Cleric Underscores Indigenized Nature of Iran’s N. Program

Tehran’s provisional Friday Prayers Leader Hojjatoleslam Kazzem Sediqi appreciated the country’s young scientists for their achievements in different fields, and stressed the home-made and peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program.
“In the past 35 years, we alone and without foreign assistance managed to indigenize nuclear know-how,” Hojjatoleslam Sediqi said, addressing a large and fervent congregation of people on Tehran University campus on Friday.

He also referred to the country’s achievement in nanotechnology, nuclear and industrial fields, and said no country can be found to overcome problems as speedily as Iran did.

Washington and its western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Tehran has dismissed west’s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians’ national resolve to continue the path.

The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.