West Expects Too Much from Iran Over Its Nuclear Program
Western governments expect too much from Iran in negotiations over its nuclear program, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Monday amid the stalled diplomatic effort.
“They should stop demanding too much,” Zarif told state-run media in Iran.
“We have our red line, and they too want assurances that our nuclear program will always remain peaceful. We believe these two add up.”
A confidential report by the International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran has begun engaging with a long-stymied IAEA inquiry into allegations that it may have worked on designing a nuclear weapon.
But Iran still refuses to give the UN agency access to a location at the Parchin base southeast of Tehran, where the military research facility is supposedly housed.
“It seems clear that there is more sanitization going on,” one Western envoy said, noting indications of major alteration work at Parchin since early 2012, such as soil removal and asphalting of the specific place the IAEA wants to see.
“I can think of no other explanation for 28 months of cleanup and denied IAEA access at Parchin except an attempt to hide all traces of something from IAEA environmental sampling.”
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