TEHRAN, 17 August 2005 — Iran’s new hard-line nuclear boss Ali Larijani vowed Tehran will press on with nuclear fuel work as protesters yesterday formed a human chain at a uranium facility at the center of its standoff with the West. Larijani signaled in his first interview since being named Monday as Supreme National Security Council head that Iran would not roll back its Aug. 8 resumption of uranium conversion but that he wanted to continue talks with the European Union.
“Iran does not accept the resolution” which the International Atomic Energy Agency passed last week urging Tehran to suspend all such activities, he told the Shargh newspaper.
The Europeans “must understand that the Iranian government is determined to preserve the nuclear fuel production cycle,” said Larijani, who took over from pragmatist Hassan Rohani.
“We insist on Natanz,” the site of Iran’s uranium enrichment factory, “but this must go through the channel of negotiations,” he said. He acknowledged it was “theoretically possible” that the Islamic republic could be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions over its controversial nuclear activities.
Some 500 demonstrators formed a human chain yesterday outside the gates of the plant in Isfahan, 400 kilometers south of the capital. “Nuclear energy is our right,” chanted the protesters, most of them Islamist students. “Let’s stop the negotiations” with the European Union, they cried, carrying a banner which read “Isfahan is only the beginning”.
The new government also ruled out any resumption of ties with the United States and said it would never have relations with Israel. “The program for domestic and foreign policy (foresees) active and healthy relations with all governments but never with the usurper regime in Qods (Jerusalem) and not with the American regime so long it fails to respect the greatness and interests of the Iranian people.” But the program said the new government did intend to “continue the policy of detente” begun by Khatami, according to state news agency reports.
Meanwhile, the wife of leading Iranian dissident Akbar Ganji accused the hard-line judiciary yesterday of spurring her husband on to his death by stopping him hearing pleas to save his life 67 days into a hunger strike.
“They are trying to weaken his spirit or to drive him into a position in which he doesn’t break his hunger strike,” Massoumeh Shafii charged in an open letter. “It’s highly unlikely that he knows that there are general calls for him to break his hunger strike, since he is in a news quarantine, without access to newspapers, telephones, radios or visits,” she says.
