Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Thursday that Iran is not seeking to build an atom bomb but defiantly added that should it decide to do so "no one can do a damn thing."
Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted
Thursday that Iran is not seeking to build an atom bomb but defiantly added
that should it decide to do so "no one can do a damn thing."
"When we say we do not want to make bomb it means we do not want to,"
Ahmadinejad was quoted by the state television website as saying.
"If we want to make a bomb we are not afraid of anyone and we are not
afraid to announce it, no one can do a damn thing," he said during a
ceremony inaugurating a sewage treatment plant in southern
Tehran
.
Iranian officials have staunchly denied Western suspicions that
Tehran
's nuclear enrichment
programme is masking a drive for atomic weapons.
Parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani last year reiterated the denial by quoting a
previous fatwa by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say
in the Islamic republic's affairs, which said "using weapons of mass
destruction, including nuclear [arms] is haram [forbidden]."
Ahmadinejad's comments come two weeks after the chief of Iranian atomic
organisation Fereydoon Abbasi Davani announced plans to triple
Tehran
's capacity to enrich uranium
to 20%level in a move
Washington
deemed "provocative."
Despite being targeted by four sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions over its
refusal to suspend uranium enrichment,
Iran
remains adamant that it will push ahead with its nuclear enrichment programme.
Enriched uranium can produce either fuel for a nuclear reactor or the fissile
material for an atomic warhead.
Tehran
insists it will use the substance to fuel its future nuclear power
plants.
Ahmadinejad also took a swipe at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency,
which has been investigating
Tehran
's nuclear programme for a number of years.
"They have created something called the agency and have installed a bunch
of puppets," he said in an apparent reference to Western powers, adding
however that
Iran
had nevertheless cooperated with the IAEA.
Ahmadinejad pointed to the
Fukushima
nuclear power plant in
Japan
,
saying that even though the "radiation was twice as much as was said ...
even then the (IAEA) kept silent."
Japan
's earthquake and tsunami in March left nearly 25,000 people dead or
missing, and knocked out cooling systems at the
Fukushima
nuclear power plant, leading reactors to overheat and triggering the worst
nuclear crisis since
Chernobyl
25 years ago.
Ahmadinejad dubbed the IAEA's reports on
Iran
as
"scrap paper," adding: "I asked them why are you silent there
(about
Fukushima
) but it is not the same when it comes to
Iran
."
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