Hard-line Iranian leader staunchly defends nuclear program
Says West's threats won't end research
TEHRAN -- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran pushed back at President Bush and European leaders yesterday, insisting Iran would press ahead with its nuclear program despite the threat of economic sanctions because ''ultimately they need us more than we need them."
At a news conference that lasted more than two hours, a confident Ahmadinejad posed a question to Western governments: ''So why do you strike a mighty pose? I advise you to understand the Iranian nation and revolution in a better way. A time might come that you would become regretful, and then there would be no benefits in regretting."
Ahmadinejad's remarks, broadcast live on international news networks, brought to a confrontational close a week in which Tehran defied a UN watchdog agency by resuming nuclear research that had been suspended for 2 1/2 years after going forward almost two decades in secret.
Iran's removal of seals on nuclear equipment at its enrichment plant at Natanz and its preparations to resume research brought a cascade of criticism, with Bush saying Friday that the prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons was ''a grave threat to the security of the world."
Diplomats from the United States, Europe, Russia, and China are scheduled to gather tomorrow in London to discuss shifting Iran's file from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the UN Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Ahmadinejad, a conservative who took office in August, said Iran remains open to negotiation and to foreign partnerships that would ensure it was not diverting uranium to a weapons program.
His statements reflected positions already established by the unelected officials steering the Iranian government's strategy, a consensus approach ultimately guided by the country's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The defiant notes struck again and again by Ahmadinejad vividly described the chasm that separates Iran and the Western powers struggling to contain its nuclear ambitions.
Ahmadinejad called it ''laughable" that his assertions that Israel be ''wiped off the map" and his reference to the Holocaust as a ''myth" may have seeded doubts about the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear program.
''We don't need nuclear weapons," Ahmadinejad said, noting that religious doctrine restrained Iran from unleashing its own stocks of chemical weapons when Iraq gassed Iranian troops during the 1980s.
''Nuclear weapons are pursued by those who want to solve everything by bullying everyone."
