RUSH: I want you to hear Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announcing new actions against Iran. This is at the State Department this morning.
RICE: The Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon, building dangerous ballistic missiles, supporting Shi’a militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations, threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Because of the Revolutionary Guard’s support for proliferation and because of the Quds force support for terrorism, acting under US law and consistent with our international obligations, the United States today is designating both of these groups. If Iran’s rulers choose to continue down a path of confrontation, the United States will act with the international community to resist these threats of the Iranian regime.
RUSH: And she also mentioned two or three banks in Iran that are directly responsible for funding both terrorism and the illegal nuclear program. They laid down the law today, and after she was finished, the treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, got up there, and he started lashing out some warnings to Iran. This has been in the works since August, and what’s going on here is they’re going to freeze their assets, and we think that we have encouraged and gotten the support of allies now in France and Germany to join us. The attack on the financial structure of Iran, which is what this really is at this point, has worked. Inflation is going through the roof in that country. Ms. Rice also said in this statement, she had a direct appeal to the Iranian people, ‘We’ve got nothing but love for you. We have nothing against you.’ One of the problems with Iran right now is that a lot of the Iranian population is very, very much supportive of the United States.
People live in oppression in that country and they very much admire us, and that puts a limit on military action that you can take, because you don’t want to destroy that goodwill. So what she announced today was serious, serious, serious financial consequences, and she named names. And Hank Paulson went up there with her to do so. The Quds force, the international Revolutionary Guard — the Quds is actually a derivative of the Revolutionary Guard, they’re one and the same — they’re operating in theater in Iraq and they are sponsoring terrorism working with the Syrians and Hezbollah, as everybody knows. Some might not want to admit it, but they are. And the president’s been warning that this has been coming.
Nobody can say this is coming out of the blue. Mrs. Clinton is getting a little heat from her blogosphere kook fringe because she voted for an authorization to allow the president to take some action against Iran, which the kook fringe, ‘My gosh, it’s just Iraq all over again, it’s horrible.’ But the thing is, the anti-war movement can’t get anything done. MoveOn.org and their Petraeus smear backfired big time.