Washington will not stop Iran pursuing nuclear technology and should not attempt a military "adventure" in the country, an influential cleric said on Friday. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has exhorted Iran to give up what she says is a nuclear weapons programme. U.S. officials have stressed diplomacy but not ruled out an attack against atomic sites, which Iran insists are to meet booming demand for electricity. "The Persian Gulf is not a region where they can have fireworks and Iran is not a country where they can come for an adventure," cleric and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani told worshippers at Friday prayers. "It is not acceptable that developed countries generate 70 or 80 percent of their electricity from nuclear energy and tell Iran, a great and powerful nation, that it cannot have nuclear electricity. Iran does not accept this," he added.
Although France produces close to 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear power stations, most major industrialised nations derive under 30 percent, U.S. Energy Information Administration data says. Rafsanjani is often hailed by analysts as a pragmatist who wants to restore diplomatic relations with the United States. However, Iran's right to produce its own nuclear fuel from uranium mined in the central deserts is a subject that unites politicians across the conservative and reformist camps. Talks with France, Britain and Germany have aimed to persuade oil-rich Iran to drop its fuel making programme in return for economic incentives.