*Iran 'ready to fill US vacuum' in Iraq*

By Edmund Blair in Tehran

August 29, 2007 02:49am
Article from: Reuters

PRESIDENT Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today the power of the US was rapidly
collapsing in Iraq and that Iran was ready to step in to help fill the
vacuum, in comments likely to irritate Washington.

“The political power of the occupiers (of Iraq) is being destroyed
rapidly and very soon we will be witnessing a great power vacuum in the
region,” Mr Ahmadinejad told a news conference broadcast live on state
television.

“We, with the help of regional friends and the Iraqi nation, are ready
to fill this void.”

Mr Ahmadinejad also rejected reports that Iran had slowed sensitive
nuclear work which the West fears is aimed at making atom bombs, and
said it would respond if the US branded the elite Revolutionary Guards a
terrorist force.

With Shiite Muslims now in power in Baghdad, ties have strengthened
between Iran and Iraq since 2003, when US-led forces toppled Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Arab who waged an eight-year war
against Iran in the 1980s.

But the US military accuses the Islamic Republic of arming and training
militias that are behind some of the violence ravaging Iraq. Iran
rejects the charge and blames the presence of US forces, numbering about
162,000, for the violence.

“They are trapped in the swamp of their own crimes and have no choice
but to accept the failure and accept the independence and rights of the
Iraqi nation,” Mr Ahmadinejad said.

“If you stay in Iraq for another 50 years nothing will improve, it will
just worsen.”

Earlier this month, Washington's envoy to Iraq warned Americans that
pulling out US troops could open the door to a “major Iranian advance”
that would threaten US interests in the region.

Opinion polls suggest most Americans have turned against the
four-year-old war and Democrats in Congress want President George W.
Bush to start pulling out US troops as soon as possible.

Mr Bush has resisted the calls.

During a two-hour press conference, Mr Ahmadinejad denied reports that
Iran's progress was slowing in its nuclear program.

“These (reports) are not true,” he said.

Diplomats in Vienna have said Iran's atomic work seems to have slowed in
pace this summer and Tehran appeared to have fewer than the 3000
centrifuges, used in enriching uranium, that it planned to have working
by the end of July.

Enriched uranium can be used to power nuclear plants or, if refined to a
high enough degree, provides the basis for bombs.

Mr Ahmadinejad, voicing continued defiance in the face of Western
demands that it suspend uranium enrichment, said Iran was now a nuclear
country and was mastering the complete nuclear fuel cycle.

“I want to officially announce to you that from our viewpoint the issue
of Iran's nuclear case has been closed. Today Iran is a nuclear Iran,
meaning that it has the complete cycle for fuel production,” he said.

Iran says its atomic work is aimed solely at generating electricity so
that it can export more of its gas and oil.

US officials said this month Washington may soon name the Revolutionary
Guards as a foreign terrorist group, a move that would enable the US to
target the force's finances.

Mr Ahmadinejad, himself a former Guards commander, said he believed it
was “highly unlikely that the American Government will take such an
illogical approach ... it would be a joke I guess”.