Hard-line cleric says Iran’s nuke stance forced EU retreat

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Nov. 28 – A senior Iranian cleric boasted on Monday that Iran’s uncompromising stance regarding the international deadlock over its suspected
nuclear weapons program forced the European Union to retreat over its threats to refer Tehran’s nuclear file to the United Nations Security Council for possible trade sanctions. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Nov. 28 – A senior Iranian cleric boasted on Monday that Iran’s uncompromising stance regarding the international deadlock over its suspected nuclear weapons program forced the European Union to retreat over its threats to refer Tehran’s nuclear file to the United Nations Security Council for possible trade sanctions.

Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah-Yazdi told a gathering in the central city of Arak that Iranian nuclear negotiators’ defence of the honour of the people of Iran led to the European retreat.

Europe’s “big three” – France, Germany, and the United Kingdom – which led talks with Tehran on behalf of the EU, previously insisted that the Islamic Republic had to suspend nuclear enrichment activities it unilaterally commenced in breach of its previous agreement with the EU-3 or else it would face Security Council action.

In a major concession to Tehran, the EU-3 lifted their objection to the breach and the countries’ Foreign Ministers wrote a letter to Ali Larijani, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and the secretary general of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), asking the Islamic Republic to return to the negotiating table.

Mesbah-Yazdi said that the country’s officials were religiously duty bound to protect the honour of Muslims in their negotiations with the international community.

“Regarding the country’s nuclear affair, the nuclear negotiators’ protection of the dignity of Islamic society led to the adversaries of the Islamic republic retreating from their stances”, the hard-line cleric said, adding, “Presently, only the path of Islam stands in the way of the dishonourable and identity-lacking culture of the West. The West is trying to remove this obstacle from its path in any way possible”.

Mesbah Yazdi, an extremist even by the standards of Iran’s ayatollahs, is notorious for regularly advocating the use of suicide operations to fight “the enemies of Islam”.

The radical cleric, who is the ultra-conservative ideological mentor hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said that Iran could not deal with countries bent on the destruction of Islam with gentility.

He identified Western influence on Iranian youths as a key danger to the existence of the Islamic Republic.

In July, Iran Focus revealed for the first time that the radical cleric’s weekly paper Parto-Sokhan was running weekly advertisements with an application form to enlist suicide volunteers against the America forces in Iraq and “Jews in occupied Palestine”.

The radical Islamist cleric holds unusual sway over Iran’s President and the direction of the hard-line government that was installed earlier this year.