Iran president says ‘not seeking nuclear weapons’

TEHRAN: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Thursday that his country was not seeking a nuclear weapon, a day after US President Donald Trump called for a new agreement to prevent it from obtaining one.

“We are not seeking nuclear weapons,” Pezeshkian said in a meeting with foreign diplomats in Tehran, adding that “verifying this issue is an easy task”.

On Wednesday, Trump called for a “verified nuclear peace agreement” with Iran, adding that it “cannot have a Nuclear Weapon”.

The US president had a day earlier reinstated his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran over allegations the country is seeking nuclear weapons capability.

Iran lambasted the reinstatement of the policy, saying pursuing it again would end in “failure”.

Under that policy during his first term, which ended in 2021, Washington withdrew from a landmark nuclear deal that had imposed curbs on Iran´s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.

Tehran adhered to the deal -- known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) -- until a year after Washington pulled out, but then began rolling back its commitments.

Efforts to revive the 2015 deal have since faltered.

During Thursday´s meeting, which was broadcast on television, Pezeshkian referred to a long-standing fatwa, or religious edict, by Iran´s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei prohibiting atomic weapons.

He noted that Iran was not pursuing such weapons because “massacring innocent people is not acceptable in the doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.