A senior Iranian presidential advisor has warned the US against introducing a new threat to the world by attacking a sovereign state.

“The forces of any government that would attack Iran will no longer have any security in our region or anywhere else,” special advisor to Iran's president, Mojtaba Samareh Hashemi said in an interview with the Washington Post.

The harsh rhetoric of Washington against Tehran has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George W. Bush leaves office.

Bush and the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen on Wednesday reaffirmed that the use of military force against Iran, either directly by the US or following air strikes by Israel, remained an option.

Samareh Hashemi maintained that although Iran's main policy is the rule of 'coexistence, brotherhood, friendship, and peace' in case of any attack the country will respond with 'a decisive answer'.

He advised Washington against introducing Iran as a threat in order to justify its military presence in the Middle East.

“The Americans shouldn't try to introduce Iran as an artificial threat and to use it as a pretext to spread the use of their forces in the region or anywhere else in the world or make it a pretext for putting long-range ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe,” he said.

The Bush administration has been struggling to persuade European countries and Russia that a missile shield plan for Central Europe is directly aimed at 'unfriendly' countries such as Iran, but Russia has been reluctant to buy into that explanation and has persisted in its opposition to the stationing of the system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

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