Image of the Day

Cartoon by Carlos Latuff.
A major theme of this year’s US presidential election campaign was
the threat to world peace allegedly posed by Iran’s nuclear program.
Democrat President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt
Romney competed to take the hardest line.
Obama boasted of organising the “strongest coalition and the
strongest sanctions against Iran in history” and promised to “take all
options necessary” to force Iran to abandon its nuclear program.
This narrative relies on the false assertion that Iran is developing
nuclear weapons with which to attack Israel and the US. It casts the US
and Israel as defenders of international peace and security, when a military
strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would constitute an illegal act of
aggression.
While the hype about Iran continues, negotiations on a proposal that
could actually reduce the threat of nuclear conflict in the region ― the
establishment of a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone ― have been
sidelined.
A conference on the proposal set to take place in Finland in
December this year, to which Iran agreed, has reportedly been cancelled
by the US and Israel.
Potential for nuclear weapons-free Middle East
The proposal to establish a Middle East Nuclear Weapons Free Zone
has garnered international support since the United Nations General
Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution, sponsored by Iran and Egypt,