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Global Times | 2012-8-9 23:05:03 | By Charles Gray

US actions in relation to Iran have raised troubling questions about whether or not the US is interested
in a multilateral solution to the current issue or is merely interested in imposing its own will upon Iran and
the rest of the world.

The recently passed Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Human Rights Act marks another escalation in US
attempts to economically isolate Iran.

These unilateral action call into question the validity of the entire P5+1 diplomatic process in the face of a
nation that seeks to wield a unilateral veto over the course of negotiations with Iran.

A US so wedded to unilateral action is unlikely to feel bound by any agreements made, whether through the
P5+1 talks or other parties.



This has already occurred once, with the successful US opposition to the 2010 Turkish and Brazilian offer to
refine Iranian uranium in return for concessions on the part of Iran.

Furthermore, the current bill states that Congress seeks to prevent Iran from achieving a "nuclear weapons
capability."

However, what exactly constitutes a nuclear weapons capability has never been clearly defined. In fact, it is a
standard that may be impossible to comply with, short of the complete elimination of Iran's civilian nuclear
research establishment.

The addition of the term "nuclear weapons capability" is a clear example of changing the demands placed on
Iran, perhaps due to the fact that both the CIA and Israel's Mossad intelligence agency agree that Iran is not
currently involved in the development of nuclear weapons.

In fact, these sanctions come at the very point where evidence of any Iranian drive to build a nuclear device is
becoming less and less convincing.

Some will argue that the importance of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons justifies these
unilateral US actions. But recent history discredits this argument.

After all, it was the US that presented these same urgent claims regarding Iraq, launching a war that lasted
over a decade and killed hundreds of thousands of people, only to have it proven that Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction were nonexistent.

Furthermore, the evidence the US presented to the world back in 2002 and 2003 was a combination of
misleading information and outright falsehoods. It is very likely that the US claims against Iran are no more
valid than those earlier claims about Iraq.

This makes it all the more important that the rest of the world resist these continued US attempts to control
the course of negotiations while denying the sovereign rights of other nations to conduct a lawful trade with Iran.