Ahmadinejad: Stockpiling nuclear arms ‘retarded’

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the age of nuclear deterrence was long gone and any country still stockpiling nuclear weapons was “mentally retarded”.

He again denied Iran was trying to develop nuclear weapons, a day after the re-election victory of US President Barack Obama, for whom Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme will be one of the thornier foreign policy issues of his second term.

“The period and era of using nuclear weapons is over... Nuclear bombs are not anymore helpful and those who are stockpiling nuclear weapons, politically they are backward, and they are mentally retarded,” Ahmadinejad told reporters at a forum to promote democracy on the Indonesian island of Bali.