IRAN PREPARES FIRST-STRIKE NUKE CAPABILITY

JERUSALEM [MENL] -- Iran's nuclear program seeks to acquire first-strike capability against Israel.

A leading Israeli strategist and former intelligence officer has asserted that Teheran was directing its nuclear program for a confrontation with Israel. The strategist said Iran believes it could destroy the Jewish state with one nuclear weapon.

"Iranians believe that it holds, may hold a first strike capability against Israel once it has a nuclear capability," Shmuel Bar, director of studies at the Institute of Police and Strategy, said. "That Israel is a one bomb country, one bomb from the point-of-view of the receiving side. That the U.S. would not intervene against Iran under such conditions, and all of that with apocalyptic zeal may result in actual use of nuclear weapons."

Bar, who for years worked in the Israeli intelligence community, told a lecture on Jan. 9 that Iran was prepared to destroy Muslim cities as the price for firing nuclear missiles toward Israel. He said the ruling Islamic clergy would support a nuclear attack on Israel even at the risk of killing millions of Palestinian Muslims.