Iran is due to give its reply on Tuesday to a package backed by six world powers that aims to end a nuclear stand-off with the West and Iranian officials say Iran does not accept the key demand to suspend uranium enrichment. Refusing to suspend the work that has both military and civilian uses would be tantamount to rejecting the package of incentives offered in return, Western diplomats say.
Iran said on Thursday it was determined to produce nuclear fuel on its territory in defiance of international calls to halt the work, and accused the United States of trying to prevent a negotiated solution to its dispute with the West. ”Based on law, Iran has planned to produce 20 000MW of nuclear electricity in the next 20 years,” chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said.
Iran on Sunday rejected a deadline to respond to an international offer aimed at resolving a nuclear stand-off, saying it would answer during the next Iranian month which begins July 23. ”A deadline is not an issue. We think such statements are not constructive and they will not help resolve the problem,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters.
Iran has threatened to allow traffickers to flood Europe with narcotics unless its costly border-security operation is given a massive hike in United Nations funding. The Islamic republic’s new anti-drugs head said Iran had asked the UN Office on Drugs and Crime for a hefty -million in order to combat smugglers from neighbouring Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday his country would not bow to pressure over its nuclear programme, implicitly rejecting international calls to suspend enrichment. ”The Islamic Republic of Iran will not bend to these pressures,” he said, referring to proposals drawn up to defuse the nuclear crisis.
Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdel Mahdi has met Iran’s top nuclear negotiator in Tehran in a bid to help mediate an end to Iran’s nuclear crisis, a source close to the Iraqi leader said on Saturday. He said the meeting with Ali Larijani took place on Friday, a day after Abdel Hadi met in Baghdad with the ambassadors of Britain, France and Germany.
Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday mocked countries that are against Iran’s controversial nuclear programme as suffering from mental problems, the ISNA student news agency said. ”Those [countries] who get upset at the happiness and progress of others are suffering from a mental problem and should find a way to cure themselves,” Ahmadinejad said.
Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday ridiculed a European Union plan to offer trade and technology incentives in exchange for his country agreeing to halt sensitive nuclear work. ”They think they can take away our gold and give us some nuts and chocolate in exchange,” Ahmadinejad told a rally in the town of Arak.
Making their third appearance in the World Cup finals this summer, Iran will be desperate to please their passionate supporters back home and the large Germany-based expatriate population by reaching the knockout rounds for the first time.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said that any new deal offered by European powers to halt Iran’s civilian nuclear activities will be rejected, state news agency Irna reported. ”Any offer which requires us to halt our peaceful nuclear activities will be invalid,” Ahmadinejad said after returning from a five-day visit to Indonesia.
A landmark letter from Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to United States President George Bush carries with it little hope of an end to decades of animosity, many ordinary Iranians commented on Tuesday. Several people believed the content of the message may only make matters worse.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has written to United States President George Bush to ”propose new ways” to resolve a quarter-century of tensions between the arch-foes, Tehran announced on Monday. The historic move brings an end to a 26-year-old break in official top-level contacts with Washington and comes amid US calls for sanctions.
Iran has managed to enrich uranium up to 4,8% purity, the head of the country’s Atomic Energy Organization said on Tuesday, as envoys of the main world powers met in Paris to discuss how to halt the sensitive nuclear fuel work. Iran had already announced last month that it had enriched uranium to 3,6% purity, sufficient to produce reactor fuel.
A senior Iranian sports official said on Wednesday that a presidential order to end a ban on women spectators in stadiums did not apply to unmarried females. ”The plan to have women in stadiums is merely for families. It does not consider single women. They are still banned from entering stadiums,” said Mohammad Aliabadi, the head of Iran’s physical education organisation.
Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected a United Nations Security Council demand to halt sensitive nuclear work and warned that the Islamic republic could quit the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In a show of defiance just days away from a Friday deadline set by the Security Council for Iran to freeze uranium enrichment, Ahmadinejad confidently dismissed the threat of sanctions.
Iran’s defence minister warned the United States on Monday it would suffer a ”disgraceful defeat” if it took military action against the Islamic republic, the official Irna news agency reported. ”If the US chooses the military option, a disgraceful defeat worse than the failure in Tabas desert awaits them,” Mostafa Mohammad Najar said, referring to a failed US attempt in 1980 to rescue American hostages in the seized US embassy in Tehran.
Iran issued a stern warning to United Nations Security Council permanent members and Germany on Tuesday ahead of their talks in Moscow on its nuclear programme, saying no amount of pressure would make it back down.
Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Tuesday that the Islamic republic will ”soon join the club of countries that have nuclear technology”, state television reported. The announcement came 15 days before the expiry of a United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to slam the brakes on its uranium enrichment programme.
Iran’s paramilitary revolutionary guards (IRGC) said on Friday that a new missile was successfully tested during a naval manoeuvre, the news network Khabar reported. The IRCG air-force commander, General Hossein Salami, told Khabar that the new missile was among ”Iran’s new missile generation” and more modern than the previous Iranian missile types.
Three strong earthquakes followed by several aftershocks have jolted western Iran, killing at least 66 people and injuring at least 988, state media reported on Friday. The epicentre was in the mountainous villages south of Boroujerd and north of Doroud in western Iran.
At least 38 people were killed when a powerful earthquake struck western Iran before dawn on Friday, wiping out villages and sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes. Another 700 people were also injured in the quake, which hit the province of Lorestan near the border with Iraq with a force of six on the Richter scale, officials said.
Iran reiterated on Friday that its nuclear programme is not up for negotiation, despite possible calls by the United Nations Security Council for it to accede to demands by the UN nuclear watchdog and immediately halt all nuclear enrichment activities.
Two men convicted of carrying out a deadly a bomb attack in Iran’s restive oil city of Ahvaz were executed in public early on Thursday, state media announced. The two men — Ali Affrawi and Mehdi Navasseri — were hanged at the scene of their crime, committed last October.
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/ 12 February 2006
Iran’s hard-line president threatened more changes to the country’s nuclear policy on Saturday, as tens of thousands of people rallied across the nation to celebrate the anniversary of the Islamic Revolution and, in many cases, to show support for
Iran’s nuclear rights.
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/ 6 February 2006
Iran said on Monday that large-scale uranium enrichment work, the focus of fears it is seeking nuclear weapons, will begin in ”due course” in response to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s decision to report the clerical regime to the United Nations Security Council.
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/ 31 January 2006
Iran warned on Tuesday that the referral of a dispute over its nuclear programme to the United Nations Security Council will bring ”an end to diplomacy”, saying the move had no legal justification. Foreign ministers of the five permanent UN Security Council members agreed in London on Monday to bring Iran before the council over its nuclear programme.
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/ 25 January 2006
An Iranian court has jailed two men from France and Germany for 18 months for illegally entering the Islamic republic’s Gulf waters, as the government insisted the case was not linked to mounting tensions with Europe. ”The verdict is imprisonment. They also face another accusation,” said Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad.
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/ 24 January 2006
Bombs killed six people and wounded several others in the south-western city of Ahvaz on Tuesday, Iranian state television reported. Fire engines and ambulances rushed to the site of the explosions, a state environmental agency building and a bank in Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.
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/ 12 January 2006
Western opposition to Iran’s nuclear programme is rooted in a ”colonial mentality” and the Islamic republic will not back down to mounting pressure, top cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said on Thursday. ”They want to deprive Islamic nations of having nuclear energy knowledge and always keep them backwards,” he said.
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/ 10 January 2006
Iran on Tuesday reopened nuclear research centres to resume sensitive work after a two-year suspension despite warnings from the West of possible United Nations sanctions. In Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran removed seals at its Natanz atomic research facility.
Iran said that inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency would remove seals from some nuclear facilities by Monday, opening the way for Tehran to resume research on fuel production. The development on Sunday heightened concerns in the West that Iran was moving toward building atomic weapons.
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/ 15 December 2005
The radical Palestinian group Hamas will step up attacks against Israel if the Jewish state takes military action against Iran, its political chief said in Tehran on Thursday. Khaled Meshaal also praised Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his ”courage” in having dismissed the Holocaust as a myth.