“Military Dictatorship”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned that Iran is “becoming a military dictatorship” in an address to students at a Qatar university during a tour of the region. “She said Iran’s elite army corps, the Revolutionary Guard, had gained so much power they had effectively supplanted the government. Earlier, aides revealed Mrs Clinton would press Saudi Arabia to help persuade China to support a tougher stand against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Asked if the US was planning to attack Iran, Mrs Clinton said Washington wanted to bring the world community together to agree on sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard. ‘We see that the government of Iran, the supreme leader, the president, the parliament, is being supplanted and that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. That is our view,’ Mrs Clinton said. She also said the US would ‘not stand idly by’ and watch Iran acquire a nuclear weapon. On Thursday, the US announced it was extending already-existing sanctions it imposed against a construction company run by the Revolutionary Guard and the general who is the company’s chief officer. The profits made by the company from infrastructure projects were being funnelled back into Iran’s missile and nuclear programmes, the US Treasury said.”