ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Building atom bombs is stupid. America must ditch Israel to gain friends in the Middle East. We need love and spirituality, not failed capitalist consumerism.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad adjusts his earphones as he attends news conference after 25th Meeting of the Standing Committee for Economic and Commercial Cooperation (COMCEC) of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Istanbul November 9, 2009. REUTERS/Osman Orsal

The world according to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not without surprises. He expounds his views with rhetorical flourishes, jabs at his foes and occasional flashes of humor.

If he lies awake at night fretting about domestic discontent at his disputed re-election in June, international pressure to alter Iran’s nuclear policy, or even an Israeli military strike, the 53-year-old leader betrays no such worries in public.

Ahmadinejad, in an open-necked shirt and jacket, pre-empted, parried and sometimes answered questions at a lengthy news conference on Monday night after an Islamic summit in Istanbul.

He opened it with a homily on the evils of poverty due to capitalism and accused the West of using “so-called democracy,” liberalism and humanism to mask a drive for world dominance.

Belying his often-demonized image, the Iranian leader evoked universal values, not just Islamic ones, to call for a new world order based on friendship and solidarity, saying: “Without spirituality, a human being is no different from an animal.”

Ahmadinejad gave little away under questioning about nuclear policy, reiterating that this was a “closed file” -- referring to what Iran says is its right to enrich uranium for civilian use regardless of outside suspicions of its nuclear aims.

Iran plans to install 50,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its Natanz site and a recently disclosed facility near Qom, Ahmadinejad said, to be used in as yet unbuilt power plants.

“Wherever we go beyond our needs, the surplus will be exported,” the president added, speaking through an interpreter.

He sidestepped queries on whether Iran would accept a U.N.-drafted plan whereby it would ship most of its low-enriched uranium abroad to be processed and returned for use in a medical research reactor -- thus calming international concern and gaining time for negotiations on a long-term solution.

FOLLY OF ATOM BOMBS

Ahmadinejad, whose questioning of the Holocaust and repeated calls for Israel to be wiped out have fueled alarm about Iran’s nuclear intentions, attacked the folly of building atom bombs.

“The era of using atom bombs is over,” he declared. “If they could be used, the Zionist regime would be victorious over the people of Gaza and Lebanon. Has the atom bomb helped the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan? Has it made them popular?”

Ahmadinejad, son of a blacksmith from the provincial town of Arad, argued that money spent by world powers on nuclear arms would not “heal wounds,” build schools or develop economies.

“They build atom bombs and at the same time they talk of human rights,” he said. “This is something that must change.”

Asked what U.S. policies must change before Iran took up President Barack Obama’s offer of dialogue, Ahmadinejad said he had sent his American counterpart a message encouraging him.

“But I ask you, where are the changes?” he queried, saying Obama had not yet kept his promise to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and had not shifted U.S. policies toward Israel and the Palestinians or toward Iraq and Afghanistan.

He acknowledged that abandoning U.S. support for Israel was “difficult” for Obama, but added: “He can’t have both friendship with the killer Zionist regime and the countries of the region.”

Obama himself told Reuters in an interview on Monday that political uncertainty in Iran may be complicating efforts to seal a nuclear fuel deal between Tehran and major world powers.

He said the United States, along with Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France, had made a “fair” offer to Iran.

“Although so far we have not seen the kind of positive response we want from Iran, we are as well positioned as we’ve ever been to align the international community behind that agenda,” Obama said.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the past seven years of efforts to restrain Iran’s nuclear program as sinister and misguided.

“We have this front against us of some countries who want to control all the world,” he said. “Our nation stood against their activities and gained victory. Today they cannot do anything.”