Bill
11-13-2008, 08:03 PM
"Iran's political and military leaders are sounding suddenly wary of President-elect Barack Obama.
"People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous," Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency. ".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR2008111203075.html?wpisrc=newsletter
"The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack," Taeb said.
For Iran's leaders, the only state of affairs worse than poor relations with the United States may be improved relations. The Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the country came to power after ousting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat, in their 1979 Islamic revolution. Opposition to the United States, long vilified as the "great Satan" here in Friday sermons, remains one of the main pillars of Iranian politics.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent Obama a congratulatory letter last week, but by Wednesday his welcoming tone had dissipated. "It doesn't make any difference for us who comes and who goes," he said in a speech in the northern town of Sari. "It's their actions which are studied by the Iranian and world nations."
On Wednesday, Iran test-fired a two-stage, solid-fuel rocket, Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar announced on state television. He said the missile had a range of 1,200 miles -- meaning that it could reach Israel and U.S. targets in the Middle East.
"People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous," Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency. ".
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/12/AR2008111203075.html?wpisrc=newsletter
"The power holders in the new American government are trying to regain their lost influence with a tactical change in their foreign diplomacy. They are shifting from a hard conflict to a soft attack," Taeb said.
For Iran's leaders, the only state of affairs worse than poor relations with the United States may be improved relations. The Shiite Muslim clerics who rule the country came to power after ousting Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat, in their 1979 Islamic revolution. Opposition to the United States, long vilified as the "great Satan" here in Friday sermons, remains one of the main pillars of Iranian politics.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent Obama a congratulatory letter last week, but by Wednesday his welcoming tone had dissipated. "It doesn't make any difference for us who comes and who goes," he said in a speech in the northern town of Sari. "It's their actions which are studied by the Iranian and world nations."
On Wednesday, Iran test-fired a two-stage, solid-fuel rocket, Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammed Najjar announced on state television. He said the missile had a range of 1,200 miles -- meaning that it could reach Israel and U.S. targets in the Middle East.