Iran Focus: Tehran, May 12 – New UN Security Council resolutions imposing tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear defiance are “worthless”, Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged on Wednesday.
Iran Focus
Tehran, May 12 – New UN Security Council resolutions imposing tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear defiance are “worthless”, Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad bragged on Wednesday.
Speaking to a crowd in south-western Iran, Ahmadinejad vowed that Tehran would remain undeterred by the actions of the UN.
“The world powers should further know that they will not succeed with propaganda and that the Iranian nation will not retreat even one millimetre from its nuclear path”, Ahmadinejad said.
Ahmadinejad routinely boasts of Iran’s nuclear determination while dismissing the impact of sanctions. Current UN sanctions are having some impact on Iran’s economy, according to observers however. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) controls a significant portion of Iran’s economy, and it is believed to direct some of its finances to its nuclear development projects and sponsorship of extremist groups in the Middle East.
With an international nuclear fuel swap deal now highly unlikely, Western powers are looking to hit the Iranian regime hard with a round of stringent sanctions aimed at targeting Iran’s banks, long seen as a tool for funding its nuclear program.
Western powers and the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, have expressed serious doubts over Tehran’s claims that its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes.