April 24, 2006 (Stop Fundamentalism) – Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, President of the theocratic government in Iran at a press conference in Tehran, said today that there was no need for talks with the United States over Iraq now that a permanent government had been formed there.

Regarding possible UN Security Council sanctions against Iran, Ahmadinejad said that it would be a "mistake" for other countries to introduce sanctions on Iran.

"If they place limitations on us it will be more damaging to them than to us," Ahmedinejad said.  "I think it is very unlikely for them to be so stupid as to do that."
 

Telegraph, Apr. 15- President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran appeared to threaten Israel with a nuclear attack yesterday when he described it as a "rotten, dried tree" that would be annihilated by "one storm". In his most vitriolic and anti-semitic attack to date, Mr Ahmadinejad warned that Israel faced imminent destruction. While he did not refer explicitly to nuclear weapons, his reference to the "one storm" that would do away with Israel was seen as a code for nuclear Armageddon….

Speaking at the opening of a conference in Teheran to support the Palestinian cause, Mr Ahmadinejad repeated earlier anti-semitic attacks in Israel, questioning the scale of the Nazi Holocaust and attacking Zionism.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," he said. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

And he poured scorn on the established history of the Holocaust, saying that an atrocity committed in Europe should be settled in Europe.

April 24, Stop Fundamentalism –Reuters reported Sunday that Iran said that it would not abandon its work on uranium enrichment as the United States and the Europeans demand.  Iran says that it will “face the consequences,” Reuters reported quoting Hamid Reza Asefi, the Foreign Mystery spokesman of Iran.

"Iran’s uranium enrichment and nuclear research and development activities are irreversible," Asefi told at a news conference.

(Stop Fundamentalism) – News agencies report that  the United States pressed Russia on Friday to halt missile sales to Iran amid international efforts to defuse a standoff with Tehran over its disputed nuclear program.

“We think it’s time for countries to use their leverage individually, and we think it’s time for countries to band together collectively to make the same effort,” said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns.

Burns’ call for individual nations to do what they can to isolate Iran, sets up an alternate way to apply pressure to the clerical regime outside the U.N. Security Council’s current review of the Iranian nuclear program.  The council is now divided, however, over whether to apply sanctions to the rich oil exporter.