Russian warning

'Russia will not brook attack on Iran'

Russia has warned that it would consider any NATO military action against Iran a 'direct threat' to its national security.

Outgoing Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin

Press TV,

14 January, 2012

"Iran is our neighbor, and if Iran is involved in any military action, it's a direct threat to our security," Russia's outgoing ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told reporters in the Belgian capital Brussels on Friday. 

"We are definitely interested in the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. But at the same time, we believe that any country has the right to have what it needs to feel comfortable, including Iran." 

The comments come one day after the secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, Nikolai Patrushev, warned about the Israeli lobby's efforts to drag the United States into a military confrontation with Iran. 

"There is a likelihood of a military conflict escalation, to which the Americans are being pushed by Israel," Patrushev said in an interview with Interfax on Thursday. 

In addition, on Wednesday an Iranian scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was killed in a terrorist attack. In the incident, a motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a building of Allameh Tabatabaei University in Tehran. 

Ahmadi Roshan was the deputy director of marketing at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility. 

The terrorist attack took place shortly after Iran reached an agreement with the P5+1 group -- Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany -- to hold negotiations in Turkey. 

The US, Israel, and their allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program and have used this allegation as a pretext to convince the United Nations Security Council to impose four rounds of sanctions on Iran. 

They have also repeatedly threatened to launch a military strike against. 

In November 2011, some US presidential candidates said operations should be carried out against Iran, such as assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, sabotage of Tehran's nuclear program, and even a military strike on the country. 

The calls for assassinations are not idle threats as a number of Iranian scientists have been assassinated over the past few years. Professor Majid Shahriari and Professor Masoud Ali-Mohammadi were victims of these acts of terror. 

On November 29, 2010, Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi were targeted in terrorist attacks. Shahriari was killed immediately, but Abbasi, the current director of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, sustained injuries but survived. 

Iran says UN Resolution 1747, which was approved in March 2007, cited Abbasi's name and identified him as a "nuclear scientist," which helped the attackers target their victim. 

According to reports, Ahmadi Roshan had recently met International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors. Iran says the IAEA has leaked information about Iran's nuclear facilities and scientists.