Reading Progress:

So Iran Thinks It Has a Right to Enrich Uranium. Is Iran Wrong?

by Mar 5, 2015Articles, Foreign Policy0 comments

The New York Times building in New York City (Haxorjoe/Wikimedia Commons)
Why does the New York Times so persistently refuse to disclose that Iran is correct: the NPT does recognize it has a right to enrich uranium.

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Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s melodramatic speech to the US Congress, the New York Times, in an article about the supposed “Chasm” between the Israeli Prime Minister and President Barack Obama on the issue of Iran, explains that Obama would like to limit Iran’s nuclear program, while Netanyahu would like to end it. The Times continues:

The problem with the dismantle-it-all approach is that the Iranians have made clear they would never sign such a deal. For all the suspicions swirling around Iran’s program, the country is a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Iran argues gives it a “right to enrich.”

This is a standard tactic employed by the mainstream media to manufacture consent for US government policy. It’s the same tactic as when they describe East Jerusalem as “disputed” land and disguise the fact that it is occupied territory under international law by characterizing this merely as the Palestinians’ view.

Notice that the Times characterizes it as merely Iran’s view that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) recognizes that it has a right to enrich uranium, hence relegating it to an irrelevant opinion.

But it is not a question of opinion, but of fact. Does the NPT recognize such a right, or doesn’t it?

The US mainstream media never tell you the answer to this question. It’s the kind of question that just isn’t asked. Like, in the wake of the Disney outbreak, “Does the humoral immunity conferred by the measles vaccine wane over time?”

You’re just not supposed to consider it.

So let’s consider it. Here is what the NPT actually has to say about it:

Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes….

The Times is not lying. It is true that Iran argues that the NPT says this.

But why has Times so persistently refused to disclose to its readers that Iran is right?

(BTW, if you want to read a spot-on commentary about Bibi Netanyahu’s Congressional theater, look no further than the Iranian Ambassador to the UN’s op-ed in the NYT.)

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