Monday's Daily Briefing on Iran

DoctorZin reports, 9.12.2005:

Iran military says Katrina showed U.S. could be turned into “war zone”

Iran Focus: a pro-MEK website

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been following closely the way the United States government has been handling Hurricane Katrina, and drawing strategic conclusions from it.

In remarks that appeared on Ansar-e Hezbollah website on Sunday, a top official of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said the devastating hurricane had exposed America’s vulnerabilities.

“The mismanagement and the mishandling of the acute psychological problems brought about by Hurricane Katrina clearly showed that others can, at any given time, create a devastated war-zone in any part of the U.S.”, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, the official spokesman of the IRGC, said.

“If the U.S. attacks Iran, each of America’s states will face a crisis the size of Katrina”, he said, referring to the massive hurricane which hit the southern coast of the United States. “The smallest mistake by America in this regard will result in every single state in that country turning into a disaster zone”. READ MORE

WorldNetDaily fears that Iran is preparing an EMP attack on the U.S. The effect would be far more devastating than Katrina.

Here are a few other news items you may have missed.

• The Marze Por Gohar Party reported that Iranians from all over the United States are merging in New York to protest against the Islamic Republic president Ahmadi Nejad in New York City. A list of groups headed to NYC included.
• AFX News reported that Iranian Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who heads his country's atomic energy agency, said his country would not drop its nuclear energy programme whatever 'dividends' are offered by the outside world.
• Salman Rushdie, The Times followed up with his recent call for reform within Islam saying: Lesson One for the Modern Muslim: Remember, This is Not the 8th Century.
• Shirin Ebadi, Rooz Online warned that Iran's new government sponsored NGO's are providing wrong information regarding human rights conditions in Iran.
• Farid Zakaria, PBS interviewed Prince Reza Pahlavi on major issues like Democracy & Election in Iran. And audio clip and partial transcript here.
• Reuters reported that Iran's top nuclear official reminded the West that Tehran had powerful allies opposed to referring its suspected atomic weapons program to the U.N. Security Council.
• The New York Times reported that the assembly of more than 170 world leaders to mark the United Nations' 60th birthday gives Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a unique opportunity to advance U.S. foreign policy goals on several difficult fronts.
• Iranian blogger, Shahram Kholdi, S'CAN-IRANIC reported a few hardliner websites, whose credibility cannot be verified and cite their "informed sources", report that the assassins of Judge Moghaddas were two brothers. One of the brothers is currently under arrest.
• And finally, The Committee to Protect Bloggers has not been able to get any information on Omid Sheikhan since the third week in July. If anyone out there can find out if he is safe or not, please let them know.