Iran to file formal complaint over US pledge

IRAN will file a formal complaint with the UN against the United States, after President Barack Obama excluded Iran from a pledge not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them, the Foreign Ministry said yesterday.

Foreign Ministry spokes-man Ramin Mehmanparast said Obama’s implicit threat to use nuclear weapons against Iran was a “threat to global peace and security,” according to Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency.

Earlier yesterday, 222 lawmakers in Iran’s 290-seat parliament called on the Iranian government to file the complaint. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, also said Obama’s threatening language is proof that the US cannot be trusted.

Obama announced America’s new nuclear strategy on Tuesday, including a vow not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. Iran, however, was pointedly excepted from that pledge, along with North Korea, because Washington accuses them of not co-operating with the international community on non-proliferation standards.

Obama’s new nuclear strategy turns the US focus away from the Cold War threats and instead aims to stop the spread of atomic weapons to rogue states or terrorists. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has said the focus would now be on terror groups such as al-Qaida as well as North Korea’s nuclear build-up and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran, meanwhile, is pushing ahead with its nuclear work. On Friday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled a third generation of centrifuge that will be used to accelerate a uranium enrichment programme that is of central concern to the US and its allies.

Enrichment is used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants, but it also provides a possible pathway to nuclear weapons development. Three sets of UN sanctions have failed to pressure Iran to stop enrichment. The United States is leading the push for a fourth round of penalties.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a TV news programme yesterday that Iran’s claimed advancements should be taken “with more than a grain of salt.”

“But in fact their belligerence is helping to make our case every single day,” Clinton told ABC’s This week. “Countries that might have had doubts about Iranian intentions, who might have even questioned whether Iran was seeking nuclear weapons, are having those doubts dispelled as much by the evidence we present as by what comes out of the leadership of Iran.”