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U.S. military commanders are pressing Washington for permission to carry out surgical strikes inside Iran against Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps facilities that are the source of weapons, explosives and training for Iraqi terrorists.U.S. intelligence agencies have identified several facilities in the region that are part of a supply network of Iranian armored piercing shaped charges which are being used by terrorists and insurgents to kill and maim U.S. troops.Any bombing raids would likely be carried out by Air Force and Navy forces in the region.Gen. David Petraeus last week issued a new accusation of Iranian support for terrorism in Iraq. Petraeus, speaking at a U.S. military base about 20 miles from the Iranian border on Oct. 6, said Iran was giving militia groups advanced weaponry and guidance.“They are responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and in some cases the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers,” Petraeus told a group of reporters when asked if the Iranian government was responsible for killing U.S. troops.In a further sign of escalating pressure, Petraeus accused the Iranian ambassador to Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, of being an IRGC Qods force member. “The ambassador is a Qods force member," Petraeus said. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last week that U.S. intelligence threat assessments show Iran to be a near term future threat of having long-range missiles and possibly nuclear arms.Asked on Russian television about Moscow’s claim that Iran cannot produce long-range missiles, Rice stated: “Our threat assessment is simply a bit different on Iran.” She said “Iran is trying to increase its missile range” and the Iranians “are in the act of doing so.”Russia disagrees with U.S. assessments on when they will be able to achieve a specific range but “our point is that we need to get started now on the ability to defend against what is an emerging threat,” Rice said.On Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Rice said “we're at a stage with Iran where our principal concern is that they will acquire the technology that can easily then be used to develop a nuclear weapon.”“It's not a question of whether Iran has a nuclear weapon today,” she said. “It is a question of enrichment and reprocessing capability, the so-called fuel cycle, which can be turned to the use of nuclear weapons just as it can be used for civil nuclear power.”The comments came during a visit to Russia by Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates when Russian officials vehemently opposed U.S. plans to deploy a third missile interceptor system in Eastern Europe.Rice said that the U.S. missile defense plan for Europe contains nothing that is anti-Russian. “It is aimed at other threats, particularly the kind of increasing or emerging long-range missile threat from countries like Iran,” she said.Ali Fazli, deputy head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Joint Staff, stated last week that Iran’s missile range had increased from 40 kilometers during the Iran-Iraq war to current systems that “today … are capable of building and launching missiles with a range of 2,000 kilometers.”Fazli said Iran's "martyrdom-seeking spirit" was “the main factor for confronting the enemy.... America does not dare attack Iran, but, if it makes this stupid mistake, it will receive a crushing response and cannot end the conflict."As in the days of Noah....
