Iran says won’t stop uranium enrichment, is not scared by US military deployment in region
By Agencies and ToI Staff. February 8, 2026, 9:50 am Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi speaks during the Al Jazeera Forum in Doha on February 7, 2026. Iran will never surrender the right to enrich uranium, even if war “is imposed on us,” its foreign minister says, defying pressure from Washington. “Iran has paid a very heavy price for its peaceful nuclear program and for uranium enrichment,” Abbas Araghchi tells a forum in Tehran. “Why do we insist so much on enrichment and refuse to give it up even if a war is imposed on us? Because no one has the right to dictate our behavior,” he says, two days after he met US envoy Steve Witkoff in Oman. Abbas also says that his country is not intimidated by the US naval deployment in the Gulf. “Their military deployment in the region does not scare us,” he says. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use force to compel Iran to reach a deal on the nuclear program, after starting a build-up of troops in the region over Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests that killed thousands and saw tens of thousands of others detained in the Islamic Republic. Before the war with Israel and the US last year, Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60 percent purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The UN nuclear watchdog — International Atomic Energy Agency — has said Iran is the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn’t armed with the bomb. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the talks between his country and Iran needed to address Tehran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles, support for proxy terror groups around the region, and “treatment of their own people.”