Iran: U.S., Europe Are Bullies

Iran ratcheted up its confrontation with the West on Wednesday, with its president lashing out at the United States and Europe as "bully countries" a day before a key meeting that could put Iran before the U.N. Security Council.

Tehran's top nuclear negotiator said Iran would resume large-scale uranium enrichment in response, warning that its main enrichment plant at Natanz was ready for full operation.

Iran provoked an outcry on Jan. 10 when it broke U.N. seals at the facility to begin research-level enrichment, a process that can produce material for nuclear reactors or, if sufficiently processed, atomic weapons.

"Natanz is ready for work. We only need to notify the IAEA that we are resuming (large-scale) enrichment. When we do that is our call. If they (report Iran to the Security Council), we will do it quickly," negotiator Ali Larijani said.

Earlier Wednesday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided the United States as a "hollow superpower" and vowed to pursue the Iran's nuclear program no matter what.

"Nuclear energy is our right, and we will resist until this right is fully realized," Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in the southern Iran city of Bushehr, where Russia is finishing the construction of Iran's first nuclear power plant.

"Our nation can't give in to the coercion of some bully countries who imagine they are the whole world," he added.

The crowd responded with chants of "Nuclear energy is our right," CBS radio correspondent Angus McDowell reports.

In an interview with the AP on Wednesday, Mr. Bush repeated his oppositon to an Iranian nuclear capability.

"We cannot afford to have Iran with a nuclear weapon," the president said. "We want them to have nuclear power but under the conditions that we describe."

Mr. Bush held out little hope of avoiding a showdown with Tehran

"It looks like to me the process is headed toward the (U.N.) Security Council, and that if the Iranians would like to avoid that, they ought to work in good faith to get rid of their nuclear weapon ambitions," the president said.

Mr. Bush's comments were echoed throughout Washington Wednesday.

"A nuclear armed Iran committed to the extinction of Israel … is a serious threat to global security," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said on CBS News' The Early Show. "It's probably the greatest single challenge outside of the war on terror that we faced since the end of the cold war."

"I think (the president) is committed to very appropriately trying many avenues before considering the military option. But you can't take the military option completely off the table," McCain said.

"What we're doing now is bringing the entire pressure of the entire world on Iran," Sen. Joseph Biden, D.-Del., told the The Early Show. "And if it fails, then the whole world is in on the deal."

The International Atomic Energy Agency's 35-nation board of governors is to meet in Vienna, Austria, on Thursday, and is expected to report Iran's nuclear program to the U.N. Security Council.

The five permanent members of the Security Council agreed Tuesday that Iran should be put before the world body.

The Security Council has the power to impose sanctions, but such a move is not likely soon. Under the deal the United States, Britain and France made with Moscow and Beijing — who tend to support Iran — the council will likely await a new IAEA report on Iran in March before deciding on substantive action.

Larijani said Iran was "committed to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty" but would end IAEA snap inspections of its facilities if the Thursday vote went against it.

"The result would be Iran's cooperating with the IAEA at a low level, which is against our wishes. All our suspensions on nuclear activities would be lifted," he said.

"The law obliges the government" to end voluntary suspension of nuclear activities ... "naturally, uranium enrichment at industrial scale" would resume, he said.

Last year, Iran's parliament passed a law obliging the government to resume full-scale nuclear activities if the country was taken to the Security Council.

Iran insists its nuclear program is designed for electricity generation. But on Tuesday, the IAEA said that Iran had turned over to it documents and drawings it obtained on the black market that could serve no other purpose than production of an atomic warhead.