Reports from Iran

Here are a few reports from Iran:

Iran forces urged to prepare to hit Israel

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's hardline forces should get ready to take revenge on Israel and the United States for the offensive on Lebanon, the head of the Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying on Sunday.

"The Basij and Revolutionary Guards should prepare to get even with the Zionists and Americans," Yahya Rahim-Safavi was quoted as telling Islamic militiamen by the conservative Fars news agency.

The Basij are volunteer Islamic militiamen.

"The timing of the this will be announced by the leader," he added.

18 "spy" Israeli shot in the south Lebanon

The Islamic regime-run news agency ILNA’s reported: "18 Israeli spies, from the port city of SOOR, located in southern Lebanon were executed. The German News Agency reported that those executed by a firing squad were accused [by Hezbollah malitia] of espionage for Israel. According to the report in the German press, the foreign nationals who had were boarding ships organized for their evacuation from Lebanon, were present at the time of the executions. Dr. Boris Bok, a Munich physicians told the German media that he witnessed a number of the Lebanese resistance fighters [who opposed Hezbollah] be charged with aiding the Israelis in air strikes and were therefore brought to the firing squads. The German physician and other German nationals who were transferred from Lebanon to Cyprus clearly stated that they saw everything as it happened; the witnesses said that the people who were executed had also divulged location of the houses of the Hezbollah terrorists to the Israeli air force.”

Blair says Syria, Iran risk confrontation

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned Syria and Iran on Tuesday that they risked a confrontation if they continued to support terrorism and export instability to Iraq and elsewhere.

In a speech urging a rethink of the West's strategy to defeat extremism in the Middle East, Blair accused Iran and Syria of helping extreme factions in Iraq and backing militant groups in Lebanon and Palestine.

Blair said the international community should tell Syria and Iran that they should either play by the same rules as the rest of the world "or be confronted."

"Their support of terrorism, their deliberate export of instability, their desire to see wrecked the democratic prospect in Iraq, is utterly unjustifiable, dangerous and wrong.

"If they keep raising the stakes, they will find they have miscalculated," Blair said in a speech to the World Affairs Council, a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles.

Iran and Syria Beat the Drums of War

www.memri.org

August 2, 2006 No.1225

In the last few days senior Iranian and Syrian officials, including Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, have stepped up their statements on the war, with the Syrian regime's mouthpieces in the media following suit.

The following are excerpts:

Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander: We Must Keep the Hatred of America Burning in Our Hearts Until the Moment of Revenge Arrives

The Iranian conservative news agency Fars reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander Yahya Raheem Safavi gave a speech before forces from the Revolutionary Guards and the Basij [1] on July 30, 2006, in which he demanded that they be prepared to act against Israel and the United States.

There Would Be No Peace In the Middle East Without A Regime Change In Iran

Three weeks after attacking Lebanon massively with the aim of destroying Hezbollah and make the Lebanese people hate the leader of the Iran-backed organisation, Hasan Nasrallah, Israel has made him the Arabs and Muslim’s number one hero, replacing the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nezjad, increased Hezbollah’s public standing, reinforced its military machine, replenished its financial coffers in the one hand and on the other, helped Iran to become the region’s major actor instead of being isolated, another aim of the Tel Aviv’s latest adventure. By Safa Haeri

God's Army Has Plans to Run the Whole Middle East

[Wednesday, July 26, 2006] ‘You are the sun of Islam, shining on the universe!” This is how Muhammad Khatami, the mullah who was president of Iran until last year, described Hezbollah last week. It would be no exaggeration to describe Hezbollah — the Lebanese Shi’ite militia — as Tehran’s regional trump card. Each time Tehran has played it, it has won. As war rages between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, Tehran policymakers think that this time, too, they can win. By Amir Taheri

Lebanon: The Victimization of a Nation on the Path to Empire Building

Before, any further deliverance of the Israeli attacks on Lebanon are addressed it must be noted that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the United States as the world's soul superpower—now a 'hyperpower,' that seems to be on the decline—the United States intended to create unipolar world under a New World Order, but these objectives have all but disintegrated as multi-polar has emerged with contending centres of power and an interlinked world has been fermented through the forces and agents of globalization. The world is once again shrouded in a cold war, but this time a cold war shrouded in silence and concealment. One can only ask why? In asking this question the best possible answer is that if this Second Cold War became a matter of public knowledge, the United States would be the primary cause and antecedent of both blame and fault, thus the issue is concealed in the West, until sufficient blame can be laid on another state such as the Russian Federation, the Peoples' Republic of China, and Iran.

Iran: Preparing For A Defining Election

WASHINGTON, August 1, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Buoyed by success in municipal, legislative, and presidential elections in recent years, fundamentalists associated with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad have now set their sights on the Assembly of Experts, the popularly elected body of 86 clerics that supervises and selects Iran's supreme leader.

The fundamentalists want Ahmadinejad's spiritual guide, Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, to head the assembly. Their support has put him in competition with Ayatollah Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, the assembly's deputy speaker, who lost the presidency to Ahmadinejad in a runoff vote in 2005. Mesbah-Yazdi's supporters shouted down Hashemi-Rafsanjani when he tried to give a speech in Qom on June 4.

A commentary in a conservative weekly connected to Mesbah-Yazdi, "Parto-i Sokhan" on May 10, also took shots at Hashemi-Rafsanjani when it interpreted regulations on eligibility for the Assembly of Experts. The weekly said that critics of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's stance on the 1979-81 hostage crisis or on the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War are ineligible. So, too, it said, are those who caused delays in the acquisition of peaceful nuclear technology or who advocated backing down in the diplomatic process.

Technorati:
Israel,
Palestinians,
Middle East,
Middle East Rules,
Lebanese Rules, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hizbollah, Hizbullah, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Bush, America, United States, USA