Iran says "not interested" in having a nuclear weaponJanuary 7, 2020 - 11:15 AMT PanARMENIAN.Net - The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations Majid Takht-Ravanchi has said that Iran is not interested in having a nuclear weapon, "because we have a very clear, clear-cut religious edict by our supreme leader prohibiting nuclear weapons," PBS reports. "At the same time, there is no place for nuclear weapons in Iran's defensive doctrine. Therefore, we do not want to have nuclear weapons. We are a member of NPT. We have said, in the JCPOA, the nuclear deal, that Iran will not have nuclear weapons," the Ambassador said. "But, at the same time, JCPOA was a deal. It was a give-and-take. We have been — we have been doing our part for some time, with almost nothing in return. Unfortunately, the European partners which were supposed to give us the benefit of the nuclear deal, they didn't act in accordance with the deal. "If Iran is given the benefits of the deal, we will go back to the full implementation of it." On January 5, Iran made a major announcement regarding its nuclear program, stating that it will no longer observe limits on the number of centrifuges that it uses to enrich uranium. While the announcement is significant, it was not altogether unexpected. And it most certainly does not constitute the “harsh revenge” that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised following the killing of Qasem Soleimani last week. Ever since May 2019, Iran has been taking one additional step every 60 days to decrease its compliance with the nuclear agreement. Over the course of summer and fall of 2019, Iran made successive announcements that it was abandoning limitations on its level of enrichment, its stock of enriched material, and its research and development work on new centrifuges. In this latest announcement, Iran said it would abandon the limit on number of centrifuges. Experts had been expecting Iran to announce such a “step five” for weeks. Top stories Authorities said a total of 192 Azerbaijani troops were killed and 511 were wounded during Azerbaijan’s offensive. In 2023, the Azerbaijani government will increase the country’s defense budget by more than 1.1 billion manats ($650 million). The bill, published on Monday, is designed to "eliminate the shortcomings of an unreasonably broad interpretation of the key concept of "compatriot". The earthquake caused a temporary blackout, damaged many buildings and closed a number of rural roads. Partner news | Russia warns Armenia against “falling into West’s trap” Zakharova maintained, however, that anything that will benefit the people of Armenia can only be welcomed. CSTO: Armenia has not participated in secretariat’s work recently Recently Armenia has not participated in the work of the secretariat of the CSTO, Imangali Tasmagambetov said. Meeting with U.S., EU not against third parties, says Armenia The meeting scheduled for April 5 is dedicated to strengthening of the Armenia-EU-US cooperation, Yerevan added. Ucom launches network modernization efforts in few regions of Armenia In particular, on March 28, the legacy Mobile Switching Subsystem will be replaced with a new one. |