WarSclerotic

Iran lashes out at U.S. during its own nuclear summit – latimes.com.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei calls the U.S. the world’s ‘only nuclear scofflaw’ for its advocating of arms control while having a huge stockpile and for accepting Israel’s atomic arsenal.

Iran’s top political and religious authority lashed out at the United States on Saturday at a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran meant to counter a nonproliferation summit in Washington earlier in the week.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described the U.S. as the world’s “only nuclear scofflaw.” He labeled Washington hypocritical for advocating arms control while retaining a huge nuclear weapons stockpile, and for accepting the atomic arsenal of Israel, which is not a signatory to the international treaty requiring transparency for its nuclear program.

“The deceptive policy by the only nuclear scofflaw, which falsely claims to be advocating the nonproliferation of nuclear arms while doing nothing substantive for this cause, will never succeed,” Khamenei said in comments read aloud by one of his closest advisors, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati.

Iran has faced international pressure over its nuclear technology and research program, which the West suspects is aimed at developing weapons of mass destruction. Iran insists its nuclear program is meant only for civilian ends.

Iranians are incensed over the Obama administration’s recent rewriting of the U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, which ruled out using such arms against non-nuclear countries that comply with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The U.S. says Iran has violated the treaty; Iran insists it is in compliance.

“Threats to use weapons, especially nuclear weapons, are made by those who have no clear logic and human thinking,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech.

Tehran also condemned the recent nonproliferation conference in Washington, which was partly a precursor to seeking new sanctions against Iran at the U.N. Security Council.

Iran has striven hard to bolster its diplomatic position ahead of anticipated maneuvers at the Security Council and a conference next month in New York to reexamine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

State-controlled Iranian media said ministers or deputy ministers of 24 nations attended Iran’s first-ever International Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, which continues Sunday.

China and Russia, strategic allies of the Islamic Republic that have appeared to back away from Tehran under Western pressure, dispatched deputy foreign ministers. Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Oman and Syria, Iran’s main strategic ally, sent foreign ministers, while Pakistan’s ambassador to Tehran attended.

There was no sign of any Western delegates.

Khamenei reiterated his long-standing stance that the use of nuclear weapons was religiously forbidden, a violation of humanitarian law and a war crime. In an echo of the message made by President Obama at his summit, he called for “sensible and practical ways and solutions to counter the threat of nuclear weapons.”

In the lounge outside the main hall where invitees delivered long speeches in favor nuclear disarmament, pictures of victims of the 1945 U.S. nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were on display.

This entry was posted on April 17, 2010 at 9:24 PM and is filed under Iran / Israel War. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.