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Journalism of Courage
Iran said on Sunday it had little faith in security guarantees from the West as a means to resolve a dispute over its atomic programme, further dousing hopes that EU incentives could stop Tehran making nuclear fuel.
Britain, Germany and France are trying to put together a package that could offer a nuclear reactor and security guarantees to Tehran. But their gambit seems doomed with both Iran and US unimpressed by the terms.
Washington is loathe to exempt EU firms from US sanctions if they get involved with Iran8217;s nuclear work and even more wary about any form of security pledge to a country that has threatened to 8216;8216;wipe Israel off the map8217;8217;.
Tehran says there are no incentives that could persuade it to halt its uranium enrichment work. That would be the only step that could convince the West that Iran is not building a bomb.
Iran8217;s Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said it was of little consequence that US would not offer security guarantees, as such a feature in the final EU package could not be trusted.
8216;8216;Firstly, they have not kept their promises and made good on obligations to different countries including Iran in the past so no one should think that such security guarantees are important,8217;8217; said Asefi.
8216;8216;US itself needs security guarantees because it has problems and is not in a position to give security guarantees to other countries,8217;8217; he added.
Meanwhile an Israeli nuclear expert claimed that Iran may already possess a nuclear bomb but is 8216;8216;smart8217;8217; enough to pretend to be on the way to achieving nuclear capability so that it could induce concessions from the international community, .
The Iranians are not necessarily presenting the true facts and may be showing the IAEA dummy presentations of an unfinished bomb, while hiding a fully developed bomb elsewhere, said former head of the Nuclear Engineering Department at Ben-Gurion University, Professor Zeev Alfassi.
