Daily Alert Archives

Charm Offensive? Hostile Iranian Messages on the Eve of Rouhani's UN Visit - with Photos

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Iranian President Rouhani attended a military parade in Tehran on Sept. 22, 2013, where he reviewed the forces and spoke. Among the messages featured during the parade, in Persian and Arabic the Iranians wrote, "Death to America," while in English they wrote, "Down with America." The parade included a line of missile transports carrying Shahab-3 missiles, which have a 1,300-km. range that can reach both Israel and American bases in the Persian Gulf. On the lead vehicle appeared a banner that reads: "Israel Should Cease to Exist." Iran's apologists will say that the sentence is in the passive voice, so it is not clear how it ceases to exist. But the very fact that the Iranians attach a sign of this sort to a vehicle carrying Shahab-3 missiles means that Tehran itself is juxtaposing its intention to destroy Israel with the military means to carry it out. Reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency last year contained information that Iran was seeking to remove the conventional warhead from a Shahab-3 missile and replace it with a spherical nuclear device.
2013-09-25 00:00:00
Full Article