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Tehran: The US move to blacklist Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group will be a matter of pride for the organisation, said a senior Iranian cleric in the official weekly sermon on Friday.
Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, who does not hold a government post but once a month delivers the official Friday prayer sermon, told thousands of worshippers at Tehran University in a speech broadcast on radio that the designation showed that the Guards were doing something right.
"I believe the US decision for including the Guards in the list of terrorist organisations is an honour and a golden card in their file," he said. "Whenever your enemy is saying something bad about an organisation, it shows that the organisation has been effective," he added.
Foreign dissidents
The cleric accused foreign-based Iranian dissidents of pushing for the group to be classified as terrorist and warned the United States that confronting the Guard would lead it into a quagmire.
On Tuesday, an unnamed official in the Bush administration said the United States planned to list the Guards as a terrorist group to squeeze Iran.
The move was seen as an effort to pressure businesses the corps is thought to control, from construction to oil sectors. It is the first time the United States has put a foreign government's military agency on the list, which includes Al Qaida network and the Hamas and Hezbollah.
Khatami said the US designation invited a fight with Iran which America could not win.
"Americans should know that in this field, as with nuclear energy, they are dealing with the whole nation. And the great nation of Iran will never abandon its revolutionary people," Khatami told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.
"Americans should know that if they act madly in this regard, they would be entering a swamp they won't be able to get out of," the conservative cleric said in a speech that was broadcast live on the radio.
Khatami is a member of the Assembly of Experts, an influential clerical body which has the power to appoint or dismiss Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
US officials said on Wednesday the United States may soon name the Revolutionary Guard as a foreign terrorist group, reflecting frustration over Tehran's nuclear programme and suspected role in Iraqi violence.
'Will grow in strength'
The designation would be the first time the United States has placed the armed forces of any sovereign government on its list of terrorist organisations and would allow Washington to target the Guards' finances.
A Guards official brushed off the threat, saying the force "will grow in strength despite US efforts to isolate it".
Iran experts and diplomats said the move was also aimed at pacifying hard-liners within and outside the Bush administration who want military action against Tehran and are frustrated that diplomatic pressure has not worked either on curbing Iran's nuclear programme or over Iraq.
Some analysts say the Guards have grown in influence since the election in 2005 of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former commander.
They say former officers have been appointed to political posts.
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