Iran accuses U.S. of nuclear threats, will make complaint to the United Nations

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday accused President Barack Obama of making nuclear threats against the Islamic Republic.

The ayatollah was responding to Obama's nuclear posture review, in which the U.S. would not strike non-nuclear states and those in compliance with nonproliferation treaties, leaving the door open for attacks in "extreme circumstances" against "outliers" such as Iran and North Korea.

"This statement is very strange and the world should not neglect it because the head of a state poses the threat of an atomic attack in the 21st century which is the century of claims about support for human rights and campaign against terrorism," Khamenei said in addressing a number of senior military commanders from the Army and the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, according to the semi-official Fars News Agency.

"Americans have in recent years made much effort to portray the Islamic Republic of Iran as an unreliable state with regard to the nuclear issue, but it has now become evident that those governments which possess nuclear weapons and shamelessly threaten others with atomic bombs are unreliable," the ayatollah said, calling the Obama administration "an unreliable and sinister government."

Khamenei said Obama "has implicitly threatened Iranians with nuclear weapons" and dismissed the president's renewed sanctions effort as passing "tornadoes."

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast confirmed Sunday that Iran will lodge a formal complaint against the U.S. at the United Nations over Obama's remarks.

"Such remarks prove that the countries which possess nuclear arms are the greatest threat to the global security," Mehman-Parast told Fars.

This follows the clamoring of 225 lawmakers asking Tehran to take the issue to the U.N., according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency; parliament speaker Ali Larijani accused the U.S. of "warmongering."

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