Last update - 16:09 30/08/2008    
 
Top Iran general says attack on Tehran would ignite 'world war'  
 
By Haaretz Service and The Associated Press  
 
Tags: Iran, U.S., Israel  

A senior Iranian military commander has warned that a "world war" would erupt in the event the United States or Israel launch an offensive against his country, AFP quoted the state news agency IRNA as reporting on Saturday.

"Any aggression against Iran will start a world war," deputy chief of staff for defence publicity, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, said in a statement carried by IRNA.

The general also lashed out at "the unrestrained greed of the U.S. leadership and global Zionism," accusing Jerusalem and Washington of "gradually leading the world to the edge of a precipice."
 
"It is evident that if such a challenge occurs, the fake and artificial regimes will be eliminated before anything," AFP reported Jazayeri as saying, without naming any countries.

The Islamic Republic is facing growing Western pressure to cease its nuclear energy program, which it insists is for peaceful purposes. The West fears that Iran is enriching uranium so as to manufacture atomic weapons.

Iran has increased the number of operating centrifuges at its uranium enrichment plant to 4,000, a top official said, pushing ahead with the nuclear program despite threats of new UN sanctions.

The number was up from the 3,000 centrifuges that Iran announced in November that it was operating at its plant in the central city of Natanz. Still, it is well below the 6,000 it said last year that it would operate by this summer, suggesting the program may be behind schedule.

Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Reza Sheik Attar, who visited Natanz last week, said Iran was preparing to install even more centrifuges. He did not offer a time frame.

The UN has imposed three rounds of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to freeze its enrichment program, which can be used to produce fuel for a nuclear reactor or the material needed for a nuclear warhead.