Iran’s top nuclear man accuses U.S. of blustering

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 23 – Iran’s new hard-line secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and chief nuclear negotiator said on Tuesday that the United States’ strategy vis-à-vis Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program was not to wage a war, but to force the Islamic Republic to “commit suicide”. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Aug. 23 – Iran’s new hard-line secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and chief nuclear negotiator said on Tuesday that the United States’ strategy vis-à-vis Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program was not to wage a war, but to force the Islamic Republic to “commit suicide”.

“Today, America’s strategy is to hold its stick in the air and bluster weak countries into committing suicide and submitting to its will”, said Ali Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guards commander who recently took over the post of secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council. The SNSC is the Islamic Republic’s highest decision-making body on security-related issues.

“But we mustn’t be afraid of the Americans’ loud noise and psychological operations and we must understand that this is their tactics and under no circumstances do they plan to start a war”, Larijani told a crowd in Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Prayers Hall.

“The Americans want to have their own way of life dominate the world, but they have been confronted with the Islamic way of life that Iran is representing. Their problem with the type of Islam ruling Iran is in its differences with other types of Islam in other Islamic countries. Islam in other Islamic countries does not create a problem for the United States”, Larijani said.

The hard-line confidant of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned that the United States’ greatest threat to the clerical regime in Iran was its attempt to infiltrate mosques.

“We must take note that their focus is very much on mosques, and unfortunately, we do not have as much a clear sight of the mosques as they have and we are unaware of the potentials of the mosques”.

The ultra-Islamist Larijani became a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and later headed the Islamic Republic’s state broadcasting until last year.

As the new chief of Iran’s nuclear negotiations team and at the head of the country’s highest decision-making body on security matters, Larijani is expected to bring his characteristically rigid ideological outlook to the job.