President Masoud Pezeshkian has reiterated that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons and war, and that unfounded allegations to the contrary are primarily made by Israel, which has committed aggression against all the regional countries.

“We are not pursuing nuclear weapons. Our dear Leader of the Islamic Revolution [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei] has issued fatwa against it,” he told foreign ambassadors and envoys in Tehran on Thursday.

“Even those who think they can push this country toward nuclear weapons cannot do so because the doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran does not, under any circumstances, accept the mass killing of innocent people,” Pezeshkian added.

Iran’s nuclear doctrine is based on Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa categorically banning the production, possession and stockpiling of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction.

Pezeshkian said verifying the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program is not difficult.

“Whenever inspectors (from the International Atomic Energy Agency) have wanted, they have come and inspected. They can come and inspect a hundred more times. When we have no such intention, they should not keep saying every day that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.” 

Such baseless allegations against Iran, Pezeshkian said, come from the occupying regime of Israel, an entity that “has violated the sovereignty of all nations in the region—yet human rights advocates claim it is merely defending itself.”

“Who displaced the people of Gaza from their homes and turned them into refugees? A displaced person has to to defend themselves. Any free human being, when deprived of their rights, will inevitably stand up. The world will only see peace when those who claim to uphold human rights respect them regardless of ethnicity, race, or religion,” he added.

Addressing the ambassadors of Islamic countries, Pezeshkian stressed that “Iran seeks sincere relations for the mutual exchange of experiences.”

In 2015, Iran proved the peaceful nature of its nuclear program to the world by signing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with six world powers.

However, Washington’s unilateral withdrawal in 2018 and its subsequent re-imposition of sanctions against Tehran left the future of the deal in limbo.

In 2019, Iran started to roll back the limits it had accepted under the JCPOA after the other parties failed to live up to their commitments.