QOM, Jan. 12--Majlis Speaker Gholamali Haddad Adel said as long as the nation remains united, Iran will not face any threat.
The speaker made the remark at a gathering of theologians at Qom’s Feizieh Theological School, IRNA reported.
“The unity and solidarity among people from all walks of life, including the clergy and scholars, will thwart the threats of enemies and even their sanctions,“ he said.
Commenting on the UN Security Council Resolution 1737 against Iran’s peaceful use of nuclear energy, he said Iranian officials have taken confidence-building measures in this regard.
“Though no deviation has been observed in the country’s nuclear programs, the United Nations Security Council was forced into taking an unreasonable decision against Iran under the pressure of colonial powers,“ he said.
“This is while, the sham and usurper Israeli regime, which has not even accepted the membership of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and even admitted to possession of atomic bombs, is immune to any international investigation.“
Haddad noted that such discriminatory approaches in the international political system call for the unity of all Iranians against the expansionist policies of the arrogant world powers.
“Iran will not give up its legitimate rights and the courageous Iranian youth will manage to access nuclear technology for peaceful purposes by themselves,“ he said.
Referring to the trial of the executed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, the speaker said he deserved to be executed thousands of times.
Haddad questioned the reason for making Saddam stand trial only for the genocide of people in one village.
“The so-called advocates of human rights executed Saddam Hussein immediately to avoid the identification of major culprits and Saddam’s accomplices,“ he said.

Children carrying placards chant slogans for reducing air pollution and protecting the environment in this file photo.

TEHRAN, Jan. 12--State Inspectorate Organization announced that the lack of seriousness of state institutions has exacerbated air pollution, as Iran prepares to mark Clean Air Week.
The SIO’s recent report shows that absence of one organization to both administer and control air pollution in the country has resulted in the prevailing conditions, ISNA reported.
Tehran Municipality’s environmental advisor, Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, had earlier declared that 3,600 people died last November as a result of air pollution.
Heydarzadeh, who also heads the Clean Air Headquarters of Tehran Municipality, noted that improper planning has intensified air pollution and those responsible for tackling it have failed.
Referring to the fact that 88 percent of Tehran’s air pollution are linked to vehicles, Heydarzadeh opined that the concerned institutions have also failed to control the vehicles.
Meanwhile, the approvals of a 10-member committee titled “Executive Committee for Reduction of Air Pollution“ have been ineffective because many governmental and private institutions have not implemented them.
Emphasizing the inefficacy of the committee’s approvals, several experts and officials have called for forming a special air pollution court in Tehran.
A report by the World Bank shows that the annual losses inflicted by air pollution in Iran amount to 14,420 billion rials that equals 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product.
Clean Air Week in Iran coincides with Jan.
13-19.

WASHINGTON,
Jan. 12--President George W. Bush faces political warfare with the US Congress over his plan to send more troops to Iraq, with even legislators from his Republican Party resisting the strategy.
Bush and top aides came under withering criticism Thursday as they launched a hard sell to convince a nation weary of the war--which has claimed more than 3,000 US lives--that this final bid to send 21,500 more soldiers to Iraq can work, AFP reported.
The president appeared with US troops in Fort Benning, Georgia, to argue that the revised plan was “our best chance for success,“ while several of his top aides testified in Congress, now controlled by the opposition Democrats.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who heads to the Middle East Friday to sell the new US plan, endured a fearsome grilling before leaving at Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Peter Pace also faced tough questions when they testified before the House Armed Services Committee.
The new Iraq policy “represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, if it is carried out,“ said Senator Chuck Hagel, a member of Bush’s own Republican Party, commenting on the president’s late Wednesday speech.
“To ask our young men and women to sacrifice their lives, to be put in the middle of a civil war, is wrong,“ said Hagel, a Vietnam war veteran. “It’s...morally wrong. It’s tactically, strategically, militarily wrong.“
Another Republican, Senator Norm Coleman, said “the cost is too great“ in terms of US lives to support the Bush plan.
Democrat Joseph Biden ripped the Bush strategy as “a tragic mistake“.
“The result will be the loss of more American lives and our military stretched to the breaking point with little prospect of success,“ he said.
Democrats said they would hold votes on the Bush plan, which would increase pressure on the president and further undercut his support in Congress, but ultimately be symbolic.
Meanwhile, activists angered by Bush’s decision to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq staged protests from New York to San Francisco, saying the extra troops would only give insurgents thousands of new American targets.
Hundreds of antiwar protestors crammed onto a traffic island in New York’s Times Square, chanting “Stop the funding, stop the war“ as drivers in one of the world’s most famous intersections honked in support.
Rallies were also planned in Boston, California and other places.
Thursday’s protests were cast as a prelude to a bigger gathering starting Jan. 27 in Washington, where demonstrators plan to urge Congress to stand up to Bush, said Hany Khalil, a spokesman of United for Peace and Justice.

TEHRAN, Jan. 12--A top military commander said Iran’s foreign policy revolves around peace, stability and security in the Middle East.
Brigadier Yahya Rahim-Safavi, commander of the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC), made the remark on the first anniversary of Arafeh martyrs at Isfahan’s Golestan Cemetery on Thursday, IRNA reported.
Rahim-Safavi warned some Arab countries that cooperate in implementing American conspiracies against the Islamic Republic and stoke tensions in the region to take lessons from Saddam Hussein’s fate.
“Saddam’s fate and America’s behavior toward its handpicked lackey, who had become the swordsman of the region, must be a lesson to those who cooperate with America’s imperialist policies,“ he said.
The IRGC chief stressed that the nation, the Army and the Revolutionary Guards are stronger than at any other time in the past, and will not bow to any power.
“The blood of the martyrs of Islamic Iran will change the history of the Middle East region in favor of Islam and the oppressed. This transformation is not exclusive to the Middle East region. In Latin America, too, nations have risen to struggle against America, and in other parts of the world, people are opposed to American policies,“ he said.
Referring to the United States, Britain and the Zionist Israeli regime as the “Axis of Evil,“ Rahim-Safavi noted that America is killing the people of Iraq and Afghanistan every day.
“Having spent $300 billion and with 3,000 killed, America has not been able to create favorable conditions in Iraq. And in Lebanon, too, by imitating our martyrs, in a 33-day war, the Hezbollah defeated the Zionist Army, the largest army in the Middle East,“ he said.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 12--A night-time swoop by US forces on an Iranian office in northern Iraq triggered strong criticism Friday, with Kurdish leaders and even Moscow branding the raid unacceptable.
The raid on Thursday in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil was “absolutely unacceptable“ and “the crudest possible violation of the Vienna Convention on consular relations,“ ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said in a statement, AFP reported.
In the early hours of Thursday, US troops dropped from helicopters and stormed an Iranian liaison office in Iraqi Kurdistan and detained six Iranian employees.
The US military later said it had freed one of the six people detained in the controversial raid on the Iranian government building in Arbil, the capital of the northern Iraqi Kurdistan region. Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the office had not yet become a full-fledged consulate.
“It is a liaison office. There was a request to change it into consulate,“ Zebari told AFP, adding that the office had been operational for 10 years.
“We had already agreed with the Iranians to open consulates in Arbil and Sulaimaniyah in return for opening (Iraqi) consulates in (Iranian cities) Mashhad and Ahvaz. These procedures have not been finalized,“ he said.
Asked about the remaining five detainees, Zebari said: “They are not with us. They are with the Americans.
The US military confirmed that the five employees were in its custody. There were no clashes with security guards but US grenades shattered windows of the two-story building as troops ordered all those inside to surrender before lowering the Iranian flag and abandoning the premises. Fuad Hussein, a senior official in the Kurdish presidency, said the regional government, one of the staunchest US allies in the Middle East, had not been given advance warning about the arrest operation.
The office of the Iraqi Kurdish party leader, Massoud Barzani, in Arbil on Thursday condemned the US military raid and called for immediate release of Iranians detained during the operation.

GAZA CITY, Occupied Palestine, Jan. 12--Thousands of Hamas supporters poured into the streets of the Gaza Strip after Friday prayers to denounce one of Fatah’s most powerful leaders, ratcheting up tensions between the rival Palestinian factions.
Both the ruling Hamas movement and once-dominant Fatah have mounted large rallies in Gaza and the occupied West Bank in recent days, trying to whip up public support and project strength amid the mounting internal violence, AFP reported.
Hamas supporters emerged from mosques on Friday waving green Hamas flags and chanted slogans accusing Mohammad Dahlan, a Fatah strongman and possible successor to President Mahmoud Abbas, of being the mastermind of a ’coup’ against its nine-month-old government.
“Dahlan is a traitor,“ they chanted.
Hamas accused Dahlan in December of masterminding a plot to kill Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, a charge Dahlan denied.
Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, a Fatah spokesman, accused Hamas of trying to spark more fighting. “We urge Hamas to return to its senses before it is too late,“ he said.
At least 30 Palestinians have been killed in factional fighting since Abbas called last month for early elections to try to break a deadlock with Hamas.
“Listen Dahlan, our ideal is the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and not Olmert and Bush,“ Hamas supporters chanted, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Bush. “Listen Dahlan, our choice is Jihad. It is not treason.“
Abbas has chosen Dahlan to serve as security adviser, Palestinian officials said.
Dahlan is one of the few Palestinian officials that Israel allows to pass back and forth between Gaza and the West Bank using the Erez crossing.
Fatah accused Hamas of digging the tunnel and of planning to use it to carry out an attack.
The United States plans to provide Abbas with more than $86 million to help train and equip his presidential guard, stepping up Washington’s involvement in the power struggle.
Haniyeh accused the United States was pushing “an old colonial policy of divide and rule“.
The anti-Dahlan marches in Gaza on Friday came a day after thousands of Palestinians attended a pro-Fatah rally in the West Bank on Thursday.