Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian says Israel tried to assassinate him

Middle East Eye

5 days ago

Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian told US conservative broadcaster Tucker Carlson in an interview released on Monday that Israel attempted to assassinate him.
While most of the interview was fairly straightforward, with Pezeshkian giving unsurprising responses to the former Fox News commentator's questions, Pezeshkian did say that he was not "afraid of sacrificing" his soul for Iran.
"They did try, yes. They acted accordingly, but they failed," he told Carlson in response to a question on whether he believed Israel had tried to kill him.
Pezeshkian did not specify when the assassination attempt took place, saying only that it was during "a meeting".
'I was in a meeting... they tried to bombard the area in which we were holding that meeting," he continued.
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'I am not afraid of sacrificing my soul in defence of my country... None of the government officials are afraid of losing their lives in the line of defence. But will… more bloodshed and killing bring peace and tranquillity and stability to the region?' he added.
Multiple times throughout the interview, conducted in both English and Farsi, Pezeshkian said that Iran wants peace, not war, and that the Islamic Republic was still willing to engage in talks with the United States.
'We have never been after' a nuclear bomb
Pezeshkian said Iran had never sought to build a nuclear bomb.
'The truth is that we have never been after developing a nuclear bomb - not in the past, not presently, or in the future - because this is wrong and is in contrast to the religious decree issued by the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran,' he said.
'It is religiously forbidden for us to go after a nuclear bomb, and this was always corroborated, thanks to our cooperation with IAEA because they were always there to verify this'.
When asked by Carlson about how much uranium Iran was enriching, Pezeshkian did not directly answer but said Iran was 'ready to hold talks over it' and have supervision. He reminded Carlson that Iran had been 'sitting at the negotiating table' with the US when Israel 'destroyed' diplomatic negotiations by launching unprovoked attacks on 13 June.
No trust
Pezeshkian said Iran had "no problem" restarting nuclear talks with the US, but said they had lost trust in the country, given what had happened over the last few weeks.
"We see no problem in re-entering the negotiations," he told Carlson. "There is a condition... for restarting the talks. How are we going to trust the United States again? How can we know for sure that in the middle of the talks, the Israeli regime will not be given the permission again to attack us?
'My proposal is that the US administration should refrain from getting involved in a war that is not America's war. It is Netanyahu's war. He has its own agenda…and that is having forever wars, wars that go on and on and on'.
Pezeshkian said that his end goal was peace, and he believed that Iran could 'easily resolve our differences and conflicts with the US through dialogue and talks'.
'We have always been after peace. It is been my heartfelt opinion that we need to live in peace and harmony during this short and limited time granted to us by god almighty to live in peace and tranquility with everybody'.
He said that Iran had not waged war on anybody in the last 200 years, but only had wars imposed on it, referring to the recent conflict with Israel and the war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Trump could 'guide' Mena
Regarding Trump, he said he believed the US president could 'guide' the region and the world to peace and was powerful enough to put Israel in its place, adding that if he did not, another war would only spread more instability in the Middle East, which was not in the interests of the US government.
When asked by Carlson if he believed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was passing information to Israel, Pezeshkian said there was a "lack of trust".
'There is lack of trust as a result of the last report by IAEA and the type of the reports. The way they prepared the reports somehow gave an excuse to the Israeli regime to prepare the ground for [the] unlawful and unauthorised attack against our nuclear facilities. Even after that, the IAEA failed to condemn these attacks or try to [in] any way to stop them'.
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Pezeshkian told Carlson that Iran would not draw on military support from allies Russia and China, saying, 'In God we trust. We are capable of defending ourselves and standing on our own two feet'.
Carlson acknowledged he would be criticised for interviewing the Iranian president. In a video over the weekend, he defended the move, saying, "American citizens have the constitutional right, and the God-given right, to all the information they can gather about matters that affect them,' including 'hearing from the people they're fighting'.
The interview follows the US's military attacks on Iran's nuclear sites at the end of June.
President Donald Trump's decision to support Israel's war on Iran sparked widespread criticism, including from his own "Make America Great Again" base, who are opposed to another "forever war" in the Middle East.
In recent weeks, Carlson has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration's decision to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. In an interview of Senator Ted Cruz that went viral prior to the US first attacking Iran on 13 June, Carlson accused Cruz of not knowing "anything" about the country.