WarSclerotic

Haaretz.Com.

Ahead of UN sanctions vote, Iranian president cautions world powers against punishing Iran for its nuclear program.

By Haaretz Service and News Agencies Tags: Israel news Iran Turkey Russia Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday warned Russia not to side with his country’s foes in a UN sanctions vote on the Iranian nuclear program later this week.

“They must be careful not to be beside the enemies of the Iranian people,” Ahmadinejad said at a press conference in Istanbul, where he attended a summit alongside regional leaders including Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has angered Iran by voicing qualified for for sanctions.

But as one of five veto-wielding powers in the UN Security Council, Russia could potentially block a vote to punish Iran, which Western powers accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear program to mask designs on a bomb – a charge it denies.

Ahmadinejad also warned U.S. President Brack Obama that America stood to “lose unless it changed its policies toward Iran”.

“We expected President Obama to start a new policy of the United States. I’m not saying I’m totally disappointed but if he fails to make a change, the first ones to lose would be President Obama and the people of the United States,” he said.

The U.S., which brought the resolution before the UN, has over the past few months run a diplomatic campaign to gather international support for sanctions.

In mid-May Iran said it had agreed to swap 1,200 kg of its low-enriched uranium for higher-enriched nuclear fuel, to be used in a medical research reactor. But the proposal, which would account for less than half of Iran’s uranium stocks, has not been enough to reassure the West and deter a UN vote.

Ahmadinejad said the nuclear fuel swap deal, which Iran reached between Iran and Turkey and Brazil, was a one-off opportunity to resolve the dispute.

“We hope and still hope they will be able to use this opportunity, but we say this opportunity will not be repeated,” he told a news conference.

On Tuesday an Iranian spokesman said a vote for sanctions was legally unjustifiable.

“A probable new resolution against Iran would be illogical, have no legal basis, make everything more complicated and eventually not benefit anybody, either” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in his weekly press briefing.

Israel ‘one step closer to death’

On Monday Ahmadinejad met Turkish activists who traveled aboard a Gaza-bound aid convoy stormed by Israeli commandos last week, saying the raid had brought Israel “one step closer to death”.

In an address to worshippers at a mosque in the Turkish capital, Ahmadinejad accused Israel of “unmatched crimes”.

“The materialist powers have imposed the Zionist regime, resorting to military force against the world nations, particularly against the Middle East,” Iran’s official IRNA new agency quoted him as saying.

“They have thus been creating many unmatched crimes in the course of sixty some years of its history, that have been unprecedented in the history of mankind, the last of which has been invading the Gaza Peace Flotilla.”

In the early hours of June 1, navy commandos stormed a six-boat aid convoy attempting to break Israel’s maritime blockade on the Gaza Strip, ruled by Islamist militants Hamas.

Five of the craft were intercepted peacefully, but nine activists were killed when troops encountered violent resistance aboard the largest of the boats, the Turkish-owned ‘Mavi Marmara’.

“Attacking the aid convoy was a big crime which brought the Zionist regime one step closer to its death,” Ahmadinejad said.

Iran has been a major beneficiary of the flotilla raid, after which Turkey – once Israel’s foremost ally in the region – all but severed ties with Jerusalem.

In his speech in Turkey, his first stop on a tour that will take him across Asia to Tajikistan and China, Ahmadinejad vowed to strengthen relations with Turkey’s moderately Islamist government.

“The two countries have brotherly relations and stand by each other forever,” he said.

Turkey has traditionally pursued closer ties with Europe but in recent years has turned eastward as its bid to join the European Union stalled. Trade between Turkey and Iran reached $10 billion in 2008, a figure which the two neighbors have said they aim to double by 2011.

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