Iran Would Attack Israel, US Navy in Gulf if Attacked

Iran Would Attack Israel, US Navy in Gulf if Attacked

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08/07/2008 Iran would launch attacks against Israel and the US navy in the Gulf as its first response against any American attack, an aide to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday.
"The first US shot on Iran would set the United States' vital interests in the world on fire," said Ali Shirazi, Imam Khamenei’s representative to the naval forces of the elite Revolutionary Guards.

"Tel Aviv and the US fleet in the Persian Gulf would be the targets that would be set on fire in Iran's crushing response," according to the Fars news agency.

Shirazi was speaking as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards begun a wide-scale maneuver in the Persian Gulf Tuesday morning, in preparation for a potential strike by Israel or the US at the time Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen sent Israel a message that US did not okay an Israeli attack on Iran.


A Guards' official said "If Iran is attacked, we will overwhelm the enemy with our firepower." The maneuver dubbed “The Great Prophet Maneuvers” included naval and aerial forces, and also Iran's ballistic missile units. The officially stated purpose of the exercise was "to improve the readiness and capability," according to Iranian media.

The Revolutionary Guards are responsible for Iran's most significant ballistic missiles including the Shahab-3 longer range missile, whose range has Israel and US bases in the Gulf within reach.

The commander of the Revolutionary Guards' missile unit, Mahmoud Caharbagi, said new types of missiles, the "long-range Fajer 3, Fajer 5 and Zilzal, with a range of up to 150 kilometers, are among the new instruments at the disposal of the Revolutionary Guards.

It emerged last month that Israel had carried out maneuvers in Greece that were effectively practice runs for a potential strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The United States has also said that the option of military force remains on the table but Iran has warned in return that any aggression against its soil will be met with a crushing response, in other words, it will mean war.


ISRAEL HAS NO 'GREEN LIGHT' TO ATTACK IRAN: MULLEN
At the meantime, a senior US strategic analyst said that Mullen sent Israel an unequivocal message stating that Israel does not have a "green light" from the US to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.

Prof. Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official and currently the top defense analyst at the ABC TV network was speaking on Monday during a meeting with Israeli defense analysts held by the Institute of National Security Studies. He said Israeli Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi was notified of the Untied States' stance regarding Iran by Admiral Mullen, the top uniformed US Army officer, during his visit to Israel at the end of June.

The US opted at this point to stick to the diplomatic track in its efforts to keep Iran from going nuclear, and has made clear to Israel that it shouldn't attack Iran without White House approval, Cordesman said. He added that the current US policy is likely to remain unchanged at least until the next US president is sworn in.

Cordesman explained that senior American officers do not make such public statements without permission from the White House. Ashkenazi is slated to visit Washington DC in the coming weeks, and while the purpose of his visit remains classified, army analysts assume that coordinating position with the US regarding the Iranian dossier will make up a large part of his itinerary.

Kenneth Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution told the Christian Science Monitor that if the Americans decide they can't live with an Iran that has a nuclear arsenal, what they are really saying is that they are willing to invade Iran to prevent that from occurring, Pollack said.
"And I don't think that the American public is ready to invade Iran to prevent it from having a nuclear weapon," he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies seminar on June 26.