Iran Says Nuclear Announcement Coming

(NewsCore) - Iran will make a "very important" announcement on its nuclear program within days, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday.

The hard-line president told a rally to mark the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that Iran would "never yield" to Western pressure to stop its nuclear activities.

Western governments are trying to tighten the screws on Iran amid growing concern that the country is trying to develop nuclear weapons. Iran has said that its nuclear program is for peaceful means.

The US on Monday handed down a fresh set of sanctions on the Islamic regime, which has threatened to block off the Strait of Hormuz, a valuable waterway near the Persian Gulf that carries about 20 percent of the world's oil shipments.

Ahmadinejad gave no further details of what would be announced. The official IRNA news agency, however, said the announcements were likely to be scientific in nature.

The achievements "deal with scientific application of nuclear know-how to the betterment of life standard and augmenting level of food and agriculture productions," the report said.

Ahmadinejad, addressing an estimated crowd of 30,000 in Tehran's Asadi (Freedom) Square in a speech also broadcast live on state TV, condemned the "arrogance" of Western powers.

In front of the stage was a model of a US drone which came down in Iran late last year due to apparent technical problems, while the Hamas prime minister of Gaza, Ismail Haniya, was present.

Ahmadinejad also described the Holocaust as a "story," which he said was used to create Israel.

"The Iranian nation has smashed a new and modern idol. The world arrogance [the United States] and colonialists [the West], in order to dominate the world, created an idol called the Zionist regime [Israel]," Ahmadinejad said. "The spirit of this idol was a story called the Holocaust. ... The Iranian nation with courage and wisdom smashed this idol to free the people of the West [of its hold]."

Ahmadinejad has previously described the Holocaust as a myth.