TEHRAN, 17 December 2005 — Iran’s defense minister yesterday warned that any Israeli attack against it will provoke a “destructive” response, even as Europe said the Arabian Gulf state’s president’s remarks about the Jewish state and the Holocaust could be grounds for sanctions.
Iran’s defenses are strong enough to thwart any strike, state-run TV quoted the minister, Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, as saying. But were Israel to try, “the answer of the Iranian armed forces to any attack would be quick, sharp and destructive,” Najjar added.
Israeli officials and politicians have openly discussed the possibility of an attack on Iran, either alone or with other countries, aimed at crippling Iran’s nuclear development capabilities. Israel and the United States accuse Iran of working to build an atomic bomb, but Tehran denies having such plans.
Raanan Gissin, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, tried to temper talk of a pre-emptive strike, telling The Associated Press yesterday that “Israel has no intention of attacking Iran, but Israel will know how to defend itself if anyone threatens its existence.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has launched a series of stinging criticisms against Israel in recent months, called for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map” and described the Holocaust as a “myth.”
Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi came to his president’s defense yesterday, saying Ahmadinejad’s comments on Israel and the authenticity of the Holocaust had been misunderstood.
Ahmadinejad had meant to say the Palestinian people were wrongly paying the price for European crimes against Jews, Pourmohammadi told the AP in Athens. Instead, Europeans should “pay the price themselves,” he said.
“A historical incident has occurred. Correct or not correct,” Pourmohammadi said of the Holocaust - in which 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis. “We don’t want to launch research or carry out historical investigation about it,” the minister said without elaborating.
But European leaders warned in a draft statement yesterday that Ahmadinejad’s statement regarding the Holocaust could be grounds for sanctions against Iran. EU leaders, meeting at a summit in Brussels, were expected to adopt the statement later last night.
Lawmakers in Germany, where denying the Holocaust is a crime, yesterday unanimously condemned the Iranian president’s remarks, urging the Berlin government to keep pressing Tehran to change its course.
Iranian moderates and even some of Ahmadinejad’s conservative allies in Parliament have expressed growing worries over the increasing confrontation with the West caused by the president’s remarks. But the tough talk on Israel has appeal among hard-liner groups.
