Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Napoleon Bonaparte

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran’s response to Israeli Infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer’s warning that a Tehran attack on Israel would call forth a response that “will destroy Iran” is expected to be incorporated in president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech Tuesday on the occasion of Iranian Atom Day.

Israeli intelligence sources were highly critical of the remarks the minister made during a visit to the national defense exercise’s situation room Monday, April 7. They say he should have known better than to provide easy propaganda fodder for Tehran’s Atom Day celebrations. He handed Iranian leaders an opening for their claim that Israel’s defense exercise was part of the Jewish state’s plans for a nuclear attack on their country, thus diverting international opprobrium away from their own covert nuclear plans.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources add that Tehran promised the people “joyful tidings” for its Atom Day. The president was expected to unveil the start of industrial production of advanced P2 centrifuges for giving uranium enrichment production a major push.

But now, say Israeli intelligence sources, Ben-Eliezer has given him the excuse to announce bigger and better progress in Iran’s nuclear program. The military situation in the region is fraught enough, the sources said, and there was no need to add fuel to the fire.