The president of Iran, Masud Pezeshkian, has warned this Sunday his US counterpart, Donald Trump, that the American leader lacks the authority to prevent the Islamic Republic from exercising its "right" to develop nuclear energy. This issue remains one of the main stumbling blocks in the complex talks opened between both countries to try to end the war.
"Trump says Iran should not use its nuclear rights, but for what crime?", declared the Iranian president during a visit to the Ministry of Sports, in comments to the semi-official Iranian agency ISNA. "How is it possible that he is capable of depriving a nation of its legal rights?", he added.
The dispute over Iran's atomic program has been dragging on for years. In 2015, Tehran signed a far-reaching international agreement by which it committed to permanently clear up suspicions about the peaceful nature of its nuclear activities in exchange for fully returning to international markets.
Trump abandoned this pact three years later and, within the framework of the current escalation, the United States and Israel initiated the attack against Tehran on February 28, alleging again —as they already did in the bombings of the previous summer— that the country was one step away from manufacturing a nuclear weapon.
After his words addressed to Trump, Pezeshkian has urged the Iranian citizenry to remain firm in the face of "a bloodthirsty and savage enemy", but has underlined that Iran's reaction to the attacks, including those launched against American positions in other countries in the region, must be understood exclusively as an act of self-defense.
"We have to manage the environment in such a way that it does not give the impression that we are inciting war. We are defending ourselves," he declared.