Iran does not care if the United Nations passes any more resolutions against it because of its nuclear programme, the president said on Wednesday. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad expressed his country's defiance as world powers consider carrying out their threat to impose new sanctions against Iran over what the West fears is a programme aimed at making an atomic bomb.
"The Iranian nation does not give the slightest value to your resolutions," Ahmadinejad said in a televised speech in Semnan, a city east of the capital. The UN Security Council has imposed two rounds of sanctions on Iran, which says its nuclear work is only to generate electricity. The International Atomic Energy Agency believes Iran could be running 8,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium by December, raising a significant risk it could make bombs, diplomats said.
"The information (about the 8,000 centrifuges), would obviously, if confirmed, increase the concerns of the international community in this respect," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei told reporters.
Tehran is on track to have 3,000 on line in July, diplomats briefed on IAEA inspections said, enough to yield enriched material for a bomb within a year if there were no hitches and if Iran wanted.
Diplomats say IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had briefed the United States and European Union that Iran looked on target for 8,000 machines, although some question if the UN watchdog was in a position to accurately determine Iran's nuclear advances.
Ahmadinejad expressed defiance at any new UN action. "We are in the final stage and if they (world powers) want to continue on the wrong path, they can only take one more step. The next step, with God's help, ... will not have any impact (on Iran)," he said without elaborating. In what has almost become a tradition when he addresses rallies around the country about the nuclear stand-off, the crowd chanted back: "Nuclear energy is our obvious right."