Tehran

Iran has no brake and no reverse gear in its nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday, while a deputy foreign minister vowed Tehran is prepared for any eventuality, ”even for war”. The United States has repeated its call for Iran to halt uranium enrichment.

Iran wants talks on its nuclear programme but rejects preconditions demanding it freeze the work, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday, just ahead of a United Nations deadline for Tehran to back down. The UN Security Council has given Iran until Wednesday to stop enriching uranium. Tehran says the process will only make fuel for power plants.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday mocked United States President George Bush and said Iran’s nuclear programme was a source of inspiration for other nations. His typically outspoken remarks came after Bush said the Iranian president was out of step with the rest of the world.

Iran opened a conference on Monday to examine the Holocaust and question whether Nazi Germany used gas chambers to kill Jews, drawing condemnation in the West and criticism from Iran’s Jewish community. Jewish rabbis were present at the government-sponsored event, Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision, alongside academics from Europe.

Iran this week announced details of a conference questioning whether the Holocaust really happened, prompted by an international outcry a year ago when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis as ”myth” fabricated to justify Israel.

An Iranian military aircraft crashed at a Tehran airport on Monday, killing at least 37 people, state-run television reported. It was the latest in a string of aviation disasters to hit the Islamic Republic. The television report said one person was in hospital after surviving the crash in the Russian-designed Antonov-74.

Iran’s president said on Thursday his country was about to take the ”final step” in its nuclear programme, in a fresh statement defying United Nations calls to halt work the West believes is aimed at building atomic bombs. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not say what the final step was, but he repeated comments he made this week that Iran would celebrate its ”right to nuclear technology” by March.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for a baby boom to almost double the country’s population to 120-million and enable it to threaten the West, as he boasted that the country’s nuclear capacity had increased ”tenfold”. Ahmadinejad told MPs he wanted to scrap birth control policies that discourage Iranian couples from having more than two children.

Iran’s Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of Western culture — by banning high-speed internet links. In a blow to the country’s estimated five million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second.

Iran will not suspend uranium enrichment, as demanded by the West, but is still holding talks about its nuclear programme, the Iranian government spokesperson said on Monday. United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said as she flew to the Middle East that foreign ministers of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and Germany might meet this week to discuss Iran.

The players are clean-living and models of athleticism. A world away from the game’s heartland in a smoky corner of a British pub, darts has taken off with a bang in Iran. In a country where alcohol is strictly forbidden, don’t expect pints of beer flowing nearby or players to sport the paunches that are the proud mark of many kings of the tungsten arrows in northern Europe.

Iran warned Western powers on Friday that armed forces would hit back ”like lightning” against any attack as it crowed over its military prowess and showed off firepower at a major army parade. Thousands of members of the armed forces and the whole panoply of Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal were on display at the parade, including the Shahab-3, a weapon whose range includes arch-enemy Israel.

An Iranian passenger plane caught fire after its tyre burst on landing at an airport in Iran’s north-eastern city of Mashhad on Friday, state television said, but at least 30 were killed, not 80 as previously reported. State television said 148 people were on board the flight.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Holocaust may have been invented by the victorious Allied powers in World War II to embarrass Germany, the semi-official news agency Mehr reported on Monday.

Iran said on Monday a United States threat to form an independent coalition to impose sanctions if the United Nations Security Council failed to act over Tehran’s nuclear programme was an insult to the council’s work. Iran has so far shown no sign it will halt enrichment, a process which can make fuel for nuclear power plants or material for nuclear bombs.

Iran has completed a new phase in its Arak heavy-water reactor plant, a presidential official said on Saturday, referring to part of Iran’s atomic programme which the West fears is aimed at producing bombs. The official said President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would give a speech later in the day ”announcing that the heavy-water project has become operational”.

Iran is ready for unconditional talks over its nuclear programme but rejects the West’s ”language of force” over the issue, one of the Islamic republic’s religious leaders said on Friday. Iran also said that it will soon announce new nuclear successes in its quest for nuclear power that the West fears is aimed at acquiring atomic weapons.

Iran delivered its response on Tuesday to a deal aimed at ending a nuclear stand-off — but it had already signalled it was likely to defy the international community and refuse to freeze sensitive atomic work. Tehran’s written response was delivered to representatives of the five permanent United Nations Security Council members plus Germany.