The West has waged an all-out war on Iran under the pretext of the country's nuclear program, a senior Iranian commander said, and added that pressures on Tehran aim to hinder Iran's progress.
    

"Today, the war between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the West is underway under such pretexts as (Iran's) nuclear energy (program) …," Commander of Iran's Basij (volunteer) Force Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said, addressing a group of Basij members in Iran's Central city of Qom on Tuesday.

He added that the West was at war with Iran even in the first few years after the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 when Iran had not acquired the peaceful nuclear technology.

Naqdi pointed to the Supreme Leader's remarks on the reason behind the West's hostile policy against Iran, and said, "As the Leader has said, the enemies do not fear a nuclear Iran, rather they are afraid of the Islamic identity of the country."

Last June, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei stated that the enemies of Iran are fearing the Islamic identity of the country rather than its nuclear capabilities.

"What the enemies of Iran fear, and must fear, is not a nuclear Iran but the Islamic Iran," Ayatollah Khamenei stated, addressing a large crowd of people at Imam Khomeini's mausoleum South of Tehran on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of the demise of the Founder of the Islamic Republic.

The Leader underscored that the Islamic Republic of Iran is today more powerful than ever before in its history.

Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.

Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions and western embargos for turning down West's calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.

Political observers believe that the West has remained at loggerheads with Iran mainly over the independent and home-grown nature of Tehran's nuclear technology, which gives the Islamic Republic the potential to turn into a world power and a role model for the other third-world countries. Washington has laid much pressure on Iran to make it give up the most sensitive and advanced part of the technology, which is uranium enrichment, a process used for producing nuclear fuel for power plants.

Source: Fars