Iran has offered North Korea oil and natural gas as payment for help in developing nuclear missiles, German weekly magazine Der Spiegel reported on Saturday, citing unidentified Western intelligence sources.

A senior Iranian official traveled to the North Korean capital Pyongyang during the second week of October to make the offer, the magazine quoted the sources as saying. It was unclear what North Korea's response was, it added.

Diplomats and intelligence sources say Iran is pushing ahead with plans to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure to stop developing sensitive nuclear technology to calm fears it is seeking nuclear weapons.

Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful.

Iran's Shahab-3 missiles are based on North Korea's Nodong rockets and Pyongyang is Tehran's most important partner in developing missile technology

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran.

A senior White House source said the threat of a nuclear Iran was moving to the top of the international agenda and the issue now was: “What next?” That question would have to be answered in the next few months, he said.

Defence sources in Israel believe the end of March to be the “point of no return” after which Iran will have the technical expertise to enrich uranium in sufficient quantities to build a nuclear warhead in two to four years.

From FoxNews: Iranian President Again Questions Holocaust.

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reiterated his doubt about the Holocaust and called on Muslim nations to take a proactive stand on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, state media reported Tuesday.

The president's comments, published on Iranian state television's Web site, were the second time in a week he has expressed doubt about the Nazi genocide of Jews during World War II. In October, Ahmadinejad also said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

"If the killing of Jews in Europe is true," the Web site quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a speech at an Islamic conference in Tehran, "and the Zionists are being supported because of this excuse, why should the Palestinian nation pay the price?" ...

Ahmadinejad has been unapologetic about taking Iran on a more openly defiant course, insisting on Iran's right to develop its nuclear program and often using rhetoric reminiscent of the 1980s heyday of the Islamic Revolution.

But he has alienated even some conservative allies in Iran, who fear he is hurting the country's image. Moderate Iranians have called on the ruling Islamic establishment to rein in the president.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has ultimate say on all matters, has backed Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's elimination.

So let's see: We have a Holocaust denier who wants to relocate an entire nation to another continent, and he happens to be head of the world's newest nuclear state. (They're not 100 percent fully-fledged operational, but happily for them they can drag out the pseudo-negotiations with the European Union until they are. And Washington certainly won't do anything, because after all if we're not 100 percent certain they've got WMD -- which we won't be until there's a big smoking crater live on CNN one afternoon -- it would be just another Bushitlerburton lie to get us into another war for oil, right?)

So how does the United States react? Well, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the comments of Ahmadinejad "further underscore our concerns about the regime."

Really? But wait, the world's superpower wasn't done yet. The State Department moved to a two-adjective alert and described Ahmadinejad's remarks as "appalling" and "reprehensible." "They certainly don't inspire hope among any of us in the international community that the government of Iran is prepared to engage as a responsible member of that community," said spokesman Adam Ereli.

You don't say. ...

What does it mean when one party can talk repeatedly about the liquidation of an entire nation and the other party responds that this further "underscores our concerns," as if he'd been listening to an EU trade representative propose increasing some tariff by half a percent?

Well, it emboldens the bully. ...

We assume, as Neville Chamberlain, Lord Halifax and other civilized men did 70 years ago, that these chaps may be a little excitable, but come on, old boy, they can't possibly mean it, can they? Wrong. They mean it but they can't quite do it yet. Like Hitler, when they can do it, they will -- or at the very least the weedy diplo-speak tells them they can force the world into big concessions on the fear that they can.

Iran is secretly trying to obtain technology and expertise needed to build a nuclear weapon, according to a leaked intelligence report that threatens to deepen a rift with the West over its nuclear programme...

The report concludes that scientists in Tehran are shopping for parts for a new ballistic missile with "import requests and acquisitions ... registered almost daily", the Guardian said.

And die quickly:

The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that there will be no dialogue with Europe because it is a waste of time. This point was underlined by the Iranian leader during his first appearance in front of the committee of foreign affairs and national security of the mullah-run majlis.

"The president, defined the attempts by the governments of the past 16 years to bring to the table a dialogue with Europe and to try and reduce tensions, as a waste of time which has so far not produced any tangible results for our country."

Playing a dangerous game with very little skill, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is doing is level best to insure that he will be the final President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. At this rate, between now and mid-March, it would be unsurprising if air and special forces from at least one nation and possibility more will likely launch a series of debilitating strikes from which the current radical Islamic regime in Iran will not be allowed to emerge.

I also suspect MoveOn.Org will start a "No Blood for Persian Carpets" campaign.

Iran said Sunday that inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency would remove seals from some nuclear facilities by Monday, opening the way for the Iranians to resume research on fuel production.

The plan to resume research, which Iran first announced last week, has heightened concerns in the West that the Iranians are moving toward building atomic weapons.

"Iran is ready to resume the research activities after the inspectors remove the seals," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi. He also reiterated Iran's contention that it has the right to conduct nuclear research under the nonproliferation agreement. Inspectors from the agency arrived in Tehran on Saturday to remove seals they had affixed to the research sites after Iran voluntarily agreed to stop all enrichment-related activities more than two years ago.

Iran’s decision yesterday to resume what it dubs “nuclear research” is garnering stern criticism in unexpected quarters.

Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says he’s “running out of patience” with Tehran. French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy urges the mullahs to “immediately and unconditionally reverse the decision.” His German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, warns that matters cannot continue this way “without consequences,” citing Iran’s actions as a violation of the November 2004 Paris Accord in which Tehran agreed to suspend its nuclear programs.

It’s almost enough to think the Europeans and their friends finally mean to get serious with Iran. Almost, but not quite.

Thus, even as Iran announced plans to break the IAEA seals on the centrifuges of its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, Austrian Chancellor (and temporary president of the European Union) Wolfgang Schüssel warned that it would be premature to discuss sanctions. Javier Solana, the EU foreign policy chief, added that “every effort must be made to convince the Iranians to return to the previous situation, to negotiations.” Mr. Solana’s idea of getting tough with the Iranians is apparently to beg them to show up for lunch.

The Iranians have seen this European two-step before.

It is remarkable how quickly discussions about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons turn to Israel.

But there is a problem with this tidy scenario. The Iranians have learned from Iraq's mistake — they've thought of little else — and have hardened and dispersed their nuclear facilities all over the vast territory of Iran. The sites are buried deep and well disguised.

In other words, from the world's point of view, there is no easy fix. "Let the Israelis do it" won't work.

For more than two years, the Europeans, with America's blessing, have been exhorting the Iranians to forego nuclear weapons. Shocking though it may seem, this has not worked. Last week, Iran announced that the country is removing the seals from its Natanz plant — a direct violation of an agreement with Britain, France and Germany.

The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran was made even more terrifying with the ascent last June of the Holocaust-denying, religious vision-seeing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president. Ahmadinejad reportedly believes in the imminent return of the righteous descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, the 12th Imam, whose appearance on Earth will be presaged by war and chaos. A previous Iranian leader mused that only one nuclear bomb would be sufficient to completely obliterate Israel and the largest Jewish population on Earth. A return salvo by Israel could destroy only a fraction of the world's Muslims. Would this madness be within the realm of the conceivable to Ahmadinejad? Even apart from his hysterical rantings about Israel ("a disgraceful blot" that "should be wiped off the face of the Earth"), consider what he said to his own countrymen when a plane crashed into a Tehran building killing 108. "What is important is that they have showed the way to martyrdom which we must follow."

Ahmadinejad and the sick mullahs who run Iran may be crazy, but they're not fools. They know that between fighting al Qaeda and building a durable democracy in Iraq, we're hardly in a mood to deal with Iran at the moment. But we cannot avoid it. The current state of play suggests that Iran will be referred to the U.N. Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency. But sanctions against Iran will probably be vetoed by Russia or China.

That leaves us with no painless options. If we, together with a coalition of the willing, impose the only sanction that will truly pinch — an embargo on Iranian oil — oil prices will rise, probably by a lot. But that cost will have to be weighed against the cost of military action, which would be far higher.

In the meantime, as the far-sighted JWR columnist Michael Ledeen has argued for years, we ought to be supporting the democratic opposition within Iraq for all we're worth. The vicious Iranian regime sits atop a population that detests it. Revolution would be redemption — for all of us.

"I would sleep happier if there were no Iranian bomb," writes former Times of London editor Simon Jenkins. "But a swamp of hypocrisy separates me from overly protesting it." Iran, he adds, "is a proud country that sits between nuclear Pakistan and India to its east, a nuclear Russia to its north and a nuclear Israel to its West. . . . How can we say such a country has 'no right' to nuclear defense?" In other words, what's the big deal?

Well, the deal is the combination of the world's most destructive weapons in the hands of clerical radicals who might use them. And even short of using them, Tehran's rulers could use the leverage of the bomb to dominate the Middle East and limit America's ability to defend itself and fight terrorism.

The most immediate threat in the region would be to Israel, an ally that only this week President Bush said we would defend against Iran. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has publicly mused that the Jewish state should be "wiped off the map," and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has said that "the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground whereas it will only damage the world of Islam." Why should we assume they don't mean this?

All the more so because Iran's current leaders seem possessed of an apocalyptic Islamist vision that wouldn't mind an episode of pan-global martyrdom. "We must prepare ourselves to rule the world and the only way to do that is to put forth views on the basis of the Expectation of the Return" of the Mahdi (Shiite Messiah), says Mr. Ahmadinejad.

The Iranian President is sometimes dismissed as a figurehead, especially on nuclear questions, but he wouldn't have his job without the consent of the ruling clerical council for whom he also serves as a mouthpiece. His fanaticism suggests a mindset that isn't vulnerable to the normal calculations of deterrence that governed during the Cold War. The complacent tell us not to worry because no state would dare use a nuke because that would only guarantee its own destruction. But what if you're a cleric who likes that trade-off?

A bomb would also give Iran far more leverage to press its influence abroad since it will believe it is immune to retaliation. In Lebanon, the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah sits on Israel's northern border with 7,000 medium-range missiles, deterred only by Israel's conventional arms superiority. But the military balance changes once Hezbollah's patron becomes invulnerable.

A nuclear Iran could also wield a predominating influence in OPEC. It could disrupt maritime traffic in the Persian Gulf and force the U.S. Navy out of its narrow, shallow waters. It could menace Europe, and eventually the U.S. homeland, as its ballistic missile capabilities develop. It could arm Palestinian terrorists with sophisticated weapons, turning Gaza into a risk not just for Israel but the entire Mediterranean basin.

It would be in a position to extend its influence into the Caspian region and neighboring Afghanistan. It could meddle in the affairs of traditional rivals such as Saudi Arabia (which, like Iraq, has a sizeable Shiite population in its eastern provinces); the Saudis--as well as the Egyptians and the Turks--might respond by seeking nuclear weapons of their own.

It's also important to consider the effect that a nuclear Iran would have on the potential for a democratic Iran. Its nuclear project is often portrayed as a matter of national prestige, the implication being that any strike against it would rally the regime's domestic opponents to its side. What Iranian dissidents tell us is closer to the opposite. A nuclear Iran would enhance the mullahs' sense of invulnerability and facilitate domestic repression.

Former US Vice President Al Gore stated Iran’s regime presents threat to the whole world, AFP reports. “Iran is governed by corrupted politicians and religious leaders and presents a threat to the whole world’s future”, said Al Gore during Economic Forum in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

According to him corrupted Iranian government together with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israeli views are “a signal for the threat Tehran may pose”.

Iran may just been caught red-handed shipping high-tech IEDs into Iraq:

U.S. military and intelligence officials tell ABC News that they have caught shipments of deadly new bombs at the Iran-Iraq border.

They are a very nasty piece of business, capable of penetrating U.S. troops' strongest armor.

What the United States says links them to Iran are tell-tale manufacturing signatures — certain types of machine-shop welds and material indicating they are built by the same bomb factory.

"The signature is the same because they are exactly the same in production," says explosives expert Kevin Berry. "So it's the same make and model."

U.S. officials say roadside bomb attacks against American forces in Iraq have become much more deadly as more and more of the Iran-designed and Iran-produced bombs have been smuggled in from the country since last October.

"I think the evidence is strong that the Iranian government is making these IEDs, and the Iranian government is sending them across the border and they are killing U.S. troops once they get there," says Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief and an ABC News consultant. "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that, in all probability, the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops."

I am not an expert on international law, but I think it likely that, when a nation chooses to participate in warfare against another nation, that participation is nothing less conscious and calculated than a formal declaration of war.

If these munitions can be tied to the Iranian government—and the article seems to strongly suggest just that—then we have the clear legal and moral justification to disrupt Iran’s nuke program, if not its entire government.

For the second day in a row, ABC News targets Iran with another bombshell allegation:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday rejected suggestions Iraq is engulfed in a civil war but predicted there would be additional "bursts" of sectarian violence in the weeks ahead.

Rumsfeld also claimed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard elements had infiltrated Iraq to cause trouble.

"They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," he said. "And we know it. And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment."

He would not be more specific except to say the infiltrators were members of the Al Quds Division of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

We know that Iran is supplying Iraqi terrorists with sophisticated SCMs (shaped charge munitions) that can defeat the armor of even our heaviest tanks. It is this kind of charge that was responsible for the deaths of 14 Marines in their Iraqi interpreter last August near Haditha.

Now we have the Secretary of Defense stating that members of the elite al Quds division—the same unit that deployed elements to Afghanistan to assist the Taliban and roughly analogous to the Green Berets in usage if not quality—are actively fighting coalition forces in Iraq.

It is quite probable that this has not been a proxy war for some time, but instead a low-level special operations war.

One has to wonder how and when the Iranian "error in judgement" will be corrected.

On the day that Iran stated it would not halt uranium enrichment, the U.S. military made what some are interpreting as a thinly-veilled threat:

The US military plans to detonate a 700 tonne explosive charge in a test called "Divine Strake" that will send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas, a senior defense official said.

"I don't want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you'll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," said James Tegnelia, head of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Tegnelia said the test was part of a US effort to develop weapons capable of destroying deeply buried bunkers housing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

"We have several very large penetrators we're developing," he told defense reporters.

"We also have -- are you ready for this - a 700-tonne explosively formed charge that we're going to be putting in a tunnel in Nevada," he said.

U.S. Central Command has been preparing for the prospect of an American-led war against Iran.

Officials stressed that Centcom has not received orders to strike Iran's nuclear facilities. But they said the command, which covers an area of 27 countries from North Africa to Central Asia, was preparing to respond quickly to any contingency in the region.

"I remain persuaded that we would be able to do anything that our nation asks us to do," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, director of strategic policy and planning at Centcom, said. "And any nation that somehow miscalculates in that regard is making a tremendous mistake."

Kimmitt told Arab journalists in a briefing in London that the United States remains committed to resolving the crisis with Iran through diplomacy. But he said Centcom was studying a range of scenarios, including the prospect of an Iranian-sponsored Islamic insurgency campaign in wake of a U.S. military confrontation with Teheran.

The president of Iran again lashed out at Israel and said yesterday that it was "heading toward annihilation," just days after Tehran raised fears about its nuclear activities by saying it had successfully enriched uranium for the first time.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians.

"The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

Ahmadinejad provoked a world outcry in October when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map."

Iran has discovered new deposits of uranium and is continuing its nuclear enrichment program despite international protests, a top nuclear official said Tuesday.

The deputy chief for nuclear research and technology, Mohammad Ghannadi, said at least three new uranium deposits were found, and the government was working toward mining them.

He said the deposits were found in the Khoshoomi region, Charchooleh and Narigan.

Iran already has substantial uranium resources, principally at the Saghand mine in the center of the country.

Ghannadi said Iran's enrichment of uranium was continuing. Last week, the country flouted a U.N. deadline to cease enrichment, saying it would never give up the program. Enriched uranium is used a fuel for nuclear power generators or in nuclear warheads.

Iran's parliament threatened the nation's withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if the United Nations pressures Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.

The UN security council, meanwhile, remains at odds on a resolution over Iran's nuclear program.

In a letter to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Iranian lawmakers said they would force the government to withdraw from the treaty if "the U.N. Secretary General and other members of the Security Council fail in their crucial responsibility to resolve differences peacefully."

Under Article 10 of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty a nation can pull out of the treaty if it decides that an "extraordinary" event has jeopardized the interests of the nation. North Korea withdrew from the treaty in 2003 on that basis.

The Security Council has been considering a resolution that demands Iran stop uranium enrichment. However, permanent members Russia and China disagree with the United States, Britain and France over how strong the resolution should be.

The draft resolution, put together by Britain and France and the U.S., would oblige Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment activities under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. A resolution under Chapter 7 would be binding under international law and would permit sanctions and even war.

China and Russia, which both have veto power in the Security Council, have argued there is no evidence that Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons.

The foreign ministers of the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany -- are meeting in New York Monday.

The U.S. ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, said he believed the resolution would be voted on next week, with or without support from Russia and China.

Bolton dismissed Iran's threat of withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty, saying it would not deter Western nations trying to push through the resolution.

"This is a typical Iranian threat. It shows they remain desperate to conceal that their nuclear program is in fact a weapons program," he said. "I'm confident that these statements from Iran will not deter the sponsors of the draft resolution from proceeding in the Security Council."

Six world powers searched for common ground Wednesday on rewarding Iran if it gives up uranium enrichment, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Tehran to “lift the cloud of uncertainty” about its nuclear program.

Among the issues at a meeting in London grouping the five U.N. Security Council nations and Germany was a compromise proposal for possible sanctions against Iran should it refuse to halt uranium enrichment, diplomats said.

The compromise — which would drop the automatic threat of military action if Iran remains defiant — is part of a proposed basket of incentives meant to entice Iran to give up the activity, a possible pathway to nuclear arms. It also spells out the penalties if it does not. It is meant to get support both from Russia and China, which fiercely oppose any suggestion of force in pressuring Iran.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said talks with the United States would have "no benefit" for Iran, so there's no need to hold them.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said officials don't consider the supreme leader's comments to be an official response. The United States and its allies in Europe are waiting for Iran's top nuclear negotiator to talk to the European Union's foreign policy chief, Snow said.

The West is offering Iran a package of incentives to give up its nuclear activities. But Khamenei — who has final say on all state matters in Iran — believes any negotiations would only pressure his country.

The U.N. Security Council passed a weakened resolution yesterday, giving Iran until Aug. 31 to suspend uranium enrichment or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

Iran immediately rejected the resolution, saying it would only complicate negotiations over an incentive package offered in June.

Because of Russian and Chinese demands, the text was watered down from drafts that would have made the threat of sanctions immediate. It now essentially requires the council to hold more discussions before weighing sanctions.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has frustrated Western officials by refusing to reply to their offer of various incentives in exchange for Iran’s discarding its nuclear program until August 22. The Western governments had asked Ahmadinejad to reply by June 29; why would Tehran need two extra months?

Farid Ghadry, the president of the Reform Party of Syria, has offered a provocative explanation for this delay.

He asserts that the Supreme National Security Council of Iran chose the August 22 date “for a very precise reason. August 21, 2006 (Rajab 27, 1427) is known in the Islamic calendar as the Night of the Sira’a and Miira’aj, the night Prophet Mohammed (saas) ascended to heaven from the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on a Bourak (Half animal, half man), while a great light lit-up the night sky, and visited Heaven and Hell also Beit al-Saada and Beit al-Shaqaa (House of Happiness and House of Misery) and then descended back to Mecca.…”

....according to Ghadry, Ahmadinejad is planning an illumination of the night sky over Jerusalem to rival the one that greeted the Prophet of Islam on his journey. What the Iranian President, he says, is “promising the world by August 22 is the light in the sky over the Aqsa Mosque that took place the night before. That is his answer to the package of incentives the international community offered Iran on June 6.”

Certainly a nuclear attack on Jerusalem or even an all-out conventional assault against Israel by Iran would be consistent with Ahmadinejad’s oft-repeated denials of Israel’s right to exist and recent predictions that its demise was at hand. He hinted at the use of nuclear weapons in his phrasing when he said that Israel “pushed the button of its own destruction” by finally retaliating against Hizballah’s relentless rocket barrage from south Lebanon.

“Arrogant powers,” Ahmadinejad said, “have set up a base for themselves to threaten and plunder nations in the region. But today, the occupier regime” – that is, Israel – “whose philosophy is based on threats, massacre and invasion, has reached its finishing line.”

Will he attempt to make good on these threats this year on the anniversary of the Miraj, illuminating the night sky over Jerusalem? Will Western powers heed Farid Ghadry’s words and move to stop Iran before it is too late?

Iran’s nuke-kook leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took the podium at the United Nations last night — and delivered a mad rant against the United States, blaming it for the world’s ills and claiming Israel should not exist. He spoke hours after President Bush addressed the world body, urging the people of Islamic nations not to be deceived by anti-U.S. propaganda.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday called Israel's leaders a "group of terrorists" and threatened any country that supports the Jewish state.

"You imposed a group of terrorists ... on the region," Ahmadinejad said, addressing the U.S. and its allies. "It is in your own interest to distance yourself from these criminals... This is an ultimatum. Don't complain tomorrow."

"Nations will take revenge," he told a crowd of thousands gathered at a pro-Palestinian rally in the capital Tehran.

Ahmadinejad said Israel no longer had any reason to exist and would soon disappear.

"This regime, thanks to God, has lost the reason for its existence," he said.

"Efforts to stabilize this fake (Israeli) regime, by the grace of God, have completely failed... You should believe that this regime is disappearing," he said.

What Ahmadinejad's thinly-veiled threat failed to mention is that his apocalyptic Hojjatieh sect quite likely has the intention of "helping" Israel out of existence once Iran has both nuclear warheads and the ability to deliver them.

The implicit threats of this particular exchange, which CNN provides coverage of in greater depth, are directed at Europe:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned Europe that it may pay a heavy price for its support of Israel.

"You should believe that this regime (Israel) cannot last and has no more benefit to you. What benefit have you got in supporting this regime, except the hatred of the nations?" he said in nationally broadcast speech Friday.

"We have advised the Europeans that the Americans are far away, but you are the neighbors of the nations in this region," he said.

"We inform you that the nations are like an ocean that is welling up, and if a storm begins, the dimensions will not stay limited to Palestine, and you may get hurt."

I wonder how much longer the pint-sized Holocaust denier will continue to issue threats against the world community without any measurable response from those countries he has threatened to put in the crosshairs.

Time and again, Ahmadinejad says Iran only wants to continue its nuclear program for peaceful means, only to quickly reissue threats that most understand to be links to implied of attacks by MIRV-equipped ICBMs.

I won't be shocked to find that the world will only recognize the threat that Ahmadinejad's Hojjatieh sect brings to hundreds of thousand if not millions of lives as they attempt to bring forth the Hidden Imam. I suspect it will only be after Iran's missiles are launched, and by then it will be far too late.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Friday called U.S. President George W. Bush's defeat in congressional elections a victory for Iran.

Bush has accused Iran of trying to make a nuclear bomb, being a state sponsor of terrorism and stoking sectarian conflict in Iraq, all charges Tehran denies.

"This issue (the elections) is not a purely domestic issue for America, but it is the defeat of Bush's hawkish policies in the world," Khamenei said in remarks reported by Iran's student news agency ISNA on Friday.

"Since Washington's hostile and hawkish policies have always been against the Iranian nation, this defeat is actually an obvious victory for the Iranian nation."

The leader of al Qaida in Iraq made new threats today.
A recorded message said to be from Abu Ayyab al-Masri claimed his group has 12,000 fighters in Iraq.
He dared President Bush to keep U.S. troops in the country.

He said: "We call on the lame duck not to hurry his escape, as the Defense Secretary [Rumsfeld] did.
For we haven't enough of your blood yet."

The message applauded U.S. voters for the election results.
It said: "They voted for something reasonable."

Yahoo News

United Press International

Russia has begun delivery of Tor-M1 air-defense missile systems to Iran, a Defense Ministry official said yesterday, confirming that Moscow plans to proceed with arms deals with the outlaw nation despite Western criticism.

The official, who insisted on anonymity, declined to specify when the deliveries were made and how many. Ministry officials have said Moscow would supply 29 of the missile systems to Iran under a $700 million contract signed last December.

The United States last spring called on all nations to cease all nuclear cooperation with Iran, thought to be seeking to enrich uranium in a bid for nuclear weapons.

The U.N. Security Council, where Russia wields a veto, is stalemated as to the severity of Iran sanctions.

U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.

This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market.

Iranian-made munitions found in Iraq include advanced IEDs designed to pierce armor and anti-tank weapons. U.S. intelligence believes the weapons have been supplied to Iraq's growing Shia militias from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is also believed to be training Iraqi militia fighters in Iran.

Evidence is mounting, too, that the most powerful militia in Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, is receiving training support from the Iranian-backed terrorists of Hezbollah.

Two senior U.S. defense officials confirmed to ABC News earlier reports that fighters from the Mahdi army have traveled to Lebanon to receive training from Hezbollah.

A federal judge in Washington yesterday blamed the Iranian government for the deaths of 19 members of the U.S. Air Force in a 1996 terrorist bombing in Saudi Arabia, allowing the victims' families to seek more than $260 million in compensation from the Islamic regime in Tehran.

The American military is holding at least four Iranians in Iraq, including men the Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in a pair of raids late last week aimed at people suspected of conducting attacks on Iraqi security forces.

Gordon D. Johndroe, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said two Iranian diplomats were among those initially detained in the raids. The two had papers showing that they were accredited to work in Iraq, and he said they were turned over to the Iraqi authorities and released. He confirmed that a group of other Iranians, including the military officials, remained in custody while an investigation continued, and he said, "We continue to work with the government of Iraq on the status of the detainees."

It was unclear what kind of evidence American officials possessed that the Iranians were planning attacks, and the officials would not identify those being held. One official said that "a lot of material" was seized in the raid, but would not say if it included arms or documents that pointed to planning for attacks. Much of the material was still being examined, the official said.

Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot Friday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers.

"The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the National Press Club.

Iran plans three days of military maneuvers, including short-range missile tests, beginning Sunday — its first since the U.N. Security Council imposed sanctions against it in late December, state-run television said.

Sunday's maneuvers are to be the first by Iran since the U.N. Security Council imposed limited sanctions on the country on Dec. 23, banning selling materials and technology that could be used in Iran's nuclear and missile programs and freezing assets abroad of 10 Iranian companies and individuals.

The United States will present evidence of Iranian agents' hostile activities in Iraq soon

A number of Iranian officials have been detained in U.S. raids in the past month, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that the accusations against them would be made public soon.

Washington accuses Iran of helping arm, train and fund Iraqi militants.

The U.S. ambassador said yesterday that one of the Iranians detained by U.S. forces in Iraq during two raids over the past month was the director of operations for Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds faction, the organization responsible for funding and arming Iraqi terrorists.

At least eight Iranians have been detained in Iraq recently, including two diplomats in a Dec. 21 roundup of a group of 10 suspects. The diplomats were interrogated and released to Iranian officials eight days later.

Six others were captured Jan. 11 at an Iranian liaison office in the northern city of Irbil. One was released and five are still believed in U.S. custody.

Iran, cranking up a war of nerves with the West, has demanded the removal of the official running U.N. nuclear inspections, diplomats said on Friday.

Tehran’s move, following a ban on 38 inspectors from four major Western nations announced on Monday, appeared aimed at testing Western resolve over its disputed nuclear activity while stopping short of violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty

Israeli security service, Mossad, may have killed prize-winning physicist who worked at plant where uranium gas is produced

A Pentagon panel has been created to plan a potential bombing attack in Iran - and some troops have already entered the country, chasing Iranian operatives, according to a report in The New Yorker

The panel initially focused on destroying Iran's nuclear facilities and on regime change.

It has more recently been directed to identify Iranian targets that may be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq, according to an Air Force adviser and a Pentagon consultant

U.S. and Europe call for tougher measures than Russia and China are willing to accept in meeting at Britain's U.N. Mission

Iran's top leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Wednesday that the country will pursue nuclear activities outside international regulations if the U.N. Security Council insists it stop uranium enrichment.

"Until today, what we have done has been in accordance with international regulations," Khamenei said. "But if they take illegal actions, we too can take illegal actions and will do so."

Iran's top leader also issued a stark warning to the United States, saying Iran will "use all its capacities to strike" its enemies if his country is attacked.

The top five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council have drawn up new sanctions meant to punish Iran for rejecting U.N. demands it halt the controversial enrichment — a key process that can produce fuel for a reactor or the material for a nuclear warhead.

Naval forces of Iran's hardline Revolutionary Guards captured 15 British sailors and marines at gunpoint Friday in the Persian Gulf — an audacious move coming during heightened tensions between the West and Iran.

U.S. and British officials said a boarding party from the frigate HMS Cornwall was seized about 10:30 a.m. during a routine inspection of a merchant ship inside Iraqi territorial waters near the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway.

Iran's Foreign Ministry insisted the Britons were operating in Iranian waters and would be held "for further investigation," Iranian state television said.

Britain's Defense Ministry said the Royal Navy personnel were "engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters" and had completed a ship inspection when they were accosted by Iranian vessels.

The eight Royal Navy sailors and seven Royal Marines were part of a task force that protects Iraqi oil terminals and maintains security in Iraqi waters under authority of the U.N. Security Council.

About 200 students threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy on Sunday, calling for the expulsion of the country's ambassador because of the standoff over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines.

Several dozen policemen prevented the protesters from entering the embassy compound, although a few briefly scaled a fence outside the compound's walls before being pushed back, according to an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

The protesters chanted ''Death to Britain'' and ''Death to America'' as they hurled stones into the courtyard of the embassy. They also demanded that the Iranian government expel the British ambassador and close down the embassy, calling it a ''den of spies.''

Britain's Foreign Office said there had been no damage to the compound.

A British Foreign Office spokeswoman in London, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with government rules, said diplomats were working normally inside the embassy.

''There is a police presence outside and there is no risk to those inside,'' said the spokeswoman.

Iran has begun producing nuclear fuel in its underground uranium-enrichment plant, according to a confidential document from the U.N. atomic watchdog.

The document, obtained yesterday by news services, said Tehran had started up 1,312 centrifuge machines, divided into eight cascades, or networks, in the Natanz complex, in an accelerating campaign to lay a basis for "industrial scale" enrichment.

Both moves flew in the face of U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government stop enriching uranium over fears that its professed civilian nuclear-power program is a cover for mastering the means to build atomic bombs.

Tehran says it seeks only nuclear-generated electricity. But its past concealment of sensitive enrichment research from the International Atomic Energy Agency and continued stonewalling of IAEA inquiries have shaken confidence in its intentions.

A former engineer at the nation's largest nuclear power plant has been charged with taking computer access codes and software to Iran and using it to download details of plant control rooms and reactors, authorities said.

Mohammad Alavi, who worked at the triple-reactor Palo Verde power plant west of Phoenix, was arrested April 9 at Los Angeles International Airport when he arrived on a flight from Iran, authorities said.

Alavi, 49, is a U.S. citizen and denies any wrongdoing, said his attorney, Milagros Cisneros of the Federal Defender's Office in Phoenix.

According to court records, the software is used only for training plant employees, but allowed users access to details on the Palo Verde control rooms and the plant layout. In October, authorities alleged, the software was used to download training materials from Tehran, using a Palo Verde user identification.

Iran's nuclear work is nearing a "peak," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday, while the U.N. atomic watchdog chief said Tehran was probably at least three years from making atom bombs if it chose to do so.

Ahmadinejad dismissed Western pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear drive.

"With God's help, the path to completely enjoying all nuclear capacity is near its end, and we are close to the peak," he told a rally in the central Iranian town of Isfahan.

• Threats and economic sanctions will not stop Iran's technological progress, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned Saturday at a large parade featuring fighter jets and radar-avoiding missiles designed to show off the country's military might.
  
  The military parade outside the capital Tehran marked the 27th anniversary of the Iraqi invasion of Iran that sparked the bloody 1980-88 war. Iran used the parade to display its latest weapons, including radar-avoiding missiles, super-fast torpedoes, unmanned surveillance drones, battle tanks and other domestically produced weapons.
  
  Some of the trucks carrying Iranian missiles were painted at the back the popular slogans: "Down with the U.S." and "Down with Israel."
  
  The parade also featured flights by two of Iran's new domestically manufactured fighter jets, known as the Saegheh, which means lightening in Farsi.

• Hillary Rodham Clinton called Barack Obama naive when he said he'd meet with the leaders of Iran without precondition.
  
  But asked about it Thursday by a voter, the New York senator said twice that she, too, would negotiate with Iran "with no conditions."
  
  "I would engage in negotiations with Iran, with no conditions, because we don't really understand how Iran works. We think we do, from the outside, but I think that is misleading," she said at an apple orchard.
  
  Clinton on Thursday also characterized her recent vote to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization as a way to gain leverage for those negotiations.

• Iran's military used its feet this week to send a clear message to the United States and Israel.
  
  A colorful inspection exercise staged for Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and broadcast on Iranian TV featured precision drill teams massing into an American flag with a swastika and a Star of David, each "stabbed" by a formation of the Zulfiqar, the legendary scimitar of the Islamic leader Ali.
  
  Khamenei is shown in the broadcast inspecting the drill teams, which chant to him, "Khamenei, we are your soldiers. Khamenei, at your command," according to a translation provided by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
  
  One of the military formations spells out the words, "National Unity," MEMRI reported.
  
  The announcer then tells viewers, " The army of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the contemporary Zulfiqar — the sword of Ali."
  
  He goes on to say: "The faces of these warriors are radiant with love of the revolution. Together with such mythical heroes, once again we can chant epic poems about the aspirations, and relive the memory of those eight years of identity and bravery. We shout the glory of the name of Iran on the summit of fame and dignity. Our proud Iran is proud of you – its brave children."
  
  The exhibition comes as the chief of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards shrugged off harsh new U.S. sanctions that are the most sweeping since 1979, saying "the corps is ready to defend the ideals of the revolution more than ever before.

• Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year, the UN's nuclear watchdog reported last night.
  
  The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), will intensify US and European pressure for tighter sanctions and increase speculation of a potential military conflict.

• Iran Halted Nuclear Program in 2003

• ONGOING DEBATE
  
  In the view of some modern conservative authors, McCarthy's place in history should be re-evaluated. Ann Coulter's book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism is a notable example of this. Coulter, a controversial right-wing author, devotes a chapter to her defense of McCarthy, and much of the book to a defense of McCarthyism.
  
  She states, for example, "Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis."[77] Other authors who have voiced similar opinions include William Norman Grigg of the John Birch Society,[78] and M. Stanton Evans.[79] Another recent defense of McCarthy is William F. Buckley, Jr.'s sympathetic fictionalized biography, The Redhunter: a Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy.[80]
  
  These authors frequently cite new evidence, in the form of Venona decrypted Soviet messages, Soviet espionage data now opened to the West, and newly released transcripts of closed hearings before McCarthy's subcommittee, asserting that these have vindicated McCarthy, showing that many of his identifications of Communists were correct. It has also been said that Venona and the Soviet archives have revealed that the scale of Soviet espionage activity in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s was larger than many scholars suspected,[81][82] and that this too stands as a vindication of McCarthy.
  
  Some responses to these viewpoints have been written by Kevin Drum[83] and Johann Hari.[84] Historian John Earl Haynes has also argued against this 'rehabilitation' of McCarthy, saying that McCarthy's attempts to "make anticommunism a partisan weapon" actually "threatened [the post-War] anti-Communist consensus", thereby ultimately harming anti-Communist efforts more than helping.[85]

• Report estimates Tehran would suffer 16-20 million casualties if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel

• An exiled Iranian opposition group claimed Wednesday that Tehran was speeding up a program to develop nuclear weapons. "The Iran regime entered a new phase in its nuclear project," said Mohammad Mohaddessin of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran.
  
  The NCRI is the political wing of the People's Mujahedeen of Iran, which advocates the overthrow of government in Tehran. The Mujahedeen has been designated a terrorist group by the United States and the European Union as well as Iran.
  
  Mohaddessin claimed that Tehran has established a command and research center near a Tehran university. And, he said, Iran is developing a nuclear warhead for use on medium-range missiles at a site on the southeast edge of Tehran. Mohaddessin also claimed that the regime obtained aid from North Korea.
  
  It was not possible to independently verify the NCRI claims. Mohaddessin said his group got the information from "hundreds" of reports and sources from within the Iranian regime, whom he did not name. He said some of the sources are within the nuclear project itself.
  
  An official of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the agency was aware of the allegations. Mohaddessin said he had provided information to the IAEA on Tuesday.
  
  Iran has steadfastly denied it is working to obtain a nuclear bomb, arguing that its nuclear program is civilian.

• Iranian Exile Says Iran Speeding Up Nuclear Production[/quote]

• President-elect Barack Obama has promised major changes in U.S. diplomacy and repeatedly criticized the Bush administration on both substance and style. Mr. Obama has pledged more negotiation and multilateralism -- less saber-rattling and "take it or leave it" unilateralism. While Iraq was Mr. Obama's focal point in the campaign, the biggest problem ahead is countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
  
  But on proliferation, what is striking are the similarities between Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush's second term. Given Mr. Bush's recent record, continuity between the two presidencies is hardly reassuring. And where Mr. Obama differs with Mr. Bush, he is only more accommodating to the intractable rogues running Pyongyang and Tehran. This is decidedly bad news.

• Iran's supreme leader yesterday rebuffed President Obama's latest outreach for peace.
  
  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was responding to a video message Obama released Friday in which he reached out to Iran on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian new year, and expressed hopes for improved relations after 30 years of hostility.
  
  Khamenei holds the last word on major policy decisions, and how Iran ultimately responds to any US effort to engage the mullah-led regime will depend largely on his say.
  
  Khamenei, whose regime is racing to develop nukes and has threatened to destroy Israel, said there will be no change between the United States and Iran unless Obama puts an end to US hostility toward Iran and brings "real changes" in foreign policy.
  
  "They chant the slogan of change but no change is seen in practice. We haven't seen any change," Khamenei said in a speech before a crowd of tens of thousands in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.

• The United States said Monday its invitations were still standing for Iranian diplomats to attend July 4 celebrations at US embassies despite the crackdown on opposition supporters.
  
  President Barack Obama's administration said earlier this month it would invite Iran to US embassy barbecues for the national holiday for the first time since the two nations severed relations following the 1979 Islamic revolution.
  
  "There's no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.
  
  "We have made a strategic decision to engage on a number of fronts with Iran," Kelly said. "We tried many years of isolation, and we're pursuing a different path now."

• The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country's supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country's clerical establishment.
  
  A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult - if not impossible.
  
  "This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic," said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. "Remember, they are going against an election verified and sanctified by Khamenei."

• Members of Iran's feared Basij militia forcibly marry female virgin prisoners the night before scheduled executions, raping their new "wives" and making it religiously acceptable to execute them.
  
  In the Islamic Republic of Iran it is illegal to execute a woman if she is a virgin, the former guard told the newspaper. So the government arranges "wedding" ceremonies to be conducted the night before executions, and prisoners are forced to have sexual intercourse with a guard.
  
  Raped by her new "husband," a female prisoner is now fit to be put to death.