Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Dec. 20 Irans former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced on Tuesday that Tehran was determined and resolute in its sensitive nuclear work, including its nuclear fuel cycle activities which could lead to the development of the A bomb, despite the looming threat of referral to the United Nations Security Council. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Dec. 20 Irans former President Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani announced on Tuesday that Tehran was determined and resolute in its sensitive nuclear work, including its nuclear fuel cycle activities which could lead to the development of the A bomb, despite the looming threat of referral to the United Nations Security Council.
We are completely serious, resolute, and determined to reap the benefits of our legal rights to make peaceful use of nuclear energy and achieve the fuel nuclear cycle, Rafsanjani, who chairs the State Expediency Council, told the Dutch ambassador to Tehran, Hein de Vries, the state-run news agency ISNA reported.
The senior cleric said that pressure on Tehran by the European Union would simply make it more difficult to negotiate a diplomatic solution to end the deadlock.
The European Union and the United States believe that Tehran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program under the cover of developing nuclear technology.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has called on Iran to suspend uranium conversion, a stepping stone in the nuclear fuel cycle. European and U.S. threats of Security Council referral have fallen on deaf ears in Tehran, which is now threatening to go further by carrying out uranium enrichment.
IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei recently told the London daily Independent that any country capable of enriching uranium would be only several months away from obtaining the nuclear bomb. I know they are trying to acquire the full fuel cycle. I know that acquiring the full fuel cycle means that a country is months away from nuclear weapons, and that applies to Iran and everybody else, he told the British paper.
EU nuclear negotiators are set to meet with their Iranian counterparts on Wednesday in Vienna to try to muster up an eleventh hour deal to salvage two years of failed talks and diplomatic manoeuvrings. EU diplomats, however, have already said that they are pessimistic of any successful outcome.
