Posted on 10/27/2007 8:22:03 PM PDT by blam
Iran steps up preparations for US war
Tim Shipman in Washington and Kay Biouki in Teheran
Last Updated: 1:03am GMT 28/10/2007
Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is stepping up preparations for possible war with America by replacing a string of moderate regime officials with hardliners who more closely share his views.
After months in which his government has played down the risk of war over Iran's nuclear programme, officials have also begun making bellicose pronouncements in an apparent attempt to ready public opinion for a military clash.
President Ahmadinejad (right) welcomes new Revolutionary Guards leader Mohammad Ali Jafari
Last week's resignation of Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, and his replacement by Saeed Jalili, an Ahmadinejad ally who is a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, was merely the most visible of a series of discreet personnal changes, diplomats have revealed.
In recent weeks Mr Ahmadinejad has fired ministers responsible for oil and heavy industry, and forced out the governor of Iran's central bank for refusing to back his policies. Last week he also quietly brought in hardliners to the justice and foreign ministries. "We don't need people with specialities, we need people who are devoted," he said.
But the lack of worldly experience among his appointees has unnerved US officials.
The new nuclear negotiator speaks little English and had not travelled to the West before Mr Ahmadinejad was elected president, according to Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Western diplomats have also been alarmed by the appointment of General Mohammad Ali Jafari, who took part in the storming of the US Embassy in Teheran in 1979, as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, one of the most powerful institutions in Iran. A Pentagon adviser compared him to the US general in charge of forces in Iraq. "He is the Iranian Petraeus. He has studied counter-insurgency warfare."
Saeed Jalili: Closer to President Ahmadinejad
CIA and Pentagon analysts are fearful that Gen Jafari's views are reflected among the other senior appointments made by Mr Ahmadinejad. He has declared his wish to identify "martyrdom-seeking individuals in society" and warned: "Each of our suicide volunteers equals a nuclear bomb."
Last week, Gen Jafari announced changes in the structure of the Revolutionary Guards and the feared Basij paramilitary forces, to make them better able to "defend the revolution against any kind of threat, whether domestic or foreign".
At the same time a Revolutionary Guards general, Mahmoud Chahar Baghi, threatened to "fire 11,000 missiles at US targets in the region in the first few minutes of the conflict", and it was announced that Iran has signed a deal with China to purchase 24 J-10 fighter jets by 2010, which have the range to hit Israel.
Michael Rubin, who was an adviser on Iran to the former US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said: "I don't think they fully understand the West.
They have become overconfident about their strength and underestimate the US."
Mr Rumsfeld's successor, Robert Gates, confirmed that "routine" planning was under way to give President George Bush options for striking at Iran. At the same time the president sought $88 million of congressional funding to modify B2 stealth bombers to carry a 30,000lb bunker-buster bomb, capable of damaging Iran's underground nuclear facilities.
Iranian police has also shut and sealed several Teheran bookshops which also provide coffee and snacks to readers, telling one owner: "All the corruption in the country comes out of these cafés."
Ahmed … move all the camels into the barn now!
I’m pretty sure we are going to stick with diplomacy like we have the past 28 years.
Sadly, you are probably right.
First, there is no Iranian Petraeus, never has been, never will be!
Secondly, if you fight a counter insurgency war against the US Air Force and Navy, your gonna loose.
The only reason for Iran to have a country-insurgency General is to fight their own people that rise up against the regime of the Mullahs.
Most of these steps seem to be tightening the screws on Iranian's dissatisfied with the regime....Bush's plan of destabilization may be producing results.
Bunker buster developed in Golden, Colorado
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