10/04/2010 The Islamic Republic of Iran is a West Asian country of particular geostrategic significance owing to its location in the Middle East and central Eurasia.
 
Although Iran has a long history of literature, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and arts, the following report highlights the Islamic Republic’s nuclear achievements, under isolation and sanctions.
 
Iran holds an important position in international energy security and world economy as a result of its large reserves of petroleum and natural gas. It is also a founding member of the UN, NAM, OIC and OPEC.
Since the Islamic revolution toppled the Shah regime in the late 1970s, Western nations have been trying to isolate Iran under the late Imam Khomeini by imposing sanctions after sanctions on it. However, the vigorous people of Iran didn’t relinquish their goal to become a nuclear-energy nation, not a nuclear-arms country.
 
April 11, 2006 was the great nuclear stride. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran had joined the international nuclear club. His announcement came after Iranian scientists succeeded in enriching uranium to reactor-grade using 164 centrifuges. “This is the result of the Iranian nation's resistance. Based on international regulations, we will continue our path until we achieve production of industrial-scale enrichment,” Ahmadinejad vowed.
 
He reiterated that the enrichment was for purely civil power purposes and not for weapons purposes. Western countries, including the United States, allege that Iran is pursuing “nuclear weapons”, or a “nuclear weapons capability,” a charge Iran vehemently denies.
 
On April 13, 2006, a day after then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the UN Security Council to consider "strong steps" to induce Tehran to change course in its nuclear program; President Ahmadinejad vowed that Iran won't back away from uranium enrichment and that the world must treat Iran as a nuclear power. “The right of the Iranian nation to enrich uranium is not negotiable.”
 
Since then, Iran’s achievements in the nuclear domain have never stopped. One year after reaching the reactor level enrichment, Ahmadinejad announced, from Natanz, that Iran has now joined the club of countries with "industrial-level" nuclear enrichment. 3,000 uranium gas enrichment centrifuges were reportedly running at the Natanz plant in central Iran. Ahmadinejad said that based on the planned timetable, the Iranian government is determined to generate at least 20,000 MWs of nuclear power and also use its nuclear capacity in the domain of medicine, agriculture and industry.
 
He added that world powers cannot stop Iran's nuclear drive. Yet, international pressure on the country persisted.
 
Although Iran is a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Additional Protocol which gives it the right to enrich uranium, the Islamic Republic has made several compromise offers, as a good will gesture, to pacify the West.
 
The United Nation’s International Atomic Energy was cleared to inspect Iranian facilities and no evidence of a military nuclear program was detected.
These offers include operating Iran's nuclear program as an international consortium, with the full participation of foreign governments. Iran has also offered to renounce plutonium extraction technology, thus ensuring that its heavy water reactor at Arak cannot be used to make bombs either. More recently, the Iranians have also offered to operate uranium centrifuges that automatically self-destruct if they are used to enrich uranium beyond what is required for civilian purposes. Iran also announced it was able to produce fuel at any level of enrichment, “but we told foreign countries through the IAEA that we prefer to provide the required fuel from abroad, but unfortunately it became clear that they are not ready for interaction with us," the Head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi said in January, 2010.
He then turned to fuel swap between Iran and western countries ad said, "our offer is still open and we are ready to receive fuel from abroad."
 
Still, the Security Council, under clear US influence wants Iran to abandon its program but the Islamic Republic insists it will not suspend its enrichment program. Iran, through its representative at the UNSC, underlined that dealing with the issue in the Security Council was “unwarranted and void of any legal basis or practical utility because the Republic’s peaceful nuclear program posed no threat to international peace and security.
 
On the public level, surveys show that the majority of Iranians favor their country's nuclear program, including a full fuel cycle program, but they also believe in Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that nuclear weapons are contrary to Islam’s teachings and therefore, Iran cannot acquire them.
 
The Islamic Republic made further achievements which shocked its foes.
Most recently, on 9 February 2010 according to Government sources, Iran announced that it would produce uranium enriched to up to 20% to produce fuel for a research reactor used to produce medical radioisotopes, processing its existing stocks of 3.5% enriched uranium. Two days later during the celebrations in Tehran for the 31st anniversary of the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution, the Iranian President announced that Iran was now a “nuclear state.”
 
Responding to Western criticism, President Ahmadinejad said: “Why do they think that 20 per cent is such a big deal? Right now in Natanz we have the capability to enrich at over 20 per cent and at over 80 per cent, but because we don’t need it, we won’t do it.” “If we wanted to manufacture a bomb, we would announce it,” He added.
 
Today the international community is seeking new and tougher sanctions on nuclear Iran and Israel along with the US are threatening the country with war.
 
US President Barack Obama’s nuclear policy narrows the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons. The policy stipulates that Washington would only use atomic weapons in "extreme circumstances" and would not attack non-nuclear states. In a policy shift, the United States said for the first time that countries without atomic weapons that complied with non-proliferation treaty obligations need not fear a US nuclear attack. But Obama warned exceptions could be made for what Obama termed as "outliers such as Iran and North Korea.” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday warned his US counterpart Barack Obama of a "tooth-breaking" response, as he condemned Washington's new nuclear policy.
  
"Be careful. If you set step in Mr. (George W.) Bush's path, the nations' response would be the same tooth-breaking one as they gave Bush," Ahmadinejad responded to “inexperienced Obama.”
 
Iran expressed readiness to defend its nuclear program at every cost and warned the US that “none of its soldiers in the region will return home alive if Iran was attacked.”