Iran threatens self-defence, shock!

Here's The Independent today:

Tehran said it will respond with “full force” to any attack on its nuclear facilities after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged global action to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Mr Netanyahu warned that the world has less than a year to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power, a prediction that will raise fears of a military confrontation.

Iran "is strong enough to defend itself and reserves its full right to retaliate with full force against any attack," said Eshagh al-Habib, Iran's deputy UN ambassador. He insisted the country's nuclear programme was peaceful.

I was impressed by the first comment below the line from an Ian Watson:

Lets look at the evidence shall we...?

Israel has ignored 150+ UN resolutions, Iran has ignored 4.

Israel has attacked openly every one of its neighbours in its short history. Iran has not attacked any neighbour and only defended itself when the US and UK cajoled Iraq to attack them leaving a million dead.

Israel has refused pointedly to sign the NNPT, has refused to allow the IAEA into its Dimona area whilst Iran has allowed the IAEA to monitor its stockpile, facilities and research programmes.

The IAEA has stated recently that Iran's 20% enriched uranium has reduced on a par with produced medical isotopes, not one ounce of Uranium has gone unaccounted for.

The Intelligence communities of the US STILL agree that Iran finally closed down its last research programme into nuclear weapon design and had in fact stopped all proper research some years earlier.

Netahanyu has "predicted" every year since 1992 that Iran would have a nuclear weapon "very soon".

Iran has fairly withdrawn some facility inspections until the IAEA give it guarantees that its inspection will not be used for military intelligence purposes for Israel and the US, this is a fair option seeing as we would not allow the Chinese or Russians to wander round Aldermastion or Fort Lauderdale would we?

Well over a year ago a friend of mine pointed out to me that when Israel threatens Iran the oil price goes up but when Iran responds to the threat the oil price stands still. It could be that the threat and the response are too close together in time to tell but it does look like the serious money is on an Israeli attack on Iran rather than the other way round.