Iranian MP Mehdi Sanayee, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, has foreclosed the possibility that the administration of president-elect Hassan Rouhani will agree to suspend uranium enrichment in the context of negotiations with the West.
“The point raised by President-elect Rouhani in his press conference meant that Iran’s nuclear diplomacy (during his term) won’t be similar to that of the last 4 years, while it will include interaction (with the opposing sides) which won’t be based on the possibility of suspension (of Iran’s nuclear activities) either,” member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Mehdi Sanayee told FNA on Tuesday.
Sanayee said Rouhani will soon define a new discourse for interactions and understanding with the West.
Early expectations that Rouhani’s election would present an opening for productive talks have subsequently been tempered by renewed attention to his 2003-2005 tenure as Iran’s chief negotiator. Rouhani boasted during the campaign that his strategy successfully split the European Union from the U.S. and allowed the regime to expand its clandestine atomic program.
He made the comment in response to a question by the interviewer, who said Rohani had presided over a suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.
“What you said is a lie, you know it yourself it’s a lie,” said a smiling Rohani.
He continued, “We suspended the program? We completed the technology. When I say ‘we,’ I don’t mean me, I mean our nuclear scientists.”
The Iranian regime is widely perceived to be pursuing nuclear weapons, a campaign that risks shredding global non-proliferation treaties and has generated increasing pitched warnings from the U.S.’s Arab and Israeli allies. This week Mashregh News, a hard-line Iranian media outlet linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, published an editorial asserting that the Holocaust is a myth created by Jews to garner Western support for Israeli atrocities.
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