Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the West cannot prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons if it wants to continue its nuclear weapons program, amid rising tensions over the country's advanced nuclear activities.

Edited by| Christian Megan

Politic section -  CJ journalist

Tehran -  June,11,2023

Iranian state media quoted Khamenei as saying that it is possible to reach an agreement with the west on Tehran's nuclear activities if the country's nuclear infrastructure remains untouched.

"There is nothing wrong with the agreement (with the West), but the infrastructure of our nuclear activities should not be touched,"Khamenei added.

He noted that Tehran should continue to work with the UN International Atomic Energy Agency within the framework of safeguards.

The Iranian leader said that "talking about Tehran's nuclear weapons is a lie and they (the West) know it, we do not want to make nuclear weapons because of our religious faith, otherwise they would not have been able to block it".

At the end of last month, Iran announced a solution with the International Atomic Energy Agency, specifically related to one of three sites being investigated for the presence of uranium particles.

An Iranian source said that the alleged case of the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding traces of uranium particles with a purity of 83.7 has ended, AFP quoted media reports in Tehran as saying.

Iran announced that the revival of the agreement on its nuclear program remains possible, blaming Western countries, especially the United States, for the delay in this.

Since April 2021, Iran and the major powers have been engaged in talks aimed at reviving the agreement, in which the United States indirectly participated. Despite the progress achieved in these talks, the stage of understanding for the reactivation of the agreement has not been reached.

Iran has concluded an agreement with major powers (the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany) on its nuclear program, which allowed the lifting of sanctions in exchange for reducing its activities and ensuring the peace of its program. However, the United States withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Tehran, which responded by gradually reneging on most of its obligations.

Iran and the parties to the agreement, coordinated by the European Union and with indirect American participation, began talks to revive it in April 2021. The negotiations stalled in early September 2022, with the Western parties asserting that the Iranian response to the draft understanding was "not constructive".

The issue of the IAEA finding traces of nuclear material at undeclared sites has been a key sticking point during the talks to revive the agreement.

Following a visit to Tehran in March, IAEA Director General Raffaele Grossi announced that Iran had agreed to restart surveillance cameras at nuclear facilities and increase the frequency of inspections.

{source}<script async src="https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4474625449481215"

crossorigin="anonymous"></script>

<!-- moss test ad -->

<ins class="adsbygoogle"

style="display:block"

data-ad-client="ca-pub-4474625449481215"

data-ad-slot="6499882985"

data-ad-format="auto"

data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>

<script>

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

</script>{/source}