Iran's new president declares worldwide 'Islamic revolution'

Iran's president-elect has proclaimed an Islamic revolution of global proportions.

Mahmood Ahmadinejad said his election coincided with what he termed a new Islamic revolution.

"The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world," Ahmadinejad said. "In one night, the martyrs strode down a path of 100 years." Ahmadinejad, who did not elaborate, was speaking to the families of those killed in a 1981 attack at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, Middle East Newsline reported.

The Teheran mayor has served as a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, responsible for the nation's missile and nuclear weapons programs, and has been identified as a suspect in the killing of Kurdish dissidents in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The 49-year-old Ahmadinejad, who participated in the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Teheran, in 1979, was regarded as the most anti-Western of the presidential candidates. On June 24, he defeated Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president who headed the Expediency Council, the regime's watchdog over what had been a reformist-dominated parliament. "Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world," Ahmadinejad was quoted by the official Iranian news agency as saying. "The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end."

The speech marked the first time since the late 1980s that an Iranian president vowed to export Islamic insurgency throughout the world. Allies of Ahmadinejad said the president-elect, who takes office in August, would seek to revive the principles of the Islamic revolution in 1978. They said Ahmadinejad would also seek to impose Islamic behavior in public, including strict enforcement of a dress code.

"Islamic and revolutionary culture have been neglected in the past years," Iranian parliamentarian Mohammad Taqi Rahbar said.

Iran has been cited as the leading financier of groups that appear on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations. Iran's leading clients have been the Hizbullah in Lebanon and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both sponsored by Teheran, as well as Hamas and the Syrian-aligned Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

This is NOT good:

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran's president elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad hailed his election triumph as a new Islamic revolution that could spread throughout the world, in a shift away from previously moderate post-vote rhetoric.

Iran's president elect Mahmood Ahmadinejad hailed his election triumph as a new Islamic revolution that could spread throughout the world, in a shift away from previously moderate post-vote rhetoric.
"Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 (the current Iranian year) will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world," the IRNA agency quoted the ultra-conservative as saying.

"The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end," he said, in an apparent reference to Iran's arch-foe the United States. "The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world,"

"In one night, the martyrs strode down a path of 100 years," he added.

Ahmadinejad has previously been at pains to present a moderate face to the world, avoiding religious rhetoric at his post-election news conference in favour of pledges of friendship and compassion to all at home and abroad.

However these latest comments were made to a markedly different audience -- the families of over 70 victims, including several MPs and the former chief justice, killed in a 1981 attack at the headquarters of the once powerful post-revolution Islamic Republic Party.

The tone of the remarks harks back to the first years after 1979 Islamic revolution, when the country's leaders frequently pledged to take the revolution beyond Iran.

Ahmadinejad has frequently extolled the "purity" of those early days.

However Iran subsequently abandoned attempts to export the revolution, which the regime believes prompted Western countries and most Arab states to side with Saddam Hussein's Iraq in its 1980-1988 war with the Islamic republic.

The return to such expansionist rhetoric could set alarm bells ringing in European capitals already worried about Ahmadinejad's stance in future talks on Iran's nuclear programme, as well as in neighbouring Arab countries.

Ahmadinejad, who is due to take office in early August, meanwhile hinted that he would be prepared to include outstanding ministerial officials from the outgoing government in his new administration.

"I think... that there are competent directors in the country and today there are ministers who deserve to serve the people and I will use all the capacities," he was quoted in local media as saying.

However he played down speculation about the future policies and composition of his government, saying "apart from me no-one knows the proposals of the government... what has been announced is people's personal opinions."

Ahmadinejad trounced moderate cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani in the second round run-off of Friday's presidential vote to record the greatest upset in Iranian political history.

The Guardians Council, the hardline vetting body that oversees the election process, confirmed that the elections were valid, according to the student agency ISNA.

"We have not received any complaint," the head of the Guardians Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, said in a letter to the interior ministry.

"Even if there were some irregularities in some election propaganda that does not put the regularity of the election in question," he said.

Rafsanjani had alleged after the election that "all the means of the regime" were used amid a smear campaign against him and his family. He also lashed out bitterly at the Guardians Council, saying he could not file a complaint as there was non-one sufficiently competent to judge it.

""Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 (the current Iranian year) will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world," the IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

"The era of oppression, hegemonic regimes, tyranny and injustice has reached its end," he said, in an apparent reference to the United States.

Do you see a conflict with those statements? Gosh, one would have to really dig deep to see it!

Ahmadinejad and his statements remind me of that "Star Trek" movie years ago when the Enterprise was "space jacked" out of the galaxy to finally meet God! (or Ala...)

LoL!

The last battle of WWII, Okinawa, lasted 83 days. In that battle the US deployed more forces, and suffered many more deaths than we have thus far in WWIII. Look at these tables:

You know, I would have to say imo, the last battle of WWII was Nagasaki, it lasted about 83 seconds. We suffered no casualties and the enemy surrendered. If we would have had the A bomb earlier, we would have nuked Okinawa.

The war on terror is being fought with the same rules and mindset as Vietnam and not WW2.

We continue to allow the enemy terrorists that kill our troops in Iraq to have sanctuaries in Iran and Syria, just like Laos and Cambodia, except in Nam, at least our Presidents then had the cojones to bomb them, but for some god foresaken reason, not President Bush.

It took us less than 4 years to beat tens of millions of professional German and Japanese troops, and thousands of their planes and tanks and ships, and their economies which were mobilized for war, and we did it with draftees(Which by the way did an outstanding job and I think they'd do well in the future too). Yet, in almost the same amount of time, almost 4 years, President Bush hasn't even been able to defeat a bunch of punks with RPGs.

I have to say, we are taking things way to slowly. All this talk of bringing freedom to Iraqis and Afghanis, to me, is not relevant. We brought freedom to the Germans and the Japanese too. We did it against a much more powerful foe and at a time when we were unprepared for war and the Japanese had hurt us significantly at Pearl Harbor. We brought freedom to them quicker because we fought them harder.

It seems, though, that nowadays, we are being led to believe that only by being kinder gentler and compassionate will the muslim world grasp and accept the concept of democracy and individual freedom. Yet the intolerant religion of Islam is still going to be the STATE RELIGION of Iraq.

I say, that the Japanese population and many Germans were as fanatical as muslims are today. We convinced them then, not by being nice and slow, but by being brutal and quick. I suggest the same approach today before its too late and we wake up one morning and Syria and Iran have atomic weapons too.

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