TEHRAN, Iran - From the deck of Iran's new guided-missile destroyer, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei criticised the US military presence in the Gulf on Friday and said Washington was trying to frighten Iran's Arab neighbors into buying its weapons. Khamenei made the comments after taking a tour of the destroyer Jamaran, which was launched at a Gulf port Friday. State television, which broadcast the event, said the warship was the country's first domestically built destroyer and a major technological leap for Iran's naval industries. Using the backdrop of military might, Khamenei declared that America and Israel were trying to sow divisions between Iran and Arab nations. "The US and the Zionist regime are trying to spread divisions to distract the attention of Islamic nations from the main enemies of the Islamic world, which are the U.S. and Israel," Khamenei said in remarks broadcast on state TV. Khamenei also insisted his country is not seeking nuclear weapons, saying Islam forbids weapons of mass destruction. "Because of this reason, we don't have any belief in the atomic bomb and don't pursue it," he said. The denial came as France and Germany threatened to seek fresh sanctions against Iran, a day after the UN nuclear agency suggested that Tehran has either resumed working on a nuclear weapon or never stopped in 2007, as concluded by a U.S. intelligence assessment. Iran maintains its nuclear work is only for peaceful purposes like energy generation.
