An exemplary army unit parades on the occasion of Army Day in Tehran, April 18.

TEHRAN, April 18--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday the Iranian Army will withstand foreign aggressors during its missions and curtail their interference.
Speaking on the occasion of Army Day in Tehran, the chief executive said the Iranian Army is a defensive, and not an offensive entity, and fully prepared to carry out its missions, IRNA reported.
“The Iranian nation is the flag-bearer of monotheism, justice and human dignity throughout the world and opposes injustices, irrespective of the place,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad pointed out that the Iranian nation is against the oppression and aggression of any country.
Emphasizing that the Iranian nation neither oppresses anyone nor allows anyone to oppress it, he said the Iranian nation favors establishment of peace and security throughout the world.
“Our nation favors the establishment of good ties with all nations and governments, except the Zionist regime of Israel,“ he said.
The president also said the Iranian Army is responsible for defending the independence, dignity and security of Iranian nation and simultaneously looking to fulfill its duties under the guidance of the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei. “Some foreign powers thought that they can weaken Iran by imposing economic sanctions on Iran. However, the youth and the creative army managers managed to meet the army’s needs in all areas and equip the army with state-of-the-art weapons,“ he said.
Ahmadinejad noted that the Iranian Army is self-sufficient and serves the goals of peace, brotherhood and security in the region. The president asked the armed forces, particularly the army, to be more prepared than ever.
After Ahmadinejad’s statements, exemplary army units paraded. Different air defense systems, missiles, radar systems and armed-personnel carriers were also displayed during the parade.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 18--Car bombs killed nearly 170 people in Baghdad on Wednesday in the deadliest attacks in the city since US and Iraqi forces launched a security crackdown aimed at halting the country’s slide into sectarian civil war.
One car bomb alone in the mainly Shiite Sadriya neighborhood killed 118 people and wounded 139, police said.
“The street was transformed into a swimming pool of blood,“ Ahmed Hameed, a shopkeeper near the scene, told Reuters.
The apparently coordinated attacks--there were five within a short space of time--occurred hours after Shiite Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki said Iraq would take security control of the whole country from foreign forces by the end of the year.
More than 200 people were wounded in total.
Maliki is under growing pressure to say when US troops will leave, but the attacks in mainly Shiite areas of Baghdad underscored the huge security challenges.
American and Iraqi forces began deploying thousands of more troops onto Baghdad’s streets in February.
Sectarian death squads killings have declined, but car bombs are much harder to stop, US military officials say.
The bombings could inflame sectarian passions in Baghdad, especially among the Mehdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr. Sunni Islamist Al-Qaeda is blamed for most of the major bombings targeting Shiites in Iraq.
“There is no magic solution to put out the fire of sectarian sedition that some are trying to set up, especially Al-Qaeda,“ Maliki said in a speech made on his behalf before the attacks.
“Sunnis are not the enemy of the Shiites and Shiites are not the enemy of Sunnis.“
Among the other attacks, police said a suicide car bomber killed 35 people at a checkpoint in Sadr City, the stronghold of the firebrand cleric. A third car bomb attack in the capital killed 10 people, police said.
The Sadriya bombing was the highest death toll in a single attack in Baghdad since a truck bomb killed 135 people and wounded 305 in the same area on February 3.
Baghdad has been the epicenter of violence in Iraq since suspected Sunni Al-Qaeda militants blew up a holy Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra in February 2006.
In a speech at a ceremony marking the handover of southern Maysan province from British to Iraqi control, Maliki said three provinces in the autonomous Kurdistan region would be next, followed by Karbala and Wasit provinces.
“Then it would be province by province until a full transfer had been completed by the end of the year,“ Maliki said in the speech, read by National Security Adviser Mowaffaq Al-Rubaie.
Maysan is the fourth of Iraq’s 18 provinces to be handed to Iraqi security forces, joining Muthanna, Najaf and Dhi Qar, all predominantly Shiite and relatively calm regions in the south.
Maliki says Iraq’s security forces will only take back control from foreign forces when ready, and he urged patience.

TEHRAN, April 18--A prominent police official said on Wednesday the police will arrest illegal foreign nationals as of April 21.
Brigadier-General Mohammad Ali Rahnama, the head of Immigration and Foreign Nationals Department of the Islamic Republic of Iran Police, told reporters in Tehran that in the first phase, illegal Afghans will be gathered from 11 provinces, IRNA reported.
He noted that the first phase of operations will include the provinces of Sistan-Baluchestan, Khorasan Razavi, South Khorasan, Isfahan, Kerman, Qom, Fars, Yazd, Semnan and Hormuzgan.
“The plan for collecting illegal nationals will gradually be implemented until the end of the current Iranian year (started March 21) in all provinces,“ he said.
Rahnama pointed out that 1.5 million illegal Afghans are residing in Iran.
“Afghans residing in Iran are divided into three different groups. The first group consists of about 13,000 Afghans who have legally entered with valid Afghan passports and Iranian visa. Afghans who left Afghanistan as a result of social crises belong to the second group.
The third group pertains to those who have illegally entered Iran and are nearly 1.5 million,“ he said.
He further said that the third group of Afghans is also divided into two subgroups.
“Firstly, those Afghans who have legally entered the country but their presence in Iran is illegal. Secondly, those (about one million) whose both entry and presence in Iran is illegal,“ he said.
Rahnama also said that about 65 human smuggling bands have been dismantled in the country.
Some 2.73 million foreign tourists entered the country last year (ended March 20) while 2.45 million departed.

Gholamreza Aqazadeh

TEHRAN, April 18--A top nuclear official said on Wednesday the world is currently the scene of media war and news machinations.
Visiting the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) with his deputies and officials of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization (IAEO), Gholamreza Aqazadeh, vice president and head of IAEO, made the remark during talks with IRNA Chief Jalal Fayyazi.
Emphasizing IRNA’s influence on international, regional and national developments, Aqazadeh noted that the government should invest in the media for turning it into a superior regional power.
“Generating thought is one of the duties of the media, including IRNA. The government should do its best to train media experts,“ he said.
Aqazadeh thanked IRNA for promoting the objectives of the Islamic system by fulfilling its role in a satisfactory manner.
Fayyazi, for his part, said cooperation between IRNA and IAEO in different fields, including information dissemination regarding Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities, is of paramount importance.

EGGENDORF, Austria, April 18--Experts from around the globe gathered at a rural military facility Wednesday for a training exercise aimed at boosting their performance during nuclear emergencies.
The roughly 180 participants--including government agencies, institutes, companies and nuclear power plants located as far apart as Australia, Canada, Germany and Iran--spent the day detecting, identifying and measuring radiation on the sprawling compound south of the capital, Vienna.
Wednesday’s session was part of a five-day training program that began Monday and was organized by Austrian Research Centers GmbH, in cooperation with the Austrian Armed Forces and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog.
The aim was to prepare participants, divided into teams, for emergency situations such as terrorist attacks and other scenarios involving radiation leaks, AP reported.
Radiation poisoning grabbed headlines late last year when Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer, died in a London hospital after being poisoned by radioactive polonium-210.
Organizers, including Brig. Gen. Norbert Fuerstenhofer of the Austrian NBC Defense School, said they hoped the event would enable participants to learn from each other and to make connections that could come in handy in case of an actual emergency.
“International networking is very important,“ Fuerstenhofer told a group of journalists invited to observe the training. “You need to know your colleagues.“
The teams worked against the clock to perform a variety of tasks across the compound--a former explosives factory sometimes used to practice earthquake rescue techniques.
Participant Kathleen Heppell-Masys, director general for nuclear safety of Canada’s Department of National Defense, said her team had already learned a lot.
“Our intent is to learn how to work together in an emergency situation,“ Heppell-Masys said, as members of her team tried to identify and quantify the radioactive substance in a barrel on the ground behind her.
On Thursday, the teams will share their know-how by letting others view their “mobile labs“.

HAMEDAN, April 18--Most of the key figures of Jundollah, the group of Iran’s wanted terrorist Abdul Malek Rigi, have been killed, announced a senior official on Tuesday.
Talking to reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of public relations managers of Hamedan province, Mojtaba Mir-Abdollahi, director general of the Interior Ministry’s Public Relations Office, said the terrorist gang operating in the mountainous areas of southwest Zahedan has been used by foreign intelligence services as a tool against the Islamic system, Fars News Agency reported.
“The Interior Ministry, in cooperation with the Intelligence Ministry, succeeded in confronting the chief thugs of Jundollah branches,“ he said.
Rigi, who is responsible for the death and injury of more than 50 ethnic Baluchi Iranians, has so far killed and taken hostage several Iranian border guards.
In the gang’s latest terrorist operation in the city of Zahedan in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, a bomb was planted in a bus carrying the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps staff, killing 11.
Iran says the United States harbors and trains the Rigi gang for carrying out terrorist operations inside Iran and destabilizing the country by supporting separatist movements.
The US television station ABC recently revealed that the US has been channeling funds to the Jundollah terrorists.
The Voice of America recently interviewed Rigi, which was condemned by Iran. Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini deplored the interview and called it a clear manifestation of the American double standards in its so-called “anti-terrorism campaign“.
He said the VOA interviewed the man despite its full knowledge of Rigi’s drug trafficking gang and his leading role in the kidnapping and massacre of innocent civilians.
Meanwhile, several police officers have been convicted for failing to fulfill their duties in the Tasouki incident, a judicial official said on Wednesday.
According to IRNA, Mohammad Kazem Bahrami, the head of Armed Forces Judicial Organization, did not elaborate on the number of police officers involved or the probable sentences awaiting these officers.
Rejecting charges of conspiracy with bandits, Bahrami said they only failed to discharge their duties.
On March 25, 2006, armed bandits blocked the Zahedan-Zabol Highway in Tasouki region, Sistan-Baluchestan province, and fired bullets at passing cars, killing 22, injuring six and taking eight people as hostages.
Later, four of these hostages were killed and three of them were released. The fate of one hostage is still unclear.
The video footage of their brutal killing was broadcast on a number of Arab TV channels.
The Jundollah terrorist group claimed the attack.