July 17, 2013 (TSR) – Iran president-elect Hassan Rouhani brushed off threats of military action against the Islamic republic by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying such warnings only made him “laugh”, media reported Wednesday.
“When some (the United States and Israel) say that all options are on the table and when a miserable regional country (Israel) says such things, it makes you laugh,” Rouhani said, according to Iranian media reports.
“Who are the Zionists to threaten us?” he said, insisting that warnings of an Iranian retaliation had stopped Israel from carrying out its threats to launch strikes on Iran.
Netanyahu on Sunday renewed his threat to take unilateral military action to halt Iran’s nuclear program, disparagingly referring to Rouhani as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” who would “smile and build a bomb”.
“We’re closer than the United States. We’re more vulnerable. And therefore, we’ll have to address this question of how to stop Iran, perhaps before the United States does,” Netanyahu said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “They’re edging up to the red line. They haven’t crossed it yet,” the Israeli premier said.
The US, Israel, and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.
Tehran has categorically rejected the accusation, arguing that as a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it is entitled to develop nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
