Iran won’t accept ‘nuclear apartheid,’ says Rouhani

TEHRAN: Iran will not accept “nuclear apartheid” but is willing to offer more transparency over its atomic activities, President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday ahead of new talks with world powers.
Iran and the P5+1 group of nations will start hammering out a draft accord Tuesday aimed at ending a decade-long standoff over suspicions that the Islamic republic is concealing military objectives.
“We have nothing to put on the table and offer to them but transparency. That’s it. Our nuclear technology is not up for negotiation,” Rouhani, referring to the West, said in remarks broadcast on state television.
“Iran will not retreat one step in the field of nuclear technology... we will not accept nuclear apartheid,” he said.
The self-declared moderate president has faced a battle from domestic critics of his diplomatic outreach since taking power last August.
“We want to tell the world they cannot belittle the Iranian nation; they have to respect it,” Rouhani added Sunday.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Sunday that Western expectations for Iran to limit its missile program were “stupid and idiotic.”
The Supreme Leader also called on the country’s Revolutionary Guards to mass-produce missiles.
“They expect us to limit our missile program while they constantly threaten Iran with military action. So this is a stupid, idiotic expectation,” Khamenei was quoted as telling the IRNA news agency while on a visit to an aeronautics fair by the Revolutionary Guards.
“The revolutionary guards should definitely carry out their program and not be satisfied with the present level. They should mass-produce. This is a main duty of all military officials,” Khamenei said.