Mahmoud Alavi says Iran could reverse the course of a nuclear program if the country is ‘cornered’.
Iran’s intelligence minister has warned that his country could push for nuclear weapons if strict international sanctions on Tehran remain in place, state television said.
The comments by Mahmoud Alavi on Tuesday marked a rare incident where a government official said Iran could reverse its course on the nuclear program.
Tehran has long demanded that the program be for peaceful purposes only, such as power generation and medical research. A 1990s fatwa, or religious edition, by the country’s Director General Ali Hosseini Khamenei says nuclear weapons are banned.
“Our nuclear program is peaceful and the fatwa with the superintendent has banned nuclear weapons, but if they push Iran to that side, it will not be Iran ‘s fault but those who pushed it,” he said. to say that Alavi was saying.
“If a cat is to blame, it may be showing a type of behavior that a cat would not do for free,” he said, adding that Iran has no plans to move towards nuclear weapons under the current conditions. currently.
In 2018, US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from an agreement from a nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers three years ago and re-imposed tough economic sanctions on Iran’s economy as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign.
In response, Iran gradually began breaking its promises under the landmark agreement. As part of those measures, Iran has begun enriching uranium closer to weapons level and said it would experiment with uranium metals, a key part of a nuclear warhead. Iran maintains that it is easy to reverse all breaches of the agreement.
Khamenei, who has the final say on all state issues in Iran, urged the US on Sunday to lift all sanctions if it wants Tehran to live up to promises under the agreement. .
The U.S. and other Western signatories to the deal seem to be going overboard on which side should return to the agreement first, making it unlikely that U.S. sanctions that destroyed has quickly wiped out Iran’s economy.
New U.S. President Joe Biden has made it clear that Washington will not make the first move.
Accommodation in the killing of a leading scientist
Alavi, the intelligence minister, was also quoted as saying that a member of Iran’s armed forces had a “chance” to kill a leading scientist in December who was in charge of Tehran’s nuclear program, which Iran has blamed Israel.
The minister did not expand on what he meant – and it was not clear whether the soldier carried out the explosion that killed the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Israel, which is suspected of killing Iranian nuclear scientists over the past decade, has refused to comment on the attack.
This was the first time Iran recognized that he may have had a member of his armed forces as an aide in the killing of Fakhrizadeh, who was in charge of an AMAD program called Iran, which Israel and the West have say that the military operation looked at the feasibility of building a nuclear weapon.
The International Atomic Energy Agency – the UN’s nuclear watchdog – says the “structured” program ended in 2003. The U.S. intelligence agencies approved this assessment in a 2007 report.
In December, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed revenge for Fakhrizadeh’s assassination, saying his country will decide the time or place of any retaliatory action.
Israel has long been accused in Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, and the 2015 nuclear treaty placed strict limits on Iran’s nuclear activity to prevent it from reaching military capabilities. In return, Iran received sanctions relief.