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Iran's president on Tuesday blamed the U.S. and other "big powers" for global ills such as nuclear proliferation and AIDS, and accused them of exploiting the U.N. for their own gain and the developing world's loss. But, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, time was on the poor countries' side.

US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday. The official claimed that a senior member of the president's entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during a closed meeting that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action was called for. However, the official continued, "the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice" was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on...

Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday that Israel would "be soon swept away" from the Palestinian Territories by the Palestinians. It is the second time within less than three years that the Iranian president predicted the eradication of the Jewish state. The first time was in 2005 when Ahmadinejad hoped that Israel would be eradicated from the Middle East map. "This terrorist and criminal state is backed by foreign powers, but this regime would soon be swept away by the Palestinians," Ahmadinejad said in a press conference in Tehran. Referring to worldwide celebrations for the 60th anniversary of...

A senior member of Iran's negotiating team with the United States on Iraqi security demanded a halt to US attacks in Iraq before any new round of talks with Washington, the Fars news agency reported on Saturday. "If US savage attacks against the Iraqi people are stopped, we will examine the US request for a fourth round of talks," the unnamed official said, quoted by Fars. Iran and the United States held three rounds of talks on Iraq last year despite mounting tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme. The talks have been stalled amid controversy over Iran's role in its conflict-torn...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared on Thursday that Iran was the world's "number one" power, as he launched a bitter new assault on domestic critics he accused of siding with the enemy. "Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. "Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place," he added in the address broadcast live on state television. Ahmadinejad's comments come amid renewed Western efforts on...

A top Iranian cleric made a rare criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's verbal attacks on Israel on Wednesday, saying a foreign policy of "coarse slogans" was not in the national interest. Hassan Rowhani, a former top nuclear negotiator who still holds several influential positions, said that Iran needed to show more flexibility and desire for dialogue in its dealings with the international community. "Does foreign policy mean expressing coarse slogans and grandstanding?" Rowhani asked in a speech to a foreign policy conference in Tehran. "This is not a foreign policy. We need to find an accommodating way to decrease the...

In yet another verbal attack against Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a "filthy bacteria" whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region. "The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast," the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran. "[Israel] won support [from the other nations] which created it as a scarecrow, so as to keep the people of this area under control," Ahmadinejad said. Referring to the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the West Wednesday to acknowledge Israel's "imminent collapse." Speaking to a crowd on a visit to the southern port of Bushehr, where Iran's first light-water nuclear power plant is being built by Russia, Ahmadinejad further incited his listeners to "stop supporting the Zionists, as [their] regime reached its final stage." "Accept that the life of Zionists will sooner or later come to an end," the Iranian president said in a televised speech. He added, "What we have right now is the last chapter [of Israeli atrocities] which the Palestinians and regional nations will confront...

Resistance by partisan ”shadow warriors” at the Department of State has limited the president’s options and is bringing us dangerously close to a military showdown with Iran, former Bush administration official John Bolton told Newsmax in an exclusive interview. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice initially had planned to provide significant aid to the pro-democracy movement in Iran, as a means of giving the president more policy options, Bolton said. But resistance by the State Department bureaucracy crippled the programs and rendered them ineffective. “[T]he outcome has been no overt program of support for democracy and no clandestine program to overthrow...

Diplomacy is doing nothing to stop the Iranian nuclear threat; a show of force is the only answer. WE MUST bomb Iran. It has been four years since that country's secret nuclear program was brought to light, and the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere. First, we agreed to our allies' requests that we offer Tehran a string of concessions, which it spurned. Then, Britain, France and Germany wanted to impose a batch of extremely weak sanctions. For instance, Iranians known to be involved in nuclear activities would have been barred from foreign travel — except for humanitarian...

COLUMBIA University Presi dent Lee Bollinger yester day made some cutting crit icisms while introducing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - but that doesn't make the school's decision to offer a platform to the head of a violent terrorist state any less abject, squalid or shameless. "Abject, squalid, shameless" is how Winston Churchill described the resolution passed by Oxford University's prestigious Debating Union in 1933 - the year Adolf Hitler came to power - that "this House will under no circumstances fight for King and Country." And Columbia's event, like the 1933 Oxford resolution, sent (to quote Churchill again) a "very...

Organized protests against the appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the U.N. began even before he arrived in New York City. A group of about 40 elected officials and civic leaders gathered Sunday outside Columbia University, where Ahmadinejad is scheduled to speak on Monday. Some carried placards with slogans such as "Don't give a platform to hate," and "Go to hell," while denouncing Ahmadinejad as a "Hitler wannabe" and a Holocaust denier. Said New York state Assemblyman Dov Hikind: "There is no excuse to invite this madman, this little Hitler. "This is immoral. This is outrageous. This is sick....

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The White House said Thursday it is taking seriously the allegations by former hostages that Iran's hardline president-elect, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was one of their captors at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran a quarter century ago. President Bush told foreign reporters he has "no information, but obviously his involvement raises many questions." "As soon as I saw the face, it rang a lot of bells to me," Don Sharer, who served as the embassy's naval attache at the time, told CNN. "...Take 20 years off of him. He was there. He was there in the background, more...

This is worse than disgusting. Iran's president is already causing a stir by coming to New York City and the United Nations. As if that wasn't bad enough, this Islamic fascist wants his personal tour of Ground Zero. Instead of a resounding "You've got to be kidding," New York's Mayor Bloomberg originally went along, considering the idea that Ahmadinejad be escorted down to ground zero ... assumingly to pay his "respects." After the outrage that erupted yesterday afternoon, it's safe to say that Bloomberg may be having 2nd, 3rd and 4th thoughts. Tax dollars are already paying for his NYPD...

In a move that has stunned New York, the Bloomberg administration is in discussions to escort the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to ground zero during his visit to New York next week, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said today. The Iranian mission to the U.N. made the request to the New York City Police Department and the Secret Service, who will jointly oversee security during the president's two-day visit. Mr. Ahmadinejad is scheduled to arrive September 24 to speak to the U.N. General Assembly as the Security Council decides whether to increase sanctions against Iran for its uranium enrichment program. Mr....

The day after the United States celebrated its Independence, two American soldiers were killed in south Baghdad by an explosive projectile provided to Iraqi insurgents by Iran; in June, NATO officials caught Iran shipping heavy arms and C4 explosives to the Taliban in Afghanistan; earlier this year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the annihilation of Israel. With these facts, there can be little doubt about Iran’s virulent intentions. However, as the evidence against the Islamic Republic mounts, so are the groups speaking out in its defense, and now those same people who so fervidly defended Saddam’s Iraq are once again...

Judging from the headlines, Vice President Dick Cheney did some serious saber-rattling against Iran during his swing through the region last week. On closer examination, it all came down to one short sentence in his speech to soldiers on the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis, stationed in the Persian Gulf. "We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region," Cheney said. In reality, the news was not so much that Cheney had said this, since presumably this has long been the policy not only of the US government, but of all US candidates...

Look behind the curtain of virtually every major problem in the Middle East, and you will find Iran: killings in Iraq; arms and money for Hezbollah's assaults on Israel and Hezbollah's attempts to usurp the elected government of Lebanon; support of Syria as the hotelier of the region's major terrorist groups; support and training of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and sleeper networks in countries beyond; promotion of a messianic revolutionary ideology that has deepened the Sunni-Shiite divide; the reckless seizure of 15 British sailors and marines as hostages; and defiance of the U.N. in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Only the...

Royal Navy Arrests On TV Updated: 17:25, Thursday March 29, 2007 New footage of 15 British marines and sailors being seized by Tehran's armed forces has been aired on Iranian TV. More to follow...

On the Tuesday edition of "Good Morning America," Diane Sawyer, on the last leg of her Dictator ‘07 tour, asked Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad her silliest questions yet. Sawyer mused about Iranian environmental problems and also wondered how often the Holocaust-denying leader cries. The ABC program featured several segments with the President of Iran. After a piece where she only lightly pressed Ahmadinejad on his calls for the destruction of Israel, the GMA anchor asked if Iran’s President, who is seeking a nuclear bomb, is "sentimental and sympathetic" This question allowed for America to see a softer side of the...

WELL done video! Zucker says in Comedy what everyone else is afraid to say!

Vast majority of Iranian lawmakers vote to move up presidential elections by 18 months, final say on matter up to Ahmadinejad's arch-rival. Will Ahmadinejad's term be cut short? The Iranian parliament voted on Sunday to unite the presidential elections with the upcoming parliamentary ones, this according to the official Iranian news agency. The proposal, which passed with a surprising 80 percent majority, may cut the term of sitting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by 18 months. The bill must still be ratified by the Iranian constitutional committee, which is headed by former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's arch-rival, a fact which many...

In what might be construed as a charm offensive–at least an effort to lay out a less confrontational tone before Americans–Ahmadinejad asked, "Can't we just be friends?" He added, "We are in favor of dialogue … but under fair conditions." The Iranian president called as well for more society-to-society exchanges, including by scientists

Tehran: Iran on Monday said the United States, Tehran's arch-foe and currently at loggerheads with the Islamic republic over its nuclear activities, was too weak to attack another country, the ISNA news agency reported. "Today the United States is in a very weak position and it is not in a condition to impose another war on the American taxpayers," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during a meeting with a visiting Syrian foreign ministry official.