Iran’s president voiced defiance on Wednesday as world powers prepared to put the finishing touches to new sanctions against the Islamic Republic, saying his country would not surrender. His tough language was echoed by another senior official, who said mastering the nuclear fuel cycle was a ”red line” from which Iran would never retreat.
World powers will receive a ”serious response” from Iran if they adopt a new United Nations resolution imposing more sanctions over its atomic drive, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani warned on Wednesday. ”If they go ahead in an extreme manner and issue a resolution, they will receive a serious answer …,” Larijani was quoted as saying.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged visiting Palestinian Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal on Tuesday to keep fighting Israel, state television said. The United States and Israel accuse Iran of ”interference” in Iraq, through backing Shi’ite militias, and of sponsoring terrorism, including the Palestinian group Hamas and Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah group.
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/ 25 February 2007
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.
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/ 20 February 2007
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.
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/ 14 February 2007
Eighteen people were killed on Wednesday when a bomb exploded next to a bus in the south-eastern city of Zahedan. The bomb was hidden in a car by ”armed rebels and attackers” and exploded as the bus, belonging to the ground forces of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, passed by, the Irna gency reported.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday predicted Iran would soon ”push the button” on production of nuclear fuel for industrial uses, the Irna agency reported. ”Iran has the fuel cycle and very soon we will push the button on nuclear-fuel production for industrial uses,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday Iran would not retreat from its right to nuclear technology and that a United Nations resolution imposing sanctions on Iran was ”invalid”. ”The Iranian nation is wise and will stick to its nuclear work and is ready to defend it completely,” Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech.
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/ 21 December 2006
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.
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/ 11 December 2006
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Monday that Iran will respond to any action against its nuclear activities amid growing signs of a consensus on United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran. ”From now on, considering your insistence on confronting the Iranian nation, we consider this move of yours as hostile and will act accordingly,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.
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/ 11 December 2006
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.
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/ 11 December 2006
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.
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/ 27 November 2006
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.
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/ 16 November 2006
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.
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/ 30 October 2006
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.
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/ 23 October 2006
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday Western powers were wrong if they thought Iran would retreat under political pressure from its nuclear plans, even as the country faces possible sanctions. Iran faces the prospect of penalties after its case was sent back to the United Nations Security Council for failing to heed a UN demand to suspend uranium enrichment.
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/ 20 October 2006
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.
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/ 19 October 2006
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that Iran will not back down ”an inch” from its nuclear programme, and launched another attack on Israel, calling it a fraudulent regime that cannot survive. Iran has firmly rejected warnings by the West to Iran to halt its sensitive nuclear activities.
Tourists visiting Iran might be able to add an unusual stop-off on their itinerary — a trip to one of the Islamic republic’s nuclear sites at the centre of a stand-off with the international community. The state news agency Irna reported on Wednesday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given permission for tourists to visit nuclear sites as proof that Iran’s atomic activities are peaceful.
The United States and the United Kingdom said on Tuesday Iran could soon face sanctions because it showed no sign of halting sensitive nuclear work, while the European Union said the latest talks had been helpful but had brought no breakthrough. A senior Iranian atomic official said suspending uranium enrichment would not solve the nuclear stand-off.
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.
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/ 29 September 2006
A senior Iranian cleric said on Friday that Pope Benedict’s recent remarks that angered Muslims were an ”act of madness” and said the leader of the Catholic Church had ”disgraced himself”. Muslim leaders worldwide have criticised the Pope for a speech two weeks ago hinting that Islam had been spread by the sword and brought only evil to the world.
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/ 28 September 2006
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.
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/ 22 September 2006
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.
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/ 6 September 2006
Iran has remodelled one of the warplanes in its fleet and successfully test flown the aircraft, state-run media reported on Wednesday. The reports did not specify which plane had been remodelled but pictures on state television of the re-designed plane indicated it was based on a United States-built F-5.
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/ 4 September 2006
Iranian police have arrested a South African man on suspicion of drug smuggling, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Sunday. Drug traffickers and dealers may receive a death sentence under Iranian law, depending on the kind and amount of drugs involved.
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/ 1 September 2006
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.
Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced defiance on Tuesday as a deadline neared for Iran to halt work the West fears is a step toward building nuclear bombs, and challenged United States President George Bush to a televised debate. ”Peaceful nuclear energy is the right of the Iranian nation,” he told a news conference.
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.