Publish dateSaturday 24 March 2012 - 14:36
Story Code : 38377
UK faces national anti-Iran war action
Britain’s anti-war activists will take to the streets across the country later on Saturday to warn the government against an attack on Iran.
This comes as nuclear scientists and former senior officials of the UN nuclear watchdog have undermined the reports by Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) suggesting he is a US stooge and his reports on a likely military nuclear program in Iran are based on unconfirmed “information” rather than solid “evidence” Press TV reported.

The demonstrations organized by the Stop the War Coalition are to be held in 15 different locations including Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, London, Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle.

The anti-war campaigners said they fear the mounting pressure on Iran could escalate into a war as unjustified as the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

The west led by the US, the Israeli regime and Britain accuse Iran of seeking to produce nukes under the cover of its peaceful nuclear program, which Iran vehemently denies.

The IAEA has in its reports, published since Amano took the rein of the agency, warned it has “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program.”

Britain and its western allies have used the report to hit Iran with a barrage of sanctions while keeping the military option “on the table” to supposedly prevent the country from making nuclear weapons.

However, several former senior nuclear officials are now warning that the reports by the pro-US Amano are plagued with pro-western bias and false accusations based on unverified intelligence.

"There is a distinction between information and evidence, and if you are a responsible agency you have to make sure that you ask questions and do not base conclusions on information that has not been verified," Hans Blix, a former IAEA director general said.

"The agency has a certain credibility. It should guard it by being meticulous in checking the evidence. If certain governments want a blessing for the intelligence they provide the IAEA, they should provide convincing evidence. Otherwise, the agency should not give its stamp of approval," he added.

Blix was pointing to the reports that Amano’s ‘trusted sources’ for its anti-Iranian warnings have been the governments of the US and the Israeli regime.

This is while, Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a Washington-based organisation against nuclear proliferation, criticized Amano for being too close to the US administration and its policy on Iran.

“The main beneficiaries of the Amano reign have been US policy and the Japanese nuclear power industry. There has been no space between Amano and [US president] Barack Obama,” Cirincione said.

"On Iran, the difference is like night and day. [Former IAEA chief Mohamed] ElBaradei constantly sought a diplomatic solution, while Amano wields a big stick and has hit Iran hard and repeatedly," he added.

The 2009 US diplomatic cables exposure by WikiLeaks revealed that Amano pledged to promote the US interests, in exchange for Washington’s support for his election as the IAEA director general.

"Amano reminded [the] ambassador on several occasions that … he was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program," the US charge d'affaires to India, Geoffrey Pyatt, wrote in an October 2009 memo.

While it is clear that a US-affiliated Amano’s “concern” and his accusations about a military aspect to Iran’s nuclear program are politically-charged - as Iranian officials have repeatedly stressed - and based on unverified information, there are fears that Amano is cooperating with the US and its allies including Britain, in an Iran war scenario.

Experts have drawn parallels between the IAEA approach to Iran and the fabricated report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that led to the US-led invasion of the country in 2003.

"What we learned back in 2002 and 2003, when we were in the run-up to the war, was that peer review was very important, and that the analysis should not be left to a small group of people,” said Robert Kelley, a former US weapons scientists who ran the IAEA action team on Iraq at the time of the US-led invasion.

The US and British administrations justified their invasion of Iraq by claiming Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction ready to deploy within days, while no such weapons were found after they took control of the country.

The Stop the War Coalition has indicated its Iran Day of Action later today seeks to highlight Britain and its western allies are repeating that scenario for Iran.
Source : Afghan Voice Agency (AVA), Kabul
https://avapress.com/vdcjatet.uqeoaz29fu.html
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