Infidels Paradise

Haaretz

Iran’s foreign minister on Monday played down the possibility of Israel launching a strike against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program, after his French counterpart warned of such an attack if talks between Iran and world powers failed.

“We regard the Zionist regime in the current era in its weakest position,” the semi-official ISNA news agency quoted Manouchehr Mottaki as saying.

World powers are awaiting an official Iranian response to a United Nations-drafted deal for Tehran to send low-enriched uranium abroad for further processing.

In comments published earlier Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the British paper The Daily Telegraph that, “They [the Israelis] will not tolerate an Iranian bomb.”

He added: “We know that, all of us. So that is an additional risk and that is why we must decrease the tension and solve the problem. Hopefully we are going to stop this race to a confrontation.”

During an official visit to Beirut, the foreign minister stressed that time was running out in the negotiations.

“There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat,” he was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Iran’s foreign minister
said his country could either buy nuclear fuel for a Tehran reactor or agree to the plan and send its uranium abroad for further processing.