Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated on Saturday that Iran views nuclear weapons as “unacceptable,” reaffirming the country’s longstanding position, supported by a religious fatwa, amid sensitive negotiations with the United States.
Western governments have long suspected Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear weapon capability although denying it, News.Az reports citing foreign media.
“If the issue is nuclear weapons, yes, we too consider this type of weapon unacceptable,” Araghchi, Iran’s lead negotiator in the talks, said in a televised speech. “We agree with them on this issue.”
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that an Iran deal was possible in the “not-too-distant future.”
He had told reporters on Wednesday at the White House: “I want it (nuclear agreement) very strong where we can go in with inspectors, we can take whatever we want, we can blow up whatever we want, but nobody getting killed. We can blow up a lab, but nobody is gonna be in a lab, as opposed to everybody being in the lab and blowing it up.”
Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear programme.
The US president has not ruled out military action but said he wants space to make a deal first, and has also said that Israel, and not the United States, would take the lead in any such strikes.
The semi-official Fars News Agency cited an unnamed Iranian official on Friday as saying that Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities is a clear red line and will have severe consequences.
“If US seeks a diplomatic solution, it must abandon the language of threats and sanctions,” the unnamed Iranian official said, adding that such threats “are open hostility against Iran’s national interests.”
Iran has held five rounds of talks with the United States in search of a new nuclear agreement to replace the deal with major powers, which Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The two governments are at odds over Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, which Washington has said must cease but which Tehran insists is its right under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Nonetheless, Trump said Wednesday that “we’re having some very good talks with Iran”, adding that he had warned Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu against striking its nuclear facilities as it would not be “appropriate right now”.
Israel has repeatedly threatened military action, after pummelling Iranian air defences during two exchanges of fire last year.
