Israel's threats bolster Iran's stance: Guards

Israel's threats of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme only serve to boost the defiance of the Islamic republic, the head of the Revolutionary Guards said on Friday. "The enemies want to stop us continuing our path... but these threats only reinforce our determination to continue in the same direction," General Mohammad Ali Jafari said in a speech to thousands of members of the country's Basij militia, according to the Guards' Sepahnews website. "That is why, when the Zionists make military threats, they are put in their place by the United States" he said. Jafari's comments came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday told the UN General Assembly that "a clear red line on Iran's nuclear weapons program" needed to be set. He has said his country is contemplating air strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. "If a military attack is launched against our nuclear installations, we promise that the enemies will not escape alive," the head of Iran's air and ballistic missile units, General Farzad Esmaili, was quoted as saying on Friday by the ISNA news agency. Last weekend, Jafari announced that an Israel-Iran war "will eventually happen" and that his country was prepared. But on Wednesday, he stepped back from those remarks, saying that Israel's threats "lead nowhere and will not result in an armed conflict," according to Sepahnews.