Senior MP Urges West to Show Pragmatic Approach, Annul Sanctions against Iran

Chairman of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi called on the western states that are due to attend talks with Iran in Kazakhstan on Tuesday to accept the realities and annul the sanctions they have imposed on Iran.

“I think that pragmatism of the Group 5+1 (the US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany) will help the negotiations succeed,” Boroujerdi said in an interview with the Iran-based Arabic-language al-Alam TV channel on Monday, and added, “They should accept the realities.”

He referred to Iran’s astonishing progress, specially in the civilian nuclear technology, and said, the western powers can no more impose their will on the Iranian nation and force it to halt its nuclear program.

Boroujerdi said that if the G5+1 wants the suspension of Iran’s 20% uranium enrichment program, it should annul all the international and unilateral sanctions against Tehran. Yet he underlined that this is his personal view and any decision in this regard should be adopted by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) which is in charge of the nuclear dossier.

Iran’s deputy chief negotiator Ali Baqeri and EU foreign policy deputy chief Helga Schmitt in a phone talk on February 5 agreed that the next round of talks between Tehran and the Group 5+1 be held in Almaty, Kazakhstan, on February 26.

The last round of talks between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany was held in Moscow in June.

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 and the western embargos 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 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.