Iranian leader warns UN of 'illegal' nuclear steps

Iran today warned it would pursue “illegal actions” if the UN Security Council insisted it halt uranium enrichment, an apparent reference to nuclear activities outside international regulations.

Its top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also warned the United States that Iran would fight back with “all its capacities” if attacked.

“Until today, what we have done has been in accordance with international regulations,” Khamenei said. “But if they take illegal actions, we too can take illegal actions and will do so.”

Iran says it will never give up its right under the treaty to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel. But it has offered to provide guarantees that its nuclear programme will not be diverted toward weapons – as the US and some of its allies fear.

The five permanent members of the Security Council – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France – and Germany have drawn up new sanctions to punish Iran for rejecting UN demands to halt enrichment – a process that can produce fuel for a reactor or fissile material for a nuclear warhead.

“If they want to treat us with threats and enforcement of coercion and violence, undoubtedly they must know that the Iranian nation and authorities will use all their capacities to strike enemies that attack,” Khamenei told the nation in an address marking the first day of Nowruz, or the Persian New Year.

Ambassadors from the 15 Security Council nations held their first negotiations late yesterday in New York on a draft resolution imposing the new sanctions against Iran.

The new sanctions would ban Iranian arms exports and freeze the assets of 28 additional individuals and organisations involved in the country’s nuclear and missile programs – about a third linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, an elite military corps.

The package also calls for voluntary restrictions on travel by the individuals subject to sanctions, on arms sales to Iran, and on new financial assistance or loans to the Iranian government.

The US, Britain and France are hoping the new sanctions will be adopted by the end of the week, but that goal seemed complicated. South Africa, which holds the rotating Security Council presidency, has proposed extensive changes to the resolution.

The US and its allies made clear they would not agree to South Africa’s proposed time out - a suggestion Britain’s UN Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry called “totally perverse”.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he will travel to the United Nations if the Security Council decides to vote on sanctions. In his own New Year address, he accused world’s powers of waging “psychological warfare … to block our nation’s progress”.

Khamenei said sanctions would backfire and only further motivate Iran to develop nuclear power without outside assistance.