Iran dismisses US threats, sanctions

May 4, 2009, 9:21 GMT

   Tehran - Iran will not be intimidated by either threats or sanctions by the United States, which will not change Tehran's course in the nuclear dispute, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi said Monday.

   'Sanctions and threats will not intimidate us and especially not affect our national will in following our rights, especially our nuclear rights,' the spokesman said.

   Ghashghavi was referring to US plans to reportedly put sanctions on fuel exports to Iran.

   'Sanctions and threats are history and have lost their efficiency,' the spokesman said, adding with a reference to Israel, 'These are just efforts by the Zionist lobby [in the US] to deviate the course of the new US administration.'

   The Iranian oil ministry said the country would be able to cope with the US plan and cover the possible shortages within 48 hours.

   Iran welcomed the decision by the US administration to resume talks, but President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for changes promised by his US counterpart, Barack Obama, to be implemented.

   Also Ahmadinejad's main challenger in the June 12 presidential elections, Mir-Hossein Mpoussavi, said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that Obama's language was 'refreshingly different' from his predecessor George W Bush and, if the United States was serious, 'then why shouldn't we negotiate?'

   Iran and the United States have had no formal diplomatic ties for three decades.

   The prospects of a policy change are darkened by the Iranian persistence not to follow demands by the US and the United Nations Security Council to suspend its nuclear-enrichment programme.