A top Iranian military commander on Saturday told US President Barack Obama that Tehran also had all of its "options on the table," echoing a warning to the Islamic republic by the American leader.
"Mr Obama, do not make a mistake: we too have all our options on the table. Before you get deeper in the region's quagmire, go back home!" Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri was quoted as saying on sephanews.com, website of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
"Our commanders have been authorised to respond to any kind of hostile move by the enemy," he said, without elaborating. The Islamic republic's forces come under overall command of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Jazayeri was speaking two days after Obama in an interview with Israel's Channel 2 television said that Iran is "over a year or so" from getting a nuclear bomb, and warned that the military option remained on the table.
The United States, Israel and much of the West believe that Iran's nuclear programme of uranium enrichment is a cover for a weapons drive, a charge denied by Tehran.
Israel, the Middle East's sole if undeclared nuclear power, has refused to rule out the option of a pre-emptive military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said the question of Iran would be a top priority in his talks with Obama when the US president visits Jerusalem later this month.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards' commanders say they would view any Israeli attack as being carried out with US authorisation, and have warned that they would retaliate by hitting US military bases in Afghanistan, Qatar and Bahrain.
Albania offers to take in members of Iran opposition group
Tirana (AFP) March 17, 2013 –
The Albanian government said on Saturday the Balkan country was ready to take in 210 members of an Iranian opposition group who currently live at a former US military base in Iraq.
"The government is ready to accommodate in Albania, for humanitarian reasons, 210 members of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran", or the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), Prime Minister Sali Berisha said in a statement.
Albania will take in the Iranians, who live at Camp Liberty near Baghdad, following demands of both the US authorities and the United Nations, he said.
The UN envoy in Iraq Martin Kobler and US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf on Saturday held talks with the Albanian authorities over security measures and housing conditions for the opponents of the Tehran regime, which would be in line with international law.
A February mortar and rocket attack on Camp Liberty, housing about 3,000 members of the MEK, killed seven people, according to the group.
A spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a coalition including the MEK, welcomed the offer but said it was nothing new and not enough.
"This was agreed upon in November," said spokesman Shahin Gobadi.
Describing Camp Liberty as "a prison", he accused Kobler of "pursuing the political objective of the Iranian regime" and acting "against the safety and security of the (camp) residents".
Gobadi said the only viable options were the transfer of all the residents to the US or Europe or their return to the camp from which they were earlier moved, Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border, and resettlement from there.
The MEK was founded in the 1960s to oppose the shah and after the 1979 Islamic revolution that ousted him the group took up arms against Iran's clerical rulers.
It says it has now laid down its arms and is working to overthrow the Islamic regime in Tehran by peaceful means.
Britain struck the group off its terror list in June 2008, followed by the European Union in 2009 and the United States in September 2012.
