IRAN TO LODGE A COMPLAINT WITH UN ABOUT BARACK OBAMA’S THREAT
PanARMENIAN.Net
April 11, 2010 – 16:44 AMT 11:44 GMT
Iran will lodge a complaint with the United Nations about what it
sees as U.S. President Barack Obama’s threat to attack it with nuclear
weapons, the foreign ministry said on Sunday.
Obama made clear last week that Iran and North Korea were excluded
from new limits on the use of U.S. atomic weapons — something Tehran
interpreted as a threat from a long-standing adversary to attack it
with nuclear bombs.
"The recent statement by the U.S. president … implicitly intimidates
the Iranian nation with the deployment of nuclear arms," Iran’s
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a televised meeting
with military and security officials.
"This statement is very strange and the world should not ignore it
since in the 21st century, which is the era of support for human
rights and campaigning against terrorism, the head of a country is
threatening to use nuclear war."
Foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told the semi-official
Fars news agency Iran would lodge a formal complaint to the United
Nations, a move backed by a letter signed by 255 of Iran’s 290 members
of parliament.
Obama is pressing other global powers to agree to a fourth round of
U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt nuclear work
that the West suspects is aimed at making bombs, a charge Iran denies.
Reflecting fears of attack on its nuclear sites from the United States
or its closest Middle East ally Israel, the defense ministry said
Iran had started producing a prototype of an advanced anti-aircraft
missile system.
"The Mersad air defense system … is able to destroy modern aircraft
at low and medium range altitude," the ISNA news agency on Sunday
quoted Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi as saying.
"The mass production of this product has begun and in the course
of the current year a large number of them will be delivered to the
armed forces," he said.
While Iran hopes the development of its own system will make it more
self-sufficient in weapons defense, it is also urging Russia to resist
Western pressure not to deliver the S-300 missile defense system it
has ordered.
On Friday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran’s nuclear program
was "irreversible" despite limits on importing foreign technology and
the threat of new sanctions, and he unveiled a prototype of an improved
centrifuge which would enrich uranium faster than existing models.
Western analysts say Iran has exaggerated progress in the past to
bolster domestic pride about its nuclear program and to improve its
bargaining position with major powers.
The head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization played down the idea
that Iran faced big technical hurdles.
"Iran’s nuclear issue is not a technical issue … we are not in a
hurry. Second generation centrifuges will be mass produced in the
next few months … in a year we will have prototype cascades of the
third generation," Ali Akbar Salehi told ISNA, Reuters reported.