| Iran's goal is to eliminate the state of Israel, Major General
Amos Yadlin, the new head of Military Intelligence, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
on Tuesday in his maiden appearance before it.
Yadlin, who described Iran as the most serious threat currently
facing Israel, stressed that statements by Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad about the need to
"wipe Israel off the map" were not mere slips of the tongue, and
should be taken seriously.
Iran is likely to acquire the
capability for manufacturing enriched uranium in industrial quantities
within six months to a year, Yadlin
said, and if its nuclear program suffers no disruptions, it will
have its first nuclear bomb in three to
four years. |
|
But its nuclear program is only
one component of Iran's plan to
eliminate Israel, Yadlin added. Other elements include its development
of the Shihab-3 missile, its support for Palestinian terror and
its support for Hezbollah attacks on Israel from Lebanon.
Iran: Uranium enrichment begins on small scale
The Iranian Vice President on Tuesday said that uranium enrichment
begun at its Natanz facility was on a "small and laboratory scale,"
the semi-official ISNA students news agency reported.
"Injecting gas into one or a few centrifuges could not be termed
enrichment," Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also heads Iran's Atomic
Energy Organization, was quoted as saying.
The announcement came shortly after Javad Vaeidi, deputy secretary
of the Supreme National Security Council, said that Iran would resume
negotiations with Moscow next week over its plan to
enrich Iranian uranium on Russian soil - a proposal designed to allay fears about Iran using enrichment to
build nuclear weapons.
Asked if Iran had resumed large-scale enrichment, as required for
producing fuel for nuclear reactors, Vaeidi replied: "No."
"We need time to have 60,000 centrifuges," he said, referring
to the devices used in the enrichment
process.
"The talks with Russia remain valid," Vaeidi said, adding that an
Iranian delegation would go to Moscow. "The final date of this visit will
be February 20."
However in Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin
said his government was considering whether this date was suitable,
the RIA-Novosti news agency reported Tuesday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak played down the delay, telling
the Interfax news agency that such postponements were nothing out
of the ordinary.
There is no problem in this, and I think we will receive the Iranian
delegation," he was quoted as saying.
Iran has repeatedly said the Russian plan can be complementary to Iran's nuclear program and that it would
reject it if it requires Tehran to
scrap its uranium enrichment program in Natanz. |
