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Iran`s top military chief vows `crushing answer` to any attack

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

Tehran, Jan 5, IRNA -- A top military chief said here Saturday that 
Iran`s armed forces were completely ready to repel any possible 
aggression amid international concerns about the specter of another 
adventurism by the Bush regime. 
"Iran`s armed forces see themselves capable of repelling the 
aggression of any power and feel completely ready to crush the 
aggressors," the head of the Armed Forces` Command Headquarters, 
Hassan Firouzabadi, said. 
"We don`t claim to have or produce the same weapons used by the 
superpowers which threat us, but our answer will neither be equal; 
rather, it will be a crushing answer," he added. 
The two countries which have virtually held no diplomatic 
relations since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, have stepped up the 
war of words in recent weeks. 
George W. Bush was quoted last month saying that he `will never 
take any option off the table` when asked whether his regime was 
willing to consider a military action against Tehran`s peaceful 
nuclear program. 
In his State of the Union address Wednesday, Bush charged that 
Iran `remains the world`s primary state sponsor of terror -- pursuing 
nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek 
and deserve`. 
His remarks have been echoed by his hawkish Vice President Dick 
Cheney who said Israel might strike Iran`s nuclear facilities `without
being asked`. 
The statements have come on the backdrop of a report written by 
investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine, 
saying US operatives were scouting inside Iran to identify targets 
for possible air strikes. 
Iranian officials have brushed off the report, stressing that it 
is part of a `psychological warfare` being waged by US officials to 
make the Europeans abandon their diplomatic negotiations with Iran. 
"Such talks did not find any audience across the world, including 
among the Europeans; even George Bush`s own peers rejected them as 
amounting to the declaration of an all-out war against the entire 
world," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi has said. 
US Pentagon officials have said the New Yorker report was `riddled
with errors`. 
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quoted as saying 
in London Friday that a military attack was simply not on the agenda 
`at this point of the time`. 
Tehran insists that its nuclear program is solely aimed at power 
generation and strongly rejects US claims that the program is a front 
for building atomic bombs. 
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