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Iran official: Iran's nuclear program not for making arms

Mika Brzezinski: Are you saying it doesn’t exist? Leader, that is against Islamic jurisprudence to build use and mass destructive weapons.

Mika Brzezinski: Are you saying it doesn’t exist? [Iran has] no nuclear program?

Secretary General, High Council for Human Rights of Iran, Mohammad Javad Larijani: “Well, we have a very extensive nuclear program, but not to the direction of producing arms. Our nuclear project is very extensive, very advanced, we are number one in the Middle East. But we are not pursuing the nuclear armament for two basic reasons. Number one, there is a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini, the [Supreme] Leader, that is against Islamic jurisprudence to build use and mass destructive weapons. And secondly, it doesn’t add to our security. It is more liability than asset for us. Our military muscle is strong enough to repel or to deter any imminent threat, and this basically is a very important achievement.

Richard Haass, Council on Foreign Relations: “Well, quite frankly it’s impossible to take the Iranian denial seriously. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), taking information from all the member states in the United Nations, have put together a comprehensive and extraordinarily damning report. And what there is is a pattern – not a single incident – a pattern over years of an Iranian program to move in the direction of developing nuclear weapons. We see a procurement mechanism – to gain access to all sorts of equipment. We see all sorts of undeclared efforts to produce nuclear material, now up to 20 percent, well on its way to what you need to produce a weapon. Most important, there’s now serious evidence about the Iranian testing of the implosive device that would actually be the heart of a nuclear weapon. So the idea that the Iranians have all these underground and undeclared facilities, that they’ve been misleading the IAEA for years, and the idea they’re doing this – this oil rich country – in order to produce electricity? If you believe that, you would seriously have to believe in the tooth fairy.”

Brzezinski: “Sir, this doesn’t sound like preposterous little pieces of information that we’re throwing together randomly.”

Larijani: “The whole series of allegations is produced and initiated by the United States…there is no secret program in our nuclear program.”