Revolutionary Guard Admits to Attacking America?

This seems an awful lot like an admission. 

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said they would not bow to pressure and threatened to “punch” the United States, in their first response to Washington’s plan to list them as a terrorist organization, newspapers reported Saturday.

Local press in the Iranian capital of Tehran quoted Revolutionary Guards leader Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi saying that he could understand Washington’s ire towards the group because of their recent successes against the United States.

Iran has claimed again and again that they are not supporting opposition forces in Iraq despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  And here we have the leader of their elite corps claiming that they have had “recent successes” against America.  What does that mean?  There are no declared or mutually acknowledged conflicts between the Revolutionary Guards and the U.S. Are they finally admitting that they are in active battle against America? 

Seems like it. 

And if so, isn’t it an act of war when an official military unit of a foreign government acts under orders to engage us in battle?

1. On the other hand, you could say Bush’s action is a direct provocation to the Iranian government. The rough equivalent would be the Iranian government saying, “Your Army, Navy, and Air Force are OK, but your Marines are a terrorist organization.” And of course the Iranians are meddling in Iraq; they share a lengthy border and have serious interests in seeing something friendly move in next door. The administration is naive if it thinks the Iranians are going to keep out of Iraq just because George W. Bush says so. They see a chance to support a Shi’a movement to fill the power vacuum left by the disaster in Iraq..

   The language of the Iranian statement just sounds like a boilerplate version of “Kiss my ass.” You hit the nail on the head, Owen. What does recent successes mean? It doesn’t mean anything except whatever they say it means.

   It’s all starting to sound suspiciously like the run-up to the Iraq war, though.

   Posted by (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on August 18, 2007 at 1703 hrs