TEHRAN — Mohammad Eslami, head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), has said the Zionist regime must first take a look at its geographical size before threatening to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“The Zionist regime must look in the mirror to its true size before threatening to target Iran's nuclear sites,” Eslami said in an interview with the Yemeni TV network Al-Masira aired on Saturday. 

Eslami, the new Iran’s nuclear chief, reiterated Tehran’s long-held position that the Islamic Republic has no intention to build nuclear weapons.
 
“In its national strategy, Iran has never tried and will never try to acquire a nuclear weapon. It acts in accordance with the standards and framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” Eslami stated.

Eslami added in all the inspections that have been carried out on the Iranian nuclear sites so far, no deviation has been observed.

On November 27, 20120, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in a terrorist attack near the city of Damavand, 45 kilometers northeast of Tehran. Israel was considered the chief culprit behind the assassination carried out by agents working for the Israeli spy agency. He was among four others assassinated in terrorist attacks over the past years. 

“The imperialism thinks that by assassinating a nuclear scientist, it can strike at the Islamic Revolution, when it is the other way around, and these actions not only have not weakened our nuclear program, but also strengthened it and led to the development of our peaceful nuclear activities,” he noted. 

Iran’s nuclear chief also stressed that the approaching talks in Vienna will be about the return of the other parties to their obligations under the JCPOA (the official name for the 2015 nuclear deal) and not about nuclear issues. 

While the U.S. abrogated the JCPOA in 2018 and illegally imposed the harshest sanctions in history on Iran and the European parties to the deal did not fulfill their obligations are claiming that Iran is moving towards the path to build nuclear arms.

“The other parties have not adhered to the commitments made in the nuclear deal, and at the same time, they make such claims. This shows the negative atmosphere the media has created against us,” he concluded. 

In remarks late on Friday, Eslami also refuted claims by the West about cooperation between Iran and the IAEA, saying the recent negotiations during IAEA chief Rafael Grossi's trip to Tehran did not fail but some issues required more time to be finalized.