The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Tehran

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Thursday that Iran was the world's "number one" power, as he launched a bitter new assault on domestic critics he accused of siding with the enemy.

"Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

"Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place," added Ahmadinejad, who on Sunday will become the first president of the Islamic republic to visit neighbouring Iraq.

Ahmadinejad's comments come amid renewed Western efforts on the UN Security Council to agree a third package of sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities.

They also came a day after former top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani launched an unprecedented attack on Ahmadinejad's foreign policy, accusing him of using "coarse slogans and grandstanding".

"You can see how some people heret try to materialise the plans of the enemies and by showing that Iran is small and the enemy is big," seethed Ahmadinejad. "These are the people who put the enemies of humanity in the place of God," said the deeply religious president.

Ahmadinejad once again insisted that Iran was winning the standoff over its atomic programme, which the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons but Iran says is peaceful. "The Iranian nation is on the verge of the final nuclear victory and no power can stop this nation."