On Friday, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the powerful Guardians Council (GC) called on the authorities to consider withdrawing from the NPT and reject the Resolution that was presented to the Agency’s Board of Directors by Australia, Japan and Canada, raising fears that Iran will ignore the 31 October deadline to declare all its nuclear projects and facilities and stop its programs for enriching uranium.

Speaking during the traditional Friday Prayers, Mr. Jannati said Iran should not sign the Protocol that would allow international atomic experts from the United Nations to inspect Iranian nuclear facilities at will to ensure they are not used for developing weapons, as alleged by Washington and Tel Aviv, now joined also by the European Union.

In a rebuff to IAEA, the Stalinist regime of Pyongyang expelled all the Vienna-based nuclear watchdog’s experts last December, get out of the NPT and revived its nuclear programs.

The hermit regime of North Korea, alongside neighbouring Pakistan -- the first Muslim nation that has developed atomic power and which hard liners believe Iran should emulate --, is Islamic Republic’s major source of technology for building ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, according to some Iranian and western sources.

The remarks by the hard line cleric who is close to Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic, heightened alarm among Western diplomats that the conservatives who controls the regime would take Iran in the same direction.

The idea of taking North Korea as model for dealing with IAEA and describing the Resolution as a "humiliation" for the Iranians were advanced by two newspapers that usually reflects the views of Mr. Khameneh'i, observers noted.

After a lengthy explanation on why signing the Protocol and even the NPT is not compulsory, Mr. Shari’atmadari goes on reiterating that Tehran should leave the NPT and not accept the diktat of the arrogant America and its European allies.

"Even if the officials accept the "ignominious" Protocol, the people that has dealt with much more difficulties and international crisis in the past 25 years would impose it on them Mr. Shari’atmadari concluded, noting that announcing Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT and deceiving the United States and its allies in Europe and in the region is the least the authorities can do in preventing the disintegration and the collapse of the sacred regime".

In an earlier editorial, the newspaper had urged the government to expel the ambassadors of the three countries that had initiated the Resolution.

Asked about Iran’s decision about it, the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s senior spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi repeated that since the Resolution was "politically motivated and dictated by the United States", Iranian decision-makers are still studying the case.

However, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the largest political organisation of Iran that controls the Majles and backs the embattled President Mohammad Khatami suggested the government to sign the controversial Protocol in order to prevent the formation of an international front against the Islamic Republic.