Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused his country's enemies of enacting a sinister plan to create a drought by somehow destroying the rain clouds before they reach Iran, several Iranian websites reported on Tuesday.

Well-known for his anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric, Mr. Ahmadinejad has made similar remarks before and last year accused the West of devising a plot to cause drought in the Islamic republic.

"The enemy destroys the clouds that are headed towards our country and this is a war Iran will win," Mr. Ahmadinejad said on Monday, according to several websites including the BBC's Persian-language site and www.snn.ir.

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Iran has one of the world's driest climates and officials have warned that a severe lack of rainfall in parts of the country has created drought-like conditions.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has courted controversy in the past, not least by denying that the Nazi Holocaust - in which six million Jews were killed - ever happened, a stance that drew furious criticism from politicians across the globe.

The Iranian authorities have repeatedly accused the West of hatching plots to undermine Islamic leadership.

Iran is also at odds with the United States and its allies over its disputed nuclear program which the West fears is aimed at developing nuclear weapons. Tehran denies its program has any military dimension.