ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on Saturday said that the West’s insistence on Tehran ceasing its uranium enrichment is an attempt at imposing dominance, adding that nuclear weapons are considered rejected in Islamic and Iranian doctrine.

During a visit to the shrine of Ayatollah Rohullah Khomeini, Iran’s former supreme leader, Araghchi remarked that when the West says Iran should not have enrichment, “they are actually trying to impose a kind of dominance and superiority on us,” adding that the country maintains its rights to “peaceful nuclear technology, including enrichment, just like other countries.”

Iran and the West have found themselves at loggerheads for years over the nuclear issue, with the West distrusting Iran’s enrichment program and seeking robust assurances that the country is not building nuclear weapons, while Iran maintains that peaceful nuclear technology is its right as a Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) signatory.

Araghchi added that his country has “been the standard-bearers of the rejection of nuclear weapons, and we share this [position] with Western countries,” noting, however, that peaceful enrichment is an “inalienable” right of the Iranian people.

Iran has repeatedly stressed that it is not interested in nuclear weapons as it goes against the principles of Islam.

Iran and the US have held five Oman-mediated rounds of talks around the nuclear issue in recent months, hoping to see eye to eye and reach a deal that would ease tensions between Iran and the West. The talks have thus far been described positively by both sides.

During his first term in 2018, US President Donald Trump walked away from a landmark nuclear deal with Iran, which was introduced three years earlier in 2015 by his predecessor Barack Obama. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal provided sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for the placement of curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran currently holds over 8,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, of which 274.8 kilograms is at 60 percent purity—far surpassing the JCPOA's limits. Araghchi has echoed the report’s findings, saying that Iran’s “nuclear program has advanced compared to the pre-JCPOA period.”