Addressing thousands of his supporters in Tehran, Ahmadinejad considered the nuclear crisis with the West as "closed" and that the "enemies of the Iranian Revolution can only play with pieces of paper, nothing more."

He warned the Western world against issuing a third set of U.N. sanctions on his country because the "Iranian people will not back down an inch over their right to nuclear energy…. They should not make another mistake by voting a new resolution against Iran."

Ahmadinejad was apparently referring to a report by the U.S. intelligence community last year that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear arms program in 2003, which contradicted repeated claims by the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush that Iran was in the process of building atomic weapons and threatening regional security.

Iran has defied international pressure to abandon its nuclear program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes only, but which the United States and much of the Western world fear would lead to building nuclear weapons.

The U.N. Security Council is considering a third set of sanctions for Tehran's refusal to stop uranium enrichment. It calls for freezing assets and mandatory travel bans on certain Iranian officials, and monitoring transactions with all banks in the Islamic republic.

The draft resolution has been approved by the five permanent members – Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States – in addition to Germany. But other members of the 15-seat council prefer waiting for a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency on Iran's nuclear activities expected this month.

U.S. officials have expressed frustration at what they see as the Security Council's "foot-dragging" in passing the new resolution, especially amid unconfirmed reports that Iran is testing an advanced centrifuge that Washington fears could lead to enriching uranium much faster and acquiring the capability to build nuclear bombs.

Ahmadinejad, proud of his government's resistance to submitting to Western pressure, assured his supporters that Tehran would remain independent in its decisions.

"You should know that the path of the Iranian nation is different from those who compromise," he said. "The Iranian nation will resist to the end."

He was speaking on the national holiday of the "Glorious Victory of the Islamic Revolution," marking the day on Feb. 11, 1979, when the army of the pro-Western shah gave up fighting an uprising led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, three weeks after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi fled Iran.

Flaunting his country's "achievements" since the Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad announced Iran will launch two more rockets into space in the next few months, after the firing of a rocket on Feb. 4 marking the opening of its first space rocket launch center.

"Two other rockets will be launched so that we can then send a satellite into space," he said, expressing hope that Iran's "first home-produced satellite will be launched in the summer."

For the Iranians, who already have one satellite in space but which was built and launched by Russia, their new space launch pad is a national pride that makes their country one of only 11 states that have acquired this satellite technology through local expertise.

But for the United States, the rocket technology, like the nuclear, could lead to its developing advanced weapons. Washington expressed concern the rocket technology could be used to develop ballistic missiles carrying atomic warheads.

Middle East analysts say that the stronger Iran is becoming in technological terms, the more confident and defiant its president becomes, suggesting that Ahmadinejad and his many supporters may be hoping that by resisting Western pressure and pursuing its technology, Iran was actually deterring possible U.S. plans for military attacks on the Islamic republic.

They add that perhaps Ahmadinejad's confrontational rhetoric would even draw U.S. respect and desire for dialogue to defuse the tension over the nuclear program and Tehran's political influence in the region, particularly in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

But some of the Iranian president's critics at home clearly don't agree with his tactics, as voices within the regime are rising against his confrontational approach, which they fear is destroying the Islamic republic's democratic process and achievements of the past 29 years through the further alienation of the country.

During his speech Monday, Ahmadinejad blasted his critics, accusing them of having a "vendetta" and betraying the country over the nuclear issue. "Unfortunately, there are some in this country who consider themselves to be its owner and want to control everything," he said, without naming anyone in particular.

His accusations came ahead of the March 14 parliamentary elections, in which some 2,000 mainly reformist candidates were disqualified from the first phase of vetting on the grounds of submitting insufficient documentation, but which reformist and even conservative critics see as an attempt by hardline conservatives to marginalize them.

Ayatollah Khomeini's own grandson, Hassan Khomeini, has also been making rare public political statements ahead of the elections, as he criticized the disqualifications and urged the military to avoid politics.

Iranian media quoted Hassan Khomeini, the most prominent of the ayatollah's grandchildren, as saying that "if a soldier wants to enter into politics, he needs to forget the military, as the presence of a gun in politics means the end of all dialogue."

His statement appeared to have come in response to the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Muhammad Ali Jaafari, who gave his backing to conservatives in the polls. Many of the Revolutionary Guards' former members, including Ahmadinejad, currently hold prominent posts in government.