On Wednesday I noted a Michael Ledeen column about an open declaration of war on the US by a top Iranian official, Hassan Abbasi. Today MEMRI has a more complete translation of Abbasi’s threatening statements: “Our Missiles Are Ready to Strike at Anglo-Saxon Culture.”

“’(President Muhammad) Khatami speaks of the dialogue between civilizations, and I have grave doubts about this. It is a dubious idea. We do not want to take over the British Embassy, since they (the British) have already cleared the embassy of documents; we must take over Britain [itself].’

”After [H.A.] harshly attacked Khatami and the reformists, he said in his speech: ‘The West sees us as terrorists, and depicts our strategy as terrorism and repression. Had our youth agreed to Khatami’s teachings and interpretations, it would never have fought the arrogance, and would never have defended the holy places — because Khatami speaks always of being conciliatory, of patience, and of rejecting terrorism, while we defend [the line of] toughness and war against the enemies of revolutionary Islam. I take pride in my actions that cause anxiety and fear to the Americans.

“’Haven’t the Jews and the Christians achieved their progress by means of toughness and repression? We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilizationand for the uprooting of the Americans and the English.

”’Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader [’Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations. Our motto during the war (in Iraq) was: Karbala, we are coming, Jerusalem, we are coming. And because of Khatami’s policies and dialogue between the civilizations, we have been compelled to freeze our plan to liberate the Islamic cities. And now we are [again] about to carry out the program.’

“In his speech, he added: ‘The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.’

“In another part of his speech, he emphasized, ‘If Israel dares attack the [nuclear] installations at Bushehr, our losses will be very low, because [only] one structure will be destroyed — while we [i.e., Iran] have means of attacking Israel’s nuclear facilities and arsenals such that no trace of Israel will remain.’”

Another Iranian official called for a “storm front” of suicide bombers to attack the US and Israel:

The previous day, Iranian sources had statements on the same issue. At a ceremony marking the four-year anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon, reformist MP and Secretary-General of the International Committee for the Support of the Palestinian Intifada Ali Akbar Makhatashemi-Pour called on Muslim countries to open their borders with Iraq to troops of Muslim martyrdom bombers. “We, the Muslim countries, must create a storm front against the U.S. and Israel. The half-million member organization that was created in Beirut [i.e., Hizbullah] is not sufficient. Many young Muslims are willing to carry out martyrdom operations against the American Crusaders.” [3]

The Iranian reformist paper Sharq reported that the Persian-language Ruydad website stated that Hizbullah-Iran activist Forouz Rajaii-Far said that ”martyrdom operations are the only option to expel the Americans and British from Iraq,“ and that a Basij activist from Elm Vasonaat University in Iran acknowledged that a group calling itself the ”To Karbala Battalion" was sent on May 27, 2004 to Karbala to fight the coalition forces.