TEHRAN, Feb 11, (Agencies): Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that the Islamic Republic, targeted by tougher Western sanctions, would soon announce advances in its nuclear programme.
He was speaking on the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah. Tens of thousands of Iranians joined state-organised rallies to mark the occasion.
“In the coming days the world will witness Iran’s announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements,” Ahmadinejad told a crowd at Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square in a speech relayed live on state television.
Demonstrators carrying Iranian flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”. Ismail Haniya, who heads the Islamist Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, also attended the ceremony.
Ahmadinejad gave no details of how Iran’s nuclear work, which Tehran says has only peaceful purposes, has progressed.
The United States and Israel, a country which Iran does not recognise, have not ruled out military action if sanctions fail.
Iran has warned of a “painful” answer, saying it would hit Israel and US bases in the Gulf as well as block the vital Gulf oil shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.
“If attacked by the Zionist regime (Israel), we will turn it to dust,” said a Revolutionary Guards commander, Mohammad Shirdel, semi-official Fars news agency reported on Saturday.
“Thousands of our missiles will target Israel and the 40 bases of America in the region,” he added.
The nuclear dispute has fuelled tension as the West tightens sanctions. The European Union has agreed to ban Iranian oil imports by July and to freeze the assets of Iran’s central bank.
Its measures reinforce those imposed by the United States as the West tries to force Tehran to return to talks before it produces enough nuclear material for an atomic bomb.
Neither side has shown much appetite for compromise. Iran says it will fight EU sanctions with counter-measures and its parliament plans legislation to ban oil exports to the EU.
Iranian officials brush off the impact of sanctions, while also proclaiming that Iranians will endure any hardship in support of their country’s right to nuclear technology.
“I am saying openly that if you (the West) continue to use the language of force and threat, our nation will never succumb to your pressure,” Ahmadinejad said.
Output
Industry analysts say sanctions are hitting Iran’s vital oil sector and say falls in crude output and exports will speed up.
Global oil flows are realigning even though the EU ban on imports from Iran only takes effect in July, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report on Friday.
Asia’s two giants, China and India, want to head off new sanctions on Iran. China, Iran’s biggest trade partner, is one of six major powers involved in nuclear talks with Tehran.
Ahmadinejad, echoing Iran’s official stance, said fresh nuclear talks would be welcome. The last round collapsed a year ago over Iran’s refusal to halt its uranium enrichment work.
“They say we want to negotiate. That is fine with us, we have been always ready to hold talks in the framework of justice and mutual respect,” Ahmadinejad said. “The Iranian nation will not withdraw even one iota from its path.”
Western nations say talking is pointless unless uranium enrichment is on the table, something Iran refuses to discuss.
Iran’s economy is around 60 percent reliant on oil. The country is heavily dependent on food imports, buying 45 percent of its rice and most of its animal feed abroad.
Sanctions-linked trade snags risk fuelling already high inflation, which Iranian critics blame on Ahmadinejad’s economic policies. The official inflation rate exceeds 20 percent.
But Ahmadinejad said the economy was “flourishing”, reeling off figures to back his contention. Critics have in the past accused the government of falsifying economic statistics.
“We have saved over $30 billion for rainy days,” he said. “Iran’s non-oil exports will reach over $43 billion by March ... Iran’s imports in the past 10 months dropped five percent.”
Following reforms under which the government phased out hefty subsidies on staples like food and fuel since 2010, Ahmadinejad said billions were saved by not importing petrol.
“We were importers of fuel but ... now we are among main exporters of fuel and oil products,” he said.
Fresh US and EU financial sanctions are snarling Iranian payments for staple food and other imports, causing hardship for its 74 million people weeks before a parliamentary election.
The election will be Iran’s first since a disputed presidential vote in 2009, which the opposition says was rigged to secure Ahmadinejad’s re-election. That sparked eight months of street protests which the government forcibly suppressed.
However, the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has already said Iran is enriching uranium to 20 percent — a level significantly closer to military-grade 90 percent purity — at a mountain bunker near the Shiite shrine city of Qom.
And Iranian officials have said that they will be inserting their first domestically made 20-percent enriched fuel plate into a Tehran research reactor by March.
Both developments have unsettled the West and Israel, which suspect Iran is pursuing research into nuclear weapons despite its repeated denials.
An IAEA report in November said there was evidence of activities in Iran that relate to a militarised nuclear programme.
The United States and the European Union have ratcheted up economic sanctions on Iran to an unprecedented level to try to force it to halt the uranium enrichment and to re-engage in long-stalled talks.
Israel, voicing concerns that Iran could shield its nuclear programme from attack by the end of this year, has made comments suggesting it could imminently launch air strikes against its long-time enemy. The United States has also not ruled out military action.
Bullying
But Ahmadinejad rejected the pressure, saying that, “if the language of bullying and insult is used, the Iranian nation will never yield.”
He added: “The only path is to adhere to justice and the respect of Iran’s (nuclear) rights and to return to the negotiating table.”
Iran has said several times in recent months that it is ready to resume talks on its nuclear programme with world powers that collapsed a year ago.
But up to now it has failed to respond to a letter by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton formally offering to return to those talks as long as Iran imposes no preconditions.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, in comments carried by media on Saturday, said his country’s chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, had written a reply to Ashton that “either has been sent or is on the verge of being sent.”
He voiced optimism that another round of talks with Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States would begin “soon”.
“They have some questions and ambiguities and we will try to answer these questions and ambiguities,” he was quoted as saying.
Ahmadinejad used his speech to again question the veracity of the Jewish Holocaust, which he has in the past dismissed as a “myth”.
He claimed the United States and the West had created “a story called the Holocaust” to create the Israeli state as part of a plan “to dominate the world”.
But, he said, “the Iranian nation with courage and wisdom smashed this idol to free the people of the West (of its hold).”
He urged Western nations to stop supporting Israel.
“Why do you link your fate with this sham regime? Let Al-Quds (Jerusalem) and Palestine become free,” he said. “Democracy doesn’t come out of the barrel of a gun.”
Iran denies Israel’s right to exist and has said it will back any group trying to put an end to the Jewish state.
Iran’s anniversary commemorations marked the day 33 years ago that a revolution led by clerics, students and dissidents overthrew the US-backed shah and installed an Islamic theocracy.
The United States cut off all diplomatic relations with Iran in 1980, after Islamic students stormed the US embassy in Tehran in November 1979 and took 52 Americans inside hostage for 444 days.
The US drone replica on display in Tehran was that of an unmanned stealth aircraft, a bat-winged RQ-170 Sentinel, which Iranian officials said they brought down by hacking its flight controls as it overflew their territory in December on a surveillance mission.
Representatives of foreign media were not allowed to circulate in the crowd commemorating the anniversary. State television showed tens of thousands of people coming out into the streets across the country.