Iran vows to remove world's 'corrupt leadership'

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday set Iran its latest mission of wiping out the "corrupt world leadership," and said sanctions and threats were nothing but scraps of paper.

"The Iranian nation will not give up until the corrupt leadership in the world has been obliterated," Ahmadinejad said in the Shiite holy city of Mashhad, northeast Iran, quoted by the Fars news agency.

"Our foes should know that threats, sanctions, and political and economic pressures can not force our nation to back down," he added.

Ahmadinejad outlined two goals for the Islamic republic and its people.

"We have two missions, to build Islamic Iran and to exert an effort to change the leadership in the world. We have to carry out both (missions) as well as we can," he said.

The president also renewed his defiance of United Nations demands for Iran to halt sensitive nuclear work.

"The resolutions which are adopted against Iran are ... scraps of papers. The Iranians are a peace-loving people of dialogue in fair circumstances, but they will not discuss their rights," he said.

Nukes for all Muslims

Iranian judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi told leaders of the Gulf Arab state of Qatar on Wednesday that his country was willing to put its controversial nuclear expertise at the service of all Muslim states.

"Iran is determined to make the best use of this technology not only for Iran but also for all Muslim states," Shahroudi told a news conference in the Qatari capital Doha.

His comments came after talks with Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, whose country hosts the headquarters of U.S. Central Command which runs military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and across the Middle East and the Horn of Africa.

Washington has been pushing for a new set of U.N. sanctions against Tehran over its insistence on mastering the nuclear fuel cycle for its self, despite misgivings from other veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council, notably Moscow.

Iran vehemently maintains that it seeks nuclear energy to address an ever growing population's need for electricity.