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Iran Source: President Ahmadinejad Arrested

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Photo Credit: WNDIranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was arrested and held for seven hours Monday and warned to keep his mouth shut about matters detrimental to the Islamic regime before he was released, according to a source within the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence unit.

After his visit to Tehran’s 26th international book fair Monday, the source said the head of Ahmadinejad’s security team informed the Iranian president that he had been asked to appear at the supreme leader’s office for an urgent matter.

On the way to the meeting, contact between the security team within the president’s convoy was disconnected while three other cars joined the convoy, instructing the lead car to take a different direction. Ahmadinejad, instead of being taken to the supreme leader’s office, was taken to a secret location in one of the buildings belonging to the Foreign Ministry, which is under the control of the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence unit.

As soon as Ahmadinejad exited the car, he and his security team were involved in an altercation with Guards’ members in which his team was disarmed and communications equipment confiscated. Ahmadinejad was then forced to enter an office belonging to Hossein Taeb, the head of the Guards’ intelligence, located underneath the building.

As this was happening, the source said, hundreds of other Guards’ members from the intelligence unit sought out Ahmadinejad’s associates throughout Tehran and questioned them on the existence of documents detrimental to the regime.

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American Pastor Now Moved to Solitary in Iran may be Suffering Organ Failure

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Photo Credit: ACLJThe American pastor jailed in Iran for his faith has been placed in solitary confinement and may now be suffering organ failure, according to family members in Iran who are increasingly alarmed at his deteriorating health.

Saeed Abedini, the 32-year-old Christian and American citizen who is serving an eight-year prison term in Iran, was put in solitary confinement following a “peaceful, silent protest” in an outside courtyard at Iran’s notoriously brutal Evin prison, according to family members. Conditions at the prison prompted Abedini and other prisoners to sign a petition decrying the lack of medical care and the threats and harsh treatment facing family members who come to visit.

The protest angered prison officials who retaliated by placing Abedini and nine others in solitary confinement.

“Saeed had previously told his family that when he was in solitary confinement in the past, that was the hardest time in his life. That every hour was like one year and that he was losing his memory and his health was deteriorating quickly,” said his wife, Naghmeh Abedini, who is at the family’s home in Idaho with their two young children.

“We believe that he is being beaten in solitary confinement. We have no way of finding out about his health. There will be no more visitations allowed and we will have no way of knowing how Saeed is doing,” she said.

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Israeli Minister: Nuclear Iran is Like 30 Nuclear North Koreas (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTubeInternational Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz warned on Sunday that Iran having a nuclear weapon would be equal to “thirty nuclear North Koreas”.

“We have the right and the ability to defend ourselves,” he said in a speech at the Jerusalem Post Conference in New York. “The cooperation with the United States is very important but ultimately each country will make its own decisions on maintaining its security,” said Steinitz, stressing that “Israel can deal with any threat.”

80 years ago, said Steinitz, “only one person identified on time and warned the world against the rearmament of Nazi Germany. This was Winston Churchill, but people refused to listen. Some people even mocked him.”

Watch video here:

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New Persian Rulers: Iran's Military has Apparently Supplanted the Clerics

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Photo Credit: APIranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “has become a hostage” of an elite branch of Iran’s army that has quietly consolidated its economic and political power, a top analyst said Tuesday.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) appears to have supplanted Khamenei and other top clerics in a significant power shift that has left Iran a “military dictatorship,” according to Ali Alfoneh, who has spent years investigating the IRGC.

Khamenei “has become a hostage in the hands of his own praetorian guard,” Alfoneh said Tuesday during a discussion hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

Thirty-four years since the Iranian revolution installed an extremist Islamic leader, the country has “degenerated into a military dictatorship which is disguising itself. … They want to preserve the illusion the regime” is still in power, he said.

The IRGC, Iran’s principal fighting force in its 1980 war with Iraq, has quietly seized control of Iran’s economy and political bodies and controls around $80 billion in private economic assets, according to Alfoneh.

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Iran Warns of World War III

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Iran ratcheted up its vitriol against Israel and the United States over the weekend, warning that an attack on the Islamic regime’s nuclear facilities could lead to global war.

The rhetoric eerily matched that currently coming out of North Korea against its perceived enemies.

“Iran will not stand by in the face of such aggression,” Ali Ahani, Iran’s ambassador to France, said Sunday, according to the Islamic regime’s PressTV. “This can entail a chain of violence that may lead to World war III. A potential Israeli attack against Iran with an objective of destroying its scientific and nuclear facilities is sheer madness. Its consequences are disastrous and uncontrollable.”

The deputy chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Brig. Gen Masoud Jazayeri, warned the United States on Saturday that Iran would continue its nuclear program.

“We would not trade off our rights,” he said, adding that Iran would stand with North Korea in its faceoff with America.

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Pentagon Slip May Cause Israel to Fast-Track Plans to Attack Iran

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Analysts fear a dramatic advance in North Korea’s nuclear missile technology, revealed inadvertently during a Congressional hearing Thursday, will quickly find its way to Iran — forcing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fast-track a long-contemplated attack against Tehran’s nuclear-enrichment facilities.

Pentagon officials are playing down a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment that North Korea probably has the ability to miniaturize a nuclear weapon and place it on an ICBM. U.S. officials say that miniaturization capability, if it exists, is untested and unreliable.

In February, North Korea detonated what is described as a “lighter, miniaturized atomic bomb.” At the time, there was speculation this could signal the Hermit Kingdom had developed a nuclear warhead that it could place on its long-range missiles. Pentagon officials, however, continued to insist North Korea was at least a year away from developing that capability.

Jerusalem Post defense analyst Yaakov Katz, author of “Israel vs. Iran: The Shadow War,” tells Newsmax that U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have generally agreed that it would take Iran six to 12 months to build a nuclear device once it tried to break out and enrich its material from the 20-percent to the 90-percent level required. Beyond that, intelligence experts have projected, it would then take Iran another year or two to produce a miniaturized warhead that could be installed on a missile.

Now, Katz says, the time lag between reaching nuclear capability and Iran’s ability to arm a missile with a nuclear warhead appears to have vanished. That means Thursday’s revelation could reduce Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s nonmilitary options against Iran, forcing the Jewish state to step up its timetable for attacking the Persian nation should it acquire enough enriched uranium to be a significant threat.

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House Intel Chair: The Iranians, Russians and Chinese are Already on Your PC

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Photo Credit: AP

The House Intelligence Committee is warning that “time is running out” before the next major cyberattack: The Russians, Iranians, Chinese and others are likely already on your computer.

“You have criminal organizations trying to get into your personal computer and steal your personal stuff. And by the way, the Chinese are probably on your computer, the Russians are probably on your personal computer, the Iranians are already there,” House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers (R.-MI). told Fox News.

“They’re trying to steal things that they think are valuable or use your computer to help them steal from someone else,” he said. “That’s a real problem.”

Experts say Rogers may be stretching the truth: most people’s computers likely aren’t infected by agents of foreign governments.

“The Iranians, the Chinese, and the Russians are probably already on my computer? Sheesh … I guess it must be getting pretty crowded in there,” joked Graham Cluley, a consultant with U.K. Web security company Sophos. But the threat Rogers describes is certainly real, he pointed out.

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Iranians Jailers Brutally Beat US Citizen, Cause Internal Bleeding, Fail to Render Medical Care

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Photo Credit: Fox News

The Iranian-American Christian pastor jailed in Iran for his faith again has been denied bail as he awaits proper medical treatment for serious injuries and internal bleeding sustained from brutal prison beatings, according to the family’s attorneys.

Saeed Abedini, the 32-year-old U.S. citizen imprisoned in Iran since September, purportedly was taken to an external hospital, but he was not admitted for treatment, according to sources close to the pastor who report that the medical specialist who was supposed to examine him was not in. Instead of seeing a different doctor, Abedini was returned to Evin Prison without receiving any medical treatment.

“This is yet another example of psychological abuse,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, the organization representing Abedini’s U.S.-based family.

“They got his hopes up about getting medical help, and either the Iranian government is incompetent or just that ruthless that they would play with people’s emotions and health,” Sekulow told Fox News.

In March, the government promised the pastor access to proper medical facilities and professionals after his attorneys brought it to the attention of the Iranian government that Abedini’s health was in jeopardy.

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Iran’s Incitement to Genocide: It's Not Just Ahmadinejad

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Photo Credit: Parmida76

Over the years, Americans have come to discount statements on Israel and Zionism by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Repetition has rendered them unremarkable.

Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Zionism is a “germ of corruption” that “will be wiped off the face of the earth.” It is a “cancer cell” that must be “removed from the body.” The Zionist regime is “heading toward annihilation.” “They should know that they are nearing the last days of their lives.” “Israel is destined for destruction and will soon disappear.”

One is tempted to add: blah, blah, blah. It is easy to dismiss this rhetoric as being designed for domestic consumption. And soon after Iran’s June election, Ahmadinejad will be out of a job — history’s most persuasive argument in favor of term limits.

But the problem is this: Ahmadinejad’s language is not exceptional within the Iranian regime.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also has referred to Israel as a “cancerous tumor.” “The perpetual subject of Iran,” he has explained, “is the elimination of Israel from the region.” “There is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state.” In recent weeks, Khamenei has promised, if the Iranian nuclear program is attacked, to “level down Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

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Iran: 2013 Will Be 'Fall of American Empire'

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Photo Credit: WND

The “American empire” will fall this year, the head of Iran’s Basij forces claimed Sunday, a message that was approved by the Islamic regime’s supreme leader.

“America should not think that with some diplomatic dialogue it can solve its dossier (problem) with the nation of Iran,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi said. “The path of this land is directed by the martyrs. America with its hollow slogans … thinks the Iranian nation will believe it.”

The Basij commander was speaking to an audience of the 10th conference of “Journey of Enlightened Land” commemorating the “martyrs” of the eight-year war with Iraq, according to the Journalist Club, an outlet run by the Revolutionary Guards intelligence division.

Naghdi called President Obama’s actions deceitful, saying, “Obama in letters sent to the Islamic Republic promised to put an end to the Iranian nuclear dossier but … reacted in a different way.”

As reported in January 2012, Iranian officials revealed the contents of an Obama letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that indicated a deep desire by the U.S. president for a dialogue with the radical leaders of Iran. Iranian officials also claimed that a subsequent oral message by Obama delivered through the Swiss ambassador in Tehran was even more revealing than the letter delivered to the Iranian supreme leader.

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