Iran to deliver destructive response to attack: DM

Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar said on Wednesday that Iran would deliver an immediate and destructive response to any attack on its nuclear facilities, the official IRNA news agency reported.

"The Iranian air force is able to cope with any aggression, and any attack against Iran's peaceful nuclear facilities will be met with a quick and destructive counterpunch," Najjar was quoted as saying in an air force base in the southern province of Bushehr.

Najjar said it is a great responsibility for the Iranian armed forces to defend the country's nuclear sites, including that in Bushehr.

The minister was referring to Iran's first nuclear power plant, which is being built with Russia's aids in Bushehr and is scheduled to come on stream later this year.

Najjar's comments came as the Iranian nuclear crisis escalated with a possible referral of Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Tehran's threat that it would take retaliating measures, including stopping the cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog if hauled to the security council.

Accusing Iran of developing nuclear weapons secretly, the United States and Israel have said they could launch preemptive attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomatic efforts to defuse the Iranian nuclear crisis go in vain.

Israel recently reiterated that it would never accept an Iran equipped with nuclear weapons while the United States repeatedly rejected to rule out military attack as the last resort.

Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander-in-chief of Iran's elite Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, said on Saturday that Iran would react with missiles in case the country was attacked.

"It is worldwide known that Iran has ballistic missiles with a range of 2,000 km...We will never launch initiative attacks on any country, but we will defend our country with all useful means if attacked," Safavi said.

Iran's upgraded Shahab-3 medium-range ballistic missile has a alleged range of 2,000 km, which makes Tehran capable of striking Israel or any other enemy target in the region.

Source: Xinhua