Israel Matzav: Iranian Revolutionary Guard running scared of Israel... for now

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Iranian Revolutionary Guard running scared of Israel... for now

JPost reports on a fascinating interview with an Iranian publication called Mashregh News by Brig.- Gen. Yadollah Javani, who is also the Guards’s most senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Reading between the lines, it seems that Javani is trying to ward off the prospect of an Israeli attack.

Javani accused the US and Israel of using Iran’s military program, which he insisted was peaceful, as an excuse for threatening the Islamic Republic with military action.

“The reality is that over the past years, Iran has faced threats by the US and the Zionist Regime [Israel] because the Iranian nation has insisted on sticking to its principles and has refused to give up its rights,” he said, adding that the West previously accused Iran of human rights and terrorism crimes to “pressurize” it.

“Over the past two months, Zionist leaders have stated their threats in such a way as to say that they will soon have no choice but to go to war against Islamic Iran, even if the US will not support them,” Javani said.

Javani, who opposes Iran’s reformist Green Movement and who has previously said it has a direct link with the Second of Khordad Movement (the political movement that brought reformist Iranian president Mohammed Khatami to power in 1997), said that since Khatami’s election, there had been two schools of thought in Iran regarding foreign policy toward the US and Israel.

These two opposing views, Javani said, consisted of political deterrence, or appeasement, and military deterrence.

“There are those who insist on the policy of political deterrence, who say that the Islamic Republic cannot defend itself against the US and the Zionist Regime [Israel],” he said.

“[Those people] say that what is needed are internal reforms and reforms in the political sphere, which will essentially remove any external threats from the West.”

This “reformist” school of thought, Javani said, “claimed that Iran did not need nuclear energy and that it should completely suspend its nuclear activities.”

If Iran followed these reformist principles and appeased the West by giving up on its nuclear ambitions, then the Islamic Republic would “lose its independence,” Javani said.

“However, the military deterrence strategy assumes the Iranian people want freedom, national dignity and to preserve the revolution and its achievements, and to continue along the path of progress and prosperity,” he wrote. “Therefore Iran should stand against all pressures and prepare to defend itself from any invasion.”

According to Javani, the main strategy of the Revolutionary Guards and the Islamic Republic of Iran Army is that of military deterrence.

Based on this strategy, Iran’s military had worked toward increasing its capabilities to deal with the enemy, he added.

“The US and Israel attack countries they are assured of winning wars against. They won’t start a war against any country if they think they will suffer defeats,” Javani wrote.

“With military deterrence you should always be aware of the enemy, be able to defend against aggression and also display determination to respond to any type of aggression.”

That's a lot different than what Ahmadinejad and Khatami have been saying. Of course, if Iran is ever permitted to obtain or develop nuclear weapons, the whole calculation would be different. That's why Iran must be stopped before they attain a nuclear weapons capability. Iran does not want a war... right now.

But they just might want one soon if this report by Reza Khalili is correct.

Iranian scientists are nearing completion of a nuclear warhead, having already successfully tested an implosion system and neutron detonator at a secret site while enriching uranium to weapons grade, according to a former Iranian intelligence officer.

The information comes from Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security, or MOIS.

Zakeri previously testified at the federal district court in Manhattan in the Havlish v. bin Laden civil lawsuit, where he provided proof that Iran had materially aided and supported al-Qaida before and after 9/11.

Zakeri, who has in the past provided credible information on another site to Western intelligence agencies, said that after the revelation of the existence of the Iranian atomic research facility in Lavizan-Shian, the team of scientists moved to a secret location in 2003.

The site was then demolished and the earth scraped clean by the Revolutionary Guards. Iranian authorities had denied an IAEA request to visit the site before the cleanup.