Iranian president accuses United States of “nuclear apartheid”

Washington supported development of nuclear energy
in Iran under the Shah

BY ROSE ANA DUEÑAS, Special for Granma International

The U.S. government continues to threaten Iran under the pretext that its development of nuclear technology represents a supposed danger. In the most recent development, it was reported that Washington is seeking Turkey’s cooperation for launching airstrikes against that Middle Eastern country.

However, under the dictatorship of the Shah that lasted for more than two decades, Washington supported Iran’s efforts to develop that energy source, which date back to the 1950s.

In an open threat of military aggression U.S. President George W. Bush has said that in regard to Iraq, “all options are on the table.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking before the UN General Assembly in New York in September, defended the nation’s “right to pursue peaceful nuclear energy” and accused the U.S. government of dividing the world into “light and dark countries” and trying to impose “nuclear apartheid.”

Once again, the U.S. is seeking to use its so-called war on terrorism to attack sovereign nations – its threats also extend to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – for having the same technology that the United States and its allies England and France use for producing energy and nuclear weapons.

In doing so, these governments are blocking Third World nations from using that resource to generate electricity, a precondition for developing their economies and offering their people the minimal conditions for a decent life.

According to the World Bank, some two billion people – one-third of the world’s population – have no access to any type of modern energy, neither electricity or fuel for cooking or heating. They have to carry water by hand, and search for firewood or dung for preparing their meals, and of course, owning a refrigerator or television is just a far-off dream.

In contrast, just the United States, with 5% of the world’s population, consumes 25% of its electricity.

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, a business organization of that industry based in Washington D.C., there are 103 commercial nuclear reactors producing energy in 31 U.S. states.

“Nuclear energy provides about 20 percent of the United States' electricity and is its number one source of emission-free electricity,” the institute’s web page says. The same page boasts that nuclear energy is cleaner and more efficient than energy produced through burning coal or fossil fuels, the two main sources of electricity generation in the world.

Bush himself has said that “It is time for this country to start building nuclear power plants again,” arguing that nuclear power would reduce the country’s dependency on oil and natural gas.

And the United States possesses nuclear weapons. Is it necessary to recall that it is the only country that has dropped nuclear bombs on people, when it brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese people at the end of World War II...?

As long as oil, natural gas and coal are scarce and their economic cost and environmental costs are rising, and until a transition can be made toward more secure and less polluting sources of energy, a growing number of countries will seek to use nuclear power.

Hugo Chávez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, for example, has affirmed his country’s interest in developing this option – and that of solar energy – for diversifying its energy sources. He said clearly that this technology would be used for “peace and energy,” not for producing nuclear weapons.

While Cuba is not developing nuclear energy at this time, President Fidel Castro has reaffirmed his revolutionary government’s position on this issue, when he spoke by telephone with President Ahmadinejad on January 4 and said: “Iran, like any other country, has the right to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and to have access to the modern technology used for this product.”