US sanctions Chinese companies out of spite

It's no coincidence that during Ahmedinejad's latest trip to China for an SCO meeting the US imposed sanctions on four Chinese companies for "supplying Iran with missile-related parts and items that could contribute to weapons of mass destruction."

Not surprisingly, China did not hesitate to express its displeasure.

China lashed out at the United States for freezing the U.S. assets of four Chinese companies and not allowing them to conduct transactions with Americans.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu says Washington imposed the sanctions without showing evidence of wrongdoing.

"The U.S. wrong practice severely undermines our non- proliferation cooperation and will not benefit the development of bilateral relations," she said. "We require the U.S. side to change their practice and abandon completely the wrong practice of sanction and pressure."

So, the US - an avowed champion of globalization and human rights - not only detains suspects without charge or trial, it sanctions foreign companies without showing evidence of wrongdoing. To make matters worse, it couldn't be more clear that they did it out of spite.

This week, Iran's president is in China for meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which has indicated it will invite Iran to formally join the group of Central Asian nations, Russia, and China.

U.S. officials have criticized the SCO invitation to Iran. Last week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was strange for an organization that is supposed to fight terrorism to invite, what he called, one of the leading "terrorist nations" to its meeting.

Let's not forget that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.

This latest development will not help to further US interests in the international arena. If anything, it may trigger a string of economic retaliation by disaffected countries.