Supreme Leader: Enemies Seeking to Stop Iranian Nation's Scientific Progress

(FNA)- Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei downplayed the effects of enemies' sanctions and threats on Iran's progress, and said the world arrogant powers are seeking to impede the Iranian nation's advancement and flourishing.

"The goal of the arrogant system's hues and cries (against Iran) is stopping the Iranian nation's scientific progress," Ayatollah Khamenei said, addressing officials of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) and a number of Iranian nuclear scientists in Tehran on Wednesday.

"Pressure, sanction, threat and assassination will not yield any results (for the enemies) and the Iranian nation will continue its scientific progress," he added.

Ayatollah Khamenei said using science to bully other nations has been the biggest crime against humanity by the arrogant powers, and added, "If nations can make independent progress in nuclear, aerospace, technological, scientific and industrial fields, there won't remain any more ground for the world powers to continue their bullying hegemony."

The Leader's remarks came in reference to the latest assassination plot staged by the US, British and Israeli spy agencies against Iranian scientists.

In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of Ahmadi Roshan's car during the rush-hour in the capital in January. His driver was also killed in the terrorist attack.

The assassination method used in the bombing was similar to the 2010 terrorist bomb attacks against the then university professor, Fereidoun Abbassi Davani - who is now the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization - and his colleague Majid Shahriari. Abbasi Davani survived the attack, while Shahriari was martyred.

Another Iranian scientist, Dariush Rezaeinejad, was also assassinated through the same method on 23 July 2011.

After Roshan was assassinated, Israeli sources confirmed that the terrorist attack was a joint operation carried out by the agents of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, and the anti-Iran terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO).

In attempts to impede Iran's progress, 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 NPT entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions 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.

Political observers believe that the United States has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.