Word: iranian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...armed to the teeth," said one senior U.S. official. "This is not like your average little militia." Indeed, one Israeli official said that, in recent months, Hamas has sent "dozens" of militants to Iran for advanced training in weapons that can destroy aircraft and tanks. Hamas insists that Iranian aid comes solely in the form of financing for the cash-strapped Palestinian government bureaucracy...
...hope we manage to get [the Iranians] to realize they have to release them. If not, then this will move into a different phase.' TONY BLAIR, British Prime Minister, on the seizure by Iran of 15 Royal Navy personnel whom the Iranian government claims were trespassing in Iranian waters...
...that the troops were captured by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). Soaked with nationalist ideology, the IRGC is controlled by hard-line cleric Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate font of religious and political power in Iran, and exists in many ways apart from the rest of the Iranian government. The Guards' activities are often a thorn in the side of Iran's Foreign Ministry, which is forced to repair the ruptures in Tehran's diplomatic relations. Nevertheless, the IRGC has been one of Iran's main instruments in projecting power and influence over the past few decades...
...then again you'd be missing the grim fatalism that has settled over Iran of late, the resigned belief that a war with the U.S. is all but inevitable. This week Iranian diplomats are telling interlocutors that, yes, they realize seizing the Brits could lead to a hot war. But, they point out, it wasn't Iran that started taking hostages - it was the U.S., when it arrested five members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Erbil in Northern Iraq on January 11. They are diplomats, the Iranians insist. They were in Erbil with the approval of the Kurds...
...Iranian grievances, real and perceived, don't stop there. Tehran is convinced the U.S. or one of its allies was behind the March 2006 separatist violence in Iranian Baluchistan, which ended up with 20 people killed, including an IRGC member executed. And the Iranians believe there is more to come, accusing the U.S. of training and arming Iranian Kurds and Azeris to go back home and cause problems. Needless to say the Iranians are not happy there are American soldiers on two of its borders, as well as two carriers and a dozen warships in the Gulf. You call this...