http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010920/aponline160945_000.htm

Iran Won't Let U.S. Use Airspace

The Associated Press

Thursday, Sept. 20, 2001; 4:09 p.m. EDT

TEHRAN, Iran –– Iran – which lies between Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, where many U.S. forces are located – will not allow the United States to use its airspace to attack Afghanistan, Iran's Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

"Iran will never allow American warplanes to use its airspace to attack Afghanistan," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told The Associated Press. Asefi also said Iran will not allow Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in last week's attacks on the United States, to enter Iran. Bin Laden, a Saudi exile, has been living in Afghanistan since 1996.

Iran shares a 580-mile border with landlocked Afghanistan and lies between it and the Gulf. A U.S. defense official said Thursday that the Air Force has been ordered to send between 100 and 130 planes to the Gulf region in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks against the United States.

Pakistan, which has agreed to let the United States use its air space, lies between Afghanistan and the Arabian Sea. Iran has condemned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and called for an international effort to fight terrorism. Iran has no political ties with the United States. The U.S. Embassy in Tehran was closed in 1979 after student militants seized the building and took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days following the Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed shah of Iran.

© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press.

-- Swissrose (cellier3@mindspring.com), September 20, 2001

Answers

Time to take out the Mullahs

Tac Nuke Qum

-- Pork Tipped Bullets (Jail@sendtheragheadstoallah.net), September 20, 2001.

Time to take out the Mullahs

Tac Nuke Qum!

-- Pork Tiped Bullets (Jail@sendthergheadstoallah.net), September 20, 2001.