Ahmadinejad: "U.S. will fail to provoke ethnic differences"

"They (the U.S. and its allies) must know that they will not be able to provoke divisions and differences, through desperate attempts, among the dear Iranian nation," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state-run television, USATODAY informs.

Iran closed the state-run Farsi language newspaper Iran and detained its chief editor and cartoonist on Tuesday for publishing a cartoon that showed a cockroach speaking Azeri and suggested Azeris are stupid.

It was the first closure of a newspaper since Ahmadinejad came to office last year — and the heavy response, along with public apologies by Iranian officials, suggested the government is concerned the United States may try to stir up trouble among Iran's ethnic minorities.

"Today, they (the U.S. and its allies) are hatching plots. They want to provoke differences, divisions, disappointment ... to prevent the Iranian nation from achieving all of its rights," Ahmadinejad told thousands of people in Khorramshahr in southwestern Iran.

Other Iranian officials were also quick to stress the nation's unity in the standoff with Washington, which accuses Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

"It is clear that the evil hands of foreigners are making efforts to provoke tribal, ethnic, and religious differences under the present circumstances," State Public Prosecutor Ghorban Ali Dorri Najafabadi was quoted Tuesday as saying by state-run media.

Hundreds of Azeris marched on Monday in the northwestern city of Tabriz to protest the cartoon. Some broke windows at the governor's office, and police had to use tear gas to disperse the crowd, witnesses said. The violence was also reported by an independent news agency, ILNA.

Azeris, a Turkic ethnic group, are Iran's largest minority, making up about a quarter of Iran's 70 million people, dominated by ethnic Persians. Azeris speak a Turkic language shared by their brethren in neighboring Azerbaijan.