TEHRAN, 18 April 2008 — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday “satanic” foreign forces had failed in their bid to dominate the Middle East’s energy resources and did not dare threaten Iran.
Ahmadinejad also said at a military parade the region could handle its own security without US and other foreign forces although he did not name arch foe, the United States. Iran is embroiled in a row over its nuclear program, which the United States says is a covert bid to make nuclear weapons.
Iran, the world’s fourth biggest oil producer, denies this and says its aim is to generate electricity. Washington says it wants diplomacy to end the dispute but has not ruled out military action. Analysts say the possibility of strikes seem remote after a US intelligence report last year said Iran halted a nuclear weapons program in 2003.
“We saw that oppressive, arrogant ... and satanic powers planned, using a suspicious excuse to gain dominance over the world’s energy reserves ..., brought their troops to our region,” Ahmadinejad said at the annual ceremony.
“Today they have failed,” he said in the televised address shortly before warplanes and helicopters flew overhead and troops marched passed the podium set up south of Tehran. Equipment on show included several missiles on trucks but did not include the Shahab-3, which officials have said is Iran’s longest-range projectile capable of hitting targets 2,000 km (1,250 miles) away.
“The Iranian nation has reached a level that none of the world powers dare to threaten (it),” he said, adding that Iran would respond “powerfully” to any attack. He said Iran would stand by its neighbors “to spread peace and security in the region without the presence of foreigners.”
Iran has regularly demanded the United States and its Western allies withdraw from Iraq and the region, as well as calling for a security pact with nearby Gulf states.
The president said Iran was capable of domestically making most of its main military equipment needs and said this included tanks, aircraft and other weaponry, some of which was included in the parade.
Meanwhile, the head of the UN atomic watchdog said yesterday Iran’s progress in developing uranium enrichment is slow and recent additions to its nuclear fuel production complex have only been older-model centrifuges.
Mohamed El-Baradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had between 3,300 and 3,400 centrifuges of the 1970s vintage P-1 type operational in the Natanz enrichment hall, up from 3,000 at the end of last year.
He urged Iran to refrain from speeding up its enrichment campaign until a dispute between the Islamic Republic and world powers over suspicions about its nuclear intentions was resolved. Iran says it wants to produce nuclear fuel only for electricity so it can export more oil.
However, the United Nations has imposed three sets of sanctions on Tehran for hiding the work from the IAEA until 2003, failing to prove to inspectors since then that it is wholly peaceful and refusing to suspend the program.
“They are basically making some centrifuges of the old type, the P-1 centrifuges that have already been there. The rate of progress on that has not been very fast,” El-Baradei told a news conference during a visit to Berlin. “I think they had 3,000 centrifuges in the past and now they have 3,300 or 3,400 so they are not moving very fast.
“I continue to call on Iran not to speed the process because we first need to have an agreement before Iran moves forward with its enrichment program.” Iran said last week it had installed almost 500 more centrifuges at Natanz under plans to bring a further 6,000 on line.
Tehran said it was testing an advanced centrifuge, which analysts say could refine uranium two or three times faster than the temperamental P-1 in Natanz’s pilot wing. Diplomats monitoring Iran’s program said that Iran had brought some advanced centrifuges into the main plant, although none were yet running.
Iran has yet to show it can run thousands of centrifuges in unison at high speed for long periods, the key to enriching significant quantities of uranium as fuel for power plants or atomic bombs, depending on the configuration of the machines.
Analysts believe Iran aims gradually to replace its start-up P-1 centrifuge with a new generation it adapted from a P-2 design, obtained via black markets from the West.
