Iran says it will "eliminate" Israel if it attacks

By Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will respond to any military attack from Israel by "eliminating" the Jewish state, a senior army commander said on Tuesday.

Deputy commander-in-chief Mohammad Reza Ashtiani was echoing Iran's late leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who said Israel should be wiped off the map.

Some analysts have speculated that Israel might attack Iran to stop its nuclear activities, which the West fears are a front for weapons development. Iran, which does not recognise Israel, insists it wants nuclear technology only for electricity.

"If Israel wants to take any action against the Islamic Republic, we will eliminate Israel from the scene of the universe," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Ashtiani as saying. "Our answer to any military attack against Iran will be strong."

Speaking later, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak did not respond directly to the remarks but said Israel was pressing ahead with its efforts to counter any Iranian nuclear threat.

Barak told reporters at an air base in central Israel that there remained much to do in "intelligence, in prevention and in formulating diplomatic and practical sanctions".

"We have to prepare, and if there's a need, to take action, not just to talk idly," he said, in apparent reference to reported remarks last week by cabinet minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer that Israel would destroy Iran if attacked.

Opposition to Israel is a fundamental principle in Shi'ite Iran, which backs Palestinian militants opposed to peace with the Jewish state but says it offers only moral support.