The Iranian flag flutters outside the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria, June 9, 2025. REUTERS/Lisa Leutner/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Iran says parliament is preparing bill to leave nuclear non-proliferation treaty
By Reuters
June 16, 2025DUBAI, June 16 (Reuters) - Iranian parliamentarians are preparing a bill that could push Tehran toward exiting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the foreign ministry said on Monday, while reiterating Tehran's official stance against developing nuclear weapons.
"In
light of recent developments, we will take an appropriate decision.
Government has to enforce parliament bills but such a proposal is just
being prepared and we will coordinate in the later stages with
parliament," the ministry's spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said, when
asked at a press conference about Tehran potentially leaving the NPT.
The
NPT, which Iran ratified in 1970, guarantees countries the right to
pursue civilian nuclear power in return for requiring them to forego
atomic weapons and cooperate with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA.
Iran last week, saying Tehran was on the verge of building a nuclear
bomb. Iran has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, although
the IAEA declared last week that Tehran was in violation of its NPT obligations.
President Masoud Pezeshkian reiterated on Monday that nuclear weapons were against a religious edict by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Iran's
state media said that no decision on quitting the NPT had yet been made
by parliament, while a parliamentarian said that the proposal was at
the initial stages of the legal process.
Baghaei
said that developments such as Israel's attack "naturally affect the
strategic decisions of the state," noting that Israel's attack had
followed the IAEA resolution, which he suggested was to blame.
"Those voting for the resolution prepared the ground for the attack," Baghaei said.
Israel,
which never joined the NPT, is widely assumed by regional governments
to possess nuclear weapons, although it does not confirm or deny this.
"The Zionist regime is the only possessor of weapons of mass destruction in the region," Baghaei said.
Reporting by Dubai newsroom, Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff