( IRNA ) - Iran as a sovereign nation has right to continue with nuclear program in line with Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Dr. Arif Razavi said in an exclusive interview with IRNA in Aligarh.
Dr. Razavi an associate professor at Aligarh Muslim University in the Department of West Asian Studies and a well known scholar and researcher on Middle East affairs said that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is monitoring Iranian nuclear program and Iran respects Safeguards Agreement with the UN agency.
"On Iraq, the US allegations that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) already proved wrong, the pretext for which the US invaded the country with its allies and is still occupying it," Razavi said.
Elaborating on US behavior regarding Iran's nuclear program for peaceful purpose Razavi said, "US has always double standard, it never wanted the former Soviet Union, France and United Kingdom to go to nuclear club, whenever a member wanted to join the nuclear club, US gets annoyed as was the case for China and India too."
US itself used nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and now it is opposing Iran for its peaceful nuclear program which is merely for the generation of energy and power, he said.
If US wants other countries not to work on or develop their nuclear programs and want the world to be nuclear free from nuclear energy, they must start from themselves first, Dr. Razavi said while criticizing US and its dual policies towards the developing nations.
Denouncing the US invasion and its presence along with its western allies in Iraq he said, "US presence in Iraq in any case is highly undesirable as Iraq has suffered a lot which was a potential country in the Middle East and I think would take decades to recover and restore normalcy from losses inflicted on it by the Americans.
Iraq was attacked on premise of helping international terrorism besides the claims about weapons of mass destruction and for having links with Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden which turned out to be false and fabricated, consequently leading to heavy losses on Iraqi people, Razavi said adding that this itself has made US and other European nations prone to terrorism instead of saving them.
Responding to the question on US presence in the region, Razavi called it as extremely undesirable with its adverse affects on both sides of the fronts and termed pre-emptive strike and regime change policy as 'dangerous theorization' and US might is disturbing the entire world order.