TEHRAN, 16 August 2004 — A senior Iranian military commander said yesterday Israel and the United States would not dare attack Iran since it could strike back anywhere in Israel with its latest missiles, news agencies reported.
Iranian officials have made a point of highlighting Tehran’s military capabilities in recent weeks in response to some media reports that Israeli or US warplanes could try to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities in airstrikes.
Iran last week said it carried out a successful test firing of an upgraded version of its Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile. Military experts said the unmodified Shahab-3 was already capable of striking Israel or US bases in the Gulf.
“The entire Zionist territory, including its nuclear facilities and atomic arsenal, are currently within range of Iran’s advanced missiles,” the ISNA students news agency quoted Yadollah Javani, head of the Revolutionary Guards political bureau, as saying.
“Therefore, neither the Zionist regime nor America will carry out its threats” against Iran, he said. An attack on Iran “could only be carried out by angry or stupid people. For that reason, officials of the Islamic Republic must always be prepared to counter possible military threats,” Javani said in a statement, ISNA reported.
US and Israeli officials accuse Iran of developing nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. Israel’s Arrow missile defense system, designed to counter threats such as the Shahab-3, passed its first live test in July by downing a Scud missile off the coast of California. Israeli officials say they plan further tests in the near future against threats which more closely resemble the Shahab-3.
“Such statements by Iran only serve to demonstrate the need for Israel to maintain and further develop defensive systems such as the Arrow II,” a senior Israeli defense source told Reuters yesterday. “It appears that Iran is rattling its saber for fear of a pre-emptive strike by Israel or the United States - however grounded in fact such fears are or are not,” the source said.
Israeli warplanes successfully destroyed the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981. But many diplomats and defense experts say airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear plants are unlikely to disable Tehran’s nuclear capability, much of which has been built underground, and could prompt a swift military reaction from Iran.
Since its 1979 revolution Iran has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist and allied itself to the Palestinian cause. Its political enmity for the Jewish state spilled over to the Olympic Games in Athens this week when an Iranian judo medal favorite withdrew rather than fight an Israeli he was drawn against.
Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami and the press heaped praise yesterday on double world judo champion Arash Miresmaeili for apparently boycotting the Olympics because he was to fight an Israeli.
Tehran Says It Has No Iraqi POWs
Iran yesterday rejected conditions set by a militant group holding a top Iranian diplomat hostage in Baghdad, saying Tehran was not holding Iraqi prisoners to exchange.
A militant group holding Iranian diplomat Faridoun Jihani has said it would release him if Iran frees 500 Iraqi prisoners it is holding, the Al-Jazeera television station reported early yesterday.
The group said Iran has held the prisoners since the Iran-Iraq war that ended in 1988 and the first Gulf War that ended in 1991.
But Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi told The Associated Press that there are no Iraqi prisoners in Iran nor Iranian prisoners in Iraq.
“The prisoners of war issue between Iran and Iraq is over,” Abtahi said.
“Current Iraqi officials, some of whom have been in Iran for years dealing with the POW issue, know better than others that there are no Iraqi prisoners in Iran,” he said.
“Personally I believe such conditions merely seek to complicate and harden the conditions for resolving the problem,” Abtahi said.
According to Al-Jazeera, the group said that if Iran did not agree to their demands within 48 hours it would “punish” the diplomat. It did not specify the form of punishment.
The statement by the militants, who said they belonged to the “Islamic Army in Iraq,” was dated two days ago, though it was unclear if the group would consider the deadline to have passed already.
The group originally released a video on Aug. 8 saying it had kidnapped Jihani, the Iranian consul to the Iraqi city of Karbala. Iran later confirmed that Jihani was kidnapped while traveling from Baghdad to Karbala, 80 kilometers south of the capital.
President Mohammad Khatami had said on Wednesday that Jihani may be released in the coming days.
Jihani is the second senior diplomat taken hostage in recent weeks, following the brief kidnapping of Egyptian diplomat Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb last month. Scores of other foreigners have been kidnapped as leverage to force foreign troops and businesses from the country.
There has been tension between Iraq and Iran in recent weeks. Last month, Iraqi Defense Minister Hazem Shaalan said Iran was Iraq’s “first enemy” because it was playing a role in the insurgency. Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi later distanced his government from the remark.
The Iranian government has denied interfering in Iraq, including allowing money transfers. It says it does not allow fighters to cross into Iraq, but it does not rule out that such people might cross the long border illegally.
