According to a report on Russian TV today (RT) on the 17th, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif attacked France for continuing to support “Saudi war criminals” and refuted French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Lederian’s claim that Tehran is building a nuclear weapons capability as “nonsense”.
On Sunday (17th), the Iranian Foreign Minister posted a tweet against the French Foreign Minister on social media. Zarif said that France was not qualified to preach to Iran on anything, accusing France of selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.
Zarif wrote, “Dear colleagues: Your cabinet career began with the sale of weapons to Saudi war criminals. Avoid making ridiculous remarks about Iran.
Fact check: You are destabilizing our region. Stop protecting those criminals who kill critics with chainsaws and massacre children with your weapons in Yemen.”
Earlier, on the 16th, French Foreign Minister Lederian condemned the position of the U.S. government under Trump against Iran and explicitly accused Iran of moving on the road to nuclear weapons in an interview with the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche.
Lederian said, “The Trump administration chose the so-called campaign to exert maximum pressure on Iran.
As a result, this strategy only increases risks and threats.
This must stop because Iran — I say it explicitly — is gaining nuclear weapons capability.”
On the same day, the French Foreign Minister also doubled down on the allegations made by France, Britain and Germany against Iran.
France, the United Kingdom and Germany, which are European signatories to the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, urged Iran to abandon its plan to produce uranium metal—which is explicitly prohibited by the Iran nuclear agreement, and claim that Iran has “no credible civilian use of uranium metal”.
However, the Iranian nuclear agency insists that such a plan is neither new nor contrary to the Iran nuclear agreement, saying that uranium metal is only the “intermediary product” needed to produce “advanced” nuclear fuel, uranium silicide.
In addition, the plan to produce this fuel has existed for about 20 years. This fuel is safer to use and more impactful than uranium oxide-based fuel. Iran has duly and repeatedly notified the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
