President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted on Thursday that Iran will not back down 'an inch' over its nuclear programme despite the growing threat of sanctions, and fired off another verbal attack on Israel, calling it a fraudulent regime that cannot survive.
"The world must know that the Iranian people will not back down even an inch on its rights to peaceful nuclear energy," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Islamshahr, south-west of the capital.
"The enrichment of uranium and having nuclear fuel are among the main demands of Iranian nation," he added in the address broadcast live on state television.
Ahmadinejad also took another verbal swipe at its arch-enemy Israel, saying "the Zionist regime is fraudulent and illegitimate and cannot survive".
"The big powers have created this fraud regime and allowed it to commit all kind of crimes to guarantee their interests," he told the crowd.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert held talks in Moscow this week to try to increase the pressure on Iran but President Vladimir Putin appeared to offer no concrete steps to calm his fears.
"We are at a critical juncture and the entire international community must join ranks to block Iran's true intention of arming itself with nuclear weapons," Olmert said in a statement after talks with Putin Wednesday.
Olmert described Iran's atomic project as "a threat to Israel which we cannot reconcile ourselves to."
But Putin refrained from any direct public reference to Iran, offering only a statement that the struggle against "terror, extremism and nationalist disputes" united the two countries.