Tehran (Platts)--3Feb2012/802 am EST/1302 GMT

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday warned the West against taking military action and imposing sanctions on Iranian oil.

He told worshippers at Friday Prayers in Tehran that Iran would respond to international threats of military action and an embargo against its oil exports "at the right time" and "when necessary," insisting that Iran would not back down over its nuclear program.

"Whatever they make a threat about, it's detrimental to them. Of course, they and others should know and they already know, that we will have our own threats against [their] threats of war [or] oil threat. And in the right time, when necessary, the threats will be implemented, God willing," Khamenei told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran in a speech broadcast on state radio.

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"The threat of war is detrimental to the United States. The war itself is ten times more detrimental to the United States. Why is that so? Because the threats show the US inability to approach by dialogue and reason," he said.

Khamenei said international sanctions had strengthened Iran rather than weakened it because they had empowered the Islamic Republic to develop its own domestic capabilities and had also boosted its standing in the region.

"They said over and over again that the sanctions are paralyzing and painful. We benefit from the sanctions," he said.

"When we are sanctioned, we turn to domestic talents and capacities. We grow domestically. If we were not sanctioned in the issue of weapons, today we wouldn't have such strange advances. If they had built the nuclear power plant of Bushehr, we wouldn't have progressed in [uranium] enrichment," he said.

"These sanctions aim at striking a blow to us, but in fact they serve us because of the reasons that I mentioned," he said.

"Iran will not back down on the nuclear issue," Khamenei said. "They repeatedly say in their threats that [they are imposing] the sanctions against Iran to make it back down in the nuclear issue. It's their pretext," he said.

"We have made all the scientific, social and technological progress under sanctions. They closed the doors of science and technology on us. They blocked the ways for us. They didn't sell the required products, but we made progress," he said.

The West was now in a weak position both in terms of politics and economic issues, particularly because of the move to impose oil sanctions on Iran, Khamenei said.

--Aresu Eqbali, newsdesk@platts.com

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