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Israel planning Iran attack<br>
by <br>
Sunday 21 December 2003 10:26 AM GMT <br><br>
<b>Israel is considering a military strike to destroy the nuclear
programme of Iran, now regarded as Tel Aviv's number one enemy.<br><br>
</b></font><font size=2>The Israeli daily Haaretz cited defence minister
Shaul Mofaz as telling Israel radio's Persian service last week that if a
decision was made to destroy Iran's nuclear capability, "necessary
steps will be taken so that Iranian citizens will not be
harmed".<br><br>
Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's rule in Iraq, Israel has come to
regard the Islamic government in Tehran as its number one enemy.
<br><br>
This is despite Iran's acceptance of a tough new international
inspections regime for its nuclear facilities last week.<br><br>
Meir Dagan, head of Israel's Mossad overseas intelligence service, told
MPs last month that Iran's nuclear programme posed the biggest threat to
the existence of Israel since its creation on the land of Palestine in
1948.<br><br>
<br>
Dagan said Israel had discovered in recent months that Iran was close to
finishing construction of a uranium enrichment plant in the central
Kashan area, which could eventually give it the capacity to build around
a dozen nuclear bombs. <br><br>
The Iranian-born Mofaz said in a speech at a security conference near Tel
Aviv that Iran was "a terror-supporting country". <br><br>
In a visit to Washington in November Mofaz called Tehran's nuclearisation
"insufferable".<br><br>
<b>NPT progress<br><br>
</b>Iran won plaudits from the international community by signing <br>
on Thursday the additional protocol of the nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty which opens the way for snap UN inspections of suspect
sites.<br><br>
Its acceptance of the protocol was part of a deal brokered by <br>
Britain, France and Germany in October to address US-led concerns about
its nuclear programme. <br><br>
Israel is the only country in the Middle East which is known to have
nuclear weapons. It is believed to possess about 200 nuclear warheads and
has not signed the NPT.<br><br>
An Israeli attack on an incipient Iraqi nuclear reactor near Baghdad in
1981 set back Saddam Hussein's ambitions to develop a nuclear
weapon.<br><br>
<b>Iran praises Libya<br><br>
</b><div align="right"><img src="cid:5.2.0.9.2.20031222090436.02a5bad8@66.103.156.66.0" alt="b3fd63.jpg"></b><br>
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Iran on Sunday hailed Libya's decision to scrap its weapons of mass
destruction programme and called for pressure to be placed on Israel to
do the same.<br><br>
Libya agreed on Friday to disclose the country's WMD programmes and open
the country to international inspectors to oversee their elimination.
<br><br>
"Iran believes that the whole world should move along the path of
destroying such weapons," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza
Asefi told a news conference. <br><br>
Asefi urged the international community to press harder on Israel to
comply with international law on its alleged nuclear programme.
<br><br>
"It is the time for the world to push for Israel's disarmament as
the main threat to the region," he said. <br><br>
US President George Bush, who praised Libya for taking "essential
steps" on the arms programmes, in a clear reference to Iran and
North Korea's disputed nuclear programme, said: "I hope that other
leaders will find an example in Libya's announcement".<br><br>
<br><br>
</font><font size=3>You can find this article at:<br>
<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/76332C2C-23BA-4FEA-A707-F12FE9534CD3.htm" eudora="autourl">http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/76332C2C-23BA-4FEA-A707-F12FE9534CD3.htm</a>
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