TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday dismissed the West’s year-end deadline for Iran to accept an enrichment fuel deal aimed at calming international fears about its nuclear program.
If Iran misses the deadline for agreeing to ship most of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad in exchange for fuel for a Tehran research reactor, Washington has made clear it intends to pursue harsher sanctions against Iran in the United Nations.
“Who are they to set us a deadline?” Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech in the southern city of Shiraz. “We set them a deadline that if they do not correct their attitude and behavior, we will demand from them the Iranian nation’s historic rights,” the president told the crowd, without elaborating.
“Mr. Ahmadinejad may not recognize, for whatever reason, the deadline that looms, but that is a very real deadline for the international community,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Tuesday. “The decision for them to live up to their responsibilities is their decision,” said Gibbs.
