President Hassan Rouhani has threatened to hold an unprecedented referendum in Iran as he warned hardline opponents of a nuclear deal with the west that the country must end its international isolation.
The Iranian leader said he was looking at the possibility of using his constitutional rights to give power to the people in comments that some analysts took as a warning that he may try to put a nuclear agreement to a public vote.
“Our political experience shows that the country cannot have sustainable growth when it is isolated,” he told a conference on Iran’s economy in Tehran yesterday. He added that this did not mean Iran’s negotiations with six world powers — the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany — were compromising the Islamic regime’s ideals of the 1979 revolution. “Our ideals are not bound to centrifuges. Our ideals are bound to our hearts, brains and determination,” he said.