WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — A top Iranian official says they have misled the West about the Islamic country’s nuclear ambitions. According to The Times of Israel, Fereydoon Abbasi-Davani, Iran’s vice president and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said in an interview that they gave foreign officials misleading facts in order to keep secret the technological advances made at nuclear sites.
“Sometimes we pretended to be weaker than we really were, and sometimes we showed strength that was not really in our hands,” Abbasi-Davani said, according to the Israeli paper. “We had no choice.”
He added in the interview with Al Hayat: “We sometimes [gave] false information to protect our nuclear sites and our earnings.”
The Iranian vice president explained that they wanted to show they really didn’t have the power to achieve their nuclear ambitions to foreign intelligence.
In the interview, Abbasi-Davani accused the U.S. of trying to isolate Iran from the rest of the world the same way officials did with Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. He also said the U.S. has yet to conduct a military strike against Iran because they are unable to do so.
Nuclear talks between Iran and the European Union were put on hold until next week, according to Reuters.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton agreed to defer the talks until she meets with the U.S., Russia, Great Britain, Germany, France and China at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
“We evaluated the common points and what we could do for further cooperation and future meetings,” Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, told Reuters.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is calling on President Obama to draw a “red line” on Iran, saying that the U.S. might need to take military action against Tehran to stop its nuclear program.
