Iran kept up a barrage of conflicting messages over its nuclear programme yesterday, threatening to strike the US navy and "set Israel alight" if it was attacked.
But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, dismissed the threat of war as a "silly joke", even as he again rejected the idea that Iran halt uranium enrichment - the key demand of the international community repeated at the G8 summit in Japan.
The strongest language came from Ali Shirazi, an aide to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate say over the most sensitive issues.
"The first US shot against Iran would set the United States' vital interests in the world on fire," said Shirazi, a cleric who is Khamenei's representative to the elite Revolutionary Guards naval forces.
"Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf would be the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response," he said, the Fars news agency reported.
Analysts said that while Iran has often warned of a crushing response to any aggression, specific warnings of this kind are unusual. The phrase echoed threats made by Saddam Hussein against Israel on the eve of the 1991 Gulf war.
It was the latest in a series of now almost daily exchanges over Iran's nuclear programme including signals from Israel and the US that they would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. Washington and its allies accuse Iran of secretly working to develop a nuclear weapon. Tehran says it has no military ambitions and is simply seeking to generate power for civil purposes.
Shirazi's remarks came as Revolutionary Guard missile and naval units began war games - codenamed The Great Prophet III - aimed at "improving the combat capability" of the forces. The Guards are responsible for Iran's most significant ballistic missiles including the Shahab-3, whose range puts Israel and US bases in the Gulf within reach.
Ahmadinejad told a news conference in Malaysia that he hoped to see a fresh approach by the next US administration to make up for the "domineering hegemony" of George Bush. "I assure you that there won't be any war in the future," he said, predicting that Israel's "regime" would collapse without the need for Iranian action. He dismissed the idea of war as "a silly joke." The US was no longer in a position to attack Iran. "In the US, his wise scholars will not allow Mr Bush to commit political suicide and of course the economic, political and military situation will not allow Mr Bush to do that," he said.
Ahmadinejad also told the leaders of the G8 that their policies would "accelerate them along the road to a precipice" and reiterated he would not accept demands to stop enriching uranium, which can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants and to make warheads if refined to a higher degree.
Despite these comments, diplomacy is still being actively pursued. Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief, is to return to Iran for talks with its top nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, before the end of the month, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, told reporters at the G8 summit.
Solana presented Iran with a revised package of economic, technical and political incentives last month on behalf of the five permanent members of the UN security council, plus Germany.
Crucially, the package includes an offer of assistance with civilian nuclear technology that has been widely publicised in the Iranian media and appears to have helped stimulate a lively internal debate among the country's leaders. Solana described Tehran's weekend response as a "complicated and difficult letter that must be thoroughly analysed".
French officials said the Iranian document failed to mention halting uranium enrichment or a reciprocal "freeze for freeze" which would halt sanctions against Iran. "There is no give on the substance whatsoever," said one diplomat.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/09/iran.nuclear
JPTF 2008/07/08
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