Iran Urges UNSC to Abide by Rules

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran said the United Nations Security Council does not have the absolute authority to take punitive measures against certain countries.

Iran’s representative to the UN Sixth Committee session, Ishaq al-e-Habib, advised the Security Council against exceeding its jurisdiction limits.

He also urged the Council to act by the UN’s principles, urging it not to give in to political pressure from powerful countries, press tv reported.

Iran has repeatedly called on the Security Council to disengage from Tehran’s nuclear case and let it be handled within the UN’s nuclear watchdog body.

Under pressure from the US, the Security Council has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, with the latest set of sanctions reaffirming the previous three. The US-led measure is aimed at forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear activities.

In the most recent report issued in September, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Chief Mohamed ElBaradei said that the Agency had not discovered any ‘components of a nuclear weapon’ or ‘related nuclear physics studies’ in Iran.

The IAEA report also confirmed that the Agency had conducted ‘seventeen unannounced inspections’ at the country’s nuclear plants, where Iran has managed to enrich uranium-235 to a level ‘less than 5 percent’.

The rate is consistent with the construction of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear arms production requires an enrichment level of above 90 percent.

Iran insists that it should continue enriching uranium because it needs to provide fuel to a 300-megawatt light-water reactor it is building in the southwestern town of Darkhoveyn as well as its first nuclear power plant in the southern port city of Bushehr.

Iran currently suffers from an electricity shortage that has forced the country into adopting a rationing program by scheduling power outages – of up to two hours a day – across both urban and rural areas.

Iran plans to construct additional nuclear power plants to provide for the electricity needs of its growing population.

The Islamic Republic says that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.