BERLIN, March 27: Military strikes against nuclear sites would not destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, which could be easily moved and restarted, a senior official said on Monday.

“You know very well ... we can enrich uranium anywhere in the country, with a vast country of more than one million 600,000 square kilometres,” said Aliasghar Soltaniyeh, Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

“Enrichment can be done anywhere in Iran,” he told a panel discussion on the possible use of military force to destroy what the West fears is Iran’s atomic bomb programme.

Mr Soltaniyeh said that after Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear power plant at Osirak in 1981, then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein bombed Iran’s Bushehr plant.

The Security Council then passed a resolution condemning the attacks and making it illegal for countries to strike nuclear facilities.

But Mr Soltaniyeh said those UN documents were ‘just pieces of paper’ today to the United States and Israel.

Mr Soltaniyeh said Iran was hiding nothing from the world and that all of its nuclear fuel facilities were known to the UN nuclear watchdog. But he hinted that threats of possible military action against Tehran could change that.

“Any threat or potential threat will create a very complicated situation,” he said, adding that Iran would never give up its enrichment programme. —Reuters