Iran Disregards Israel Threat to Launch a ‘Stupid’ Attack

Iran on Tuesday said it is dismissing Israeli threats of an imminent attack, explaining that even some Israeli officials realized such a "stupid" act would provoke "very severe consequences."

"In our calculations, we aren't taking these claims very seriously because we see them as hollow and baseless," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters in a weekly briefing.

"Even if some officials in the illegitimate regime (Israel) want to carry out such a stupid action, there are those inside (the Israeli government) who won't allow it because they know they would suffer very severe consequences from such an act," he added.

Iran's defense minister, General Ahmad Vahidi, was quoted by the ISNA news agency saying that Israel "definitely doesn't have what it takes to endure Iran's might and will."

He called the Israeli threats "a sign of weakness" by "brainless leaders."

The comments were a response to bellicose rhetoric from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak in recent days stating that they were thinking more seriously of a military action against Iranian nuclear facilities.

The United States has recently multiplied visits by top officials to Israel in what appears to be an attempt to dissuade the Jewish state from targeting the Islamic republic.

"We continue to believe there is time and space for diplomacy," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday.

Israel insists that Iran is on the point of developing nuclear weapons, and says it reserves the right to act to prevent that.

The Jewish state has in the past launched air strikes to destroy nuclear facilities in Iraq and, reportedly, in Syria to protect its own nuclear weapons monopoly, whose existence it refuses to officially confirm.

Iran says its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful and civilian purposes.

In the past couple of years it has ramped up uranium enrichment to a level just a few steps short of military-grade fissile material, saying those stocks are needed to create medical isotopes. It has also refused U.N nuclear inspectors access to suspect military installations.

In the meantime, Iran is suffering from increasingly tough U.S and EU economic sanctions that have crippled its all-important oil exports.