For the Freedom of Iran

Iran Has 'Blood on its Hands' MacKay Says

2006-08-22T02:45:00.000-02:00

August 19, 2006
Mike Blanchfield
With a potential international showdown looming next week in Iran's nuclear standoff with the West, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay says Tehran has "blood on its hands" for backing Hezbollah in its recent war against Israel.
In an interview with CanWest News Service, Mr. MacKay highlighted Iran's support of Hezbollah and its nuclear ambitions, which will be back in the international spotlight on Tuesday -- the symbolic date in the Muslim calendar chosen by the Islamic regime to reply to UN demands to end its suspected nuclear weapons program.
"They [Iran] are certainly behind much of the difficulty that's going on in the region by funding Hezbollah, by supporting them in terms of their activities against Israel. They have a great deal of responsibility and blood on their hands from their activities," he said.
Mr. MacKay said he saw a "glimmer of hope" this week Tehran might consider halting its uranium enrichment program, although he's not holding his breath.
Iran says it needs nuclear energy to provide electricity, but the West suspects it of trying to create a nuclear bomb.
The United States says it wants the United Nations to move swiftly to impose sanctions if Iran fails to halt uranium enrichment by Aug. 31, the deadline set by the UN Security Council for Tehran to respond to an incentive package offered by the West.
"I think this is one of the more ominous and looming concerns that everyone should be focused on," Mr. MacKay said.
"Of course, we've been very much caught up with what's been happening in the Middle East, but Iran, it's fair to say, has been described an agent provocateur." Mr. MacKay also pointed to Syria as "a conduit for Iran to perpetrate much of this mischief."
Israel and the United States are concerned Iran and Syria may try to resupply Hezbollah with weapons after the ceasefire in its 34-day war with Israel. Syria is thought to have acted as one of the main supply routes for weapons used by Hezbollah during the war.
Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, suggested his country might be ready to agree on suspension of uranium enrichment.
"We are ready to negotiate over all issues stated in the proposed package," he said this week.
"One of the points in the package is the issue of suspension.
We are ready to negotiate over all issues, including suspension." Mr. Mottaki's conciliatory tone contrasts with the continued refusal of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to stop enrichment and his fiery support of Hezbollah.
"I have reservations about Iran's intentions for obvious reasons. At this point I think the Foreign Minister's statement is -- I would describe it as a glimmer of hope -- and let's hope that they follow through on their word," Mr. MacKay said.

Iran ready for Israel action after Lebanon war - army

2006-08-22T02:42:00.000-02:00

Yahoo Asia News:

Sunday August 20, 2:19 AM
TEHRAN (Reuters) - A senior Iranian army commander said on Saturday the armed forces were prepared for any action by Israel after what Iran has called the Jewish state's defeat at the hands of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrillas.
Ataollah Salehi, commander-in-chief of Iran's army, made his comment on the first day of army wargames, which started in the south of the country but will later extend to other areas. He did not say how long the manoeuvres would last.
"The enemy has gone mad facing Hizbollah's strength and we should keep ourselves prepared given the history we have from our mad enemy," Salehi was quoted as saying by Iran's official IRNA news agency.
Iranian officials have praised the truce in Lebanon as a victory for Iran's ally Hizbollah and a defeat for Israel.
Iran is embroiled in a nuclear standoff with the West.
It is due to reply by Aug. 22 to a demand by major powers that it relinquish uranium enrichment in return for trade and technical concessions. It denies accusations by western countries that it is seeking nuclear bombs. Israel launched a strike on Iraqi nuclear facilities in 1981 and some analysts have speculated Israel could consider a strike on Iran. But they say this would be a tougher task, partly because Iran's facilities are widely dispersed.
"We have designed plans that will definitely surprise our enemies," Salehi said in comments on state television, adding that the wargames would be held across the country.
Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the ideologically driven wing of the armed forces which has a separate command structure to the regular military, held wargames in the Gulf in April in which they tested new missiles, torpedoes and other equipment.
Analysts interpreted those wargames as a thinly veiled threat that Iran could disrupt vital oil shipping lanes if pushed by an escalation in the nuclear dispute.
Officials said new home-made equipment would be tested during the army's manoeuvres, newspapers earlier reported, but no such tests were announced on Saturday.

Iran launches military exercises

2006-08-22T02:39:00.000-02:00

Yahoo News:

Sat Aug 19, 4:45 AM ET
Iran on Saturday launched a series of large-scale military exercises aimed at introducing the country's new defensive doctrine, state-run television reported.
The television report said the military exercise would occur in 14 of the country's 30 provinces and could last as long as five weeks.
The first stage of the maneuvers began with air strikes in the southeastern province of Sistan va Baluchistan, the report said.
The military exercises come as Iran faces heightened international scrutiny because of its contentious nuclear program and for supporting the guerrilla group Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran has denied Israeli accusations it is arming and training Hezbollah fighters but also has declared Hezbollah victorious in its battle against the Jewish state.
The Islamic Republic, which views the United States as an arch foe, also is concerned about the U.S. military presence in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel's threats to destroy its nuclear facilities.
The military exercise, involving 12 infantry regiments, is called "The Blow of Zolfaghar," in reference to a sword that belonged to Imam Ali, one of the most revered figures of Islam for Shiite Muslims. A majority of Iran's 70 million people are Shiite.
Iran has routinely held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and test locally made equipment such as missiles, tanks and armored personnel carriers.

Iran bans The Economist over Gulf map

2006-06-15T07:13:00.000-02:00

Yahoo News:

By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jun 14, 6:39 PM ET
Iran has banned The Economist magazine for describing the Persian Gulf as merely "the Gulf" in a map published in the latest edition, state television reported Wednesday.
It is the second time in two years that Iran has banned such an international publication for failing to use the term "Persian Gulf" in a map. In 2004, it banned the National Geographic atlas when a new edition appeared with the term "Arabian Gulf" in parentheses beside the more commonly used Persian Gulf.
Tehran believes in aggressively defending the use of the historical term Persian Gulf. It regards the name Arabian Gulf, used by some, as a name dreamed up by Arab nationalists.
While Iran dominates the eastern side of the waterway, the western shores are held by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries.
State television reported late Wednesday that the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance had banned the importation and distribution of current and future editions of The Economist. The ban would only be lifted when the journal used "Persian Gulf," the ministry was quoted as saying.
In London, where The Economist is published, the magazine said it would stand its ground.
"We've used 'the Gulf' for a long time, and we have no intention of changing it at the moment," a spokeswoman for The Economist said, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with the magazine's policy.
She said the magazine sells about 750 English-language copies in Iran per week.
The current week's issue runs an article on the Iranian nuclear dispute titled: "Iran and nuclear diplomacy: Risky Bargaining — Should Iran's latest threat to stop oil exports be taken seriously?" The offending map shows Iran and its neighbors, with the waterway designated "the Gulf."
Iran lifted its earlier ban on the National Geographic atlas after the publishers decided the following month to drop the term "Arabian Gulf" in favor of a note, printed in the middle of the Gulf, that said while most people call it the Persian Gulf, "this body of water is referred to by some as the Arabian Gulf."
___ Associated Press writer Beth Gardiner contributed to this report from London.

Demonstration by women in Iran capital

2006-06-14T07:43:00.000-02:00

Tehran, Iran, Jun. 12 – Nearly 100 women were arrested by State Security Forces (SSF) in a clampdown on a peaceful demonstration by several thousands Iranian women in Tehran, protestors told Iran Focus by telephone.Security forces used truncheons and teargas to attack the women who had gathered in 7 Tir Square demanding equal rights, the sources said.“Put an end to misogyny”, the women chanted. There were also chants of “freedom, freedom”, “we are human beings but have no rights”, and “we want equal rights”.Hundreds of young men took part in the rally and clashed with the agents of the SSF. The following are photos of the protest :

U.S. bans transactions with 4 Chinese companies for aiding Iran weapons programs

2006-06-14T07:37:00.000-02:00

USA Today:

Posted 6/13/2006 3:08 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States on Tuesday prohibited all transactions with four Chinese companies and one U.S. company for allegedly helping Iran acquire weapons of mass destruction and missiles capable of delivering them.
"The companies targeted today have supplied Iran's military and Iranian proliferators with missile-related and dual-use components," said Stuart Levey, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the U.S. Treasury.
He urged governments worldwide to take appropriate measures to ensure that their companies and financial institutions are not facilitating Iran's proliferation activities.
Three of the Chinese companies are Beijing Alite Technologies Company, Ltd; LIMMT Economic and Trade Company, Ltd and Great Wall Industry Corporation.
The company with U.S. connections is China National Precision Machinery Import/Export Corporation, whose U.S. representative is G.W. Aerospace, Inc., based in California.
The U.S. government has applied various sanctions against the four Chinese companies in the past. In 2004 the State Department sanctioned all four in accordance with the Iran Non-proliferation Act of 2000 for transferring equipment and technology to Iran.

Movement's Coordinator interview with VOA (Audio/Video)

2006-06-14T07:18:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

Jun 13, 2006, 09:31
"Voice of America" (Persian Service) broadcasted, on Saturday June 10th and via Satellite TV, Radio waves and on the Internet, its "Round Table" Q&A program in reference to Iran. The guest was Aryo B. Pirouznia who was speaking on behalf of SMCCDI and the "Iran National Secular Party" (INSP).
Various topics, such as, the internal situation, the Ahmadinejad factor, the fate of the Islamic regime's reformists or tolerated docile student groups, secularity, modernism, accountability, ways of fighting the regime, the mistakes of the outside opposition and what needs to be corrected, and geopolitic factors were debated during the one hour program hosted by Bijan Farhoodi of VOA.
Several callers from Iran and Europe posed their questions to Pirouznia or endorsed the Movement's stands.

To listen to the interview click here.

Iran-Mexico soccer game leads to clashes in several Iranian cities

2006-06-13T07:56:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

Jun 12, 2006, 01:32
Unrest, sporadic clashes and attack of some public buildings and materials happened in several Iranian cities, yesterday night, following Iran's 3-1 loss to Mexico in the frame of the 2006 Soccer World Cup.
Angry supporters expressed their hostility, against the Islamic regime and in cities, such as, Tehran, Ahvaz, Shiraz and Esfahan. Several were injured or arrested by the Islamic regime's security forces and plainclothes men.
Many Iranians had gathered with the hope of seeing Iran's victory, especially, after witnessing Iran's net dominance of Mexico, during the first haf time. But the anger arised after the astonishing and sudden mediocre game played, by Iran's National Team, during the second half time and immediately following the return of the players to the field.
Already many Iranians were speaking about the way that most members of the Iranian team had refused to chant the mandatory Islamic republic anthem, which was very noticeable during the televised transmission. Many were already speaking about the repressive consequenses for these maverick players and how their refusal had put more shame on the theocratic regime, at a time that it needed to show as much support as possible for its illegitimate rule.
Rumors spreaded quickly that the Islamic regime has forced again the Iranian players to lose, in order to punish them and to avoid massive celebrations and hostile popular gatherings at a time that it faces pressure and an increased world wide attention.
These rumors were boosted following the sudden childish way that Iran's goal keeper and a defender sent the ball, resulting in Mexico's second goal, in the feet of Omar Bravo. "It was like it was made based on an order" many were saying.
Many experts were sure of Iran's victory following the way it played, during the first half time, and as, especially, the main Mexican player was pulled off of the game due to an injury, and the fact that Mexico had used all its exchanges.
Many remember how Iran's National Soccer Team was forced to lose to Bahrain, four years ago. Several players had mentionned this fact but were quickly silenced due to threats made against their family members.
That forced loss had put an immediate stop to consecutive nightly gatherings and anti-regime demos.
A victory against Mexico would have, for sure, lead to a night full of problem for the Islamic regime, such as, those witnessed in year 2000 and during what became famous as Iran Soccer Riots. Underground groups would have used a much massive popular presence in order to transform a night of popular celebration into another nightmare for the Islamist clerics and technocrats.

Oppostion bars Islamic regime's propaganda at the occasion of soccer game

2006-06-13T07:49:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

Jun 12, 2006, 00:05
Opposition groups and their members stopped the Islamic regime's propaganda and supporters at the occasion of the Iran-Mexico match played in the frame of the 2006 Soccer World Cup.
In several cities groups gathered in order to organize opposition soccer gatherings, in which they displayed the banned "Lion & Sun" flag and some posters of the Islamic regime's crimes. Such actions were very noticeable, especially, in cities, such as in Los Angeles, where, the Marzeporgohar Party had rented a full restaurant in the Westwood area, and where tens of Iranians gathered to watch the match on Television.
In Dallas and in Seattle, several SMCCDI and Iran National Secular Party members took off the Islamic regime's displayed flags, from the walls of some businesses, where some Islamic regime supporters had gathered in order to watch the game on big screen televisions.
In Nuremberg and in Berlin, tens of Iranian opponents rallied with anti-Ahmadinejad Jewish groups in order to condemn the hateful nature of the Islamic republic regime.

Jailed Iranian writer barred from seeing lawyer

2006-06-13T07:35:00.000-02:00

Reuters:

Tue Jun 13, 2006
5:14 AM EDT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Canadian-Iranian philosopher Ramin Jahanbegloo, arrested in Tehran last month on spying charges, has been denied access to a lawyer during his interrogations, the judiciary said on Tuesday.
Canada earlier this month asked Iran to either release or charge Jahanbegloo, who has joint nationality, and the case has further strained the icy relations between the two governments. Jahanbegloo has worked and lectured on democracy in Iran and how the Islamic Republic can engage with the West, and has written on the importance of acknowledging the Holocaust. Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether it happened.
"It is a security case. Based on the law, when it is at this stage of the investigation, he cannot have access to a lawyer," Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad told a news conference at Evin prison in north Tehran.
Karimirad gave no indication of how long the investigation stage might take. Authorities had invited journalists on a very rare visit to the notorious Evin prison, where political prisoners like Jahanbegloo are held.
Diplomatic relations between Tehran and Ottawa have been poor since Canadian-Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in detention in Iran in 2003 after being arrested for photographing Evin prison.
Iran says conditions are improving in its jails but rights groups describe arbitrary detention and solitary confinement and say detainees should have more access to lawyers and family.

Tehran's prisoner

2006-06-12T07:31:00.000-02:00

Macleans.com

Ramin Jahanbegloo is a noted scholar and a Canadian citizen. Now he's been locked up in Iran, accused of being a foreign agent, and Ottawa is powerless to do anything about it.
LUIZA CH. SAVAGE
Last summer, while Iran was in the grip of the election campaign that would bring the authoritarian populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power -- and set the country on a collision course with the West over his nuclear ambitions -- Harvard professor Michael Ignatieff found himself in Tehran, talking to university students about such lofty matters as whether one can prove that human rights are universal. He was there at the invitation of a dapper, intellectually intense 46-year-old philosopher named Ramin Jahanbegloo, who had studied at the Sorbonne and Harvard, taught at the University of Toronto, and written some 15 books in three languages. Jahanbegloo, a Canadian citizen, was now back in his homeland, to foster what he earnestly called a "dialogue of civilizations."
Outside of the state-controlled universities, Jahanbegloo -- whose name in one dialect translates as "son of the world" -- had turned a small office in an arts and culture NGO into something of an international salon. Through force of will and a gregarious personality, he persuaded some of the world's most famous intellectuals to travel to Tehran, where they were treated like rock stars. Crowds of 1,500 people gathering to listen to German Jürgen Habermas discuss "post-ideological thinking," or Stanford philosopher Richard Rorty talk about "democracy and non-foundationalism." While such encounters are taken for granted on Western campuses, in theocratic Iran they took a measure of courage -- though it is only now becoming clear just exactly how much.
It has been less than a year since Ahmadinejad replaced the reform-minded Mohammad Khatami as president, but a political era has passed. Ignatieff is now running for the leadership of the Liberal party, and Jahanbegloo, who was until recently "dialoguing" with foreign presidents and the Dalai Lama, is in jail. He was arrested at Tehran airport on April 27, between a sojourn in India and a trip to a conference in Brussels, and locked up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, where detainees are routinely subject to torture and abuse. Formal charges have not been laid, but Iran's minister of intelligence said Jahanbegloo was picked up because of "relations with foreigners." Government-aligned newspapers accuse him of being a foreign agent conspiring against the government.
His friends, and they number in the hundreds around the world, are shocked that the regime could target their Ramin -- a man so passive in his methods that a critic once dismissed him as "all talk and no action." "Ramin was not a political activist, an organizer, someone to get caught up in causes," says his long-time friend, Nader Hashemi, a post-doctoral fellow in political science at Northwestern University in Illinois, who got to know him while studying in Toronto. "That's something he was critical of."
A letter to Ahmadinejad calling for the philosopher's release has been signed by more than 420 thinkers from Antwerp and Austin to Malaysia and Serbia, including Habermas, Umberto Eco, Timothy Garton Ash, Noam Chomsky, Leszek Kolakowski, Antonio Negri and others. Danny Postel, a Chicago-based journalist and critic who is organizing the petition, admits that given the unpredictability of the regime, he can't be sure it won't do more harm than good. "The authorities could say, 'Look at all the Western intellectuals who are behind Ramin. This proves our point.' We hope it has the opposite effect of putting pressure on the regime. But one simply doesn't know." Insists Ignatieff: "This man had no connection to any anti-regime activities of any kind. It would be an international disgrace if they harmed him."
A disgrace, yes, but not the first one. Jahanbegloo is the second Canadian citizen to be thrown into the brutal Evin prison, at risk for his life. And it's the second time Canada seems powerless to do anything about it. He sits in the same prison where Zahra Kazemi, the Iranian-Canadian photojournalist arrested for taking pictures during a demonstration, was raped and tortured. She died of her injuries. Jahanbegloo's friends worry that he could face a similar fate. Ottawa's campaign to have him either formally charged or released has consisted mainly of stern letters from Foreign Minister Peter MacKay to the Iranian minister of foreign affairs, and futile entreaties. A letter co-signed by the EU, which has greater diplomatic and economic ties to Tehran, protested the lack of due process, the fact that no charges have been laid, and that he has not been granted a lawyer. But it has made no difference. Canada has not been allowed consular visits. "Iran does not recognize joint citizenship, so they're not in any way acknowledging his Canadian citizenship or connection," MacKay said. "In fact, by some bizarre assessment, having Canadian or American or any other foreign connection is feeding perhaps the reasons for his detention."
The Iranian chargé d'affaires in Ottawa has met with Canadian officials, while Canada's ambassador in Tehran has met Iranian officials, but there have been no public threats to recall our ambassador, as Canada did at least three times over the Kazemi affair, and no public upbraiding of the regime over the case. It's a delicate area because every step must be weighed for its consequences on a man's life. MacKay and his officials have taken pains not to issue statements that might be interpreted as putting pressure on the unpredictable Iranian regime. But some critics say Canada should be doing more, not just for Jahanbegloo but to hold Iran to account for human rights abuses, and to encourage democracy there. "If the Bush administration monopolizes this issue on the international stage, it's the kiss of death for civil society in Iran," says Payam Akhavan, an associate professor of international law at McGill University, and a former adviser to the UN war crimes prosecution at The Hague. "We take notice because [Jahanbegloo and Kazemi] are people with a connection to Canada, but there are so many people like them who suffer in silence because they don't have a foreign nationality. Canada should be engaged in promoting civil rights in Iran irrespective of whether a Canadian is languishing in prison. The case has to be raised at the highest levels. It needs to become an international issue." Reliable news on Jahanbegloo's condition is difficult to come by. His wife, with whom he has an infant daughter, is thought to be the only one who has seen him, and she has declined to speak to reporters out of fear of making things worse. She is also said to be wary of involvement by foreign governments.
If his treatment follows the typical pattern of other dissidents, he is likely being held in solitary confinement in a small cell with the lights continually on, in an effort to disorient him and deprive him of his sense of time, says Akhavan, who is also president of the New Haven, Conn.-based Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. "He is probably being interrogated to coerce a confession through sheer exhaustion or psychological breakdown," he says. Jahanbegloo could be there a long time. "If he doesn't confess, they will continue to detain him. If he does confess, they cannot release him because their accusations would lack credibility," Akhavan says.
There are multiple layers of irony to his arrest, not the least of which is that Jahanbegloo was a patriotic Iranian who turned down the chance at an academic career in the best Western universities to live in a middle-class apartment and contribute to the cultural life in his country. "I encouraged him and so did others," says Hashemi. "We said that he was more needed in Iran than anywhere else." Says Ignatieff: "He could be living a comfortable life in Toronto -- that makes me angriest. This man is a patriotic Iranian and has every right to live and teach in Iran."
Moreover, to hear his friends and colleagues tell it, the idea of him plotting to overthrow the regime is as likely as seeing Mahatma Gandhi get into a barroom brawl. Jahanbegloo was raised in a family of intellectuals in Tehran; his father was an economics professor and his mother hosted salons for writers and artists. He did his Ph.D. dissertation at the Sorbonne on the non-violence philosophy of Gandhi. He studied the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as well. "The key feature of his thinking is non-violence and dialogue," explains Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, professor of history and Near and Middle Eastern civilizations at the University of Toronto. Jahanbegloo first moved to North America to study and teach at U of T from 1997 to 2001. Hamid Marjaee, a friend and community volunteer in Toronto, remembers his dedication to his work. Except for early morning swims and strolls around the city, he spent his time working. "He liked Canada. He was very happy here, with the non-intrusiveness," says Marjaee. After a stint in Washington, Jahanbegloo headed back to Iran in 2002.
In a lengthy series of interviews in January and February with Danny Postel, to be published in the online journal, Logos, Jahanbegloo explained: "I consider myself a politically moderate and non-violent person, but a philosophically radical-minded person. . . . Philosophy is the daily practice of dissent at the level of thought. Being a true radical is having the courage to think and to judge independently." His contacts with foreigners were part of a philosophical, rather than a political, project. "For those of us who live and work in Iran, every visit of a prominent intellectual figure is fresh air which gives us the necessary oxygen to continue thinking differently," he told Postel.
Jahanbegloo comes from a generation of Iranian thinkers disillusioned by revolutionary politics and political violence, and rejects utopian ideologies like Marxism as well as religious dogma. Instead, the way forward is through tolerance, "dialogue" with other cultures, and efforts to understand them, though not to ape them. "The new Iranian intellectual is no longer entitled to play the role of a prophet or a hero," he told Postel. "He/she is in the Iranian public space to demystify ideological fanaticisms and not to preach them."
It is no coincidence that one of his best-known books, Conversations with Isaiah Berlin, published some 14 years ago, focused on a thinker Ignatieff describes as a "pragmatic" liberal. At one point in the book, Berlin tells Jahanbegloo, "Total liberty can be dreadful, total equality can be equally frightful." Here was a Persian entering into conversation with a Latvian-born Jew and Oxford don. "That's what it means to think freely," says Ignatieff, who has written an authorized biography of Berlin. "It means you don't decide you like a thinker based on his religion or ethnicity -- you find him interesting based on what he says, and that is Ramin's view."
Another irony of his arrest as a foreign agent is that, despite his immersion in Western philosophy, he was opposed to importing Western ideas wholesale into Iran. On the contrary, he told Postel, "We have to look for a universalism which is founded on all human experiences of history rather than only on Western values." Says Postel, a senior editor at openDemocracy.net, a British-based online magazine: "I think of Ramin as a philosophical ambassador between Iran and the outside world -- and not just the West. He is engaged in a profound dialogue with India." While in prison, he will miss the publication of his latest book, a collection of conversations with Indian thinker Ashis Nandy.
At U of T, Jahanbegloo founded an Iranian discussion group that met each Saturday and called itself the Agora, after the ancient Athenian forum. "Agora initially created a lot of problems in Toronto," recalls Tavakoli-Targhi, "because it brought people from the far right and far left and they were debating. They had been so polarized: Islamist, monarchist, or leftist, and he sort of messed this up. He came and brought people of different ideologies together."
There are a variety of theories as to why this moderate man of letters was targeted. For one thing, his detention is part of a broader crackdown. Student leaders and prominent writers have been arrested in past months. Human Rights Watch reported that "freedom of expression and opinion deteriorated considerably" last year, while Amnesty International pointed out the arrests of journalists, online bloggers and human rights defenders. Last month, the government even closed a state-run newspaper "due to its publication of divisive and provocative materials."
Secular intellectuals were tolerated under Khatami, who encouraged at least a rhetorical "dialogue of civilizations" as cultural policy. But Ahmadinejad is interested only in a "dialogue of religions." "This administration wants to roll back the democratic gains that were achieved in the last presidency," says Hashemi. "One way of doing that is to target someone like Ramin as an example of the type of people they don't want."
"He lived in this kind of bubble that the regime allowed for free thought in Tehran," Ignatieff notes. "Now it's not simply that they have arrested a free mind, but they have also deliberately decided to puncture the bubble for free thought. It's not just Ramin, it's all these people. In silencing him, they decided to silence all other free spirits in Iran with trumped-up charges of espionage." Another theory is that Jahanbegloo was simply becoming too popular among young Iranians, who make up 70 per cent of Iran's population.
Some accounts have linked his arrest to two articles he published in Spain's El País newspaper. In January, a little more than a month after Ahmadinejad famously denounced the Holocaust as "myth," Jahanbegloo wrote emotionally about his 2004 visit to Auschwitz, calling it "one of the most terrible experiences that anyone can experience." In a second article, which ran on April 20, Jahanbegloo outlined the current intellectual debates in modern Iran, stating that it is one of the few Muslim countries with an active civil society, which he compared to those in Poland and Czechoslovakia under the Communist regime. He described two groups of religious intellectuals -- reformists who aim to reconcile Islamic thought with democracy, civil society and religious pluralism, and oppose the absolute supremacy of clerics; and neo-conservatives who believe in the supremacy of the clerics, are against Western ideas, and oppose the separation of church and state. Jahanbegloo placed himself among a third new generation of thinkers who do not follow a specific ideology, but are in favour of exchange with other cultures and a dialogue with the West and with modernity, thus posing a threat to the philosophical and intellectual principles of the established order.
Some see Jahanbegloo as a pawn in the escalating confrontation between Iran and the U.S., which earlier this year announced it would spend US$75 million to promote democracy in Iran. Some of that money is slated to flow to radio and TV broadcasts to promote opposition to Iran's religious leaders. But some will flow to non-governmental organizations and institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization based in Washington that receives some funding from the U.S. Congress.
Jahanbegloo won a fellowship from the endowment to cover a year's living expenses in the U.S. capital, where he worked on a book that dealt with balancing the traditions of Persian civilization with the demands of the modern world. Now, his connection to the endowment could be held against him. But the notion that by receiving a fellowship he was somehow on Washington's payroll is "bogus," says Hashemi, "because the U.S. government gives money to many academic institutions, and a lot of people indirectly benefit from U.S. largesse. In that sense, many top-ranking Iranian officials who studied at U.S. universities could be accused of the same things." Nonetheless, some blame the Bush administration for pursuing a program that is backfiring. "I think he is a victim of the kind of policy the U.S. has been pursuing of openly declaring they are giving $75 million to the opposition to overthrow the regime. So the regime has been looking for people to scapegoat. It seems they have picked Ramin as a way of making a case," says Tavakoli-Targhi.
But others say that if other countries stood firm, such a policy would not be branded as a purely U.S. project. "You can fault the Americans, but where are the Europeans and the Canadians in making a more serious commitment?" asks Akhavan. "It is equally the fault of Canada and the Europeans that they are not playing a more prominent role on the issue."
Hashemi fears there is little Canada can do to help Jahanbegloo. "Unfortunately, Canada's relations with Iran are at an all-time low. The leverage that Canada has over Iran is not extensive. The only thing Canada can do is keep raising the human rights profile and condition of Iran in international forums and not allow Iran to close the case on Jahanbegloo or Kazemi."
The Kazemi case was a flashpoint in Iranian-Canadian relations. After Iran admitted she died as a result of being beaten in 2003, and an intelligence officer was charged, Canada was forbidden to have representatives at much of the trial. Our ambassador was twice recalled in protest. The intelligence agent was acquitted in July 2004, and the story exploded again in March 2005, when an Iranian physician who had examined Kazemi fled to Canada as a refugee and recounted how he had seen signs of horrific torture and rape. More recently, a story in the National Post suggesting a new Iranian dress code would force non-Muslims, including Jews, to wear identifying badges caused an uproar, and led to our ambassador being summoned to Iran's foreign ministry. (The Post later admitted the story was wrong.)
Despite the strained relations, former Hague adviser Akhavan says it is time for Canada to get more serious about pushing Iran to respect human rights, by taking concrete steps such as using international law to indict members of the regime. "Canada should exercise leadership in leading a coalition to push for individual accountability against Iranian leaders who are responsible for crimes against humanity, such as widespread executions, torture, persecution on political or religious grounds," he says. As well, Canada could look for regime-related assets to freeze.
At stake is ensuring that the issue of promoting a civil society in Iran "doesn't simply become a standoff between the U.S. and Iran, but becomes part of a broader sustained commitment on the part of the international community," Akhavan says. In that, he adds, Canada must be strongly engaged. Foreign Affairs declined to comment on what steps, if any, are now being considered. But, says Ignatieff: "It's time for everyone who loves freedom of thought to stand up and speak out on Jahanbegloo's behalf."

Iran has weeks to settle nuclear dispute, says Rice

2006-06-06T04:58:00.000-02:00

The Guardian:

Associated Press in Washington
Monday June 5, 2006
The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, yesterday warned that the incentives offered by the west to Iran to end its nuclear programme were not open-ended, but declined to say whether Tehran had a firm deadline to respond.
"I'm not one for timelines, but we do have to have this settled over a matter of weeks, not months," she said. The US, Britain, Germany, France, China and Russia agreed last Thursday to offer Iran incentives to give up uranium enrichment, and to punish it if it refused. "No one among these six powers is prepared to let this drag out," she said.

Iran threatens oil disruption in event of US 'mistake'

2006-06-06T04:55:00.000-02:00

Financial Times:

By Roula Khalaf in London and Negar Roshanzamir in Tehran
June 5 2006
Iran's supreme leader yesterday warned that energy supplies from the Gulf would be disrupted if the US made a "mistake" against his country, as officials in Tehran prepared to receive the details of an international package of "carrots and sticks" aimed at resolving the nuclear dispute.
In an attempt to raise the diplomatic stakes and deflect growing international pressure, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the ultimate decision-maker, appeared to contradict earlier assurances from Tehran that the world's fourth largest oil producer would not use the oil weapon. "If Americans make a mistake about Iran, the flow of energy from this region will definitely be jeopardised," he said in a speech, insisting, however, that Iran would never be the initiator of war. His comments are likely to unsettle oil markets when they open today.
Iranian analysts say the regime considers one of its most potent cards the ability to disrupt energy supplies through the straits of Hormuz, from which much of the world's oil shipments pass.
But Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, yesterday played down the leader's threats, highlighting that Iran depended heavily on oil revenues.
Mr Khamenei did not specifically mention last week's US offer of talks with Iran if it agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and processing activities. But he referred scathingly to a "recent message from Americans", describing it as "rude, cheap and full of foolish arrogance".
Sticking to Iran's official position that it has no intention of building a nuclear bomb, he suggested the regime felt emboldened and saw no need to make concessions. He said the government in Tehran was "one of the most popular in the last 100 years since the constitutional revolution", while the Bush administration was "one of the most hated governments in the history of the US".
Despite an agreement reached last Thursday by the US, UK, France, Russia, China and Germany, to offer Tehran a package of incentives in return for suspending uranium enrichment, Mr Khamenei insisted that there was no international consensus on Iran policy.
Yet the bold rhetoric combined with milder messages from other senior officials. President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad said on Saturday Iran would study the international proposals and not rush to judgment. The package is set to be delivered to Iran by Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief, possibly this week.
Analysts in Tehran said the occasion of Mr Khamenei's speech marking the anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic republic, required the projection of a defiant image.
But the leader's comments also highlighted the challenge ahead for the world community in trying to persuade the regime to give up uranium enrichment. "The leader wants to show that Iran can stand firm and that it won't falter," said one analyst. "At the same time. Iran will study the proposals and postpone any decision on them as long as possible."

Security inspection leads to clashes in Bookan

2006-06-06T04:52:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

Jun 5, 2006
Sporadic clashes resulting in shoot out happened, yesterday, in the northwestern City of Bookan, as an angry crowd attacked Islamist militiamen during a security inspection.
The militiamen were intending to confiscate textile products when they were attacked by the local residents of the Amir-Abad district. Several security agents were injured by pieces of stones and clubs and they had to open their escape way by shooting to the air.
Slogans against the regime and its leadership were shouted by the protesters who damaged the local bank and several public vehicles.
The situation is tense in most northwestern cities following last month's clashes, following the publication of a cartoon judged, by some analysts, as an insult to the Azari ethnicity. Many residents, like most Iranians, seized the occasion in order to show their rejection of the Islamic regime but the move reduced of intensity as some sources tried to portray it as a long run separatist movement.
The cartoon was in reality a hidden critic made of the Islamist clergy, but the Islamic regime's intelligence circles pushed the promotion of the theory of ethnical insult, in order to increase the fear of a civil war and split of the province from Iran.
The arrested cartoonist named 'Neyestani', who has been used as a scapegoat, is in reality an Iranian-Azari, just as like as, most of the Islamic regime's leadership, including Khamenei, who are native of the Iranian Azarbaijan province and Turkish speaking.
The Islamic regime's disinformation game was at the same time an occasion for some discredited separatist groups, such as the so-called "Diplomatic Mission of S. Azarbaijan" which are lacking of any real popular support inside, to try to make a name outside Iran; and an occasion for some opportunist oppositionist, such as "Mandana Zand-Karimi-Ervin" who are located abroad, to make 'comments' during controversial meetings or on satellite TV and radio networks. It's believed that some American think thanks, in a desperate need of a kind of Iran solution, are also fueling this wrong campaign which is undermining more the Bush Administration's popularity among Iranians.
President Bush had stated, last July, on the "need of respecting the territorial integrity of Iran". The statement had boosted, at that time, his popularity among Iranians and had lead to massive demos, against the Islamic regime in most Iranian border provinces. But a controversial meeting, held later at the WDC based AEI on last October, fueled the Islamic regime's propaganda machine and inadvertently contributed to damage the US Administration's increasing popularity among most Iranians.
The October 2005 meeting, had gathered a panel composed by some notorious fascist and blood thirsty elements, such as Rahim Shahabzi, and the very same opportunist Zand-Karimi Ervin. But the find out of some of Shabazi's racist and fascist comments, on the Google website, was a major blow to the meeting and created a massive protest reaction, by many Iranian-Azaris and Iranians of other ethnicities, against the wrong move.
The long run result of the reaction was to the point that none of the US legislators was present during another such controversial meeting, held last week, in a room at the Russell Senate Building. The meeting had gathered the very same opportunists but had no real coverage except by one agency and following the posting, a week later of Roya Toloo-i's so-called speech, on a controversial 'oppositionist' website named Iran Press News.
In reality, it has been reported that Toloo-i refused to deliver her speech, at the meeting, after understanding the real goals of the other speakers who were the affiliates of the same discredited separatist groups.
It's believed that the room, without any present US legislator, was obtained by an American Think Thank who has somehow access to the Senate and who's also somehow 'helping' the Iran Press News website in which Zand-Karimi Ervin's daughter is heavily involved.

Report: Japan Eyeing Sanctions Against Iran in Nuclear Weapons Dispute

2006-06-05T04:44:00.000-02:00

Fox News:

Sunday, June 04, 2006
TOKYO — Japan is considering imposing sanctions on Iran if it continues to reject international calls to scrap its nuclear program and controversial uranium enrichment efforts, a news report said Sunday.
The sanctions would ban the remittances of money to Iran from Japan, the Yomiuri newspaper said, citing unidentified sources.
CountryWatch: Iran
Japan has tried to seek a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions, but with Iran still uncommitted to a package of incentives offered by other nations, the Japanese government is considering stronger measures, the report said.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, when asked about Iran on a Sunday morning talk show, declined to say whether Japan was considering sanctions and said the government is still pushing for a diplomatic resolution.
But he said he doubted whether sanctions would be effective against Iran, given the windfall profits the country is making on the currently high price of oil.
"It might not damage Iran, but could cause confusion in the world economy," Abe said on TV Asahi's Sunday Project.
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry Taro Aso urged Iran to accept a U.S. offer for direct talks in return for suspending its controversial uranium program, but said Tokyo was not considering economic sanctions.
Foreign Ministry officials were not immediately available for comment Sunday afternoon.
Local news reports have said the United States is urging Japan to consider restricting financial transactions with Iran should diplomatic efforts fail to break the diplomatic impasse. Some have said Washington is pressuring Japan to freeze plans to develop oil fields in Iran, although both sides have denied the reports.
Japan, a top U.S. ally that also imports much of its oil from Iran, has been keen to play a mediating role in resolving the standoff.
Japan has started to curb crude oil imports from Iran amid the nuclear controversy. Oil shipments from Iran fell by 20 percent in April compared to a year earlier, according to Trade Ministry data.

f Cornered, Iran Would Sic Hezbollah on U.S., Intel Officials Say

2006-06-04T04:50:00.000-02:00

Fox News:

Saturday , June 03, 2006
WASHINGTON — If cornered by the West over its nuclear program, Iran could direct Hezbollah to enlist its widespread international support network to aid in terrorist attacks, intelligence officials say.
In interviews with The Associated Press, several Western intelligence officials said they have seen signs that Hezbollah's fundraisers, recruiters and criminal elements could be adapted to provide logistical help to terrorist operatives.
Such help could include obtaining forged travel documents or off-the-shelf technology — global positioning equipment and night goggles, for example — that could be used for military purposes.
The senior officials spoke only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive positions they occupy.
Hezbollah was responsible for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The group's Saudi wing, in coordination with the larger Lebanese Hezbollah, is blamed for the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 that killed hundreds of American servicemen.
Tensions between Iran and the U.S. and its allies have grown over Iran's expanding nuclear program. Iran insists its aims are peaceful; leading U.S. officials say they are convinced the Iranians intend to develop a nuclear weapon within the next decade.
John Negroponte, head of the U.S. intelligence network, suggested in an interview aired Friday by the British Broadcasting Corp. that an Iranian bomb could be a fact in as little as four years away, although he admitted, "We don't have clear-cut knowledge."
The U.S. and five other world powers agreed Thursday on a plan designed to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Iran's president, without directly mentioning the proposal, pledged Friday that the West would not deprive his country of nuclear technology.
The Bush administration and U.S. allies know Iran could order attacks. Some officials believe that threat is a bargaining chip worth more to Iran if kept in reserve.
Given that diplomacy could fail to defuse the nuclear standoff, U.S. intelligence agencies are studying Iran's options to retaliate: using oil as a weapon, attacking Americans in Iraq and elsewhere, unleashing Hezbollah or deploying other tactics.
To the State Department, Hezbollah is a militant Lebanese group classified as a terrorist organization. Its terrorist wing, the Islamic Jihad Organization, is a global threat with cells in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, South America, Asia and North America. Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other single terrorist organization.
Yet in many countries, Hezbollah is praised for providing education, medical care and housing, particularly in Lebanon's south, and raising money for it is legal.
So far there are no signs the Iranian-backed group is planning an imminent attack on U.S. interests. But that possibility has counterterrorism agencies keeping close watch as the friction with Iran grows.
U.S. analysts believe the potential is greater for Iran to use terrorism to retaliate, rather than to strike first. But they have considered scenarios under which Iran may view its own pre-emptive attack as a deterrent.
One senior official said that if Iran was backed into a corner and considered U.S.-led military action as inevitable, the Iranians might calculate that terrorism could break international unity, increase pressure on the U.S. or shift American public opinion.
U.S. analysts, however, are cautious in their judgments about what might lead Iran to order strikes.
Hezbollah, which means Party of God, was founded in 1982 to respond to Israel's invasion of Lebanon. The radical Shiite organization advocates for Israel's elimination and the establishment of an Islamic government in Lebanon modeled after the religious theocracy in Iran.
With some exceptions, Hezbollah has not targeted the United States in recent years — a strategic decision that gives the group more freedom to operate, according to one U.S. counterterrorism official.
On orders from Iran, Hezbollah was tied to a string of kidnappings and assassinations of Westerners in the 1980s, including the abduction of the CIA's station chief in Tehran, William Buckley, in 1984.
Hezbollah is accused of bombing the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in the early 1990s, killing more than 100. The group denies the charges.
A former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said before and right after the Sept. 11 attacks that Hezbollah was believed to have the largest embedded terrorist network inside the U.S. "I have no reason to believe that there has been a dismantlement of that capability," said former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla.
Steven Monblatt, the head of the Organization of American States' Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, said tensions with Iran could lead Hezbollah to take steps to prepare attacks on Western interests in Latin America and elsewhere.
"I think it is legitimate to be concerned about situations where terrorist groups will not have an operational base, but will have made the preparations to establish one," said Monblatt, a former State Department official. "I don't know anyone alleging an operational cell right now. Now, how do you distinguish an operational cell from a sleeper operation — a more kind of logistical base?" Leadership in Hezbollah is exercised by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, a Shiite Muslim cleric who took over after Sheik Abbas Musawi was killed in southern Lebanon in an Israeli helicopter strike in 1992.
Hezbollah gets significant support from Iran, Shiite communities and particularly the Lebanese diaspora. One official said the group has access to several hundred million dollars a year, much of it going to the social service network in southern Lebanon.
The organization has been linked to all kinds of organized crime, including drug trafficking, drug counterfeiting and stolen baby formula. The substantial profits are thought to be funneled almost entirely back to the Middle East.
Kevin Brock, a career FBI agent who is now deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently told reporters that the U.S. has active investigations into Hezbollah around the world.
"The prioritization obviously has been Al Qaeda, but that doesn't mean Hezbollah has dropped off the screen by any stretch of the imagination," Brock said.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have had success in breaking up Hezbollah-linked crime rings, including a cigarette-smuggling operation in North Carolina.
This year, the Justice Department announced an indictment charging 19 people with a global racketeering conspiracy to sell counterfeit rolling papers, contraband cigarettes and counterfeit Viagra. Portions of the profits, law enforcers allege, went to Hezbollah.
Extensive operations have been uncovered in South America, where Hezbollah is well connected to the drug trade, particularly in the region where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. The area has a large Shiite Muslim immigrant population.

Iran's draft law on dress has many worried

2006-05-21T08:01:00.000-02:00

USA Today:

Posted 5/20/2006 10:46 PM ET
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A draft law aimed at encouraging Islamic dress raised fears Saturday that Iran's hard-line government plans to re-impose veils and head-to-toe overcoats on women who have shirked the restrictions for years, letting hair show and wearing jeans and shapely outfits. The looser social rules and dress codes are one of the few legacies left from Iran's once-strong reform movement.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose election last summer spelled the virtual end of the reformists' influence, came to office promising a return to Islamic values, with the support of clerical hard-liners.
Ahmadinejad has purged reformers from government, angered the West with calls for Israel's destruction and taken a tough line resisting U.N. demands that he curb Iran's nuclear program.
Iranian liberals had hoped that Ahmadinejad would not risk alienating a large sector of the young, who make up the majority of Iran's 70 million population.
But the draft law, which got preliminary approval in parliament last week, had many concerned.
"It is a ridiculous bill. Young Iranian girls will not return to the so-called Islamic loose-fitting clothes," said Sahar Gharakhani, a 25-year-old secretary wearing a colorful headscarf and a stylish jacket in Tehran on Saturday.
"The only way for authorities to make this happen is if they force it," she said.
The social gains made in the past were often measured in hemlines and retreating headscarves.
Laws in place since the 1979 Islamic Revolution require women to wear "chador" — a head-to-toe, loose-fitting black overcoat and veil that covers their hair and hides their shapes. They were enforced by religious police and paramilitaries, who castigated women who showed too much hair, wore makeup or had a chador that did not fit the required dark colors and shape.
Under President Mohammad Khatami, elected in 1997, enforcement became lax, and women took advantage, adding color to their clothes, pulling back scarves and shortening their coats.
Now on Tehran's busy streets, only some women adhere to the strict code of the chador. Others are seen in scarves that leave almost their entire heads bare, showing blonde-highlighted hair, and brightly colored formfitting jackets, called "manteaus," that stop just under the waist, revealing jeans and sandaled feet with painted nails.
The 13-article bill — which focuses on economic incentives for Islamic dress — has been touted by conservatives as a vital tool to curb Western influence in the conservative Islamic Republic.
No date has been set yet on a final vote on the bill.
"This bill brings no obligation, no imposition," said Emad Afresh, an Iranian lawmaker.
"It only requires the government to support the private sector," he said, adding that it was a way to "resist the (Western) cultural onslaught in a world where globalization is being imposed."
The bill does not call for police or other bodies to enforce stricter styles of dress for women.
Instead, it rallies state agencies to promote Islamic dress and "encourage the public to abstain from choosing clothes that aren't appropriate to the culture of Iran," according to the copy received from the parliament's press office.
It also would give economic incentives, including bank loans, to producers making Islamic-style clothing and impose tariffs on clothes imports. It leaves it to the Culture Ministry and others to define what Islamic dress means.
On Friday, a Canadian newspaper, The National Post, quoting Iranian exiles, said the law would force Jews, Christians and other religious minorities to wear special patches of colored cloth to distinguish them from Muslims. The report drew a condemnation from the United States, which said such a law would carry "clear echoes of Germany under Hitler."
A copy of the draft law obtained by The Associated Press made no mention of religious minorities or any requirement of special attire for them, and the Post later posted an article on its website backing off the report.
A crackdown on social mores could face stiff public resistance at a time when Iranians are more concerned with reviving the country's ailing economy and the escalating confrontation with the West.
Parvin Ardalan, a women's activist and journalist in Tehran, said the government clearly aims "to fight the Western dress code."
"But I don't think that they can just eliminate the Western dress altogether. It's going to be very difficult."
Parvaneh Khedmati, a 22-year-old administrator in a clinic, said she opposes the bill, even though she already wears a conservative, all-covering chador that leaves only her face exposed.
"I chose to wear a chador, I wasn't forced," she said. "The government has no right to impose anything this personal on the people. ... It's like a government telling people what to eat."

Iran's Iraq Strategy

2006-05-21T07:58:00.000-02:00

Washington Post:

Tehran Could Retaliate Against Washington by Striking Next Door
By Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh
Sunday, May 21, 2006; B02
From the moment the first U.S. warheads detonate over an Iranian nuclear installation, the United States will be at war with the Islamic Republic. A vast tableau of American facilities around the world -- as well as the streets of U.S. cities -- could be targets for retaliation by Iran's agents and surrogates. "The Americans should know that if they assault Iran, their interests will be harmed anywhere in the world that is possible," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, warned last month.
The most likely theater of operations in the initial stages of a U.S.-Iranian conflict, however, would be next door -- in Iraq. Since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, Iran has methodically built and strengthened its military, political and religious influence in Iraq. Iran's Revolutionary Guard has extensively infiltrated Iraq's Ministry of the Interior and police force, both mainstays of Shiite power. The hundreds of Iranian mullahs and businessmen who have slipped across the border have a commanding presence in southern Iraq's commercial and religious sectors.
Iran's sway over Shiite militias and its considerable paramilitary presence in Iraq give Tehran leverage in the ongoing nuclear stalemate with Washington, and would emerge as a key factor should armed conflict break out. U.S. forces and prestige are vulnerable in Iraq, making them particularly attractive targets. However, should Iran decide to strike in Iraq, it would have to weigh competing priorities: a desire for revenge against the Americans, and the strategic need to both avoid chaos in its western neighbor and bolster the political role of Iraq's Shiite majority. How Iran resolves this dilemma would go a long way toward determining the outcome of a U.S.-Iranian conflict -- as well as the future of the U.S. war in Iraq.
Iran's paramilitary and intelligence buildup in Iraq would put some members of the "coalition of the willing" to shame. Over the past three years, Tehran has deployed to Iraq a large number of the Revolutionary Guard's Qods Force -- a highly professional force specializing in assassinations and bombings -- as well as officers from the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security and representatives of Lebanese Hezbollah.
The Qods Force has a longstanding relationship with Hezbollah, which it trains and supplies in coordination with Syria through an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps unit in central Lebanon. In the words of Iranian Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, the IRGC commander, "The range of [the IRGC's] duty is not limited to our land and we have extra-border missions."
Iranian personnel have established safe houses throughout southern Iraq. They monitor the movement of coalition forces, tend weapons caches, facilitate cross-border travel of clerics, smuggle munitions into Iraq and recruit individuals as intelligence sources. Presumably, Tehran has recruited networks within U.S. military bases and civilian compounds that could be activated on short notice. Iran is also believed by regional intelligence agencies to have armed and trained as many as 40,000 Iraqis to prevent an unlikely rollback of Shiite control.
Coalition forces have suffered the consequences of Iran's military presence. U.S. and British officials contend that the IRGC has introduced into Iraq "shaped charge designs" -- powerful bombs that channel the force of an explosion into a narrow path. (Lebanese Hezbollah also has used such bombs effectively against Israeli tanks.) According to the British, at least 10 of their soldiers in southern Iraq have been killed since May 2005 by the combination of such explosives and remote triggering devices. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted in a March briefing with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that these makeshift bombs are "traceable back to Iran."
U.S. troops have improved their force protection skills over the past three years and are more adroit at detecting such bombs. But it is just not possible to fully safeguard 135,000 troops, let alone the 30,000 contractors and civilians working in Iraq. If the IRGC activated its agents within U.S. forward operating bases, or used indirect fire weapons -- Katyusha rockets or heavy mortars -- Iran could kill sizable concentrations of soldiers in mess halls, sleeping quarters, headquarters tents and other key facilities. The overall level of violence in Iraq -- 75 insurgent attacks per month in 2006, including 144 bombings that killed more than three people each -- would give Tehran some plausible deniability.
Iran's clerical regime could complicate matters for Washington even more by pressing its Shiite allies in Iraq to demand a U.S. withdrawal. The leading Shiite cleric in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani, has counseled patience and refrained from challenging the U.S. military presence; he is also wary of Tehran's influence over Iraqi politics. However, Abul al-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, has closer ties to Tehran and has publicly chastised Washington for not tackling the Sunni insurgency. (The council's armed wing, the Badr Organization, musters thousands of armed members.) And the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr also receives subsidies from Iran.
Although the Islamic Republic may not be able to obtain a fatwa against the United States from Iraq's most esteemed clerics, it can still count on the backing of important segments of the Shiite community, particularly those jockeying for power within it. This support could quickly produce mobs of young men in the street protesting the occupation.
Tehran is capable of wreaking havoc in Iraq, and it may consider such a move in response to a U.S. attack. However, as Iraq continues its descent into chaos, Tehran must balance its desire to hurt the United States with the equally compelling objective of fostering an orderly transition to Shiite rule in Iraq.
This need for balance is rooted in Iran's wartime experience during its long conflict with Hussein's Iraq. As Iran and Iraq are both Shiite-majority nations, the historic animosity between them has had less to do with religion than politics.
Indeed, an uneasy consensus has evolved among the Iranian leadership that the impetus for the war with Iraq, which killed hundreds of thousands of Iranians from 1980 to 1988, lay in the Sunni domination of Iraqi politics. The Sunni minority sought to justify its rule under the Baathist regime by embracing a pan-Arabist program; ultimately, this quest for glory abroad led to an assertion of hegemony in the Persian Gulf region and a devastating war with Iran. Empowerment of the more congenial Shiites in Iraq emerged as a key postwar objective of the Islamic Republic, and that empowerment depends on a modicum of political and social stability.
Ironically, the Iranian clerical hard-liners, so adamant about suppressing the reform movement at home, have emerged as advocates of democratic pluralism in Iraq. The Bush administration's satisfaction with January's parliamentary elections was echoed by Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the reactionary head of the powerful Guardian Council, when he said: "Iraq is now going through its election cycle. The election results are very good." Iran's theocrats appreciate that the surest way to advance their interests is to support an electoral process that will yield a state with strong provinces and a weak federal structure. That would keep the Shiites up, the Kurds in and the Sunnis down.
How, then, will Tehran reconcile its war aims with its determination to preserve stability in Iraq? Look back to the early 1980s, when a U.S.-Iranian confrontation played itself out in hapless Lebanon.
In that conflict, Iran did not subvert Lebanon's already brittle society by assassinating politicians and damaging the national infrastructure. Iran certainly could have done so, given its extensive network of clerical sympathizers, guerrillas and terrorists. Instead, Tehran opted for an incremental and deadly campaign of violence against the U.S. presence. It was at the behest of Iran that Hezbollah wrecked the U.S. Embassy in 1983, wiping out the CIA's cadre of Near East experts, and struck American barracks in Beirut in 1984, killing 241 Marines.
In contemplating war with Iran today, the Bush administration should remember the lessons of Lebanon. The U.S. presence in Iraq -- with its ubiquitous convoys, vast embassy compound, vulnerable forward operating bases and legions of civilian workers -- provides equally tempting targets. The U.S. commitment to Iraq is of course far greater than it was to Lebanon a quarter-century ago. And Washington is unlikely to redefine its interests with the alacrity of the Reagan administration and withdraw as swiftly. Nonetheless, the burden under which the United States now labors in Iraq would become exponentially heavier, with the pressure to exit threatening to overwhelm the strategic need to stay.

Hitler Resurrected

2006-05-21T07:52:00.000-02:00

Jewish org's: Very disturbed by reports from Iran

2006-05-20T07:50:00.000-02:00

Jerusalem Post:

May. 19, 2006
In response to numerous inquires, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations issued the following statement:
We are deeply disturbed by reports indicating that the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) may be in the process of adopting legislation that would require religious minorities in Iran -- including Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians -- to adopt distinctive color schemes, or according to some reports, different colored cloth markers that would identify them. This is part of legislation, originally introduced in 2004 but blocked within the Majlis, mandating that Iranians wear standard Islamic garments.
We have been seeking to clarify these reports but do not yet have confirmation. There are clear indications that various Iranian government agencies, including the Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, are working on new uniforms to be introduced in the fall.
While such legislation would be reminiscent of dark periods in the past, like the Nazi era when Jews and others had to wear identifying badges, it is also consistent with the racist and extremist ideology propagated by President Ahmadinejad.
We are monitoring the situation and seeking to ascertain the facts in order to determine the appropriate response. The initial reports have aroused concern in many governmental and non-governmental circles. We are confident that the facts will be clear soon and we will comment further at that time.

Iran religion plan appalling, says PM

2006-05-20T07:47:00.000-02:00

NineMsn:

Saturday May 20 07:22 AEST
Prime Minister John Howard has reacted with horror to a new Iranian law forcing Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges.
The Iranian parliament passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments", Canadian newspaper the National Post reports.
The law, which has yet to be formally approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide", Ali Khamenei, before it comes into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims - a yellow strip of cloth for Jews, a red badge for Christians and blue cloth for Zoroastrians.
Mr Howard said he had not been formally briefed on the law but if the report was true, it would be totally repugnant. "It obviously echoes the most horrible period of genocide in the world's history and the marking of Jewish people with a mark on their clothing by the Nazis, and anything of that kind would be totally repugnant to civilised countries," Mr Howard said.
"If it is the case, it's something that would just further indicate to me the nature of this regime. It's a calculated insult - if it's true - not only to Christians but most particularly to Jews and therefore it has direct connotation for the state of Israel, which has been the object of hate speeches and speeches of vilification. It would be appalling."
The UN is currently trying to resolve a stand-off over Iran's nuclear program.
Mr Howard's Canadian host and counterpart, Stephen Harper, said the new law should help firm the UN's resolve to take action against the country.
"It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany," Mr Harper said.
"However, we've seen a number of things from the Iranian regime that are along these lines and the fact that such a measure could even be contemplated, I think, is absolutely abhorrent.
"And I would hope that as our allies wrest with the difficult issues surrounding Iran's apparent desire to obtain nuclear capacity, that they will reflect carefully on the nature of a regime that would even contemplate such actions or such thoughts."

Iran 'capable' of introducing Nazi-like clothing labels

2006-05-20T07:43:00.000-02:00

CNews:

By ALEXANDER PANETTA May 19, 2006
OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper was quick to condemn Iran on Friday for an anti-Semitic law that appears not to exist.
Harper seized on a newspaper report that said Iran's hardline government would require Jews and Christians to wear coloured labels in public.
The prime minister couldn't vouch for the accuracy of the newspaper report, but he added that Iran was capable of such actions and compared them to Nazi practices.
"Unfortunately, we've seen enough already from the Iranian regime to suggest that it is very capable of this kind of action," Harper said.
"We've seen a number of things from the Iranian regime that are along these lines . . .
"It boggles the mind that any regime on the face of the Earth would want to do anything that could remind people of Nazi Germany."
But western journalists based in Iran told their Canadian colleagues that they were unaware of any such law.
And Iranian politicians - including a Jewish legislator in Tehran - were infuriated by the Post report, which they called false.
Politician Morris Motamed, one of about 25,000 Jews who live in Iran, called the report a slap in the face to his minority community.
"Such a plan has never been proposed or discussed in parliament," Motamed told the Associated Press.
"Such news, which appeared abroad, is an insult to religious minorities here."
Another Iranian legislator said the newspaper has distorted a bill that he presented to parliament, which calls for more conservative clothing for Muslims.
"It's a sheer lie. The rumours about this are worthless," Emad Afroogh said.
Afroogh's bill seeks to make women dress more traditionally and avoid Western fashions.
Minority religious labels have nothing to do with it, he said.
"The bill is not related to minorities. It is only about clothing," he said.
"Please tell them (the West) to check the details of the bill. There is no mention of religious minorities and their clothing in the bill."
The Associated Press reported from Tehran that the draft law, which has received preliminary approval, would discourage women from wearing Western clothing, increase taxes on imported clothes and fund an advertising campaign to encourage citizens to wear Islamic-style garments.
According to existing law, women must cover from head to toe, but many young women, buoyed by social freedoms granted to them during the 1997-2005 rule of former President Mohammad Khatami, ignore the law.
The Post's front-page story, which quoted Iranian expatriates living in Canada, made headlines around the world and was the banner story on the popular Drudge Report website in the U.S.
The story said Iran would require Jews to wear yellow labels on their clothing in an eerie reminder of the buildup to the Holocaust. Adolf Hitler forced Jews to identify themselves with yellow Star of David patches.
Christians would need to wear red labels, and Zoroastrians would be tagged with blue.
The law was still to be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide," Ali Khamenehi, the Post reported.
Calls to the Post newsroom for comment on the developments around the story was not immediately returned.
Harper called the report a reminder that the international community must prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons.
He made the remarks during a news conference in Gatineau, Que., with the visiting Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
Both men provided lengthy answers to a question about the report.
Harper said he had seen the story and wasn't sure if it was true, before launching into his criticism of the Iranian government.
Howard said he hadn't seen the report. In answering the question, he sprinkled qualifiers into nearly every sentence to underscore uncertainty about the accuracy of the report.
"I haven't previously heard of that," Howard said.
"If that is true I would find that totally repugnant. It obviously echoes the most horrible period of genocide in the world's history - the marking of Jewish people with a mark on their clothing by the Nazis."
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has previously described the Holocaust as a myth and has called for the destruction of the state of Israel.
Non-Muslims in Afghanistan were required to wear arm bands under the former Taliban regime.
The practice is a throwback to centuries-old rules imposed on non-Muslims living in Islamic states. Under Dhimmi law, non-Muslims were guaranteed security in exchange for paying a tax and wearing special labels on their clothing.
The U.S. government reacted with caution Friday.
The State Department said any such measure would be "despicable" and carry "clear echoes of Germany under Hitler."
U.S. government statistics indicate that 98 per cent of Iranians are Islamic. Other faiths are Zoroastrian, Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i.
Department spokesman Sean McCormack said he could not comment further because the precise nature of the proposal is unclear.
"I don't have all the facts," he said.

...

2006-05-19T04:59:00.000-02:00

Iran president to send letter to Pope - paper

2006-05-19T04:57:00.000-02:00

Reuters:

Thu May 18, 2006
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is writing a letter to Pope Benedict, following an unprecedented letter to U.S. President George W. Bush earlier this month, a newspaper said on Thursday.
"President Ahmadinjad's second letter is for Pope Benedict and will be sent in the next days," Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper, which is close to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, quoted unnamed sources as saying.
The newspaper gave no details of the letter's content. Iranian officials were not available to comment.
In the first direct communication between the two countries' presidents for more than two decades, Ahmadinejad wrote a long missive to Bush this month in which he questioned his commitment to Christian values and criticised U.S. foreign policy.
Some Iranian analysts and Western diplomats interpreted the letter as a veiled offer to open talks with Washington on the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme.
But Washington has said it has no intention of holding direct talks with Iran on the issue. Britain, France and Germany, the European Union's three biggest powers, plan to offer Iran a package of incentives to try to induce Tehran to freeze a uranium enrichment programme which the West suspects could be used to make atomic bombs.
Ahamdinejad has ruled out halting nuclear fuel work in return for incentives, saying the Europeans were offering "candy for gold".

Venezuela Threatens to Sell F-16 Fleet to Iran

2006-05-17T05:10:00.000-02:00

Fox News:

Tuesday , May 16, 2006 CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela's military is considering selling its fleet of U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to another country, possibly Iran, in response to a U.S. ban on arms sales to President Hugo Chavez's government, a Venezuelan military official said Tuesday.
Gen. Alberto Muller, a senior adviser to Chavez, told The Associated Press he had recommended to the defense minister that Venezuela consider selling the 21 jets to another country. Muller said he thought it was worthwhile to consider "the feasibility of a negotiation with Iran for the sale of those planes."
The U.S. State Department, however, warned that Washington would have to sign off on any sale of the F-16s — a possibility that spokesman Sean McCormack suggested was highly unlikely. "Without the written consent of the United States, you can't transfer these defense articles, and in this case F-16s, to a third country," McCormack told reporters in Washington.
Even before the United States announced the ban on arms sales Monday, Washington had stopped selling Venezuela sensitive upgrades for the F-16s.
Muller said officials have been considering options for replacing the F-16s for some time, since the United States has not been selling replacement parts for a year. He said the military was considering Russian Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters, "which is the best jet fighter there is in the world right now."
Chavez has previously warned he could share the U.S.-made F-16s with Cuba and China — and look into buying new jets from Russia or China — because he said Washington was not supplying parts for the planes as agreed.
U.S. officials disputed that accusation, saying they were living up to their commitments under the deal. U.S. officials have said Venezuela is bound under the 1982 contract to consult with Washington before transferring any F-16s to another country.
"The recommendation that I'm making to the minister, and which I will make to the president at the appropriate time, is that the (F-16s) be sold to a third party because if they aren't complying with their part of the agreement, we don't have any obligation to comply with our part," Muller told the AP.
The U.S. State Department, in announcing the ban on arms sales Monday, said the measure was in response to a lack of support by Chavez's government for counterterrorism efforts. The State Department cited Venezuela's close relations with Iran and Cuba, both of which the U.S. deems state sponsors of terrorism, saying Venezuela has developed a much closer "intelligence-sharing relationship" with Cuba and Iran.
McCormack also expressed concerns about Venezuela serving as a transit point for arms, and about alleged links between Venezuela and leftist Colombian rebels — an accusation Chavez dismisses as baseless.
Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said the U.S. ban on arms sales — which becomes effective for one year starting Oct. 1 — "is nothing new" since the U.S. government already effectively was blocking defense deals.
In a statement, Rangel called the terror-related accusations unjustified and hypocritical, particularly considering the United States' unwillingness to turn over Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent wanted for trial in on charges of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane.
"These despicable accusations are based on a futile campaign to discredit and isolate Venezuela, to destabilize its democratic government and prepare the political conditions for an attack," Venezuela's Foreign Ministry said early Tuesday.
The U.S. arms embargo signals further deterioration in relations with Venezuela, a top supplier of oil to the United States. Venezuela is moving ahead with various other defense deals despite the U.S. ban, buying transport planes from Spain, helicopters from Russia and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles that are due to arrive soon.
Venezuela originally purchased its fleet of F-16s in 1983.
Chavez has accused the United States of breaching its contract to supply parts for the planes.
U.S. officials say the contract for the planes does not require the United States to supply parts indefinitely or to upgrade the planes. U.S. officials say periodic amendments to the F-16 contract have authorized the limited sale of replacement parts in the past.
Defense analyst John Pike said it wouldn't be very practical for Iran to buy Venezuela's F-16s because it, too, would have trouble finding spare parts due to an American arms embargo.
"I can't imagine why Iran would want to buy more airplanes that it can't get more spare parts for," said Pike, director of the Virginia-based defense think tank globalsecurity.org. "I think it's basically posturing on Venezuela's part."

EU powers to offer Iran reactor for atom deal: sources

2006-05-16T05:06:00.000-02:00

ABC News:

Reuters
May 16, 2006 — By Louis Charbonneau
BERLIN - The EU's three biggest powers plan to offer Iran a light-water nuclear reactor as part of a package of incentives if Tehran agrees to freeze its uranium enrichment program, EU diplomats said on Tuesday.
They said they would be very surprised if Iran accepted -- but would take a rejection as confirmation that its nuclear program does not solely aim at generation for peaceful ends. The United States and EU accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program, a charge Tehran denies.
A European Union diplomat said political directors from the "EU3" -- Britain, France and Germany -- and the office of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana would discuss the proposal with U.S., Russian and Chinese counterparts in London on Friday.
"The EU3 and Solana are planning an offer of a European light-water reactor to Iran in return for a suspension of its enrichment program," the diplomat, familiar with the negotiations on Iran, told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Nuclear experts say light-water reactors are more difficult to use for weapons purposes than heavy-water plants.
The EU trio first proposed offering Iran light-water technology in 2005, after two years of negotiations. At the time, the Iranians said the offer lacked specific incentives. SLIM PROSPECTS
EU diplomats said the new offer would be more specific, partly because they were confident of full U.S. support.
But they made clear they saw little prospect that Iran would accept, and were aiming above all to demonstrate to skeptics such as Russia and China that the West was not trying to deprive Iran of civilian nuclear energy.
"No one believes that this reactor will be built, because Iran will say 'No'," an EU diplomat said, adding that a European reactor would be much more expensive for the Iranians than the $1 billion Russian plant currently under construction.
Even so, the United States, which has taken the toughest line against Iran, was at best grudging in its backing.
U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton said he would not comment on the reactor idea but that the package had to include sticks as well as carrots -- "not half a package."
One U.S. official who deals with non-proliferation issues added: "Why should we be aiding and abetting their program?
"They are going to forge ahead with their nuclear weapons program. I think this is just an effort to see whether the Iranians say 'Yes' -- but they are not going to. Our position is going to be one of not a whole lot of enthusiasm."
According to a confidential EU document obtained on Tuesday by Reuters, the bloc is also considering an array of economic and political sanctions, including travel bans on Iranian officials, curtailing diplomatic ties, trade sanctions and the freezing of assets of Iranian companies and officials.
SCEPTICS
China's Foreign Ministry declared its support for what it expected to be a broad European offer of incentives.
But China and Russia are opposed to an EU-backed U.N. Security Council resolution that could penalize Iran if it continues sensitive nuclear development.
"We should not isolate Iran nor put pressure on Iran," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in Beijing.
Iran again insisted it would pursue enrichment.
"Iran's decision to preserve this right is definite and irreversible," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
After three years of investigation, the IAEA says it still cannot confirm that Iran's nuclear program is entirely peaceful, but has found no proof of a military program.
Iran's Asefi appeared to dismiss the latest EU package in advance, saying no incentive was required beyond implementing the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The NPT says signatories may research, develop and produce nuclear fuel for peaceful use.
But Western officials say Iran must prove its aims are peaceful before it can enjoy this right, after concealing an enrichment research program for 18 years until it was disclosed by an opposition exile group.
(Additional reporting by Jon Boyle in Paris, Evelyn Leopold at the United Nations and Carol Giacomo in Washington)

Iran says no to girly sportsmen

2006-05-16T01:57:00.000-02:00

Breitbart.com

May 08 1:16 PM US/Eastern
Iran's hardline Islamic regime has had enough of footballers with long hair and plucked eyebrows.
"I will ban athletes with an effeminate look," the head of the country's Physical Education Organisation, Mohammad Ali-Abadi said, told the Etemad-Melli newspaper.
"It is really disgraceful for Iran that young people step onto fields wearing make-up," the top official fumed. "When a man enters the field with dyed hair and groomed eyebrows he is disrespecting society."
The paper said Ali-Abadi appeared to be particularly worried about footballers, and warned that "even though they get away with it now, they will be disqualified in future".

Iran supplied al-Qaeda in Iraq with AA weapons.

2006-05-16T01:51:00.000-02:00

Iraq The Model:

According to this report from Azzaman, Iran's revolutionary guard corps is supplying Zarqawi's al-Qaeda in Iraq with Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons including the infrared guided, shoulder-born missile Sam 7 (Strela) in addition to other weaponry like machineguns and improved IEDs.
Iran Focus provides a translation of Azzaman's report:
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) had provided the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq heavy weapons including anti-aircraft missiles, it emerged on Friday.The Iraqi daily az-Zaman which is published in London and Baghdad quoted credible Iraqi sources as revealing that the IRGC had given al-Qaeda in Iraq, Strela-type SAM-7 surface-to-air missiles, modern explosives, and a large number of personnel arms including Kalashnikovs and BKC machineguns.
The report says Hizbullah of Lebanon played the mediator role in this deal:
Representatives of al-Zarqawi’s group met in Beirut with members of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah and through them established channels with Tehran.
And the network grows to involve Iraqi facilitators, Azzaman adds:
Three of Zarqawi's aides entered Iran through a border cross-point in the Amara region in the south east of Iraq, IRGC personnel instructed the Iraqi border guards guarding that cross-point to facilitate the movement of the al-Qaeda members.
Moreover, this doesn’t seem to be the first incident where similar weapons pass into Iraq from Iran; interesting that the state found al-Sabah newspaper-that is not normally in agreement with what Azzaman publishes-had a report on a similar smuggling incident that dates back to late April:
Sources in the border guards in Diyala province said that there are anti-aircraft weapons entering Iraq as part of deals between smugglers and insurgent groups in Iraq. Brigadier Nadhum Sherif commander of Diyala border guards told al-Sabah that on April 24-2006 his forces foiled the delivery of weapons to terror groups in the area of Qara-lous…weapon smuggling operation take place in remote areas far from the eyes of our forces but our corps received intelligence that weapon smugglers were about to deliver large amounts of weapons to the terrorists including Russian-made anti-aircraft weapons produced in 2005…we found the weapons left in hidden caches in the mountainous area…Just another example of how helpful a neighbor the Mullahs are, of course! They want everything to be stable on the ground.

2006-05-15T02:01:00.000-02:00

FrontPageMagazine.com

By David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin
May 15, 2006
Rarely has the world been afforded such a clear glimpse into the unholy alliance between Islamic extremists and secular radicals in the West. That’s exactly what it got last week when the foremost Imam of the radical Left, Noam Chomsky, bestowed his blessings on the world’s largest terrorist army, the Shiite jihad outfit sponsored by Iran and known as Hezbollah (“Party of God.”)
Following a meeting with Hassan Nasrallah, the Lebanese terrorist group’s “secretary general,” Chomsky announced his support for Hezbollah’s refusal to disarm. Then, in an echo of Nasrallah’s recent declaration that President Bush is the world’s top “terrorist,” Chomsky pronounced his own fatwa on the United States calling it one of the “leading terrorist states.” It was a meeting of murderous radical minds.
In many ways, Chomsky’s newly forged friendship with Hezbollah -- the most recent entry in a lifetime befriending America’s most deadly enemies -- is the logical continuation of the professor’s longstanding admiration for global terrorists and Jew-haters. In fact, Chomsky devoted most of the nineties to touting Hezbollah as a “resistance” movement (which occasionally committed misguided acts against civilians) while singing its praises as a crusader for peace and social justice.
Typical was Chomsky’s 1996 book, World Orders Old and New Citing with approval a journalist’s observation that Hezbollah “is not a terror organization,” Chomsky explained that the terrorist who blew up 243 U.S. Marines in Lebanon and murdered untold citizens of Israel was only engaging in “legitimate resistance” against an oppressor and “avoids striking civilians except in retaliation for Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians.”
Elsewhere in his book Chomsky claims that, in launching its attacks against Israel Hezbollah “carefully avoided civilian areas” and assured his readers that Hezbollah attacks were always “retaliatory.” Israel through Chomsky eyes presented quite a different story. Dispensing altogether with the studied euphemisms that marked his descriptions of Hezbollah, Chomsky unequivocally denounced Israel for using “terror weapons” to commit “atrocities” such as targeting “civilians” with “no provocation”.
The resulting effort bore little resemblance to fact. Rather than consider well-documented reports of Hezbollah’s repeated shelling (at its Iranian master’s prompting) of Northern Israel, killing women and children in the process, , Chomsky rejected the reports as so much American and Israeli propaganda. How after all, could the Great and Little Satans be telling the truth?
Rather than reflect on the fact that Hezbollah terrorists deliberately entrenched themselves among Arab civilians to cause the casualties so that Chomsky could protest, Chomsky falsely charged, that the Israeli military targeted the civilians, a claim which no reasonable human being could make. Even the anti-Israel UN felt compelled to acknowledge that “Hezbollah had resorted to using civilian areas to provide a human shield for its terrorist activity.”
In Chomsky’s version of the Elders of Zion, Israel is always the instigator, while the attacks of terrorists whose declared objective is the establishment of an Islamic state on Israel’s grave, are invariably “defensive.” Chomsky blames an upsurge in Hezbollah terror, for example, on Israel’s 1992 assassination, of Hezbollah leader (and mass murderer) Sheikh Abbas Mussawi. Yet Chomsky neglected to mention that Mussawi, speaking in behalf of Hezbollah openly proclaimed his genocidal goal: “We are not fighting so that the enemy recognizes us and offers us something. “We are fighting to wipe out the enemy.”
In Chomsky’s writings about Hitler’s heirs, the genocidal roles are always reversed. When Hezbollah broke an informal 1995 agreement to suspend attacks against civilian targets, Chomsky condemned Israeli military strikes, again omitting the fact that the complete annihilation of the Jewish state was Hezbollah’s stated goal.
In his 2000 book Fateful Triangle, Chomsky complained about media coverage that described Hezbollah’s shelling of the so-called Israeli “security zone” in Southern Lebanon as “terrorism,” Chomsky insisted that it was instead an act of “indigenous resistance to the rule of Israel and its proxies.” As usual, Chomsky was lying. Hezbollah’s attacks were against civilians inside the security zone not military targets. In a typical projection, Chomsky maintained in the face of the facts that it was Israel who was killing civilians, and (another lie) that Israel’s , official policy was to attack “villages and civilians” in Lebanon.
Today as its Iranian patron calls on the Muslim world to exterminate the Jews and finish Hitler’s job, Hezbollah is blessed by the embassy of America’s most prominent leftist, and better still, a self-hating Jew. While the international community and even the United Nations (whose resolutions Chomsky has repeatedly used as a sledge hammer against Israel), demands that the terrorist Party of God – which is an occupying army in Lebanon -- lay down its weapons, Chomsky provides the occupiers with a moral defense. According to Professor Chomsky there is a “persuasive argument” that the weapons “should be in the hands of Hezbollah as a deterrent to potential aggression and there is plenty of background and reasons for that.” (Many Lebanese are not persuaded. Commenting on Chomsky’s visit, a Lebanese observer pointed to the professor’s ignorance of the fact “that the Hezbollah arms scare the Lebanese people more than the Israelis.")
In fact, of course, the only “potential aggression” comes from Chomsky’s friends. In 2004, Hezbollah inked an agreement with Hamas – similarly dedicated to the extermination of Israel -- to continue their joint terrorist attacks against Israel. Hezbollah has also provided political support and weapons training to Hamas and al-Qaeda. In 2004, Hezbollah also launched an unmanned aerial vehicle that crossed Israeli airspace before crashing.
Hitler concealed his genocidal agendas from the German people and from his Chomsky-apologists. Hezbollah is more fortunate. In pursuing a second Holocaust of the Jews, it can count on Muslim support and apparently the support of American radicals as well. Therefore it makes no secret of what it intends. Its 1985 manifesto contains a section titled “The Necessity for the Destruction of Israel” that spells out the evil it seeks: “Our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease-fire, no peace agreements.” Like true jihadists, Hezbollah’s genocidal plans are not reserved for the Little Satan only but are its agenda for the Great Satan too. In 1993, Chomsky’s host Nasrallah declared: “Death to America was, is, and will stay our slogan.”
As his pilgrimage to Hezbollah’s mecca confirms, it is Noam Chomsky’s life-dream as well.

US gives up asylum seeker to Islamic regime

2006-05-14T13:52:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

May 14, 2006, 00:05
Un-confirmed reports are stating about the role of the US Government in the forced return of an Iranian asylum seeker to the Islamic regime. Majid Kavoosi, was handed by the US Embassy, in UAE, to the Interpol which handed him, in its turn, to the Islamic republic regime.
According to the same sources, Kavoosi had handed several secret files to the US Embassy based on promises of granting him asylum.
The latter risks the death sentence for his role in the murder of a notorious repressive Islamist judge who was known for having ordered the executions of tens of freedom fighters. In addition, Kavoosi was part of a guerilla group which was seeking the overthrow of the Islamic regime and which was involved in several attacks against the regime's symbols of political and financial power.
An increasing number of exasperated Iranians are resorting to the use of violent actions in response to the Islamic regime use of bullets or issuance of harsh sentences against any kind of real democratic movement or genuine peaceful uprising,
It seems that Kavoosi, as like as many opponents to the Islamic regime, had literally trusted this message of President Bush stating that "the day that the Iranian People chose to stand up, they won't have a better ally than the US!"
The hand over of Kavoosi coincides with rumors stating about some 'non-official' visits, of Iran, made by Americans close to the Pentagon and the State Department. If confirmed, such news would be an additional blow to the trust that many Iranians have placed in the American Administration and its claim of intending to promote Human Rights and Democracy in the region.
Already, other rumors are circulating among the Iranian opposition on the existence of a kind of "Iran Opposition Black List" and the influence exerted by some WDC based think tank circles, on part of the American media, US legislators and the State Department, in order to boycott genuine Iranian secularist opposition groups or to avoid granting them of any kind of financial support. Concerted efforts have been undertaken, in that line, in order to promote and finance docile Iranian individuals or groups which are ready to follow any kind of instruction.

From Publius Pundit

2006-05-14T02:05:00.000-02:00

My post over there (click on the title to open the page):
WHERE IS THE U.S. SUPPORT TO THE IRANIAN PEOPLE?
It’s with great sorrow that I learn that the U.S. gov’t caved in to the Mullahs.
SMCCDI, a secular , democratic and anti-islamist movement committed to regime change in Iran reports some worrying news.
Many Iranian oppositionists had used to support President Bush and now the U.S. gov’t sells its soul to the Islamic regime and announces it won’t grant funds to the Iranian oppositions.
If Bush’s popularity has reached a new low, it is not because of being a “warmongering” administration, as some naive pundits claim. No. It’s because it has caved in to the terrorists and the terrorist regimes.
It has decided to stay on the side of Europe and the U.N.
It has decided to be multilateralist. The President has no longer the guts he had in his first term. In spite of his anti-terror rethoric, he is doing a Clinton. It reminds me of when Clinton had shamefully repatriated the Cuban boy Elian back to Castro’s Cuba.
The past seems to repeat itself, when the U.S. betrayed those seeking freedom and stood with tyrannical regimes.
Let’s hope we will not hear the usual people wondering “why don’t the Iranians overthrow their regime by themselves?”.
Europe has no intention to support the dissidents. And now the U.S. seems to think the same. How could one think that the Iranians would overthrow the regime without a minimal moral and economic support?
Without any doubt, this is a big blow to the Iranian oppositions.
Now one should hope that the Islamic regime refrain from using its atomic bomb against Israel and the West.
But, given the European and American attitude and behavior, not only will the Mullahs stay more time in power, but they will have the time to use their deadly arsenal.
From SMCCDI: US gives up asylum seeker to Islamic regime.
Read the whole thing.
P.S. : I wish this post will not be used by the America-haters for their own purposes.

Noam Chomsky openly supports Hebzollah

2006-05-13T02:09:00.000-02:00

He spoke directly from terrorist Hebzollah's Al Manar TV:

http://www.almanar.com.lb/story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=649568

Would an attack on Iran be legal?

2006-05-10T04:53:00.000-02:00

BBC:

Tuesday, 9 May 2006
By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs Correspondent, BBC News website
As diplomatic attempts continue in the UN Security Council to get Iran to suspend its nuclear enrichment activities, the question has been raised about an American attack on Iran and whether it would be legal under international law.
If the US decided to attack Iran, it would probably claim that it was acting pre-emptively and exercising an inherent right of self-defence under the UN Charter.
One can rule out the US taking the other main legal path by which one state can attack another - an authorisation of force by the Security Council. Russia and China, both veto holders, are opposed to sanctions against Iran, let alone military action.
And nor would it invoke the growing doctrine of a humanitarian intervention, as the conditions needed for that do not apply.
So the US would probably seek to justify an attack under the self-defence principle, and it would first of all have to outline the nature of the threat.
Currently, this would refer to Iran's previously secret development of enrichment technology, and therefore its forfeiture of trust; its refusal to follow Security Council demands to suspend enrichment; and its president's hostile comments on Israel's right to exist.
All of these would be declared a threat to the US, its interests and to regional and world security.
At some future date, the US might bring forward further arguments, depending on how Iran's nuclear programme develops.
Article 51
Having defined the threat, the US would then invoke Article 51 of the UN Charter, which allows self-defence.
This article says: "Nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."
To get round the phrase "if an armed attack occurs", the US would say that international law does not require that an attack is actually taking place, and that its own new doctrine of pre-emption, an extension of the self-defence principle, was being implemented.
It justified pre-emption in a National Security Strategy document in 2002, after the attacks of 11 September 2001:
"The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile attacks by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act pre-emptively."
The US might say that it was acting in protection of or at the request of Israel, which could argue that it was under a greater threat than the US itself.
Collective defence is allowed by the UN if the original state claiming self-defence asks for help.
It is possible that, if the Security Council ever agreed a resolution under the enforcement of Chapter Seven of the UN Charter, which orders a member state to comply, the US could declare that it was enforcing it unilaterally.
International law
Would such arguments be accepted in international law?
There is some legal backing for the principle of not waiting too long.
A British judge, Dame Rosalyn Higgins, who was made president of the International Court of Justice in February, said before she joined the court: "In a nuclear age, common sense cannot require one to interpret an ambiguous provision in a text in a way that requires a state passively to accept its fate before it can defend itself."
However, the general view among international lawyers is that there has to be the threat of an "imminent" attack.
British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who used a complex series of Security Council resolutions on Iraq to justify the 2003 invasion, was critical of pre-emption in the House of Lords in April 2004: "International law permits the use of force in self-defence against an imminent attack, but does not authorise the use of force to mount a pre-emptive strike against a threat that is more remote."
There is therefore a fairly fundamental divergence between the US doctrine and the view of much of the rest of the UN membership. At the very least, there is no settled opinion.
The question of imminence
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, senior fellow in international law at the British think tank Chatham House, who resigned as a legal adviser to the Foreign Office because she felt the invasion of Iraq was illegal, told the BBC News website: "There is currently no basis for an American attack on Iran under Article 51. There certainly is not a case for self-defence at the moment.
"You do not have to wait for an attack but the threat has to be real and imminent."
She did not think the conditions for a self-defence argument existed. "Does enrichment of uranium count as a threat?" she asked. "It has not been weaponised. Is there a threat?"
Nor did she accept that the US could enforce a Chapter Seven resolution by itself. "This requires a further resolution authorising force and is a settled view," she said.
That an attack is illegal is also a view shared by former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. He told reporters the other day that an Article 51 action could not be justified.
The new Foreign Secretary, Margaret Beckett, has not gone that far, saying only that nobody had any "intention" of attacking Iran.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has pointedly refused to say that an attack is "inconceivable", a word used by Mr Straw, but whether this is a tactical use of language to rattle Iran or whether it foretells potential British support for an attack is not clear.
Ms Wilmshurst accepted that Israel might regard itself as threatened, given the remarks made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
But she added: "Israel would have to take an objective, realistic view as to whether there was a real threat, and I am doubtful at the moment."
The Caroline incident
Much of the traditional doctrine on self-defence comes from an incident in 1837 near the Niagara Falls, in which a boat called the Caroline was attacked and tipped over the Falls by British forces that moved into American waters from Canada. The boat was being used by Canadian rebels preparing an attack.
Some very elegant diplomatic exchanges between US Secretary of State Daniel Webster and British Foreign Secretary Lord Ashburton led to the acceptance of Webster's principles of pre-emptive self-defence. These held that it was justified only in cases in which the "necessity of that self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation".
The UN Charter basically adopted that rule, and a highlevel group which looked at UN reform in 2004 said that "Article 51 needs neither extension nor restriction in its long understood scope". The General Assembly confirmed that view. However there remains some debate about how "imminent" a threat has to be, and how large.
The doctrine of pre-emption has therefore not received widespread international backing. Last year, Chatham House sent a questionnaire about self-defence to 13 international lawyers in Britain. As a result, a number of principles were drawn up to give precision to Webster's phrasing.
These stressed the importance of imminence.
Post-9/11 style pre-emption was not endorsed.

No comments...

2006-05-04T14:33:00.000-02:00

Persians Gather To Commemorate Holocaust

2006-05-04T09:46:00.000-02:00

Holocaust- a slide presentation for Ahmaghinejad to see:
By Karmel Melamed
Nearly 1,000 Persians Americans and local civic leaders of different religious backgrounds gathered at the Nessah Cultural Center in Beverly Hills last Sunday, April 23, to honor the memory of the nearly six million Jews who perished in the Nazi genocide during World War II.
The event this year was of particular importance for local Iranian Jews and Muslims as a show of unity against recent statements made by Iran?s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denying the existence of the Holocaust.Tonight is a historic event as Iranians of various faiths have gathered here to commemorate the Shoah and we pledge that this tragedy will never be repeated, said George Haroonian, an Iranian Jewish community activist and the day?s event coordinator.
Keynote speaker Rabbi Marvin Heir, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in West Los Angeles, said remembering the tragedy of the Holocaust is especially significant today as Iran?s government has been developing nuclear weapons and its President has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction.
"Many in the world don?t understand why Jews are so obsessed with commemorating the Shoah," Heir said. "We must remember because we paid a dear price for allowing the world to be silent when it was going on more than 60 years ago."
Another speaker, Stanford University professor and director of the Iranian Studies program, Dr. Abbas Milani, spoke of the long history of tolerance between Iranians and Jews despite the anti-Semitic rhetoric from Iran?s current regime.
"I'm here to tell you that the words of Ahmadinejad do not represent the views of the majority of Iranians in the world," Milani said. "I hope the world realizes that the captive people of Iran and those Iranians in exile do not make the same choices as Ahmadinejad and are not in the same camp as the Nazis."
Members of various southern California-based Persian language satellite radio and television outlets opposed to Iran?s current regime were also on hand to cover the event at Nessah, which will be broadcasted in Iran in the coming days.
Many of the thousands who turned out for the event waited on foot for several hours just to hear the speakers and catch a glimpse of a 20-minute video showing a collection of anti-Semitic speeches made by Ahmadinejad and Holocaust revisionist programs on Iran state-sponsored television stations.
Experts familiar with Iran?s fundamentalist Islamic regime said Ahmadinejad's comments about the Holocaust were not designed to divert the world's attention from Iran?s nuclear crisis, but were based on the Iranian government's deep-rooted anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi ideologies.
"This issue of Holocaust revisionism is not just a diversion or demagoguery," said Frank Nikbakht, founder and director of the Committee for Religious Minority Rights in Iran. "It is really what the Iranian government officials believe and not just what Ahmadinejad believes. It is part and parcel of their long-term program of global jihad as embodied in the current Iranian constitution."
About 10 Holocaust survivors were also in attendance, including 88-year-old Menashe Ezrapour, a Westwood resident and the only known Iranian Jewish Holocaust survivor to be interned in Nazi concentration and work camps during World War II.
At the start of the war, Ezrapour was an Iranian college student studying engineering in Southern France when he was sent to various camps, including the notorious Gurs Concentration camp. After more than 60 years of silence about his experiences, Ezrapour went public two years ago about his suffering at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
What I went through in the camps is too painful to recall, but I thought it was important to be here today to remember those who perished," Ezrapour said.
Many in the audience were in tears during the event as special Hebrew prayers were chanted for the victims of the Holocaust and six candles representing the millions who perished were lit by Ezrapour and the speakers.Haroonian and other organizers said Ezrapour?s story is important because it represents first-hand proof of the tragedies of the Holocaust from an Iranian who experienced the same events that Iran?s President denies ever occurred.
Other officials in attendance at the Nessah gathering were Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch, Beverly Hills Vice Mayor Jimmy Delshad, and Deputy Director of Community Affairs for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger Michelle Kleinert

Dicey - Cox and Forkum

2006-05-04T09:31:00.000-02:00

Experts Warn of Drawbacks of Potential UN Sanctions Against Iran

2006-05-04T09:25:00.000-02:00

Voice Of America:

By Dan Robinson Capitol Hill
03 May 2006
Experts have cautioned a congressional panel about potential drawbacks from any U.N. sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Capitol Hill that a vote on an Iran resolution in the U.N. Security on Iran will be a key test for Russia and China and their willingness to cooperate with efforts to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions.
Ambassador Bolton says the United States would like to see a unanimous decision from the Security Council on Iran.
Although that is widely seen as unlikely, despite U.S. efforts to persuade Moscow and Beijing, he says Russian and Chinese abstentions would not stop the progress of a sanctions resolution.
"It's not impossible that we would proceed without them, and if they abstain then that resolution would go into effect, as would subsequent sanctions resolutions if we get to them," said John Bolton.
Ambassador Bolton faced tough questions from House lawmakers at the hearing examining the viability of United Nations sanctions.
Democratic Congressman Chris Van Hollen is concerned U.S. efforts to gather support may suffer from fallout from the way the Bush administration handled the Iraq issue, and suspicion in foreign capitals that Washington would use a resolution to justify a future military strike.
"The concern at the U.N. that resolutions adopted may at some point be used by the United States or another country as a point for unilateral military action," said Chris Van Hollen.
Experts appearing with Ambassador Bolton at Tuesday's House subcommittee hearing cautioned against hasty action.
Carne Ross, a former British diplomat, urges dialogue and more patience with Tehran, saying sanctions may not succeed without broad political support.
"Ramping things up at this rather accelerated rate that the U.S. is doing, pushing things through to the Security Council in a very determined and aggressive and time-limited fashion is not the way to win political support," said Carne Ross.
At the same time, Ross adds military options cannot not be ruled out, and Iran could help ease tensions by allowing international inspectors full access to its nuclear facilities.
Republican Congressman Christopher Shays is not optimistic China and Russia will support U.N. sanctions.
"I just don't have any faith that Europe's heart or Russia's heart or China's heart is in having sanctions," said Christopher Shays. "I think it is a message to Iran [that sanctions are not] going to happen so they don't need to fear them, and then what I fear is the only thing left on the table is [the] military option."
If European countries want to head off such a scenario, Shays says they must recognize there is no way around sanctions.
George Lopez, professor at the Joan Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, says U.N. members should carefully consider potential outcomes of prospective sanctions, as well as drawbacks, including possibly giving more rhetorical ammunition to Iran's leadership.
"We saw this with [former Serbian leader] Slobodan Milosevic," said George Lopez. "We saw this with [former Liberian president] Charles Taylor. There is no reason knowing what we know now to reinvent the same scenario with a quite erratic Iranian leader. And while we don't have responsibility for that Iranian leader, we do have a responsibility for the outcomes of [policies] which will only further aggravate a situation rather than accomplish our goals."
Tuesday's hearing came as U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Nicholas Burns told reporters in Paris the Security Council is preparing a stiff international message for Iran on its nuclear program.
It also coincided with the latest threatening statements from Iran, including one by a Revolutionary Guard leader saying Iran would retaliate first against Israel in the event of any attack.

2 female critics of Islam discuss need for reform

2006-05-04T09:08:00.000-02:00

YNet News:

(05.03.06, 09:26)
Canadian author, Dutch politician express their criticism of Islam, discuss need for reform of religion; ‘we Muslims have completely lost sight of balance between religion and reason,’ author says
Associated Press
A Canadian author and a Dutch politician expressed their criticism of Islam and discussed the need for reform of the religion.
Writer Irshad Manji and Dutch Parliament member Ayaan Hirsi Ali, also an author who launched a book on Tuesday and wrote the movie that provoked the murder of director Theo van Gogh by an Islamic radical, spoke before an audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York, a Jewish arts and culture center, about the reform of Islam.
“The way in which my religion has been practiced and promoted for the last several hundred years is such that codes of honor - very Arab and very primal - have become enmeshed in the practice of Islam so that even though this is not a problem from Islam it has become a problem for Islam,” Manji said.
But the author mixed serious discussion with humor, greeting the audience with “Salaam, shalom, and for the atheists out there, ‘How the hell are you?”’ Manji, currently a visiting fellow at Yale University and syndicated columnist for the New York Times, wrote “The Trouble With Islam Today,” a book critical of Islam.
The 37-year old, born in Uganda to parents of Indian and Egyptian descent who moved to Canada where she grew up, told the audience that a sense of humor was necessary to opening a dialogue and questioning Islam. When asked if the approach would work, her co-panelist Hirsi Ali answered in a somber tone, “Not until we draw cartoons of the prophet.” A dissident of Islam
In her book “The Caged Virgin,” Hirsi Ali mentions the riotous reactions in many Muslim countries after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. She also cites the example of a Newsweek magazine report that a copy of the Quran was flushed down a toilet. Newsweek later retracted the report, which sparked riots in some Muslim countries that left dozens of people dead.
“We Muslims have completely lost sight of the balance between religion and reason,” Hirsi Ali writes in the new book.
The 36-year-old former refugee from Somalia, who fled an arranged marriage and ended up in the Netherlands where she would eventually be elected to parliament four years ago, says she is an atheist, but retains her past as a Muslim.
“I am a dissident of Islam - I share this history, I share the culture, I share the religion, my parents and everyone have stayed Muslims my whole life and I feel an obligation to share that which I believe now,” she said.
In addition to being close in age and two of the most outspoken critics of Islam, both women say they have needed to take security measures.
Hirsi Ali spent 2 1/2 months in hiding after Van Gogh’s murder in 2004 and said she recently had a neighbor force her to move by court order because of the danger she could bring as a terrorist target. Manji said she has also received numerous threats.
“You have bodyguards,” Manji said, turning to Hirsi Ali, “I have an excellent relationship with the Yale and the Toronto police.”
‘Protect freedom of expression’
Manji said she would go to Egypt in June for her foundation, Project Ijtihad, an organization designed to spur “A reform that enables the emerging generation of Muslims, especially young women, to challenge the authoritarianism of critical thinking.”
But the task is challenging, Manji said, as culture and religion have become intertwined throughout the history of the religion.
Both women agreed that the there is potential for dialogue and the eventual reform of Islam in the West.
“If both Europe and the U.S. both succeed in protecting freedom of expression ... Then that can happen,” Hirsi Ali said.

Thousands march in Iran labor protest

2006-05-02T09:13:00.000-02:00

CNN:

Monday, May 1, 2006; Posted: 11:35 a.m. EDT (15:35 GMT)
TEHRAN, Iran, (Reuters) -- Thousands of Iranian workers on Monday protested the growing use of short-term employment contracts. It was the most vociferous May Day demonstration the Islamic state has seen in years.
The protest came as a reminder to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that, although embroiled in an international dispute over his country's atomic ambitions, he was elected to improve living conditions for the poorest members of society.
Short-term contracts, while better paid than regular staff contracts, allow bosses to fire workers more easily and cheaply.
"The contract worker is a slave as he lives in fear of being sacked," said Aliasghar Ghaliaf, 37, who has worked in a textile factory on a permanent contract for 19 years.
"Employers set us up against the contract workers, accusing us of not working hard enough," he added.
Paper-factory worker Masoud Cheraghi, 40, said, "Some employers even make contract workers sign a resignation form without a date on it."
The demonstrators, numbering some 10,000, called for Labor Minister Mohammad Jahromi to resign and brandished placards with bread stuck on them to symbolize their hand-to-mouth existence.
Some wore headbands saying, "The short-term contract is a slavery law." Others carried banners that read, "Labor strikes must be revived."
The protesters spread out for more than a kilometer (0.6 mile), beating their chests in a reference to religious mourning ceremonies.
Unions exist in Iran but their power is limited. Authorities quickly snuff out strikes and protests over living conditions.
Short-term contracts were introduced by the previous administration of pro-reform cleric Mohammad Khatami as part of attempts to make the state-heavy economy more efficient. The Labor Ministry said it was looking at ways to "optimize" the contracts in favor of workers. The Labor House, the largest labor foundation in Iran, said temporary contracts were a threat to job security.
"This is an idea that sacrifices the rights of the workforce on the pretext of boosting investment and profits," said the Labor House's legal adviser Arash Faraz.
Ahmadinejad is a religiously conservative populist who won a landslide presidential election victory in June after promising to deliver petrodollars from the world's fourth biggest oil producer to the people.
Iran's government says 10.9 percent of the workforce is unemployed, but some economic analysts say the real figure could be nearer 25 percent.

Rooz e Kaargar - May 1st

2006-05-01T10:31:00.000-02:00

Rice: Tehran is 'playing games'

2006-05-01T09:15:00.000-02:00

CNN:

Sunday, April 30, 2006; Posted: 5:44 p.m. EDT (21:44 GMT)
Secretary urges action from U.N. on Iran's nuclear program
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Iran Sunday of "playing games" with the international community over its nuclear program, but she stopped short of saying whether economic sanctions against the Islamic republic are inevitable.
"Every time they get close to a Security Council decision, there is some effort to say, 'Oh no, we really were in fact interested in that proposal that we rejected a few weeks ago.' Or, 'No, now the IAEA can come,' Rice told ABC's "This Week."
"They've had plenty of time to cooperate."
Rice was referring to the announcement Saturday by Muhammad Saeedi, deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, that his nation will allow snap inspections of its nuclear facilities by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. The condition: that the U.N. Security Council, which comprises the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, would not be involved.
The United States, France and Britain favor a tough response to Iran, including the possibility of economic sanctions. Russia and China have been reluctant to apply sanctions. The five members will meet informally on May 3 to discuss the issue and, with Germany, on May 9 at the United Nations. (Watch the different diplomatic efforts underway -- 1:28)
Saeedi's announcement was in response to a report that the IAEA delivered to the Security Council Friday finding Iran not in compliance with the U.N. demand to stop uranium enrichment. (Details)
Iran has insisted that its nuclear ambitions are legal and for peaceful energy needs. But statements by Iran's leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and describing the Holocaust as a "myth," have heightened fears that Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons.
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz called Iran's nuclear program the most serious threat faced by Jews "since Hitler." Israel, which was founded partly as a haven for survivors of German dictator Adolf Hitler's genocide of the Jews during World War II, is believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal.
Iran also rejected last month a proposal by Moscow to enrich uranium on Russian soil and ship it to Tehran, provided that Iran cease all enrichment activity on its own soil. (Full story) "The international community's credibility is at stake here," Rice said Saturday. "We can either mean what we say when we say that Iran must comply, or we can continue to allow Iran to defy."
According to the eight-page IAEA report, "Gaps remain in the agency's knowledge with respect to the scope and content of Iran's centrifuge program.
"Because of this and other gaps in the agency's knowledge, including the role of the military in Iran's nuclear program, the agency is unable to make progress in its efforts to provide assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran," the report said.
To address Iran's noncompliance, the U.S. will seek a resolution under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which makes any resolution mandatory, as opposed to discretionary, by the member state, Rice said. Such a resolution could be enforceable by sanctions or, ultimately, by military action.
When asked about whether she agreed with her predecessor, Colin Powell, who recently said Iran has "pretty much decided" to accept economic sanctions, Rice was vague. "Well, we'll see, because I do know, also, that the Iranians are doing everything that they can to get this out of the Security Council," she said.

Iran admits to producing higher grade uranium

2006-05-01T07:31:00.000-02:00

The Age:

By Tehran
May 1, 2006
Iran has enriched uranium to more than 4 per cent, an Iranian official said, a level higher than Iran previously told the UN nuclear watchdog but still well below the range needed to make nuclear weapons.
Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency two weeks ago that it had enriched uranium to 3.6 per cent, a level which the agency confirmed from samples.
According to experts, uranium enriched to a range of 3 to 5 per cent is used in atomic power reactors.
Uranium needs to be enriched to 80 per cent or more to make nuclear weapons, which is what the West fears Iran wants.
"We have done enrichment in the range of above 4 per cent," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Agency, said on Iranian state television.
He also repeated Iran's position that it would not give up enrichment, describing it as an "issue of life and death for Iranian society" and saying the goal enjoyed broad support.
"It is up to Iran to decide if it will keep enrichment at a pilot level or move towards an industrial scale," he said.
- US and Iranian officials held talks on Iraq in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region "a while ago", Iraq's al-Sharqiya television quoted President Jalal Talabani as saying.
US, Iranian and Iraqi officials could not confirm the report.
According to Sharqiya, Mr Talabani told Iraqi and Arab writers during a spring cultural festival that the talks took place in the lakeside mountain resort of Dukan and were "dedicated to the Iraqi issue".
It said Mr Talabani, a Kurd, expected further meetings on the matter.
Iranian and US officials have said they would hold talks to discuss Iraq, without giving a date. A spokesman at the American embassy in Baghdad said he was unaware of such a meeting. There was no immediate comment from Tehran.
The US accuses Iran of fuelling sectarian violence in Iraq, a charge dismissed by Tehran, which says the presence of US troops is to blame.
Both sides had said any such talks would only cover Iraq, although some analysts said it could open a conduit for discussion of other issues, particularly the dispute over Iran's nuclear program.
- Reuters
TEHRAN AND THE UNNEXT STEP
UN ambassadors from the United States, Britain and France today begin drafting a resolution they hope to introduce within a week. The measure would legally obligate Iran to comply with the council's demands.
LEGAL BASIS
The resolution would be adopted under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which makes council resolutions mandatory under international law.
SECOND RESOLUTION
If Tehran refuses to comply, the Western powers will attempt to impose targeted sanctions against individuals in Iran.
OBJECTIONS
Russia and China, which have Security Council veto power, fear too much pressure on Iran would be self-defeating or precipitate an oil crisis. Both oppose sanctions and worry the United States would use a tough council resolution to justify military action.
IRAN'S POSITION
Iran argues that nuclear inspectors, after three years of scrutiny, have not found a weapons program. But its diplomats say Tehran has offered to slow down nuclear programs if the Security Council takes no action.
MEETINGS
No date is set for a vote on a UN resolution, which usually takes longer to negotiate than its sponsors predict. Senior foreign ministry officials from the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany meet in Paris tomorrow and foreign ministers from the same countries will meet at the UN on May 9.

Iran shells Kurdish rebel positions in n. Iraq

2006-05-01T07:28:00.000-02:00

The Jerousalem Post:

Apr. 30, 2006 16:28
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
BAGHDAD, Iraq
Iranian artillery fired more than 180 shells into northern Iraq, targeting Kurdish rebel bases, the Iraqi government said Sunday.
The shells landed near the Iraqi village of Haj Omran, which is about five kilometers (three miles) inside the Iraqi-Iranian border, Iraq's Ministry of Defense said.
No casualties were reported.
Iran launched a similar attack on Kurdish rebel positions in the same area on April 21, also causing no casualties or damage, Kurdish officials said.
Kurdish rebels fighting Iranian forces operate from Iraqi territory and have been active recently, mounting attacks against Iranian army and Revolutionary Guard posts.

Iran Lifts Ban Barring Women From Attending Sporting Events

2006-05-01T07:17:00.000-02:00

New York Times:

By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, April 30 — Women can attend games in Iran's stadiums for the first time in nearly three decades, after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unexpectedly lifted a ban last week on their presence in the stands.
Senior clerics and conservative members of Parliament criticized the decision and said that frequent hooliganism at sporting events made them inappropriate for women.
But Mr. Ahmadinejad said women would promote better behavior.
"Certain prejudices against women have nothing to do with Islam," he said Friday, several days after lifting the ban. The speech seemed to present him for the first time as a supporter of expanded rights for women. "Unfortunately, whenever there is talk of social corruption, fingers are pointed at women. Shouldn't men be blamed for the problems, too?"
Soccer matches are the most popular sporting events in Iran. Women had been demanding the right to attend games for more than a decade, but officials, including the former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, denied their requests.
A strict dress code for women and segregation of the sexes has been enforced since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Mr. Ahmadinejad has specified that the best seats in stadiums be allocated to women and families to adhere to the segregation code. Women and men will still be seated in separate areas.
"I respect him for this move," said Siamak Namazi, a political analyst at Atieh Bahar Consulting. "It was a gutsy move because he can lose some of his conservative supporters who voted for him," he added.
Advocates of greater rights for women welcomed his decision, although they acknowledged that the move was also a way to increase his popularity among women at a time when he needs to bolster his support inside the country.
"Even if the pressure by clerics in Qum forces Mr. Ahmadinejad to back down, his decision will always be considered as a winning card for him," Shadi Sadr, a lawyer and a feminist, wrote Saturday in the daily reformist newspaper Shargh.

Iran Says Imposition of Sanctions Would Provoke Strong Response

2006-04-30T07:24:00.000-02:00

Voice of America:

By Challiss McDonough
Cairo
30 April 2006
Iran has warned that it will take "radical measures" if the U.N. Security Council imposes sanctions over Iran's nuclear program. But the Foreign Ministry also says Iran will cooperate fully with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, if its case is referred back there.
Iran is continuing efforts to head off international action over its nuclear program, combining promises of cooperation with vows never to back down.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, Iran is open to dialogue, but he said the imposition of sanctions would provoke a strong response.
"If the Security Council discusses Iran's case and decides against us, Iran will keep all its options open," he said. "This means that if their decision is radical, Iran's reaction will be radical. If it is rational, our decisions will also be rational."
The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency reported to the Security Council on Friday that Iran has failed to comply with Security Council demands that it stop its nuclear-enrichment program.
Iran says it has successfully enriched uranium to the level needed for nuclear power plants, and insists that the process is irreversible. Tehran says the international community must now deal with it as a nuclear power.
Western nations believe Tehran could be building a nuclear bomb. Iranian leaders have denied that, and say their nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
The United States, France and Britain want the Security Council to legally require Iran to freeze its nuclear-enrichment activity. Such a decision could pave the way for sanctions, if Iran still fails to comply. But the two other veto-holding nations on the Security Council, Russia and China, favor continued diplomatic efforts.
Iran has made several attempts to have the case referred back to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
On Saturday, Iran offered to let the agency, known as the IAEA, resume snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Asefi says if the agency and the Security Council commit to dealing with the case only through the IAEA, in his words, "We are ready for maximum cooperation."
Speaking in Pakistan, Iran's deputy oil minister said he doubts the Security Council will impose sanctions on Iran, because it would increase oil prices.
Iran has 10 percent of the world's proven oil reserves and is the second-largest producer in OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries).
The foreign ministers of the five Security Council members plus Germany are scheduled to meet in New York in one week to discuss the next step.

Iran Strategy: Cold War Echo

2006-04-30T07:13:00.000-02:00

New York Times:

By DAVID E. SANGER and ELAINE SCIOLINO
WASHINGTON, April 29 — Iran and the United States have begun to reveal new strategies in their nuclear dispute that seem bound to escalate their confrontation, as both nations seek to turn to their advantage a highly critical report that portrays a nuclear program proceeding at full tilt, in growing secrecy.
In many ways, what has unfolded in the past three days resembles cold-war deception and brinkmanship, with some decidedly new twists for a very different nuclear age. As in the early days of the cold war, both sides have tried to write the rules on the fly, using every tool available — from American threats of sanctions to Iranian threats to cut off oil.
Iran, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, has been successful in gradually blinding the agency's inspectors, increasingly denying them access to crucial sites and steadfastly refusing to answer questions about suspected links between Iran's civilian nuclear program and its military.
While Iran denies any clandestine effort to build a nuclear weapon, it is clearly drawing on the diplomatic playbook of a country that has done just that — North Korea. Iran has gone so far as to boast about, and perhaps exaggerate, its nuclear prowess to try to convince the West that its program is now unstoppable.
Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the chairman of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, and other Iranian officials on Friday described their nuclear program as "irreversible." They argue that the United States should simply accept this — much as it now accepts that Pakistan and India will never give up nuclear technology.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's fiery president, said Saturday that giving up enrichment "is our red line, and we will never cross it," according to state television.
In Washington, senior Bush administration officials have taken a position at the opposite extreme. In the words of Robert Joseph, the State Department's top proliferation official, the administration is determined to ensure that "not one centrifuge spins" in Iran.
In interviews in the past two days, the officials have described a plan to turn the United Nations Security Council's "requests" that Iran cease enriching uranium into an enforceable requirement.
What has chilled the Chinese, the Russians and some others in Europe, however, is that the administration is insisting on citing Iran under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, which authorizes the use of penalties, and if that is inadequate, of military force.
This is still not a contest between nuclear powers — Iran is not believed to have a bomb yet, and intelligence estimates say that day is still 5 to 10 years away, assuming there is no clandestine effort that no one has detected.
Instead, it is an effort by the United States and some other nations to refashion the nuclear rules.
They want to declare that even if Iran is legally entitled under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, Mr. Ahmadinejad cannot be trusted to do so. By deceiving the nuclear agency about its activities, President Bush and British, French and German officials say, Iran has given up whatever treaty rights it once enjoyed.
Mr. Bush has also acknowledged that America's credibility has been deeply harmed by the intelligence failures over Iraq.
On Friday, he tried to allay concerns that he was proceeding down the same path he used to give a legal basis for the invasion he ordered 37 months ago. "There's a difference between the two countries," he told reporters, even as his European allies worry about similarities in the American strategy.
For the first time, the administration has publicly declared, as it did in the case of Iraq, that if the Security Council fails to act, Mr. Bush will organize "like-minded nations" to begin to impose punishment.
"We have not conceded the point and we will not concede the point that Iran will become a nuclear weapons power," said R. Nicholas Burns, who directs the diplomatic talks for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
He insisted that Iran was mistaken if it thought that the Bush administration would ever allow its nuclear activity to go ahead— which is essentially what has happened in North Korea for the past three years, while negotiations have dragged on to the brink of collapse.
"The difference in the two situations is that in Iran you have a state situated in the most volatile area of the world, where they are the leading central banker of terrorist actions," Mr. Burns said. "What they can't count on is a compliant and divided international community."
The strategies have only hardened the other side's position.
Washington's episodic saber-rattling — from the president's vague comments that "all options" are on the table if diplomacy fails, and the increasingly public discussion of whether he or the Israelis will ultimately opt for a military strike — has so far failed.
The Iranians have responded with threats of their own, knowing that even the specter of confrontation rattles the oil markets and sends prices to new levels, enriching Iran and heightening the pain for Mr. Bush and American consumers.
The Iranians may have also overplayed their hand.
While they insist that their current activities are within their treaty obligations, they ignore the I.A.E.A.'s finding that Tehran hid some of its activities for two decades. And Friday's report accuses Iran of continuing to hide vital information.
But this dispute is about more than transparency. It is also about national pride and Iran's insistence on self-sufficiency and independence. That may help explain why Iran has celebrated enrichment with dancers in traditional dress, who paraded on national television while holding a small box said to contain the fruits of their atomic labors.
The inspectors' report confirmed that Iran had succeeded in enriching uranium at a low level, but it would take significantly more processing, equipment, and problem-solving to produce fuel for a bomb. Fabricating a warhead would take even more time, and risk detection.
"The real fight here is not over whether they have a weapons program, it is over whether they can create a nuclear weapons option," said Gary Samore, who led nonproliferation efforts in the Clinton administration and continues to study the Iranian program, speaking earlier this year.
"And that is the smoke-and-mirrors game, convincing everyone that they have that capability."
That is what most concerns senior officials inside the Bush administration. Officials who deal with nuclear strategy note that it is now widely assumed that North Korea has several to 10 nuclear weapons — even though the North Koreans have never conducted a nuclear test.
"We think the Iranians looked at the Koreans and learned a lesson," said a senior official, who would not speak for attribution on a matter of nuclear strategy.
It would be a very different approach than the one taken by the Russians in the late 1940's, or the Chinese in the early 1960's, or the Indians and Pakistanis in the late 1990's, all of whom set off nuclear explosions to prove their powers. Given the limited access allowed I.A.E.A.
inspectors, officials here and in Vienna say, there would be no way to verify, or disprove, Iran's claims.
Mr. Bush has therefore taken the position that Iran must give up everything. He said Friday, "The Iranians should not have a nuclear weapon, the capacity to make a nuclear weapon, or the knowledge as to how to make a nuclear weapon."
The Russians and Chinese view that as unrealistic; a senior Russian official said it was time for a "détente" with Iran, drawing another term from the cold war.
In Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the atomic agency, has made it clear in conversations with diplomats that he believes pragmatism will eventually dictate that Iran be allowed some limited form of enrichment, monitored constantly by his agency.
But there is the fear — here, and in Vienna — that the I.A.E.A. is seeing only part of the program, and that the evasive answers to its questions hide a clandestine effort, somewhere under the desert. As Tehran restricts international inspections, it will be harder to know whether its program more closely resembles the very real one in Pakistan, whose scientists sold technology to Iran, or the nuclear mirage in Iraq.
U.S. Rejects Offer on Inspections
TEHRAN, April 29 (AP) — Iran said Saturday that it would allow United Nations inspectors to resume inspections of its nuclear facilities, but only if the dispute was returned to the United Nations' nuclear monitor.
The White House rejected the offer.
Iran gave no ground on the United Nations Security Council's demand that it stop enriching uranium but offered to allow the inspections if the Council dropped the matter; Council members have been at odds over imposing sanctions on Iran.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington for this article, and Elaine Sciolino from Vienna.

Iran Says It Will Share Nuclear Skills

2006-04-29T08:08:00.000-02:00

New York Times:

By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, April 25—Iran's supreme leader said today in a meeting with the Sudanese president that Iran was ready to share its nuclear technology with other countries.
"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists," said the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, IRNA news agency reported.
Mr. Khamenei's comments to the leader of Sudan, one of the most unstable countries in Africa, came a few days ahead of the Friday deadline by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.
At a conference on its nuclear program in Tehran today, senior officials rejected the demand and vowed that Iran will continue its enrichment activities.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that if the Security Council imposed sanctions, Iran will suspend its cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency, and any military strike aimed at destroying its enrichment facilities will lead Iran to hide its program.
"If you decide to use sanction against us, our relation with the agency will be suspended," Mr. Larijani said. "Military action against Iran will not lead to the closure of the program," he added.
"If you take harsh measures, we will hide this program. Then you cannot solve the nuclear issue."
"You may inflict a loss on us but you will lose also," he warned.
Mr. Larijani said that Iran is willing to cooperate if its case is returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "But do not expect us to act otherwise if you drag the case to the Security Council," he added.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, denounced the role of the nuclear agency at the conference and said the I.A.E.A. has failed to support Iran's program.
"I am not saying that the agency has had bad intentions," he said. "But it has not fulfilled its duty to support countries to enjoy their right to have nuclear technology," he added.
The head of Iran's atomic organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, left Tehran for the I.A.E.A.'s headquarters in Vienna today, ISNA news agency reported.

What It Takes to Build a Militia

2006-04-29T08:07:00.000-02:00

by General Falco
What It Takes to Build a Militia
A speech given by General Falco, Leader of the Brotherhood of Nod.
Many people feel that their purpose in life is to achieve a certain goal that seems impossible to achieve. These goals might be, say, forming one's own country, taking over an existing country, reviving the Confederate States, & cet. But the problem is that in some cases (such as living in the United States), passive resistance will not help very much. So, weapons and loyal soldiers seem to be the only way to get one's point across. Nod's purpose, for example, as most of you know, is to unite the Western World into a nation, puppet the rest of the globe (with the exception of Africa and the Confederate States), thus rendering the entire earth under our command. But in order to undertake such a task, we have decided to build a militia, a fighting force that can carry out our goals with ease.
The dictionary defines a militia as "A group of freelance, usually self-declared and self-trained soldiers, who band together for the sake of a cause." The Brotherhood could not be described in better words. But our weapons research and scientific study has turned us from a ragtag band of soldiers, incapable even of marching in a straight line to a strong fighting force, albeit small, with one goal in mind; the return of civilization.
But what have I, as your Leader, done to make this militia? Surely I took inspiration (and a few other things) from the organization of the same name from the C&C games, but most of it was my idea. And what does go into the making of a militia such as this? I will tell you. Many a night I have lost sleep over plans and technologies and other things that could help build the Brotherhood. But here are the main points in forming a militia:
1. Strong leadership. This cannot be emphasized enough. How can people possibly stay together without a leader to guide them and keep them as a team? But this particular person cannot just be any ordinary person. He has to be strong in body and mind, a genius in military tactics, an honest person full of integrity, a spiritual person with strong belief in his god or higher power, whatever he believes in, and he must be able to convince his brethren of a certain point. If you roll all of these things in with courage and sensitivity, you have before you the ideal leader and model commander.
2. A fanatical fighting force. Yes, fanatical. Without that kind of charisma, no goal can be met. These people must live for the cause, eat for the cause, breath for the cause, sleep for the cause, and dream of the day when that cause is achieved. Also, they must be well-trained with weaponry. To the Brotherhood, strength in numbers can possibly be important, but it is strength in weapons and technology that are truly the key. That is why when facing up with an army bigger than your own, hit-and-run tactics can be applied and defeat of the other side is immanent. And proper use of these weapons and proper knowledge of this technology can help us to overcome even the United States army.
3. A weapons stockpile. Sure, it'll be hard to pull something like this off, but that is one of the reasons why Nod is so secretive; to hide its operations from the Government until we're breathing right down their necks. Then we will be able to use these weapons we have gathered and occupy nations, cities, provinces, and anything else you can think of. Also to be stockpiled are bombs, flame throwers, missiles (if it is feasible to acquire them), poisons, explosive powders, & cet.
4. Supporters. A militia cannot very well succeed without the support of the mob, as Nietzsche called the common people. Although Nod will definitely be no democracy, popular support is essential if you want to succeed in something. If people don't have your support, they will rise up and, although your forces may be strong enough to suppress a movement such as this, your control will eventually be overturned. Look what happened to the Soviet Union and take that for an example. If you loose the support of the people, then your rule will not last.
5. Finances. What else are you going to buy your weaponry with? You can't use the barter system anymore, so money is definitely one of the key elements in constructing a militia. Not only do you need it to buy guns and explosives, but you also need it to pay the higher military and government officials for their services.
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate the importance of remembering these tips as we continue to build and shape the Brotherhood's future. We together must take what is our birthright. And we must take it now or lose it forever. One vision, one purpose!

Roots and history of Islamofascism

2006-04-29T07:53:00.001-02:00

TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/ourmessage.html

Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and you will discover that
Before Amin Al Husseini, there was no Pan-Islamic Jihad against the West and the non-Muslims.
Before Amin Al Husseini, there was no hatred between the Jews and the Arabs.
Why did Osama Bin Ladin say in his speech on Al Jizira that this Jihad has been lasting for 80 years?
Because 80 years ago, Amin Al Husseini, the man who officialized Islamic hate, declared Holy War on the West and the Jews.Bin Ladin and many other terror chiefs are only believers in Amin Al Husseini, who have dedicated their life to his ideology.
As you will see in the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH
Amin Al Husseini was a friend and close collaborator of Hitler and Mussolini, who saw himself as the Muslim arm of theworld Nazi coalition. Husseini promised Hitler and Mussolini to turn Islam into the most formidable weapon against the West and the Jews. After the war he helped organize the creation of dictatorships all over the Muslim world, where many of his believers are now the leaders. Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Assad of Syria, and other Arab dictators were all schooled at Husseini's feet. Amin al Husseini was at different intervals the head of the Islamic World Congress, The Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League. As a leader of these organizations, until his death in the 70's, he had the time and possibility to spread his hate philosophy all over the Muslim world. Since Husseini's days, the whole Islamic world has been infected with armies of fascist violent groups.Osama bin Laden and all other Muslim terror chiefs are ardent followers of Amin Al Husseini.
Read the timelines in our website TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and you will learn the simple history which lead to today's conflicts, so you can pass the truth to the generations to come. Read the weblinks at the end of each timeline of this website and do your own search for further sources. We are just opening up the real debate about truth.
JEWS
Read our timelines to know the origin of today's antisemitism.
As you will see, there is evidence that Amin Al Husseini was the one whofirst proposed the FINAL SOLUTION to the Germans, in order to avoid mass migration of Jews to their homeland and prevent the creation of the State of Israel. Read how Husseini's soldiers killed Jews and escorted Jewish refugees to the death camps. Husseini lived in Berlin during WWII and from there he broadcasted hate propaganda against Jews to the Muslim countries. Before Amin Al Husseini, Jews and Muslims lived side by side peacefully for many centuries. Husseini's influence as President of the World Islamic Congress in 1962 led to the systematic expulsion of hundred of thousands of Jews from Islamic countries.Husseini's huge influence is at the origin of the hatred and the violence in the mid-East. Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and learn for yourself.
CHRISTIANS
In his lifetime, Amin Al Husseini organized andparticipated in the GENOCIDES of Armenians, Christian Assyrians, Croats, Serbs, Bulgars and Gypsies first in the name of the Ottoman Empire, and later for Nazi Germany. Over 2 million Christian Sudanese have been killed by Islamic Fundamentalists who were inspired by Husseini's hateful ideology. Get informed and learn the facts for yourself from our timelines and weblinks or other sources.
HINDUS
The Islamo-Nazis inspired by Al Husseini are responsible for killing over 60 thousand Hindus in the last 2 decades in India alone, and for cultivating anti-Hindu hatred in the hearts of the Pakistanis, Muslim Kashmiris, and Afghans. The Hindus of Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, were forced to wear a special sign to be singled out as non-Muslims, a strong reminder of how Hitler imposed the yellow star on the Jews. In Bangladesh, over 3 million Hindus were murdered under the sword of Jihad, and by people poisoned by Husseini's hate philosophy. Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and get informed on the history of the fascist Jihad against Hindus and humanity.
BUDDHISTS
Was it not just a few years ago that the Taliban of Afghanistan destroyed, without reason, the world's most ancient statues of Buddha?As you will see in TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH, this would have been unthinkable in the Muslim world before Amin Al Husseini.
BAHAI
In Iran, persecussion of Bahai people under Islamic rule has been covered up by Iranian officials who practice torture and murder against the Bahai in the name of Husseini's distorted version of Islam: a weapon of oppression against humanity. Get the facts and demand Justice. TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH provides you with a true insight into the root of this new paranoid philosophy called Jihad.
MUSLIMS

Read TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and you will learn that the root of this evil called fundamentalism is not original Islam, it is plain fascism. The representant of this foreign ideology in the Arab world was Amin Al Husseini, who tried to marry Nazism with Islam. Read TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and study our links for evidence that Amin Al Husseini organized and participated in terror in Islamic countries, and had Muslims mercilessly massacred by his followers. You will learn how during the years that Husseini spent at Hitler's side, he mastered the science of mass manipulation and propaganda, which characterized the Third Reich, and subsequently applied it in Arab countries, after having commited genocides in the Balkans. You will also learn how, with utter disregard for Islamic sanctity, Husseini had the late King Abdallah of Jordan, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, assassinated in the moment of prayer. Why? Because King Abdallah was a proponent of peace with the Jews. Learn how Husseini's followers in the Muslim Brotherhood also assassinated Egyptian President Sadat, and participated in the first attack on the World Trade Center. TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH reveals how, because of groups linked with Husseini's fascist ideology, at least 2 hundred thousand Muslims have died in Algeria in the past decade, where Islamic fundamentalists slaughter their victims daily, thus desecrating Islam and the Kur'an. Our timlelines and weblinks show how Two million Sudanese lost their life to this tyranny in the name of Islam. One million, mostly Christians, have been massacred over the past forty years in East Timor and Indonesia. It is of utmost importance for Muslims to learn about and radically reject Husseini's version of Islam, which is really anti-Islamic and was actually borrowed from the German Nazis. TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH shows that Husseini hosted among the most notorious Nazis who survived World War II in Syria and had them organize terror and policing in Arab countries. Husseini's use of the Holy Book of Islam as a tool of hate was not new: Hitler and Mussolini had done the same using the Bible. Our website will make this clear to everyone : The suicide attackers do not carry out their shocking missions until they have been fed Husseini's poisonous interpretations of Islam. The last free voices of Islam are warning us that this Husseini/Wahhabi poison is being injected daily in mosques worldwide. The message to all of Husseini's followers must be simple and direct: If Islam before Husseini was good enough for generations of peaceful believers who could live side by side with other peoples, then it is still good enough for all Muslims today. Have the answer ready when your children ask you : " Why Islam?"
The dream of a brutal Islamic world take-over is not and never was original Islam. It originated in a sick and hateful mind dedicated to trick and manipulate millions of Muslims into being the unconscious carriers of hatred against humanity. His name : Amin Al Husseini. Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and study our links so you can tell the story. The more people know about it, the sooner all will be free from the Husseini nightmare, and our children will have the chance to awaken to a better world.

Roots and history of Islamofascism

2006-04-29T07:53:00.000-02:00

TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/
http://www.tellthechildrenthetruth.com/ourmessage.html

Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and you will discover that
Before Amin Al Husseini, there was no Pan-Islamic Jihad against the West and the non-Muslims.
Before Amin Al Husseini, there was no hatred between the Jews and the Arabs.
Why did Osama Bin Ladin say in his speech on Al Jizira that this Jihad has been lasting for 80 years?
Because 80 years ago, Amin Al Husseini, the man who officialized Islamic hate, declared Holy War on the West and the Jews.Bin Ladin and many other terror chiefs are only believers in Amin Al Husseini, who have dedicated their life to his ideology.
As you will see in the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH
Amin Al Husseini was a friend and close collaborator of Hitler and Mussolini, who saw himself as the Muslim arm of theworld Nazi coalition. Husseini promised Hitler and Mussolini to turn Islam into the most formidable weapon against the West and the Jews. After the war he helped organize the creation of dictatorships all over the Muslim world, where many of his believers are now the leaders. Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Assad of Syria, and other Arab dictators were all schooled at Husseini's feet. Amin al Husseini was at different intervals the head of the Islamic World Congress, The Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League. As a leader of these organizations, until his death in the 70's, he had the time and possibility to spread his hate philosophy all over the Muslim world. Since Husseini's days, the whole Islamic world has been infected with armies of fascist violent groups.Osama bin Laden and all other Muslim terror chiefs are ardent followers of Amin Al Husseini.
Read the timelines in our website TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and you will learn the simple history which lead to today's conflicts, so you can pass the truth to the generations to come. Read the weblinks at the end of each timeline of this website and do your own search for further sources. We are just opening up the real debate about truth.
JEWS
Read our timelines to know the origin of today's antisemitism.
As you will see, there is evidence that Amin Al Husseini was the one whofirst proposed the FINAL SOLUTION to the Germans, in order to avoid mass migration of Jews to their homeland and prevent the creation of the State of Israel. Read how Husseini's soldiers killed Jews and escorted Jewish refugees to the death camps. Husseini lived in Berlin during WWII and from there he broadcasted hate propaganda against Jews to the Muslim countries. Before Amin Al Husseini, Jews and Muslims lived side by side peacefully for many centuries. Husseini's influence as President of the World Islamic Congress in 1962 led to the systematic expulsion of hundred of thousands of Jews from Islamic countries.Husseini's huge influence is at the origin of the hatred and the violence in the mid-East. Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and learn for yourself.
CHRISTIANS
In his lifetime, Amin Al Husseini organized andparticipated in the GENOCIDES of Armenians, Christian Assyrians, Croats, Serbs, Bulgars and Gypsies first in the name of the Ottoman Empire, and later for Nazi Germany. Over 2 million Christian Sudanese have been killed by Islamic Fundamentalists who were inspired by Husseini's hateful ideology. Get informed and learn the facts for yourself from our timelines and weblinks or other sources.
HINDUS
The Islamo-Nazis inspired by Al Husseini are responsible for killing over 60 thousand Hindus in the last 2 decades in India alone, and for cultivating anti-Hindu hatred in the hearts of the Pakistanis, Muslim Kashmiris, and Afghans. The Hindus of Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, were forced to wear a special sign to be singled out as non-Muslims, a strong reminder of how Hitler imposed the yellow star on the Jews. In Bangladesh, over 3 million Hindus were murdered under the sword of Jihad, and by people poisoned by Husseini's hate philosophy. Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and get informed on the history of the fascist Jihad against Hindus and humanity.
BUDDHISTS
Was it not just a few years ago that the Taliban of Afghanistan destroyed, without reason, the world's most ancient statues of Buddha?As you will see in TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH, this would have been unthinkable in the Muslim world before Amin Al Husseini.
BAHAI
In Iran, persecussion of Bahai people under Islamic rule has been covered up by Iranian officials who practice torture and murder against the Bahai in the name of Husseini's distorted version of Islam: a weapon of oppression against humanity. Get the facts and demand Justice. TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH provides you with a true insight into the root of this new paranoid philosophy called Jihad.
MUSLIMS

Read TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and you will learn that the root of this evil called fundamentalism is not original Islam, it is plain fascism. The representant of this foreign ideology in the Arab world was Amin Al Husseini, who tried to marry Nazism with Islam. Read TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and study our links for evidence that Amin Al Husseini organized and participated in terror in Islamic countries, and had Muslims mercilessly massacred by his followers. You will learn how during the years that Husseini spent at Hitler's side, he mastered the science of mass manipulation and propaganda, which characterized the Third Reich, and subsequently applied it in Arab countries, after having commited genocides in the Balkans. You will also learn how, with utter disregard for Islamic sanctity, Husseini had the late King Abdallah of Jordan, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, assassinated in the moment of prayer. Why? Because King Abdallah was a proponent of peace with the Jews. Learn how Husseini's followers in the Muslim Brotherhood also assassinated Egyptian President Sadat, and participated in the first attack on the World Trade Center. TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH reveals how, because of groups linked with Husseini's fascist ideology, at least 2 hundred thousand Muslims have died in Algeria in the past decade, where Islamic fundamentalists slaughter their victims daily, thus desecrating Islam and the Kur'an. Our timlelines and weblinks show how Two million Sudanese lost their life to this tyranny in the name of Islam. One million, mostly Christians, have been massacred over the past forty years in East Timor and Indonesia. It is of utmost importance for Muslims to learn about and radically reject Husseini's version of Islam, which is really anti-Islamic and was actually borrowed from the German Nazis. TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH shows that Husseini hosted among the most notorious Nazis who survived World War II in Syria and had them organize terror and policing in Arab countries. Husseini's use of the Holy Book of Islam as a tool of hate was not new: Hitler and Mussolini had done the same using the Bible. Our website will make this clear to everyone : The suicide attackers do not carry out their shocking missions until they have been fed Husseini's poisonous interpretations of Islam. The last free voices of Islam are warning us that this Husseini/Wahhabi poison is being injected daily in mosques worldwide. The message to all of Husseini's followers must be simple and direct: If Islam before Husseini was good enough for generations of peaceful believers who could live side by side with other peoples, then it is still good enough for all Muslims today. Have the answer ready when your children ask you : " Why Islam?"
The dream of a brutal Islamic world take-over is not and never was original Islam. It originated in a sick and hateful mind dedicated to trick and manipulate millions of Muslims into being the unconscious carriers of hatred against humanity. His name : Amin Al Husseini. Read the timelines of TELL CHILDREN THE TRUTH and study our links so you can tell the story. The more people know about it, the sooner all will be free from the Husseini nightmare, and our children will have the chance to awaken to a better world.

Senior Iran Cleric Tells Sudan That Nuclear Aid Is Available

2006-04-29T07:41:00.000-02:00

New York Times:

By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, April 25 — Iran's supreme leader said Tuesday at a meeting here with the Sudanese president that Iran was ready to share its nuclear technology with other countries.
"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country," the leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, the news agency IRNA reported. "The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists."
Mr. Khamenei made his comments just days before the Friday deadline set by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment.
At a conference on Tuesday in Tehran on its nuclear program, senior officials vowed that Iran would continue its enrichment activities.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that in the event of Security Council sanctions, Iran would suspend cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency. If there is a military strike aimed at destroying its facilities, Iran will simply hide its nuclear program, he added. "You may inflict a loss on us, but you will lose also," he said.
Mr. Larijani said Iran was willing to cooperate if its case was returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency, but warned, "Do not expect us to act otherwise if you drag the case to the Security Council."
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and head of the powerful Expediency Council, speaking at the conference, denounced the role of the nuclear agency and said it had failed to support Iran's program.
"I am not saying that the agency has had bad intentions," he said. "But it has not fulfilled its duty to support countries to enjoy their right to have nuclear technology."

West will stop Iran getting WMDs, says Israeli premier

2006-04-29T07:20:00.000-02:00

Ireland Online:

29/04/2006 - 13:10:39
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed confidence that the West will prevent Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction and compared Iran’s president with Adolf Hitler for calling for Israel’s destruction.
The remarks were published in Germany’s Bild newspaper today – a day after the UN nuclear watchdog said Iran had failed to observe a deadline for halting uranium enrichment activity.
“The West – above all under the leadership of the United States – will ensure that Iran under no circumstances comes to possess unconventional weapons,” Olmert was quoted as saying in an interview.
“The president of the US is a very brave man who understands that very well,” Olmert said.
Olmert wouldn’t say whether he thought a military conflict with Iran could become inevitable.
However, he said Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated calls for the destruction of Israel underlined the need to limit Iran’s military strength.
“Ahmadinejad talks today like Hitler before he seized power” in Germany in the 1930s, Olmert said.
“We are dealing with a psychopath of the worst kind. … God forbid that this man ever gets his hands on nuclear weapons,” Olmert was quoted as saying.

Petition to free Iran

2006-04-28T06:57:00.000-02:00

Petition Online:

To: Honorable President Of United States George W. Bush, General Secretary of the United Nations Mr. Kofi Annan, U.S. Congress, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mr. John Bolton, Senator Brownback, EU Heads of States, Heads of the world’s democratic states, The United Nation Commission for Human Rights Special Rapporteur, U.S. Secretay of State, the European Parliament, Amnesty International, , Reporters Without Borders , Human Rights Watch, and International Criminal Court (ICC)
The undersigned are individually or as a group unequivocally and unconditionally are in favor of regime change in Iran by peaceful means. We believe this could effectively be done through support of the Iranian Opposition Groups within Iran and outside along with world wide economic sanctions, targeting government hierarchy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. We support and respect the aspiration of the people of Iran for freedom and democracy.
We further declare that:
1- Mahmood Ahmadinejad does not represent Iranian people as his election involved fraudulent activities.
2- In the 2nd article of IRI constitution it is stated that the foundation of governing, and legislation only comes from God. Foundation and basis of legislation comes from Quran and living tradition of profit Mohammad and his family. “Imam” supreme leader or (Velayate Faghih) is the interpreter of the legislations.
Velayat e Faghih is an unelected body and does not represent Iranians. The position of “Imam” supreme leader or (Velayate Faghih) is contrary to any fundamentals of democracy.
3- Based on the constitution of the IRI, the “Imam” supreme leader or (Velayate Faghih) is the interpreter of the legislations in addition to the fuqaha' of the Guardian Council who are judges in this matter. The guardian council members are selected by the Imam.
Therefore, religious discrimination, killing of the non-Moslems, individual or group execution of the dissidents, amputation of limbs, eye gouging, flogging, torture, raping the virgin dissident females the night before the execution, stoning, property confiscation of the Moslems and non-Moslems, killing of persons who change their religion, killing of homosexuals, valuing women half of a man, killing of children by their fathers or grandfathers, selling daughters at any age for marriage, execution of children , state sponsorship of terrorism and support of religious terrorism worldwide to export the divine rule is considered legal and in accordance to the religious order.
4- Human Rights violations by the Islamic "Republic" of Iran have reached an unprecedented colossal level of cruelty and barbarism.
5- We further recognize bombing Iran and its infrastructure will drive a wedge between the Iranian people who are the most pro-American nation in the Middle East if not in the world and the west.
6- We have come to the conclusion that the only way to deal with this unelected and undemocratic regime is to deal with it strongly and with a comprehensive set of measures. The measures that we recommend and strongly advocate are as follows:
* Stop, with immediate effect, all international trades with the undemocratic Islamic “Republic” of Iran.
*Stop the purchase of oil from Iran and refrain from signing any new contracts and renewal of any existing ones.
* Blockade Iran’s ports in the Persian Gulf and possibly the Caspian Sea allowing passage of food and medicine.
*Stop all IRI satellite TV and Radio programming to the outside world
* Cease all Mullahs personal assets outside Iran including its support organization such as Alavi Foundation in New York City.
* Freeze IRI assets outside of Iran and impose prohibition on investment, a travel ban, and asset freezes for government leaders and nuclear scientists
* Worldwide announcement to all nations that any deals and contracts made with IRI (Islamic Republic of Iran) by any entity is null and void. The IRI does not represent Iranians.
* Publicly identify known IRI agents, arrest and prosecute their agents abroad as promoters of international terrorism and abusers of human rights. Shut down all illegal unregisterd agent organizations representing IRI interests, their lobbyist and apologists.
* Close or limit Islamic Republic’s embassies and its activities including travel limits on Iranian diplomats.
* Release the frozen assets of Iran to the IRI opposition to be spent on strike funds and promotion of democracy.
* Expel IRI representatives from UN since the IRI constitution is contrary to the UDHR (Universal Declarations of Human Rights).
Please remember; the key to salvation of Iraq is also in freedom of Iran. The freedom-loving countries of the world must unite and assist Iranian people to end this embarrassment to humanity and civility called Islamic Republic and allow Iran to come back to the arms of the civilized nations.
In helping us, you have stopped the violence in Iraq and have made Iran reach democracy with minimum bloodshed and have preserved the peace and freedom worldwide. God Bless all of peace and freedom-loving people.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned

Click here to sign the petition.

Iran Threatens Retaliation if U.S. Attacks

2006-04-27T08:07:00.000-02:00

New York Times:

By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, April 26 — Iran's supreme religious leader vowed Wednesday that Iran would retaliate "twofold" if it were attacked by the United States over its refusal to comply with demands regarding its nuclear activities. He made his comments as other senior Iranians traveled to Vienna just days ahead of the deadline for international monitors to report on Iran's nuclear program.
"Iranian people and the Islamic regime will not invade any country, but the Americans should know that if they invade Iran, their interests around the world would be harmed," the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told workers gathered ahead of May Day, the international workers' holiday, the ISNA news agency reported.
"Iran will respond twofold to any attack," Ayatollah Khamenei said.
In escalating rhetoric, a number of Iranian officials have made similar threats in recent days, but the Bush administration has insisted it is pursuing a diplomatic path, even while vaguely holding open the distant option of imposing sanctions or taking military action if diplomacy fails.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is for energy-producing purposes and that it is entitled to pursue those interests, including enriching nuclear fuel. The United States and some of its European allies, however, believe the country has ambitions for a nuclear bomb.
On Wednesday in Vienna, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the United Nations' monitoring group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, met with the Iranian representatives, two days before Mr. ElBaradei is to report to the United Nations Security Council.
"The talks were encouraging," Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, said, according to Reuters. But he gave no details.
Tension between the monitoring agency and Iran became evident after Iran refused to answer the agency's questions during a trip by Mr. ElBaradei last week. A trip by Mr. ElBaradei's deputy was canceled in protest.
Iran has been relying on the vote of two its economic allies, China and Russia, at the Security Council meeting, hoping they would use their veto power to stop any punitive measures against it.
Moscow has helped Iran build its first nuclear reactor in the southern city of Bushehr and Iran has extensive oil deals with China.
China's defense minister, Cao Gangchuan, said Wednesday that he hoped Iran's nuclear issue would be settled through diplomatic means, the New Chinese News Agency reported.
Speaking to reporters after a meeting of defense ministers from members of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization, Mr. Cao said: "Under the current situation, there is still room to seek an appropriate settlement to the Iran nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiation. More efforts are needed to maintain such an important international consensus."
Mr. Cao said Iran, as a signer of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, enjoys the right to peaceful use of nuclear power, and should also perform relevant obligations and commitment.

Petition to bar Iran's President from attending the World Cup

2006-04-27T07:43:00.000-02:00

Simon Wiesenthal Center:

Please join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in its urgent campaign to bar Iran's President from attending the World Cup in Berlin in June.
Mr. Joseph S. Blatter President of Federation Internationale de Football Association
I join with the Simon Wiesenthal Center in urging you, in your capacity as President of FIFA, to bar Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from attending the forthcoming World Cup in Germany this June.
The Iranian President has openly called for Israel's destruction and is an avowed Holocaust denier, having called the Nazi Holocaust a "myth". The international community of sports must not allow such a person to sit in the VIP section at one of the world's most prestigious sporting events. His presence would evoke painful memories of the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games when leaders of the Third Reich sat in the VIP section, a move that gained them stature and acceptance throughout the world.
It would indeed be a travesty if FIFA found it fit to condemn Israel for an air strike on an empty soccer field in the Gaza Strip used for training by terrorists but would lose its voice in protest against a promoter of genocide and a Holocaust denier taking a seat in the VIP section of the World Cup.
Even if the ultimate decision to invite President Ahmadinejad to Germany was not FIFA's, it is crucial for an organization devoted to fairness and equality not to stand on the sidelines of this issue. Silence will only further embolden this dangerous demagogue.
Please act now!

Khamenei Warns US Against Attacking Iran

2006-04-27T07:19:00.000-02:00

Voice of America:

26 April 2006
Iran's supreme leader has warned that American interests around the world will be harmed if the United States launches an attack on the Islamic Republic.
Iran's state television quoted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying the Americans should know that if they invade Iran, their interests in every possible corner of the world will be harmed.
Tuesday, the Ayatollah said Iran is prepared to share nuclear technology with other countries.
Earlier, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, warned that Tehran would stop cooperating with the U.N. nuclear agency if the Security Council imposes sanctions against Iran.
The remarks come ahead of Friday's deadline the United Nations Security Council has set for Iran to stop enriching uranium. Iranian leaders have vowed to proceed with uranium enrichment despite the Council's demand.
In Washington, the White House accused Iran of seeking to escalate the standoff over its nuclear program. Spokesman Scott McClellan also said it is time for the Security Council to consider what action needs to be taken for Tehran's "continued defiance."
The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, says the Council plans to consider a resolution to legally require Iran to comply with international nuclear demands. But permanent Council members China and Russia have opposed such a measure.
The United States and the European Union allege Iran is seeking to develop an atomic bomb - a charge Tehran denies.
In other news, Russia launched an Israeli reconnaissance satellite into orbit. News reports from Israel say the satellite is designed to improve the country's surveillance of Iran's nuclear program.

Iranian Leader Warns U.S. Of Reprisal

2006-04-27T07:13:00.000-02:00

Washington Post:

Khamenei Is Defiant Ahead of U.N. Report
By Molly Moore and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 27, 2006; Page A01
PARIS, April 26 -- Escalating the threats between Washington and Tehran, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned Wednesday that his country would strike U.S. targets around the world in the event it is attacked over its refusals to curb its nuclear program.
"If the U.S. ventured into any aggression on Iran, Iran will retaliate by damaging U.S. interests worldwide twice as much as the U.S. may inflict on Iran," Khamenei said in a speech to a workers' assembly, according to the official news agency IRNA.
His statement adds to a campaign of defiance by senior Iranian officials in advance of a report expected Friday by the U.N. atomic watchdog agency, which analysts predict will cite Iran for defying U.N. Security Council demands to halt its uranium enrichment program.
The heightened tensions between the United States and Iran have helped drive oil prices to record highs and have set in motion intense diplomatic meetings aimed at heading off greater destabilization in the Middle East.
In a spate of statements this week, Iranian officials have also threatened to cut oil production, export nuclear technology, bar international nuclear monitors, make their nuclear program entirely secret and withdraw from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
While Bush administration officials have said they have no plans to attack Iran, they have repeatedly said they have not ruled out that step.
U.S. military experts are confident that U.S. forces could carry out extensive airstrikes against Iranian targets, but there is disagreement about how much of a setback such raids could impose on the Iranian nuclear program, much of which is housed underground.
Two main options are under consideration, say people familiar with Air Force thinking. The first would be a quick series of strikes against several dozen nuclear-related facilities, lasting only a few days and followed by a U.S. statement that the bombing would resume if Iran retaliated.
The second option envisions a lengthier, more ambitious campaign of waves of strikes by bombers and cruise missiles aimed at hundreds of targets, hitting not just nuclear-related facilities but also the headquarters of intelligence agencies, the Revolutionary Guard and other key government offices.
Many experts worry that Iran, dominated by Shiite Muslims, would retaliate against U.S. and British forces in neighboring Iraq by mobilizing Iraqi Shiites. It might also attack U.S. and British installations in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain through the help of Shiites in those countries. In other scenarios, Iranian agents would stage terrorist strikes against civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.
The recent statements are "a war of words," said Gary G. Sick, a professor of Middle East policy at Columbia University and longtime monitor of Iranian politics. "Neither side has anything to gain by an attack on the other, but there is a chance of an accident triggering something and that's what makes the situation so dangerous."
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency's report due Friday to the U.N. Security Council on the status of Iran's uranium enrichment program will shape debate in the council that could begin as early as next week. At issue would be possible international responses to Tehran.
An IAEA official declined to comment on the contents of the pending report.
Iran dispatched an envoy to Vienna on Wednesday to meet with representatives of the IAEA, but neither side expressed optimism about a last-minute breakthrough. Iranian leaders have said they will not stop their uranium enrichment efforts, but rather plan to expand them. "I think it's pretty clear what that report is going to say," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Wednesday, "which is that this is a regime that is in noncompliance with its obligations; this is a regime that is not abiding by the agreement it made with the Europeans to suspend all its enrichment and enrichment-related activities."
Under an agreement reached with Britain, France and Germany, Iran had suspended enrichment work while negotiations continued toward an agreement under which Iran would receive economic and political incentives in exchange for a permanent shutdown of controversial aspects of its nuclear program. It recently restarted enrichment.
Iran says its nuclear program is exclusively directed toward generating electricity. But U.S. officials accuse it of using the program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. The Security Council has instructed Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program out of concern that it puts the country a step closer in the years-long process of building a nuclear bomb.
Iranian authorities, playing to a domestic political audience, have cast the U.N. demands as an effort by the West to trample on its sovereign right to develop a civilian nuclear program. "The Iranian nation and its officials are peace-seekers and the Islamic republic would not invade anybody," Khamenei said Wednesday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also created concern abroad by repeatedly calling for the end of the Jewish state. On Monday, Ahmadinejad said the "fake" state "cannot survive" and urged Israeli immigrants to return to their home countries. He has often called the Holocaust a myth.
"Of all the threats we face, Iran is the biggest," Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said Tuesday as Israel observed Holocaust Remembrance Day. "The world must not wait. It must do everything necessary on a diplomatic level in order to stop its nuclear activity."
He added, "Since Hitler we have not faced such a threat."
Ricks reported from Washington.

Iran Says It Will Share Nuclear Skills

2006-04-26T07:39:00.001-02:00

New York Times:

By NAZILA FATHI
TEHRAN, April 25—Iran's supreme leader said today in a meeting with the Sudanese president that Iran was ready to share its nuclear technology with other countries.
"Iran's nuclear capability is one example of various scientific capabilities in the country. The Islamic Republic of Iran is prepared to transfer the experience, knowledge and technology of its scientists," said the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, IRNA news agency reported.
Mr. Khamenei's comments to the leader of Sudan, one of the most unstable countries in Africa, came a few days ahead of the Friday deadline by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to suspend its sensitive uranium enrichment activities.
At a conference on its nuclear program in Tehran today, senior officials rejected the demand and vowed that Iran will continue its enrichment activities.
Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said that if the Security Council imposed sanctions, Iran will suspend its cooperation with the United Nations nuclear agency, and any military strike aimed at destroying its enrichment facilities will lead Iran to hide its program.
"If you decide to use sanction against us, our relation with the agency will be suspended," Mr. Larijani said. "Military action against Iran will not lead to the closure of the program," he added.
"If you take harsh measures, we will hide this program. Then you cannot solve the nuclear issue."
"You may inflict a loss on us but you will lose also," he warned.
Mr. Larijani said that Iran is willing to cooperate if its case is returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "But do not expect us to act otherwise if you drag the case to the Security Council," he added.
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a senior cleric and chairman of the powerful Expediency Council, denounced the role of the nuclear agency at the conference and said the I.A.E.A. has failed to support Iran's program.
"I am not saying that the agency has had bad intentions," he said. "But it has not fulfilled its duty to support countries to enjoy their right to have nuclear technology," he added.
The head of Iran's atomic organization, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, left Tehran for the I.A.E.A.'s headquarters in Vienna today, ISNA news agency reported.

Save Leila From Execution

2006-04-26T07:39:00.000-02:00

PetitionOnline:

To: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
8-14 Avenue de la Paix 1211
Geneva 10, Switzerland
Leila, a 19 year old woman, faces imminent execution in Iran. What childhood she has had has been marred with physical and sexual abuse from the age of 8, giving birth to her first child at the age of 9. Having become a concubine to an Afghan man at the age of 12, Leila was forced into prostitution by him until the age of 14 when she gave birth to twin daughters. Leila was then given to a 55 year old married man who continued her history of abuse until her arrest at the age of 18, when she was found guilty of prostitution. Prostitution carries the death penalty under the Islamic laws of Iran. We, the undersigned, appeal for your involvement on Leila’s behalf based on principals of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html), to which Iran is a signatory.
Sincerely, The Undersigned
Cilck here to sign the petition.

Guerilla member hanged in Esfahan

2006-04-25T07:34:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

April 24, 2006
Another exasperated young Iranian was executed, on Thursday, in the central city of Esfahan according to the Islamic regime's official sources. The young man was charged with the killing of a Militia commander, in August 2004, during a guerilla style attack against a local security building.The Militia commander, named Akbar Bayati, was shot and killed during the armed operation and several other security agents were wounded by a commando composed of four men.
Armed attacks against the Islamic regime's symbols of powers and security agents are increasing as more Iranians are loosing hope in a peaceful change of the political structure in Iran.

Rice Pushes Security Council on Iran

2006-04-25T07:30:00.000-02:00

Houston Chronicle:

By ANNE GEARAN AP Diplomatic Writer © 2006 The Associated Press April 24 SHANNON, Ireland — The credibility of the U.N. Security Council will be in doubt if it does not take clear-cut action against Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.
Rice made her remarks four days before the expiration of a United Nations deadline for Iran to stop uranium enrichment. That process can produce fuel for nuclear energy or material for nuclear weapons.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, has accused Iran of failing to answer questions about its nuclear program. In late March, it reported Tehran to the Security Council and gave it one month to address the demands.
"When the international community reconvenes after the 30 days, there has to be some message, clear message, that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, or you will start to call into question the credibility of what the Security Council says when it says it," Rice said while flying to diplomatic visits to Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria.
Though the United States has said it prefers decisive steps, Security Council members Russia and China have opposed forceful sanctions. As permanent members of the council, either of those countries could veto any proposals.
"We'll continue to discuss this with the Russians and with others, but I expect that we're going to have to have some kind of action by the Security Council that demonstrates that this is a serious matter," Rice said.
Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Konstantin Dolgov expressed hope that before Friday, when IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei is expected to report to the agency's board and the Security Council on Iran, "there will be some further moves and steps taken which could, let's say, a little bit defuse the situation."
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said that "assuming no change of direction by Iran _ and there's no reason to think there will be a change in direction" _ the United States will prepare a Security Council resolution under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable, to make all IAEA resolutions mandatory.
Dolgov reiterated Russia's opposition to sanctions against Iran, and adopting a resolution under Chapter VII.
Asked whether China remains opposed to sanctions against Iran, China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya replied, "Yes, definitely."
Would Beijing oppose a resolution under Chapter VII? "I don't think it will be a productive move," he said.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad indicated Monday that Iran might withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on nuclear activities, and he predicted the Security Council would not impose sanctions on his country.
Meanwhile, a leading German legislator said the United States should delay "for some time" any U.N. Security Council action on Iran and talk directly to Tehran about its security concerns.
"We have time to be patient," Ruprecht Polenz, chairman of the international relations committee of the German Bundestag, said before meetings in Washington with Undersecretary of State Nichols Burns and Elliott Abrams of the National Security Council.
In the meantime, Polenz said, Russia could explore expressions of renewed interest by Iran in joint enrichment of uranium on Russian territory. The Russian proposal has U.S. and European support as a way to make sure Iran does not use enriched uranium for weapons development.
Nor, he said, would it be "a bad idea" for the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to resume its review of Iran's nuclear activities.
By contrast, a State Department spokesman was skeptical that Iran really was interested in the Russian proposal.
"One day they will say there is a deal and the other day they will say there is no deal, and then they will say there is one _ only on their terms," spokesman Adam Ereli said.
Iran contends that its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful in purpose.
Next week, U.S., British, French, Chinese, Russian and German officials will meet "to consider the next steps that we should take in response to what we expect to be a negative report," Ereli said. ___ AP Diplomatic Writer Barry Schweid in Washington contributed to this report.

Top Islamist Militia General Gunned Down by Exasperated Soldier

2006-04-24T07:10:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

Apr 23, 2006
Official sources of the Islamic republic regime are revealing the murder on, Wednesday, of a top Pasdaran Corp. (Islamic Revolutionary Guards) commander in the religious city of Ghom. General Kamal Kazemi was gunned down, by a 'crazy' conscript soldier 'who will then commit suicide', according to the same official sources which have not revealed the name of the soldier. Kazemi was a top Pasdaran Corp. instructor and the local commander of the repressive Bassiji elements who are dealing with what the Islamic regime qualifies as "immoral behavior" or “social corruption”.
Most Iranians reject the rule of the Islamic regime and radical signs of exasperation, against the symbols of the theocratic power, are increasing in Iran.

Militiamen gunned down in Shiraz

2006-04-24T06:36:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

April 24
Official sources of the Islamic republic have revealed the deaths of two Islamist militiamen who were gunned down, on Thursday, in the southern City of Shiraz. Their patrol car was blocked by two vehicles and an unkown armed commnado opened fire on them. Armed attacks are in constant raise against the agents and symbols of the Islamic regime.

Islamic Republic prosecutor shot by gunmen

2006-04-23T06:34:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

April 23
Official sources of the Islamic republic have revealed that the Islamist prosecutor of the City of Shadgan was seriously wounded during an armed attack by an unknown masked commando. Najafabadi, the prosecutor, has been hospitalized and is in critical conditions. Armed attacks are in constant raise against the agents and symbols of the Islamic regime.

Gender Apartheid Policy Increases in Iran

2006-04-23T06:29:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

April 23
The Gender Apartheid Policy and repression of Iranian women has increased following the start, yesterday, of a new official campaign intended to enforce the observance of the Islamist mandatory veil in Iran.
Hundreds of fully black veiled and armed female security agents, qualified as "black crows" by most Iranians, have been deployed in each of Iran's main cities. Their official mission has been qualified as a 'suggestive guidance task intending to make respect the Islamic and moral values' and 'to fight the increasing western decadence'.
While officially they're 'not to use of any force or brutal manners', never less various reports are contrary to the official statements made, today, by the Islamic regime's President and heads of security forces. Reports are stating about the use of brutality, insults and fines against hundreds of maverick Iranian females who were seen opposing the black crows injunctions in several areas of Tehran, such as, Vali-e-Asr (former Pahlavi), Madar (former Mohseni) and Tajrish.
Several young girls were seen arrested and transferred to security posts in order to what has been qualified as 'proper identification'.
In some places maverick Iranian males, offended or intending to protect their mothers, sisters, female friends or the victims, from the repressive female agents, were seen beaten by male security agents who have been deployed to protect their female colleagues.
It seems that some harsh critics made by some European and American circles against the discriminatory campaign have caused the sudden issuance of official statements on the 'peaceful nature of the guidance task'.
Reports of the same type of repressive measures have been received from some of the provincial cities, such as, Esfahan, Rasht, Ghom, Mashad or Shiraz where they have already been applied before its start in the Capital.
In reality, the whole campaign has started following the quasi-official rally which took place in front of the Islamic Parliament last week. It took place in order to offer a so-called legitimate and popular back up for the discriminatory crackdown on Iranian women and was composed by dozens of fully dark veiled female agents, as well as, foreign Islamist females and even what some many Iranians call as 'veiled governmental prostitutes'. This third category is used for various purposes by the Islamic regime, such as, collecting information or approaching foreign journalists while having a more western look or in some cases wearing more provocative clothing.
Tens of Iranian women have died and hundreds of other have been injured, since 1979, for fighting for gender equality in Iran. Many of them have used mass gatherings to burn their mandatory veils and to denounce the existing repression while some naive foreign circles have started to promote, since 1997, individuals, such as, Shirin Ebadi or Mehranguiz Kar as defenders of women's rights.
In reality, while thousands of Iranian women were marching in the streets of Tehran, in 1979, and shouting "No Veil, No Submission"; Ebadi and Kar were endorsing Rouh-Ollah Khomeini's backwarded Islamist revolution. Worst, they were seen as wearing the Islamist veil in sign of such support, despite having had higher law education and human rights courses.
For a better understanding of Iranian women's case and their persistent struggle, check the following links:
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3043.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_2007.shtml
SMCCDI has always been heavily involved in the genuine defense of Iranian women's rights and has been a major factor in denouncing their persistent repression. The group, which is using its website and independent satellite TV and radio networks, has always believed that Iranian women will never obtain their full rights and equality other than in the frame of a genuine secular regime.
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_1572.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_1573.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_1573.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3350.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3365.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_1879.shtml
http://daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_3248.shtml

Soccer game leads to protest in Iranian Capital

2006-04-23T06:27:00.000-02:00

SMCCDI:

April 22
Hundreds of Iranians used the occasion, offered by the match played between Bargh e Shiraz and Esteghlal (former Taj) soccer teams, in order to protest against the Islamic republic regime. The local game took place yesterday at the "Azadi" ('Freedom') stadium of Tehran.
Slogans were shouted and street clashes took place in the Azadi, Karaj and Enghelab areas as security forces attacked the protesters. Dozens of security patrol cars and buses were damaged in retaliation to the brutality of Islamist Militiamen.
Tens were seen injured or arrested at the issue of the unrest.
Iranians are seizing the mass presence opportunity offered by soccer games or big events in order to protest and express their rejection of the Islamic regime. In that line, Iran was the scene of consecutive and massive protest actions, during the 2002 World Cup soccer qualification games but the trend was stopped by the believed forced loss of Iran to Bahrain.
Since then, important soccer games have been often turned into popular protests, especially when they're played in Tehran.
Most opposition groups, such as SMCCDI and the Iran National Secular Party (INSP), and underground networks have planned massive popular protest actions, both inside and abroad Iran, at the occasion of the upcoming 2006 World Cup games in Germany. Iran's first game is scheduled for June 11th against Mexico and Its other first round games are against Portugal, on June 17th, and against Angola on June 21st.
SMCCDI is known for its importnat role in the promotion of Football (Soccer) Protests and especially in the coordination of last World Cup Soccer qualification games' riots. It constantly mobilized the masses via the intense use of digital technology, such as the Internet and satellite TV, as well as, help from some friendly Persian speaking radio stations abroad who were offering airtime for consecutive interviews and transmitting the Movement's calls:
http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_486.shtml
http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_485.shtml
http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_482.shtml
http://www.daneshjoo.org/article/publish/article_479.shtml

Petition

2006-04-22T11:05:00.000-02:00

PetitionOnLine:

Dear Clare Short MP,
We would like to commend you for standing up in support of your Iranian constituent, Omid Farivar and his family, to be saved from deportation to Iran.
The plight of the Farivar family, and in particular that of their young daughter is very harrowing indeed. Your support for the Farivar family however; also highlights the inhumane state law of the Islamic Republic of Iran, where girls are allowed to be married at the young age of 9.
This inhumane law has nothing to do with the Iranian culture, it is a state law drafted by the ruling theocracy in Iran after 1979.
The previous parliament in Iran, which many Islamic Republic apologists in the West, had pinned their hopes on, passed a bill to increase the legal age of marriage for girls from 9 to 12, but this was vetoed by the unelected Guardian Council, demonstrating clearly the futility of the Islamic Republic sham “democracy”.
We the undersigned, support your courageous stand in the UK parliament for the Farivar family and hope you will extend this to condemn under-age marriage laws in the Islamic Republic of Iran. We ask the world's conscience to condemn the Islamic Republic for state laws which abuse Iran's children.
Make Under-Age Marriage Laws History.
Sincerely, The Undersigned
Click here to sign the petition.

As Iran Presses Its Ambitions, Its Young See Theirs Denied

2006-04-22T10:54:00.000-02:00

The Washington Post:

Lack of Economic Opportunity Leads Many to Drugs
By Karl VickWashington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 21, 2006; A01
SHAFT, Iran -- The question that preoccupies most of Iran lay coiled in the sullen stare of Abbas Kayhan, 25 years old and stuck behind the counter of his father's corner store. It pulled his heavy brow even lower and traveled down a forearm that shuddered in anger with each word.
"But what about me?" the young man demanded, smack in the colorless center of a generation whose complaints have driven Iranian politics for more than a decade, with no satisfaction in sight.
"You people, you have got a very good life in the U.S. What is this place?" He glanced down the main street of a town called Shaft, where young men with gelled hair and no jobs sauntered at aimless angles. "Everything is miserable."
While the world focuses on Iran's nuclear ambitions, Iranians focus on the unmet aspirations of the two-thirds of the population that is younger than 30. Nearly three decades after a revolution that swept aside a monarchist system grounded in privilege, the typical Iranian has seen average income shrink under a religious government that has cultivated an elite of its own atop a profoundly dysfunctional economy.
The 80 percent of the population working in the private sector struggles mightily to make a living in the 20 percent of the economy that is not controlled by the government. The end product is a frustration edging into resentment that informs every private conversation with ordinary Iranians and frames every public issue.
It explains the stunning landslide victory 10 months ago of a relative unknown named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the only candidate in the presidential race who campaigned against the rich.
Dissatisfaction also accounts for much of the public support for Iran's nuclear program, despite widespread disdain for the ruling mullahs. In a country where time has seemed to stand still for a quarter-century, the public associates nuclear energy with economic development.
"The city of Shaft is just like anywhere else in the country," said Jafar Shalde, the owner of a housewares shop whose business on a recent morning consisted of one transaction: A woman returned the shelving she'd bought the day before, and Shalde gave her $3 back.
"There is not enough salary for the people," he said. "There is not enough income. They don't have enough money, so they don't buy anything.
"Normally, everything gets worse."
Shaft rests in the low-lying vermillion countryside below the Caspian Sea, its main street of tidy shops curving gently. The surrounding valley is checkered by rice paddies, and families lucky enough to own one eat the harvest themselves. Though economists call the region prosperous compared with most of Iran, residents say they need two jobs to survive. The local string factory, which used to employ 400, now has work for fewer than 100.
"Opium, yes. You can smell it in the evening," Shalde said of the drug many people in Iran -- more than in any other country in the world, according to U.N. figures -- use to fill days not filled by jobs.
At 64, Shalde is old enough to remember Iran's 1979 revolution, defined for Americans by the hostage crisis. Iranians recall it differently.
"It was because of the shah," Shalde said, referring to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, whose Peacock Throne the CIA restored in a 1953 coup. "There was no equality between classes. There was a gap between people, and our imam said the reason was the shah, and he asked us to demonstrate against him. And this is what we did."
The mullahs took control, but the gap remained, though the government declines to measure income differences.
"In my view, 1 percent may be getting equal to the next 30 percent of the population," said Ali Rashidi, a prominent economist and former Central Bank official. "You can see it."
Iranians say they do. They call a rich man "the son of a cleric," shorthand for the insider government connections crucial to any enterprise here. The richest person in Iran is believed to be Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a mid-level cleric who served two terms as president in the 1990s and outspent his opponents in an attempt to return to office last year.
His accession was preempted by Ahmadinejad, who surged ahead on the strength of a half-hour campaign video. Broadcast nationwide in a nightly candidate showcase, the video made no mention of wiping Israel off the map or even nuclear power -- issues that have since defined Ahmadinejad for the outside world.
It simply showed that he lived in a modest house, worked long hours as Tehran's mayor and clearly savored contact with the common folk.
"I saw him on television," said Shalde, in the stillness of his shop. "I didn't vote for his promises. I just looked at him and saw he was just like us. So I told everybody I knew -- for example, my kids -- I told them to vote for him."
That Ahmadinejad even made promises was unusual for a candidate in Iran. He vowed to "put oil money on the sofre ," the dining cloth that in an Iranian household is the equivalent of the kitchen table. Iran's petroleum reserves are the second largest of any OPEC country. And only Russia has more natural gas.
But great chunks of the income from oil already go to keeping public anger at bay. Iran will spend $25 billion this year to hold down the prices of flour, rice, even gasoline. With insufficient refining capacity of its own, Iran imports more gas than any nation except the United States.
"Instability and mental insecurity would result from increasing the price of such products in society," Ahmadinejad said in announcing retention of the subsidies. His first budget also included $19 billion to create the new jobs the economy is failing to generate at the rate young Iranians enter the marketplace, a staggering 1 million a year.
"Work," said Sassan Ataei, 18, "is in Tehran. That's where our peers go."
At 11 on a weekday morning, Ataei was headed down a barren side street toward a teahouse where the unemployed young men of Shaft put their effort into leisure. Everlast, Puma -- it's all about the shoes in the bare, tiled room where young men of working age pass the daylight hours smoking water pipes.
"We only get hopeful when we smoke hashish," said one, smiling as he made do with spiced-apple tobacco. "Otherwise, there's no hope."
The new president has brought a glimmer, however. Mojtaba Dejahang, 23, voted for a reformist candidate but now approves of the hard-line conservative who emphasized economic issues over personal freedoms.
"Bread is important," said Dejahang, who lives with his parents despite holding an engineering degree. "I think ordinary people do love him and trust him, especially with his position on the nuclear issue. He showed that he's a firm person.
"We believe that with nuclear power Iran will actually speed up development."
As he spoke, other young patrons chimed in, drawn by the novelty of a visiting American and the opportunity to be heard.
"I want to make one point clear," Mani Jalili announced, by way of introduction. "If Americans attack the city of Shaft, I will defend it."
Shop owner Ali Korshidi concurred: "If there's going to be any change in this country, it has to come from inside. I put no faith in foreign forces."
Atta Jafarzadeh, 17, wore suede sneakers and an injured look. "We are the generation born after the revolution," he implored. "We have no bad memories of the Americans."
The young men were either on their way to Tehran, 180 miles to the southeast, or had just come back empty-handed. Many of the overcrowded capital's perhaps 10 million residents are economic migrants.
"Unless you have jobs for everyone, democracy will never take root here," said Zirak Shafti, 39, who said his advertising business was faltering. "That's why no government ever succeeded here.
It was always dependent on oil. It wanted to control everything."
Inside the airy, neatly arranged home of Fatemeh Jaberoodi, the grown children not at work took seats along the living room wall. Only the oldest has a job -- a bank clerk position inherited from his father. Except for another child in Germany, the entire brood, seven adults, survives on the rice from a small paddy plus Jaberoodi's husband's pension, equal to $77 a month.
The fixed amount shrinks with each uptick of inflation, a chronic condition in Iran that ran at 15 percent last year. Persistent price increases, which economists call a tax on the poor, will be aggravated by Ahmadinejad's budget, according to a wide range of analysts, including fellow conservatives.
Jaberoodi grew wistful recalling the years before 1979, when the Iranian rial held its value year to year. "It seemed that the money we got was just blessed," she said. "There was no inflation.''
Her daughters sat silently. Ameneh, at 30 the eldest, had a computer degree and a good lead on a job with an automaker, but the family lacked the clout "to push the matter through," her mother said.
"If people have got links inside the government, it's easy. For ordinary people, not a chance.
There's a lot of talk about justice, but there's not equality of opportunity."
Sajad, the oldest son still at home, stood up. His mother frowned. He is 23. "We don't have enough money to start a business for him," she said. "That's a real problem."
She lowered her voice. "My main concern is that without a job he doesn't become addicted to any of these drugs. My concern is if they can't find a job, this kind of thing is inevitable."
He dressed as she spoke, a fit, handsome man discreetly opening a full-length cupboard door in the living room that becomes a bedroom at night. He pulled off a soccer jersey and buttoned up a dress shirt.
"He got up at 12, had his lunch, watched a bit of television. Now he's going out just to run around with his friends," his mother said. Her face was crossed, like Iran, by currents of knowing and helplessness.
"I can't stop him."

Police in Tehran ordered to arrest women in 'un-Islamic' dress

2006-04-22T10:51:00.000-02:00

The Guardian:

· Taxi drivers responsible for clothes of passengers
· Purge allied with effort to cut viewing of western TV
Robert Tait in Tehran
Thursday April 20, 2006
Iran's Islamic authorities are preparing a crackdown on women flouting the stringent dress code in the clearest sign yet of social and political repression under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
From today police in Tehran will be under orders to arrest women failing to conform to the regime's definition of Islamic morals by wearing loose-fitting hijab, or headscarves, tight jackets and shortened trousers exposing skin.
Offenders could be punished with £30 fines or two months in jail. Officers will also be authorised to confront men with outlandish hairstyles and people walking pet dogs, an activity long denounced as un-Islamic by the religious rulers.
The clampdown coincides with a bill before Iran's conservative-dominated parliament proposing that fines for people with TV satellite dishes rise from £60 to more than £3,000. Millions of Iranians have illegal dishes, enabling them to watch western films and news channels. The dress purge is led by a Tehran city councillor, Nader Shariatmaderi, a close ally of Mr Ahmadinejad who helped to plot last year's election victory.
Loosely arranged headscarves - exposing glamourous hairstyles - and shorter, tight-fitting overcoats (manteaus) became a symbol of the social freedoms that flourished under the reformist presidency of Mohammed Khatami.
During his election campaign, Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed fears that his presidency might herald a forced reversal, saying Iran had more urgent problems.
However, Mr Shariatmaderi denounced the trends as "damaging to revolutionary and Islamic principles". "We are looking for a social utopia to live in but in the last couple of months, our attention has wavered," he told fellow councillors. "In the present international situation, people must unite under known principles."
The clampdown recalls the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic revolution, when women wearing lipstick were often confronted by female vigilantes wiping their faces clean with handkerchiefs, which were said to often conceal razor blades.
The new campaign will hold taxi agencies accountable for their passengers' attire, police will be able to impound cabs carrying women dressed "inappropriately". Agencies guilty of repeat offences will be closed. Police have reportedly been stopping women motorists recently whose hijab was judged inadequate. Police have also raided fashion stores and seized brightly coloured manteaus.
Tehran's police chief, Morteza Talai, said the campaign would try to clamp down on people making "the social environment insecure".
Young women shopping in north Tehran's fashionable Tajrish neighbourhood yesterday, however, were uncowed. Matin, 24, a nurse, was wearing a gaudily patterned light-blue head scarf pushed back to reveal sunglasses and bleached blond hair. Her tight, short black manteau with intricate gold patterns seemed designed to provoke the ire of the authorities. But she was unrepentant. "I'm a married woman and it should be my husband who tells me what and what not to wear. He likes the way I dress," she said.
Surprisingly, Narges Asgari, 20, a dressmaker wearing an all-encompassing black chador, was also critical. "I don't think people will listen because they want to take decisions themselves," she said. "Clothes depend on the culture of their families. I wear the chador because, in my family, it's something we accept."

US prepared to go it alone over Iran

2006-04-22T10:45:00.000-02:00

EuroNews:

20/04 07:26 CET
US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has invoked self-defence as a potential justification for military intervention in Iran. Rice said the US had the authority to act alone or with a coalition if the dispute over Iran's nuclear programme could not be resolved within the context of the United Nations Security Council.
The UN Security Council has given Iran until the 28th of April to comply with its demands to stop enriching uranium. Iran has ignored the ultimatum, while China and Russia have both made clear they will use their power of veto against sanctions. However, a senior US official at the meeting said they are in the minority: "We heard last night, and again today, from individual countries, that all of those who spoke, and it was the great majority, are looking at sanctions", said senior White House official Nicholas Burns.
Iran's programme of low-grade uranium enrichment has stoked western fears that the country plans to manufacture nuclear weapons. But the country has always insisted its research is peaceful and aimed at generating domestic energy.

U.S Must Offer Iran Diplomatic Deal

2006-04-22T10:42:00.000-02:00

Fox News:

Friday , April 21, 2006 By Ted Galen Carpenter and Justin Logan
Several reports have surfaced indicating that the U.S. government has plans to launch a preventive war against Iran.
President Bush recently ratcheted up his rhetoric, saying that a nuclear Iran is “unacceptable,” and other administration officials have used the term “intolerable.”
Politicians and pundits across the spectrum seem to agree.
Some analysts hold out hope that EU-led diplomacy will defuse the crisis. If that strategy fails, they believe that UN-authorized economic sanctions could bring Iran to heel. Yet neither the historical record on nuclear proliferation (e.g., India and Pakistan) nor our recent experience with Iraq inspires much confidence in the effectiveness of sanctions.
Still, why leap to the military option? Although negotiations haven’t yielded much thus far, that’s because they haven’t been nearly broad enough. To determine whether the Iranian regime is willing to give up its quest for nuclear weapons, the administration must offer it a grand bargain. The Iranian government presents a laundry list of grievances against the United States. At the top is fear that the United States may attack Iran, as Washington attacked Serbia and Iraq. Bush’s linkage of Iran to Iraq in his “axis of evil” speech did nothing to reassure the Iranians.
Tehran also complains about the lack of diplomatic relations and the decades-old system of U.S. economic sanctions. Until those issues are addressed, there is little hope of progress on the nuclear front.
At bottom, the United States has one prevailing interest in Iran: stopping it from getting nuclear weapons. Although the Bush administration believes the Iranians are not negotiating in good faith, there is a straightforward way to find out: offer them a grand bargain that gives them what they want in exchange for giving up a capability to build nukes.
The United States should offer Iran full normalization of relations, including a public promise not to attack it, restored diplomatic relations, and normalized economic relations. In return, Iran would need to give up any prospect of building a nuclear arsenal. Iran would be required to immediately open its existing nuclear program to unfettered international inspections.
There are potential problems with that bargain, to be sure. The first problem is that Iran hawks in Washington will inevitably characterize such a deal as “appeasement” of the Iranian regime and a moral endorsement of the mullahs’ repressive rule. They will say that it is not sufficiently sensitive to the plight of Iranians living under tyranny.
The Iranian regime is undoubtedly odious. But one of the requirements of an effective foreign policy is to engage with unpleasant regimes when America's national interest requires that step.
This is one of those cases.
Moreover, do hawks genuinely believe that the alternative to a grand bargain -- preventive military strikes, perhaps involving up to 400 targets, some of them beneath densely populated urban centers -- is sensitive to the plight of Iranians?
Are we to believe that such a policy, which would involve thousands of civilian deaths, is the policy that best serves the interests of the Iranian people?
Another problem: the Iranian government might balk at intrusive, on-demand inspections of a civilian nuclear program. If the United States is unwilling to accept an Iran armed with nuclear weapons, however, Washington must hold firm on this point. Otherwise, Tehran would still be able to divert civilian nuclear technology to build an arsenal.
Offering a grand bargain has more benefits than downsides, however.
One, it would test the Iranian side’s faith immediately, without endless haranguing over peripheral or esoteric issues. We would determine rather quickly whether negotiations would be worth the breath.
More importantly, with a full-scale deal on the table, the Iranians would have no excuses to back away. If they refused the deal, there would be only one conclusion to draw: Tehran is irreversibly determined to develop nuclear weapons.
But the biggest and most profound benefit of the deal is that it holds a reasonable chance of resolving the conflict without going to war. According to the New Yorker, existing U.S. war planning is based on the assumption that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government."
Even if that assumption were accurate -- and it almost certainly is not -- what would happen next? A strategic, oil-supplying Islamic country of 70 million people, presumably with its infrastructure in shambles, would be in chaos. Plunging the entire Persian Gulf region into anarchy would be one of the worst strategic blunders in American history.
Washington needs to make every diplomatic effort to stop Iran from getting a bomb before we start a war with that country. A comprehensive initiative may not work in the end, but considering the options currently on the table, offering the Iranians a grand bargain seems rather low-cost.
Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies and Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst, both at the Cato Institute. Both authors are members of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

US and UK develop democracy strategy for Iran

2006-04-22T10:38:00.000-02:00

Financial Times:

By Guy Dinmore in Washington,
Published: April 21 2006 22:23 Last updated: April 21 2006 22:23
The US and UK are working on a strategy to promote democratic change in Iran, according to officials who see the joint effort as the start of a new phase in the diplomatic campaign to counter the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme without resorting to military intervention.
A newly created Iran Syria Operations Group inside the State Department is co-ordinating the work and reporting to Elizabeth Cheney, the senior US official leading democracy promotion in the broader Middle East.
“Democracy promotion is a rubric to get the Europeans behind a more robust policy without calling it regime change,” a former Bush administration official commented.
The new direction, the former official said, reflected a growing belief in the US and UK that diplomacy through the United Nations and partial sanctions were unlikely to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability. In the absence of a credible military solution, the argument went that international diplomacy could try to slow down the nuclear programme while more “robust” efforts continued towards the ultimate solution of regime change, he said.
US officials said the British input was important because of the Bush administration’s lack of experts on Iran, the legacy of 25 years of frozen diplomatic relations. Some see the UK as having a moderating effect as the US considers whether to fund opposition groups in exile, launch covert activities inside Iran, and/or “independent” satellite television broadcasting in Farsi.
But US officials also detect a hardening of the UK stance in response to the confrontational approach of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran’s president.
Seeking to fill the US knowledge gap, the State Department last month set up the Iranian Affairs Office in Washington and announced new diplomatic posts for Farsi speakers. Barbara Leaf, an Arabist, is expected to head the office.
At the same time, the separate Iran Syria Operations Group was established to plot a more aggressive democracy promotion strategy for those two “rogue” states. Funding is to come from $75m that Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, announced in February she was requesting from Congress this year, plus some $10m already in the budget.
Adam Ereli, a State Department spokesman, denied the operations group existed.
But two other US officials and a European diplomat insisted that it did. They said the inter-agency group, which is supposed to co-ordinate with the Pentagon and other departments, is heade`d by David Denehy, a special adviser who served in the coalition government in Iraq, and Alberto Fernandez, a public diplomacy official.
Jack Straw, UK foreign secretary, accused Iran of deciding to “take on the international community” through its development of nuclear weapons and support of terrorism in a tough speech on March 13.
Mr Straw said the UK would “not take sides in Iran’s internal political debates” and noted that Iranians were “understandably sensitive about any hint of outside interference”.
But in language that echoed Ms Rice’s testimony to Congress a month earlier, Mr Straw pledged UK support for the democratic “aspirations” of the Iranian people.
He focused on how to give Iranians access to “independent authoritative information” and said governments could help provide this.
The US is planning to increase satellite television programming by Voice of America and may launch a new “independent” network with a prominent Iranian as front-man.
US officials concede, however, that they are not encouraged by their experience in Arabic broadcasting in the wake of the invasion of Iraq.
Serious Iranian opposition politicians are virtually unanimous in saying that foreign funding of activities designed to promote democracy, especially by the US or UK, would be counter-productive.
Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a press adviser to Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, recently said Iranians were “alert” to the “propaganda of enemies”, and in general Iran’s rulers show little concern over existing US broadcasts.
Additional reporting by Gareth Smyth in Tehran

U.S. Wants Embargo on Arms to Iran

2006-04-22T10:24:00.000-02:00

Los Angeles Times:

An official urges nations to 'use their leverage' to halt Tehran's nuclear program. Russia says it intends to proceed with missile sales.
By Paul Richter and Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writers
April 22, 2006

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration, trying to increase pressure on Iran, called Friday for an international embargo on sales of arms to Tehran until the regime agrees to suspend its nuclear program.
Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said the United States believed it was "time for countries to use their leverage," including banning the sale of arms and "dual use" technologies that could be employed in Tehran's nuclear program to generate electricity or make a weapon.
Burns singled out Russia, a longtime military supplier to Iran that has announced its plans to proceed with a $900-million sale of Tor M-1 antiaircraft missiles over U.S. objections.
"It doesn't stand to reason that Russia would continue with the arms sale, particularly of the type envisioned, Tor missiles," said Burns, the administration's point man on the Iran issue. "Iran is a country that is violating every international agreement it's made on the nuclear issue…. We hope and trust that the deal will not go forward."
But Russian officials Friday repeated their intention to deliver the weapons, which they said were not the subject of any international sanctions.
"Currently, nothing is preventing the fulfillment of our obligations in the area of military and technical cooperation with Iran. This deals with all the agreements made," Nikolai Spassky, deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, told reporters in Moscow.
"As far as the future is concerned, military and technical cooperation with any country may be limited only after the U.N. Security Council imposes the relevant sanctions," he said.
The Tor surface-to-air missiles are designed for use against aircraft and guided missiles at low and medium altitudes. They could theoretically be used against U.S. forces in the event of an American attack on Iran.
Russia also signaled its unwillingness to discuss possible U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran pending a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog. On March 29, the Security Council demanded that Iran suspend enrichment and asked the IAEA to report back in 30 days. U.N. nuclear agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei is due to deliver a report by Friday on whether Iran is meeting the IAEA's demands for a halt to uranium enrichment.
The U.S. has been pressing Russia and China to at least abstain on a resolution calling for targeted sanctions.
"Our position [on sanctions] is quite clear and does not require further clarification. At this stage, we consider it unproductive to discuss the issue of sanctions," Spassky told The Times.
"When we get the report, we'll review what's written in it. Moreover, we will be reviewing concrete issues, concrete items — not abstractly 'Do we like Iran or not?' or 'What's it doing with centrifuges?' " Spassky said. "The primary issue, the source of this whole story, is the issue of Iran's failure to fulfill its obligations, the issue of doubts on the part of the IAEA about its past nuclear program.
"As soon as this dossier gets closed, the mechanisms of Iran's normal IAEA membership can immediately be fully restored, as can the normal, full-fledged development of its peaceful nuclear program."
Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, speaking at an international security conference in Moscow, said there were no conditions under which Iran would be willing to give up its nuclear power program. He emphasized again that the program did not have a weapons component.
"You would be surprised if I said we have a common agreement with the United States, [but] I'm saying that Iran should not have nuclear weapons," Soltanieh said. "But there should be a distinction. Iran will have nuclear technology for peaceful uses, and will never give up."
He said Iran would be announcing bids in the next few weeks for construction over the next 20 years of two nuclear power plants capable of generating 20 megawatts of power.
"European or other potential suppliers are welcome for the bid," he said.
Richter reported from Washington and Murphy from Moscow. Natasha Yefimova of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.

The State Department’s Dead Parrot

2006-04-21T10:18:00.000-02:00

Front Page Magazine:

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
April 20, 2006
In the Monty Python skit, a man brings a parrot back to the store where he purchased him half an hour earlier, complaining that the parrot is dead.
The shop owner insists it must be resting, but the man says he discovered that the only reason that parrot was sitting up at all was because it had been nailed to the perch in its cage.
Like the shop owner, the State Department is promoting a long-dead policy of supporting “moderates” in Tehran, under the guise of promoting “reform” and “change.”
Not only is State making a monumental mistake: it has fallen for one of the oldest tricks of Iran’s clerical elite.
Over the past three years, President Bush has accumulated a tremendous capital of goodwill with the Iranian people because of his outspoken support for their struggle for freedom.
The president has made clear in private meetings with Iranian exiles that his public statements were not mere rhetoric. He really meant it when he called Iran part of an “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union speech.
He meant every word he uttered after the regime disqualified some 2,400 candidates for parliamentary elections in February 2004 and he said, “The United States supports the Iranian people’s aspiration to live in freedom, enjoy their God-given rights, and determine their own destiny.”
He meant it when he spoke to the Voice of America’s Persian service on August 17, 2004. “There is a significant diaspora here in the United States of Iranian-Americans who long for their homeland to be liberated and free. We’re working with them to send messages to their loved ones and their relatives…say[ing], ‘Listen, we hear your voice, we know you want to be free, and we stand with you in your desire to be free.’”
And he meant it again when he addressed the Iranian people during his State of the Union speech this year. “Our nation hopes one day to be the closest of friends with a free and democratic Iran.”
Somehow, that message hasn’t made it over to Foggy Bottom.
At the State Department, where Condoleeza Rice has admirably pledged to spend $85 million this year to support the pro-freedom movement in Iran, careerists have taken over the show and are steering her in the wrong direction.
Of that $85 million, nearly $50 million has been tentatively ear-marked to expand the Voice of America and the Persian service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Both radios need to improve the quality of their broadcasts and, especially, their political content, before they deserve another dime in taxpayer funding. But that is a story I will treat in depth in a future column.
The rest of the money is being spent on a variety of programs led by former Tehran regime officials, student leaders, and U.S. academics who believe the Tehran regime can be reformed, but does not need to be changed.
This is sweet music to the ears of Iran’s ruling mullahs and to Iran’s boy president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
They all want “reform.” After all, Ahmadinejad campaigned for president on a platform of “reform.” He was going to drive out corrupt mullahs, such as the “reformist” Rafsanjani, and reform Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Mohsen Sazegara was one of the founders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. He fell out with the regime in the late 1980s, published a series of reformist newspapers, and was jailed for nearly two years.
He came to the United States last year at the invitation of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and with the blessing of the Department of State.
Sazegara’s break with the regime was sincere. But since coming to the United States, he has teamed up with “reformers” such as Akbar Atri, Ali Afshari, and Ramin Ahmadi of Yale University, who have gotten the lion’s share of the “pro-freedom” moneys from the State Department.
Instead of providing seed money to a home-grown pro-democracy movement, State Department has sponsored Atri to go on a tour of U.S. college campuses, and is now talking of providing him with a radio station to broadcast his message of “reform” into Iran. They have also thrown money at Ramin Ahmadi by the million – initially, to sponsor a data base of Iranian human rights abuses (something that a number of other groups had already pulled together privately over the past decades, on shoestring funding).
It was Ahmadi who sponsored the ill-fated “non-violent training workshops” in Dubai that backfired last year, sources familiar with the program told me.
The idea of training Iranian activists in the weapons of non-violent conflict is an excellent one. But as reported by the Washington Post, the problem with the Dubai workshops was the choice of people who were selected to attend.
They were reformers, not activists seeking to grow a pro-democracy movement.
They didn’t want to change the regime in Tehran; they wanted to make it stronger, just as Iran’s reformist clerics have sought to do. When they found out that the State Department – and not Yale University - was financing the workshops, they fled back to Tehran, where they denounced the United States publicly.
Roozbeh Farahanipour was one of the leaders of the student rebellion at Tehran University in July 1999. He remembers Ali Afshari well.
“When we tried to get students to take the demonstrations from the university to the streets of Tehran, Afshari came along behind us in a truck with a sound system, shouting at the crowd to not follow us because we were against the revolution,” Farahanipour recalls.
That is one of the tricks the regime likes to play. It periodically gives leash to “reformers” and allows them to publish newspapers and speak out against regime excesses, for as long as they don’t cross the red line and demand true freedom and a change of regime.
Several authentic, grass roots movements for change in Iran do exist. One is led by Farahanipour and is called Marzeporgohar, or Iranians for a Secular Republic.
Another is the Iran Nation’s Party (sometimes referred to as the Iran People’s Party in the West). It was led by Darioush Forouhar until he and his wife were brutally hacked to death by regime thugs in Tehran in November 1998. The current leader is Khosrow Seif.
Yet another authentic pro-democracy group worthy of U.S. funding is the Iran Referendum Movement. Prompted initially by Sazegara’s campaign that collected 35,000 signatures on the Internet in favor of an internationally-monitored referendum on the regime, the movement now has chapters in 35 cities worldwide who sent 250 delegates to a founding convention in Brussels, Belgium, this past December.
They elected a 15-member Central Committee, who in turn selected a 7-member Executive Board. Although they have extensive networks inside Iran, they can’t seem to get the eyes and ears of the State Department.
But because the Referendum Movement is calling for an end of the Islamic Republic, the groups being funded by the State Department have all refused to have anything to do with it. The State Department’s choices are reformers, not revolutionaries.
Sazegara himself told me last year that the reform movement was “dead.” And yet, the State Department, through lack of imagination or its atavistic tendency toward blind man’s bluff, refuses to recognize it.
Like Monty Python’s dead parrot, the State Department Iran “experts” have nailed the reform movement to the perch, and keep selling it again and again, pretending that it’s alive.
But no matter how they dress it up, it’s still a dead parrot.
Or, as the Monty Python character put it, “This parrot is no more!… 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!”
Alas, not in Washington.

Iran's War On The West

2006-04-21T10:11:00.000-02:00

CBS News:

April 21, 2006 (Weekly Standard) This column was written by Thomas Joscelyn
In a New York Times op-ed this past Sunday, former National Security Council staffers Richard Clarke and Steven Simon lamented the possibility of a military strike on Iran. They warned that "a conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to our interests than the current struggle in Iraq has been."
At the heart of their concern lies a simple cost-benefit analysis. Iran has not supported anti-American terrorism since the mid-1990s. But if provoked, the mullahs may unleash their terrorist network, which is "superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field." In the war on terrorism, therefore, the potential benefits of a military strike on Iran are rather low, while the costs are prohibitively high.
Clarke and Simon tell us that Iran's last act of anti-American terrorism came in 1996 when the "the Qods Force, the covert-action arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, arranged" the Khobar Towers bombing. (It is worth noting that there is still some uncertainty surrounding the Khobar Towers bombing. For example, the 9-11 Commission concluded, "While the evidence of Iranian involvement is strong, there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown." Eight years after the attack, therefore, the government still wasn't sure if this was a joint Iran-al Qaeda operation.)
While the Clinton administration ruled out a military strike against Iran, Clarke and Simon say that the U.S. intelligence community scared Iran out of the terrorist game. After some unspecified covert action, "Iranian terrorism against the United States ceased."
On its face, this claim is dubious.
Anti-American terrorism has been a central tenet of Iran's Islamic revolution for decades. That the U.S. intelligence community, with its less-than-stellar track record in fighting terrorism during the 1990s, managed to convince Iran to stop orchestrating or aiding terrorist attacks against American interests seems highly unlikely. How could the mullahs have a terrorist network "superior" to al Qaeda, poised to strike, and yet not have used it for the past decade? Are we really to believe, as Clarke and Simon would have it, that this network of terrorist operatives has lain dormant all this time?
The questionable nature of this claim becomes apparent when one considers what Richard Clarke himself thought less than two years ago. In Against All Enemies, Clarke makes it clear that Iran was a "priority" country "as important as the others," including the Taliban's Afghanistan, in the post-9/11 war on terrorism.
While dismissing the evidence of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda (a claim that is also inconsistent with Clarke's previous statements and a wealth of evidence), Clarke argued in 2004:
...al Qaeda regularly used Iranian territory for transit and sanctuary prior to September 11. Al Qaeda's Egyptian branch, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, operated openly in Tehran. It is no coincidence that many of the al Qaeda management team, or Shura Council, moved across the border into Iran after U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan.
Moreover, Clarke explained that the threat posed by Iran's weapons of mass destruction programs, coupled with its ties to terrorism, posed a threat far greater than Saddam's Iraq. He wrote, "Any objective observer looking at the evidence in 2002 and 2003 would have said that the U.S. should spend more time and attention dealing with the security threats from Tehran than those from Baghdad."
Why did Clark believe that Iran should be a priority and Saddam's Iraq should not? He explained: "There is, of course, evidence that Iran provided al Qaeda safe haven before and after September 11."
Even Clarke's famously unequivocal denial of Iraqi involvement with al Qaeda, which supposedly took place the day after September 11 as he was allegedly countering President Bush's pointed questions, includes an admission of Iran's ties. Clarke claims that he told the President, "… we have looked several times for state sponsorship of al Qaeda and not found any real linkages to Iraq. Iran plays a little, as does Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, Yemen."
Thus, Clarke's previous views seem inconsistent with his current claim that Iran stopped supporting anti-American terrorism in the mid-1990s. Far from ending its support for terrorism, it seems that Iran has continued its decades-long terrorist assault against the West. Clarke's book, Against All Enemies, touches upon some of this evidence.
A few additional examples of Iranian support for al Qaeda make it clear that Iran was not scared out of the anti-American terrorism game. The 9/11 Commission reports that al Qaeda operatives received explosives training from Iran in the early 1990s. Bin Laden "showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983." This early history of collaboration did not come to an end. Even after 1996, Iran continued to open its doors to al Qaeda. The Clinton administration's original unsealed indictment of al Qaeda in November 1998 states that bin Laden's group had allied itself with Iran and its terrorist puppet, Hezbollah. The 9/11 Commission even left open the possibility that Hezbollah had assisted al Qaeda's execution of the September 11 plot.
This is just a small sample of the evidence tying Iran to al Qaeda. None of this means that military action against Iran is necessarily the most prudent next step. In this regard, Clarke and Simon may very well be right. A strike against Iran may not be in America's best interests, or the most effective way to deal with the Iranian threat. A careful weighing of the costs and benefits of military action should guide America's path. But by dismissing Iran's role in the past decade of anti-American terrorism, Clarke and Simon muddy the public debate and fail to accurately assess the Iranian threat.
Thomas Joscelyn is an economist and writer living in New York.

US won't rule out N-strike on Iran

2006-04-21T10:06:00.000-02:00

The Aurstralian:

April 20, 2006
WASHINGTON: The US has failed to secure international support for sanctions against Iran as President George W.Bush refused to rule out nuclear attacks if diplomacy failed to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions.
Mr Bush said he would discuss Iran's nuclear program with China's President Hu Jintao, who has been cool towards sanctions, during Mr Hu's US visit this week.
Asked if his options included planning for a nuclear strike, Mr Bush said: "All options are on the table. We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so."
But a meeting of major powers in Moscow ended without consensus, despite strong US pressure for international sanctions. Washington believes Iran is trying to build bombs but Tehran insists it is only developing peaceful nuclear energy.
The meeting of deputy foreign ministers of the UN Security Council's permanent members - the US, Britain, France, China and Russia - plus Germany, was called after Tehran declared last week it had enriched uranium and was aiming for industrial-scale production.
US State Department official Nicholas Burns called for sanctions to be imposed on Iran, but Russia and China are resisting and no agreement was reached.
The US, which already enforces its own sweeping sanctions against Iran, wants the UN Security Council to be ready for strong diplomatic action, including measures such as imposing a freeze on assets and visa curbs on Iranian officials.
Tehran had vowed to continue its pursuit of nuclear technology, whatever the meeting's outcome. "Whatever the result of this meeting might be, Iran will not abandon its rights," an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stressed that the goal of the Moscow meeting was to make preparations for decisions to be taken in a number of capitals.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is due to report at the end of the month on whether Iran is complying with UN demands that it halt uranium enrichment.
Iran's defiance of world pressure to halt its program drove oil prices to a record high of $US72.64 a barrel, raising fears of a cut in supplies from the world's fourth biggest exporter of crude.
Speculation about a US attack on Iran has mounted since a report in The New Yorker magazine said the Bush administration was considering the option of using tactical nuclear weapons to knock out Iran's underground nuclear sites.
Despite Mr Bush's assertions that all options were open in relation to Iran, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last night that an invasion was not being considered.
"I've said constantly that Iran is not Iraq, nobody is talking about military invasion," Mr Blair told parliament.
China, which sent an envoy to Iran to try to defuse the stand-off, repeated a call for a negotiated solution. "We hope all sides will maintain restraint and flexibility," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in Beijing.
Russia restated its opposition to punitive action. "We are convinced that neither the sanctions route nor the use of force route will lead to a solution of this problem," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov urged Iran to suspend its research and development efforts to enrich uranium in a telephone conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Motaki on Monday.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at an annual military parade, said the army was ready to defend the nation. "It will cut off the hands of any aggressors," he said.