- "We can claim that we have rapidly produced equipment
that has resulted in the greatest deterrent." -- Iranian Defense Minister
Ali Shamkhani
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- TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) --
Iran has the military might to deter attacks against it, its defense minister
said in remarks published on Tuesday, one day after U.S. President George
W. Bush said he would not rule out military action against Iran.
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- Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said the Islamic
Republic, which has seen U.S. forces topple regimes in neighboring Afghanistan
and Iraq in the last three years, did not fear 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 semi-official 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 said, without elaborating.
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- Bush said on Monday that Washington would not rule out
military action against Iran if it was not more forthcoming about its suspected
nuclear weapons programme.
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- His comments followed an article in the New Yorker magazine
on Sunday which said U.S. commando units were conducting secret reconnaissance
missions inside Iran to identify hidden nuclear and chemical sites for
possible future strikes.
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- Iran denies its nuclear facilities are to be used to
make nuclear weapons and Pentagon officials have rubbished the New Yorker
report.
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- Iranian officials have given no public reaction to the
New Yorker article which suggested Pentagon officials were eager to tackle
Iran in the second term of the Bush administration.
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- Mehr news agency, which analysts say has close ties to
the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in an editorial entitled
"Futile espionage" ridiculed U.S. attempts to destabilize Iran
since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
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- "The United States is well aware that Iran has strongly
withstood U.S. pressure for over 25 years ... Today, the Islamic Republic
has acquired massive military might, the dimensions of which still remain
unknown, and is prepared to attack any intruder with a fearsome rain of
fire and death," it said.
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- "The U.S. and Israel know that they can never militarily
challenge Iran, since attacking the Islamic Republic would be biting off
more than they could chew and would only choke them if they attempted it,"
it added.
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