Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday termed this week's European Union oil sanctions against Tehran as futile, official news agency IRNA reported. “The sanctions will be futile and history has so far shown that the Iranian nation has always mastered to pass such hurdles,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the city of Rafsanjan, south-eastern Iran. The president at the same time declared Iran's readiness to resume negotiations with the world powers over the nuclear dispute. “Who says Iran does not want to resume the negotiations, its you (EU) who is after pretexts not to hold the (nuclear) talks,” Ahmadinejad said. An Iranian US-manufactured F-14 fighter jet crashed early on Thursday minutes after takeoff killing both crew, the Fars news agency reported. “The pilot and the co-pilot of an F-14 plane that crashed this morning have been martyred,” the news agency quoted the governor of Bushehr province on the Gulf coast, Jafar Pourkabgani, as saying.
