MP: Decades of US Hostility against Iran Not to Vanish Overnight


MP: Decades of US Hostility against Iran Not to Vanish Overnight

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An Iranian lawmaker referred to the antagonist policies pursued by the United States against the Islamic Republic for morin the course of the past three decades, saying the deep freeze in bilateral ties needs time and effort to break.

“Unfortunately, the Americans have maintained their hostility and plots against our country in the past 34 years, hence it is impossible to change the relations overnight," Seyed Saeed Heydari Tayyeb told Tasnim News Agency in Kermanshah in western Iran.

"The US warns of military option against Iran, however we are not after war, but will not relinquish our right to have nuclear energy for peaceful purposes," he said.

The MP also referred to the recent Obama-Netanyahu meeting in Washington and advised the US president to act independently and not permit the Zionists to decide on behalf of his country.

"From what Obama said after his meeting with the Israeli prime minister we come to this conclusion that he is not firm in his decisions and tends to follow the lead of Benjamin Netanyahu."

Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs Seyed Abbas Araqchi, too, said on Saturday that the US should regain the Iranian nation’s trust, adding that Washington now has the primary responsibility in the trust-building process.

“The main burden of trust-building rests on the US government’s shoulders,” Iran’s said in an interview with the Iranian News Network on Saturday.

Araqchi, who also had a leading role in the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) explained that a negative image of US “colonialist and imperialist” policies has been seared in the psyche of the Iranian nation, and said, “The US should make a big effort to win the Iranian people’s trust, because the US is blamed for the whole host of existing problems.”

In recent years the western governments have imposed new sanctions on Iran on the pretext that the country may be trying to develop a nuclear weapon capacity under the guise of its civilian nuclear program, an allegation strongly dismissed by Iran which states that it needs nuclear energy for generating electricity and other purely peaceful purposes.

Many of the sanctions predate the nuclear dispute and some of them are as old as the Islamic system in Iran, and the US has always found pretexts to tighten the existing sanctions and impose new ones.

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