TEHRAN -- President Masoud Pezeshkian said here Monday during a televised press conference that Iran will never give up its missile program, saying the country needs such deterrence for its security, in a region where Israel is able to “drop missiles on Gaza every day.”
“If we don’t have missiles, they will bomb us whenever they want, just like in Gaza,” Pezeshkian said.
He reiterated Tehran’s official stance with respect to its missile program, calling on the international community “to first disarm Israel before making the same demands of Iran.”
“We need military power for the security of our people and country,” he said. “We will not lose our defense power unless all are disarmed in our region. If America also respects our rights, we have no dispute. Do not sanction or threaten us, we will not be threatened.”
In April, Iran launched an unprecedented missile and drone attack against Israel, firing some 300 projectiles, after the Zionist regime bombed its consular section in Damascus. 
Pezeshkian said Tehran has shown restraint so far in its response to the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh because it believes the Zionist regime has been trying to lure it into a regional war.
“What Israel has done in the region and what Israel tried with the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Iran was to drag us into a regional war,” he said. “We have exercised restraint so far but we reserve the right to defend ourselves at a specific time and place with specific methods.”
He conceded that Iran has hypersonic missiles, but he said not of the kind fired by the Yemenis on Sunday. “We don’t have this missile in Iran at all,” he said.
“It takes a person a week to travel to Yemen [from Iran], how could this missile have gotten there? We don’t have such missiles to provide to Yemen,” the president said. 
He also denied that Iran has transferred any weapons to Russia. “This has not happened in our time. I won’t go into what happened in the past. It is a possibility. There is no prohibition.” 
On the future of Iran’s nuclear commitments and its enrichment of uranium at a level of 60% purity, he said Iran would not seek nuclear weapons but he hit out at the U.S. of tearing up the old nuclear agreement. 
“The Americans have closed all the roads for us, everyone we want to talk to, the Americans say they will not allow it,” he said. 
The president said Tehran didn’t want to enrich uranium to higher levels but had been forced to by the U.S. withdrawal from its nuclear deal.
“I think, we said many times, we don’t want to do this at all. We want to solve our technical and scientific needs, we are not looking for nuclear weap

ons,” Pezeshkian said. “We adhered to the framework written in the (nuclear deal). We are still looking to maintain those frameworks. They tore them, they forced us to do something.”
He added: “If they don’t continue, we will not continue.”
Pezeshkian, asked if he’d meet or talk with U.S. President Joe Biden or whoever wins the November election, said that Washington should return to the nuclear deal first, then “we will talk, there is no dispute”.
“They have blocked all roads to us,” Pezeshkian said. “They should show that they have no enmity towards us. We have no enmity toward them.”
Pezeshkian urged the U.S. not to threaten Iran with its regional military bases or impose sanctions on the country. “Otherwise, we are a brother with them,” he said. The Iranian president will soon visit New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. He said he wants “to defend the rights of our people because we do favor peace and not war.”
Pezeshkian said that if Iran sought better relations with the West it did not mean it would forget its friends, including Russia and China. “We have and will have relations with Russia but our view in all wars is that no country should encroach the territory of another,” he said. At the same time, he said NATO should not have come so close to Russia’s border.
Pezeshkian hailed Iran’s relations with China and said Tehran is determined to implement the 25-year partnership agreement with Beijing.
He said China took a “major step” in mediating between Iran and Saudi Arabia to resume mutual relations and creating coordination in the region.
Iran’s cooperation with regional countries via connecting corridors can improve the access of Iran and China to the respective markets through the Silk Road, he said.
The Iranian president described China as a “strategic” partner and vowed to further develop ties between the two countries.
Asked about Iran’s policy on relations with Egypt, Pezeshkian said his administration will initiate contacts with senior Egyptian officials as soon as possible.
“We will welcome relations with the friendly and brotherly country of Egypt.”
Pezeshkian underscored the importance of facilitating travel for people living in Muslim countries, which, he said, will lead to common viewpoints and the establishment of joint markets.
Enhanced unity among Muslims will help defend their rights, the Iranian president noted.
He also reaffirmed the need to settle differences between Iran and Saudi Arabia and said he welcomes any measure which will bring the two Muslim countries closer together.
Muslims must foster unity to make the Israeli regime understand that it has no right to kill children, women and the elderly, the Iranian president said. “If we join hands, Israel will not dare to do this.”
The president said Iran’s need for growth required it to remove itself from the blacklist of the Financial Action Task Force, the global body that decides whether countries meet standards on money laundering and corruption. “We have no choice but to solve the FATF issues,” he said.