Khamenei: The Zionist regime will disappear from the map

Iranian officials ramp up rhetoric ahead of anti-Israel event, Al-Quds Day; Israeli gov't official: The fact that Iran makes such comments despite increased int'l pressure shows they really believe it.

By HERB KEINON, JOANNA PARASZCZUK

With the US sending clear public signals to Israel that it is opposed to military action now against Iran, and a cacophonous debate on the matter in Israel, senior Iranian officials continue to threaten Israel with destruction.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that he was confidant "the fake Zionist (regime) will disappear from the landscape of geography,” Iran's Mehr News Agency reported.

Khamenei made the comments during a meeting with veterans of the Iran-Iraq War.
"The light of hope will shine on the Palestinian issue, and this Islamic land will certainly be returned to the Palestinian nation," Khamenei was quoted as saying.

Earlier on Wednesday Brig.- Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran's Passive (civil) Defense Organization and a former commander of the Revolutionary Guards, during a speech ahead of Al-Quds Day, an anti-Israel event initiated by Iran, said that in order to liberate Palestine there was no other option but to destroy Israel.

"[Al-Quds Day] is a reflection of the fact that no other way exists apart from resolve and strength to completely eliminate the aggressive nature and to destroy Israel," Jalali said, according to a report by Iran's ISNA news agency.

The report was also picked up by other news outlets including Mashregh News, which is affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards.

Al-Quds Day is an annual Iranian anti-Zionist event established in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and which falls this year on August 17. Iran also seeks to export the event to other Muslim countries.

Jalali said that the message of Khomeini's Al-Quds  Day initiative was that the Muslim world must support the "oppressed people of Palestine" in a show of resistance against "the Zionist usurpers."

The Passive Defense Organization head added that the Islamic Revolution was a "beacon of light" and that the plight of the Palestinians was not forgotten.

Calling on Muslims to rally on Al-Quds Day, he expressed hope that the Islamic world would be "strong against the Zionist threat," adding that the "Islamic front in Syria has been strengthened," presumably a reference to Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

An Israeli government official responded to Jalali's comments by saying it was simply a "reaffirmation of what we continually hear from the Iranian leadership."

The official said that the statement was "not an aberration," and that Israel was taking the Iranian threat very seriously. "We urge others to do the same," he said. "The Iranians use unequivocal language, and their words speak for themselves."

The official said that it would be in the interest of Iran's leadership to rein in these comments in at this time to reduce international pressure, and the fact that Iran's leaders continue to utter such remarks just shows the degree to which they actually believe them.

The official, meanwhile, dismissed a report on a left-wing, anti-Netanyahu blog called Tikun Olam Wednesday purporting to have "an Israeli briefing document outlining Israel's war plans against Iran." The blogger, Richard Silverstein, said the document "feels" like it came "from the shop of national security advisor Yaakov Amidror, a former general, settler true believer and Bibi confidant.  It could also have been produced by Defense Minister Barak, another pro-war booster."

According to Silverstein the document talks about a coordinated strike that will include an "unprecedented cyber-attack" that will totally paralyze the Iranian regime, as well as a barrage of ballistic missiles launched from Israel and Israeli submarines near the Persian Gulf. IAF planes, according to the "document," will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown even to the US that will render the planes "invisible."

One government official said there is "a lot of press speculation out there, and everyone has their 'secret source.' It is not the government's policy to comment on any piece of speculation."

Iranian general: Our finger on war trigger

Enemies 'are all within range of the resistance fire'

By Reza Kahlili

With Western pressure growing on Bashar Assad over the latest massacres of defenseless women and children in Syria, Iranian officials again are warning the world against any action against the Middle East dictator.

The pro-Assad “resistance” has its finger on the trigger and the aggressors will not survive the conflict, a senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Massoud Jazaeri, told Mashregh, a media outlet run by the Guards. Iranian officials often refer to Iran, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon as the resistance front.

Mashregh reported in March that Iran’s armed forces had formed a joint war room that included officers from Syria, Iran and Hezbollah for a coordinated military response to an attack on Syria.

“A conflict in Syria will engulf the region and its main victims will be the people of Syria themselves,” Jazaeri warned the protesters. “The Zionist regime and the interests of the enemies of Syria are all within range of the resistance fire.”

Citing a conspiracy to weaken the resistance front and that foreign hands were involved in the events in Syria, Jazaeri said, “At the right time, people of the region will retaliate against these actions. The defeat of the enemy at this stage will be a big event and, God willing, we will witness that.”

There have been several reports alluding to the Revolutionary Guards’ involvement in the Syrian suppression. Recently the deputy commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, Cmdr. Esmail Ghani, said his forces have been playing a “physical and nonphysical” role in Syria.

The Guards last year called Syrian protesters “rabble-rousers” who are “puppets of Zionists and the United States” and that their chanting slogans against Iran and Hezbollah “will be their last stand.”

On Thursday, U.N. observers were fired upon as they tried to reach the site of the latest massacre of civilians, many of them women and children, who were shot or stabbed, the fourth such massacre in two weeks. More than 10,000 civilians have so far lost their lives in the brutal suppression ordered by Assad and abetted by Iran and Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, the head of Iran’s Basij militia made clear that Iran will not tolerate the fall of Assad.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naqdi, who has been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for human rights abuses in Iran, told Lebanese TV Al Manar, “After the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and the disruption to their defensive posture in protecting the Zionist regime, America in order to defend the regime of the occupier of the Quds (Jerusalem) is after a new scenario in Syria. … But they will be defeated.”

The Basij commander warned Israel against any attack on Iran or Syria, stating, “Today all the people of the region are ready for wiping out this cancerous tumor, and reaction to any aggression will be the freedom of Quds.”

Naghdi also said the West was wrong in believing that international sanctions against Iran will force the Islamic republic to accept demands that it yield on its clandestine nuclear program.

“Sanctions have had a lot of effect on Iran, but one positive one is the growth of science and internal production. … If the American president did not have his hands in the blood of nations of the world, specifically Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Palestine, and had not embraced torture, we would have given him a national medal for his service to the Iranian nation for imposing sanctions.”

Naghdi predicted that America will be forced to pack up and leave the region, taking with it all of its forces.

The mullahs ruling Iran, based on centuries-old hadiths, believe that an attack on Syria and Iran and an ensuing counterattack on Israel will trigger the coming of “Mahdi,” the Shiites’ 12th imam and the last Islamic messiah. Both those events are looking increasingly likely as Assad continues to murder his own people and Iran continues its quest for nuclear weapons.

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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and author of the award-winning book, “A Time to Betray.” He is a senior fellow with EMPact America and teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy. He also is a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.