Up to 30 Tor-M1 units, will be used to defend key state and military facilities, foremost, nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Bushehr, Tehran and in the east of the country.

The contract, worth 1.4 billion U.S. dollars, is the biggest arms deal Iran and Russia have ever made.

Ivanov ruled out the possibility of terrorists using the Tor-M1air defense systems, saying, "By its technical parameters, the system cannot be used for terrorist activities."

"Russia is lagging far behind other countries in the volume of weapons supply to the Near and Middle East," he added.

The Tor-M1 unit is an all-weather air defense system intended for fulfilling air defense tasks at the battalion unit level. It ensures effective protection from cruise missiles, guided bombs, warplanes, helicopters, and pilotless and remotely controlled attack aircraft.

Ivanov said the two ministers focused on problems of nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies not only in respect to Iran.

"New threats that did not exist earlier have appeared which makes us focus more attention than before on the nonproliferation problem," Ivanov said.

"This is a very serious problem, international regimes should be strengthened, and in that sense the positions of Russia and Germany are fully identical," he said.

Ivanov said Russia will implement the contract to supply Tor-M1air defense systems to Iran in full. "Russia has signed a contract with Iran on supply of close-range air defense systems Tor-M1 to Iran. The contract will undoubtedly be fulfilled if no force major factors interfere."

"We strictly observe all our commitments, and if told that Russia allegedly helps in certain prohibited programs we say it is mere propaganda, " Ivanov added.

"You see, two big leaders of two great occupying countries are making such important confessions," Rafsanjani said in his Friday prayer sermon, which was carried live on Iran's state radio. Rafsanjani said that the two would also make such confessions about Iran if they do not give up their hard stance toward Iran's nuclear program.

Rafsanjani's remarks came amid diplomats from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany are expected to have more talks on a decision to offer Iran a package of incentives in return for Iran's suspension of its nuclear activities, after their London talks on May 24 stopped short of making a final agreement.

Diplomats from the six nations have made encouraging progress over the package to Iran, as a compromise proposal, which would drop the automatic threat of military action but still pack the threat of sanctions if Iran remains defiant, was reached.

Washington has been accusing Tehran of using its civilian nuclear program as a cover to develop an atomic bomb, a charge denied by Iran, which insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful use.

During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bolton said that as soon as the committee released him, "I will be returning to New York to start working again on the Chapter 7 resolution that we had under discussion, because that track needs to move forward as well".

Bolton noted that political directors of the Permanent five plus Germany met in London on Wednesday in an effort to help delineate a package of incentives and disincentives aimed at persuading Iran to "seriously commit to suspend their uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing activities".

The incentives package will be an elaboration of what the EU-three -- Britain, France and Germany --have said to Iran in the past, combined with Russian offers to guarantee fuel supplies to Iran, Bolton said.

The disincentives package will "show clearly to the Iranians, if they choose not to suspend their progress toward acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, what that option will be for them as well," he added.

Bolton declined to discuss specifics of the package, saying that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "deserves a chance to assess the situation. I am sure she is going to be consulting with her counterparts in trying to determine the way ahead".

"As we announced yesterday, there was good progress in the discussions in London, but we really are in the middle of this effort that began with Secretary Rice's meeting with the other Perm 5 foreign ministers in New York about two weeks ago, setting in motion this process that is now under way," Bolton said.

The Iran issue "certainly could not be any higher on the priority list to try and get this resolved," he said. "And that is a subject of continuing conversations at the very highest levels".

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss Embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.

The Iranian negotiating proposal indicated clearly that Iran was prepared to give up its role as a supporter of armed groups in the region in return for a larger bargain with the United States. What the Iranians wanted in return, as suggested by the document itself as well as expert observers of Iranian policy, was an end to U.S. hostility and recognition of Iran as a legitimate power in the region.

Before the 2003 proposal, Iran had attacked Arab governments which had supported the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. The negotiating document, however, offered "acceptance of the Arab League Beirut declaration", which it also referred to as the "Saudi initiative, two-states approach."

The March 2002 Beirut declaration represented the Arab League's first official acceptance of the land-for-peace principle as well as a comprehensive peace with Israel in return for Israel's withdrawal to the territory it had controlled before the 1967 war.. Iran's proposed concession on the issue would have aligned its policy with that of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, among others with whom the United States enjoyed intimate relations.

Another concession in the document was a "stop of any material support to Palestinian opposition groups (Hamas, Jihad, etc.) from Iranian territory" along with "pressure on these organizations to stop violent actions against civilians within borders of 1967".

Even more surprising, given the extremely close relationship between Iran and the Lebanon-based Hizbollah Shiite organisation, the proposal offered to take "action on Hizbollah to become a mere political organization within Lebanon".

The Iranian proposal also offered to accept much tighter controls by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in exchange for "full access to peaceful nuclear technology". It offered "full cooperation with IAEA based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments (93+2 and all further IAEA protocols)".

That was a reference to protocols which would require Iran to provide IAEA monitors with access to any facility they might request, whether it had been declared by Iran or not. That would have made it much more difficult for Iran to carry out any secret nuclear activities without being detected.

In return for these concessions, which contradicted Iran's public rhetoric about Israel and anti-Israeli forces, the secret Iranian proposal sought U.S. agreement to a list of Iranian aims. The list included a "Halt in U.S. hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.", as well as the "abolishment of all sanctions".

Also included among Iran's aims was "recognition of Iran's legitimate security interests in the region with according defense capacity". According to a number of Iran specialists, the aim of security and an official acknowledgment of Iran's status as a regional power were central to the Iranian interest in a broad agreement with the United States.

Negotiation of a deal with the United States that would advance Iran's security and fundamental geopolitical political interests in the Persian Gulf region in return for accepting the existence of Israel and other Iranian concessions has long been discussed among senior Iranian national security officials, according to Parsi and other analysts of Iranian national security policy.

An Iranian threat to destroy Israel has been a major propaganda theme of the Bush administration for months. On Mar. 10, Bush said, "The Iranian president has stated his desire to destroy our ally, Israel. So when you start listening to what he has said to their desire to develop a nuclear weapon, then you begin to see an issue of grave national security concern."

But in 2003, Bush refused to allow any response to the Iranian offer to negotiate an agreement that would have accepted the existence of Israel. Flynt Leverett, then the senior specialist on the Middle East on the National Security Council staff, recalled in an interview with IPS that it was "literally a few days" between the receipt of the Iranian proposal and the dispatch of a message to the Swiss ambassador expressing displeasure that he had forwarded it to Washington.

Interest in such a deal is still very much alive in Tehran, despite the U.S. refusal to respond to the 2003 proposal. Turkish international relations professor Mustafa Kibaroglu of Bilkent University writes in the latest issue of Middle East Journal that "senior analysts" from Iran told him in July 2005 that "the formal recognition of Israel by Iran may also be possible if essentially a 'grand bargain' can be achieved between the U.S. and Iran".

The proposal's offer to dismantle the main thrust of Iran's Islamic and anti-Israel policy would be strongly opposed by some of the extreme conservatives among the mullahs who engineered the repression of the reformist movement in 2004 and who backed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in last year's election.

However, many conservative opponents of the reform movement in Iran have also supported a negotiated deal with the United States that would benefit Iran, according to Paul Pillar, the former national intelligence officer on Iran. "Even some of the hardliners accepted the idea that if you could strike a deal with the devil, you would do it," he said in an interview with IPS last month.

The conservatives were unhappy not with the idea of a deal with the United States but with the fact that it was a supporter of the reform movement of Pres. Mohammad Khatami, who would get the credit for the breakthrough, Pillar said.

Parsi says that the ultimate authority on Iran's foreign policy, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was "directly involved" in the Iranian proposal, according to the senior Iranian national security officials he interviewed in 2004. Kamenei has aligned himself with the conservatives in opposing the pro-democratic movement.

The sources said while Iran is expecting lone Israeli military action, Iranian intelligence estimates the Jewish state is coordinating a planned attack with the U.S.

"The Iranians currently are operating under the working assumption that Israel is going to strike in less than a year and that this strike is highly coordinated with America," said a senior Lebanese politician.

Lebanese political sources said Iran has been attempting to organize Shiite tribes in Iraq to stage repeated large-scale attacks against American and British forces stationed there during any Israeli strike. They said Iran believes attacks in Iraq, including hits against soft targets such as oil fields, will prompt a British or American retreat.

The Lebanese sources said Iran claims it has intelligence information indicating Israel has been carrying out military exercises related to an attack against it from bases in Kurdish sections of Iraq. Israeli security officials said the claims are baseless.

Iran has instructed Hezbollah to stage retaliatory raids and missile attacks against Israeli military and civilians targets during any Israeli strike against Tehran, the Lebanese political sources added.

Hezbollah is stationed alongside Israel's northern border and boasts it has over 10,000 missiles pointed at the country's civilian population centers.

Officially, Israel denies it is planning military action against Iran. Israeli leaders regularly call Iran a "world problem" and urge the international community to halt Iran's nuclear ambitions through diplomacy and the threat of economic sanctions.

At a joint press conference yesterday in Washington, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said they still had faith in diplomacy. They stated Iran's nuclear ambitions must be halted.

"We have a variety options, one of which is of course the United Nations Security Council. Our primary objective is to solve this problem diplomatically. On all issues I'll try diplomacy first and exhaust diplomacy," said Bush.

Olmert called Iran a "major threat. This is something that must be stopped. There is a need to stop it and we reviewed the different ways to do it."

Iran is openly defying international calls to halt uranium enrichment activities. After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was inaugurated last August, the country rejected European proposals aimed at curbing its nuclear programs and resumed nuclear projects, reopening a major uranium conversion plant in Isfahan. In January, Iran escalated the international confrontation by removing U.N. seals at one of its uranium-enrichment plants and resuming nuclear research.

So far, Tehran has scorned most diplomatic initiatives. Last week, it rejected an European Union proposal to cease uranium enrichment in exchange for economic incentives and the construction of a light-water energy reactor. Unlike the heavy-water plant Iran is building in the city of Arak, a light-water reactor wouldn't produce plutonium - another ingredient for weapons - as a waste product. Such a reactor would still need enriched uranium for fuel, though, which could be refined to weapons-grade material.

Knesset member: Strike Iran now

Last week, Israeli Knesset member Effie Eitam, a member of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said in a WND interview Israel and the international community should consider carrying out strategic strikes now against Iran's nuclear facilities to stall its suspected uranium-enrichment activities.

Eitam, a former Israeli army general, warned the Jewish state would need to attack Iran by itself if the international community led by the United States fails to successfully halt Tehran's nuclear program within about a year.

"With or without a world coalition, Israel will have to take action at some point when we are fully sure Iran's nuclear project is coming to a point of no return," he said. " I am worried all mechanisms of diplomacy used by the Iranians in response to the international movement against it are to buy time as they camouflage the real nature of their programs."

Asked to offer a timeline for the point at which he feels Israel would have to strike Iran by itself, Eitam replied, "We are talking about the period when Iran would have enough uranium to build a bomb. The information indicates this is not long away. Six months to a year or not much more.

"It is clear Iran is already starting to enrich uranium, and they are nearing the completion of technology necessary to assemble weapons. It is true they may leave quantities of uranium unpacked and not processed as weapons-grade for a time, but they can soon bring themselves to the point where they can make weapons within short periods of time."

Eitam deemed Iran "an international problem - by far not just an Israeli problem. The Iran leadership threatens the entire free world. It is a source of evil and not just a typical enemy. This evil will not compromise. It is best if it is destroyed physically. If the world doesn't act by a certain point, then Israel must."

Eitam said military action is the best assurance against Iran's nuclear program.

"With diplomacy and agreements you can never be sure unless the diplomacy comes to a point where the Iranians agree to dismantle their nuclear projects under intense international supervision. This looks extremely unlikely after so many years of negligence [by the U.S., Israel and Europe]. There is no second to physical destruction of Iran's facilities," said Eitam.

Eitam predicted Iran would also retaliate against Israeli and international interests in the event of a strike against its nuclear facilities, but he said Israel is prepared for the expected onslaught of violence.

"We are ready to defend ourselves against Hezbollah and are quite adept at dealing with terrorism," he said. "These Iranian threats are very cheap prices to pay relative to what an Iranian nuclear threat represents for the future of the state of Israel. The entire world may have some tough times while the Iranians try to retaliate by using terror internationally, hijacking embassies, targeting innocents like at nightclubs in Europe."

The Knesset member went on to blast Olmert and the current Israeli administration for what he said was "gross negligence" at failing to counter the Iranian threat.

"I am extremely skeptical as far as Olmert, [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and [Foreign Minister Tzipi] Livni being able to revive and renew a credible Israeli policy toward Iran. So far they are paralyzed. They have no program. They are just waiting for a miracle or for someone else to act. In a very short time if Olmert fails to provide a new approach, the real question becomes whether he should continue to be allowed to govern."

Eitam recommended Israel make public a policy of deterrence he says would render an Iranian first strike against Israel useless.

"It is crucial to change Israel's current policy of vagueness to open deterrence. It needs to be made clear to the Iranians that Israel will not be the only country destroyed if it is attacked. Even if the Iranians have weapons, they wont enjoy any strategic advantage because Israeli deterrence will be clear and credible. They wont even think about destroying Israel because doing so will place them under the fear of being totally destroyed, too."

Referring to Bush and Blair's admission that mistakes were made in Iraq, the influential former president said: "You will make such confessions about Iran too. You will realize your mistakes".

Britain, France and Germany have prepared a package of incentives to try to persuade Iran to suspend enriching uranium.

The United States and its allies are also pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that could eventually trigger sanctions against Iran, which they accuse of secretly moving toward making a nuclear bomb.

Iran insists its nuclear program is for energy purposes and that it has a right to uranium enrichment as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A process in the nuclear fuel cycle, uranium enrichment, can also make the core of an atom bomb.

"Iran's historic experience shows it will not allow anyone to deprive this country of its rights," said Rafsanjani, who still heads Iran's powerful Expediency Council.

The head of Iran's powerful ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, vowed Friday that any US, British and Israeli "interference in Iran's affairs or attacks on its soil will be faced by an unpredictable response".

"The enemy forces in the region are vulnerable," General Yahya Rahim Safavi said before the sermon.

US President George W. Bush has refused to rule out a military strike against Iran if negotiations fail to calm suspicions it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon.

But his chief Iraq ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, said in an interview released Thursday: "We don't want a conflict with Iran, we have got enough on our plate doing other things."

"We confirm our respect for the right of Iran and all countries who (want nuclear power) with guarantees and promises to prevent an arms race in the region and deal transparently with the IAEA."

"We are against all tension in the region at this time because we think that everyone would lose in this case," he emphasized.

Chief Iranian diplomat Manouchehr Mottaki's trip is the first high-level visit to Iraq by an Iranian official since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election win in June of last year. Former Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi visited Iraq in May 2005.

Although Iran tried to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis, the U.S. has consistently rejected Iran's offers and showed that it is not interested in a peaceful solution. Iran has stated publicly that it is seeking a "security guarantee" and Iran is willing to participate in the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Instead of pursuing peaceful dialogue, the U.S. continues to follow Israel's ideology of war and expansion. Israeli leaders are publicly pushing the U.S. to attack Iran. The U.S. is acting as if the U.S. Army is Israel's proxy army and many young Americans are dying for Israel's Zionist ideology.

Israel has illegally attacked and invaded other nations. Israel is still occupying land in Lebanon and Syria in contravention of UN resolutions. Israel is currently arming and training Kurdish militias in northern Iraq and the Iranian Mujahideen el-Khalq (MEK) -- until recently listed as terrorist group by the U.S. State Department -- to carry out clandestine terror operations and surveillance inside Iran.

The U.S. goal is to overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran, enforce U.S. imperialist domination over the oil resources of the Middle East and support Israel's Zionist policy. It is important to bear in mind that during the murderous dictatorial regime of the shah, the U.S. and Israel supported Iran in its pursuit of developing nuclear weapons technology. The current Iranian program is a peaceful nuclear technology to produce energy.

Furthermore, Iran is not guilty of violations of international law. Iran has voluntarily signed the Additional Protocol. As stated by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report of 8 March, "Iran has continued to facilitate access under its Safeguards Agreement as requested by the Agency and, until 06 February 2006, implemented the Additional Protocol as if it were in force, including by providing, in a timely manner, the requisite declarations and access to locations."

The Director-General of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, has pointed out several times in the past that Iran is not in violation of the NPT or any agreement with the IAEA. However, Mr. ElBaradei has since been rewarded (with a Nobel Prize) by his masters and proves to be good at following orders. ElBaradei is making misleading statements accusing Iran of "non-compliance." As usual, the IAEA continues to politicise the situation, forcing Iran into the impossible. The statement that the IAEA is "unable to confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities inside Iran" is the same misleading statement used by Hans Blix -- the UN accomplice -- to demonise Iraq and prepare the public for the illegal war of aggression that destroyed a vibrant nation and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians. Now ElBaradei's role is "to keep providing the U.S. the ammunition for charges of 'non-compliance.' With time, the public will be prepared and persuaded to support a war on Iran.

Iran has stated publicly that it is willing to enter into dialogue with the U.S. to discuss all issues, including "security guarantees" -- assurance of non-aggression -- and demanded that the U.S. and Israel stop their threats and interference in Iran's affairs. The U.S. and its allies are using the nuclear issue as a pretext to justify war on Iran in the same way they used the discredited pretext of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) for illegal war on Iraq.

The U.S. has demanded that Iran abandons all it nuclear research, including the mining of its own uranium, and instead buy the enriched uranium fuel for the generation of electricity. This is unacceptable as many countries around the world do just the opposite. Like any country would do, Iran rejected the unfair U.S. demands, which would leave Iran dependent on outside technology and resources. On 16 May, the EU-3 demanded that Iran "suspend all enrichment related and reprocessing activity, including research and development." Iran responded by stating that; "No incentives are better than implementing the NPT and the IAEA rules without discrimination." The EU-3 demands are unrealistic and designed for propaganda purposes to enforce the case for war. By demanding the impossible, the U.S. and the EU-3 are increasing the possibility of conflict and aggression.

The U.S. and Israel's threat to Iran is alarming the civilised world. In anticipation of an attack on Iran and, in addition to Israel's own arsenal of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, the U.S. supplied Israel with F-15 and F-16 aircraft capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Avner Cohen and William Burr show that; "A U.S. nuclear attack [on Iran] would cause severe physical, social, economic, and political damage." Cohen and Burr added, "Five to ten nuclear explosions of 10 kilotons each a few meters below ground would destroy most buildings within 1-2 kilometres of each explosion; force prompt evacuation to save lives within about a hundred square kilometres of each explosion; contaminate buildings, grounds, livestock, and crops over thousands of square kilometres; and depending on wind and rain, cause fallout sufficient to cause evacuation and/or sheltering as far as thousands of kilometres downwind. Measurable radioactivity would be detected around the world." [2]

Given that most of Iran's research plants and facilities are situated in urban areas and near population centres, hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would be killed. American citizens should think carefully before their government commits new crimes against humanity in their name.

Rather than working to eliminate the use of nuclear weapons, the U.S. is continuing to refine its own nuclear weapons, and considers them an integral part of its military forces. In violation of the NPT, the U.S. is pursuing more nuclear armaments and is encouraging other nations to develop nuclear weapons. In reality, the U.S. is in the process of making the use of the monstrous nuclear weapons more acceptable in future wars against nations with no nuclear weapons. We should not forget that the U.S. is the only nation to have ever used nuclear weapons against humanity.

If there is a country that constitutes a classic threat to international peace and security, it is the U.S. The U.S. has been involved in many conflicts and wars that resulted in unnecessary killings of millions of innocent people. From Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia to Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq, millions of innocent people have been massacred by U.S. forces.

No nation will surrender its rights and national independence in the face of the threats posed by the U.S. and Israel to Iran. If Iran is attacked without provacation, Iran has the right to retaliate in self-defence. Self-defence against aggression is Iran's inalienable right and deserves the support of people wordwide. Like North Korea, Iran has the right to pursue a self-defence policy of deterring a future U.S. attack.

[1] Jimmy Carter, 'Saving Nonproliferation,' Washington Post, 28 March, 2005.

[2] Avner Cohen & William Burr, 'Dangerous Doctrine' the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, vol. 61(2), March/April 2005.