Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Saeed Khatibzadeh said the country’s nuclear program is still “intact” despite admitting that it suffered severe damage from attacks by the United States and Israel on its facilities earlier this year.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Frederick Preitgen on Sunday, Mr. Khatibzadeh said that Iran’s “peaceful nuclear program is intact as we speak,” adding: “We are going to protect it.”
The exact status of Iran’s facilities remains unclear following a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June, and the United States’ airstrikes on three of the country’s nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan that month.
US President Donald Trump initially claimed Fordow had been eliminated. Initial US intelligence assessments suggested that three nuclear facilities were badly damaged, but Iran’s nuclear program may have been set back by only up to two years.
Khatibzadeh said Israeli and US airstrikes had destroyed “much of our infrastructure, machinery” and “buildings”, but noted that the nuclear program “is largely based on the knowledge of our indigenous peoples and has spread far and wide across our vast country of 90 million people”.
“And this is not a country where you can think about bombing and ruining everything,” the minister said.
Khatibzadeh’s assessment comes after Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Alaghushi said on Sunday that the country’s enrichment facilities were “attacked” and no uranium enrichment is taking place “at this time.” The enrichment process produces fuel for nuclear power plants, and at higher enrichment levels it can also be used to make nuclear bombs.
Khatibzadeh did not comment on whether enrichment is taking place at Iranian facilities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said in a confidential report on Wednesday that inspecting Iran’s highly enriched uranium stockpile was “long overdue” and Iranian inspectors were still not allowed access to the bombed nuclear facility, Reuters reported.
Mr. Khatibzadeh said Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, reiterating the Iranian government’s long-standing position that nuclear weapons exist solely for energy generation purposes.
He also suggested that any future dialogue with the United States over Iran’s nuclear program would be conditional on an agreement that would allow Iran to pursue uranium enrichment. “The delusion of zero enrichment in Iran and trying to strip Iran of its fundamental rights will not be an option for Iran,” he said.
Separately, Khatibzadeh said Iran has “legitimate military plans to protect national interests and national security.” Asked by CNN whether the Iranian government was expanding its missile program, the minister said the program was “repairing and restoring” after the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Iran went into effect in June.
CNN reported last month on signs that Iran is ramping up rebuilding its ballistic missile program, despite the recent reintroduction of UN sanctions banning arms sales and ballistic missile activity to Iran.
European sources say Chinese companies are helping Iran rebuild its ballistic missile program, and sodium perchlorate, a precursor for missile propellant, has been shipped from China to Iran several times since the end of September.
In an interview with CNN, Khatibzadeh said Iran has “very close ties” with China and Russia, and that those ties predate “what’s happened recently.”
Asked if he had a message for the Trump administration regarding relations with Iran, the deputy minister said his country is “the oldest continuous civilization on earth…This country and this nation are masters of survival.”
CNN’s Melissa Bell and Gianluca Mezzofiore contributed to this report. This story has been updated.
