TEHRAN - Iran will make the strategic Gulf region unsafe for all if it comes under attack by the United States over it nuclear programme, the deputy head of the elite Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday.
"If the Americans make the slightest mistake, the security of the region will be endangered. Security in the Persian Gulf should be for all or none," Yadollah Javani told the official IRNA news agency.
"The Persian Gulf is a strategic region and if it is endangered they (Americans) will suffer losses and our response will be firm.
"We will defend ourselves if America or Israel resort to any hostile measures against our vital values," he added.
The international community led by the United States has stepped up pressure on Iran over its controversial nuclear programme amid concerns that the Islamic republic is engaged in a covert nuclear weapons programme, a charge Tehran vehemently denies.
The United States and Israel have not ruled out a military strike to stop Iran's alleged atomic ambitions.
Javani's declaration preceded comments by the top US military officer on Sunday that a plan to attack Iran was ready, if needed to stop the Islamic republic from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
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WASHINGTON - The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff says the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran, although he thinks a strike is probably a bad idea.
Adm. Mike Mullen, the nation's highest-ranking military officer, has often warned that a military strike on Iran would have serious and unpredictable ripple effects around the Middle East. At the same time, he says the risk of Iran developing a nuclear weapon is unacceptable.
Mullen would not say which risk he thinks is worse. But he tells NBC's "Meet The Press" that a military strike remains an option if need be.
And he says that, should it come to that, the military has a plan at hand. He didn't elaborate.
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TEHRAN - Iran will set Tel Aviv on fire if Israel attacks the Islamic republic over its controversial nuclear programme, newspapers on Sunday quoted Iran's envoy to the United Nations as saying.
"If the Zionist regime commits the slightest aggression against the Iranian soil, we will set the entire war front and Tel Aviv on fire," Mohammad Khazai said in the northeastern town of Kashmar, the Farhang-e Ashti daily reported.
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In a message on the 22nd anniversary of the massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners in Iran in the summer of 1988, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, called for the establishment of an international tribunal to put on trial the criminals responsible for the massacre. Mrs. Rajavi said: According to all the evidence and on the basis of opinions submitted by international jurists and stipulations of human rights organizations, this massacre was a flagrant example of both crimes against humanity as well as genocide. This is because its main objective was to eradicate a specific sociopolitical movement that harbored a particular belief, namely in a democratic and tolerant Islam.
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SAO PAULO - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva offered on Saturday to provide refuge to a woman who has been sentenced to death in Iran following her conviction for committing adultery.
The case created an international outcry when Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani initially was sentenced to death by stoning. Iran withdrew that part of the sentence earlier this month, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging.
During a campaign rally for his party's presidential candidate, Silva appealed to Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, "to allow Brazil to grant political asylum to this woman."
"If she is causing problems there, we will welcome her here," Silva added, according to Brazil's official news service, Agencia Brasil.
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Under severe international pressure to end its uranium enrichment program and nervous about being besieged by a growing U.S. military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Iran appears bent on increasing its leverage by supporting insurgents to tie down U.S. troops in a long, unpopular and costly war.

"I think Iran is playing all sides in the Afghan conflict," said Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Islamic militancy and author of a book on the Taliban.

"Tehran and the Taliban have a common enemy. I have no doubt that Iran has been involved in channelling money and arms to various elements in Afghanistan for the last few years."
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The death sentence for Jafar Kazemi, an Iranian post-election detainee, has been sent for execution after being approved by the appeals court.
Nasim Qanavi, Kazemi's attorney, confirmed the news and told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran that her request to review the case has been denied and at the moment there is no other legal avenue to save the life of Jafar Kazemi.
Kazemi was arrested last September in Tehran's 7th Tir Square and kept in solitary confinement for 74 days.
Kazemi is accused of "enmity against God through sympathizing with the People's Mojahedin of Iran Organizations", a dissident group that the Islamic Republic considers as one of its archenemies. However, his attorney maintains that her client merely participated in the post-election gatherings and perhaps chanted a few slogans but the "charge of enmity against God does not apply to him."

...Jafar Kazemi is a lithographer at the University of Amir Kabir. He was also incarcerated for nine years in the 1980s.
Roudabeh Akbari, Kazemi's wife has appealed to the UN Secretary General in a letter to help stop the execution of his husband.
The Islamic Republic has handed the death sentence to a number of protesters who were arrested in the course of widespread protests to the allegedly fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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