Defiant?

I wonder what CNN sees as “defiant” in its article: Iran defiant on right to nuclear power

(CNN) — Iran’s government spokesman on Saturday reiterated its right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, a state-run news agency reported.

Gholam-Hossein Elham made the remark to reporters a day after Iran delivered a response to a world powers proposal that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment in exchange for economic and other incentives, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

World leaders, such as those from the West, the U.N. Security Council and Israel, have been suspicious that Iran is using its nuclear program to develop weaponry. Iran has consistently disputed that and said it plans to use nuclear power for energy.

Elham said “Iran’s stand on the issue has not changed” and that Iran “will not withdraw from legitimate rights of its people,” IRNA reported.

“Tehran’s stand is based on the legitimate rights of the Iranian nation as well as the international regulations. The Iranian nation will continue with the path determined by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei,” Elham said.

The remarks in the IRNA report are paraphrased comments.

Iran has the right to develop nuclear power under the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty which it signed.  They have UN inspectors in the country and more thorough inspections than are actually required.  They have held tours of their nuclear facilities with the media in tow, and released pictures to the world.  How is this being defiant?  Since when is following the rules being defiant?

Israel, Pakistan, and India have not signed the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, do not allow inspectors into their facilities, have developed nuclear weapons, and, in the case of Pakistan, have spread nuclear weapons technology to other countries.

Who is following the international rules, and who is in defiance?

Given what the US government has been up to lately, we don’t even have standing any more to complain about human rights violations in other countries, like Iran.

Recently it was confirmed that what all of us who had SERE training suspected when on July 2 the New York Times reported”  China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The Air Force study was used to design the SERE program to help air crews deal with capture.

Let’s not forget the umbrage of the Hedgemony over the Amnesty International report that referred to Guantánamo as part of a US “gulag”.  On June 1, 2005 CNN reported that Rumsfeld rejects Amnesty’s ‘gulag’ label

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday dismissed as “reprehensible” Amnesty International’s characterization of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as “the gulag of our times.”

What was reprehensible was the conduct of Rumsfeld and the those who obeyed his illegal orders in defiance of US law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and international treaties.

The people of Iran deserve more freedom and a more open and free society, but they need to do the work so that it will be their government.  You can’t impose democracy and more than you can freedom.  To work they have to come from within people, because both are risky and people need to be willing to take the risk.