US Politics |OT|

[SvennoJ]

No War With Iran: Emergency Rally in NYC After US Bombing

Protests are happening across the country today in response to last night's US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. BT is streaming live from the emergency action in Times Square, NYC.

Protesters say, "Trump’s unprovoked bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities is an outright war crime. It violates the UN Charter, international law and the U.S. Constitution. It threatens to set into motion a regional or even global war with massive casualties, nuclear radiation, and catastrophic consequences."

If Iran withdraws from the NPT, ‘other countries could follow suit’

If Iran left the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it would remove its “legal obligation not to build a nuclear weapon”, said Mark Fitzpatrick, an associate fellow for strategy, technology and arms control at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Iran would be “free to engage in nuclear activities without the oversight monitoring of the International Atomic Energy Agency”, he told Al Jazeera.

“Iran has been threatening to pull out of the NPT for several years … as leverage in diplomacy”, said Fitzpatrick, adding that “given the enormity of the situation that Iran faces”, the time has likely passed for such a threat.

Fitzpatrick, who is also a former director of IISS’s non-proliferation programme, said he is concerned that if Iran were to withdraw from the NPT, other countries might follow suit.

He said nations like Saudi Arabia have vowed to match Iran if it were to pursue nuclear weapons, so it might take Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT as a signal that Iran was seeking “to pursue nuclear weapons in secret”.