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Post by Watchman on Feb 9, 2007 11:03:10 GMT -5
Iran will strike against US interests worldwide if it is attacked, the country's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned.
"The enemies know well that any aggression will lead to a reaction from all sides," he said.
Washington accuses Tehran of secretly trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and has not ruled out using military force.
The Iranians insist their nuclear programme is purely civilian and aimed at meeting their energy needs.
The BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says Ayatollah Khamenei was defiant about the prospect of a possible American military strike.
The supreme leader said he hoped nobody would risk attacking Iran because the nation would stand up for itself and only become stronger militarily and economically.
Iran also denounced remarks by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair that Tehran was determined to stir up maximum trouble in the Middle East.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini said Mr Blair's comments were "insolent" and "undiplomatic".
Mr Hosseini said Britain had played a key role in sabotaging talks on the nuclear issue in the past and had followed the US and Israel in imposing destructive wars on the Middle East.
War games
Another key Iranian figure, ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani, has also warned against a strike, saying it would carry a heavy cost for those who tried it.
The warnings came as Iran's navy and air force conducted war games. Iran said it had successfully test-fired a land-to-sea missile with a range of 350km (220 miles).
Tehran said it had also tested a new Russian-made air defence system.
Officials have refused to confirm whether the system has been deployed around nuclear sites.
At the weekend ambassadors from non-aligned countries were allowed to visit an Iranian nuclear facility, on what was billed as a transparency visit.
The UN's chief nuclear inspector is to report on Tehran's compliance with the UN Security Council's demands later this month.
In December the UN imposed limited sanctions on Iran for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.
© BBC MMVII
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Post by Watchman on Aug 21, 2007 14:49:55 GMT -5
Persian Gulf Will Become 'Hell' for Iran's Enemies, Iranian Official Says By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor August 20, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - The Persian Gulf will become "hell" for the enemies of Iran if they attack the Islamic republic, a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps official warned Sunday, stepping up Tehran's belligerent rhetoric over reports that Washington may add the IRGC to a terrorist list.
"Given the present power of the IRGC, in case enemies intend to invade the Islamic Republic borders in the Persian Gulf waters and start military confrontation, the Persian Gulf will become a hell for them," Ali Razmjou, regional commander of the IRGC's naval force, told the Fars News Agency.
"Using modern tools and equipment, none of the moves and threats made by the enemies is hidden to us in the Persian Gulf," he said, citing torpedo vessels and long-range missile launches.
Last week U.S. officials said the Bush administration was considering designating the IGRC as a terrorist group under an executive order designed to block the assets of terrorists and those who help them. Iran's Revolutionary Guard is a controversial force that operates alongside the regular Iranian military.
The U.S. military has accused the IRGC of supporting and arming insurgents fighting coalition forces in Iraq, and it says Iran has supplied deadly types of armor-penetrating roadside bombs that have cost numerous American lives.
Tehran has denied the charges, but on Sunday the commander of American forces in the region south of Baghdad, Major-General Rick Lynch, told reporters that about 50 IRGC members were believed to be "facilitating training of Shi'ite extremists" inside Iraq.
Lynch said the accuracy of bombs and mortars used by Shi'ite insurgents had increased, and that Iranian munitions were somehow "making their way into the hands of Sunni insurgents" as well.
Although American forces had not captured any weapons shipments crossing the border from Iran, he said, his troops had seized more than two hundred weapons bearing Iranian markings over recent months.
Tehran has reacted strongly to reports about the possible blacklisting of the IGRC. If the move goes ahead, it will be the first time the administration has used the post-9/11 executive order 13224 against a branch of a foreign government rather than a non-state group or individual.
On Sunday, speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Haddad Adel was the latest senior official to heap praise on the IGRC, calling it an effective defender of the Islamic revolution.
Earlier, the Iranian newspaper Kayhan quoted IRGC commander Yahya Rahim Safavi as warning that Iranian missiles could hit warships operating anywhere in the Persian Gulf and in the Oman Sea -- the body of water lying between the Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
Last March, an IRGC naval unit apprehended British sailors in the Persian Gulf, claiming they were in Iranian waters, and held 15 of them hostage for 13 days before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was releasing them as a "gift" to the British people.
Apart from its military focus, the IGRC has been playing an increasingly important economic role at a time Iran faces some U.N. sanctions over its nuclear program.
In a speech last June, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said "the IRGC is so deeply entrenched in Iran's economy and commercial enterprises, it is increasingly likely that if you are doing business with Iran, you are somehow doing business with the IRGC."
As the U.S. pushed for a third U.N. Security Council resolution targeting Iran -- earlier ones were passed in December 2006 and March 2007 -- it was increasingly focused on the role of the IRGC, Paulson said.
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Post by Watchman on Oct 3, 2007 11:42:11 GMT -5
Iran threatens to attack 170 US targets JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 1, 2007
Iran threatened Monday to attack some 170 American targets in the Middle East and around the world if it is attacked by Israel or the US, Israel Radio reported.
A high-ranking officer from the country's Revolutionary Guards told the force's official journal, The Guards, that Teheran succeeded, after extended and comprehensive work, to identify hundreds of strategic American targets in the Middle East and around the world.
The Revolutionary Guards' Ground Forces Command is able to easily kill American nationals staying in the Middle East. "Several years ago they [Americans] were far away from us by thousands of kilometers. Now they are so close we can touch them," the Iranian general said.
On Sunday former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Tory delegates in Britain that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.
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