President: Iran Firmly Defends N. Rights

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani underlined Tehran’s willingness to obviate ambiguities about its peaceful nuclear program, but meantime, reiterated Iran’s firmness in defending its nuclear rights based on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
“Iran considers the nuclear rights stipulated in the NPT as its inalienable right and is ready to obviate the ambiguities within the framework of talks with the Group 5+1 (the US, France, Russia, China and Britain plus Germany),” Rouhani said in a meeting with the Netherlands’s new Ambassador to Tehran, Johans Duma, in Tehran on Monday.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran is determined to have its nuclear issue settled in a short period of time,” he added.

President Rouhani also blasted the cruel sanctions imposed on Iran by the US and its allies, and said the embargos which have even troubled the Iranian people’s access to their needed medicines are a violation of the human rights.

Iran says its nuclear program is a peaceful drive to produce electricity so that the world’s fourth-largest crude exporter can sell more of its oil and gas abroad. Tehran also stresses that the country is pursuing a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

The US and its western allies allege that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program while they have never presented corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations against the Islamic Republic.

Iran is 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, saying the demand is politically tainted and illogical.

Iran has so far ruled out halting or limiting its nuclear work in exchange for trade and other incentives, saying that renouncing its rights under the NPT would encourage the world powers to put further pressure on the country and would not lead to a change in the West’s hardline stance on Tehran.

Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.