DOHA, Sept 5, (Agencies): Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ruled out an attack on the Islamic republic over its nuclear programme, during a visit to Qatar on Sunday, because any such action would result in Israel’s destruction.
“Any act against Iran will lead to the eradication of the Zionist entity,” he told a joint news conference in Doha with Qatar’s Amir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, after their talks.
Israel, the region’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, has not ruled out a military strike to prevent Iran acquiring an atomic weapons capability, an ambition its arch-foe Tehran strongly denies.
“The Zionist entity and the US government would hit any country in the region whenever they are able to do so, and they will not wait to get permission. But (at the moment) they cannot,” he said.
“Iran has the ability to retaliate, strong and hard,” warned Ahmadinejad, whose comments in Farsi were translated into Arabic.
Iran’s hardline president said the talk of war against Iran to halt its controversial nuclear programme was aimed at putting psychological pressure on Tehran.
“There will be no war against Iran. What could take place is a psychological war,” he said.
In renewed criticism of the relaunched direct peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel, Ahmadinejad charged that the “decaying” Jewish state was hoping to “revive” itself through the talks.
“The Zionist entity is decaying. It is in a critically difficult state, and hopes to revive itself through an unfruitful dialogue,” he said.
Ahmadinejad had on Friday said the Washington-sponsored talks were “doomed” to fail, and infuriated the moderate Palestinian leadership by slamming it as unrepresentative.
“Who gave them the right to sell a piece of Palestinian land? The people of Palestine and the people of the region will not allow them to sell even an inch of Palestinian soil to the enemy,” he said at an annual pro-Palestinian rally.
Unlike other Arab states in the Gulf that have echoed Western suspicions about Iran’s nuclear programme and its ambitions in the region, Qatar has maintained friendly relations.
In May when the United States was pushing for a new round of UN sanctions against Iran, Qatar backed Turkish and Brazilian efforts to broker a deal that would avoid further punitive measures.
But Qatar is also a staunch US ally and hosts two American military bases.
As-Sayliyah base served as the coalition’s command and control centre during the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, while the US air force used Al-Udeid airbase in the 2001 war in Afghanistan and in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.
Opposition
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Sunday denied they and Islamist militiamen had besieged opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi’s home, but urged that the cleric and “seditionists” like him be tried.
The Guards, in a statement carried by ILNA news agency, said that the siege on Karroubi’s home earlier this week was instigated by “rogue elements” who were not linked to the force or to the Basij militia.
“The incident was the work of imprudent and rogue elements. The instigators were completely rogue and unrelated to sacred organisations of Basij and Sepah (Guards),” it said.
Karroubi’s sahamnews.org website had reported that Guards and Basij men had surrounded the cleric’s home on Friday to prevent attendance at an annual pro-Palestinian rally, which last year saw anti-government protests.
It said militiamen had been gathering outside Karroubi’s residential building since last Sunday, and on Thursday night even “got inside the building after smashing down the door.”
“The attackers opened fire and threw Molotov cocktails at the building,” the website said, describing Thursday’s attack. It said Karroubi’s chief bodyguard was badly beaten and later went into a coma.
But the Guards condemned what they said was “hyping of a trivial issue,” adding that there was “shooting from his (Karroubi’s) residence which injured a few people.”
“We insist that the best way to deal with the seditionists is through a natural and popular trial,” the Guards said.
Karroubi and fellow opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have steadfastly refused to acknowledge President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government since his re-election last year.
Stoning
The Vatican raised the possibility Sunday of using behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to save the life of an Iranian widow sentenced to be stoned for adultery.
In its first public statement on the case, which has attracted worldwide attention, the Vatican decried stoning as a particularly brutal form of capital punishment.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Catholic church opposes the death penalty in general.
It is unclear what chances any Vatican bid would have to persuade the Muslim nation to spare the woman’s life. Brazil, which has friendly relations with Iran, was rebuffed when it offered her asylum.
Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of adultery. In July, Iranian authorities said they would not carry out the stoning sentence for the time being, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging for adultery and other offenses.
Her son, Sajad, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos that he was appealing to Pope Benedict XVI and to Italy to work to stop the execution.
Lombardi told The Associated Press that no formal appeal had reached the Vatican. But he hinted that Vatican diplomacy might be employed to try to save Ashtiani.
Lombardi said in a statement that the Holy See “is following the case with attention and interest.”
“When the Holy See is asked, in an appropriate way, to intervene in humanitarian issues with the authorities of other countries, as it has happened many times in the past, it does so not in a public way, but through its own diplomatic channels,” Lombardi said in the statement.
In one of the late Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals in 1995, the pontiff laid out the Catholic Church’s stance against capital punishment.
John Paul went to bat in several high-profile cases of death-row inmates in the United States. One of the first was the case of Paula Cooper, who was convicted of murdering her elderly Bible teacher when she was 15 but spared the electric chair by Indiana in 1989. Other appeals for clemency have been made by the Vatican, including one for a group of Cuban officers convicted of drug trafficking.
Meanwhile, Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, told the ANSA news agency that while Italy respects Iranian sovereignty and isn’t in any way interfering, “a gesture of clemency from Iran is the only thing that can save her.”
Italy has strong economic ties, primarily energy interests, in Iran.