The head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, said on Wednesday that Israel is too vulnerable to his country's longer-range missiles to dare launch an attack.

"Our strategic assessment shows that if the Zionist regime took action, whether alone or with the United States, in minimal time all of its territory would be vulnerable because this country lacks strategic depth and lies within the range of Iranian missiles," the Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.

"Iran's ballistic capabilities are such that the Zionist regime, with all the means at its disposal, has no way of countering them," the senior officer added.

"In the event of an attack against against Iran, the Israelis know that with the capabilities that the Islamic world and the Shiite world have in the region, they will suffer deadly strikes," Jafari said. According to him, an attack against Iran could come only from the United States and warned that in that event "our riposte will be swift, tough and unimaginable".

© 2008 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)