(Mehr News) - Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) Secretary General Ali Larijani said on Tuesday that Iran will suspend its relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if sanctions are imposed on the country.
Speaking at an international conference entitled Iran's Nuclear Energy Program: Policies and Prospects, he said, They think that Iran will back off under the pressure, but they must realize that Iran will not do so.
He insisted that no Iranian government would ever give up its national technology.
On the possibility of U.S. military strikes on Irans nuclear sites, he said, In this case, Irans nuclear expertise will not be wiped out. It will only be converted from an open program to a clandestine program.
Iran is a large country and you cannot bombard all of it.
If the U.S. harms Iran, it will be harmed too, Larijani noted.
Irans hands are not tied, and if the enemies provoke Iran, they will suffer the consequences, he asserted.
If you threaten and provoke us, you should not expect us to continue the same level of relations with the IAEA, and if you launch a military strike against us, we will continue our (nuclear) activities in places where you cannot reach us, he stated.
The European Union declared that they did not want Iran to gain access to nuclear expertise during earlier negotiations and private meetings, but now they say they must accept the fact that Iran has attained nuclear expertise and that it must be on the agenda of talks, he added.
He described the Europeans contention that Iran might withdraw from all international treaties after developing nuclear technology as mere speculation, saying that this could be applied to any country and nobody should be punished based on mere speculation.
If the West sticks to negotiations, Iran will follow suit, but if the West takes extreme action, Iran will reciprocate, he explained.
Stressing that the IAEA should be responsible for dealing with Irans nuclear dossier, he said that if IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei completes his investigation of Iran in a logical period of time and if Irans uranium enrichment activities continue along their logical course, the Islamic Republic will implement the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Commenting on the Wests claim that Iran does not need nuclear energy because it has huge oil and gas reserves, he said that Iran and the U.S. signed a $6 billion cooperation agreement before the Islamic Revolution of 1979 for the construction of nuclear power plants in Iran that would have produced 20,000 megawatts of electricity.
Iran and France also signed a contract in 1974, according to which 6000 megawatts of nuclear electricity were to have been supplied to Iran, he added.
The contract between Iran and France said that a nuclear research and development center was to be established to enrich uranium for the production of nuclear fuel in Iran and to train personnel, he noted.
Now we have to ask them why they signed such contracts with Iran nearly 30 years ago when our oil and gas reserves were larger than today, but now they claim that Iran does not need nuclear energy because it has oil and gas, he said.
Iran had signed contracts with Frances Eurodif Company to supply its nuclear fuel, but the company did not honor its commitments and refused to supply uranium to Iran after the Islamic Revolution, he pointed out.
Today, we do not trust the West anymore, he said, adding, We do not insist on producing all of our needed nuclear fuel, but we do seek to maintain our independence.
The West left no option for Iran but enrichment while we were prepared to proceed step by step."
Elsewhere in his remarks, Larijani said that a country that wants to produce nuclear weapons does not sign the NPT.
We accepted the voluntary implementation of the additional protocol to the NPT, too, which proves we do not seek nuclear weapons, he added.
We have repeatedly declared that if the future plans for the nuclear program were clarified, we would be ready for every kind of cooperation. I told the European side in Vienna that we are ready to plan Irans nuclear research and developments step by step with them, he noted.
Irans nuclear fuel cycle program is being developed under the supervision of the IAEA, he stated, adding that currently one enrichment chain has been activated and the other chains are being completed.
So far, 2000 man-hours of inspections of Irans nuclear sites and 26 visits to Irans military sites have been carried out, but this situation has a limit, he said.
We cannot open the gates of the country to inspectors because of phantom claims, he added.