated NAM's position that all countries have a basic and inalienable right to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes--the prime objective for which the IAEA was established in 1953 at the initiative of US President Dwight Eisenhower.
By design or happenstance, Iran has emerged as a champion of the developing world with the courage and conviction to stand up to the Western world. This has won it quiet admiration by NAM governors, who fear that the limitations imposed on Iran could be extended to them eventually. Little wonder that Ali Larijani, the newly appointed secretary-general of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said that he welcomed talks with all IAEA governors and NAM members.
This went down badly with both the EU-3 and the United States. It is clear by now that further pressure on Tehran to abdicate its right would cause a major fissure between the West and the developing world.