- Iran has urged the United Nations to undertake a probe to find out the actual reasons for the U.S.-led Western military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.N. Secretary- General's office said on Tuesday. Ban ki-Moon's office confirmed that it had received a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urging the world body to set up a fact-finding team for the purpose, but declined comment.
Ahmadinejad sought to portray the military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan against a historical backdrop saying invasions only served to victimize people in the region and alleged that U.S. and NATO tactics used in fighting terrorism were a resounding failure.
Bilateral ties between Washington and Tehran were fraught with tension since the overthrow of Iran's openly pro-West Shah government following the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Lately, relations have been further soured over Iran's disputed nuclear program with the U.S. engaged in efforts to drum up support for tougher sanctions on the Islamic Republic for failure to cap its nuclear program.
However, the timing of Ahmadinejad's letter and the reasons which prompted the missive are still not clear, other than it coincided with the ongoing Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington from which both Iran and North Korea have been left out.
The U.S.-led West suspects that Iran's nuclear program is aimed at securing nuclear weapons despite Tehran's claims that it is meant for peaceful purposes.
Even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year came up with a proposal allowing Iran to swap low- enriched uranium for nuclear fuel from France and Russia as part of its efforts to break the impasse over the nuclear row, Tehran's insistance on the handover taking place inside Iranian territory to ensure fairness was rejected by the U.S. and other Westen nations.
On Monday, Iran's representative to the U.N., Mohammad Khazaee, launched a tirade against the U.S. terming its new nulear weapons policy unveiled by Obama as "state terrorism."
Meanwhile, Iran has called a nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran on April 17-18 titled "Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None" to be attended by delegates from Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) as well as international treaties such as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty(CTBT).
Tatarewicz: Now is the time to pepper politicians with letters telling them to back a UN investigation into why America led an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq, two countries that did it no harm or posed any threat to the West. Up until now the reasons given for the two wars by government and the Zionist-controlled mainstream media have been nonsense.