“Any action against the Islamic republic will not go without a response and the aggressor would regret the action very quickly,” foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters.

A senior Israeli official has dismissed as “absurd” the report in The Sunday Times that the Jewish state had drawn up plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities in a tactical nuclear strike.

“This comes after the confession of the Israel prime minister who acknowledged that the Israeli regime posseses a nuclear weapon,”  Hosseini said, referring to Ehud Olmert’s apparent slip last year which broke a decades-long official silence on Israel’s nuclear programme.

“It will convince world public opinion that the main threat for the world and the region is the Zionist regime,” he added.