President Ahmadinejad said that Iran would press ahead with its nuclear plans and that a UN resolution imposing sanctions on Iran was "invalid".
TEHRAN: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday vowed Iran would deal a "historic slap" to Western nations if they launched any military action against the Islamic republic over its nuclear programme.
"Even if all powers who stood behind Saddam Hussein during the sacred defence war are resurrected again against Iran, the Iranian nation will give them an historic slap on the face," Ahmadinejad said in a speech.
The president was addressing thousands gathered in Ahvaz, the capital of the western Khuzestan province which Saddam Hussein invaded in 1980 and sparked a devastating eight year war with the Islamic republic.
"The Iranian nation stands by its nuclear rights and will do its best to defend them," said Ahmadinejad, as he maintained Iran's defiance over its atomic programme.
Ahmadinejad shrugged off a resolution passed last month by the UN Security Council imposing sanctions over the Iranian nuclear programme, saying it was illegal and in any case would not hurt the Islamic republic.
"The resolution lacks validity and is completely political and unlawful," he told the cheering audience.
"It is a political resolution adopted under pressure from the United States and Britain, although the content of the resolution is not very significant. It was adopted with two objectives. Firstly, to create psychological war and propaganda against Iran and also to give an opportunity to scare some people inside the country under the pretext of a hollow resolution."
Western powers want Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, a process that they fear could be used to make nuclear weapons. Iran insists its atomic programme is entirely peaceful and it has every right to the nuclear fuel cycle.
"The Iranian nation seeks the complete exploitation of nuclear energy as its undeniable right," Ahmadinejad said.
"The nuclear issue is even more important to us than the nationalisation of oil that they opposed," he said, referring to the nationalisation of Iran's oil resources by the Iranian government in the 1950s.
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