President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran did not care about the renewed financial sanctions imposed by the West over Iran’s nuclear program.
Iran “will not withdraw one iota from its (nuclear) rights,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the city of Pakdasht, south of the capital Tehran.
The president was speaking two days after the United States, Britain, France and Canada slapped tough new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear activities.
The move was a response to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency earlier this month that accused Iran of having tested designs for a nuclear warhead.
“We have said numerous times and say it over and again: we have no atomic bomb, we want no atomic bomb and we need no atomic bomb,” Ahmadinejad said in his speech carried live by the news network Khabar.
Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for energy and medical applications only. Western powers have long been concerned that Iran also holds ambitions for nuclear weapons.
