Haaretz
Tevet 26, 5766
Were Israel to attack Iran's
nuclear facilities, Iran would respond so strongly that it
would put the Jewish state into "an eternal coma" like Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon's, the Iranian defense minister said
yesterday.
Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has
said his country would not accept Iran's acquiring nuclear
weapons under any circumstances. He stopped short of
threatening a military strike against Iran, but he said Israel
was preparing for the possible failure of diplomatic
negotiations with Iran.
A newscaster on Iranian state
television read out a response from Iran's minister of
defense, Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najjar,
yesterday.
"Zionists should know that
if they do anything evil against Iran, the response of Iran's
armed forces will be so firm that it will send them into
eternal coma, like Sharon," Najjar said.
Meanwhile, a
senior German security official proposed yesterday temporarily
pulling the passports of neo-Nazis intending to participate in
an Iranian conference on the Holocaust.
Guenther
Beckstein, the interior minister of Bavaria, suggested that
local authorities temporarily revoke the passports of
right-wing extremists known to have expressed interest in
participating in the conference in an effort to prevent them
from traveling.
"It would massively damage Germany's
image if German citizens (took part) in Iran to deny the
Holocaust or the right of Israel to exist," said Beckstein, a
member of the conservative Christian Social Union, sister
party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic
Union.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for
the conference earlier this month, the latest step in his
campaign against Israel.