Russia Warns West Not to Strike Iran

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, attends the First Joint Ministerial Meeting for Strategic Dialogue between the GCC and the Russian Federation at Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi, 01 November 2011. EPA/BGNES

Military action against Iran would be a "very serious mistake fraught with unpredictable consequences", Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned Israel and the USA.

Lavrov said diplomacy, not missile strikes, was the only way to solve the Iranian nuclear problem, as cited by the BBC, two days after Israeli President Shimon Peres said an attack on Iran was becoming more likely.

The UN's atomic watchdog is expected to say this week that Iran is secretly developing a nuclear arms capability, international media point out.

Diplomats say the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, due for release on Tuesday or Wednesday, will produce compelling evidence that Iran will find hard to dispute.

Lavrov said it was "far from the first time" Israel had threatened strikes against Iran, when asked for his view on Mr Peres' recent comments.

"Our position on this issue is well-known: this would be a very serious mistake fraught with unpredictable consequences," he told reporters.

Lavrov added that "the only path for removing concerns is to create every possible condition" to resume the talks between Iran and six world powers - including Russia - which broke down in December 2010.

Shimon Peres said on Sunday: "The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option."

"I don't think that any decision has already been made, but there is an impression that Iran is getting closer to nuclear weapons," he told the Israel Hayom daily.

He made similar comments to Israeli television on Saturday, saying: "I estimate that intelligence services of all these countries are looking at the ticking clock, warning leaders that there was not much time left.

Diplomats, speaking anonymously, have been briefing journalists on the IAEA's next quarterly report on Iran.

The evidence is said to include intelligence that Iran made computer models of a nuclear warhead, as well as satellite images of what the IAEA believes is a large steel container used for high-explosives tests related to nuclear arms.

The IAEA has reported for some years that there are unresolved questions about its program and has sought clarification of Iran's secretive nuclear activities.

Of this week's report, one Western diplomat told Reuters news agency: "There are bits of it which clearly can only be for clandestine nuclear purposes. It is a compelling case."

Hardline Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami warned the IAEA on Monday not to become "an instrument without will in the hands of the United States".

Iran has always insisted that its nuclear program is exclusively to generate power for civilian purposes.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi has said the alleged evidence is a fabrication and part of a multi-pronged US smear campaign against his country.

Last weel, the Haaretz newspaper reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak were seeking to win cabinet support for a strike on Iran, which Israel and the West suspect is looking to build an atomic bomb.

Previous IAEA assessments have centred on Iran's efforts to produce fissile material -- uranium and plutonium - that can be for power generation and other peaceful uses, and also in a nuclear bomb.

Iran denies has insisted its nuclear program is for power generation and medical purposes only to which the country is entitled to under the NPT, which forms the core of the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

Israeli forces have already carried out preventive strikes against the nuclear facilities of other Middle Eastern nations – against the Osirak reactor in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1981 (Operation Babylon) and against a Syrian nuclear site in 2007 (Operation Orchard), effectively destroying the nuclear programs of Iraq and Syria.

Iran's nuclear facilities, however, would be a much harder target for Israel because of the greater distance, mountainous terrain, and the fact that they are underground and spread around the country, which makes it doubtful that if acting alone without US involvement Israel could really set back the Iranian nuclear program.

The international repercussions of a potential preventive strike carried out either by the USA or Israel remain unknown. Secret US diplomatic cables published in 2010 by WikiLeaks revealed that Iran's Arab neighbors were growing especially worried by the Iranian nuclear program, and that they secretly backed a preventive strike.

Israel is especially concerned by the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, in the least because of the frequent rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Jewish State must be "wiped off the map."

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