Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian emphasized Tehran’s position that it will not develop nuclear weapons in response to U.S. President Donald Trump saying he had not yet heard such a promise.
A third round of indirect U.S.-Iran talks is due to take place on Thursday to reach a deal that avoids military action by Washington, which has sent what Trump calls an “armada” to the Middle East.
The top issue is Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for civilian energy, but the U.S. and Israel fear will one day lead to the development of a weapon of mass destruction.
“He says, for example, that Iran should declare that we will not have nuclear weapons,” Pezeshkian said on Thursday in comments carried by Iranian state media, originally in Farsi.
“Well, the Supreme Leader has already stated that we will not have nuclear weapons at all. It’s different when I, as a politician, say something—because maybe politicians like us, who are not clerics, might not tell the truth to people.
“I might think that I’m like those politicians; I might lie too. But the leader of society, the religious leader of society, cannot lie. When he declares that we will not have nuclear weapons, it means we will not have them.
“Even if I wanted to move in that direction, I wouldn’t be able to. From a religious standpoint, I wouldn’t even have the right for it to cross my mind. We do not have the right to do such a thing.
“That’s what he says. They have not merely announced, so to speak, that we ‘do not want’ to have nuclear weapons.”
In his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday, Trump said he wants to solve the Iran issue through diplomacy.
“We are in negotiations with [Iran]. They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,'” Trump said during his speech.
“My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy, but one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon,” he added.
“And no one should ever doubt America’s resolve. We have the most powerful military on Earth.”
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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