More useless sanctions

On Saturday, New York time, the United Nations Security Council once again unanimously adopted a resolution imposing additional sanctions on Iran because it refused to halt its uranium enrichment program.

Let's put a few things straight:

1) Under the NPT, Iran has the right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Without proof that it is making the bomb, there is no justification to demand that it stops its uranium enrichment program.

2) The proposed sanctions are mild and won't hurt Iran too much. Tougher sanctions could never have been passed unanimously.

3) Still, the sanctions resolution is wrong. The U.N. Security Council is acting more and more as a rubber stamp council for the U.S. administration. China, Russia and France do not object for their own selfish reasons. The non-permanent members are bullied to go along.

4) As a result, resolutions of the Security Council can no longer be considered to be the expression of the will of the international community.

5) Iran will not be swayed by the sanctions, they will have the opposite effect: less cooperation with the IAEA and perhaps, like in the case of North Korea, leaving the NPT.

Meanwhile the stand-off involving the 15 British sailors is continuing. And Blair is threatening a “different phase”. The old gunboat diplomacy once again. The British have only themselves to blame, because they shouldn't have been their, nor in Iranian, neither in Iraqi waters. Again, they claim to have the mandate of the U.N., a mandate manufactured in Washington, not the expression of the will of the peoples of the world.