Iranian group signing up potential martyrs

[Phlegm]

From Reuters:

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Some 200 Iranians have volunteered in the past few days to carry out "martyrdom missions" against U.S. and British interests around the world if Iran is attacked, a hard-line group said Sunday.

The United States and other Western nations accuse Iran of seeking to master enrichment technology to build atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies. Washington says it wants a diplomatic solution, but has not ruled out a military option.

The news of potential martyrs came as The Institute for Science and International Security, a U.S. think tank, said Sunday that Iran has expanded its uranium conversion facilities in Isfahan and reinforced its Natanz underground uranium enrichment plant.

The fresh fears over a possible U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear sites helped attract volunteers during its latest recruitment drive, Mohammad Ali Samadi, spokesman for the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, said.

"Because of the recent threats, we have started to register more volunteers since Friday," Samadi told Reuters by telephone.

"Some 200 people have registered to carry out operations against our enemies. America and Britain are definitely considered enemies."

Chanting "Death to America" and "Nuclear technology is our right", volunteers registered their names at the former American Embassy in southern Tehran on Sunday.

"We will give a good lesson to those who dare to attack our country," said Ali, a 25-year-old masked volunteer, after filling out registration form.

When asked why he had covered his face, Ali said: "I do not want to be recognized when traveling abroad to harm American and British interests."

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which says it has no affiliation with the government, was formed in 2004. Since then Samadi said some 52,000 people have signed up to be involved in possible attacks.

The Sunday Times of London, quoting unnamed Iranian officials, reported Iran had 40,000 trained suicide bombers prepared to strike western targets if Iran is attacked.

"The main force, named the Special Unit of Martyr Seekers in the Revolutionary Guards, was first seen last month when members marched in a military parade," the report said.

But Samadi denied the report.

"The Revolutionary Guards have no links to martyrdom-seeking operations. We are the only martyrdom seeking group in Iran," he said. "And we are an independent group."

In Sunday's New York Times a former White House counterterrorism expert said Iran's response to any U.S. military attack would be to use "its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world".

"Iran has forces at its command far superior to anything al Qaeda was ever able to field," wrote former White House counterterror chief Richard Clarke and former State Department official Steven Simon.


The Institute for Science and International Security said in an e-mail with commercial satellite photos attached sent to news media that Iran has built a new tunnel entrance at Isfahan, where uranium is processed into a feed material for enrichment.

Just two entry points existed in February, it said.

"This new entrance is indicative of a new underground facility or further expansion of the existing one," said the think tank, led by ex-U.N. arms inspector and nuclear expert David Albright.

ISIS also released four satellite images taken between 2002 and January 2006 it said showed Natanz's two subterranean cascade halls being buried by successive layers of earth, apparent concrete slabs and more earth and other materials.

The roofs of the halls now appear to be 26 feet (8 meters) underground, ISIS said.

The revelations came one week after Iran announced it had enriched uranium for use in power stations for the first time, stoking a diplomatic debate over Western suspicions of a covert Iranian atomic bomb project.

Iran has said it seeks only nuclear energy for its economy.

The U.N. Security Council, wielding the threat of sanctions against Iran, has urged Tehran to halt enrichment activity and asked U.N. nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei to report on the Iranian response on April 28. Iran stood its ground during a visit by ElBaradei last week.

U.S. President George W. Bush has dismissed reports of plans for a U.S. military strike against Iran as "wild speculation" and said he remained focused on diplomacy to defuse a standoff over Iran's nuclear activities between Tehran and Western countries.

But analysts said Iran was not taking any chances.

"Iran is taking extraordinary precautions to try to protect its nuclear assets. But the growing talk of eliminating Iran's nuclear program from the air is pretty glib," Albright told Reuters by telephone from Washington.

Despite Bush's denial, former Iran President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said Tehran could not discount the possibility of a U.S. military strike.

"We stress at the same time that it would not be in the interest of the United States, nor us," Rafsanjani, who heads a council that arbitrates Iranian legislative disputes, said during a visit to Syria.

"Harm will not only engulf the Islamic Republic of Iran, but the region and everybody," the influential Iranian leader told a news conference with Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Shara.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told Spain's ABC daily that the situation was already "too heated" to withstand any further aggravation.

"I still think the best solution is a negotiated one, and I don't see what would be solved by a military operation," he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

"I hope that the will to negotiate prevails and that the military option proves to be only speculation."

[Harrison]

26 feet underground?