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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, an ultra-conservative leader who
has confronted the United States and Europe in recent months,
dismissed talk of possible sanctions and said Iran will "continue
the path of production of the nuclear energy."
 "Iranian
people do not allow foreigners to block their progress,"
he said on the state-run radio station.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice blamed Ahmadinejad for
infuriating the international community by restarting nuclear
activity and making provocative speeches such as one in which
he said the Jewish state of Israel should be "wiped off the
face of the Earth."
"The government of President Ahmadinejad has done nothing
but confront the international system ever since he came into
power … with outrageous statements that I don't think have
been made in polite company in many, many, many years," she
said.
Israel considers Iran its greatest threat,
and has repeatedly said international diplomatic pressure is the
best way to end Iran's nuclear program, with military action considered
as a last resort.
China and Russia, two nations that buy a large amount of oil
from Iran, urged restraint and called on Ahmadinejad to do more
to build trust and restart talks.
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Iran
said it was resuming "merely research," but the United
Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency,
or IAEA, said Iran had begun small-scale enrichment of uranium,
a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate
electricity or material for nuclear weapons.
seized
the American Embassy in the capital city of Tehran, taking 66
Americans hostage to protest U.S. and Israeli policies. Known
as the Iran hostage crisis, it wasn't until the day President
Ronald Reagan was inaugurated in 1981 that the standoff ended.
Like many Californians, I live in a town where teenagers drive to school in gas-guzzling SUVs and pick-up trucks just because they want to look powerful and extravagant.
