Iran will not give up "one iota" of its nuclear rights, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech to clerics, Mehr news agency reported on Tuesday.

Iran will not give up "one iota" of its nuclear rights, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a speech to clerics, Mehr news agency reported on Tuesday.

Stressing that the Syrian cause tops the Iranian priorities, Rouhani pointed out that any strike against Syria will mainly harm the aggressors.

"Iran is exerting all possible efforts to prevent the war whose chances to take place have recently decreased," President Rouhani noted.

Rouhani's comments come ahead of a meeting in New York later in the month between his foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on restarting negotiations over the Islamic republic's nuclear program.

"Our government will not give up one iota of its absolute rights" on the nuclear issue, Rouhani said.

He also said that following the meeting between Zarif and Ashton, nuclear negotiations "will continue in another place with the 5+1 group," which is made up of the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, but gave no further details.

Himself a former nuclear negotiator, Rowhani last week handed responsibility for future talks to the foreign ministry under Zarif, a US-educated moderate.

On Friday, after a phone call with Ashton, the P5+1 lead negotiator, Zarif said that Tehran wanted to "remove any ambiguity" about its nuclear work.

Rouhani has also appointed a new Iranian envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Reza Najafi, and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi as head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.

Salehi indicated last week that Iran could grant the IAEA greater inspection rights.

Rouhani said soon after his election as president in June that he wanted to hold "serious" talks "without wasting time" on Iran's nuclear file, while maintaining Iran's "undeniable rights" to its nuclear program.