Obama continues animosity towards Iran

US President Barack Obama continued his administration's hostile approach towards Tehran by extending a Carter Administration executive order freezing all Iranian government assets held under US jurisdiction."Because our relations with Iran have not yet returned to normal, and the process of implementing the agreements with Iran, dated January 19, 1981, is still underway, the national emergency declared on November 14, 1979, must continue in effect beyond November 14, 2011," Obama said in a notice to Congress Monday. The decision is technical, as the US president extends the sanctions, introduced after US embassy staff were taken hostage in Tehran in November 1979, every year. The US and Iran broke off diplomatic ties in 1979, when Iranian students seized the US spying center at its embassy in Tehran and held 52 US diplomats hostage for 444 days.In January 1981, the US and Iran signed agreements with Algerian mediation. The agreements were called upon to resolve the crisis with American hostages still held then by Iranians. They also contained a few basic principles to heal the bilateral relations. The US has since initiated the introduction of international UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. The West suspects Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program, but the Islamic Republic insists it needs nuclear power solely for civilian purposes. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries.