Free Republic

Mullahs' World Holocaust Foundation has challenged Europe to hand over documents which detail the mass slaughter of Jews in the second world war, the mullah-run news agency IRNA has reported. Mohammad Ali Ramin, head of the government-funded foundation, said on Tuesday that Austria, Germany and Poland in particular should supply documents. Created following Iran's controversial Holocaust conference last year, this Iranian organisation's primary mission is to probe the authenticity of the Holocaust. "They should hand over the proof for the dossier on the organised massacre of Jews in Europe during World War II to the independent international fact-finding committee affiliated...

U.S. and Western pressure on Iran is squeezing its economy, feeding the inflation and joblessness that have swelled under its controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Trade figures and other data have begun to reflect deepening economic isolation taking place as a result of U.S.-led efforts to penalize Tehran for what the United States alleges is the pursuit of nuclear weapons and sponsorship of terrorist groups. For example, Iran's imports from Germany fell 14% in the first eight months of 2006, the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce says. European Union countries account for 40% of Iran's imports, and Germany is Iran's largest European...

"If I leave the middle east will be filled with terrorist ideology" - Shah of Iran reign 2,500+ years of monarchy in Iran Video for scumbag Carter

Dec 18, 2006 — TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's biggest reformist party said on Monday President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had suffered a "decisive defeat" in nationwide elections last week due to his government's "authoritarian and inefficient methods." The government's spokesman countered that by saying the government had no favored candidates in Friday's twin votes for local councils and a powerful clerical body known as the Assembly of Experts and was happy to work with the winners. Political analysts said the elections, the first since Ahmadinejad's stunning 2005 presidential win, would have no immediate impact on policy in the Islamic state where Supreme...

Tehran, Iran — Early electoral returns on Saturday suggested that a moderate former president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, had a strong a lead over a conservative opponent in at least one of the elections held Friday. The semi-official Fars news agency reported that most candidates on the slate led by Rafsanjani were headed for a victory in the elections for the 86-member Assembly of Experts. Muhammad Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi, the hard-line cleric, had also received enough votes to get elected. Other Web sites reported that Rafsanjani received far more votes personally than Mesbah-Yazdi. Officials close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad backed Mesbah-Yazdi,...

TEHERAN - Iran’s former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani is leading the polls of the Experts’ Assembly elections while the candidate linked to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in sixth place, several local news agencies reported on Saturday. Rafsanjani, one of Ahmadinejad’s main opponents, represented the coalition of reformists and moderates in the Experts’ Assembly elections while Mohamad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi stood for the presidential camp. The Experts’ Assembly has the power to appoint, supervise and even oust Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who constitutionally has the final say in state affairs. Rafsanjani and former reformist President Mohammad Khatami appeared together Friday at the polling...

With Iran's great oil wealth, Mohammad Reza Shah became the pre-eminent leader of the Middle East, and self-styled "Guardian" of the Persian Gulf. In 1975, he abolished the multi-party system of government so that he could rule through a one-party state under the Rastakhiz (Resurrection) Party in autocratic fashion, which he claimed was a response, among other things, to the Soviet Union's support of Iranian Communist militias and parties, particularly the Tudeh Party. In addition, the Shah had decreed that all Iranian citizens and the few remaining political parties must become part of Rastakhiz. He made major changes to curb...

CAIRO (Reuters) - U.S. Senator John Kerry said on Friday he was willing to go to Tehran to talk to Iranian leaders but would not have time during his current Middle East tour. "I don't have time and we were not able to make arrangements in the short timespan we had but I would be willing to go," he told reporters in Cairo, the first stop on his tour. Asked if he planned to make a trip later, he said: "At the appropriate time, at some point." Kerry, the Democratic candidate in the U.S. presidential election in 2004, is pressing...

"Whoever sows wind, will reap a tempest" ran the concluding line of a statement published in Tehran on Wednesday by the Tahkim Vahdat, the main student movement in Iran. Monday's incident, where hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was heckled by students at the controversial Holocaust denial conference, "shows that the universities are alive and do not intend to stay silent at the ruin of the country," Vahdat's leaders said. Dozens of protesters burned pictures of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad crying 'dictator go away', 'death to dictatorship' and threw firecrackers on Monday forcing him to interrupt several times a speech he was...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday said that the curve of the Zionist regime's life is on the decline, adding that this is a divine promise and will of world nations. Addressing the International Conference on 'World Vision on Holocaust' in Tehran, the Iranian president said that today nations are seeking justice and worship God Almighty. "Those having supported the Zionist regime during their lifetime, should be aware that its lifetime will be over and their interests as well as reputation will be endangered. "Just as the ground was prepared to assign such a regime, the Zionist regime will be...

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian students have staged a rare demonstration against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, setting off firecrackers and burning pictures of him as he delivered a speech at Tehran university, reports said. Iran's semi-official FARS news agency and a student news Web site reported that a group of students Monday briefly interrupted Ahmadinejad's speech at Amir Kabir University by booing and chanting "Death to the dictator." However, an Amir Kabir University student, who witnessed the incident and did not want to be identified, told CNN that the protesting students interrupted Ahmadinejad's speech with slogans, including "Death to the dictator,"...

TEHRAN -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the world is “rapidly becoming Ahmadinejadised” and global leaders have started following in his footsteps, press reports said yesterday. “I have travelled to all the continents except for one and I know what is going on out there. Everybody is eager to hear the Iranian people’s message,” the reformist Aftab-Yazd newspaper quoted the president as saying. “The world is rapidly becoming Ahmadinejadised.” The austere hardliner said that Iran’s “two big missions are constructing the country and introducing a model for humanity.” World leaders, he added, had started copying his provincial trips, during...

What took place over the next fortnight astonished me. Everywhere I went -- from the traffic-choked streets of Tehran in the north to the dusty desert town of Yazd in central Iran, to the elegant cultural centers of Isfahan and Shiraz -- I was overwhelmed by the warmth and, dare I say it, pro-Americanism of the people I met. Ponder the irony of that last statement for a moment. While much of the rest of the world seems to be holding their collective noses at us Americans, in Iran people were literally crossing the road to shake an American's hand...

Rome, 26 June (AKI) - by Ahmad Rafat - One year after his election as Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in trouble. On the domestic front, Iran's economy has not recovered and the president's promise to re-distribute among the population part of the country's oil revenues has not been fulfilled. The Iranian government's international strategy to challenge the international community has on the other hand not given the expected results and the failure of Tehran's foreign policy has greatly contributed to depeen domestic rifts. The creation of the Council for foreign policy strategies decided by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah...

"The Iranian nation will wipe the strain of regret on the foreheads of those who want to bring about injustice", President Ahmadinejad scorned at a recent rally in the province of Zanjan. Iran "will cut off the hands of any aggressor", any attack would be met with a response that is double-fold including suicide attacks across Europe and the United States, he warned. "Israel should be wiped off the map", the predominately Jewish nation "cannot survive" and is headed "towards extinction" quipped the fanatical President. If one were to listen to his rhetoric alone, even the most astute political intellectuals...

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is cracking down on Iran's universities in an effort to crush a student pro-democracy movement and strengthen the hardliners' grip on power. Leading student activists have been jailed or expelled from their studies, and lecturers have been sacked, while the government has proposed subjecting academics to strict religious testing. The authorities have also begun a programme of burying the bodies of unknown soldiers on campus grounds in what student leaders say is a thinly disguised attempt to bring religious extremists into the universities on the pretext of holding "martyrs' ceremonies". Students fear that such a presence will...

Dear Iranians, Dear Americans, Dear Iranian-Americans, Dear Freedom Lovers, Most Middle-Easterners and Iranians have been long among the first victims of Islamo-Fachism. Iranians for their part have shown their deep rejection of the Islamic republic regime, at many occasions, by boycotting successive sham elections or by demonstrating, striking or some even resorting to violence at the price of their lives and due to total exasperation. Iranians in their vast majority have turned their backs to the totality of the theocratic regime and the degree of popular rejection is to the point that even some absconded former officials, living now in...

Eight Iranians were killed and dozens injured by two bombs in Ahvaz, on the day President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been due to visit the south-western city. The blasts, in a bank and a government building, were the latest outbreak of violence to strike the ethnically sensitive city, which has a majority Arab population. Officials said Mr Ahmadinejad had called off his trip because of bad weather, but there was speculation that the cancellation was due to intelligence warnings of an imminent attack. The Lebanese television channel al-Manar - run by the pro-Iranian Shia group Hizbullah - reported that the attacks...

The BBC is reporting that access to its Persian language website is being blocked by Iranian authorities. The block appears to have taken effect over the past three days, according to the Beeb, as tensions between the UK and Iran increased, depriving Iranian web users of a respected, independent news service. According to the BBC, its Persian website is the most popular of its foreign language websites but in a climate of growing international web censorship some of the world's most controversial regimes are setting their sites on limiting their people's access to such internet resources. Nigel Chapman, director of...

The Syrian-Iranian terror alliance goes back a long time, at least to the mid-1980s, when Hezbollah was created to wage terror war against American and French forces in Lebanon. There was a neat division of labor: Syria controlled the territory, and Iran ran the organization. Hezbollah's murderous successes are legendary, from the suicide bombings against the French and American Marine barracks to a similar operation against the American embassy, all in Beirut, to massive bombings of Jewish targets in Argentina. That alliance remains intact, and provides the base of the terror war in Iraq today. So it should not have...