By IANS,
Tehran : Iran will soon announce new “big” nuclear achievements, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday on the occasion of the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
Addressing a crowd in the capital, Ahmadinejad said: “In the following days, the world will witness the inauguration of several big achievements in nuclear fields.”
Chanting anti-US and anti-Israel slogans, thousands of Iranians carrying flags and banners gathered at the Azadi (liberty) Square in Tehran to celebrate the anniversary of the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah, Xinhua reported.
Ahmadinejad also said Iran will not surrender to Western pressures and coercion over its nuclear issue.
Western nations suspect Iran, which is already under four sets of UN Security Council sanctions, of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons programme but Tehran insists it needs nuclear power solely for civilian purposes.
Tensions over Iran’s nuclear activities have reached boiling point since Tehran announced that it had launched a nuclear enrichment programme at a well-protected underground facility near the city of Qom.
Tehran has also threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway where an estimated 40 percent of the world’s seaborne oil passes, in response to a European ban on Iranian oil imports due to come into force July 1.