Ahmadinejad laughs off Israel's 'bluffing'

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, on Monday accused Israel of bluffing over threats of air strikes against his country's nuclear programme, and once again questioned the right of the Jewish state to exist.

In a series of combative interviews in New York on the eve of the UN General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said Israel was making a lot of "noise" and encouraging the West to prevent legitimate scientific progress in his country.

He reiterated that he was open to dialogue with the United States on the nuclear issue and also said he was prepared to defend Iran from any external threat.

"Fundamentally, we do not take seriously threats of the Zionists," he said. "We believe the Zionists see themselves at a dead end and they want to find an adventure to get out of this dead end. While we are fully ready to defend ourselves, we do not take these threats seriously."

Despite a plea from Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, to "build international confidence" and refrain from grandstanding statements, Ahmadinejad once again questioned the legitimacy of Israel as a nation.

"Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history," he said. "We don't even count them as any part of any equation for Iran. During a historical phase, they represent minimal disturbances that come into the picture and are then eliminated."

The assembly opens today with Barack Obama scheduled to give an address. He is expected to strike a more sombre note than last year when the Arab Spring and the ending of war in Iraq allowed him to assert that the "tide of war is receding".

A year on, with Syria locked in civil war, Israel heating up its rhetoric over Iran and the Muslim world riven with anti-American protests, Obama is under pressure both at home and abroad. The White House said the president would address the Middle East turmoil but also "underscore that Iran must not be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon".

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who is to address the UN on Thursday, has been piling the pressure on the White House in public in recent weeks, calling for clearer "red lines" that if crossed would precipitate intervention to stop Iran developing a nuclear weapon, an event which Israel says is potentially only "months" away.

Netanyahu is expected to use his speech to clarify his position and demand that Obama lays out a boundary stating how far he is willing to allow Iran to enrich higher-grade uranium, according to Israeli government sources.

"Iran's nuclear weapons programme has a number of elements and I've heard the prime minister say on different occasions at a number of private meetings that one of the most crucial is the issue of enrichment, because that is the most difficult ingredient for a nuclear weapon," an official said.

The White House has taken a more sanguine view of Iran's progress towards a nuclear weapon, refusing to yield to pressure from Israel and from Mitt Romney, Obama's Republican presidential election opponent, to take a tougher line with Tehran.

Romney, who will speak in New York today at a philanthropy forum organised by Bill Clinton, the former president, accused Obama of failing to support Israel adequately and being too slow to support rebels in Syria.

He accused the Obama administration of running a "policy of paralysis" in Syria and said the president was sending "a message throughout the Middle East that somehow we distance ourselves from our friends" by his attitude towards Israel.

Obama gave a quick response, saying: "If Governor Romney is suggesting that we should start another war, he should say so." Obama said he would not be swayed by outside "noise" when making national security decisions, a phrase that was taken by Republicans as a derogatory reference to Netanyahu's public calls for actions in recent weeks.