Ahmadinejad: West Missing Opportunities for Resolving Nuclear Standoff with Iran

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the western states have missed several opportunities for resolving their problems with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program in the past, and underlined that now the West has no way but accepting a nuclear Iran.
“In the past there were ways to settle the issue but these opportunities were not taken (by the West),” Ahmadinejad said, addressing a number of Russian academics and experts in Moscow on Tuesday.

“From my point of view, the nuclear issue was resolved four years ago (when Iran removed all the 6 ambiguities that the IAEA had about its nuclear program within an action plan), but they sought to prevent us from becoming a nuclear state. Nonetheless, we grew nuclear and they cannot make us backtrack,” he added.

“(Now) the only solution to the issue is accepting a completely peaceful nuclear Iran, and the best state is that we leave standoff and move towards cooperation, and this will happen.”

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 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.

Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.