Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told podcaster Tucker Carlson that Iran does not war with the United States, that his regime has not attempted to assassinate President Trump, and that while Iran is open to negotiations with the United States, he worries that Israel will receive “permission” to attack the nation again.

Pezeshkian blamed Israel for Iran’s problems with the United States. U.S. officials, he said, imprudently listen to Israeli propaganda.

Carlson released the remote interview today on his website, X feed, and YouTube Channel.

Asked whether Iran would give up its atom bomb development program, Pezeshkian claimed that Iran has never tried to develop such a weapon.

“We have never been after developing a nuclear bomb, not in the past, not presently, or in the future because [it is] wrong and this is in contrast to the religious decree, or the fatwa, which has been issued by his eminence, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic,” he said. Iran is “religiously forbidden,” he said, to develop the weapon.

“Unlawful attacks” on the nation’s nuclear facilities interrupted surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, and Israel “torpedoed the negotiating table” with the United States by launching attacks against the facilities on June 13.

IAEA, he said, “failed to condemn these attacks.”

He also claimed that the U.S. bombing of Iran “severely damaged” its facilities. “We stand ready to have these supervisions” but because of the American air raid, “we don’t have any access to them.”

Pezeshkian said Iran could “very much easily resolve our differences and conflicts with the United States,” but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “destroyed” the “diplomatic efforts” between the United States and Iran.

Despite the American air raid, Pezeshkian says “we see no problem in re-entering the negotiations” over nuclear facilities. Then again, he continued, “how are we going to trust the United States again? We re-enter the negotiations, then 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?”

Carlson also asked the 70-year-old president whether Americans should fear Iran given that they see and hear chants of “Death to America.”

Pezeshkian elaborated at length.

“I believe that this is a very wrong impression that anybody might have of Iran or the Iranians. I would like to remind you that Iran has never invaded another country in the last 200 years. When they say death to the United States it doesn’t mean death to — they don’t mean death for the people of the United States or even to the officials of the United States,” Pezeshkian replied:

They mean death to crimes, death to killing and carnage, death to supporting, killing others, to insecurity and instability. Have you ever heard that an Iranian kill[ed] an American? Have you heard that? Or a terrorist that was Iranian and he carried out a terrorist attack against the Americans? And no, it was your president who confessed that the Americans created the ISIS [sic] in our region and they were responsible for this wrong image that is portrayed of religion of the Muslims in the world.

And once again, I would like to tell you and remind you that this is not death to the American people or to the officials. Death to crimes and atrocities, to bullying, to the use of force. Anybody who would like to become an accomplice in the crimes perpetrated by others.

Americans have heard that Iranian Islamic terrorists seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, then held 52 hostages until President Reagan’s inauguration day in 1981.

Pezeshkian told Carlson that the religious fatwas issued against President Trump by Iranian mullahs were not threats against Trump, and that Iran has not attempted to assassinate him.

“This is actually what Netanyahu is trying to insinuate and to make your people or the president of your country to believe,” Pezeshkian said:

But this is wrong because Netanyahu, who as I said, has his own agenda, wants to drag the U.S. into forever wars … and to bring more insecurity, instability, and unrest.

Pezeshkian denied that Iranian nationals formed terrorist sleeper cells inside the United States.

Carlson also asked Pezeshkian why the seemingly friendly relationship between Iran and Israel, which included trade and arms sales, deteriorated.

“Israel itself is to blame, because just look at what they have been doing in the last couple of years in Palestine, in Gaza, what Netanyahu has been doing, killing women and children, bombing schools and hospitals, and civilian and residential areas,” he said:

[It’s] nothing short of  a full-scale genocide there. They have blocked the entry of food and medicine, any kind of humanitarian relief to Gaza.

Asked whether Russia and China would help Iran in a war against the United States, Pezeshkian said Iran doesn’t need their help.

“We have always put our trust in God … and we are capable enough to defend ourselves and to stand on our own two feet and defend our country, our territorial integrity to the last drop of our blood,” he said:

As I have said, again and again, we don’t want wars, we don’t want to develop a nuclear weapon. And this false image, this wrong mentality created in the minds of the U.S. decision-makers and officials is because of the devilish machinations instigated by Netanyahu and the Israeli regime and its policies based on war mongering.

Trump, he said, “should know that another war will only spread more instability in the Middle East,” which is averse to American interests there.