ISFAHAN -- There is no global consensus against Iran’s nuclear program, Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Deputy Director Mohammad Saeedi said in Isfahan on Tuesday.

“The issue is that some countries are concerned about the fact that we want to strengthen our political independence,” Saeedi said in an address at a conference on the role of nuclear fuel in the development of technology.

He stated that Iran had crossed the frontier of nuclear fuel technology and would vigorously continue on to the next stages.

“Possession of the complete nuclear fuel cycle in no way runs contrary to the NPT (nuclear Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty). The right to have access to this cycle, which is a necessity for Iran, has been enshrined in the International Atomic Energy Agency Statute,” he said.

There is no guarantee that the multilateral approaches that certain countries have proposed to provide nuclear fuel for Iran through an international mechanism, such as a nuclear fuel bank, will be implemented, he noted.

EU and U.S. punish Iran for innocence: academic

The director of the London-based Urosevic Institute, Piruz Mojtahedzadeh, said in Isfahan on Tuesday that the European Union and the United States intend to punish Iran for its innocence.

It was the United States that initially proposed Iran move toward using nuclear energy, he said in a speech at an international congress of the Islamic world’s geographers.

“An agreement was signed between Iran and the U.S. in 1978, according to which Iran could use nuclear energy, but now they never mention the agreement,” he pointed out.

The U.S. had predicted that Iran’s population would reach 100 million in 2025 and the country would face energy crises by that time, he noted.

The U.S. had warned Iran’s previous regime that if it did not make use of nuclear energy, it would face many forex problems due to depletion of its natural resources, he said.

“The only thing that has changed since 1978 is Iran’s political system, which has caused a big change in U.S. policy,” Mojtahedzadeh explained.

But at this stage, Washington claims that the Islamic Republic has abundant oil and gas reserves and does not need nuclear energy, he added.