It’s not that they can’t, it’s that they won’t: Obama will do anything and everything to prevent Israel from carrying out airstrikes.

TEHRAN (AFP) — Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted Thursday that Iran is not seeking to build an atom bomb but defiantly added that should it decide to do so “no one can do a damn thing.”

“When we say we do not want to make bomb it means we do not want to,” Ahmadinejad was quoted by the state television website as saying.

“If we want to make a bomb we are not afraid of anyone and we are not afraid to announce it, no one can do a damn thing,” he said during a ceremony inaugurating a sewage treatment plant in southern Tehran.

Iranian officials have staunchly denied Western suspicions that Tehran’s nuclear enrichment programme is masking a drive for atomic weapons.