Kaveh Ahmadi, a taxi driver and veteran of the 1980-88 war with Iraq, was quivering with indignation as he wove his aging Iranian-made Paykan at high speed through the heavy evening traffic of Iran's capital, Tehran. An ad on the side of the road read "Nuclear energy is our indisputable right," a slogan now seen frequently on television and at public events.

"I've got two Iraqi bullets in my leg," he says. "It was Western countries that supported [Saddam Hussein] when he used chemical weapons against us. Now they destroy Iraq and lecture us on human rights. America killed more than a hundred thousand people when it dropped atomic bombs on Japan, but they won't even let us have nuclear energy."

The Iranian government accuses Western countries of trying to bully it into giving up its uranium-enrichment program, saying they want to deny Iran the benefits of modernity. The threat of Western sanctions or military action has worried some here. Others say the government uses it to divert attention away from economic woes. Still, Western pressure for the most part has inspired widespread anger and defiance.

"I can't see why others in the world can benefit from the use of nuclear energy but we shouldn't," says Hasan Mesbahi, a retired government employee. "If there is a military attack or sanctions, we should resist, defend ourselves, and put up with hardship."

He was speaking in the Ekbatan neighborhood near the airport in the west of Tehran. Ekbatan is an immense high-rise concrete housing estate that was originally designed in the shah's era but has ballooned since the Islamic revolution in 1979. Because people from many different social classes and backgrounds live there it is a good place to test opinion in a country where polling is infrequent and often inaccurate.

"It is very difficult to gauge if there is any opposition to the nuclear program," says Sadegh Zibakalam, professor of political science at Tehran University. "But all the indicators are that many people, including those who oppose the Islamic regime, tend to support the program. In a sense it has become an emotive nationalistic issue for Iranians like supporting their football team. Western opposition has actually benefited the hard-liners here."

Iranians have long been mistrustful of Western powers. They remember Britain's long exploitation of their oil resources and the US-led coup in the 1950s that ousted a popular nationalist prime minister.

Earlier this month the Iranian military carried out a series of major maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and announced the development of new weapons systems. At an annual military parade on April 18, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised to "cut off the hands" of any foreign aggressor. Analysts in Tehran say these shows of bravado were intended to bolster public confidence in the face of external threats - something that comes across on the street.

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