الرئيسية
Iran says could target Turkey missile shield
By Reuters
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran could target installations in Turkey
that are part of a planned NATO missile shield in any future conflict, a
senior military official said on Saturday, upping the rhetoric against
its neighbor with whom relations have soured in recent months.
"We
are ready to attack NATO's missile shield in Turkey if we face a threat
and then we will follow other aims," the semi-official Mehr news agency
quoted Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace
division, as saying.
Tehran has made clear its displeasure at
Turkey's agreement in September to deploy a NATO missile early warning
system which it sees as a U.S. ploy to protect Israel from any
counter-attack should the Jewish state target Iran's nuclear facilities.
Once
warm relations between Iran and Turkey have been strained this year due
to the missile shield and Ankara's outspoken criticism of Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad's violent crackdown on popular unrest.
Turkey
and Iran, the Middle East's two major non-Arab Muslim states, are vying
for influence in the post-Arab Spring region and Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's military adviser accused Turkish Prime Minister
Tayyip Erdogan of setting its foreign policy to please Washington.
Major-General
Yahya Rahim-Safavi said earlier this week that any attack from Israel
would trigger a response from Tehran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon and
Hamas in Gaza.
"The Zionists know well that if they start a war
they will be targeted strongly from South Lebanon, from Hamas and also
from Iran," he told state broadcaster IRIB.