Iran’s leaders continue to make clear their determination to press forward with uranium enrichment and to expand their nuclear program under the deal they negotiated with the Obama administration a week or two ago in Geneva. The semiofficial FARS news service reports:
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani underlined that Tehran is determined to forge ahead with its uranium enrichment program for peaceful purposes, and stressed that the size of uranium enrichment operation depends on the country’s nuclear facilities’ needs.
In an interview with The Financial Times published on Friday, President Rouhani underlined that Iran will not dismantle its nuclear facilities, and stressed that the size of uranium enrichment should be determined by Iran’s domestic needs for nuclear power.
Asked by the newspaper whether dismantling Iran’s atomic facilities was a “red line” for the Islamic republic of Iran, the Iranian president replied, “100 percent”.
This was obviously intended to ridicule the hapless Obama administration’s “red line” on Syria. President Rouhani–you know, the “moderate”–also made the gibe on Iranian television:
“Enrichment, which is one part of our nuclear right, will continue, it is continuing today and it will continue tomorrow and our enrichment will never stop and this is our red line,” Rouhani said on a state TV channel on Tuesday night.
Iran maintains that the permanent right to enrich uranium was guaranteed by President Obama in the Geneva agreement:
In relevant remarks on Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign minister and senior nuclear negotiator Abbas Araqchi said the recent nuclear deal signed between Tehran and the world powers in Geneva secures Iran’s right of enrichment based on the NPT [non-proliferation treaty].
Commenting on the US Secretary of State John Kerry’s words that “the nuclear deal with Iran doesn’t include the right to enrich uranium”, Araqchi explained that there is some misunderstanding over the issue.
Actually, there isn’t any misunderstanding. Iran is right, as we wrote here. The agreement does confirm Iran’s right to continue to enrich uranium, now and forever. That the Obama administration would try to deny what the agreement plainly states testifies to its confidence that American reporters are too stupid, or too corrupt, to read the agreement–a whopping four pages–and truthfully inform the American people what it says.
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