A lawmaker said no foreign limits can be placed on Iran’s missile program, as it does not violate international law.
Kamal Dehqani Firouzabadi, deputy chairman of Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, made the statement in an interview with ICANA on Monday.
He was referring to recent remarks by the US Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, who said she would contain Iran’s missile program if elected to office.
“As long as a country’s defense activities are not against international law, no restrictions can be imposed on them,” he said.
Firouzabadi said Clinton’s anti-Iran remarks can be viewed as empty promises aimed at attracting greater support in the race for presidency.
“US presidential candidates are used to give promises whose fulfillment is not in the power of US president,” he said.
Donald Trump is another US presidential hopeful who has repeatedly criticized the July 2015 nuclear deal and vowed to rip it up and negotiate a new one, if he became a president.
The deal was signed after two years of negotiations between Iran and P5+1 (the US, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany) and went into effect last January. Under the deal, Iran curbed its nuclear work for the removal of UN, US and EU nuclear-related sanctions.
After the settlement of the 12-year dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities, Iran’s missile program has become a new source of tension between Iran and the West, which accuses Tehran of intending to build nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Last March, Iran successfully test-fired two ballistic missiles during a military drill to assess its defense capabilities.
The tests became an excuse for a March letter by the United States, Britain, France and Germany to the UN Security Council, contending that the launches were “in defiance of” the UNSC Resolution 2231.
The resolution, which was adopted last July to endorse the nuclear deal, only “calls upon” Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles “designed” to deliver nuclear weapons.
Iran says none of its ballistic missiles is developed to carry nuclear weapons and it only uses them as a conventional deterrent.
