Haaretz
Tevet 28, 5767
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
said neither Israel, nor the United States, would dare attack the Islamic
Republic over its nuclear program, a Spanish newspaper quoted him as
saying in an interview.
The Iranian president was responding to a
question on a recent article by Britain's Sunday Times that Israel had
secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical
nuclear weapons.
"They well know the power of the Iranian people.
I don't think they would ever dare to attack us, neither them nor their
masters. They won't do such a stupid thing," Ahmadinejad told El Mundo
during a visit to Nicaragua, referring to Israel.
Conservative
Iranian leaders, such as Ahmadinejad, see Israel as a stooge of the United
States in the Middle East.
Iran does not recognize Israel and
Ahmadinejad has previously called for Israel to be "wiped off the
map."
"That regime wants to hurt the Iranian people. They have many
dreams but they are not all powerful," said the Iranian
leader.
Israel has refused to rule out pre-emptive military action
against Iran along the lines of its 1981 air strike against an atomic
reactor in Iraq, although many analysts think Iran's nuclear facilities
are too much for Israel to destroy alone.
Asked about whether he
wants to see Israel destroyed, Ahmadinejad avoided a direct answer, but
seemed to refer to an earlier statement in which had said that Israel
would be wiped out "just as the Soviet Union was wiped out."
"Where
is the Soviet Union?" he told El Mundo, "It has disappeared."
The
Iranian president called the Holocaust a "pretext" for the establishment
of the "dictatorial, totalitarian" Israeli regime which "was created
essentially to threaten other nations."
He said researchers were
not allowed to "ask questions" about the Holocaust. "If it really existed,
where did it take place," he queried, asking what the Palestinians had to
do with it.
Western countries had "imposed" the "Zionist regime" on
the region to promote their economic and political interests, Ahmadinejad
charged.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, echoed the
president's comments in Tehran when asked about the possibility of an
attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.
"We have considered all the
options and don't take these things that they say too seriously. They have
enough brains not to carry out such mindless acts," Larijani was quoted as
saying by Iran's official IRNA news agency on Wednesday.
The United
Nations Security Council voted unamimously last month to impose sanctions
on Iran to try to stop its uranium enrichment programme, which Tehran
insists is peaceful.
The United States, which suspects Iran wants
nuclear weapons, says it wants a diplomatic solution to the deadlock but
military force remains an option.
Israel has said it will not allow
Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.