TEHRAN, 19 September 2003 — Israel will be given a “slap it will never forget” if it dares attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, the Islamic republic’s former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said in an interview broadcast here yesterday.
“We are not worried about Israel and its threats,” Rafsanjani said when asked about the possibility of the Jewish state launching a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“If Israel committed such an error, we would give it a slap it would never forget — not only during several years but for all its history,” said the powerful ex-president, who now heads Iran’s top political arbitration body.
The interview, given to the Qatar-based Arab TV station Al-Jazeera, was also carried here on state television.
Iran has been accused by the United States and Israel of using an atomic energy program as a cover for secretly developing nuclear arms, a charge Tehran angrily denies.
Last Friday, the International Atomic Energy Agency gave Iran until Oct. 31 to clear up widespread suspicions that it is using an atomic energy program as a cover for nuclear weapons development.
The resolution, passed by the IAEA’s board of governors after intensive US lobbying, demands Iran answer all the IAEA’s questions regarding its enrichment activities, provide unrestricted access to UN inspectors and a detailed list of its nuclear-related imports.
Rafsanjani dismissed warnings of severe consequences for Iran’s foreign relations, especially with the European Union, if Tehran does not comply with IAEA demands. Brussels has made the conclusion of a trade agreement with the Islamic republic conditional on Iran’s acceptance of nuclear inspections. “We are used to such threats and we are not afraid of them. We will do what we have to do and our scientists will continue their work,” he said.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry angrily hit out yesterday at demands from the EU that the Islamic republic show greater cooperation with the UN’s nuclear watchdog in order for trade talks to continue, the state news agency IRNA reported yesterday.
“Iran and the European Union began their political and commercial negotiations based on mutual respect, and just as Iran did not accept preconditions to start the talks, it will very certainly not accept preconditions to continue them,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
The ministry said Italy, the current holder of the rotating EU presidency, had warned Iran that unless there was rapid progress on the nuclear issue, the talks on hammering out a trade and cooperation agreement would effectively stop.
Meanwhile, Jordanian King Abdallah told The Washington Post that Iran and the United States shared enough common ground for a dialogue on Iraq and that Tehran was eager to settle the dispute over its nuclear program.
In an interview published to coincide with his meeting with US President George W. Bush at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, Abdallah said “there is common ground for dialogue” between Washington and Tehran.
He said he had no message to deliver to Bush, but would merely give him his impressions. “It’s up to them to see if they feel there is enough there to follow up,” he said. “I would hope that they would. My impression was that there’s enough common ground, as I said, to (approve) maybe a shift in policy, but that’s a decision that (Bush is) going to make,” added the monarch, who paid a two-day visit to Iran earlier this month.
