Iran does not fear Security Council – senior official

Iran Focus: Tehran, Feb. 18 – A senior Iranian official today shrugged off the threat of referral to the United Nations
Security Council for its perceived nuclear weapons program, saying that Iran did not fear the implications of such an action. Iran Focus

Tehran, Feb. 18 – A senior Iranian official today shrugged off the threat of referral to the United Nations Security Council for its perceived nuclear weapons program, saying that Iran did not fear the implications of such an action.

“If America imagines that it can reach its goals by passing economic sanctions against Iran in the (U.N.) Security Council, it is seriously mistaking”, Ali Larijani said.

Ali Larijani, a former general of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and former chief of Iran’s state-controlled television, currently represents Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the Supreme National Security Council and also sits on the powerful State Expediency Council which arbitrates between the watchdog Guardian Council and the Majlis (parliament). Larijani is regarded as Khamenei’s favourite candidate in the upcoming June 2005 presidential elections.

Speaking to the state-run Al-Alam television channel, Larijani claimed that Iran had grown self-sufficient to an extent that it could economically withstand the burden of international sanctions.

“The Americans are not serious in their threats against Iran”, he added, referring to the threat of U.S. military action against the Iranian regime’s nuclear sites.

Larijani echoed comments by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security chief, Ali Younessi, calling recent U.S. statements on Iran’s nuclear program part of a “psychological war” designed to convince the regime of abandoning the program.

Questioned about the state of affairs in Iraq, Larijani said that incursions were the consequences of continued U.S. presence there, and violence would continue until their troops left the country.