18-Dec-13: Head of Iran's nuclear energy agency: "Iran's centrifuges are working at full capacity. You talk, we act."

Memories of a simpler, more optimistic epoch...
three weeks ago [Washington Post article]

An opinion piece entitled "Iran Nuke Deal Quietly Collapses" by Amir Taheri in the New York Post, December 16, 2013, presents a devastatingly different view of how the West's delicate dance with the ayatollahs is perceived over in Iran:

Less than a month after it was hailed as "a great diplomatic coup," the Geneva accord to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions seems to have come unstuck. The official narrative in Tehran is that Iran signed nothing. "There is no treaty and no pact," says Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, "only a statement of intent." Originally, Iran's official media had presented the accord as a treaty (qarardad), but it now refers to a "letter of agreement" (tavafoq nameh). On Sunday, an editorial in the daily Kayhan, published by the office of Supreme Guide Ali Khameini, claimed that the six-month period of the accord was meaningless and that a final agreement might "even take 20 years to negotiate"... Translated into plain language, the new Iranian narrative is that talks about implementing an accord that is not legally binding have collapsed and that, in the words of the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, Ali-Akbar Salehi, there is no change in the rhythm and tempo of Iran’s nuclear project. “Our centrifuges are working full capacity,” Salehi said last Thursday... If unable to impose its will on others, the Iranian regime will try to buy time through endless negotiations... Here is how Khamenei’s daily mouthpiece put it Sunday: “If our centrifuges do not continue to turn, no other wheel shall turn for our dignity, independence, power and security.” The message from Tehran to Washington is clear: You talk, we act.

What's worse? That the P5+1 leadership thought they had a deal?
Or that they knew they did not, but pretended
otherwise? [BBC page]

As ominous as this sounds (and it certainly should), there's an additional dimension that gets too little attention outside Iran:

The mullahs also use the prospect of normalization, especially with the United States, to divert attention from their increasingly repressive rule. While Iranians are bombarded with talk of President Hassan Rouhani’s “diplomatic miracle,” an average of 10 people are executed in Iran every day. [Taheri]

Translating that into body count terms, under "Smiling" Hassan Rouhani, its new, mild-and-moderate post-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad president, the number of state-instituted deaths by execution so far this year has soared to 529 as of the end of November [source], making it the world's new leader, on a per capita basis. 

Further proof that while the word talks, in Iran they act.