While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen to defy Western plans to deepen sanctions against his country for its contentious nuclear programme, criticism is growing louder at home for exposing Iran to avoidable risks and hardship.

Ahead of the meeting in London of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany, to consider punitive action against Tehran for ignoring an ultimatum to halt uranium enrichment, Ahmadinejad was quoted by the ‘Fars’ news agency as saying: “Iran’s nuclear train is racing ahead and it does not have any brake or rear gear because we have uninstalled and dropped them away.” They (the West) claim that they support dialogue and logic but when they are about to lose the game they resort to military force. Yet, they should know that even their weapons are of no efficiency today.”

Ruling hardliners and conservatives starting with Ahmadinejad staunchly deny that sanctions can cause irreparable damage to the nation and the Supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei has described “propaganda about existence of a state of emergency in Iran’’ as false. Yet, the impact of sanctions is beginning to be felt by ordinary Iranians. “What good is nuclear fuel for an unfinished nuclear plant in Bushehr going to bring to us if our people have to go under sanctions and get poorer and poorer everyday?” the director of an importing enterprise in Tehran told IPS, asking to remain anonymous. Iran is already under limited sanctions with a December 23 United Nations resolution banning the supply to Iran of materials and technology that could be used for its nuclear or missile programmes and freezing the assets of ten top Iranian companies and 12 entities.

Discussion of the country’s nuclear policies by political parties, individuals and the press has long been banned by the Supreme National Security Council, the body responsible for all nuclear policy making and negotiations.

But voices are beginning to be heard. “There is no doubt that nuclear energy is our inalienable right,” the Rooz portal quoted Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel peace laureate and rights activist as saying. “But we have other more important, more urgent inalienable rights like the right to welfare, peace, healthcare and freedom. One right can’t be sacrificed to

the other.”

There is consensus among Iranian political parties on the nation’s ‘inalienable’ right to possess and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, but many including the Islamic Revolution’s Mujahedin Organisation are now questioning the current policies that have led the country to a crisis. They are demanding a return to the course taken by Iran’s former nuclear negotiation team led by Hasan Rohani under the reformist regime of former president Mohammad Khatami.

“The nation is facing a threatening course in the international scene,” the Etemad Melli, the mouthpiece of Karrubi’s reformist Etemad Melli Party warned in an editorial last Saturday. “In spite of certain unfounded optimism about the role of of nations like China and Russia in postponing or reducing the intensity of a second Chapter 7 Unied Nations resolution against Iran, one cannot really place too much hope in them,” the editorial said. — IPS