Israeli historian Benny Morris wrote in Friday's NYT, treating an Israeli strike on Iran’s nascent nuclear program, whether sooner or later, as a foregone conclusion. It’s a sobering, or rather a disturbing, read, especially as it takes into account such an attack's disastrous consequences.

It gives one pause, almost, over Standpoint’s treating the faked photos of Iranian missile launch in a humorous vein, as we did HERE and HERE.

The government of Iran, for its part, is taking the threat of such Israeli action seriously, and has issued an array of their own threats in recent weeks.

What follows here is a small sample of the whole catalogue of threats compiled by Y. Mansharof is a MEMRI Research Fellow and A. Savyon of the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Iran Will "Chop Off the Hands of the Attackers before They Can Attack"

In a speech at the conference of the Eight Islamic Developing Countries (D-8) in Malaysia, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran would "chop off the hands of the attackers before they could attack." He added that Iran attached no importance to threats or pressures, that nobody would dare to attack Iran's "sacred soil" today, and that only U.S. President George Bush still harbored such plans. Ahmadinejad stated further that America's hegemony was collapsing, and that the world should prepare for "a future that is free of the bullying powers"


Ahmadinejad advisor Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi said in a July 5, 2008 interview with The Washington Post: "The forces of any government that attacks Iran will no longer have any security in our region or anywhere else. They will no longer be safe, wherever they are."

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stated that Iran's response to a U.S. and Israeli attack would be "devastating."
On another occasion, he said that there could be “no fate for the usurping Zionist regime other than annihilation, as happened to the apartheid regime of South Africa.”

Iranian Oil Minister: Oil Prices Will Rise to Unforeseeable Heights
Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid that if attacked, Iran would hike oil prices "to unforeseeable heights."

Mojtaba Zolnour, Ayatollah Khamenei's representative in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said: "If the U.S. or Israel fires one bullet against Iran, the Iranian Armed Forces will not hesitate to strike at the heart of Israel and at the 32 U.S. military bases in the region. [This will happen] before the dust [even] settles…"
 


Ali Shirazi, Khamenei's representative in the IRGC navy, said that if Iran were attacked, "Tel Aviv and the American warships in the Persian Gulf would be the first targets to go up in flames as part of Iran's crushing response." He added, "The Iranian nation is a nation… that believes in jihad and self-sacrifice, and against such a nation warships and weapons are to no avail… Today, Iran's military strength and capabilities have grown to such an extent that Iran cannot be disregarded in any regional or international balance of power."

Benny Morris's Op-Ed can be read HERE.