Tehran NAM Summit: the Failure of Anti-Iranian Plots

Tehran NAM Summit: the Failure of Anti-Iranian Plotshttp://dissidentvoice.org/2012/08/tehran-nam-summit-the-failure-of-anti-iranian-plots/

by Kourosh Ziabari

The 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement kicked off in the Iranian capital of Tehran on August 25 and the heads of state and government of the 120-member organization are slated to meet on August 30 and 31 to discuss the most important international developments ranging from the violence and crisis in Syria, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to Iran’s nuclear program. During the summit, the rotating presidency of NAM will be conferred to Iran by Egypt which has held the movement’s presidency since 2009.

Consisting of nearly two-thirds of the United Nations body, the Non-Aligned Movement is the second largest international organization, and its members are said to be politically independent of the world’s great powers; namely, the United States and its European allies. As the Cuban revolutionary President Fidel Castro stated, the ultimate objective of the movement is to foster “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.”

The United States and Israel have been intensively trying to dissuade the world leaders and politicians from attending the summit through running an all-out media campaign aimed at derailing and undermining the largest diplomatic gathering in Iran’s contemporary history; however, as Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi pointed out,  more than 100 countries will be sending delegations to the summit of which 51 countries will take part in the level of president, Prime Minister and vice president.

This year’s summit is important for Iran from different viewpoints.