Amid heightening tension with the radical Taliban militia in neighbouring Afghanistan, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, yesterday called on the country's armed forces and all other Iranian officials to be ready to carry out immediately any orders that might be given to deal with the crisis. But the atmosphere in the capital did not suggest that war was about to break out.
He was speaking to a delegation of senior commanders from the Revolutionary Guards Corps, which has some 70,000 troops deployed near the Afghan border. The corps itself issued Iran's most blunt threat so far of direct intervention in Afghanistan in support of the routed opposition.
"We and the Basij `militant volunteers' are ready to help the oppressed, meek people of Afghanistan," it stated. "The Taliban criminals and their backers should know that Iran's revolutionary guards are ready to take revenge by revolutionary force on behalf of the oppressed."
The escalatory statements came a few hours after the return to Tehran of the bodies of six Iranian diplomats and a journalist killed by the Taliban when they captured the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-sharif from the opposition last month. President Mohammed Khatami, other government leaders and most of the Tehran diplomatic corps turned out for a dignified ceremony at Tehran Airport, where the bodies were flown in.
But the stately decorum broke down when grief-stricken relatives of the seven men broke through a security cordon and mobbed the President, chanting "Khatami, revenge!" and "Death to the Taliban!"
The bodies were sent back shortly after the Taliban had scored another victory in Afghanistan, driving the Iranian-backed Hizb-e-Wahdat faction out of its stronghold in the central town of Bamiyan. The faction is drawn from the Shia Muslim minority and is backed by its Iranian co-religionists.
The assault on Bamiyan was pressed home despite deterrent pressure exerted by Iran, in the shape of military exercises on the border by the Revolutionary Guards and an announcement on Saturday that 200,000 regular army troops would soon be deployed there in the country's biggest-ever war games.
The fall of Bamiyan prompted Ayatollah Khamenei on Monday to issue a dire warning that the region was on the brink of a major conflagration which could only be averted if the Taliban militia abandoned its current course and made amends for its past actions.
However, despite the rising rhetoric there is little sense in Tehran of a nation about to plunge into war - and little appetite for it on the part of most ordinary Iranians. Memories of the disastrous eight-year conflict with Iraq, which ended in 1988, are still strong, and most Iranians.
Western diplomats pointed out that the latest Iranian warnings came as the United Nations Security Council was preparing to meet to discuss the situation in Afghanistan. Tension is undoubtedly high and the risk of a collision is real enough. But the impression that Iran's more incendiary statements might be intended largely for external consumption was heightened by the fact that yesterday's call by Ayatollah Khamenei was barely mentioned in Tehran Radio's own news bulletins.