Were Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran would respond so strongly that it would put the Jewish state into "an eternal coma" like Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's, the Iranian defense minister said yesterday.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has said his country would not accept Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons under any circumstances. He stopped short of threatening a military strike against Iran, but he said Israel was preparing for the possible failure of diplomatic negotiations with Iran.

A newscaster on Iranian state television read out a response from Iran's minister of defense, Gen. Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, yesterday.

"Zionists should know that if they do anything evil against Iran, the response of Iran's armed forces will be so firm that it will send them into eternal coma, like Sharon," Najjar said.

Meanwhile, a senior German security official proposed yesterday temporarily pulling the passports of neo-Nazis intending to participate in an Iranian conference on the Holocaust.

Guenther Beckstein, the interior minister of Bavaria, suggested that local authorities temporarily revoke the passports of right-wing extremists known to have expressed interest in participating in the conference in an effort to prevent them from traveling.

"It would massively damage Germany's image if German citizens (took part) in Iran to deny the Holocaust or the right of Israel to exist," said Beckstein, a member of the conservative Christian Social Union, sister party to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the conference earlier this month, the latest step in his campaign against Israel.

Iran: Israel seeks to divert attention from its nuclear weapons
Iran-Israel, Politics, 1/30/2006

Commending on the Israel's claim that Iran will soon attain nuclear weapons, "Israel has announced since the 80s that Iran is close to acquiring nuclear weapons and such claims are mostly raised to divert public opinion from Israel's mobilization of 200 nuclear warheads," Iran's ambassador to Serbia, Morteza Mirheydari told Serbian national TV.

IRNA reported Mirheydari saying that the possibility of the referral of Iran's nuclear dossier to the UN Security Council is very weak, but if such a move is taken, Iran will, based on a recent Majlis approval, stop cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). He said "We are for negotiations and dialogue and the door for talks is still open although the US and European Union have rejected it."