Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Monday that Iran would retaliate severely to any possible US attack over TehranÂ’s nuclear programme.
“They (the Americans) understand that if they should make this mistake, the retaliation of the Iranian people will be severe and they will repent,” he told reporters at the end of a landmark visit to the United Arab Emirates.
Ahmadinejad, who was speaking three days after US Vice President Dick Cheney warned that the US would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, said the era when a state could come from “thousands of miles away” to strike another country had gone.
“They cannot strike Iran. The Iranian people are able to retaliate. They are able to protect and defend themselves well,” he said. Ahmadinejad repeated Tehran’s assertions that its nuclear programme, which the US suspects is a cover for developing atomic weapons, was being pursued “within the context of the law” in keeping with its “right to acquire this energy.”
He dismissed Cheney’s warnings made from the hangar deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf on Friday, saying “The message did not contain anything new.”
The Iranian president said talks on Iraq between US and Iranian delegates, announced by both sides on Sunday, would take place in Baghdad, but the date has not been decided.
The US “requested to talk with Iran” to solve security issues in Iraq, he said. “In order to support the Iraqi people, we declared that we are ready,” he added. Ahmadinejad, whose country has a longstanding dispute with the UAE over three strategic Gulf islands, said his visit – the first by an Iranian head of state – had “turned a new page in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.” |
