Iran vows deterrence after Bush refuses to rule out an attack

IHT | Jan 18 2005

TEHRAN Iran has the military might to deter attacks against it, its defense minister said in remarks published on Tuesday, one day after President George W. Bush said he would not rule out military action against Iran.
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The defense minister, Ali Shamkhani, said Iran did not fear a military attack.
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"We are able to say that we have strength such that no country can attack us because they do not have precise information about our military capabilities due to our ability to implement flexible strategies," the Mehr news agency quoted Shamkhani as saying.
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"We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment that has resulted in the greatest deterrent," he was quoted as saying, without elaborating.
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Iran denies that it has been trying to make nuclear weapons and says that its nuclear program is geared solely to producing electricity.
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Bush said on Monday he would not rule out military action if Iran was not more forthcoming about its suspected nuclear weapons program. His comments, in an interview with NBC News, followed the publication Sunday of an article in the New Yorker magazine that said U.S. commando units were conducting reconnaissance missions in Iran to identify hidden nuclear and chemical sites for possible future strikes.
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Asked if he would rule out the potential for military action against Iran "if it continues to stonewall the international community about the existence of its nuclear weapons program," Bush said, "I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table."
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The Pentagon on Monday refused to comment on whether U.S. forces were conducting reconnaissance in Iran, but it cast doubt on the credibility of the entire article in The New Yorker, which was written by Seymour Hersh.
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Hersh's article was "so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed," said the Pentagon's chief spokesman, Lawrence DiRita . Hersh reported that Bush had signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 countries in the Middle East and South Asia.
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