Things are heating up on the Nuclear front between Iran/Israel.
Iran warns Israel against striking nuclear reactor
JPost.com Staff Dec. 23, 2003
Iranian leaders warned Israel on Monday against an attack on the Muslim country's nuclear reactor, following remarks by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz last week, according to which Israel would not allow Iran to achieve nuclear capability.
"He made a damn mistake," Iranian president Mohammad Khatami said Monday Mofaz's statements the day before to the effect that Israel would take care not to harm Iranian citizens should a strike be launched against the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities.
On Sunday, Mofaz, of Iranian origin, spoke on Israel Radio's Farsi (Persian) weekly radio phone-in program broadcast to an audience of millions in Iran. Mofaz told listeners that, 'if deemed necessary, we will strike nuclear facilities in Iran."
Israel has said a nuclear Iran would pose a grave danger to the world and is urging the European Union and the international community to help halt a "nightmare scenario" from becoming reality.
Also responding to Mofaz's remarks, former Iranian President, Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned, 'our response will be severe.'
Two years ago, Rafsanjani said in a speech that the Islamic world wanted to obtain an atomic bomb for the purpose of wiping Israel off the map.
"Israeli attacks will be to no avail. The Iranian Islamic Republic will respond very harshly to a possible Israeli aerial strike. They will pay a heavy price. If Israel acts irrationally, it will not achieve anything, and they will regret it, Rafsancani told the Saudi Arabian newspaper Al-Riyadh.
The head of the Iranian air force General Seyed Reza Pardis said if Israel launches an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, it will be "digging its own grave," the Mehr news agency reported.
He later warned that an attack would have serious consequences beyond the imagination of the Israeli leaders.
Whether the Israeli threats are serious or not, he said, Iran's armed forces are fully prepared to defend sensitive sites and the country's airspace.
Neither confirming nor denying that it has nuclear weapons, Israel has been accepted as a nuclear power by the US since 1969. According to some experts, Israel has at least 200 nuclear weapons.
Israel bombed Iraq's French-built Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981 destroying Iraqi hopes for producing nuclear weapons.
For months Israel has been trying to focus international attention on what it perceives is the real obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Last month the head of Israel's overseas intelligence service said Iran's nuclear program posed the biggest threat to the existence of the Jewish state since its creation in 1948.
Last week Iran bowed to pressure from the international community by signing the additional protocol of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows intrusive snap inspections of its nuclear sites.
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