Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Saturday his country was not seeking to develop nuclear weapons despite assertions from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that it was close to acquiring enough material to develop a bomb.
“Iran is not planning on acquiring nuclear weapons because Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had issued a fatwa against them,” said Raisi according to the Arab World Press.
IAEA chief Rafael Grossi had recently stated that Iran was weeks rather than months away from obtaining enough enriched uranium to develop a nuclear bomb.
“This does not mean that Iran possesses or will possess a nuclear weapon in that period of time,” he added in a report earlier this week.
Raisi, meanwhile, claimed that Tehran’s “nuclear ideology” does not at all include the development of nuclear arms.
He stressed that Iran was seeking to use nuclear technology for peaceful means.
He called for lifting the sanctions imposed on his country, declaring that they will not yield their desired results.
Vienna has hosted numerous rounds of talks between Iran and western powers with the aim of reviving Tehran’s 2015 nuclear agreement that the United States withdrew from in 2018.
An informed source denied claims that Iran was pursuing direct negotiations with the US to restore the deal, reported Iran’s IRNA news agency last week.
It said Tehran and Washington were still exchanging messages “within specific frameworks” and that top Iranian negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani was following up on the negotiations.
Iran is enriching uranium to up to 60%, close to the roughly 90% that is weapons grade, at its Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant (PFEP) in its sprawling Natanz complex and at its Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant (FFEP), which is dug into a mountain.
