Leader: Iran Will Not Back Down on Nuclear Issue

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said the Islamic Republic will not back down on its right to peaceful nuclear technology and will continue its progress in this field in line with the country’s current and future needs.
“Like other issues, the Islamic Republic will not back down on the nuclear issues [in the face of Western pressures] and will continue to march forward on the basis of the country’s present and future expediencies,” Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks during a Sunday meeting with members of the Assembly of Experts in Tehran, Press TV reported. 
Stressing that Iran will never make a move to develop nuclear weapons, the Leader said, “What prevents the Islamic Republic from building nuclear weapons is the Islamic way of thinking and principles, which prohibit the production of all kinds of nuclear or chemical weapons, which would be used to massacre ordinary people.”
Referring to the massacre of 220,000 innocent people in the US nuclear bombardment of two Japanese cities during World War II as well as the indiscriminate bombardment of Yemeni people, markets, hospitals and schools by Western warplanes, Ayatollah Khamenei said massacring civilians and innocent people is the way of Americans and Western countries, but the Islamic Republic does not believe in this method and, therefore, never thinks about nuclear weapons.
“That international Zionist clown, who keeps saying that ‘we will not allow Iran to build nuclear weapons’, must know that if the Islamic Republic had decided to produce nuclear weapons, he and those bigger than him could not prevent it,” he declared.