Iran 138

'Iranians Worry About Rumors of an American Attack
By Marie-Claude Decamps
Le Monde

A few days ago, Iranian newspapers echoed back a BBC report, according to which the United States was preparing an attack not only on the country's nuclear sites, but also on its military bases. Since then, nothing.
Publicly, no one mentions this possibility. Friday, February 23, the first day off after the International Agency for Atomic Energy (IAEA) delivered its report - damning for Iran - Tehran's streets, given over to the madness of weekend traffic, kept their silence. Even Friday prayers at the Great Mosque, a traditional locale for political diatribes during periods of crisis, were not followed by any spillover events: neither American flags burned, nor any demonstration, as is often the case.
The principal orator, former president Ali Akbar Hachemi Rafsandjani, kept a low profile. Concentrating on criticism of the poor management of the economy, he just added several phrases about "arrogant powers" that "are afraid of Islam's vitality." And, as he called all the while for a resumption of dialogue, he warned the United States that "if it pursues its policy, it will create new problems for itself, the region, and the whole world."
"Attack? The Americans have neither the courage nor the capacity to do so," declares a young soldier.
An old man raises his cane to the sky: "Allah will destroy them!" A mullah answers with a shrug of his shoulders, and a young couple refuses to comment.
Could the subject be taboo? Virtually, but privately Iranians wonder. "Seeing foreigners in my store reassures me: they haven't been evacuated on account of the danger," confides a merchant in the bazaar. Another confesses sotto voce "I can't keep myself from watching the sky every time an airplane flies low over the city."
"We, the Iranian people, are hostages to this extremist policy. The official message is: 'Don't think about anything; we think for you and we are ready,'" moodily explains Zarah, a student.
In the beginning of the week, when the American naval air group led by the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis met the Dwight Eisenhower group in the Gulf, the television continually broadcast images without commentary of the military maneuvers organized in sixteen Iranian provinces, emphasizing the 750 missiles and sophisticated munitions that were fired to repel a simulated air attack.'

Lees verder: http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3218,36-875835,0.html Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022607G.shtml