[OG Note: On one of the news shows, probably Fox, I saw a pro-American demo in Teheran after the attacks, brutally broken up by the authorities.]

NYPost

IRAN REFUSES TO HELP ‘DISGUSTING' AMERICANS

September 27, 2001 -- TEHRAN - Iran's supreme leader ruled out Iranian help for any U.S.-led attack on neighboring Afghanistan, saying yesterday that the United States was not "competent" to lead a global campaign, and calling American behavior "disgusting."

In a state-run television address to the nation, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the U.S. administration was "over-expectant" in wanting the whole world to help following the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"Iran will not participate in any move under U.S. leadership. Iran will not extend any assistance to the U.S. and its allies in attacking the already suffering Muslim neighboring Afghanistan," Khamenei said.

America's behavior, by expecting help but not earning the respect of other nations, was "disgusting," Khamenei said, adding that Iran did not consider the United States "competent and sincere [enough] to lead any global campaign against terrorism." He did not elaborate.

Khamenei's remarks were the clearest made yet by Iran in response to suggestions that Washington may call on Iran to join a U.S.-led global force to fight terrorism.

Iran considers the United States its biggest enemy, but a strong reform movement in the government favors warming ties with the West. Washington has put Iran on a list of nations supporting terrorism.

During the past few days, Iran expressed its opposition to unilateral retaliatory U.S. military strikes against the Taliban, who harbor Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the terrorist atrocities. Iran has called for an international anti-terror coalition led by the United Nations - not Washington.

In his speech, Khamenei, the leader of anti-reform hard-liners, also rejected America's declaration to the world that nations had to choose between being "with us or terrorism."

"We are not with you," he said. "At the same time, we are not with terrorists."

The United States wants Mideast support - from use of military installations or airspace to intelligence - as it builds forces for an expected assault on bin Laden's operations in Afghanistan.

In another regional rebuff yesterday, Saudi Arabia said it won't let the United States use its bases to strike Afghanistan, saying Turkey and the former Soviet republics would better serve America.

Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, said his country, the birthplace of Islam, could not be involved in any "carpet-bombing" of Muslims in Afghanistan.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

Answers

Washington has put Iran on a list of nations supporting terrorism.

we'll get back to you.

LOL

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001

NYDailyNews

Defiant Islamic Axis Forming

Since Sept. 11, President Bush has emphasized again and again that the struggle against terror isn't a war on the Muslim world. He says that Islam means peace.

This is not idle theological speculation by the President. It is a rhetorical necessity if Bush is going to find allies among the Islamic nations of the Middle East and Central Asia.

Yesterday, Bush got a resounding no from one of the world's most influential Muslim nations, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

"How dare you request help [from us] in order to attack the innocent Muslim nation of Afghanistan?" demanded the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the crowd chanted, "Death to America."

And so the Islamic Terror Axis continues to take shape.

It includes the Taliban government of Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden's group, Al Qaeda, Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, and Iraq.

'We Defy You'

Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq is nominally nationalist and secular, but it is mobilizing Islam in the war against the West. Last Friday, on Iraqi state controlled television (there is no other kind) one of the country's leading official clerics (there is no other kind), Bakir Abdul Razek said: "By Allah's will, the Americans will not defeat us. We call for jihad and we defy you, the Americans."

The Islamic axis also is supported by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two wildly popular Palestinian fundamentalist movements.

This week both groups bitterly denied reports that they intend to suspend their suicide bombings of Israeli citizens — which they regard as a religious commandment.

This slander against Hamas and the Islamic Jihad was presumably spread by Yasser Arafat in an effort to diminish the prestige of his rivals. He is under intense American pressure to turn his back on the axis, but the odds against that are very long. This week Arafat was handed a list of more than 100 Palestinian terrorists, some of whom have murdered U.S. citizens as well as Israelis. Either he locks them up (a very dim possibility) or he will find himself in the position of harboring known terrorists.

Syria has the same problem. It hosts more than a dozen international terrorist organizations (including a faction of the Japanese Red Army), all of which are under the patronage of Syrian warlords. Any effort by the young Syrian president, Bashar Assad, to clean house on behalf of the U.S. would almost certainly be life-threatening.

Resisting the Call

Not all Islamic countries and groups belong to the Islamic axis. Pakistan is with the U.S. — at least for now. Turkey has put its air space and bases at the disposal of America. And it appears that the former Soviet republics in Central Asia — like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — intend to cooperate.

Some Arab countries, too, have resisted the call to jihad. Jordan's King Abdullah has bravely and forthrightly sided with the United States. Egypt is also on America's side, although a little less bravely and a little less unequivocally.

Saudi Arabia, supposedly an American friend, has paid lip service to the war on terrorism. But out of Islamic solidarity, it has declined to let the U.S. stage missions from its bases in the kingdom. But the Saudi no isn't final. They, and the other Muslim fence-sitters, will decide whether Islam really means peace as soon as they decide whether George W. Bush really means business.

-- Anonymous, September 27, 2001