Pat Dollard

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(AFP) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday the West was only “playing with pieces of paper” in its pressure over Iran’s nuclear programme and launched a bitter tirade against his domestic opponents.

Ahmadinejad said Tehran would refuse to “back down an inch” in the four-year standoff over its atomic drive and claimed his opponents at home were handing over information to Iran’s enemies.

“Thanks to God, the Iranian nuclear dossier has been closed. The enemies of the Iranian revolution can only play with pieces of paper. They can do nothing more,” he said in a speech to mark the 29th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

The United States and its allies have been working to agree a third UN Security Council sanctions resolution to punish Tehran for its continued nuclear defiance.

“The Iranian people will not back down an inch over their right to nuclear energy,” Ahmadinejad told a huge crowd packed into Azadi square in central Tehran in a typically combative speech.

“They (the world powers) should not make another blunder by voting a new resolution against Iran.”

The West fears Iran could use sensitive nuclear technology to make atomic weapons but Tehran insists the drive is peaceful and has pressed on with its nuclear programme.

Ahead of parliamentary elections on March 14, Ahmadinejad also lashed out at his critics at home who he accused of having a “vendetta” and betraying the country over the nuclear issue.

“Unfortunately there are some in this country who consider themsleves to be the owner of the country and want to control everything in this country,” he said.

“In the nuclear case, there are some who unfortunately who went to enemy and encouraged the enemy. They gave them the information from inside the country.”

“I do not think that these people are part of the Iranian nation. These people cannot escape the claws of the Iranian nation,” he added.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad announced Iran is to launch two more rockets into space in the next few months, after the firing of a rocket earlier this month sparked international concern.

“Two other rockets will be launched so that we can then send a satellite into space,” Ahmadinejad said.

“We hope that Iran’s first home-produced satellite will be launched in the summer,” he added, reiterating a prediction made by other Iranian officials.

Iran on February 4 said it fired a rocket into space in preparation for the launch of its first home-produced satellite. Iran already has one satellite in space but it was launched and built by Russia.

The United States had branded Iran’s firing of a rocket into space as “unfortunate” and warned that the move would further isolate the Islamic republic from the international community.

The national holiday of the “Glorious Victory of the Islamic Revolution” marks the day on February 11, 1979 when the army refused to continue fighting the anti-shah popular uprising led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The army’s decision effectively handed control of the country to Khomeini and spelled the end for the shah’s last prime minister Shapur Bakhtiar. Pro-US Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had left Iran three weeks earlier.

“I have come to say that atomic energy is our absolute right. The United States cannot impose its will on us,” said Mohammad Reza Abolhassan, 18, a student who attended the rally.