Iran's semi-official hard-line Fars news agency, which is said to have ties to the Revolutionary Guard, has posted a video of what it says are graves for forces that would invade Iran. The video emerges days after the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said that the U.S. military has a contingency plan to attack Iran. Mullen added that he thought a military strike was not a good idea.
The video shows dozens of trenches in a desert area. Set to music, the video begins with comments by Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who talks about the need to know those who are standing against Iran.
Fars attributed the video to the Institute for Defending Values of the Sacred Defense and said that the graves were dug in 2008 in Khuzestan Province by the Iranian armed forces' Search Committee of the Missing in Action to "symbolically show the country's readiness to bury invaders of Iran's soil."
The head of the committee, Mir Fazel Bagherzadeh, said in 2008 that Iran would dig between 15,000 and 20,000 graves in each of the country's frontier provinces for burying “invading soldiers" who might get killed in “a possible attack.” He said a total of 320,000 graves would be dug.
A former commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Kanani Moghadam, told AP on August 9 that the graves were dug at the site of where Iran buried Iraqi soldiers killed during the bloody 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
"The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam's soldiers have now been prepared again for U.S. soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this large number of graves," he said.
-- Golnaz Esfandiari
The video shows dozens of trenches in a desert area. Set to music, the video begins with comments by Iranian Supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who talks about the need to know those who are standing against Iran.
Fars attributed the video to the Institute for Defending Values of the Sacred Defense and said that the graves were dug in 2008 in Khuzestan Province by the Iranian armed forces' Search Committee of the Missing in Action to "symbolically show the country's readiness to bury invaders of Iran's soil."
The head of the committee, Mir Fazel Bagherzadeh, said in 2008 that Iran would dig between 15,000 and 20,000 graves in each of the country's frontier provinces for burying “invading soldiers" who might get killed in “a possible attack.” He said a total of 320,000 graves would be dug.
A former commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Hossein Kanani Moghadam, told AP on August 9 that the graves were dug at the site of where Iran buried Iraqi soldiers killed during the bloody 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
"The mass graves that used to be for burying Saddam's soldiers have now been prepared again for U.S. soldiers, and this is the reason for digging this large number of graves," he said.
-- Golnaz Esfandiari