Iran’s President Accuses America of ‘Terrorism,’ Says Uranium Enrichment Is a ‘Right’

President Masoud Pezeshkian of the Islamic Republic of Iran accused America and Israel of committing “terrorism” against his country and vowed to advance Tehran’s nuclear program in a speech to the United Nations. Mr. Pezeshkian’s address Wednesday was presented as a rebuttal to President Trump, who said on the same stage a day earlier that Iran is the world’s top sponsor of terrorism. “I had prepared a speech to present to you yesterday,” yet “the United States president described us as terrorists,” the Iranian president said. “We have been the victims of terrorism.”In his speech, one day after an unsuccessful negotiation between Tehran and Washington, Mr. Pezeshkian claimed that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful even as he also insisted that uranium enrichment is a “right,” and indicated that international inspectors would be blocked while Israel’s nuclear program is uninspected.Iran watchers are meticulously studying satellite images of activities at nuclear sites that were not bombed by America and Israel last spring or since February. The deeply dug site known as Pickaxe Mountain might be where Iran hopes to renew its efforts to renew its nuclear weapons program. “We may have to blow up” Pickaxe Mountain, Mr. Trump told Iran’s Arab neighbors during a closed-door meeting with members of the Gulf Cooperation Council on Tuesday. “We’re not seeing a lot of activity there, but if we do, we’ll blow it up immediately,” the president said. Blaming America for committing terrorism, meanwhile, Mr. Pezeshkian lifted a picture of children from the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, which was hit by an American bomber on the February 28 launch of the war. American officials deny that the school, located near an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps camp, was deliberately targeted. “America and Israel attacked us, equipped with the latest technology and weapon systems, and our people stood steadfast,” Mr. Pezeshkian said, vowing that Iran’s “resistance” to aggression will intensify.While Iran initiated the shutdown of the Hormuz Strait as part of that “resistance,” Mr. Pezeshkian insisted that it was a reaction to America’s blockade. “We cannot let some have free access and gain their interest from a waterway, while at the same time using that waterway to impose their aggressions upon us,” he said. The closure of Hormuz is complicating Mr. Trump’s war plans and his political calculations on the eve of the November midterms. Hormuz was discussed during a Qatari-mediated negotiation on Tuesday between Iranian officials and Mr. Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. The mediators “shuttled between the two sides throughout the day,” Mr. Witkoff wrote on X. “They successfully completed a round of discussions that we hope will prove constructive and promising.” A Tehran foreign ministry spokesman, though, insisted on Wednesday that Iran is adamant that diplomacy leaves “no ambiguity, excuses or pretexts for the other side.”Iran demands, according to the spokesman, start with “ceasing America’s aggressive actions, including the naval blockade and economic terrorism, ending the war on all fronts, the release of Iran’s frozen or restricted assets, acceptance of a safe shipping route in the manner agreed upon” between Iran and Oman. Washington has long deemed such demands as non-starters while at Tehran even the meeting itself is far from universally accepted. Islamic Republic’s “hardline voices and media outlets claim that the meeting was unauthorized,” a senior Iran analyst at the Crisis Group, Hamidreza Azizi, writes.In a repetition of an old tactic by the late supreme leader, Ali Khamanei, Tehran officials preemptively “shift the blame for any failure of diplomacy” to the government of Mr. Pezeshkian, Mr. Azizi added. Mr. Pezeshkian’s 18-minute address was mostly met with silence at the UN General Assembly hall. Israeli and American officials, though, reacted swiftly. “I think that slaughtering tens of thousands of your own people is a violation of UN principles,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. “I think funding terrorist organizations in neighboring countries to attack them and attack energy infrastructure is a violation of UN principles.”“Pezeshkian, your regime spreads terror,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, added. “You are in no position to lecture Israel and the United States about morality.”The Iranian regime, Mr. Danon added, “arms Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and Judea and Samaria, and militias in Iraq. The same regime that murders its own citizens when they dare to protest against it.” Separately Mr. Danon warned Tehran against attacking Israel. “We know where their leaders live,” he told Fox News Tuesday.

Iran’s President Accuses America of ‘Terrorism,’ Says Uranium Enrichment Is a ‘Right’

Iran’s President Accuses America of ‘Terrorism,’ Says Uranium Enrichment Is a ‘Right’

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