New York [US], September 21: Iranian President EbrahimRaisi defended the country's nuclear programme during the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday.
"Nuclear weapons have no place in the defensive doctrine of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Risia said in his speech to the UN. International sanctions had not prevented the country from progressing, he added.
In 2015, Tehran signed a nuclear agreement to drastically restrict the enrichment of uranium and allow strict International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) checks. The move was intended to curtail nuclear weapons in the country.
After the United States pulled out of the agreement in 2018 under then-president Donald Trump, Tehran began enriching uranium to near-weapons-grade purity and restricting IAEA inspections. Raisi, during his address before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, said scuttling the deal was an "inappropriate response" to Iran being found out of compliance with treaty requirements.
On Saturday, Tehran informed the IAEA that it had stripped key experts of their accreditation to inspect the country's nuclear arsenal. The move followed the announcement by Germany, France and Britain on Thursday that they would not lift existing sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. Negotiations to revive the 2015 nuclear deal have not made significant progress for more than a year.
On Monday, the US and Iran carried out a prisoner swap that had been prepared for months and, according to observers, could pave the way for new rounds of talks.
Raisi was accompanied on his trip to the US by Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri, who is leading the nuclear talks for Tehran. The Biden administration was in negotiations with Iran to restart the agreement last year, but those talks fell through. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in July that the US is "not talking about" starting the deal again.
"An agreement was on the table. Iran either couldn't or wouldn't say yes," Blinken said. "We're not about to take any deal. Of course, it has to meet our security objectives. It has to meet our interests."
"So, we made a very good faith effort to get back into compliance with them," he continued. "They couldn't or wouldn't do it. We're now in a place where we're not talking about a nuclear agreement."
The Iranian president, who spoke for more than half an hour, also held up a copy of the Quran and defended the teachings of Islam's holy book. Criticizing the banning of headscarves in schools and the burning of the Quran at demonstrations, he said that "Islamophobia and cultural apartheid are evident in the West" and called for the UN to play a greater role in defending religions.
Source: Qatar Tribune