We have no intention of building nuclear bomb, Iranian president tells UNGA

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian says his country has no intention of building a nuclear bomb.

While addressing the UN General Assembly on Wednesday in New York, Pezeshkian stressed that Iran has never sought to build a nuclear bomb.

“The bedrock of all divine religions and of the human conscience is this golden maxim: that which you would not approve for yourself, do not approve for others,” he said.

In June, the United States bombed three nuclear sites in Iran in what was part of actions to deflate the Middle East’s nuclear capacity.

US President Donald Trump, in an early social media post, said the military struck the nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan.

Iran retaliated by launching missile strikes on US forces at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar.

Speaking on the attacks, Pezeshkian said Iran “was subjected to a savage aggression in flagrant contravention of the most elementary principles of international law”.

“They were happening precisely at a time when we were treading the path of diplomatic negotiations and constituted a grave betrayal of diplomacy and a subversion of efforts towards the establishment of stability and peace,” the Iranian president said.

He warned that a failure to “confront such perilous breaches of international norms” would risk a repetition in the wider world.

Pezeshkian also spoke out against what he called “the ludicrous and delusional scheme of a Greater Israel”, encompassing “vast swaths of the region”.

He said Iran should instead be surrounded with powerful neighbours fighting against a grand project that imposed genocide, destruction and instability upon the region.

“In such a strong region, slaughter and bloodshed shall find no place,” he said.

“It is for this very reason that my country has for many years been among the staunchest advocates of establishing a region free of weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

“Yet those who themselves possess the largest nuclear arsenals and who, in flagrant breach of the NPT (non-proliferation treaty), make their weapons even deadlier and more destructive have for years subjected our people to pressures on the basis of spurious allegations.”

The president’s speech came after he addressed the UN security council meeting last week, where members rejected a resolution to lift sanctions against Iran imposed prior to a 2015 agreement on its nuclear programme.