In an appearance at NYUs Center on International Cooperation, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attended a Q&A meeting on Wednesday.
Answering questions posed by David Ignatius, Zarif reassured that Iran is willing to submit to the highest level of international transparency on its nuclear program within a sensible international framework and advised those looking for militarily traces in Irans wholly peaceful nuclear activities not to waste their time because they would find nothing.
"The (UN nuclear agency) IAEA has seen everything and if you're looking for a smoking gun, you've got to wait a long, long, long time before you get one," Mohammad Javad Zarif told an audience at New York University.
Tehran is ready to accept the highest level of international transparency available to members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, said Zarif.
"Iran is prepared, within an agreement, to accept the additional protocol and I think with that you will have all the transparency that you need."
Iran has fulfilled every detail of its undertaking, Zarif said, since an interim agreement in November 2013. But he criticized the United States for not doing the same keeping on certain sanctions that have caused the republic of 75 million people major economic pain by strangling its oil exports and financial system.
"There is a lot to be desired in the way the United States, particularly the Treasury Department, has implemented its part," Zarif said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called on the Group 5+1 (the US, Russia, China, France and Britain plus Germany) to seize the opportunity and strike a final agreement with Iran.
Zarif said the main precondition for reaching a permanent agreement on Irans nuclear program is political will, saying that such a will was absent in similar talks between 2002 and 2005, when some parties sought excuses.
The Iranian top diplomat said Iran welcomes the opportunity to use peaceful nuclear technology by all countries, but big powers and the regime of Israel still pose a huge threat to the global peace and security by possessing nuclear warheads.
Zarif also commented on captivity of Iranians who are jailed in foreign countries while awaiting extradition to the United States on charges of violating US sanctions against Iran.
He also lamented that the propaganda campaign of the US media about anti-Iran issues prevent the global society to hear about Iranian people lingering in prisons in Southeast Asia who committed no crime, and added that one Iranian in that situation died in a Philippine prison.
By Mehr News Agency
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