Recent national elections that have returned Iran's ultraconservative president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have heightened fears of nuclear proliferation in the country.
Ahmadinejad has already vowed to restart the nation's controversial nuclear programme and has added that Iran "is taking the path of progress based on self-reliance."
USA secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld has already denounced Ahmadinejad as "no friend of democracy" and the US maintains that the nuclear policy is one of weapons development, rather than civil energy generation as Ahmadinejad insists.
