You are terrorists, no, you are terrorists

Iran MPs brand U.S. army, CIA "terrorists" 

Reuters

September 29, 2007

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian lawmakers branded the U.S.
armed forces and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as "terrorist"
in a statement read out in parliament on Saturday, Iranian media said.

Signed by 215 members of the 290-seat legislature, the statement was an apparent response to reports that Washington is considering labelling a unit of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards a foreign terrorist organization.

The legislators criticized the U.S.
military and the CIA for what they called terrorist actions, the
official IRNA news agency said, citing the World War Two atomic bombing
of Japan, the Vietnam war and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as examples.

"Iranian
lawmakers in a statement labeled the American army and the country's
intelligence services (CIA) as terrorist," IRNA said.

Their statement condemned "the violations by the American army and the creation of insecurity in the region," IRNA said.

It also listed the United States' "unlimited support for the racist and aggressive Zionist regime (Israel) and involvement in the terrorist operations of the government of that regime against the oppressed nations of Palestine and Lebanon".

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week Washington was considering sanctions against the Qods force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards which it accuses of inciting violence in Iraq.

The Qods force is considered the elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards.

The two nations, who have not had diplomatic ties since shortly after Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, are embroiled in a deepening rift over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. They also blame each other for the bloodshed in Iraq.

Iran has said any U.S.
move to brand the Guards unit a terrorist organization would be illegal
and amount to a confrontation with the entire Islamic Republic.

A
month ago, there were plans within the U.S. administration to label the
entire Guards Corps a foreign terrorist group -- the first time the
United States would place the armed forces of any sovereign government
on such a list.

U.S. officials said the thinking was that the Qods unit was easier to target. Washington accuses the force of training and equipping insurgents who have attacked U.S. troops.

Iran denies this, as well as Western allegations its nuclear program is aimed at developing atomic weapons.

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Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization' 

Associated Press

September 29, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's
parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the
CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," in apparent response
to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The
hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping
nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium
munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings
of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and
torturing terror suspects in prisons.

"The
aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists
and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who
signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The
session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S.,
urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the
two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the
resolution to become legislation that — if ratified by the country's
hardline constitutional watchdog — would become law.

The government is expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision. In Washington, the White House declined to comment Saturday.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the
proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of
Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a
terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization
of military force in Iran.

The
Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist
an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the
vast military operation to financial sanctions.

The U.S.
legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the
U.N. General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose
new sanctions by "arrogant powers" seeking to curb its nuclear program,
accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

He said the nuclear issue was now "closed" as a political issue and Iran
would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program "through its
appropriate legal path," the International Atomic Energy Agency, which
is the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.

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Senate Urges Bush to Name Iranian Guard as Terrorist Group

New York Times

September 27, 2007

WASHINGTON,
Sept. 26 — The Senate approved a resolution today urging the Bush
administration to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as
a foreign terrorist organization, and lawmakers briefly set aside
partisan differences to approve a measure calling for stepped-up
diplomacy to forge a political solution in Iraq.

Since
last month, the White House has been weighing whether to deem the
entire Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group or to take a narrower
step focused only on the Quds Force, an elite unit of the corps. Either
approach would signal a more confrontational posture by declaring a
segment of the Iranian military to be a terrorist organization.

The
appearances in New York this week by the Iranian president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad — at Columbia University on Monday and then at the United
Nations on Tuesday, where he said Iran would ignore Security Council
resolutions regarding its nuclear program — seemed to toughen the
resolve of Senate Democrats who had been hesitant to take an aggressive
stance toward Iran.

The
Senate resolution, which is not binding, calls on the administration to
designate the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group and to impose
economic sanctions. Even if the White House were to take such a step,
policy experts said it was unclear that it would be anything more than
a symbolic gesture without the cooperation of other nations.

The
measure proposed by Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, and Senator
Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent of Connecticut who votes with
Republicans on war issues, relied heavily on testimony earlier this
month by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Ambassador
Ryan C. Crocker, the top American political official in Baghdad.

It quoted General Petraeus as saying it is “increasingly apparent to both coalition and Iraqi leaders that Iran,
through the use of the Iranian Republican Guard Corps Quds Force, seeks
to turn the Shiite militia extremists into a Hezbollah-like force to
serve its interests and fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and
coalition forces in Iraq.”

In a
separate vote, the Senate approved a resolution by Senator Joseph R.
Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, and chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, calling for greater diplomatic efforts and, in particular, a
focus on partitioning Iraq into federal regions, in hopes of reaching a
political solution and more swiftly ending the war.

While
Democrats sought to portray the vote as a potential breakthrough in
reaching other legislative compromises that might force President Bush
to shift his war strategy, Republicans quickly made clear that this was
little more than wishful thinking.

Mr. Biden’s resolution called on the United States “to actively support a political settlement in Iraq
based on the final provisions of the Constitution of Iraq that create a
federal system of government and allow for the creation of federal
regions consistent with the wishes of the Iraqi people and their
elected leaders.”

And it said that the U.S. should call on the international community to help and on Iraq’s neighbors not to “intervene in or destabilize” Iraq.