Ahmadinejad: Iranian Nation to overcome sanctions in 4 months

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played down the effects of the western sanctions against Tehran, and said the Iranian people will win over embargos within the next four months. "Today, they have imposed the heaviest sanctions against the Iranian nation to prevent its speedy move and they imagine that they can impede the Iranian nation('s progress) by such desperate moves," Ahmadinejad said, addressing a large group of people in Orumiyeh city, Northwestern Iran, on Sunday. "They should know that the Iranian nation will overcome all sanctions … in the next 3 to 4 months and will foil the plots of ill-wishers," he added. Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only. Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry. Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and the western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment. Tehran has dismissed West's demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians' national resolve to continue the path. Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.