Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei has called out the double standard of France possessing nuclear weapons while stressing that Tehran can never acquire one.

“Emmanuel Macron, the President of the French Republic, declares: ‘To be free, therefore, one must be feared, and to be feared, one must be powerful’. Yet, he himself asserts, regarding Iran, which has never sought to acquire nuclear weapons: ‘Iran must never possess nuclear weapons. Neither today, nor in five years, nor in ten years. Never,’” Baqaei writes on X.

He questions why Paris views peaceful civilian use of nuclear technology by Tehran as a “threat”.

“The harsh reality is this: they do not want peace for all. They want to maintain the monopoly on the kind of power that inspires fear and the monopoly on the legitimacy to intimidate,” Baqaei adds.

“They intend to remain powerful themselves, equipped with nuclear weapons and, of course, fearsome, while imposing restrictions on others—including countries that simply seek to harness nuclear energy for peaceful purposes—by waving the spectre of an alleged ‘nuclear threat.’”