TEHRAN/WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday Iran was close to enriching uranium nearly pure enough for atomic bombs but the United States was dismissive, saying he spoke to rally government supporters on the Islamic revolution’s 31st anniversary.
Ahmadinejad told a vast, flag-waving crowd of government supporters in central Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square that Iran could now enrich uranium to more than 80 percent purity, coming close to levels experts say is needed for a nuclear bomb, although he again denied any such intention.
“The Iranian nation is brave enough that if one day we wanted to build nuclear bombs we would announce it publicly without being afraid of you,” Ahmadinejad said, addressing Iran’s Western enemies.
He told the crowd: “When we say that we don’t build nuclear bombs, it means that we won’t do that because we don’t believe in having it.”
The United States does not believe Iran is capable of enriching uranium to that degree, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in response.
“Iran has made a series of statements that are … based on politics, not on physics,” he told reporters.
In Vienna, a think-tank tracking nuclear proliferation said that “while Iran may take longer than expected to make sufficient weapons-grade uranium, few believe it will fail in that effort.”
The report by David Albright and Christina Walrond of the Institute for Science and International Security said international sanctions had slowed Iran’s progress but not stopped it.
Iranian State television said “tens of millions of people” rallied to support the revolution across the country of 70 million, which is facing its worst domestic crisis in three decades after a disputed presidential election.
Opposition supporters have coalesced around the reformists who lost to Ahmadinejad in the election last June, and refused to yield to government demands to halt protests.
State television showed footage of hundreds of thousands of people, some carrying Iranian flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, walking to the square.
Khamenei later thanked the Iranian people for turning out in such numbers.
An opposition website, Iran’s Green Voice, said security forces fired shots and teargas at supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi staging a Tehran counter-rally on the anniversary of the revolution that toppled the Shah.