NCRI – A top State Department official suggested Wednesday that European and other nations might curb trade and investment in Iran if the next round of negotiations does not succeed in halting Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons, reported the Associated Press.
"All of us around the world have to think about how we can influence that government," said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns. "And that is certainly one way that many countries around the world can do that."
If diplomacy fails, Burns said, a growing number of countries is likely to consider such economic weapons as curbs on trade and investments.
"There is a growing diplomatic coalition to apply curbs, and other countries have trade and other weapons," Burns said, contrasting their ongoing commerce with Iran to a virtual U.S. freeze.
Burns cited assurances from India that it had no plans for an energy agreement with Iran as an example of growing dissatisfaction with Tehran worldwide.
"There was a time when the United States and a few other countries were a lonely voice," Burns said. "That’s no longer the case."
Burns stressed that Iran was determined to build nuclear weapons, was the most avid supporter of terror groups in the world, and had a dreadful human rights record, engaging in torture and summary executions.
"Oppressive regimes do not survive forever," Burns told reporters.
In response to a question as to whether the U.S. would pursue a policy of "regime change" in Iran as it did in deposing President Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq, he said, "That is clearly the job of the Iranian people.”
The current policy of appeasement pursued by the EU has been proven to be a failure following the appointment of Ahmadinejad as the mullahs’ new president. In the meantime the foreign intervention to bring change in Iran has been rejected by Iranians.
In December 2004 Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran told a meeting of European MPs in Strasbourg that the solution to Iran problem is democratic change through Iranian people and their resistance. To this end she has been calling on Western governments to stop appeasing the mullahs and remove the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), main Iranian opposition group, from the terror list.
