Washington, December 23: The United States warned Iran on Tuesday that December is “a very real deadline” after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed an ultimatum over its nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad said on Friday that Iran is ready to strike a uranium enrichment deal if the United States stops making threats.
The United States and France have warned Tehran to accept a UN nuclear watchdog-drafted deal to swap enriched uranium for nuclear fuel by the end of the year or face the threat of further sanctions.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that the so-called P5+1, which gathers UN Security Council veto-wielding permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany, were all on board with the deadline.
Ahmadinejad earlier rejected the deadline and delivered another broadside against pressure over Tehran’s refusal to suspend enrichment or agree to full inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.
“They say we have given Iran until the end of the Christian year. Who are they anyway? It is we who have given them an opportunity,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the southern Iranian city of Shiraz.
Gibbs said: “Mr Ahmadinejad may not recognize, for whatever reason, the deadline that looms, but that is a very real deadline for the international community… It is in his control what Iran decides to do.”
US President Barack Obama’s administration has signaled that time is running out for Iran.
“As we have said many times, the president has stressed that we and our partners will be assessing Iran’s responsiveness here as we approach the end of the year,” said State Department spokesman Philip Crowley.
He warned that, “come 2010, should Iran continue in its current posture… there will be implications and consequences for their failure to take advantage of this opportunity.”
A senior diplomatic official said: “These things do take time… we have come into office with a sense of urgency and we have been working steadily on this issue.”
The official said the administration would carefully seek consensus before acting.
“When we pull the trigger, we want to be sure that there’s a broad understanding among those who play a role in the Security Council as to what we should be doing.”
The United States has raised the specter of a fourth round of UN sanctions, but will need to persuade Russia and China to drop their traditional reluctance to consider tougher measures.
Iran insists its nuclear program is solely for energy purposes due to its growing population and rejects claims that it is covertly trying to develop a bomb.
Its top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, told Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Monday that weapons of mass destruction “are against Islamic teaching and that Iran would never develop such weapons,” according to Hatoyama’s office.
“We seriously oppose mass destruction nuclear weapons,” Jalili told reporters, rejecting as “baseless” reports that a plane-load of arms from North Korea seized in Thailand was headed for Iran.
—Agencies