Ayatollah blasts U.S. over bomb ‘myth’
JERUSALEM — Iran’s most powerful cleric raised the ante Sunday ahead of the latest negotiations over his country’s nuclear program, by accusing America of creating a “myth” that Tehran wanted to build an atom bomb.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, said the United States had fabricated the issue to depict Iran as a threat and deflect blame from its own activities and those of Israel, which he called “America’s chained dog.”
“They created the myth of nuclear weapons so they could say the Islamic Republic is a source of threat. No, the source of threat is America itself, with its unrestrained, destabilizing interventions,” he said in a televised speech to Iranian military commanders.
“The other side is methodically and shamelessly threatening us militarily ... even if they did not make these overt threats, we would have to be prepared.”
Tehran has been suspected of gearing up to produce an atom bomb for a decade. It claims its nuclear program is aimed purely at producing domestic energy. Ayatollah Khamenei’s comments appeared to represent a toughening of Iranian attitudes in preparation for the resumption this week of nuclear talks in Vienna between Iran and negotiators from six world powers.
The two sides are scheduled to meet on Wednesday and Thursday in an attempt to reach a definitive agreement that would build on this month’s framework deal struck in the Swiss city of Lausanne. The proposed final deal would see a drastic scaling back of the Iranian nuclear program in return for the withdrawal of crippling economic sanctions. Negotiators have been given a June 30 deadline.
The prospects of that being met seemed to fade Sunday after a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) ruled out allowing inspections of the country’s military sites — one of the putative deal’s main pillars.