The Arak IR-40 heavy water reactor in Iran. Photo: Nanking2012/Wikimedia Commons.

JNS.org – While negotiations between Western countries and Iran began Tuesday in Geneva, Israel sounded a skeptical note on Iran’s characterization of its nuclear program as peaceful.

“Israel does not oppose Iran having a peaceful nuclear energy program,” the Israeli Diplomatic-Security Cabinet said in a statement. “But as has been demonstrated in many countries, from Canada to Indonesia, peaceful programs do not require uranium enrichment or plutonium production. Iran’s nuclear weapons program does.”

A country like Iran “that regularly deceives the international community, that violates U.N. Security Council resolutions, that participates in the slaughter of civilians in Syria and that promotes terror worldwide” has no right to enrich uranium, Israel added.