GENEVA, January 22. /TASS/. Iran has neither plans nor desire to develop nuclear weapons, the republic’s Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"Had we wanted to build a nuclear weapon, we could have done it long time ago," he said when asked by US journalist Fareed Zakaria to comment US intelligence data that Tehran was allegedly on the verge of creating weapons of mass destruction. Zarif noted that Israeli politicians have been saying for 20 years that Iran is "a couple of days away from nuclear weapons." The Iranian politician dismissed these allegations.
"Iran is not a security threat. Some people want to frame Iran as a security threat. Iranophobia, Islamophobia are tools to carry out programs like the genocide in Gaza," Zarif pointed out. He added that after the US pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has achieved great success in its nuclear program.
Earlier, US President Donald Trump said he could not rule out the possibility of an armed conflict with Iran due to this nuclear factor.
Since 2003, a fatwa by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has outlawed the production of nuclear weapons, since it runs counter to Islam. Iranian politicians cite this as proof that the nation's nuclear program is purely peaceful.
On November 1, Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, said Tehran could revise its nuclear doctrine in the event of an existential threat to the country. According to the official, the republic has the technical capability to produce nuclear weapons and the supreme leader’s decision is the only obstacle.