The New York Times is reporting on its front page today: “The United States and Britain will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into the Persian Gulf region in a display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country, Pentagon and military officials said Wednesday.” Another Times front-page piece is headlined “Iran President Facing Revival of Students’ Ire.”

TRITA PARSI
Parsi is head of the National Iranian American Council. He said today: “As bad as the war in Iraq is, the U.S. action raises the specter of a wider regional war. Some ‘neo-cons’ have called for just such a military deployment. Some in Saudi Arabia seem to be preferring a wider war to an Iraq dominated by Shiites.” Parsi is author of the forthcoming book Treacherous Triangle: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States.
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ARASH NOROUZI
Norouzi said today: “If a country is under threat, certainly nationalism would be a big reaction. Support for [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has come from his anti-Western rhetoric and he relies on continued threats from the West to have the status as the defender of Iran. Each act of aggression or threat validates the arguments in Iran that the Muslim world is under attack by Western powers, especially the U.S.”

Norouzi is an artist and has set up a web page about Mohammad Mossadegh, who was Iran’s democratically elected prime minister from 1951 to 1953 — until the U.S. government engineered a coup that overthrew him.
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167