Forget about coercing Iran; the country wants to co-operate against terrorism writes Javad Zarif

We have come a long way over the past 21 months of negotiations over my country’s nuclear energy programme. A very long way. Never have Iran and its counterparts been this close to a final accord. But success is far from assured. All that is clear about what will happen next is that things will not go back to the way they were.
Serious political decisions still need to be made. Countless technical solutions have been discussed and devised, and in many cases now resolved, but this crisis has at its core always been political. Some say they are trying to shut down this or that pathway to the bomb. The agreement within our reach will do just that through a plethora of measures.

But the truth is that there really is only one pathway to the bomb, and that is through a political decision to build a nuclear weapon. Sober strategic calculations, and more importantly our religious obligations, have firmly distanced Iran from this calamity, and these calculations have been put to the test. Even under attack by weapons of mass destruction, by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, Iran did not respond in kind. Such weapons have always been strictly prohibited by
the Supreme Leaders of the Islamic Revolution.

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This article was written by Javad Zarif for opinion page of Financial Times? on July 8, 2015.  Javad Zarif is foreign minister of Iran.