Iran's top nuclear negotiator said this week that Washington must accept the Islamic Republic’s "inalienable nuclear rights" and suggested that Western governments are deluding themselves about the concessions Tehran is prepared to make in nuclear talks, The Washington Free Beacon reports.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who also serves as its top negotiator in nuclear talks with the United States and five other international powers, dismissed Western media reports suggesting that Tehran was moderating its demands. He said there had been no change in Iran’s insistence on its "inalienable nuclear rights."

With a Nov. 24 deadline looming for conclusion of international talks aimed at reining in Tehran’s illicit nuclear program, Zarif gave no indication that his government was prepared to make substantive changes.

"Some [western] countries have fallen prey to miscalculations [about Iran’s position] due to wrong analyses," Zarif said Tuesday, dismissing concerns about its weapons development efforts as a "manufactured crisis."

On Capitol Hill, there is mounting concern that the Obama administration will accede to Iranian demands that it be permitted to continue to enrich uranium. Two leading congressional advocates of bipartisan legislation toughening sanctions indicated that Congress would move in that direction of the administration gives in.

Republican Sen Mark Kirk of Illinois and New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez issued a joint statement calling on the administration to push for an agreement that "will dismantle, not just stall, Iran’s illicit nuclear program and prevent Iran from ever becoming a threshold nuclear weapons state."

If a potential deal does not achieve these goals – including a strong inspection and verification regime and strict limits on nuclear research – then "we will work with our colleagues in Congress to act decisively, as we have in the past," the two senators said.

Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the Obama administration is on the verge of permitting Tehran to continue some of its most dangerous nuclear activity.

"A deal that allows Iran to enrich any uranium and to keep in place a nuclear infrastructure is a bad deal," she said Wednesday. "As long as Iran maintains the capability to enrich uranium, it can create a nuclear weapon."

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