Leader: Iran Firm on Nuclear Rights

Source: alalam.ir, 03-09-2007
TEHRAN -Iran`s Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei pledged on Monday that Tehran would never yield to Western pressure over its nuclear program, and it would outsmart "drunken and arrogant" Western opponents in the standoff.
In a meeting with several hundred Iranian students who have ranked top in national and international Olympiad contests, the leader said "The Iranian nation has withstood and it will withstand intimidation. It will never bow to any intimidation in the nuclear issue and in other matters."
The leader said the scientific progress made by Iran is an auspicious movement which is promising for the future.
Ayatollah Khamenei also added the scientific movement is a need to make good on backwardness Iran suffered owing to dominance of dictatorial and puppet regimes in Iran.
Citing another reason for the scientific movement, the leader said that if any nation wants dignity, strength, independence, national identity, security and welfare, it has to build up its scientific capability.
"It is an undeniable reality and the nature of human life." Ayatollah Khamenei said that Iranian nation has been kept away from scientific progress in the past one hundred years and though the situation has changed after victory of the Islamic Revolution, and Iran is currently passing through glorious period, but, there is still a long way ahead to make good on backwardness.
Elsewhere in his remarks, the leader criticized the US lobbying against Iranian nuclear program and said that it is surprising that those who initiated two World Wars within 20 year-period and committed crimes against humanity in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Kosovo are creating obstacles in the way of Iran`s nuclear program.
"In the past 28 years, Iran has never been initiator of any aggression or military strike. Iran withstood and will withstand the US bullying and will never yield to pressure," the leader said.
Ayatollah Khamenei said that certain Western states led by the US got used to take advantage of their scientific capability for unleashing war and bloodshed.
The leader dismissed recent statement of US President George W. Bush as arrogant, lawless and hateful adding "since victory of the Islamic Revolution, the Iranian nation has never feared bullying of the arrogant leaders of the West.
"Their arrogance and reliance on power have got them entangled in quagmire further day by day, hastening their ultimate collapse."
While the Vienna-based watchdog has described the agreement with Tehran as a significant step forward, Washington has plotted to express serious reservations that it does not go far enough.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, reaffirmed his view that the IAEA deal meant that Iran`s nuclear case was "closed".
"With the help of God and the resistance of the Supreme Leader and the nation of Iran, we think that the nuclear case is closed," Ahmadinejad told a meeting of Non-Aligned Movement countries in Tehran on Monday.