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Even among Israel's tough security chiefs, Meir Dagan has always been known for his raw nerve. As a military trainee he would wander around the base during his off hours flinging a knife at trees and telephone poles like a circus entertainer, one fellow soldier recalls. He earned one of his first decorations as a young commando in Gaza, for snatching a live grenade from the hands of an enemy fighter. Long-haired and confident, Dagan would sometimes bring his pet Doberman, Paco, along on raids. His propensity for solving problems by force continued even after he retired from the military....

'Kayhan': 'Turkey's Place is Alongside Iran'; The Turkish Muslim Brotherhood Model Is Influenced By, and Supportive of, The Iranian Islamic Model Iranian leaders and the Iranian media have lately been stressing the need for tighter relations with Islamic Turkey, and even for forming a strategic alliance with it, as part of the regional and global confrontation between Islam and the West. These statements have taken on greater significance since the recent Gaza war, which revealed that two camps exist in the Middle East - the Iranian axis (comprising Iran, Syria, Qatar, Hizbullah and Hamas) and the Saudi-Egyptian camp - and...

<p>Russia made clear Saturday that it opposes a Western push for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.</p> <p>Russia spoke out against a fourth round of UN sanctions against Teheran at a meeting of the five permanent UN Security Council members and Germany in Washington on Friday, the Foreign Ministry said.</p>

DAMASCUS, March 20 (Itar-Tass) - Russia is making contacts with HAMAS to restore Arab unity and move HAMAS toward a common Arab platform, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated on Thursday, noting that he met with the HAMAS leadership in Damascus on Wednesday. "We're making contacts with the purpose of helping restore Arab unity, with the view of moving HAMAS toward a common Arab platform, and with the purpose of implementing the "road map," he said. "The necessity to restore Palestinians' unity is comprehended by an increasing number of countries, including those who earlier called for isolating HAMAS. We observe...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Russia has agreed to sell an S-300 anti-aircraft missile system to Iran, Iran's defense minister was quoted as saying on Wednesday, a report likely to irritate the United States. S-300 missiles are longer-ranging than the TOR-M1 surface-to-air missiles which Russia, in a deal criticized by the West, earlier this year said it had delivered to the Islamic Republic under a $1 billion contract. Iran is under U.N. sanctions over its refusal to halt sensitive atomic work that Western powers suspect it wants to master so that it can build nuclear bombs, but they do not ban conventional...

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran is capable of firing 11,000 rockets into enemy bases within the first minute after any possible attack, state-run television quoted a top Revolutionary Guards Corps commander as saying Saturday. Gen. Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, the missile commander of the Guards, said Iran has identified all enemy positions and was prepared to respond in less than a minute to any possible attack. "Enemy bases and positions have been identified. ... The Guards ground force will fire 11,000 rockets into identified enemy positions within the first minute of any aggression against the Iranian territory," the television quoted Chaharbaghi as saying.

(IsraelNN.com) US President George W. Bush said a nuclear Iran would mean World War III. Israeli newscasts featured Gog & Magog maps of the likely alignment of nations in that potential conflict. Channel 2 and Channel 10 TV showed the world map, sketching the basic alignment of the two opposing axes in a coming world war, in a manner evoking associations of the Gog and Magog prophecy for many viewers. The prophecy of Gog and Magog refers to a great world war centered on the Holy Land and Jerusalem and first appears in the book of Yechezkel (Ezekiel). On one...

TEHRAN, Iran - Russian President Vladimir Putin made an unspecified proposal about Iran's nuclear program at a private meeting with the country's supreme leader during a brief trip to Tehran, Iran's state news agency said Wednesday. Russian officials could not immediately be reached to verify the report and the Iranian news agency provided no details on what Putin had proposed. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all government matters, said Iran will give Putin's proposal serious thought before giving a response, the news agency said. "We will ponder your words and proposal," IRNA quoted Khamenei as saying....

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 9 minutes ago Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran. He also said countries bordering the Caspian Sea must jointly back any oil pipeline projects in the region. At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea, Putin said none of the nations' territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was a clear reference to...

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to unveil a vision of a world without Israel, in which America and Europe would be freed of what he said was Zionist oppression. Culminating a concerted assault on what he described as the injustices and oppressions practiced by the "big powers" since World War II, he said that the ungodly era of lewdness and violence was coming to a close and that "the age of monotheism has commenced." The world was "nearing the sunset of the time of empires," he said, and urged the...

Today as I drove my Mom home from her dental appointment, we listened to Focus on the Family. All this week, FoF is focusing on "Radical Islam and the Family." I'd like to make a few observations. 1. Granted, we only caught the last fifteen minutes, but at no point was there any discussion of "the family and Islam," unless by this, one means something like, "Radical Islam wants to overthrow America and we should support the Iraq War." 2. Most, if not all, of the broadcast focused on Joel Rosenberg's bestseller Epicenter. 3. Consequently, we were treated to a...

Russian Navy eyes Syria bases to expand Mideast presence MOSCOW — Russia plans to expand its naval presence in the Middle East, starting in Syria. Officials said the Russian Navy has been pressing Moscow's allies to expand basing and anchoring rights. They said the navy has sought to establish a permanent naval presence that would include such countries as Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen__ Full Text, Subscribers --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Creators describe game as response to U.S. company's 'Assault on Iran' TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian hard-line student group unveiled a new video game Monday that simulates an attempt to rescue two Iranian nuclear experts kidnapped by the U.S. military and held in Iraq and Israel. The "Rescue the Nuke Scientist" video game, designed by the Union of Students Islamic Association, was described by its creators as a response to a U.S.-based company's "Assault on Iran" game, which depicts an American attack on an Iranian nuclear facility. "This is our defense against the enemy's cultural onslaught," Mohammad Taqi Fakhrian, a...

MOSCOW (AFP) - A Russian reporter who died after falling out of a window was investigating sales of weapons by Russia to Syria and Iran, his newspaper Kommersant said Tuesday. Ivan Safronov had told his newspaper that he had "received information" about the sale of Sukhoi-34 fighter jets to Syria and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to Iran via Belarus. The business daily said the arms were being sold "via Belarus to avoid the west accusing Russia of arming rogue states". Safronov, a former colonel, specialised in writing about the army and space. Russian prosecutors on Monday opened an investigation into the...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in Sudan late Wednesday that "Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan," state-run IRNA news agency reported. "The Zionists are the true manifestation of Satan," Ahmadinejad said during the state visit, speaking to a meeting of Sudanese Islamic scholars in the capital Khartoum. Both Sudan and Iran are accused internationally of supporting radical Islamic movements.

The Israeli government is building a massive war bunker in the hills outside Jerusalem – a refuge for top government officials in the event of a biological, chemical or nuclear attack. The maze of tunnels and underground rooms is scheduled to be completed in the next year or two as fears of an attack from Iran intensify, the Baltimore Sun reported. Israel’s top intelligence officer told the Knesset last month that Iran could have a nuclear weapon by 2009, and Israelis increasingly fear that Tehran would seek to carry out Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s threat to "wipe Israel off the...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday told delegates at an international conference questioning the Holocaust that Israel's days were numbered. Ahmadinejad, who has sparked international outcry by referring to the killing of six million Jews in World War Two as a "myth" and calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map," launched another verbal attack on the Jewish state. "Thanks to people's wishes and God's will the trend for the existence of the Zionist regime is downwards and this is what God has promised and what all nations want," he said. "Just as the Soviet Union...

Current world events are beginning to increasingly resemble the 2,500 year old bible prophecy made by Ezekiel in chapters 38-39. Ezekiel foresaw the rise of Russia (or Turkey, depending on the interpretation) in a coalition with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries (Sudan, Ethiopia and Libya). The coalition is foretold to attack Israel from the north in a bid to destroy it during the earth's "last days," commonly known as the "war of Gog and Magog." Throughout history it was thought that the prophecy had been put on hold, until perhaps today when it seems frighteningly more feasible. In Joel...

Tough sanctions on Iran to punish it for pursuing uranium enrichment would be counter-productive, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said before major powers met to discuss possible measures on Tuesday. "We believe it is irresponsible to impose these kind of sanctions," Lavrov told reporters on the margins of a meeting of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Brussels.

Learn what American attitudes toward current events and Bible prophecy are in this exclusive new poll.Are We Living in the Last Days? We asked: "Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: 'Events such as the rebirth of the State of Israel, wars and instability in the Middle East, recent earthquakes, and the tsunami in Asia are evidence that we are living in what the Bible calls the last days.'"* 42% of all Americans agree * 44% disagree * 14% say they don’t know Last Days—Gender* 50 percent of women agree; 37 percent disagree; * 14 percent don’t know...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States used Israel's attack on the Hizbollah militia in Lebanon as a prelude to "settling accounts" with Iran, Interfax news agency quoted a senior Russian diplomat as saying on Wednesday. Vladimir Trofimov, deputy head of the foreign ministry's Middle East department, was quoted making the comments the day before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov begins a visit to the Middle East that will include Israel. "If we look at Israeli and U.S. plans, they aim at removing the Hizbollah factor ahead of the forthcoming U.S. settling of accounts with Iran," Interfax quoted Trofimov as saying....

Kazan(Russia), Aug 31: Officials and religious figures from Russia and more than a dozen Islamic countries kicked off a conference here that organizers said was aimed at deepening their dialogue and defending a "multipolar" world in the face of US power. "Values cannot be imposed by force," Mintimer Shaimiyev, President of Russia`s mainly Muslim republic of Tatarstan where the three-day conference was being held, said in an opening address to delegates. "The example of Iraq has shown that democracy can only be the result of internal development. Liberal values can`t be exported like cars. A multipolar world without a system...

US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made his strongest public case for a plan, opposed by some in the US Congress and by Russia, to convert some Navy long-range missiles from a nuclear to a conventional role for potential use against terrorist targets anywhere in the world. Rumsfeld held talks Sunday with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, and they discussed the issue at a joint news conference. Opponents of the plan argue that it could create a situation in which a conventionally armed US Trident missile, launched from a submarine, would be mistaken for a nuclear launch, thus risking the...

Oracle Commentaries 7/22/2006 Urgent Intelligence Update UNCOVERED: RUSSIAN-SYRIAN-IRANIAN AXIS For students of Bible prophecy, even the title of this communiqué should set off alarm sirens. I just received some electrifying intelligence data. First, from the Debka-Net-Weekly’s briefing. And second, from some personal intelligence sources (I carefully guard) that confirm Debka’s report. Russia, Iran and Syria have entered a defense pact that is in the process of altered the balance of power in the entire Middle East. Russia’s part in the pact has been kept relatively secret for a long time. But the facts reveal a long steady Russian commitment...

The 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency delayed a vote on a landmark resolution on Iran's nuclear program today largely because of American opposition to a clause indirectly criticizing Israel's nuclear weapons status, according to several diplomats. The countries that sit on the decision-making council of the world's nuclear watchdog agency will meet again on Saturday. Several diplomats said that it was unlikely that the problem would derail passage of the resolution, which would report Iran's case to the United Nations Security Council for the first time and which enjoys the support of the United States, Russia, China,...

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - President George W. Bush vowed on Wednesday the United States will rise to Israel's defense if needed against Iran and denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for "menacing talk" against Israel. In a Reuters interview aboard Air Force One en route to Nashville, Bush also said he saw a "very good chance" that the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency will refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions. "I am concerned about a person that, one, tries to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, and two, has made it clear that his...

Moscow: Russia's fifth-generation fighter plane will be ready in 2007, Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Air Force Vladimir Mikhailov said Tuesday. "Work to build the fifth-generation plane is going according to schedule," he said. Mikhailov said, however, that the project had encountered some financial problems after civilian aircraft were produced using the money allocated in the budget for the fighter planes. "Clearly, the development of aviation technology will depend on specific military and economic conditions, determining the progress of reform in the Russian armed forces and the country's aircraft construction industry. However, Russia will continue to be a leading aircraft-building power,"...

Russian FM Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday sanctions are not the best and only solution. DEBKAfile adds: Moscow is muscle-flexing ahead of EU-Russian negotiations due to take place with Iran over a formula for Iranian nuclear enrichment in Russia, mediated by Chancellor Angela Merkel and accepted for study by Tehran. When the talks yield a proposal, it will be brought before Washington. The Kremlin is saying the threat of UN sanctions is counter-productive if the next round of diplomacy is to succeed. The five permanent UN Security Council members meeting in London failed to agree on a referral of the Iranian...

Iranian President Mahmoud's Ahmadinejad's mystical pre-occupation with the coming of a Shiite Islamic messiah figure – the Mahdi – is raising concerns that a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic could trigger the kind of global conflagration he envisions will set the stage for the end of the world. While Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been making headlines lately by questioning whether the Holocaust actually happened, by suggesting Israel should be moved to Europe and by demanding the Jewish state be wiped off the face of the earth, his apocalyptic religious zealotry has received less attention. In a videotaped meeting with Ayatollah Javadi-Amoli in Tehran,...

Let’s face it, the only thing Russia is doing to control Iran’s nuclear ambitions is to have a slick PR campaign that spouts disinformation about the entire sordid affair in the hope that no one notices its support of the mad mullahs. A report from the AP via The Washington Times, says that Javad Vaidi, Iran’s nuclear negotiator is considering a Russian proposal to have a joint fuel enrichment program in Russia to supposedly ensure that no fuel is diverted to make weapons. This proposal means nothing. Earlier, I reported that the Novosibirsk nuclear fuel fabrication facility in Siberia was...

Moscow told Iran on Saturday it remained ready to build a joint venture plant to enrich uranium in Russia, just days after an EU diplomat said Tehran had dismissed the compromise plan at talks in Vienna. The plan, which would allow Tehran to establish a civilian nuclear energy programme but transfer enrichment to Russia, is aimed at ending a stalemate between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear programmes. "The Russian embassy in Tehran gave to the Iranian side an official note saying that the previous Russian proposal of the creation ... of a joint Russian-Iranian company to enrich uranium...

Lest you get carried away with the recent good news from Iraq, consider what's happening next door in Iran. The wild pronouncements of the new Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have gotten sporadic press ever since he called for Israel to be wiped off the map. He subsequently amended himself to say that Israel should simply be extirpated from the Middle East map and moved to some German or Austrian province. Perhaps near the site of an old extermination camp? Except that there were no such camps, indeed no Holocaust at all, says Ahmadinejad. Nothing but "myth," a "legend" that was...

"I want to remind those who are on the other side, those who allegedly defend Islam, that the Russian Federation has always been the most consistent, loyal and staunch advocate of Islam," Putin said. "Russia was and remains the best partner of Islamic states," he said.

Don't get us mixed up Ahmadinejad is not, REPEAT not, the epitome of Iranian people's aspiration and their logic December 16, 2005 iranian.com There are countries of the world about which the world cannot afford to be ignorant. Iran is one such country and though the International community is slow in realising, it will have to be as informed and uncluttered in the their judgement about Iran as they are about France say. They would have to because Iran matters a lot and I am not saying that as an Iranian patriot but as an informed observer. It is precisely...

Posted 05-Dec-2005 04:44 Related stories: Coastal & Littoral, Contracts - Awards, Issues - International, Middle East - Other, Missiles - Surface-Air, Other Corporation, Radars, Russia, Surface Ships - Combat Also on this day: 05-Dec-2005 » ORD_SAM_SA-15_Radar.jpg Tor M-1 (click to view full) Novosti in Russia and western media outlets like Reuters are reporting that Russia will sell about 30 Tor M-1 (SA-15 Gauntlet) surface-to-air missile systems. Greece had bought 21 of the systems and had the right to another 29, but scrapped the deal in the late 1990s. Those missiles will now find their way to Iran, where they will...

MORE NEWS FROM IRAN Speaking of Islamic dictatorships, the president of Iran is once again speaking his mind. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that he doubted the Holocaust took place and that Israel should be moved to Europe. That's at least a step up from wanting to destroy it. Kofi Annan condemned the statements, which may be a first. This in addition to the cancellation of his trip to Tehran after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. Now given Iran's desire to get rid of Israel, and that regime's previous call for the destruction of the...

Events in the Middle East are starting to sound an awful lot like a lead up to the war of Gog and Magog prophesied in the Bible. If you’ve read the article about this on our site, you know that a possible player in that war is Russia, who will form an alliance with Islamic countries to attack Israel. If Israel does what it recently promised to do and attacks Iran before it can get Nuclear weapons, it’s not hard to imagine Russian weapons being used by the coalition nations mentioned in Ezekiel 38 to launch an attack on Israel....

Muhammad El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA...the UN's nuclear watchdog division, says he agrees with Israel....Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb. However, he warns against anybody actually doing anything about it....fearing Iran would retaliate. Now that's a great plan, isn't it? A sworn enemy is well on the way to developing nukes, and you just sit back and do nothing because you're afraid they may retaliate. Just let them proceed until they actually have the nuclear weapons in hand. A typically useless position from the Nobel prize-winning bureaucrat. Now think for just a...

IAEA chairman Muhammad ElBaradei on Monday confirmed Israel's assessment that Iran is only a few months away from creating an atomic bomb. "If Teheran indeed resumes its uranium enrichment in other plants, as threatened, it will take it only several months to produce a bomb," ElBaradei told The Independent, according to Army Radio.

Head of Tehran's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission says Iran will built another 20 power plants, two as soon as March 2006; Britain, U.S. and France pressure Russia and China to endorse efforts to refer Iran to U.N. Security Council; test launching of Arrow missile in Israel and Iran's deal to purchase weapons from Russia mark escalation in arms race between two states, experts claim Iran's Atomic Energy Organization has been given license to set up another 20 nuclear plants, two of them by March 2006, head of Tehran's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi was quoted...

On the heels of his anti-Israel diatribe, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently sacked senior ambassadors deemed too liberal for his administration. Unperturbed by the world’s fiery reaction to his anti-Semitic comments a couple weeks ago, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hasn’t refrained from continuing with his controversial hard-line politics. November 2, the Iranian government announced that it was sacking 40 ambassadors and senior diplomats. Deemed too liberal and pro-Western in their ideology, the prominent ambassadors and diplomats will be unemployed by the end of the year. Those fired include the representatives to London, Paris, Berlin and the United Nations, the four...

LONDON, November 13 (IranMania) - US intelligence officials have shown leaders of the International Atomic Energy Agency a stolen Iranian laptop computer containing nuclear designs as proof the country is secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported on its website. The newspaper said that during the demonstration, which took place in Vienna in mid-July, officials displayed selections from more than a thousand pages of Iranian computer simulations and accounts of experiments, saying they showed a long effort to design a nuclear warhead. The Americans acknowledged that the documents do not prove that Iran has an atomic...

Tehran, Iran, Oct. 31 – Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on the country’s officials to be united in one front against the “common enemy” as he reaffirmed that the state of Israel would eventually be toppled, state-run dailies reported on Monday. Khamenei told a meeting of senior Iranian officials that they had a duty to avoid falling into the “traps and plans of the enemy”. He said that the “enemy had put immense effort in recent years to create divisions and cracks” among the country’s rulers. “Fortunately, certain officials were vigilant and stood up against this plan”, the...

Behind Iran's open threat to Israel Amir Taheri writes in the New York Post about what may lie behind Iran President Ahmadinejad’s naked threat to obliterate Isarel: Ahmadinejad has gone several steps further — presenting the destruction of Israel as a major goal of his government. Why? One reason may be his desire to distance himself as far as possible from his predecessor, Muhammad Khatami, and from Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful mullah-cum-businessman who still heads a key faction within the regime. Ahmadinejad has criticized the “softness” of Khatami and his mentor Rafsanjani, which led to “a decline in revolutionary spirit.”...

AMMAN. Oct 27 (Interfax) - The Iranian president's tough statements about Israel have not influenced Moscow's position on the Iranian "nuclear dossier", Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters during his visit to Jordan on Thursday. "Our position on Iran remains unchanged. We favor cooperation through the IAEA in dealing with problems related to the Iranian nuclear program," he said.

Oct 27, 2005 Russia has quietly worked to forge a quasi-alliance of that to rival the US-led NATO, between current and future nuclear powers of Pakistan, China and Iran. This alignment is specifically geared toward confronting the US in a hotly contested market for geopolitical status in the middle east and to dictate economic trends concerning natural resources in the region. Decision by the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council has also put Russia in a difficult position between choosing its long-term economic ties with the EU and US or short-term ones with Iran. As the world...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" does not signal the start of a more aggressive stance toward Israel by Tehran, officials and analysts said on Thursday. "Iran's policy toward Israel will remain unchanged. We do not want more confrontation with the West," a senior government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks during the conference "The World without Zionism" in Tehran October 26, 2005. Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be "wiped off the map" does not signal the start of a more aggressive stance toward...

Israel should be "wiped off the map": Iran president Agence France-Presse | October 26, 2005 Posted on 10/26/2005 2:44:55 AM PDT by HAL9000 Original Article on FRKHALID MASHALThis cult is dangerous and should be dealt with now

TEHRAN, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Wednesday that Israel is a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map" — fiery words that Washington said underscores its concern over Iran's nuclear program. Ahmadinejad's speech to thousands of students at a "World without Zionism" conference set a hard-line foreign policy course sharply at odds with that of his moderate predecessor, echoing the sentiments of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran's Islamic revolution. The United States said Ahmadinejad's remarks show that Washington's fears about Iran's nuclear program are accurate. "I think it reconfirms what we have been saying about...

Britain is to summon a top Iranian diplomat to protest against his president's comments about Israel. Hardline Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the Jewish state to be "wiped off the map". The Foreign Office will call in Iran's London chargé d'affaires on Thursday. It said the comments were "deeply disturbing and sickening". The US said they highlighted concerns about Iran's nuclear plans, which Iran says are for peaceful purposes only. 'Horrible reality' Mr Ahmadinejad made his comments at a conference in the Iranian capital Tehran entitled The World without Zionism. He said Israel's establishment was "a move by the...