Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Jafari is the NEW head of the IRGC, appointed in September. Just to remind you, he is the guy that was previously tasked with and in charge of the Lovers of Martyrdom Brigade. Shortly after his appointment Jafari said that the IRGC was switching its military tactics from conventional to guerilla, which basically means they are ready to deploy any number of their 50,000 individuals in the Lovers of Martyrdom Brigade as suicide bombers.

TEHRAN, Iran - The head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards dismissed the possibility of a U.S. military action against Iran and warned that his forces would respond with an “even more decisive” strike if attacked, an Iranian news agency reported Friday.

The comments by Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari came after the United States announced sweeping new sanctions against Iran focusing on the Revolutionary Guards, a force that is tasked with protecting Iran’s Islamic government and reports to the country’s supreme leader.

The sanctions step up tensions between the United States and Iran, where many fear Washington is planning military action. The U.S. accuses the Guards of supporting terrorism by backing Shiite militants in Iraq. Washington also accuses Tehran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons and has vowed to prevent it from doing so—though the Bush administration insists it is seeking diplomatic means. Iran denies trying to build weapons.

Asked about the possibility of an American strike on Iran, Jafari told reporters late Thursday that, “These words are just exaggerations, and I don’t consider them a threat,” the news agency ISNA reported.

“The Islamic Republic has the strength and power of its people’s faith. This power is joined with experience, knowledge and technology in the realms of defense. The enemy knows it cannot make any mistake, so these words are just exaggeration,” he said.

The sanctions ban U.S. dealings with the extensive network of businesses believed linked to the Guards—and put stepped-up pressure on international banks to cut any ties with those firms.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini dismissed the new U.S. measures as “worthless and ineffective” and said they were “doomed to fail as before.”

Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi vowed that anyone who attacks Iran would “find itself faced with a hard and crushing response,” though he said the probability of American attack is “very small.”

“America knows well that while it can start such an attack, how it ends will not be in Washington’s hands, and such an attack will lead to America’s collapse,” he told journalists during a visit to Kuwait on Thursday, according to the Iranian state news agency IRNA.