Mohammad Marandi: US simply wants leverage over Iran

​Press TV has conducted an interview with Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran, about the United States’ rejected stance on Iran’s defense capabilities.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Iran’s stance has been adamant stating that it does not need anyone’s permission in order to defend itself. Tell us more please.

Marandi: The Americans and their European allies have been claiming that Iran’s missile defense program and the launching of ballistic missiles is in violation of the UN resolution, but obviously that’s not true. The Americans know that’s not the case. These have nothing to do with nuclear weapons and Americans have no evidence whatsoever to show or indicate that any of Iran’s missiles are designed to carry nuclear warhead.

The Americans simply want leverage, the French and the British too. They basically abide by the Americans. And therefore, their support for Americans’ position again is to help Americans gain leverage over Iran. The Russians and the Chinese, as you mentioned earlier, have said that Iranians are not in breach. And the Iranians obviously have no option but to ignore the Americans, because if the Iranians start becoming intimidated; then they will have to back down every time the Americans want the Iranians not to do something. That would be very dangerous for Iran’s national security.

Press TV: In recent months we’ve seen Washington trying its best to pressure Iran to stop its ballistic missile test. Their different viewpoints regarding Washington’s stance some believe that Washington is doing this on purpose, some analysts believe that it’s been pressurized by certain lobby groups into this directive, into this form of action, but at the end of the day what we know is that pretty much the US is doing this on purpose as a pretext to impose new sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Marandi: Yes, whatever the reason, it is illegal, the actions of the United States, and the United States is a country of lobbies. So it’s not extraordinary for the Israeli lobby or the Saudi-Israeli joint lobby to put pressure on the Americans, but in any case Iranians have no option but to ... and the Americans must not be allowed into the mistaken belief that they could put pressure on Iran and have Iran forsake its sovereignty. We have to keep in mind that the United States and its allies destroyed Libya, they pounded the country, they destroyed the country. They brought about a civil war in Syria. The Americans and their regional allies and the British and the French have been helping the extremists, the Takfiri terrorists. So a country like the United States which has behaved like a rouge regime cannot be trusted. Therefore, the Iranians need to have a strong deterrence to prevent the Americans and any other country from being able to threaten the country, Iran.

Press TV: And what do actions like this do to the United States’ image amongst the international community?

Marandi: I think the United States really doesn’t have a very good image already in the eyes of Iranians of course.

We’ve seen that even after the agreement between Iran and the P5+1, the Americans have stealing two billion dollars of Iranian assets and despite the fact that the tensions were supposed to decrease as a result of the agreement between Iran and P5+1. And this itself shows that the United States is an unreliable partner. And I think that the international community too recognizes that US behavior towards Iran hasn’t changed despite the fact that Iran has been very flexible over the past couple of years and despite the fact that the Iranians have done their best to ease tensions.

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