Israel: Drill, dress rehearsal on Iran
Israel's recent military maneuver was aimed at threatening Iran to stop its nuclear activities, an Israeli political official has said.
The official who was speaking on condition of anonymity warned that Tehran must "read the writing on the wall. This was a dress rehearsal, and the Iranians should read the script before they continue with their program for nuclear weapons."
"If diplomacy does not yield results, Israel will take military steps to halt Tehran's production of bomb-grade uranium," the official, familiar with the military exercise, said Saturday, according to The Times.
The remarks came a day after US officials told The New York Times that more than a hundred Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in a maneuver across the eastern Mediterranean and Greece to prepare for possible long-range strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.
Following the New York Times report, UN watchdog Chief Mohamed ElBaradei cautioned that he would quit his post in case Israel attacked Iran.
“A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible,” he said. “It would turn the region into a fireball."
Israel and its western allies particularly the US, accuse the Islamic Republic of trying to enrich uranium to 'make a nuclear bomb' and have been pressuring Iran to stop its nuclear activities.
Israeli premier Ehud Olmert recently told a US pro Israel lobbying group that Iran's nuclear activates "must be stopped by all possible means.”
Tehran vehemently rejects the allegations as baseless; stressing the country is only perusing the technology to produce electricity and use it for other peaceful purposes.
Meanwhile, Commander of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari said on Saturday that Iranian armed forces are fully prepared to repel any acts of aggression against the country's nuclear sites.
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