TEHRAN, 9 August 2007 — An Iranian minister said he believed the United States had dropped the idea of attacking Iran but wanted to topple its leadership through what he called a “soft revolution.” Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said Iran’s enemies had waged “psychological warfare” to prepare for military action against the Islamic Republic.

In comments carried yesterday by the government-owned Iran daily, he suggested the country’s successful defense against Iraqi forces during the 1980-88 war and more recent US setbacks in Iraq had, however, forced the Americans to rethink. “The resistance of the Iranian nation during the eight years of holy war and the defeat of the enemies in the Middle East caused the global arrogance (the United States) to put aside the option of a military attack against Iran,” he said.

The United States accuses Iran of fomenting instability in Iraq. Iran blames the presence of US forces for the violence threatening to tear its neighbor apart. Washington and Tehran are also at loggerheads over Iran’s nuclear program. Iranian, US and Iraqi officials on Monday held the first meeting of a joint committee aimed at easing Iraq’s security crisis which they agreed to set up during landmark talks in Baghdad that began in May.

Tehran has kept up its fierce anti-US rhetoric despite the two old foes holding their highest profile face-to-face dialogue since Washington cut ties after Iran’s 1979 revolution. Iran’s detentions this year of four Iranian-Americans, and last month’s televised “confessions” of two of them, have further stoked tension.

Mohseni-Ejei listed what he said were plans by the United States and its allies to undermine and discredit Iran’s leaders: “The first one which the Americans are leading ... is to create disputes and divisions among the revolutionary forces.” He said they were also trying to portray the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against the West and Israel, as “useless in order to ready the ground for the entrance of some of their own elements into the government.” But, Mohseni-Ejei said: “This plot will not be successful.”

Meanwhile, Moscow has warned Tehran it will not deliver fuel to a nearly completed Russian-built nuclear reactor unless Tehran lifts the veil of secrecy on suspicious past atomic activities, a European diplomat said in Vienna.

Separately, a US official said Russia is not meeting other commitments that would allow the Iranians to activate the Bushehr nuclear reactor and suggested the delays were an attempt to pressure Tehran into showing more compliance with UN Security Council demands. Both men demanded anonymity in exchange for speaking to the AP because their information was confidential.

The increased Russian pressure comes at a time when Iran already appears to be ready to compromise on a key international request — that it fully explain past activities that heightened suspicions it might be looking to develop a nuclear arms program.

Those fears led to Security Council demands that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program — and to UN sanctions over Tehran’s refusal to mothball the program, which can be used both to generate power and to make the fissile core of nuclear warheads.

In Algeria, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that his country will continue pursuing nuclear energy and will refuse to talk with any countries that do not recognize Tehran’s right to civilian nuclear power. But Tehran last month told the International Atomic Energy Agency — the UN nuclear watchdog that is investigating Iran — that it would answer questions about past experiments and activities that could be linked to a weapons program.

That — as well as a slowdown in enrichment activities and a decision to lift a ban on IAEA inspections of a reactor that will produce plutonium once it is completed — appeared aimed at deflecting US-led moves to implement a third set of sanctions.

Last month, IAEA inspectors visited the reactor, near the city of Arak. And a second European diplomat told the AP that the Iran had recently began providing valuable information on “four of 10 questions” that the agency wanted answered.

IAEA officials declined comment. But concerns detailed by past IAEA reports have included suspicions that Tehran has secretly developed elements of a more sophisticated enrichment program than the one it has made public; that it might not have accounted for all the plutonium it processed in past experiments and that its military might have been involved in enrichment, a program that Tehran insists is strictly civilian run.

Revelations that Tehran possesses diagrams showing how to form uranium metal into the shape of warheads have heightened concerns.