ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Thursday emphasized the importance of educating and raising children with “national and regional passions,” telling Tehran’s rivals that even if they attack the nuclear facilities, the children of Iran will build more.

“Our children are valuable assets; more valuable than the projects we inaugurate,” said Pezeshkian during an event on the importance of education in Iran’s southwestern city of Bushehr.

“The enemy is threatening us with destroying our nuclear facility. Come and destroy it. It is the brains of our children that built it. If you destroy a hundred, our children will build a thousand projects,” he added.

Iran’s arch rivals – the United States and Israel – have repeatedly threatened to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, despite Tehran maintaining that its nuclear program is peaceful and that it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons.

“We have a duty to educate our children in a way that gives them the knowledge, skills, and belief in solving the country's problems, and this behavioral structure must be created in schools across the country, from Tehran to deprived areas,” stressed Pezeshkian.

US President Donald Trump earlier this month signed a memorandum restoring his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran and detailing a series of new economic measures against the Islamic republic.

In 2018, Trump unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal – an agreement between Tehran and world powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. Subsequent attempts at reviving the deal have failed to yield results.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday said that he will not deny “the possibility of a new [nuclear] deal or a new round of negotiations” with Washington, but stressed that “now, there is much more mistrust between us.”

“The lifting of sanctions requires negotiations, but not within the framework of a ‘maximum pressure’ policy, because it would not be a negotiation but a form of surrender,” Araghchi added.

In October 2024, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) launched around 200 ballistic missiles toward Tel Aviv and several other regions of Israel. In response to the strikes, Trump said he would advise Israel to “hit the nuclear first, and worry about the rest later.”