Iran Again

Okay, I keep thinking I'm done with Iran posting for awhile, but Iran seems to be pumping out new threats by the hour.

Agence France-Presse reports more, to put it mildly, inflammatory rhetoric out of Tehran today. At the “Support for the Palestinian Intifada” conference there today, a smiling Major General Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of the Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami (Islamic Revolutionay Guard Corps – IRGC), had this to say to Americans about the possibilty of war with the United States:

You can start a war but it won't be you who finishes it…The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error…I would advise them to first get out of their quagmire in Iraq before getting into an even bigger one…We have American forces in the region under total surveillance. For the past two years, we have been ready for any scenario, whether sanctions or an attack.

Meanwhile, at a Friday prayer sermon, a “senior cleric,” the Ayatollah Ahmad Janati, called the United States, a "decaying power" that doesn’t have the "stamina" to block Iran's ambitions. Besides making me wonder if the Ayatollahs there pray for anything but war when at prayer, it shows that the Iranian leaders definitely pay plenty of attention to our Cindy Sheehans and all our other little Leftie friends of freedom and liberty.

Do the makers of these statements really believe this stuff ? More to the point, do their local listeners ?