West must accept Iran is ‘master of enrichment

Iran’s ambassador to the UN nuclear watchdog insists that Tehran will not bow to the West’s pressure on Tehran’s abandoning of its enrichment activities.

“Iran will never give up enrichment at any price. Even the threat of military attack will not stop us,” said Ali-Asghar Soltanieh in an interview with the New Statesman, a British current affairs magazine published Wednesday.

The Iranian ambassador reiterated that the West had to accept that Iran was a “master of enrichment.”

“The West just has to cope with a strong Iran, a country with thousands of years of civilization that is now the master of enrichment. I know it is hard for them to digest, but it is the reality.”

The US has been leading efforts to push Iran to accept a deal that demands Tehran to send most of its low-enriched uranium abroad for further processing for the research reactor, which runs on 20-percent enriched uranium and produces medical isotopes for cancer patients.

Iran has called for “concrete” guarantees that the fuel would eventually be returned to the country, but such demand has been shrugged off by the West, particularly the US, insisting that the deal would remain intact.

Iran announced on February 9 that it had started enriching uranium to the level of less than 20 percent to meet the country’s fuel requirements for a research reactor in Tehran, after the potential suppliers failed to provide the fuel under the UN deal.

Two days later, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad formally declared that Iran had successfully produced the first stock of the 20-percent enriched uranium, a declaration which was met with cynicism in the West.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an interview with al-Arabiyya television aired on Wednesday that the US was seeking the “strongest” possible UN Security Council (UNSC) sanctions on Iran over its nuclear work.

“We want to try to get the strongest sanctions we can out of the United Nations Security Council … mostly to influence their (the Iranians’) decision-making,” the former first lady said.

The Iranian envoy, however, rejected such rhetoric emphasizing that the language of threats demonstrates a “colonialist mentality.” He said that threatening Iran with more sanctions or a military action would further complicate the issue.

“By threatening Iran with the Security Council, with sanctions, with military action, you are just making life more difficult for yourself. It doesn’t work.”

US-led calls for more sanctions against Iran have mainly received a chilly welcome by China, a veto-wielding member of the UNSC, which insists that diplomacy can work.

Iran says it is still open to talks with the West over a nuclear fuel swap provided that its conditions and concerns are valued.

Tehran has, however, maintained that a fuel swap with Western countries does not require Iran to relinquish other means of acquiring the fuel, including the enrichment of uranium domestically.