Ahmadinejad: USA Can't Save 'Zionist Entity' Israel

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (R) walks next to photos of late Iranian supreme leader Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (L-back) and Iran`s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R-back), at the Iranian parliament, in Tehran, Iran, 01 November 201

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned against an attack on his country's nuclear installations amidst increased reporting that Israel and possibly the USA and the UK are mulling strikes to set back Iran's nuclear program.

"Iran's capabilities are increasing and it is progressing, and for that reason it has been able to compete in the world. Now Israel and the West, particularly America, fear Iran's capabilities and role," Ahmadinejad told Egypt's Al-Akhbar newspaper.

"Therefore they are trying to gather international support for a military operation to stop (Iran's) role. The arrogant should know that Iran will not allow them to take any action against it," he said.

Ahmadinejad added that Washington wanted to "save the Zionist entity, but it will not be able to do so."

"This entity (Israel) can be compared to a kidney transplanted in a body that rejected it," he said. "Yes it will collapse and its end will be near."

Ahmadinejad's statement comes two days after Israeli President Shimon Peres warned in a television interview on Saturday that an attack on Iran was becoming "more and more likely."

Peres followed this up in comments published on Sunday by the Israel Hayom daily, saying: "The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option.

The heightened tensions come ahead of the release this week of a report into Iran's nuclear program by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which diplomats say will focus on the Islamic republic's alleged efforts to put fissile material in a warhead and developing missiles.

Diplomats in Vienna cited by The Telegraph said the new report from the UN atomic watchdog, to be circulated among IAEA members Tuesday or Wednesday, will provide fresh evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons drive.

Previous IAEA assessments have centred on Iran's efforts to produce fissile material - uranium and plutonium - which can be put to peaceful uses like power generation, or be used to make a nuclear bomb.

But the intelligence update will focus on Iran's alleged efforts towards putting radioactive material in a warhead and developing missiles to deliver them to a target.

Iranian officials have already seen the IAEA's information, diplomats told AFP, and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said in comments published in Iran on Sunday that it was based on "counterfeit" claims.

"I believe that these documents lack authenticity. But if they insist, they should go ahead and publish. Better to face danger once than be always in danger," Iranian dailies quoted Salehi as saying.

Salehi said on a visit to Libya last week that Washington had lost "wisdom and prudence" in dealing with international issues.

"They have lost rationality; we are prepared for the worst but we hope they will think twice before they put themselves on a collision course with Iran," he said.

Earlier on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the West against striking Iran.

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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