Cleric Assures Negotiators of Iranian Leadership, Nation’s Support
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A top Iranian cleric urged the country’s team of diplomats engaged in talks with world powers to vigilantly defend Iran’s nuclear rights, giving an assurance that both leadership and the nation backs them in this course.
Addressing a congregation of worshippers in Tehran on Friday, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati urged the nuclear negotiators to “remain vigilant, refuse to concede to humiliating conditions, preserve the country’s dignity and avoid afraid of the US” when holding talks on Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program.
The Iranian team enjoys the backing of the leadership and the nation, Ayatollah Jannati said, calling for efforts to safeguard the “values” Iran has gained over years in the nuclear field.
Since Tuesday, senior diplomats from Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) have launched a new round of talks in Vienna to draft a lasting accord, meant to end years of Western standoff over Tehran’s peaceful nuclear program.
The talks are expected to continue until at least November 24, a self-imposed deadline for the talks.
The two sides inked a six-month deal on Tehran’s nuclear activities in Switzerland on November 24, 2013. The Joint Plan of Action took effect on January 20 and expired six months later.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Ayatollah Jannati pointed to a recent surge in Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians, and called on the Islamic countries to pay attention to Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei’s call for the arming of the West Bank.
Back on July 23, Ayatollah Khamenei in a speech described armed resistance as the only way to confront the Zionist regime.
Tel Aviv’s “unimaginable crimes” show the “innate reality” of Israel, whose “only cure is annihilation,” he said at the time.
“Of course until then, Palestinians’ resolute, armed resistance and its expansion to the West Bank is the only way to confront this savage regime,” Ayatollah Khamenei noted.
In another speech on July 29, the Supreme Leader reiterated the necessity for supporting Palestinian resistance groups in their fight against the Israeli regime, saying that the US is seeking to disarm Palestinians to help Israel suppress them easily.
“Unlike the view and effort of supporters of 'the child-murderer Zionist regime', the whole world and the Islamic world in particular, have an obligation to arm the Palestinian nation as much as possible,” the Leader said.
