By Iran’s deputy foreign minister Saeed Khatibzadeh has described the country’s nuclear program as still “intact,” despite admitting that US and Israeli strikes earlier this year caused significant damage to key facilities.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen on Sunday, Khatibzadeh said Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program is intact, as we are speaking,” adding that “we are going to be protecting that.”
The exact state of Iran’s facilities remains unclear following a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June and US airstrikes against three of the country’s nuclear facilities – Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan – also that month.
US President Donald Trump initially claimed that the Fordow facility had been obliterated. An early US intelligence assessment suggested the three nuclear facilities had been badly damaged, but that Iran’s nuclear program may have only been set back by up to two years.
Khatibzadeh acknowledged that Israeli and US strikes had “ruined many of our infrastructure, machineries” and “buildings,” but emphasized that Iran’s nuclear capabilities are widely dispersed and rooted in domestic expertise. “Our nuclear program is very much based on our indigenous knowledge, very much spread across our country, which is a huge country – 90 million people,” he said.
“And this country is not a country that you can bomb and then think that you are going to ruin everything,” he added.
Khatibzadeh’s assessment comes as Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Sunday that no uranium enrichment was taking place “right now” because the country’s enrichment facilities had been “attacked.” The enrichment process produces fuel for nuclear power plants, which, at higher-enrichment levels, can also be used to make a nuclear bomb.
The deputy minister did not comment on whether enrichment was taking place at Iran’s facilities. The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a confidential report on Wednesday that checking Iran’s stock of highly enriched uranium was ‘long overdue,’ with its inspectors still not allowed into the bombed nuclear sites, Reuters reported.
Reiterating Tehran’s long-held stance, Khatibzadeh insisted that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful and directed solely toward energy production.
Separately, Khatibzadeh said Iran has “legitimate military programs to defend our national interests and our national security.” Asked by CNN if Tehran is expanding its missile program, the minister said the program was going through “repair and recovery” after a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Iran came into effect in June.
Last month, CNN reported indications that Iran is accelerating efforts to rebuild its ballistic missile capabilities, despite the recent reimposition of United Nations sanctions prohibiting arms sales to Iran and any ballistic missile activity. According to European intelligence sources, Chinese companies have been assisting Tehran with the reconstruction efforts. The sources said several shipments of sodium perchlorate — a chemical used as a missile propellant precursor — have been transported from China to Iran since late September.
In his interview with CNN, Khatibzadeh said Iran enjoys “very close relations” with China, as well as Russia, noting that these ties existed long before “anything that happened recently.”
When asked if he had a message for the Trump administration regarding its approach to Iran, the deputy foreign minister replied that his country is the “oldest living, continuous civilization on earth… This country and this nation is (a) master of survival.”
