Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed international sanctions against his country as a "childish idea" on Friday, Iranian media reported. His comments came a day after U.S. President Barack Obama said he was extending economic sanctions against Tehran as it continued to pose an "extraordinary threat" to the national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States.
According to Reuters, Obama declared the routine extension of punitive measures imposed by former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1995 in a public notice on Thursday.
According to Ahmadinejad, the idea of creating obstacles for Iran's development with sanctions was "a childish idea and a big mistake," the official IRNA news agency reported. "Of course our belief is that with the grace of God the Iranian nation can traverse the course of development," he said in a speech in the southern Gulf port of Assaluyeh.
He also said that Iran’s presence in the space and its nuclearization are all because of the superpowers’ bad-temperedness. “Had you not been bad-tempered and not blocked the way, the Iranian nation would not have been present in the space and not nuclearized,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.
