Iran will never seek nuclear weapons, says President Pezeshkian at UN

Iran’s president reiterated on Wednesday that the country is not pursuing nuclear weapons, following earlier military strikes by Israel and the United States and looming sanctions from European powers.

“I hereby declare once more before this assembly that Iran has never sought and will never seek to build a nuclear bomb,” President Masoud Pezeshkian told the United Nations General Assembly.

“The one disturbing peace and stability in the region is Israel, but Iran is the one that gets punished,” he said.

On August 28, Britain, France and Germany launched a 30-day process to reimpose U.N. sanctions that ends on September 27, accusing Tehran of failing to abide by a 2015 deal with world powers aimed at preventing it from developing a nuclear weapon.

The European powers have offered to delay reinstating sanctions for up to six months to allow space for talks on a long-term deal if Iran restores access for U.N. nuclear inspectors, addresses concerns about its stock of enriched uranium, and engages in talks with the United States.

Iran has consistently maintained that it is not seeking nuclear weapons, citing a fatwa by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and US intelligence has not concluded that Iran has decided to develop a bomb.

However, Israel, the US and European nations remain sceptical, citing Iran’s advanced nuclear capabilities and the potential for rapid weaponisation. Britain, France, and Germany have moved to reimpose UN sanctions that were suspended under the 2015 nuclear deal, which was later abandoned by former US President Donald Trump.

Pezeshkian accused the Europeans of bad faith, saying that Iran’s lack of cooperation was in response to Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“They falsely presented themselves as parties of good standing to the agreement, and they disparaged Iran’s sincere efforts as insufficient,” Pezeshkian said.

“All of this was in pursuit of nothing less than the destruction of the very JCPOA which they themselves had once held as a foremost achievement."

Standing at the General Assembly rostrum, Pezeshkian showed pictures of people killed in the Israeli military campaign against Iran, which Tehran says killed more than 1,000 people.

“Aerial assaults of the Zionist regime and the United States of America against Iran’s cities, homes and infrastructure at the very time we were treading the path of diplomatic negotiations constituted a grave betrayal of diplomacy,” he said.

With inputs from agencies