North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has vowed never to surrender the country’s nuclear arsenal despite what he said were efforts by the U.S. to destabilize his government, as parliament passed a law greenlighting an “automatic nuclear strike” in response to the threat of attack, state media reported.

“The aim of the United States is not just to eliminate our nuclear weapons themselves but also ultimately to bring down our [leadership at] anytime by forcing [North Korea] to put down nuclear weapons and give up or weaken the power to exercise self-defense,” the official Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim as saying in an address to the 7th Session of the 14th Supreme People’s Assembly on Thursday in the capital Pyongyang.

Kim’s comments came as the country’s rubber-stamp legislature passed a law authorizing an “automatic and immediate” nuclear strike in the face of what the KCNA described as an imminent attack against North Korea’s leadership or “important strategic objects” within its territory.