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Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday said the world would witness the destruction of Israel soon, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported. Ahmadinejad said last summer’s war between Israel and Hezbollah showed for the first time that the “hegemony of the occupier regime (Israel) had collapsed, and the Lebanese nation pushed the button to begin counting the days until the destruction of the Zionist regime,” IRNA quoted him as saying.

“God willing, in the near future we will witness the destruction of the corrupt occupier regime,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying during a speech to foreign guests mostly from African, Arab and neighboring countries who attended ceremonies marking the 18th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who is known as the father of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has lost public support after Israel failed to achieve its goals during last summer’s 34-day war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon freeing two captured soldiers and crushing the militant group. The war was sparked after two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah militants in a cross-border raid. The fighting ended with a U.N.-brokered cease-fire that called for deployment of U.N. peacekeepers and Lebanese troops in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel. Ahmadinejad has made anti-Israel comments in the past. In October 2005, he caused outrage in the West when he said in a speech that Israel’s “Zionist regime should be wiped off the map.” His supporters have argued Ahmadinejad’s words were mistranslated and should have been better translated as “vanish from the pages of time” implying Israel would vanish on its own rather be destroyed.

ABC News

The Washington Post reports Iran has increased arms shipments to both Iraq’s Shiite extremists and Afghanistan’s Taliban in recent weeks in an apparent attempt to pressure American and other Western troops operating in its two strategic neighbors, according to senior U.S. and European officials. In Iraq, Iranian 240mm rockets, which have a range of up to 30 miles and could significantly change the battlefield, have been used recently by Shiite extremists against U.S. and British targets in Basra and Baghdad, the officials said.

Three of the rockets have targeted U.S. facilities in Baghdad’s Green Zone, and one came very close to hitting the U.S. Embassy in the Iraqi capital, according to the U.S. officials. The 240mm rocket is the biggest and longest-range weapon in the hands of Shiite extremist groups, U.S. officials said. Remnants of the rockets bear the markings of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and are dated 2007, those sources said. The Tehran government has supplied the same weapon, known as the Fajr-3, to Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia. In Afghanistan, British forces have intercepted at least two arms shipments from Iran to Afghanistan’s Helmand province since late April, the officials said. Such shipments reflect an unlikely liaison between two historic rivals, the Shiite theocrats in Iran and the Sunni Taliban in Afghanistan, they said. Both shipments were carried out after Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly put Iran on notice in mid-April that the United States was aware it was sending arms to the Taliban. The intercepted shipments to Afghanistan included 107mm mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, C-4 explosives and small arms, identical to shipments to Iraqi militias around Basra in March, according to the U.S. and European sources, who track arms movements. The C-4 explosives in both shipments have fake U.S. markings, a common deceptive tactic, the sources added. “We’re concerned about what appears to be an escalating flow of Iranian arms shipments to extremists operating in Iraq and about Iran’s stepped-up efforts to supply weapons to Taliban militants in Afghanistan,” said a senior U.S. official who monitors Iranian activity in the region. The new arms supplies reflect an increasing boldness by Iran, according to U.S. officials and officials from NATO countries. The secretive Quds Force, the branch of the elite Revolutionary Guard in charge of Iran’s special operations abroad, is said by the U.S. officials to be behind the arms flow to militants in both countries. In Iraq, U.S. special military operations as well as new diplomatic talks with Iran are focused on trying to limit the impact of Quds, U.S. officials said. “The imperative for this exercise is to stop Iran’s lethal activities,” said a senior U.S. official involved in Iran policy. At U.S.-Iran talks last Monday, the first in almost three decades, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan C. Crocker, laid out what he later described as “solid evidence” of Iran’s role in arming the militant groups that are attacking American and Iraqi forces, as well as civilians. “We know the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force is the lead instrument in pursuing this policy and that they need to stop this behavior,” Crocker said in a telephone briefing after the talks. “We know what they’re doing.” Iran’s goal is to prevent the return of stability in Iraq because it would be associated with an American victory, a senior administration official said. Iran is after “managed chaos” that benefits its long-term interests, according to a recent report by the independent British American Security Information Council. “Iran’s interest lies in supporting and training allies to influence their political positioning in a post-war, post-occupation Iraq.” “Most beneficial for Tehran would be the emergence of a friendly, preferably Shia Iraqi government, strong enough to keep Iraq together but too weak to pose a military threat,” the report said. Iran’s aim is to get a “security buffer zone for Iran against foreign invasion, and the political dominance of Iraqi Shia would likely deter future U.S. aggression against Iran.” Two U.S. military raids netted seven Quds Force operatives, including two top commanders, in December and January. The five mid-level operatives captured in Irbil in January remain in U.S. custody, while the Iraqi government pressured U.S. forces into releasing the two senior commanders captured in Baghdad. For years, Iran supported the Taliban’s rivals and was a de facto ally in the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that ousted the strict religious movement. But now, “the Iranians have more extensive intelligence links with the Afghan warlords and militias than anyone except Pakistan,” said Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution fellow formerly at the National Security Council, Pentagon and CIA. “If we now see a change in Iranian behavior and support for Taliban attacks on NATO forces, then that’s a serious escalation that has ominous implications for the Afghan government.” Iran’s goal may just be to exercise a “spoiler function” that would put pressure on the United States and NATO forces but not empower the Taliban long-term, said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Quds Force, commanded by Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, has come under increasing scrutiny in the past year. Soleimani was among those targeted by U.N. Security Council Resolution 1747 for sanctions stemming from Tehran’s failure to suspend uranium enrichment. Soleimani was identified in the resolution as one of the top officials engaged in nuclear or ballistic missile programs.

Iran has accused the United States of interfering in its domestic affairs by demanding the release of four Iranian-Americans held in Tehran on charges of harming national security. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters in Tehran Sunday that the detainees are Iranian nationals, and authorities are reviewing their case.

In a statement Friday President Bush called for the four detainees to be freed “immediately and unconditionally.” Mr. Bush said the four peace activist Ali Shakeri, scholars Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh, and journalist Parnaz Azima pose no threat to Iran. He noted that they went to Iran either to visit their parents or conduct humanitarian work. The president also demanded to know the whereabouts of a former FBI agent, Robert Levinson, who has been missing in Iran since early March. Thursday, the U.S. State Department confirmed that Ali Shakeri is being detained at Tehran’s Evin prison. It is not clear if Shakeri has been formally charged. Academics Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh are also being held in the prison and have been charged with spying. Journalist Parnaz Azima is also charged with spying, and has been barred from leaving Iran. Shakeri is an advisory board member at a non-governmental organization, the Center for Citizen Peacebuilding at the University of California at Irvine. Esfandiari is the director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington-based foundation. Tajbakhsh is an urban planning consultant linked to the New York-based Open Society Institute. Billionaire businessman George Soros established the institute to promote democracy and human rights. Azima works for U.S.-funded Radio Farda. Her passport was confiscated, and she has been barred from leaving Iran since January.

Voice of America

Iranians flouting Islamic street dress codes may risk being hauled in by police for questioning by “psychologists,” but the frequent sight of bandaged faces from cosmetic surgery raises not so much as an official eyebrow. For a visitor to Tehran, the number of young women — as well as some men — sporting post-surgery gauze on their faces is striking. It prompted one U.S. newspaper last year to label Iran a “nose-job nation.” “Nose surgery is very popular,” said Iranian plastic surgeon Nabiollah Shariati, as veiled women filled his waiting room eager to go under the knife. “It makes people feel good about life and themselves.”

Business is brisk for hundreds of doctors specializing in this highly visible trend in the conservative Islamic state, as nose and other facial surgery enhances the only features an Iranian woman is not obliged to conceal. More commonly associated with the rich and famous in Hollywood, surgery is in demand among trendy and well-off Iranians keen to correct perceived flaws in their looks. Speaking in the green marble-floored office of his private clinic in an affluent part of Tehran, Shariati said he carried out two or three nose operations a day, or 3,000 during 16 years in the profession. “Every year the figures go up,” he said. “Compared with the United States and European countries they are much higher in Iran.” This may seem a contradiction in a country where since the 1979 Islamic revolution sharia law has discouraged women from seeking to attract the attention of the opposite sex. Besides covering their hair and bodies with the Muslim headscarf and loose clothing, such as the head-to-toe black chador, women who use heavy make-up are frowned on and those who transgress modesty rules can be fined, lashed or jailed. But a senior Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Mahdi Hadavi, said Islam allowed facial surgery as long as it did not harm the person: “It is permitted based on Islamic rules,” he said. “Being beautiful is not something prohibited in Islam.” Shariati said the authorities had not raised any objections to his line of work, and he believes the Islamic dress code actually helps explain why nose surgery has become so popular in the Middle Eastern country. “Because of the hijab women have to wear the face becomes the most prominent part of the body,” he said. Reducing the size of the nose was the most common request: “Iranian noses are on average a little bit larger than European and Asian noses.” One of his patients, Arezoo Abbasi, complained of her big nose as she prepared for the hour-long procedure dressed in a blue hospital-style gown. “The beauty of Iranian women can only be seen in their faces,” she said shortly before anesthetics put her to sleep. Iranian-American journalist Azadeh Moaveni describes in her 2005 book “Lipstick Jihad” how demand for cosmetic facial surgery surged after the revolution, when women were banned from revealing the shape of their bodies. “It was an investment in feeling modern, in the midst of the seventh-century atmosphere the mullahs (Iran’s ruling clerics) were trying to create,” she wrote. “It assuaged so many urges at once — to look better, to self-express, to show off that you could afford it, to appear Westernized,” Moaveni added. Shariati said he charges between 15 million and 20 million rials ($1,600-$2,200) a time — cheap by Western standards but a considerable amount in a country where many earn the equivalent of a few hundred dollars a month. Haniyeh Asli, a 20-year-old waiting for a check-up a few days after surgery, said her mother had encouraged her to go ahead with it and both were very happy with the result. “I want my daughter to be beautiful,” said her mother, Manijeh E’tesami. “Her nose had a little bit of a high ridge and she also had some breathing difficulties.” She would have surgery herself if she were younger, she said, adding Iranians tend to have large noses: “It seems to be something genetic.” Shariati said most of his patients were women between 20 and 30 but more men were also coming to see him, even though they do not face the same dress restrictions. Mohammad Nasiri, a 20-year-old with long black hair, said he opted for surgery because his nose was slightly crooked. “Reaching a certain age you become more conscious about how you look,” he said. “I have quite a fine face and the nose sort of stuck out. Now it is more balanced.” But not everybody is satisfied: “It was much better before,” said 28-year old Roya Soltanian of her long, thin nose. Others disapprove of the trend altogether. “I think I’m the only one who is not here for nose surgery,” said Hadi Salimi, 27, whose baby son was suffering ear problems. “I feel sorry for some of these women,” he said. “What matters is inner beauty.”

Source: Reuters