AFP
Sunday, January 7, 2007

Iran warned on Sunday it would make any foe "regret" an attack against the Islamic republic after a British newspaper reported Israel was planning a strike against its nuclear facilities.
"Any action against the Islamic republic will not go without a response and the aggressor would regret the action very quickly," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

A senior Israeli official has dismissed as "absurd" the report in The Sunday Times that the Jewish state had drawn up plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities in a tactical nuclear strike.

"This comes after the confession of the Israel prime minister who acknowledged that the Israeli regime posseses a nuclear weapon," Hosseini said, referring to Ehud Olmert's apparent slip last year which broke a decades-long official silence on Israel's nuclear programme.

"It will convince world public opinion that the main threat for the world and the region is the Zionist regime," he added.

Israel and the United States, the Islamic republic's two arch-enemies, accuse Iran of seeking a nuclear weapon, a charge vehemently denied by Tehran.

"We have said on numerous occasions that our (nuclear) activities are within the framework of international rules," said Hosseini.

He described the report as "proof of the weakness of the enemy and will have no effect on the determination of the Islamic republic to continue its activities."