Iranian official: We’ve not yet manufactured a nuclear weapon but we have the capability to do it!
A senior Iranian parliamentary official said on Saturday that Iran hasn’t yet developed a nuclear weapon, but it possesses the capability to do so.
Kamran Ghazanfari, a member of the Iranian parliament’s Interior Affairs Committee, said that Tehran could increase its uranium enrichment to 90% within the framework of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
He added, “Iran must prepare by possessing a sufficient quantity of uranium, so that if the enemy uses a nuclear weapon against us, we will be able to manufacture a nuclear weapon and respond to it within a short period of time”.
Ghazanfari continued, saying, “We’ve not yet manufactured a nuclear weapon, but we have the capacity to manufacture one, and we must maintain this capacity”.
For his part, Qadri Goodarzi, spokesman for the Iranian parliament’s presidium, said that parliament will never remain silent in the face of the activation of the trigger mechanism and will take a decisive and proportionate decision in this regard.
He added that what some Western powers are proposing under the guise of snapback, or re-imposing sanctions, has no practical or real impact, rather than being a propaganda and psychological move to pressure Iranian public opinion.
Goodarzi stressed that Iran won’t succumb to blackmail, and that Parliament will take countermeasures in response to the formal implementation of the trigger mechanism.
The UN Security Council re-imposed sanctions on Iran on Friday evening, thus failing to adopt a draft resolution to extend the lifting of international sanctions on Iran.
Earlier this month, Britain, France, and Germany launched a 30-day process to activate the “snapback mechanism,” which automatically restores UN sanctions on Iran.
The European Troika accused Tehran of failing to comply with the nuclear agreement, which was intended to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Tehran, in turn, threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty if the trigger mechanism was activated and sanctions were re-imposed.
