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.