Rick Santorum
2008-05-07 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

WASHINGTON -

As U.S. and Iraqi officials released new evidence this week of Iran’s training, funding and arming of terrorists in Iraq, Iranian cleric Ahmad Khatami said in a Friday prayer broadcast on state radio: “If maniacs in Washington or Tel Aviv seek to take [military] action, the Iranian nation will slap them so hard they will not get off the floor.”

The alarming rhetoric comes amid new reports that Iran has been providing Hezbollah facilities to train Iraqi militants.

U.S. military spokesman Col. Donald Bacon told journalists, “We have multiple detainees who state Lebanese Hezbollah are providing training to Iraqis in Iranian [Qods force] training camps near Tehran.”

The Qods are a wing of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guards and are a source of funding and training for Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

Also, evidence presented last week by Iraqi officials to the Iranians in Tehran of weapons smuggling and meddling in Iraq ... included Iranian missiles found in Basra.

Read more at www.eppc.org.