Iran reformists assail leader over nuclear stance
TEHRAN, Iran - Iranian reformists challenged President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hard-line nuclear policy Friday.
The United States announced sanctions Thursday against more than 20 Iranian companies, banks and individuals as well as the Defense Ministry, hoping to increase pressure on Iran to stop uranium enrichment and curb what the U.S. says is its involvement in terrorism.
At a meeting in Tehran, the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front warned the country’s rulers of an escalating crisis with the international community and called for a review of nuclear policy.
“The government should refrain from its adventurous policies,” Mohsen Mirdamadi, the party’s secretary-general, told an audience of 200 people.
Mirdamadi also warned a U.S. attack on Iran would set back chances for reform and democracy in Iran by decades.
“We cannot neglect defending the country’s independence and integrity even for a while,” he said.
In Brussels, Belgium, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Iran’s émigré opposition group, said Iran might be closer to developing nuclear weapons than the three to eight years believed by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
“According to our intelligence, the Iranian regime is closer to having a bomb than what Mr. ElBaradei says,” the council’s expert, Alireza Jafarzadeh, told a news conference in the Belgian capital, referring to Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The council welcomed the U.S. sanctions, saying they would hit the operations of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
The new U.S. sanctions ban dealings with a host of companies connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, an elite force that has extensive business holdings in oil, construction and other sectors.
The ban bars American companies from working with them, but also puts pressure on international firms and banks not to deal with them as well.