Dubai, Nov 9: A defiant Iran today vowed not to budge even “one iota” from its nuclear programme as international pressure mounted on Tehran to backtrack from any move to develop atomic weapons.
“Iranians will not retreat from their rights one iota,” President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Shahrekord in central Iran, as a UN report hardened suspicions that the nation is seeking nuclear weapons.
Accusing the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of running “absurd US claims”, Ahmadinejad dared the UN agency to pass a report on American nuclear arsenal, as his commanders threatened to take the battle to the street of Tel Aviv.
The Iranian President said it doesn't makes sense to build one or two bombs in a world already awash with nuclear weapons.
“The cultured and civilised Iranian nation has no need to make atomic bombs or carry out acts of terror... The Iranian people won't fear anyone if they intend to make atomic bombs,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by the state-run Press TV.
They have stockpiled thousands of bombs and are currently updating and making bombs which can target all parts of the world, he noted.
But his top commanders warned that any attack on Iran's nuclear sites would result in the “destruction” of Israel.
“The smallest action by Israel (against Iran) and we will see its destruction,” Iran's deputy military chief Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri said in a television interview. He warned that the Israeli nuclear site of Dimona was “the most accessible” target, and Iranian “response would not be limited to the Middle East”.
Senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards Brigadier General Hossein Salami threatened that West's dreams and plots against Iran would backfire.
The words of defiance also came from parliamentarians and other leaders with leading Majlis member Seyed Hossein Naqavi saying any war would be fought in streets of Tel Aviv.
“Israel is not in the size to launch a military strike on Iran, but if it takes such a foolish action, the Iranian militaries will fight with the Zionist soldiers in Tel Aviv streets and will force them out of the Palestinian soil,” said Naqavi, a member of the Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission.
The 13-page annex to the IAEA report released yesterday said while some of the Iran's nuclear activities have civilian as well as military applications, others are “specific to nuclear weapon”.
The nuclear watchdog said there were clear indication that Iran had conducted high explosives testing and detonator development to set off a nuclear charge as well as computer modelling of warheads.
The report has triggered widespread alarm in the West with France calling for slapping of stern sanctions against Tehran.
The Obama administration also warned Iran with more sanctions over the report as American lawmakers demanded tough international action against the Islamic Republic.
