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Iran's Guards: We'll 'Punch' US

By NASSER KARIMI
The Associated Press
Saturday, August 18, 2007; 5:41 AM

TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said they would not bow to pressure and threatened to "punch" the U.S., in their first response to Washington's plan to list them as a terrorist organization, newspapers reported Saturday.

Local press in the Iranian capital of Tehran quoted Revolutionary Guards leader Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi saying that he could understand Washington's ire toward the group because of their "leverage" against the U.S.

"America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future," he was quoted as saying in the conservative daily Kayhan. "We will never remain silent in the face of U.S. pressure and we will use our leverage against them."

There was no elaboration on what Safavi meant by the punch or the organization's "leverage."

Washington has accused the Guards of supporting militias and insurgent groups attacking U.S. forces in Iraq _ charges Iran denies.

The fact that the remarks, made on Thursday in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, appeared in local newspapers rather than the official state news outlets suggest the comments are for domestic consumption.

Meanwhile, other Iranian officials continued to speak out against Washington's move to register the group as a terrorist organization, with a government spokesman calling the claims "baseless," on the Web site of the state broadcasting company.

"The claims of the U.S. are baseless and have no takers around the world," he said Saturday, noting that "the U.S. has endangered the world many times under the excuse of fighting against terrorism."

On Tuesday, an unnamed official in the Bush administration said the U.S. planned to list the Guards as terrorist group in order to squeeze Iran.

The move was seen as an effort to pressure businesses the corps is thought to control, from construction to oil sectors. It would be the first time the U.S. would put a foreign government's military agency on the list, which includes the al-Qaida network and the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

Iranian armed forces spokesman Gen. Ali Reza Afshar hit out precisely against this attempt to declare a state body terrorist in an editorial Saturday in the country's largest circulation newspaper, calling it illegal.

"America's long time hostility against the Guard is clear and understandable, but this move against organization that is part of Iran's armed forces is illegal," he wrote in the daily Hamshahri.

The estimated 200,000-strong Revolutionary Guards is an elite force separate from Iran's regular military and has its own ground, naval and air units.

Iran's Guards: We'll 'Punch' US (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/18/AR2007081800439.html)

Is that an admission of guilt, or what??

We need to quit playing games and show Iran and the rest of the world what the U.S. is capable of when we STOP tying our military's hands and allowing fear of civilian casualties hold us back. Please don't misunderstand me: I realize that war is quite terrible, and I realize that there are a great many innocent Iranians who will suffer and die when this war finally occurs. My heart goes out to them! But Iran's leadership is unfortunately forcing us into this position. As unfortunate as it is, I would rather see Iranian civilian collateral damage occur, then to see Jews or Americans dying of radioactive fallout as a result of our inactions.

You cannot win a war when you are more concerned about sparing civilians than you are of killing the enemy. War is brutal. War is ugly. War is deadly. Civilians die in wars. Millions died in World War II. Yet it was finally ended because our president understood that sometimes it is necessary to kill, in order to bring peace. This is an unfortunate product of human sin, but it is nevertheless our current reality and the rules which we live by.

We are being led down a path with no other route. It is time the goverment hits back. Let us do it hard, and fast, and in such a way that the world remembers why you do not "awaken a sleeping giant."