Ahmadinejad: Iran 'most powerful'         
Thursday's Army Day parade showcased
Iran's military might [EPA]

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has proclaimed that his country is the "most powerful and independent nation" on earth, at a military parade marking Army Day.
 
Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, however, was quick to contradict Ahmadinejad's comments made on Thursday, saying "Iran will never become a nuclear power".
   
"I can say that, to my knowledge, and on the basis of what I know and read, I believe the efforts of the international community will succeed, and that Iran will not become a nuclear power," Olmert told the Maariv daily.
   
"There is an enormous effort on the part of the international community to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear country. Israel plays an important part in those efforts, without leading them," he said.
 
War of words
 
Last week Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli infrastructure minister, warned that any Iranian attack against Israel "would lead to the destruction of the Iranian nation".
 
That prompted a response from Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, the deputy commander of Iran's army.
 
"All the branches of the armed forces would react forcefully in response to any attack against Iran," he stressed, saying "that no one would dare to launch a strike on the country".
 
The United States and Israel, the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, accused Iran of using its civilian nuclear power programme as a cover for attempting to develop an atomic bomb.

Tehran vehemently denies that the technology used for producing fuel for nuclear power is being used to enrich the uranium to a much higher level to produce a nuclear explosion.
 
However, until Iran's peaceful intentions can be fully established, it has had three sets of United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed over its refusal to stop enriching uranium.
 
The military might on display at Thursday's parade looked impressive, but the aircraft were, in aviation terms, ancient.
 
They were US made F4s and F5s bought during the 1960s and 1970s before the revolution.