IT´S ON - Iran opens garrison to recruit suicide bombers against West

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Iran opens garrison to recruit suicide bombers against West Fri. 22 Jul 2005


Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jul. 22 – A military garrison has been opened in Iran to recruit and train volunteers for “martyrdom-seeking operations”, according to the garrison’s commander, Mohammad-Reza Jaafari.

Jaafari, a senior officer in the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), told a hard-line weekly close to Iran’s ultra-conservative President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the new “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison” (Gharargahe Asheghane Shahadat, in Persian) would recruit individuals willing to carry out suicide operations against Western targets.

The full text of the original interview in Persian can be seen on the weekly’s website at www.partosokhan.ir/283/page08.pdf .

“The Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison has been activated and we will form a Martyrdom-seeking Division for each province in the country, organised in brigades, battalions and companies to defend Islam”, Jaafari told the weekly Parto-Sokhan.

The weekly is published in the Shiite holy city of Qom by the Imam Khomeini Educational and Research Institute. The institute’s chairman, hard-line cleric Ayatollah Mohammad-Taghi Mesbah Yazdi, is regarded as the ideological mentor of President-elect Ahmadinejad.

The weekly carried a report in its July 13 issue on a meeting between Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi and the commander of Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison. Jaafari was quoted by the weekly as saying that the organisation of "martyrdom-seeking popular forces" was being implemented on the basis of instructions from the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

In the earlier interview, the garrison commander spoke in glowing terms of the newly-elected president.

“I have personally met Dr. Ahmadinejad, the distinguished mayor of Tehran”, Jaafari said. “He is a Bassiji [member of the Revolutionary Guards’ paramilitary forces] and I recommend other officials to make him a role model”.

The commander said that “in Tehran alone, there will be four martyrdom-seeking divisions”, adding that “we are currently in the process of recruitment and organisation and soon volunteers will receive training in accordance to their assigned missions”.

The weekly’s interview with Jaafari appeared under the title, “Commander of Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison: Let America and Israel know, each of our suicide volunteers equals a nuclear bomb”.

Jaafari told the weekly that his organisation had set up branches all over Iran and was in particular aiming to convince young persons to enlist for “martyrdom-seeking operations”.

“One of our garrison’s aims is to spot martyrdom-seeking individuals in society and then recruit and organise them, so that, God willing, at the right moment when the Commander-in-Chief of the country’s armed forces [Ayatollah Khamenei] gives the order, they would be able to enter the scene and carry out their missions”, Jaafari said.

“The Imam [Khomeini] said years ago that Israel must be wiped off the face of the Earth, but so far practical steps have not been taken to achieve this”, the garrison commander said. “Our garrison must spot, recruit, organise and train martyrdom-seeking persons to be able to materialise this objective. Any delay in fulfilling the strategy of the Imam and the Supreme Leader in this regard will not be to the advantage of Islam or the revolution”.

“The United States should know that we have nuclear weapons, but they are in the hearts of our suicide bombers”, Jaafari added.

Jaafari is a senior commander who has met with Khamenei on several occasions, according to the interview. He was chairman of the First Conference in Honour of Unknown Martyrs in Tehran earlier this month. The event was widely reported by Iran’s state-run media, which cited Jaafari’s remarks.