US officials who have assessed the likely Iranian responses to any attack by Israel on its nuclear program believe that Iran would retaliate by launching missiles on Israel and terrorist-style attacks on United States civilian and military personnel overseas.
While a missile retaliation against Israel would be virtually certain, according to these assessments, Iran would also be likely to try to calibrate its response against American targets so as not to give the US a rationale for taking military action that could permanently cripple Tehran’s nuclear program. “Iranians have been pretty good masters of escalation control,” said Gen James E Cartwright, now retired, who as the top officer at Strategic Command and as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff participated in war games involving both deterrence and retaliation on potential adversaries.
The Iranian targets would include petroleum infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, and American troops in Afghanistan, where Iran has been accused of shipping explosives to local insurgent forces.
US officials believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb.
To produce n-bomb is a great sin: Iran
Geneva: Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament in Geneva on Tuesday that he expected talks to continue. “I would like to re-emphasise that we do not see glory, pride or power in nuclear weapons, quite the opposite based on the religious decree issued by our supreme leader, the production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful and prohibited as a great sin,” he said. Reuters