America Unilaterally Increases Stiff Sanctions on Rogue Iran

Secretary of State Condi Rice and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made joint statements announcing sanctions on Iran and explaining the reasoning for the sanctions.

The sanctions in a nutshell are tagged into Iran’s insistence of creating weapons grade uranium which is a quality way beyond needed for peaceful nuclear energy.

A few subdivision reasonings surrounded Iran’s constant threatening of Israel and America for interfering with the Iranian nuke program, the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force actively supplying arms and training to terrorists from the Taliban, Shi’ites in Iraq, Hamas of pseudo-Palestinians and Hezbollah.

It is now illegal for business to be conducted with Iran wherever there is American jurisdiction and whatever Iranian assets under Iranian jurisdiction will be frozen.

The official government stand is that this is not a prelude to war with Iran; however Presidential statements, Vice Presidential statements and now State/Treasury statements are a chain of aggressive wording that has all the appearances of daring Iran to cross the line in the sand (if they already have not done so).

I can’t wait to hear the official Iranian response to today’s turning of the screws of pressure on Iran to comply with American led International wishes.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards: We Will 'Punch' U.S.

General Yāhoo Yahya Rahim Safavi is the leader of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Yahya’s response to Bush moving forward to placing the Revolutionary Guards on America’s Terrorist List is that the RG will “punch” America for doing so.

JRH 8/19/07

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Iran's Revolutionary Guards: We Will 'Punch' U.S.

Associated Press

Fox News

Saturday, August 18, 2007

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 Qaeda 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.

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Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2007 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to be Added to America’s Terrorist List

The publicity of Iran’s nuclear ambitions seem to fade in the American press as the November 2008 elections creep slowly nearer; yet the repercussions of a nuclear armed Iran is increasingly growing as a global threat. The global threat is NOT because America is in Iraq attempting to create a stable government. Nay good friends, the global threat is because Iran’s government is under a leadership that looks for global chaos due to the religious expectations of Radical Shi’ites belief that the Twelfth (Lost) Imam will be the Mahdi. These radical Shi’ites expect this Mahdi to make the Earth Mohammedan in its entirety.

All the politics of a U.S. occupation of Iraq is the propaganda that these Shi’ite Twelvers revel in with this Mahdi expectation. (The Wahhabi Sunnis have their own reasons of American hatred that are similar yet very different.)

This radical Shi’ite mindset is why it is so globally dangerous for Iran to become a nation in possession of nuclear weapons. There would be no geo-political restraint of the old Cold War Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) theory preventing nuclear powers from engaging in a nuclear war. Iran would push the warhead launch buttons merely to enable chaos in a deluded realization of the Mahdi.

International diplomacy crawls at a snails pace. The Ayatollahs of Iran are using the political management of Twelver disciple President Ahmadinejad to surge Iran into the possession of nuke WMD’s. Ahmadinejad has taken full advantage of Western style diplomacy to move their program along without interruption. The West talks while Iran walks toward the WMD dream.

Iran has successfully tied up America in Iraq and (to a lesser degree) in Afghanistan by being a weapons supplier and terrorist trainer. The vehicle Iran has utilized for tying the American military (essentially killing our military boys clandestinely) is the Revolutionary Guard. The Revolutionary Guard is essentially Iran’s extra-military force outside its regular Military that is at the trusted bidding of the Ayatollahs. The Revolutionary Guard has its origins in the lack of trust in a U.S. trained Iranian Military under the rule of deposed Shah, an extremely loyal ally of America dumped for his repression of Iranians by screw-up President Carter. Thus Iran exchanged the repression of the Shah for the repression of the Khomeini Revolution. The exchange of repression for repression did not help the plight of Iranians and this is why Carter is a screw-up, especially in the realm of Middle Eastern diplomacy.

U.N. Sanctions have been highly ineffective in slowing down Iran’s nuclear process because Russia and China’s support of Iran. Russia’s distaste for America probably arises from jealously from taken down a notch by America’s overwhelming the former Communist Soviet Union. China’s support of Iran is due to a National Interest connection due to the obvious – oil.

The EU has attempted talks with Iran but that is part of the stall agenda of Ahmadinejad, in other words a failure.

America has ratcheted its own sanctions to a much higher degree than the U.N. on Iran yet having little effect on Iran’s nuclear expansion. President Bush has upped the ante on sanctions by preparing to place the Revolutionary Guard on America’s Terrorist list. This will make it tougher for American Corporations or foreign Corporations that come under the jurisdiction of American law to deal with Iran. It will allow Iranian assets related to the Revolutionary Guards to be frozen as well.

Do I think this will slow down Iran’s nuclear program? Nope. However I do think it will annoy Iran that they may make a move that may expose publicly what Western governments already know clandestinely; viz. that Iran is way more dangerous to global peace than the official Appeasement line of the West is willing to admit to their constituent public or the Left dominated deluded pro-Arab and pro-oil-Iran loving media are willing to admit.