Ahmadinejad dismisses Israel threat
Iranian president says Israel does not have the courage to attack his country.
Israel, Washington’s staunchest ally in the Middle East, says Iran could have a nuclear bomb by 2010 and that an Iranian nuclear weapon would threaten Israel’s existence.
Missile test
On Thursday the Israeli defence ministry said: “A successful missile launch was carried out within the framework of examining rocket propulsion.”
Israel is thought to be developing the Jericho-3 ground-to-ground missile that could have a range of up to 4,500km.
“The Zionist regime … lacks the courage to launch any strike against the Iranian state” Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian President |
It is also widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole nuclear power with an estimated but undeclared arsenal of 200 warheads.
“Ahmadinejad thinks of Israel in terms of ideological and theological grounds,” Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said.
“He thinks of it as a colonial state, he doesn’t think of it as a sovereign state. He thinks of it as an ideology that is going to collapse like the communist Soviet Union or apartheid South Africa.”
“The Iranians did not deviate or adopt any unlawful course in its nuclear activities, all of our activities are in harmony with the international resolutions,” he said.
“They were transparent and from the very beginning we exerted the maximum co-operation with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
Programme halted