Stop Fundamentalism – In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing today, General James Mattis, the US’s head of Central Command in the Middle East said that the current efforts by the west to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb are not working.
“Tehran has a history of denial and deceit,” General Matis told the Senate hearing adding that the country is “enriching uranium beyond any plausible peaceful purpose.”
Matis stressed that Iran is using the talks between the west and this country only “to buy time.”
Matis believed that there is still a chance to use sanctions and other means of pressure to bring Tehran to its senses and said that the US has a number of ways to do that short of an open conflict.
Iranian and western negotiators met in Almaty, Kazakhstan last week after an eight months pause to once against talk on ways to persuade the Iranian regime to curve its nuclear program. The west suspects the program has a military nature.
Yesterday the International Atomic Energy Agency accused Iran of preventing inspection of a nuclear site near Tehran which the agency suspects of having been the test site for a nuclear triggering mechanism intended to be used on a nuclear warhead. The name of the site is Parchin. Iran says the site does not fall within the NPT agreement and refuses to allow inspections by the UN agency.
IAEA says that it cannot confirm that Iran’s nuclear program is in fact a peaceful one.
“President Barack Obama is not bluffing,” said Vice President Joe Biden Monday stressing that the United States will not refrain from using military force to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state, shouild other options fail.
