Let’s start with enrichment. Iran did not decide to enrich. Iran was forced to enrich, because we had a share in a consortium in France called “Eurodif,” which we had paid for fully, but we were not able to get a gram of enriched uranium, even for our research reactor that was built under the “Atoms for Peace” Program of President Eisenhower. We did not decide to enrich to 20 percent. We tried for 20 years to buy 20 percent-enriched uranium for fuel for that reactor. We were intimidated, insulated, pushed back and forth to the point that we said we’ll do it ourselves: We’re not going to take this from anybody! Now this doesn’t mean that if they provide us with fuel now we will accept it, because first of all we have made this investment domestically, and secondly we do not have any trust and, third we do not see any reason now that we have put so much time and effort in it and brought them to the point of abandoning the illusion of zero enrichment in Iran, why should we accept anything less.

David Ignatius: Q&A with Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister - The Washington Post Wednesday, December 18, 2013 @ 10:04pm