I thought we were friends now?
Via MEMRI:
On February 11, 2014, Iran celebrated Revolution Day, the 35th anniversary of the regime of the Islamic Revolution, against the backdrop of the start of permanent agreement nuclear talks between Iran and the superpowers, and of the ongoing struggle within Iran between the ideological stream led by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and the pragmatic stream led by Hashemi Rafsanjani, on the issue of how Iran should deal with the U.S. Revolution Day 2014 was marked by regime officials’ harsh anti-U.S. statements and by calls for maintaining Iranian hostility towards the U.S.
In two separate speeches, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei stressed that the main enemy of the revolution was the U.S. and extolled fighting it as the revolution’s central value. He added that the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was “an even greater revolution than the first one,” that is, greater than the removal of the Shah and the seizure of power by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khamenei also called on Iranians not to be taken in by the U.S.’s overtures, and not to trust it, because its aim – that is, to topple the revolutionary regime – remains unchanged.
As part of the Iranian regime’s dismissal of the U.S. military threat, many of this year’s Revolution Day marches and demonstrations featured signs bearing the slogan in English, “We Are Eager For The Options On The Table,” – a slogan praised by both Khamenei’s and Rafsanjani’s circles. Moreover, Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) naval commander Ali Fadavi stated that the U.S. would understand Iran’s might when Iran began to sink U.S. warships, with their crews of over 5,000. At the same time, Iranian Navy Adm. Rezai Haddad announced that an Iranian flotilla was en route to the Atlantic for “a first approach of U.S. maritime borders” and that this was meant to be a “message” for the U.S.
In his Revolution Day message, both Iranian Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan and Iranian Army chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi stressed that Iran longs for the decisive battle with the U.S., in light of the latter’s threat to use the military option if the nuclear talks fail. In other speeches, government officials stressed that hostility towards the U.S. – “the Great Satan” – would continue even if the nuclear issue were resolved, and that Iran’s smiles at the negotiating table were merely a tactical move aimed at obtaining Iran’s nuclear rights.