Tehran: Nuclear weapons are forbidden by Islam hence Iran will not pursue them, said Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. He told this while delivering a speech on Wednesday.

Trying to ease fears that Iran could secretly be researching nuclear weapons, Khamenei told a group of academics and high-level scientists, “Although we have always had the ability to tread this path, we declared it haram [forbidden by religion] according to the verdict of the beloved Islam, and therefore there is no reason for us to expend our resources on developing and stockpiling a weapon that is absolutely prohibited [by Islam] to use.”

Hailing Iranian achievements in medical science, engineering, nanotechnology and peaceful nuclear energy, Khamenei said: “We want science but we don’t want our universities to be a reproduction of some U.S. university”.

UPI quoted Khamenei as saying, “We live in a different situation than others.” He added, “We need to think Iranian, act Iranian and live Iranian and this trend can be accelerated by adopting the Islamic-Iranian Blueprint for Progress.”

Khamenei had told last week that Tehran will continue abandoning commitments to the 2015 nuclear deal as long as the United States keeps hitting Iran with sanctions.