Taken from Haaretz, Israel, 30/09/2007
By The Associated Press
Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution to label the CIA and the U.S. Army terrorist organizations.
The move is seen as a diplomatic tit-for-tat after the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.
"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio. The hard-line dominated parliament said the two were terrorists, because they were involved in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, used depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supported the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombed and killed Iraqi civilians and tortured terror suspects in prisons.
The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that - if ratified by the country's hard-line constitutional watchdog - would become law. The government is expected to remain silent over the parliament resolution and wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.
The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by arrogant powers seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.
He said the nuclear issue was now closed as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program through its appropriate legal path, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN's nuclear watchdog.
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.
Earlier this month, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on all state matters, named a new head for the elite Revolutionary Guard. He appointed Mohammed Ali Jafari, described as a senior figure in the hard-line force, to replace Yahya Rahim Safavi, who led the Guard for the last decade.
In a new decree, Khamenei also appointed Jafari to run the Basij, groups of volunteers dedicated to support the ruling Islamic establishment, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The appointment effectively merged the two forces. Further intertwining the Guard with the popular Basij force is widely believed to be aimed at undermining U.S. efforts to designate the Guard a terrorist organization.
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Can anyone blame Iran (or even it's people) for declaring the CIA a terrorist organisation? The CIA has a history of destabilising Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. In Iran this process began in 1953 when the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup, after he threatened to nationalize foreign oil companies. The CIA replaces him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police, SAVAK (trained by the CIA & Mossad), was as brutal as the Gestapo. The Shah was an evil dictor (supported by the US) and kept his people oppressed. For his support, he awarded foreign oil companies to resume extracting oil from Iran but was forbidden to see its accounts (i.e how much oil was extracted and how much money was made) - Sound familiar? His dictatorship made Iranian people more angry towards him and the Western world and bred fundamentalism. It was only until 1979 that the people of Iran were set free by the Islamic revolution that overthrew him. The US backed puppet fled to Egypt, never to return. All foreignors and westernised Iranians had also fled Iran. Iranian students stormed into the US embassy, held 52 embassy employees hostage for a 444 days. The US government severed diplomatic relations and imposed economic sanctions on April 7, 1980 and later that month attempted a failed rescue. Shortly afterwards, Iraq invaded Iran and it was the start of Iraq-Iran war where millions of people died. To get revenge, the US backed Saddam Hussein's Iraq in their war against Iran, helping them with weapons (to fight the Soviet backed Iran) but at the same time secretly allowed Israel to sell American weapons to Iran using the profits to arm the Contras fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Well you couldn't make it up! The people of Iran are forgiving people, they want a fresh start with the USA, but the USA hasn't forgotten it's embarassing defeat in Iran and want's to make ammends. On July 3, 1988 the USS Vincennes shot down Iran Air Flight 655 en route to UAE killing all 290 passengers and crew on aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time. According to the US government, the Iranian airbus was mistakenly identified as an attacking F14 fighter. The Iranian government maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down a civilian aircraft. Today, Iran has changed alot. Whether you like him or not Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has tried on numerous occasions to make friendship with the Bush administration. Bush does not want to know. Ahmadinejad recenty went to the States and answered questions by students and public from Columbia University. He has since extended an invitation to U.S. President George W. Bush to speak at an Iranian university - I doubt Bush will ever take that offer. Jaw Jaw is better than War War!
Here's more info of the roles the CIA played in recent time . All information has been extracted from a brilliant site informationclearinghouse.info
The U.S. Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 with the passing of the National Security Act. The official duty of the Central Intelligence Agency is to serve as an intelligence gathering agency.
In reality, the CIA does not only gather information but consistently targets and engages in covert operations, psychological operations, and acts of terrorism both domestically and internationally.
CIA past operations and activities
Operation Phoenix was an assassination program conducted by the CIA during the Vietnam conflict. Its objective was to eliminate Vietnamese who might oppose the U.S but also to terrorize the entire population of South Vietnam and to suppress opposition to the occupying U.S. forces. Over 20,000 Vietnamese were murdered, often at random.
During the 1980s the CIA used profits from its cocaine smuggling activities to finance the Contras in Nicaragua who were responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of civilians, and it attempted to disrupt the country's economy, in order to destabilize the legitimate Sandinista government. For this, the U.S. was condemned in the World Court for "unlawful use of force," and it rejected a U.N. security council resolution calling upon it to observe international law. We must note that George Bush Sr. was vice president at the time .
On Sept. 11, 1973, the CIA planned and organized the military coup d'etat in Chile which overthrew the legitimately elected government of Salvador Allende and brought to power the regime of General Augusto Pinochet. This regime abducted, tortured and killed thousands of Chilean citizens in an attempt to suppress opposition.
It appears that Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State in the Nixon and Ford administrations, was closely involved diplomatically with the Southern Cone governments at the time and well-aware of Operation Condor. The first cooperation agreements were signed between the CIA and anti-Castro groups, and fascist movements such as the Triple A set up in Argentina by Jose Lopez Rega ("personal secretary" of Juan and Isabel Peron), and Rodolfo Almiron. The post-junta truth commission found that the Argentine military had "disappeared" at least 10,000 Argentines in the so-called "dirty war" against "subversion" and "terrorists" between 1976 and 1983; human rights groups in Argentina put the number at closer to 30,000. We must note that George Bush Sr, was head of the CIA at the time it began and vice president at the time it ended.
Operation CHAOS was the most vicious aggressive domestic surveillence operation conducted on American antiwar groups and activists like Abbie Hoffman, whose objectives were to:
1. Gather information on their immorality.
2. Show them as scurrilous and depraved.
3. Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
4. Explore every possible embarrassment.
5. Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them.
6. Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity.
7. Use narcotics and free sex for entrapment.
8. Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
9. Exploit the hostilities between various persons.
10. Use cartoons and photographs to ridicule them.
11. Use disinformation to confuse and disrupt.
12. Get records of their bank accounts.
13. Obtain specimens of handwriting.
14. Provoke target groups into rivalries that resulted in deaths.
The CIA was allegedly involved in the April 2002, Venezuela failed coup that tried to overthrow President Hugo Chavez, who was democratically elected.
In 2002 the CIA distorted Iraq data to the media in order to justify George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Most recently, former CIA employee, Luis Posada Carriles, who is believed to be the mastermind behind the 1976 Cubana de Aviacion bombing which killed 73 people, walked free from a U.S. court Tuesday following a court ruling for his liberation.
These are only a handful of operations; there have literally been hundreds and many are still classified as secret by the U.S. government.
For a time-line checkout here.
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