President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday urged the Western powers to help build nuclear power plants in his country saying it will be too late if they do not decide to do so immediately, state television reported.
Speaking to a crowd on a visit to the southern port of Bushehr, where Iran's first light-water nuclear power plant is being built by Russia, Ahmadinejad urged other countries to participate as well.
"If you will not come, this nation will build nuclear plants based on its own resources and when you come some four years later it will reject your request and not then give you any opportunity," he said in a live television speech.
"I am addressing leaders of two or three powers; do you remember I sent you message and told you to stop be stubborn? If you think that you can block the movement of Iranian nation, you are wrong."
Also Wednesday Ahmad Fayyazbakhsh, the deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization told reporters "the first Iranian-made light-water 360-megawatt nuclear power plant will go operational in 2016 in the southwestern Iranian town of Darkhovin.
The official also said that the Bushehr plant would go on test operation in October, though its precision instruments have yet to be delivered.
The U.N. Security Council has been trying to pressure Iran to freeze uranium enrichment, but it has repeatedly refused, and officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency have privately said Tehran is expanding the program.
The Security Council is considering a new draft resolution that calls for additional sanctions against Iran, including bans on travel. Two sets of sanctions have already been imposed on Iran for refusing to halt enrichment.
Iran says its enrichment activities are intended only to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that would generate electricity, but the U.S. and others suspect Tehran's real aim is to produce nuclear bombs.
A U.S. intelligence report released last month, however, concluded Tehran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in late 2003 and had not resumed it since.
Iranian officials have said they plan to generate 20 gigawatts of electricity through nuclear energy in the next two decades.