‘We will not let Iran have nuclear weapons’

Ahead of the crucial nuclear talks between Iran and the world powers, the US has said that its goal is not to allow Tehran to obtain nuclear weapons. ‘Our goal is to achieve a verifiable agreement that does not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon,’ White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters. ‘We’ve said, obviously, that the window is open for us to pursue this option, to achieve our goal of not allowing Iran to possess a nuclear weapon, and we’re going to aggressively pursue that while the window is open,’ he said on the eve of the next round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, Russia, China plus Germany) in Geneva. ‘But it won’t remain open indefinitely,’ he said, issuing a subtle warning to Iran to accelerate the process to address the concerns of the international community on its nuclear programme.

‘So we’re obviously going into this eyes wide open, but as we’ve discussed in the past, we need to take advantage of this opportunity to see if, in fact, Iran is serious about addressing the international community’s concerns when it comes to its nuclear weapons programme in a way that is verifiable for the US and the whole international community.