TEHRAN, Aug 12: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that resistance by nations against major world powers pays off, state television reported.

“People and their government’s resistance and their demanding their rights will bear fruit,” Khamenei said during a meeting with visiting Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the report said.

The meeting was held on the last day of a three-day visit by the Algerian leader to Tehran.

“The Iranian nation and government achieved all the progress they have despite pressures, sanctions, and threats by the domineering powers,” Khamenei said.

Tehran has been at loggerheads with the West for the past five years over its controversial nuclear programme.

During Bouteflika’s visit, Tehran and Algiers inked separate agreements on avoiding double taxation and customs cooperation as well as a memorandum of understanding for banking cooperation, the television said.

On Monday, Bouteflika met his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said Tehran would press on with its nuclear programme despite the risk of fresh sanctions.

Iran is facing a possible fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt enrichment, a process which makes nuclear fuel but also the core of an atomic bomb.

The West fears the programme is a cover for an atomic weapon, a charge vehemently denied by the Islamic republic which maintains that it seeks nuclear energy to produce electricity.

Bouteflika last visited the Islamic republic in 2003, after agreeing to restore relations with Iran in 2000 on the sidelines of a UN summit during a meeting with Iran’s then reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

Algiers broke off relations with Tehran in 1993 over alleged Iranian support for the Islamic Salvation Front. —AFP