Iran names defense management team

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has named the country's team tasked with minimizing the effects of damage on the country should it be attacked by foreign forces.

The occupant of the presidential palace in downtown Tehran on Monday appointed Chief-of-Staff of Iran's Joint Armed Forces Major General Hassan Firouzabadi as the head of the Permanent Passive Defense Committee.

A statement from the President's office also identified Davud Ahmadinejad as the President's special representative and the country's ministers of interior, defense and science as members of the committee.

Iran is under constant threat by the United States and its staunch ally in the region, Israel, which have time and again kept "all options" with regards to Tehran "on the table."

The Sunday Herald on Tuesday reported that the Obama administration has shipped hundreds of “bunker-buster” bombs from California to the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in preparation for "a possible attack on Iran."

The cargo includes 195 smart, guided, Blu-110 bombs and 192 massive 2000lb Blu-117 bombs, the report added.

The Diego Garcia base has been used for strikes against Iraq during the 1991 and 2003 Persian Gulf wars and houses more than 3,200 US personnel.

Washington accuses Iran of developing nuclear weapons and has for years levied sanctions and threats of attack to force the Tehran government into abandoning its nuclear activities.

Iran, which has been under various US sanctions after the Islamic Revolution toppled a US-backed monarch in 1979, rejects the accusations as politically motivated.

Iran's nuclear program was launched in the 1950s with the help of the United States as part of the Atoms for Peace program. After the 1979 Revolution, Western companies working on Iran's program refused to fulfill their obligations even though they had been paid in full.

Iran is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and, unlike some of its regional neighbors, has opened its enrichment plants to UN inspection.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120858§ionid=351020101.