Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that more sanctions would not deter Iran from pursuing its peaceful nuclear plans. "Whatever they do, Iran will continue its activities. Sanctions are not important," Ahmadinejad told a news conference. "The era of such threats has ended." The United States, Britain and France have vowed to seek harsher sanctions on Tehran over its defiance of UN demands for full disclosure and a suspension of uranium enrichment, a process that has both civilian and military uses. The Iranian leader said the UN nuclear watchdog IAEA had "no right" to consider US-provided documents that allege Tehran sought to make an atomic bomb.
Ahmadinejad also said the Jewish state would not survive in any form. Speaking to reporters in Tehran, the hard-line leader smirked at the idea that a 'Greater Israel' would include occupied Palestinian territories. "I have heard some say the idea of Greater Israel has expired," Ahmadinejad said. "I say that the idea of lesser Israel has expired, too."
The press conference was an opportunity for Ahmadinejad to speak to the media at length before traveling to New York to attend the UN General Assembly. The Iranian president repeated his previous anti-Israel comments, calling the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II a "fake" and saying that Israel was perpetrating a holocaust on the Palestinian people.
Meanwhile, a top adviser of Iran's supreme leader said that no war ship passing through the Persian Gulf region would be beyond the reach of the Iranian missiles. Yahya Rahim-Safavi, a senior military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, earlier this week said that Khamenei had put the élite Revolutionary Guards in charge of defending the Gulf against any enemy attacks and that they would not hesitate to "confront foreign forces."
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