• So Iran seeks only peaceful nuclear power? I have doubts now after reading this…http://apnews.myway.com//article/20051026/D8DFNIMO2.html

  • Moderator

    Not sure if this was the same article:

    From AP (on Yahoo):

    _Iran Leader calls for Destruction of Israel

    TEHRAN, Iran - Iran’s hard-line president called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” and said a new wave of Palestinian attacks will destroy the Jewish state, state-run media reported Wednesday.

    President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced attempts to recognize Israel or normalize relations with it.

    “There is no doubt that the new wave (of attacks) in Palestine will wipe off this stigma (Israel) from the face of the Islamic world,” Ahmadinejad told students Wednesday during a Tehran conference called “The World without Zionism.”

    “Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury, (while) any (Islamic leader) who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world,” Ahmadinejad said.

    Ahmadinejad also repeated the words of the founder of Iran’s Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who called for the destruction of Israel.

    “As the imam said, Israel must be wiped off the map,” said Ahmadinejad, who came to power in August and replaced Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who advocated international dialogue and tried to improve Iran’s relations with the West.

    Ahmadinejad referred to Israel’s recent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as a “trick,” saying Gaza was already a part of Palestinian lands and the pullout was designed to win acknowledgment of Israel by Islamic states.

    “The fighting in Palestine is a war between the (whole) Islamic nation and the world of arrogance,” Ahmadinejad said, using Tehran’s propaganda epithet for the United States and Israel. “Today, Palestinians are representing the Islamic nation against arrogance.”

    Iran does not recognize the existence of Israel and has often called for its destruction.

    Israel has been at the forefront of nations calling and end to Iran’s nuclear program, which the United States and many others in the West say is aimed at acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Iran says the program is for generating electricity.

    White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Ahmadinejad’s comment “reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran. It underscores the concerns we have about Iran’s nuclear intentions.”

    French Foreign Minister Jean-Baptiste Mattei condemned Ahmadinejad’s remarks “with the utmost firmness.”

    Harsh words for Israel are common in Iran, especially at this time of year, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. In Iran, this Friday — the last Muslim day of prayer in the Ramadan holiday — has been declared Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day. Rallies were slated in support of Palestinians — and against Israel’s occupation of parts of the city and other Palestinian lands.

    Other Iranian politicians also have issued anti-Israeli statements, in attempts to whip up support for Friday’s nationwide Quds Day demonstrations.

    But Ahmadinejad’s strident anti-Israeli statements on the eve of the demonstration were harsher than those issued during the term of the reformist Khatami and harkened back to Khomeini’s fiery speeches. Ahmadinejad was a longtime member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, which even operates a division dubbed the Quds Division, a rhetorical reference to Tehran’s hopes of one day ending Israel’s domination of Islam’s third-holiest city.

    After his election, Ahmadinejad received the support of the powerful hard-line Revolutionary Guards, who report directly to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

    Last year, a senior member of the guards attended a meeting that called for and accepted applications for suicide bombers to target U.S. troops and Israelis.

    Iran announced earlier this year that it had fully developed solid fuel technology for missiles, a major breakthrough that increases their accuracy.

    The Shahab-3, with a range of 810 miles to 1,200 miles, is capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East._

    I didn’t want to post the link because the yahoo links are too long and then I have to scroll too much to read the MB. I’m far too lazy to scroll.
    It’s front page on Yahoo, shouldn’t be hard to find.


  • Well,
    I guess he WAS democratically elected, so that’s one reason not to invade Iran . . . .


  • Your kidding right? Thier is no Democracy in Oligarchy sorry…


  • No question Iran is a dangerous nation. Are they correct that the Palestinians can/will destroy Israel - I doubt it! Will they nuke Israel once they develop this capability? Will Israel take preemptive action, as they did to Iraq in the 80’s?

    CC, I’m not sure their elections having taken place is a valid reason to not invade. But there are lots of more pragmatic reasons why we are not going to invade:

    1. We don’t have the military capability to do so (sorry Marine, but we clearly do not). Iran is 4X the size of Iraq, and to invade we would need to ramp up our forces on a scale not seen since at least Vietnam, if not WWII. Is anyone going to re-instate the military draft? :lol: Additionally, we are still stuck in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And finally, there does remain the possibility of WMD’s being used by Iran in its defense.

    2. Its not clear that this would really solve anything. The hatred of Israel (and also the West in general) in the Middle East is shared by other nations. Has our actions in Iraq helped or hurt? This is debateable, I refer everyone to previous threads, but uncertain. Not even Bush has the guts to take this kind of chance.

    3. This would greatly disrupt the world’s economy since Iran is a major oil producer. With supplies very tight and getting tighter, and not much currently coming out of Iraq we could find ourselves in an economic depression and without enough oil to operate in Iran.

    4. The effects on other nations would be unclear. Would there be a theocratic revolt in Saudi Arabia? What would nuclear and probably ICBM capable Pakistan do? Certainly the rest of the world would be appalled.

    For these reasons, the problems with Iran will continue to be dealt with by a diplomatic fashion for the forseeable future, IMO. Iraq was invaded and occupied by the US, not because they were the greatest threat, but because it was (just) possible for us to do so, the intellegence on Saddam was wrong and because Saddam was uncooperative with the UN weapons inspectors (again IMO).

    What I think will be interesting is how the shift in the power in Iraq from the Saddam based Sunnis to the Shite majority will affect Shite Iran in the long term. I think a sucessful moderate government, led by Shites in Iraq is the biggest threat to the current hardliners ruling in Iran, as the Iranians will ask why not us? After all, there is/was a strong movement in Iran to become more moderate. I don’t think the recent elections of the hardliners really show the true picture either, as elections can be “fixed” and changes do take time.

    Time will certainly tell…


  • @Imperious:

    Your kidding right? Thier is no Democracy in Oligarchy sorry…

    we’re both wrong . . .
    Theocratic Republic.

    and you’re forgiven.


  • Yep thats the word… anyway you cant call them a democracy. Unless you can incorporate religion out of every decision they make and say thats freedom, then they can have free elections.

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