Voice of America News reports: “Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is reiterating a previous claim that Islam is ‘opposed to nuclear weapons,’ insisting that Tehran is not trying to build them. Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency is also calling a leaked report that Tehran is working to build a nuclear warhead ‘baseless.’

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei christened a new, Iranian-built warship, as a military band honored him on the ship’s deck. Addressing a crowd of military commanders after the ceremony, he told them that ‘Islam is opposed to nuclear weapons and that Tehran is not working to build them.’

Iran’s ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna indicated earlier that Tehran had informed the new IAEA director Yukiya Amano that it had started enriching 20 percent grade uranium for its medical research reactor in Tehran.

‘Even if the nuclear agency would continue for ten more years, the result would be the same,’ he said. ‘If a new director general comes, again, [he] will report the same, because we are absolutely sure and we have assured the international community that all are activities are exclusively for peaceful purposes.’

Ambassador Soltaniyah added that a leaked report claiming Tehran was trying to build a nuclear warhead is ‘baseless,’ because the documents have ‘no confidential or secret stamps.’ The West, he argued, is trying to distort the nature of Iran’s nuclear program for political purposes.

‘Our advice is, in fact, to stop [these] political challenges and debates in the IAEA. Let the IAEA begin new director general to focus on their purely technical and professional work,’ he said…” (Khamenei’s quotation above is opposed by other Islamic clerics or Imams in Iran – Matthew 7:15.)

Israel National News reports: “Ayatollah Masbah Yazdi, the spiritual teacher of Iran’s dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says that the acquisition of nuclear weapons is a religious obligation. So reports the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), headquartered in Ramat HaSharon.

Yazdi, considered one of the leading religious thinkers in Iran, authored a book in which he wrote that attaining the ability to independently produce ‘special combat means of a specific type’ is not only a military obligation for Iran, but also a religious one.

Just ten days ago, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the opposite. Speaking to army commanders at the launch of a new Iranian naval destroyer, Khamenei said, ‘Our religious beliefs are against the use of [nuclear] weapons. We in no way believe in an atomic weapon and do not seek one.’

Yazdi wrote that the country’s leaders need not fear the financial costs of producing atomic weapons, as these would be more than compensated for by the ‘Divine and Messianic aid’ that would result.

ITIC acknowledges that the prevalent approach in official Iran is as Khamenei said, namely, that Islam forbids the development of nuclear weapons. However, no official ruling to this effect is known, nor ‘is it reasonable to assume that this would prevent the regime from developing’ such weapons, ITIC says.

‘We must manufacture, here at home, the most advanced weapons,’ Yazdi wrote, ‘even if it doesn’t please our enemies. There is no reason that they should have the right to manufacture [such] weapons, while other countries are denied this right.’…” (Apparently Ayatollah Masbah Yardzi interprets the Koran differently. I believe this report reveals Ali Khamenei’s distorted cover up. See Amos 3:3.)

The Jerusalem Post reports: “Supreme Iranian Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that was not seeking nuclear weapons, a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) published a report expressing concern the Islamic republic may develop a nuclear-armed missile.

In Thursday’s report, the IAEA expressed concern for the first time that Iran may currently be working on ways to turn enriched uranium into a nuclear warhead, adding that Iran managed to make a minute amount of near 20-percent enriched uranium within days of starting production from lower-enriched material.

‘The West’s accusations are baseless because our religious beliefs bar us from using such weapons … we do not believe in atomic weapons and are not seeking that,’ Iranian state television quoted Khamenei as saying in a report cited by Reuters..

Iran’s envoy to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, also rejected the UN watchdog’s report, saying the documents cited in the report were ‘fabricated and thus do not have any validity,’ AFP reported.

‘None of the documents had any confidential or secret stamps on them,’ Soltanieh reportedly said. ‘And thus it was proved that all of the documents have been fabricated and are baseless and thus do not have any validity.’

Soltanieh went on to say that ‘the issue of the missile or explosives has nothing to do with the IAEA’s charter and function.’…” (More discredited statements by Iran’s leading deceiver. Jesus alone is the Way, Truth and the Life – John 14:6. See the opposing view in the next report.)

The Guardian.co.uk reports: “The UN’s nuclearwatchdog raised concerns for the first time yesterday that Iran might be developing a nuclear warhead for a missile.

In his first report on Iran, the new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Yukiya Amano, suggested Iran could have looked into the construction of a weapon, and that work on a weapon could be under way.

Amano’s report to the IAEA board also confirmed that Iran had succeeded in producing 20% enriched uranium, a level of enrichment much closer to weapons grade than it had attempted before. It criticised the Iranian authorities for taking the step without giving IAEA inspectors notice.

In an unexplained development that is likely to further raise international anxiety about Iran’s intentions, the IAEA noted that Iranian technicians had moved almost the entire stock of low enriched uranium (LEU), nearly 2,000kg, to a pilot plant being used to produce the 20% enriched fuel. That is far more than would be needed for its ostensible purpose – to provide fuel for a medical research reactor.

Iran also has installed or plans to install a series of production lines for the manufacture of metal using natural, depleted and enriched uranium. Highly enriched uranium (HEU) metal has some limited civilian applications, but it also used to form the core of a nuclear weapon…” (Since the Shia messiah Mahdi cannot appear until Ahmadinejad has blown Israel off the global map, he certainly must have weapons matching Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to fulfill his demented dream – Luke 21:26.)