ISRAEL AND US SEEK TO PORTRAY IRAN AS THREAT: IRANIAN PM

Tehran, 22 Jumadil Akhir 1435/22 April 2014 (MINA) – The Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the Israeli regime and its American supporters spearhead an “anti-Iran campaign” in an attempt to portray the Republic as a global “threat.”

In an essay for the journal Foreign Affairs, Zarif said the administration of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani seeks to “defeat the international anti-Iranian campaign, spearheaded by Israel and its American benefactors, who seek to ‘securitize’ Iran — that is, to delegitimize the Islamic Republic by portraying it as a threat to the global order,” Press TV reported as quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA).

“The main vehicle for this campaign is the ‘crisis’ over Iran’s peaceful nuclear program — a crisis that, in Iran’s view, is wholly manufactured and therefore reversible,” wrote the Iranian foreign minister. 

The administration of President Rouhani engaged in nuclear talks with the P5+1 group – the US , Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany – in an effort to foil the smear campaign launched against the country, added Zarif.

The top Iranian diplomat further emphasized that the Republic “has no interest in nuclear weapons and is convinced that such weapons would not enhance its security.”

Iran and the P5+1 group inked an interim accord, dubbed the Joint Plan of Action, over Tehran’s nuclear energy program in Geneva, Switzerland, in November 2013.

Tehran and its negotiating partners have been holding talks in an effort to hammer out a final accord aimed at fully resolving the dispute over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program.

“The ongoing negotiations over the nuclear issue face no insurmountable barriers. The only requirements are political will and good faith for the negotiators to ‘get to yes’ and achieve the objective established by the Joint Plan of Action,” stated the Iranian foreign minister. .(T/P04/P03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)