Ali Akbar Velayati, the foreign policy adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spoke with Khamenei July 21 about the impact of the nuclear deal on Iran’s foreign policy and its missile program.

Velayati began the interview discussing the impact of sanctions on Iran, saying that the sanctions did have some positive effects because it forced Iran to rely on its own abilities and technologies in its defense industry. He compared the sanctions on Iran to the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s when Iran was subjected to international sanctions and isolation, and world powers “would not even give us a cartridge.” He said that only with the most difficulty they were able to get missiles from Libya and North Korea and eventually began to produce their own missiles.

He repeated one of Iran’s main talking points, that it was not the sanctions that brought Iran to the table, and that the West would not allow even one centrifuge while in the comprehensive nuclear agreement Iran will have 5,000 centrifuges. Velayati called this amount “not ideal,” however.

Velayati also rejected that the nuclear deal would create more bilateral talks between Iran and the United States on non-nuclear issues. He said that previous talks with the United States about Afghanistan and the Taliban “fell under the umbrella of the United Nations” and were not direct talks between Iran and the United States.