UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iran has said it will react "most severely" to any Israeli action against its nuclear facilities, issuing the warning after Israel said the United States was selling it 500 bunker buster bombs. Israeli military officials said Tuesday that the Jewish state will receive nearly 5,000 smart bombs, including the 500 one-ton bombs that can destroy two-yard-thick (two-meter-thick) concrete walls. In 1981, Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor before it could begin operating. On Wednesday Israel said that Iran would never abandon plans to develop nuclear weapons and called for quick action by the U.N. Security Council "to put an end to this nightmare." Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi, asked Wednesday about the sale of the monster bombs, told reporters: "Israel has always been a threat, not only against Iran, but all countries."
As if Iran's continual sponsorship of international terrorism isn't a threat to "all countries.".
The main conflict in the Middle East, Kharrazi said, is Israel's "freedom to produce as much as they need -- nuclear bombs as well as other weapons of mass destruction." "But be sure, any action by Israel certainly will be reacted by us, most severely," Kharrazi said after he met British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly's ministerial meeting. Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom sidestepped the question Wednesday of whether Israel would take military action against Iran if it continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions. "They are trying to buy time, and the time has come to move the Iranian case to the Security Council in order to put an end to this nightmare," he told reporters after meeting U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. |