Top Iranian official says 'country has capability to produce nuke weapons, but won't'

Tehran, Apr 8 (ANI): A prominent Iranian politician has said that Tehran has the knowledge and skills to produce nuclear weapons, but will never do so.

Gholamreza Mesbahi Moghadam, the Iranian parliamentarian whose views do not represent the government's policy, said that Iran could easily create the highly enriched uranium that is used to build atomic bombs, but stressed that it was not the country's policy to go down that route.

"Iran has the scientific and technological capability to produce [a] nuclear weapon, but will never choose this path," Moghadam told the parliament's news website.

According to The Guardian, Israel said Mghadam's claim supported its view that Iran's nuclear programme had a military dimension.

An Israeli official demanded that Iran must stop enriching uranium, remove all military-grade enriched material from the country, and dismantle its Fordo nuclear research site.

Meanwhile, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly insisted that Tehran is not seeking nuclear weapons, saying that holding such arms is a sin and 'useless, harmful and dangerous'.

According to the paper, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that if Iran one day decides to build nuclear weapons, it will do so openly and without fear. (ANI)