Any country still stockpiling nuclear weapons is “mentally retarded,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday.
Speaking to reporters in Bali, Indonesia, Ahmadinejad said, “The period and era of using nuclear weapons is over … Nuclear bombs are not anymore helpful and those who are stockpiling nuclear weapons, politically they are backward, and they are mentally retarded.”
He added, “The Iranian nation is not seeking an atomic bomb, nor do they need to build an atomic bomb … For defending ourselves we do not need a nuclear weapon.”
Ahmadinejad then said that representatives of any government or agency could visit the Islamic Republic to verify that it was not developing nuclear weapons.
Last week, the Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Fereidoun Abbasi, said that Iran is completing its nuclear activities.
Asked about recent media reports on Iran's new centrifuges in the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, Abbasi told reporters that Iran is completing its nuclear activities as scheduled “regardless of the negative western media speculations and reports.”
"We are doing our job according to our specified timeline and we are accomplishing them. Our response to such reports is working harder," Abbasi was quoted as having said.
His remarks came a week after Western diplomats said that it appears as though Tehran is in its final stages of placing centrifuges at Fordow.
The diplomats noted that for some unknown reason the new centrifuges have not yet been activated. They added that they received indications that Iran has placed 640 centrifuges out of the 2,800 that were supposed to be installed in the Fordow facility.
The reports seemed to confirm remarks by a Western diplomat registered with the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The diplomat said previously that it is believed Iran continues to install centrifuges at the Fordow plant.
Iran denies it is developing nuclear weapons, and insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.