TEHRAN, April 30: Iran said on Sunday it was digging in for a confrontation with the West over its disputed nuclear programme, vowing that neither UN Security Council resolutions nor US military action could force a climb-down. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, accused Tehran of ‘playing games’ and called on it to come clean and halt uranium enrichment.

“We will not accept any forced resolution,” Iran’s top national security official Ali Larijani told students at Tehran’s Sharif University, the most prestigious scientific faculty in the Islamic republic.

Drawing loud applause, he asserted the country’s bid to master sensitive nuclear technology — for peaceful purposes and not weapons as the United States alleges — was ‘a strategic objective’. “We will use any means to achieve that objective,” he said.

“Our programme is to continue research and development in enrichment and to have the nuclear fuel cycle. We are ready for all scenarios. The government has set up a committee and has thought about all scenarios. If the situation becomes a military one, we have thought about that too,” Mr Larijani said.

On Friday the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed Iran had not complied with a Security Council demand to freeze uranium enrichment — which makes civilian reactor fuel but can also be extended to make the explosive core of an atom bomb.

The US and European powers are now poised to seek a Security Council resolution legally obliging Iran to halt the work.

Unlike the IAEA, the Security Council has enforcement powers and its beefed-up involvement in the crisis could pave the way for sanctions or even military action.

“If they want to pressure us, our reaction will be to revise our relations with the IAEA,” Mr Larijani said, repeating Iran’s threat to put an end to crucial UN inspections.

“If you want to harm Iran, you should know that we can also harm you. We are serious about that,” he added, several days after supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei bluntly warned Washington of global retaliation in the event of an attack.—AFP