Iran Won't Retreat 'One Iota' from the Nukes It's Not Building

One day after the UN officially issued a damning report that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had decided that the best way to respond is to insist that his nation will keep doing what it's doing--but that what it's doing isn't nuclear weapons.

One day after the UN officially issued a damning report that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had decided that the best way to respond is to insist that his nation will keep doing what it's doing--but that what it's doing isn't nuclear weapons. "This nation won't retreat one iota from the path it is going," the Iranian president said in remarks broadcast on the nation's state-run TV network, according to the AP. "Why are you ruining the prestige of the (U.N. nuclear) agency for absurd U.S. claims?" According to the reports from the AP and Sky News, Ahmadinejad remarks suggest that Iran will be going ahead with building all the nukes it wants, the UN report and subsequent international sanctions be damned. But then Ahmadinejad backtracks, going on to call U.S. allegation of an Iranian nuclear weapons program "absurd" as he "chided the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency" for now agreeing with the U.S., according to the AP. "The Iranian nation is wise," he said. "It won't build two bombs against 20,000 (nuclear) bombs you have."

As Iran tries to figure out what it actually wants to say, the international community collectively is wringing its hands over the prospect of the nuclear Iran. China, one of its most powerful allies, is urging Iran to use "flexibility" and "sincerity," Reuters reports. France has signaled it will support tougher sanction unless Iran fesses up, the AP says, and the U.S. want more pressure on Iran, too, according to Reuters. And most notably, Israel, which has said it's still open to a military option, has "remained silent over the report," the AP says.