Ahmadinejad calls his critics 'traitors'

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday labeled his critics at home "traitors," and accused them of spying and collaborating with Iran's enemies, state media reported.

Ahmadinejad, who is facing growing domestic criticism over his hardline policies that have led to UN Security Council sanctions, did not specifically name any of his critics.

But Ahmadinejad said that he has resisted pressures not only from the West but also from critics at home and he vowed to eventually publicly expose them.

"They sent people to the enemy to regularly give them information from within the ruling system every week," the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as telling a group of students at Science and Industry University in Tehran.

"We even have a recorded speech of one of them who tells the enemy 'Why should you give up? ... Step up pressures to make them (Iran) retreat,'" the state television Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

He did not elaborate on the alleged recorded speech or specifically say who the enemy was.

Ahmadinejad's critics have stepped up vocal warnings in recent months that the president's hardline policies and defiance against international demands to roll back Iran's nuclear program were turning more countries against Tehran.

Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator — Hasan Rowhani, who is an ally of Ahmadinejad's top rival, former President Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rasfanjani — delivered an unusually sharp rebuke last month to Ahmadinejad, saying he was making more enemies for Iran.

Suspicions over the purpose of Iran's nuclear program have led the UN Security Council to impose sanctions over Tehran's refusal to halt its enrichment program. The enrichment process can be used for generating energy or producing the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

The United States and some of its allies accuse Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons — a charge Iran denies, saying its program is for peaceful purposes including generating electricity.