Iranian Official: The Russian Proposal is not Worth a Penny

Sheila Parsi, Rooz Online:

In a talk at Gilan University Medical School, Mohammad Bagher Nobakht, the deputy director for economic research at the Center for Strategic Studies belonging to the State Expediency Council of Iran said that the Russian nuclear proposal was “not worth a penny.” Nobakht who is a five-term Majlis deputy from the northern city of Rasht was invited to the medical school to give a talk on the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry and the role of oil in its economy. In his talk he provided his interpretation of the highlights of Iran’s economic history before and after the 1979 revolution. He said the post revolution economic plans had all failed and not reached their intended goals. The government is now larger in size, despite the goal of shrinking it, our dependence on petro-dollars to for the government’s operational budget is also much greater than before, and no real development has taken place. READ MORE

In the question and answer part of his talk, he said that the Russian proposal to enrich uranium for Iran on its soil was not worth a penny, unless they gave Iran nuclear fuel so that we could acquire the know-how through a pilot project. “But they will not let us do that as the world has rejected our demand, while Saudi leaders have said that there should be no concerns about the absence of our oil in the markets as they have promised to replace it,” he added.

Nobakht is a trained economist and was the director of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s election campaign that took the cleric to the presidential palace over 15 years ago.