"Let’s start with enrichment. Iran did not decide to enrich. Iran was forced to enrich, because we had a share in a consortium in France called 'Eurodif', which we had paid for fully, but we were not able to get a gram of enriched uranium, even for our research reactor that was built under the 'Atoms for Peace' Program of President Eisenhower. We did not decide to enrich to 20 percent. We tried for 20 years to buy 20 percent-enriched uranium for fuel for that reactor. We were intimidated, insulated, pushed back and forth to the point that we said we’ll do it ourselves," the Iranian foreign minister said in an interview with the Washington Post on Sunday.
"Now this doesn’t mean that if they (the West) provide us with fuel now we will accept it, because first of all we have made this investment domestically, and secondly we do not have any trust and, third we do not see any reason now that we have put so much time and effort in it and brought them to the point of abandoning the illusion of zero enrichment in Iran, why should we accept anything less," Zarif went on to say.
"Now let’s move to the second issue, Arak. We offered the option — every single program that Iran has was sought from the West first; they refused, we then relied on our own technology. We did not want to start from scratch in building all these research reactors. We wanted to use the technology. Everybody wants to use sophisticated technology. It was denied to us, in denial of the NPT, because mind you, it requires countries to provide energy for peaceful purposes. It’s not just a right, it’s a requirement — it’s an obligation to provide. So they have been in violation of the NPT for the past at least 22 years, since 1990, almost every single Western country. Unfortunately there is no official judge of that violation because that article does not have any monitoring mechanisms. But it should, because the NPT stands on three pillars, and one of them is peaceful use," the top Iranian diplomat added.
ِHe went on to say that Iran was not provided with light water reactors. We had to invest with what we knew how to build. It doesn’t mean that we wanted a heavy water reactor because you can extract plutonium from it. It was because that was the only technology that was available to us at the time we started this.
In mid-November, Zarif said Iran is a signatory to the NPT based on which the country's nuclear rights are automatically recognized, and called on the West to respect this lawful trend.
"Iran's enrichment right does not need recognition, because it is an inseparable right based on the NPT. What we expect is (the West) respecting parts of this right," Zarif said.
He further added Iran has practiced its enrichment rights over past years, but these rights have not been respected and even have been violated because of sanctions imposed against the country by the West.
