WASHINGTON, Sept 5: President George Bush on Tuesday branded Iran’s president a tyrant and compared leaders in Tehran to Al Qaeda militants who cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons.
“America will not bow down to tyrants,” the US president said in the second of a series of election-year speeches defending his handling of the ‘war on terrorism’ and Iraq.
“The world’s free nations will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.”
Mr Bush accused Iran of funding Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other groups ‘to attack Israel and America by proxy’ and said Hezbollah was second only to Al Qaeda in the number of US citizens it has killed.
“Like Al Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims. They want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East,” said Mr Bush.
But, he said, Shia ‘extremists’ have done something Al Qaeda only dreams of by taking over Iran in 1979, ‘subjugating its proud people to a regime of tyranny and using that nation’s resources to fund the spread of terror and to pursue their radical agenda’.
“The Iranian regime and its terrorist proxies have demonstrated their willingness to kill Americans, and now the Iranian regime is pursuing nuclear weapons,” said Mr Bush.
The US president quoted Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying, in an Aug 15 speech, ‘If you would like to have good relations with the Iranian nation in the future, bow down before the greatness of the Iranian nation and surrender’.
“If you don’t accept to do this, the Iranian nation will force you to surrender and bow down,” he quoted the Iranian leader as saying.
“America will not bow down to tyrants,” he replied.
SANCTIONS: The time has come for sanctions on Iran over its atomic program, the US ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog said on Tuesday.
“The time has come for the (United Nations) Security Council to back international diplomacy with international sanctions,” US ambassador Gregory Schulte told a meeting of a foreign press association in Vienna.
He said that Iran’s actions ‘pose a threat to international peace and security’.
Mr Schulte said a report last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency had ‘in just over five pages’ listed ‘a dozen examples of Iran’s failure to provide access (to IAEA inspectors) to information, facilities and individuals’.
The IAEA report confirmed that Iran has failed to suspend uranium enrichment, despite calls from world powers as well as the Security Council for this strategic nuclear fuel work to be halted. Enrichment makes nuclear power fuel but also atom bomb material.
By choosing not to suspend, Mr Schulte added, ‘Iran’s leaders are making the negative choice, a course of confrontation over one of negotiation’.
“This course will bring not reward but isolation and sanction.”—AFP
