Ahmadinejad urges IAEA to follow lead

“Now, you should take your step,” he went on to say, IRNA reported.

The Iranian chief executive proposed a joint plan based on which “you will take one step and we will take one.”

“We have announced that we do not want (nuclear) bombs and also declared that if we want (bombs), we have no fear of anyone to state,” Ahmadinejad emphasized.

On July 13, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov laid out a new “step-by-step” approach that would enable Iran to take steps to address questions raised by the UN nuclear agency on the country’s nuclear program.

According to the plan, Iran can revive negotiations to alleviate individual concerns of the IAEA about its nuclear activities and be rewarded along the way by partial removal of sanctions.

The approach would start out with the easiest questions and move onto more complicated ones that would require a longer time to respond to, according to the Russian minister.

The Iranian president further dismissed claims that the Islamic Republic is a threat to regional and European countries, saying accusations leveled against the country that it seeks to hit Russia or Europe with missiles are sheer lies.

“We do not need that and are friend with Russia,” he pointed out.

Iran has repeatedly announced that it has no intention to build atomic weapons, he stressed.

Iran insists that as a member of the IAEA and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has a right to use the peaceful applications of nuclear energy for electricity generation and medical research.

In addition, the IAEA has conducted numerous inspections of Iran’s nuclear facilities but has never found any evidence indicating that Iran’s civilian nuclear program has been diverted towards military purposes.