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Gets 'shahid's' pen. Ahmadinejad
Photo: Reuters

Ahmadinejad: Enemy does not fear nuclear bombs

During tech conference on Kish Island, Iranian president says 'enemies fear resurgence of Iranian spirit, identity'

A new classified US intelligence report says Iran's leaders are locked in an increasingly heated dispute over whether to move further toward developing nuclear weapons, but Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Americans fear his country's "spirit" rather than the development of nuclear arms.

 

“How can a government which possesses more than 5,000 fifth-generation nuclear bombs be afraid of this false claim that Iran may build one first generation bomb within the next few years?” Ahmadinejad said Saturday during a conference on advanced technology held on the island of Kish in south Iran. 

  

"Our enemies do not fear weapons, missiles or bombs," the president said. 

 

"The enemies fear the resurgence of the Iranian spirit and identity," he said. "The enemies have “seen through experience that, whenever Iranians have had an opportunity they present ideas and develop capabilities which are (just as good as) those developed in the West."

 

On Thursday the Wall Street Journal reported that the new US national intelligence estimate, or NIE, says Tehran likely has resumed work on nuclear-weapons research in addition to expanding its program to enrich uranium—updating a contested 2007 estimate that concluded the weapons program had all but halted in 2003.

 

However, the report doesn't conclude that Iran has relaunched a full-blown program to try to build bombs. According to the assessment, Iran's debate over whether to do so suggests international sanctions may be causing divisions in Tehran, US officials said.

 

The Wall Street Journal said the NIE's findings suggest that, in the US view, at least some Iranian leaders are worried that economic turmoil fueled in part by international sanctions could spur opposition to the regime—"though officials acknowledge it is impossible for outsiders to determine the precise effect of sanctions on decision-making in Tehran."

 

During the conference in Kish, the wife of assassinated Iranian nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi presented Ahmadinejad with her husband's personal pen. "I present this pen, which my husband carried around at all times, to Ahmadinejad so that he may continue in the path of the shahid (martyr) Ali Mohammadi," she said.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 02.20.11, 08:45
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