Iran on Monday again denied it is seeking to produce a nuclear bomb, after top US military commander Admiral Mike Mullen charged that it has enough fissile material to build such a weapon.
“All this talk is baseless,” foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said at his weekly news conference.
When asked if Iran had enough nuclear material to manufacture an atomic bomb Mullen had told CNN on Sunday: “We think they do, quite frankly,” the first time a US official had made such an assessment.
The Pentagon rowed back on Mullen”s comment on Monday, insisting that he had meant Iran had enough uranium which it could enrich to the very high level required for a bomb, not that it had already done so.
“When he answered the question about low-grade uranium, it sounded like he was talking about an enriched uranium capability,” spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters adding that there was no difference of assessment between Mullen and Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
In a separate interview aired on NBC television on Sunday, Gates had said Iran was “not close to a weapon at this point.”
The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman stressed that Tehran had no desire to develop a nuclear bomb but added that the safeguards overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency meant that it could not do so even if it wanted to.
