Susan Smith

FRANCE, UK AND GERMANY slammed Iran at the United Nations this week for not allowing in nuclear inspectors recently—but China and Russia pointed out that the US and Israel have literally been dropping bombs on those facilities for more than a year. The argument that broke out at the United Nations on Tuesday was shocking for many reasons. Western countries said they had the right to hit Iran with even more sanctions, because it has not fulfilled all the requirements of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed in 2015. But China and Russia pointed out that the agreement was clearly altered by a key signatory, the United States, who in 2018 abandoned the plan and hit Iran with another long list of sanctions--and then attacked the country with missiles. The Chinese delegate said the “root causes of the current predicament” are the United States’ withdrawal from the agreement, and its subsequent behaviour. Iran’s representative said: “Iran is victim of war, not the aggressor”. . TWO BIG ISSUES There are two big issues here, which should be highlighted. First, the west paints Iran as a recalcitrant nation which doesn’t let inspectors visit. This is not true. (It’s a perfect description of Israel, but that country gets a free pass from the west on this topic.) The International Atomic Energy Agency admits that its inspectors have spent more than 14,000 calendar days in Iran, conducting verification activities in more than 1,400 facilities and locations. The IAEA then chose to withdraw in June 2025, 16 months ago, because the US and Israel suddenly started bombing those facilities. This clearly was not Iran’s fault. The US attacks and threats of even larger airstrikes on Iran are continuing to this day. . RUSSIA’S DEFENCE Russia also defended Iran at the United Nations discussion. “Today, we have already heard another round of fabrications about the absence of IAEA verification activities in Iran,” said the Russian Federation's delegate. He pointed out that Western countries preferred not to notice that, even after the first series of strikes by the United States and Israel against Iran’s nuclear plants in June 2025, Iran continued to engage with the agency, including enabling inspections at facilities not hit by airstrikes. . ISRAEL NOT MENTIONED The other big issue is Israel. Virtually all the accusations unfairly aimed at Iran are actually true of Israel—which clearly DOES have an illegal secret nuclear weapons program, which DOES ban inspectors from their facilities, and which DOES ignore global non-proliferation treaties. But western leaders, for unclear reasons, will not criticize Israel for this. . BARGAINING CHIP After years of unfair treatment, Iranian scientists enriched some of their uranium to the 60 per cent level, as a bargaining chip. This is above the level used for civilian purposes, and sent a message saying that Iranian scientists have the same capability as Israeli scientists, but have chosen not to create nuclear weapons—as the US director of intelligence confirmed. The United Kingdom’s representative this week criticized Iran for this, saying “there is no credible civilian justification” for enriching uranium to the 60 per cent level. Yes, that’s the point. Every western mainstream media outlet has religiously printed US assertions that they are attacking Iran because they want to stop it acquiring nuclear weapons. But I have never seen a single article or column pointing out that the US-Israel attacks on Iran have clearly proved the opposite—which is that Iran needs nuclear weapons to stop violent rogue nations attacking it. . .