US Analyst: Iranians Entitled To Doubt US Sincerity

Tehran, Oct 12, IRNA – Vice President and editor at The Future of Freedom Foundation in the United States Sheldon Richman said Iranians are entitled to doubt the reconciling remarks of Washington. In an article published recently, he believed that contrary to the recent fashion which says whether the US can trust Iran, the better way is to ask the question whether Iran could ever trust the US. He said the US president should disregard war-mongers and choose the option of peace with Iran. As for one reason for distrusting the US, he pointed to the covert and proxy war against Iran Washington has been engaging since 1979 with the objective of bringing about a regime change and installation of a government that will loyally serve the US. He pointed out that “this war began after the popular overthrow of the US government’s client, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose brutal regime had been preserved by the Eisenhower administration and CIA by driving Iran’s popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq from office in 1953”. The analyst further pointed to the US governments ceaseless efforts to change the regime in Iran since 1979 in various ways including supplying the Saddam regime with intelligence and chemical weapons during its war against Iran and also the shot down of an Iranian passenger plane within Iran's airspace, killing 290 civilians by the US Navy. Richman went on to focus on the plots by the US and its Middle East puppet regime of Israel against Iran carried out through such insurgent terrorist groups as Jundallah and the Mujahedeen-e Khalq Organization (MKO), the assassination of Iranian scientists and the cyber warfare. “Then there are the economic sanctions. In international law, sanctions are an act of war. … They aim to deprive a population of food, medicine, and other needed goods….. Thus, sanctions inflict harm on innocent individuals, with the greatest damage to children, the elderly, and the sick. That is cruel and unconscionable. It must stop, yet some in Congress would toughen the sanctions further.” The analyst stressed that “as one can see, the Iranians are the aggrieved party in the conflict with the United States. Thus they have good reason to doubt the sincerity of recent conciliatory statements, especially when President Obama insists that “all options are on the table” — which logically includes a military and even nuclear attack? Obama should match the conciliatory words with action.” As to the claims of Iran’s producing nuclear bombs, Richman noted that there were no clues found ever even by the US intelligence service to prove the claim, stressing that all Iran’s nuclear activities have been under direct supervision of the UN nuclear watchdog plus the fact that the country is a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty./end