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June 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Further talks will be held in Moscow later this month as the United States intensifies pressure on Iran’s main trade partners, including India, Japan and South Korea, to reduce their dependence on Iranian oil. President Obama’s Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, Carlos Pascual, has been holding a series of meetings with ministers in those countries to help identify alternative sources of oil.
The threat of new US sanctions against those countries who do not significantly reduce their imports of Iranian oil has alarmed Tehran, but Ayatollah Khamenei warned further measures to isolate Iran will only increase hatred of America and the West among its people.
“The Iranian people have proved they can progress without the United States, and while being an enemy of the United States,” he said. “International political circles and media talk about the danger of a nuclear Iran, that a nuclear Iran is dangerous. I say that they lie. They are deceiving,” Khamenei said.
“What they are afraid of – and should be afraid of – is not a nuclear but an Islamic Iran.”
Sanctions had succeeded only in “hatred and animosity of the West in the hearts of the Iranian people,” he added.
Iran’s spiritual leader, who retains control of Tehran’s nuclear programme and is senior to President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, has previously denounced nuclear weapons and said to develop them would be “a great sin.” But in his speech yesterday he reserved the country’s right to develop its own technology and resources. It is, he said, “forbidden to stop on the path to progress, in the political sphere and in the sphere of science and technology.”
Despite his belligerent comments, Tehran has shown greater flexibility in its dealings with Western officials recently, raising hopes that agreement may yet be possible.
It has been waging its own diplomatic campaign to urge long-time allies and trade partners, like India, to resist American pressure on sanctions while engaging with the G5+1 countries to explore solutions to the stand-off.
Observers say that despite its defiant rhetoric, Tehran fears the impact on its economy of new US sanctions following the June 28 deadline and may be ready to make concessions on higher-grade uranium enrichment which could be diverted from civil nuclear energy production to military use.
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