Sunday, June 13, 2010

'US, Israel would harm all ME states"


POST.COM STAFF
06/13/2010 17:48

Ahmadinejad accuses West of trying to separate Iran, Saudis. ranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Israel and the US are trying to drive a wedge between Iran and Saudi Arabia, following a London Times report that
Saudi Arabia will allow Israeli jets to use its airspace to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Ahamadinejad said "there is no doubt that America and the Zionist regime are enemies of Iran and Saudi Arabia," in a meeting with the new Saudi ambassador to Iran.

"Should [America and Israel] have the opportunity," Ahmadinejad said, "they would harm all the states in the region. If Iran and Saudi Arabia will be united on regional matters, our enemies will not have the courage to invade Muslim land."

The Times cited a US defense source as saying the Saudis have already done tests to ensure no jet is shot down in the event of an Israeli attack. The source added that the US State Department is aware of the agreement.

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“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” a US defense source in the Gulf was quoted as saying. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the State Department.”

According to the report, a Saudi government source confirmed that a blind eye would be turned to Israeli jets attacking Iran. However, Riyadh has publicly denied the report.

Sources in Saudi Arabia told The Times that it is common knowledge within defense circles in the kingdom that an arrangement is in place if Israel decides to launch the raid. Despite the tension between the two countries, they said, their governments share a mutual loathing of the regime in Teheran and a common fear of Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

An Israeli attempt to destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities would likely target uranium enrichment facilities at Qom and Natanz as well as a heavy water reactor at Arak and a gas storage development at Isfahan, the report said.

Israeli officials refused to comment on details of a raid on Iran, which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has refused to rule out. Questioned on the option of a Saudi flight path for Israeli bombers, Aharon (Ze’ev) Farkash, who headed military intelligence until 2006 and has been involved in war games simulating a strike on Iran, was quoted by The Times as saying: “I know that Saudi Arabia is even more afraid than Israel of an Iranian nuclear capacity.”

The UN Security Council passed a fourth set of sanctions against Iran on Wednesday in the hope of diplomatically stopping Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry released a statement following the passing of the sanctions which said that the resolution was “not enough,” and that what was necessary now was for additional “significant steps” to be taken by various countries and international groupings.

Comment:
This speech was for the Saudis and other like-minded but too scared to go public Arab countries. He has called SA out and soon we'll see a retraction from them.We are about to see how strong the Saudis are or for that matter how afraid they are?

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