Official: West Fearful of Iran’s Scientific Progress

A senior Iranian official underlined that the West has tried every trick in the book to prevent the country from making progress in scientific and technological fields, but to no avail.

“The global arrogance is not afraid of Iran’s number of centrifuges, but it is fearful of the country’s economic and scientific capabilities because it knows Iran is the stable island of the region,” member of Iran’s Expediency Council Mohammad Hossein Saffar-Harandi said in the city of Golpayegan, Central Iran, on Sunday.

He said Iran’s power has grown much through its major scientific advancements, specially in the hi-tech, reminding that Iranian experts have pushed the country into the seventh stand in the field of nanotechnology in the world, gained access to modern technologies and sent rockets and satellites into the space.

Last month, Iran’s Police Chief Brigadier General Esmayeel Ahmadi Moqaddam stressed the country’s great progress in different scientific and technological fields, and said the western sanctions and pressures exerted on Iran on the nuclear pretext are all meant to stop this trend.

“We are moving ahead in biotechnology, nanotechnology and nuclear energy at a high speed and our scientific progress, made despite all the sanctions, pressures, enmity and propaganda against the Islamic Republic, is surprising foreign observers,” Ahmadi Moqaddam said, addressing a gathering in Tehran.

Stressing that the main reason for the imposition of certain sanctions is blocking Iran’s progress, he said, “Today, the nuclear issue is nothing other than an excuse and if this pretext is removed, they will certainly find another one.”

His remarks came after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei underlined that the dispute over nuclear program is politicized, used as a pretext to put pressure on the Islamic Republic, slow down its scientific/technological progress, and contain its influence across the region and beyond.

According to Ayatollah Khamenei in 2014, even if Iran and the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, Britain and France plus Germany) clinch an accord, the West will come up with new excuses to antagonize Tehran.

The 10th round of negotiations between Iran and the six world powers was held in Vienna from November 18 to 24, where the seven nations decided to extend the talks until July after they failed to strike an agreement.

The latest round of the nuclear talks between the two sides was held at the level of deputy foreign ministers in Geneva, Switzerland, on January 18.

The two sides decided to continue their talk early in February.

Both Iran and the G5+1 negotiators have underlined that cutting a final deal before the July 10 deadline is possible.